Chapter Four
Travis held the nylon gel pack he’d scored from Jan Glasser against his cheek where Ashley had nailed him with an open-palm slap straight from an old movie in the nurse’s break room “for leading her on.” He cruised down the country highway, baseball cap backward, wind blowing through his rolled-down window, driving toward his little house rental.
So she was crazy—they hadn’t even gone on a first date, let alone established any recurring arrangements, and she’d gone full-tilt territorial on him. It was as if Skylar had been thrust into his path right before he’d made a horrendous mistake.
Somehow in the course of one afternoon and a years-long dry spell, he’d managed to piss off two women. But only one of those women’s affection he cared about, and never in all their days had Sky pushed him away. The thought sat more sourly in his gut by the minute and sucked a lot worse than his sore cheekbone. He’d gone looking for Sky back in Emergency after he’d finished charting on Brandon, but she’d already gone. And all he wanted was a moment in her company when he didn’t have Ashley in his face angry at him or professional codes of conduct preventing him from being more personal.
Two hours later and he still couldn’t shake the onslaught of feelings from that fluke encounter. And a foster kid? Now why did that seem like a total Skylar thing to do? How adorable was the nickname Doolittle? And God, he couldn’t stand the ice in her eyes directed at him, couldn’t reconcile the warm, sparkling gaze she’d once bestowed upon him with the frosty one now. Why did her pushing him away today feel so shitty? Why had she seemed so angry?
She’d always had a bleeding heart, ready to help any stray off the street. Had he made a mistake so long ago, letting her go? She would have pitied you back then, just like she did that dog that her dad made her surrender to the shelter. That was where he’d met her. Both incoming freshmen at the tender age of fourteen, she’d been surrendering a dog, desperately begging the staff to let her volunteer there so she could see it, and Travis had adopted it out of her arms, promising her it would have a great life on the Legacy, then promptly used it as a means to ask her out. Or ask her over so she could see the dog whenever she wanted, and he could see her whenever he wanted. That he loved animals was only the icing on the cake for Skylar: She’d found her soulmate, she’d once said.
In spite of the memories still crashing over him from touching her and feeling her warm, muscled body snug against his chest, he smiled thinking about it. Adopting the dog had totally been a ploy to get her attention and talk to her—that, and he’d hated the tears in her eyes at the shelter. She’d been so pretty. He’d known her in middle school, but they hadn’t run in the same circles. He’d been a baseball jock, she an artsy spirit with a penchant for thrift store overalls and school camera in hand from photography class, ready to snap pictures of the beautiful nuances in the world that only she could see. He and the other guys on his team in eighth grade had drooled all over their baseball cleats when she’d walk by, and he’d seen a chance to slip to the front of the line of hormone-crazed teens checking her out and start off high school with a girlfriend. A grunge girlfriend on a country boy’s arm.
But the joke had been on him.
She hadn’t needed to flirt, just acted like herself, and he’d wrapped himself around her finger. The first time he’d seen the evidence of Rhett Rivers’s unpredictable anger in the form of a bruise on her cheek, he’d been toast. He’d been unable to think straight, it had pissed him off so badly. He’d schemed all sorts of scenarios where he formed a posse with his brothers and dragged the bastard out of his trailer to give his drunk face a conversation with a ditch. And he’d realized in that singular moment that the protective rush of testosterone was a result of something far deeper than teenage hormones. He’d wanted to wrap her in bubble wrap, make promises about the future. He’d been wildly in love.
The second Dixon son had been off the market before he’d ever been on it. He’d trailed after her like one of her shelter puppies, and she’d never pushed him away. Not like today, he thought bitterly, readjusting his ice pack and wincing—
His phone buzzed, distracting him, rattling the spare change and extra set of keys in Red Lightning’s ashtray, a standard fixture in those old ’80s trucks.
Toby, his little bro, illuminated the screen, reviving a string of texts that had gone unanswered while he’d been holed up in the OR, racing between patient dictations, or then that doozy of an emergency consult.
He flipped on his blinker and turned onto the gravel drive, bisecting alfalfa fields as his music droned, an overtone to the rush of air through the window, and cruised into his driveway, rolling his eyes at his brothers’ fretting. It had taken a long time to reconnect with them, especially his kid brother, who’d borne the brunt of his PTSD. But over the past month, Toby, the player, the rebel extraordinaire, had actually been lassoed by a woman, and Tobes, an all-too willing victim, hadn’t even fought it. When the news hit that Toby Dixon, the man who made putting notches on his belt an artform, had gone ahead and clipped his own damn wings, Travis hadn’t been able to resist texting him and forging a new—yet still fragile—connection.
Toby (9:16 a.m.):How’s it going, Trav? A simple check-in, sent that morning. Travis had been opening his second knee of the day around then.
Toby (12:35 p.m.):What’s going on, man? Everything okay? Travis had been finishing up the knee about then and had been wrists-deep in blood and bone fragments.
Tyler (3:09 p.m.):Hey man, Toby tried to get a hold of you this morning. Everything all right? He’d been in the throes of Reyes’s ACL repair and bone graft, obviously busy.
Toby (Now):Paging Dr. Dixon…
He chuckled at the newest text and swiped the messages open. He should have known better than to let the first text sit. Both his brothers might’ve known in theory that he’d pulled his bootstraps up by now, but they only remembered in practice, the old Travis convulsing on the floor too vividly. If they didn’t get an answer within a few hours after first reaching out, they began tag-teaming him for fear that he’d fallen into the abyss again.
Travis:Hey.
He hit Send.
A speech bubble began to waver. What the hell? Was Toby sitting by the phone on a Friday night? Why wasn’t Tobes taking Rose out for fajitas and dancing? Or had the family life truly bit Toby good and hard? Rose had a little boy, and Toby seemed just as smitten with the kid as he was with the kid’s momma. Travis hadn’t met her yet, but meeting the woman who could anchor Toby’s boots was definitely on his to-do list.
Toby:He lives and breathes. You owe me a visit home just for the scare today.
Travis:Sorry, turned my ringer off while operating. Figure avoiding distractions when I’ve got a scalpel millimeters from a popliteal artery is a good thing.
He left the second part of Toby’s message unanswered. He always did. Another text buzzed right away.
Toby:Smartass.
He grinned and rattled off a response.
Travis:Better than being a dumbass.
Toby:LOL, so funny bro, forgot to laugh. You take that nice piece from your ER out on a date yet? What was her name? Aubrey? Ashlyn?
Travis groaned. Pressed the cold pack against the stark reminder that he was never going to take Nurse Ashley anywhere, and thank God for that.
Travis:Negative.