A/N: I know it's been, like, forever since I updated. Sorry for the delay in the story. Not only have I been battling a nasty cold while working insanely long shifts all week (and OMG has it been a crazy week at work) but I've had probably the worst writer's block in my whole life this week. So bare with me. I'm working on the next few chapters right now so they will hopefully be up in the next few days.
Jamie wanted to cry just seeing her brother. She was so happy to see that he was okay. There wasn't a scratch on him. Jamie had always been every bit as protective of her big brother as he had been of her. She wanted to run to Tyler, but she knew that she was in no shape to run. She could hardly walk down the long hallways without Reid's help. She felt so useless, so weak.
Tyler had talked to Reid on the phone and Evelyn Danvers when she had arrived at the hospital. They had told him that Jamie had fought with Chase. They had told him that she was hurt badly. But Tyler felt his heart freefall into the pits of his stomach and land with a crash as he saw Reid helping Jamie make their way down the long white hallway. She looked so much worse than he ever could have imagined. His eyes began to water. How had he let Jamie get pulled into The Covenant's struggle with Chase? It was not her battle to fight.
Tyler didn't wait for Jamie and Reid to reach him at the waiting room at the end of the hallway; he sprinted to them, meeting them halfway, and held his sister. Tears began to slowly make their way down his rosy cheeks and into Jamie's black hair. Jamie could feel the water droplets hitting the top of her head and began to cry herself in reaction to them. With everything she and Tyler had been through in their lives, she had never once seen him shed a tear—not even one, not over anything. Even as children, when he would skin a knee or would fall from the monkey bars on the playground, he would get angry, but would never cry. Their father was the same way.
"I was so worried about you!" Jamie cried to him. She wrapped her one good arm around Tyler's waist and held on as tight as her bruised body would allow.
"I'm okay. Not even a scratch," Tyler assured his baby sister. She reminded him so much, in that moment, of the little sister who had left him and Ipswich, Massachusetts behind all those years ago to move to Miami with her mother. She reminded him so much of the little sister he had missed so much. And she reminded him so much of the person she would never be again.
Tyler tried not to hold Jamie too hard, fearing that he would hurt her. She looked so fragile.
"When Tyler said that Chase had come after you and Caleb…" Jamie was having trouble saying what she was thinking. It was so hard to say. It was so horrible to even think. "Tyler, I thought that you were dead. I thought I was all alone." Jamie began sobbing into her brother's shirt. She never wanted to let him go.
But her aching body thought otherwise.
Jamie felt her knees giving out under the weight of her body. They had never done that before. She gasped in surprise. Tyler's arms caught her immediately, as they were wrapped around her waist. But when Tyler caught Jamie his arm hit the spot on her ribs that hadn't stopped throbbing with pain since Chase had thrown her into a tree branch a good fifteen feet in the air. Jamie let out a cry of pain.
Tyler quickly helped Jamie to one of the bench seats in the waiting area at the end of the hall where Pogue and Kate were sitting holding hands from their chairs. "You shouldn't be here," Tyler said as he and Jamie sat side-by-side. Reid took a seat in the chair next to the bench on the side Jamie was sitting on after saying hello to Pogue and Kate. "You should be home resting."
"No. I had to make sure you were okay. I had to see for myself," Jamie exclaimed. She put her head on Tyler's shoulder and closed her eyes. "Besides," she said so softly that no one else would be able to hear her. "I didn't want to be there alone."
That was the moment that Tyler realized just how much Chase scared his sister. Jamie had never admitted to being scared before. She always tried to act tough. When things would bother her—the kids at school or her parents' fighting or whatever—she would try to act like she was okay. When Tyler or Reid or one of the other boys had confronted her about what was bothering her, she usually would tell them and talk about it in great detail. But she had never told Tyler that she was scared before. She had never come to him and clung to him the way she had done a moment earlier. He was beginning to realize that Jamie was not shaking because she was hurt. She was terrified.
Tyler wrapped his arm around Jamie's shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. Jamie took a deep breath and her shaking stopped. Tyler let out a small, almost silent sigh and the ends of his mouth curled ever-so-slightly into the beginnings of a smile. At least for right then, Tyler knew that he had his baby sister back.