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his chair.
    Kallie woke him and told him it was time to leave.
    Gratefully, he stood up and the three of them took the elevators down to the first floor. Sean had booked rooms for them at the Hilton, just a block away. Scarlett was about a quarter mile away at the Holiday Inn.
    So Scarlett got a cab out front and left, waving and promising to see them bright and early the next morning at the hospital.
    Kallie and Sean began the short walk back to their hotel.
    The two of them were exhausted and barely able to speak as they made their way.
    The cars and people and life moving around them seemed unreal and unimportant. They were in their own separate little bubble—they had been in an unimaginable situation, still trying to come to grips with what they’d been through.
    “Are you okay, Sean?” she asked him, as they walked together.
    “I just keep replaying it over and over again,” he said. “That guy coming in the restaurant and the look on his face.”
    “I know,” she said, remembering it herself—how sure she’d been that she was going to die.
    “I turned and ran, just like you told me to,” Sean laughed, shaking his head. “But it came real natural, the running. Like I was born to run.”
    “Don’t beat yourself up, Sean. Anybody with half a brain runs when a person points a gun at them and starts shooting.”
    “I always thought I was tough,” Sean said. “So fucking tough. Beating guys up who looked at me the wrong way. Hell, I was going to try and beat Hunter up not that long ago.”
    Kallie had to smile, remembering the little stand off the two of them had, the night of Sean’s engagement party in New York. “That was pretty ridiculous,” she chuckled.
    “And something tells me it wouldn’t have gone well for me if I’d been dumb enough to try anything that night,” he said, shaking his head once more. “God, how could I be so fucking blind?”
    “Blind about what?”
    “About the fact that it doesn’t take courage to get in a fight at a bar. It doesn’t mean anything. All those fights, all those years of standing up to people and making them back down. And then the one time that actually mattered…I was fucking scared. I was scared shitless and I did nothing.”
    Kallie glanced at him. His face was pale, his hands clenched as they walked.
    They were almost at the hotel now.
    “Sean, look at me,” she said, slowing down.
    He did, looking at her with confused, large blue eyes. “Yeah?”
    “You’re a good guy with a good heart. And maybe you’re just a regular guy—
    maybe you don’t have to be the one who saves everybody.”
    “Why does it feel so bad?” he asked.
    “Because you think it makes you weak. You think it matters.”
    “It does matter and it does make me weak.”
    Kallie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter to me. You’re still my brother, still the same kid who used to play Shoots and Ladders with me for hours on end when I was little, even though it bored you to tears. Still the same kid who told me jokes that night I watched Friday the Thirteenth when I wasn’t supposed to and got scared half to death.
    You told me jokes and made the nightmares go away, Sean.” She went and hugged him tightly.
    “I couldn’t make the nightmare go away today,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s okay, though,” she told him. “It’s okay Seany.”
    And this time, she meant it.

    ***
    That night, despite everything she’d been through, Kallie managed to sleep deeply.
    When she awoke again, it was just the crack of dawn and she felt like someone had plugged her in and wired her for sound. She was a bundle of energy and nerves; frightened of what the day held, but hopeful that maybe it would be good news.
    Kallie got out of bed and called over to their old hotel that Hunter had booked them in West Hollywood. She explained to the concierge what had happened (she needn’t have explained—it appeared the entire hotel and possibly the whole state knew about the