Why—why—why is it taking so long! She voiced it, those words poured out before she could stop herself. Tani raced frantic eyes around the waiting room. Her friends and teammates were giving off the same vibes. Their looks of desperation, anxiety—fear, matched her own shaken, shaken to the core, appearance. Tears flooded her eyes; her eyes itched, were swollen, and couldn't focus properly. She sucked it up, hearing what Danny would've said if he weren't being operated on. I got this, kid. You can't get rid of me this easily.
Tani gave several slight nods. She wasn't going to lose him—not today. She didn't hesitate to think I love him. I loved him the more I got to know him. Then, Junior loved me the more he got to know me. And I love him too, but not the way I love Danno.
Still no word, and Steve was slowly losing it. But then, word came. Danny wasn't out of the woods yet, but Steve could go in to see him. The departing look on his face radiated his need to spend a very long time with his bosom friend, the closest best friend he'd ever known.
I'm going next, chanted on and on in her muddled mind. Should I call Gracie? Or, should Steve? He has too much going on right now. Like does he want to stay, or leave us to go off and find himself?
She felt a strong, firm, yet gentle hand settle on her left shoulder. "Tani, he's gonna be all right. He's strong, stubborn as my grandma's old cat, Dura, and Danny is one tough cop." Junior coaxed Tani around to him. "He isn't going anywhere from us."
Tani settled her hand over Junior's to massage and pat it. All she could do was give a choked, "Yeah." She smiled through her storm of violent emotions. "He's not." Deeply, she croaked, "I know that's right." Please-let him be okay. Please, God.
A while later, Steve reappeared, looking all geared-up to be on the move. That familiar steel in his antsy eyes he had when something huge was about to go down grabbed everyone's attention. Dynamic Lincoln Cole had just called to let Steve know that it was urgent he meet with Quinn and Cole. Steve gripped his mobile phone still hearing Cole's exigency that had leeched through the connection. "I'll be in touch," McGarrett had emphasized, primed for alerting his team. He informed Lou, Adam, and Tani: "Pieces are falling into place. We regroup, downrange, and take Daiyu Mei and her killers out. Be ready!"
"You got it, Steve," Grover promised, anxious to accompany him, but also eager to see Danny. Since Lou had teamed up with 5-0, he could count on one hand the number of times Williams had been shot.
Adam argued for riding shotgun, but his advocacy never reached Steve's ears. Steve was full-on in the 'zone.'
Tani had already run off to be with Danny. She spilled into his room, and over to his bed. Her eyes said it all.
"Is that concern I see, or are you just happy my pretty face isn't more banged up than it is?" Danny lay there taking her in, and cracked his familiar lopsided smile as best as he could in his present condition.
"Shut-up, jerk," Tani breathed in a voice fraught with emotions. "Thank God you're alive!" Moving deliberately, she placed a grateful kiss upon his varied-pigmented shades of red forehead. "That's all that matters." Her troubled eyes glistened, and teardrops unstoppably fell, dropping on his hospital bed like glittery rainfall. As she shook, she took a rock-solid hold of Danny's hand with both of hers. "You mean everything to me." She lowered her head to his hand, kissing it with trembling lips.
Under her spell, Danny gazed into Tani's eyes, when she stared into his. His throat continued to tighten. "I…uh. Uh, I—"
She dropped in, not letting him finish, anchoring her lips to his, and sealing them with a passion-charged kiss. All that she had kept bottled up inside herself all these months released in catharsis. She'd given herself to Junior, but her tumultuous feelings for Danny caused her shame. She'd done what she'd done with Junior, had uttered many tender things, but it no longer felt right. He certainly didn't deserve to be hurt. Deep in her heart, though, she knew he would be. She couldn't go on pretending; Danny was the man she truly loved, the man she was choosing to never be without.
She shuddered, revived courage coursing in her veins.
"Kid?" Danny whispered, his throat even tighter now. "Are you gonna be all right?"
Inches from his face, she nodded. "I will be now. Yes. I know you're the man I love with everything I've got. I'm sure. You show me what you're made of every day. I pretend not to notice. Convince myself I'm just infatuated. Keep making excuses—over and over again. I'm done. I promised myself that if you came out of this alive, relatively intact, I owe you honesty. Confess. Tell the truth."
"I, uh…I'm at a loss here." The rapid beating of his heart registered on the monitor he was hooked up to. Danny glanced at it, and grinned. "No, that's not true. I'm not. I confess too. You're better than adrenaline. Any drug known to man. A clueless man like me. But, hey, know what I'm about to say is the God's-honest truth. You're the woman I've fallen hard for. I'm the one who chickened out. Made like I didn't care one way or the other. I never stopped wanting you. You, wanting to be with me. Then it looked to me like Junior happened."
"He did happen, Danny. Your mixed signals tripped me out. I figured I wasn't who you wanted. Junior did. Does, actually. He does." She gave Danny a look.
"He's going to be crushed."
"I know," she said, sounding like it.
Danny made the effort to raise his other hand, but didn't have the strength, which annoyed him to the bottom of the soles of his feet. "You don't want that. I don't want that. So, what do we do?"
She liked that he'd said, "we." It was so Danny. So comforting hearing him put it the way he had. While feather-stroking his somewhat perspired forehead, she truthfully answered, "I have no idea..." Bare my soul, and beg his forgiveness.
"Yes you do. Of course you do. A smart, caring, beauty like yourself." Danny tossed his most mischievous wink her way.
"I only know I need to be with you too." Tani began thinking out loud. "Okay. Maybe we make telling him a joint effort? Like. I could. Oh, like invite him to my place. I'll cook. You'll be there, and we break it to him gently, together." She wrinkled her forehead, looking as if she could see the scene in her mind's eye. "Bad idea?"
"Nope. It's doable." Danny motioned with his head for her to bring her face closer to his again. "It's the best idea I've heard all day. Not trying to be a wise guy here. Breaking it to Junior gently, together, won't make breaking up with him any easier. But maybe with your cooking, jokes, and sparkling personality, and my looking like I'm the inventor of humble pie, it might make telling him sting less." Danny gave a short sigh, motioning for Tani's hand, by wriggling his fingers of the IV-punctured arm. "Okay, maybe not less, but it won't be like having the rug pulled out from under him. He's a righteous dude."
Her brow furrowing, Tani concurred. "You're telling me. I don't love Junior any less. It's that I love you more." She briefly eyed the fine-tuned apparatus monitoring Danny's vitals. "So much more. But, I cannot hurt Junior. I'd rather jump into shark-infested Hanauma Bay all dressed up in my mermaid finery…than shoot him down. He'll always own a chunk of my heart." She arched an eyebrow. Is that a problem?"
Danny snorted. "I don't hear problem. I hear loyalty; an honesty that takes my breath away. That's because you're a righteous woman, babe." As she carefully cupped her hands around his face, and began kissing the tip of his nose first, then his right cheek, then his left, Danny said in-between guttural ahs, "As soon as I can stand on my own two feet without help, that includes not needing a cane, which I'm sure I'll need for a while, we're going surfing. I hope you'll wear your gorgeous mer-babe outfit as we carve." He sounded and looked thoughtful, he picturing her in the fanciful getup. It brought a dreamy smile to his healing face.
"I'll take care of you. I'll be whatever you need; you're so worth it." Going back to the tip of his nose to kiss it, Tani guaranteed, "You've got it, Charger."
"Speaking of which. I need a new ride."
"You do. What those scums did to yours was criminal!"
"They paid." He coaxed Tani to his lips, and this time he initiated the smooching. Grover sticking his head inside the room separated them, as Tani and Danny exchanged sheepish looks with the mountain of an African-American man.
"Well, I'll get back with Junes, and Adam." She eased off the side of the hospital bed, still squeezing Danny's hand. "I'll be back later," she promised. Bolder then, she mouthed, Love you.
Danny winked at her, and she half-smiled, half-giggled at Lou as she hurriedly left, waving goodbye to the bruised Jersey boy. Grover ambled up to the bed, wearing a puzzled, disbelieving facial expression. "What was that?"
Not answering right away, Danny finally gave up, "Another chance."
"Another chance?" Lou refuted. "It looked more like a betray—" Remembering that Danny had almost died, Grover shut his mouth.
"You were saying?" Danny asked, making it sound like a dig.
"How're you feeling, m'man?" Lou substituted.
"The best I've felt in too long," Danny insisted, and despite his present delicate condition, looked it too. She's giving me another chance, and this time ain't no way I'm blowing it. Nah! This time I'm running with it all the way. And then in the same stream of thought, Better Lou popped in here next instead of Junior. The guy loves her every bit as much as I do…maybe even more…
"Do you know what this'll do to Junior?" Lou aired, giving Danny a semi-hostile eye.
Looking contrite, Danny frankly confessed, "Both of us do."
Grover crossed his arms over his broad chest, and humphed. "Well, if I'm being honest, I used to think there was something going on between the da-lovely Ms. Ray, and you before Junior started showing greater interest. Like he was testing the waters."
Careful with cracking a too wide smile, Danny said, "We're telling him together, and when we do, it'll be Tani and me sitting on either side of him. Double team him with hugs. We pour out our hearts, laying it all out. We're ohana, man. Not backstabbers."
"And with Steve dead-set on giving 5-0 a little rest for a while, we owe it to him to keep ourselves ohana strong."
"Amen, brother. All for one, and one for all."
Lou gently jiggled Danny's blanketed left leg. "I'm happy for you, man. Tani and you deserve each other."
Elated to hear that, Danny said, "I don't deserve her, but bewildered she hasn't caught on yet. She really is the woman of my dreams."
"Brother, amen, man," Lou congratulated. "You treat her anything less than a queen, what I do to you will make what those punks did to you like playing patty-cake with Little Miss Muffin. Tani is just like another daughter to me."
"My word is my bond when it comes to Tani, Lou. She rules my heart."
"M'man, your word always has been." Lou lightly bumped his fist with Danny's leg, seeing the contented look in the man's light eyes. "Now mend quick. You can't have too many sick days left with all the time you've taken off."
"I have enough vacation days to get me through."
Cracking up, Lou needled, "Paid vacation?"
"If it's not paid vacation time off, it's not a vacation." Danny quit speaking, thinking back to when he'd been badly injured and the lovely lady he'd been instantly intimate with had been killed in that impossible car crash not long ago. "Tani said she'll take care of me."
"I'm happy for you, Danny. Tender, loving care is the best wonder drug of all."
"Tani's mine drug of choice."
Suddenly, Junior dropped in, his face aglow. "Can I have my turn with him now?"
"Yeah, yeah," Lou urged. "Get your butt in here. I was just leaving."
As Junior moved deeper into the room, Grover closed in on him, giving his back a substantial pat. "He's not as bad off as he looks."
Begging to differ, Danny, discordant, protested, "Says you, Lou. Like everybody keeps telling me I nearly died. What? That's not bad enough? I couldn't walk away from this like I did after the car crash."
"But, you catch another break, and live to tell. Keep that streak going. Later, man. Don't relapse and cause a funeral."
"Thanks for dropping in, Lou," Danny said, exaggerating syllables.
Junior, grinning from ear-to-ear, came closer to the bed. His jovial bearing spiked mixed feelings within Danny. Before he could say anything, Junior said, "Tani looks so much calmer now. Having seen you." Danny went stone-still. His itchy back itched even worse. Junior continued with no trace of resentment. "I've known. Didn't want to accept it. Tried pushing it away, but I can't do it anymore. How you two feel about each other doesn't leave just because I want her. She loves you. Really loves you. She went crazy. Came apart, fearing she'd lose you. Yeah, I love her too. But you are the man she can't live without. I'm not stepping aside, I'm getting out of the way to save myself from getting run over."
"Junior, hey—"
"I'm cool. I'm good. Grateful. Happy for her, and you, Danny. No regrets." Led by impulse, Junior gingerly lined his forehead up with Danny's, bestowing a gentle honi, the Hawaiian gesture of kissing. "You're my brah, man. Always will be."
"Same here." Danny had to catch his breath. "I have the privilege and honor of knowing real men, like you, who don't come any better. The exception being, the Navy Seal, who's making loud noises about ditching us."
"He talks a lot. Like you don't know. He's not going anywhere. And even if he does, it won't be forever. You know that better than anybody. If I read Steve right, he might add Lincoln to our merry band."
"Ohana forever," Danny measuredly cheered.
"The more the merrier," Junior tacked on, dismissing a sudden sadness tinge Danny's eyes. "Ohana shapes our lives, brah!"
Danny didn't curtail his abrupt mood swing, having sensed Steve's need for moving on for some time now. He told himself to pull out of the annoying onset of low spirits. He focused on his curative love for Tani. He did a fist pump as best as he could. Junior met him half way, as Danny promoted, "Ohana, all the way."