Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9(75)

Jack had to stop and catch his breath. She’d never looked so small or so fragile, not even after the birth of the twins. He reminded himself that she was tough. This was Kathleen. She was going to be just fine.

He moved beside the bed, eyes fixing first on her lips and the bluish tint that stained them. Then on the shallow, rapid rise and falls of her chest. He reached out and took her hand in his, shocked by how cold it was. What the hell was wrong with these people? Didn’t they know she was freezing?

As he looked around for an extra blanket for her, her eyes fluttered open. She stared at him for several long moments before recognition dawned. “Jack. You’re okay.”

The whispered words were muffled beneath the clear plastic mask strapped over her nose and mouth. Her hand lifted as if to remove it, but stopped about half way and dropped over her abdomen as if she didn’t have the strength.

“Of course I’m okay. I promised didn’t I?”

She smiled weakly. “Yes.”

“How about you?” he managed through the pain in his chest.

“So much fuss,” she wheezed. “A couple of days rest and I’ll be fine.”

At two-twenty a.m., Kathleen Siobhan O’Leary Callaghan turned to her husband, and with her last breath, whispered, “I love you, always.”

And in the next moment, Jack Callaghan had lost his heart.





Chapter Twenty-Eight




It was like a bad dream; the worst of nightmares. Machines screeching and blaring alarms, a rush of doctors and nurses who tried so valiantly to bring her back. Jack watched it all, his heart refusing to believe what his eyes saw. He was tempted to claw them out for their betrayal, for showing him the impossible.

Kathleen couldn’t be gone. She was only forty years old. His wife. The mother of his seven children.

His croie.

The doctors, the nurses, the priest, they all said the same thing. But they were liars, all of them. Evil, lying, rotten bastards. Even Kathleen’s family had turned against him, trying to make him believe that Kathleen could leave him so easily.

Hospital security was no match for a man of Jack Callaghan’s skills. He stood over her, refusing to allow any of them near her. She was his. His to protect. His to care for. They wanted her, wanted to take her away, but they couldn’t have her.

He held her in his arms, willing her heart to borrow strength from his. Kissed her lips, lips that were far too cold, pushing breath into her damaged lungs.

Because she couldn’t be gone.

The details of the rest of that night were sketchy. From what they’d told him later, they’d had to sedate him and physically remove him from Kathleen’s room after several hours. He vaguely remembered screaming at Father Murphy, cursing him to Hell for daring to suggest Kathleen was with God now. God couldn’t have her, because she was his.

All of his life he’d never lost his faith. Had never questioned Him or his purpose, even when he was a prisoner of war. Not when the skin had been flayed from his back; not when small, sharp sticks had demonstrated the true meaning of excruciating over and over again. None of that compared to this.

No beneficent God could command such a thing as this.

He woke up a full twenty hours later in Brian’s house. At first he was disoriented, but when he saw Brian and Charlie talking in hushed tones, it all came back to him. It was then he knew the horrific nightmares had been true.

They didn’t bother trying to console him. They must have known how impossible a task that would have been -—especially Brian, who had lost his wife less than a year earlier. However, when Jack, overcome by the crushing grief, went for the loaded gun Brian kept on the top shelf in the kitchen, they did remind him that he had seven grieving, scared boys who had just lost their mother.

Jack didn’t know how he would do it. He didn’t know how he was going to make it through another minute, let alone face his boys. He’d failed them, failed them all.

That was the first time he heard Kathleen’s voice in his head. “Aye, you will do this, mo croie beloved. You will do this for me.”

He didn’t know how he did it, but he did. He went home to his sons, her boys, and somehow, they made it through the next few days. He did what he needed to do, little more than a semi-functional zombie.

He spoke with the priest. Erin took care of her clothes. The funeral home director, a friend of his father’s, took care of everything else. Jack just signed whatever they told him to.

The days were dark and cold, filled with a thousand times more pain and suffering than anything he’d ever experienced. Then, the thought of seeing Kathleen again was the only thing that got him through. That same desire was a temptation he fought every minute of every day. His boys were his strength, the only reason he continued to draw breath. That, and the haunting whispers and warnings of his croie, echoing in his heart as well as his mind: “If you chose that path, Jack, then I will be forever lost.”

So he endured. One agonizing moment at a time. The pain never went away, but he learned to live with it. He focused on their boys and did the best he could.

Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Months became years.

It was Kathleen who eventually brought him back to his faith, because it went hand in hand with the belief that he would see her again.

One by one he saw their sons follow in his footsteps. Stood proudly as each one enlisted and became a SEAL. Watched as they followed their natural talents and became what they were destined to be. And finally, as their commitments were satisfied, accepted them into what had become the unofficial family “business.”