“Dr. Dixon…” Brandon shook his head. “You’re just as bad as him calling you Dr. Rivers, as if it isn’t obvious that you two used to be a thing and still are a thing.”
God, Brandon was right. It was so stupid to act so sterile, yet she couldn’t help doing it.
“Gotta comply, or you could reinjure it. And if you want to go out for baseball at the end of summer, you for sure gotta get that joint healed properly.”
“Did Anita approve it?”
“Cut the sarcasm, Bran, okay?” She smiled brightly so that she didn’t scowl.
“I’ll be long gone by then in my new ‘placement,’” he mumbled with the skill of a ventriloquist.
“Do you want to stay? Anita’s blowing up my phone, but you’re the one she needs to hear from—”
“Why?” Brandon frowned “It’s not like she’ll listen anyway. She’ll just lecture me about my behavior.” The fistfight hadn’t been Brandon’s only altercation.
“Bran, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to help—”
“Well, stop trying. You’re just another foster home, probably in it for the monthly check.” The air left her lungs at his venom. He leveled his hurt, hard stare at her. “And I’ll be forced to pack up again when you’re finally sick of me, like everyone else, if not sooner, thanks to the accident yesterday.”
He said it like the accident was her fault. Pain gouged. Don’t let him push you away.
“That’s not true—”
“I thought for a minute at the hospital, when you and that Dixon guy got all weird about each other, that maybe, just maybe…” He let the thought go, his jaw tight and pumping.
What? Her desire to get to the clinic cooled a degree as she rested a hand on Brandon’s forearm. Brandon was complicated and was trying to get a reaction. Brandon’s fingers tightened on the drawstring bag.
“I should know by now never to get my hopes up,” he finished with resignation.
What did he mean by that cryptic thought?
“Does this have to do with his tattoo?”
Yeah, Travis had quickly charmed his way out of that conversation when Brandon had bombarded him about the tattoo and the death it commemorated.
Brandon shrugged.
“I imagine it might have been hard for him to talk about it, Bran. I think your questions surprised him. Did he say something during your procedure to bother you?”
“Naw, Skylar, all he did was talk about you.” Brandon paced away. Jasper, squatted down in the corner, Skoal ring having worn a circle in his back pocket, eyed her.
He’d done what? That anticipation to get to her clinic spiked again.
She exhaled and strode to her office in the far corner of the barn by the stairs leading to the hayloft; slung her backpack on her shoulder; snatched up her coffee thermos, stack of charts, keys, lab coat. She shuffled around her plywood desk, built with her own two hands, rummaged in her drawer for a new box of pens, when her fingers landed on the edge of a manila envelope.
“Roadside bomb… I’m so sorry, honey… I know how much Travis meant to you.”
She froze. Shoved shut the memories—drawer. Shoved shut the drawer. Jasper followed her out.
“I owe you, Jasper. Thanks so much for coming over.”
“Pay me in supper sometime and we’ll call it square.” He winked and lowered his breath. “I heard the boy arguin’. I’ll see what I can do to work that attitude out of his system today.”
She shook her head with mock exasperation and smiled as he winked.
“He’s like the strays that come through the clinic,” she sighed. “I’m trying to give him time to come around. I just wish he’d stop biting at me.”
“He will, Doc. And he has already, a lot. You just work on that caseworker of his. Get her to leave him be so he can settle in. Hard not to bite the hand that feeds when it’s been cruel to him before.”