Huh.
Travis stepped unevenly down a stairwell and out into the emergency department lobby. He jammed the unfinished protein bar into his pocket as he approached the nurse’s station and squirted a poof of sanitizer from the wall pump into his palm, rubbing it around. Horse rehabilitation. Like, equine therapy? Or therapy for riders?
That old, forgotten voice, the boy who’d dreamed big dreams about a horse sanctuary only for his daddy to stomp his boot upon it and grind it into dust, whispered in the depths of his mind.
“Hey, Ash.” He smiled at the nurse, pulling the earbuds out again and dropping them upon his lapel once more. His mouth pulled up into a grin and grinned even harder when it elicited the response he’d wanted from her. Coy stare and kissable smile. “Ortho consult?”
“Hey, Dixon,” she replied, a divot in her cheek and chin, wide brown eyes as she handed him a chart, her gaze trailing over his physique as a pair of police officers sauntered from the triage unit, their walkie-talkies muttering statically at their shoulders. “I was hoping they’d send you.”
Yeah, her number was all his. Once he scored it, he’d ask her out and end his dry spell.
Ashley smirked playfully up at him. He popped his dimple at her and gave her a stiff head nod to say hello as he flipped the chart over and scanned the notes.
Ashley’s fingertips brushed against his—on purpose, judging by the divot in her cheek never “undivoting”—as she pointed to a couple things in the chart and began giving him the lowdown. His pulse raced at the contact, eager to get his hands on her once the time was right. His dick twitched as her fingers feathered against his skin, as her eyes flashed with heat, as if trying to get a read on him. Yeah, missing leg or not, he was still a guy and his equipment got all hot and bothered at the mere thought of a gorgeous woman naked beneath him.
With her, there’d be no strings attached. No expectations of girlfriend status. Sex. Hot sex. It was all he needed and all she wanted.
“Kid arrived by ambulance an hour ago. Left dislocated shoulder, no fractures. Brandon Bridges, fourteen, stable, got the Versed-Propofol duo for pain management.”
Huh. Boss’s given name had been Brandon. Little untimely coincidences like this one popped up once in a while, too, just as they’d done with the song up in the OR, reminding him of simpler, happier times—
“Dr. Glasser can’t get muscle spasms to relax. Truck sideswiped his mom’s vehicle, and she collided with a fence post.”
“Is the mom okay?” he asked as his eyes perused the kid’s diagnosis, music emanating faintly from the loose earphones.
No damage to the circumflex nerve. Anterior impact—the kid braced the dashboard when the impact occurred and the airbag deployed. Damn.
“Mom’s bruised from her airbag, but she seems okay. Lucid enough to refuse treatment and stubborn AF about it. She just wants us to worry about her kid. She’s pretty shaken. Refused to lie on the bed, like just touching it upset her.”
“What bay?”
“Twelve.” Ashley practically batted her eyes.
He grinned, enjoying the way her plump lips, shimmery with lip gloss, pulled upward into a tantalizing smile that did nothing but make him picture what they looked like when she was on her knees, gazing up his navel at him as she—A delighted gleam flickered in her eyes.
He nodded his thanks as she slid a folded sticky note across the counter and into his fingers. He glanced at it. Her number. Ego boosted. He winked, jutted his chin at her. Score a point for team Dixon. He began walking to Bay Twelve, tapping off his music on his cell, as Ashley swiveled away to answer the beeping phone, slapping a stack of charts in front of her.
His eyes scanned the chart as he approached the drawn curtain, grabbing hold of the hem to yank it back—He froze midsentence.
All lackadaisical excitement about Ashley dissipated. All tingling excitement below the waist was doused, like water on a campfire, as his eyes landed on a name that might have been churned up in his memories because of that stupid song in the OR but he hadn’t actually read in a long time. His chest tightened in such a strange way. He reread the name again. Again.
His hand dropped from the curtain. Is this for real?
A new course of tingling erupted on his skin, pebbling it painfully with goose bumps. A pair of beat-up women’s ropers paced beneath Bay Twelve’s curtain, the soft, higher-pitched voice he would know to this day, now that he was listening, in spite of fourteen years separating them as she spoke in muted tones. Heat infused his body like an endorphin rush. But this time, it had nothing to do with Ashley teasing him. It was dusty, unabashed attraction with a twist of concern like he was still that kid who wanted to be her hero.
A stupid pinch of alacrity to both see her and hightail it fast in the other direction tightened in his chest.
He shook his lab coat off his shoulders, sweat breaking upon his temples as he draped it over his arm. Cleared his throat. A rush of dubiety flooded the pit of his stomach as he fought that old-yet-familiar need to rush to her rescue infusing his blood with adrenaline.
It couldn’t be her. Here. All the way out in middle-of-nowhere, Texas. Was she okay? He’d never intended on seeing this ghost from his past ever again. He’d let her go. And when he’d finally quelled that need to try and find her, convincing himself it was all for the best, she had to resurface here? Now? Where he’d settled to start a new life that had no more room for backward glances at a past that would never be his future?
Get your shit together—her kid is injured.
Did she still ride horses? He could almost feel that wind in his hair once more and her arms cinched around his waist, Cimarron’s motion beneath them. Great, and now she’d made him think of Cimarron. This was why he’d let her go. He couldn’t have the life they’d spent four years of high school dreaming about. He couldn’t bring home the same parts of himself he’d left in Afghanistan. Those bits of his soul had died in that hellhole and no amount of therapy or recovery would revive them. Skylar had always deserved the stars and moon, not another drunk like her old man. She’d always deserved the life he’d promised her.
What did she look like now? Had the years been good to her? Or aged her prematurely?
His thoughts flitted around like startled barnyard chickens.