Chapter Ten
Skylar snapped off her gloves and gown and pushed through the door as Joshua strode out behind her, waving as he headed out the back. A moment later, she spied his hatchback smattered in Share the Road stickers turn out onto the road. It was just her and Travis now. She washed her hands and walked out to the waiting room.
“So the suturing…”
Her voice trailed off as she arrived in the waiting area. Travis dozed in a chair, his arms folded in that hard-ass posture across his stomach and once more wedged beneath each bicep, slouched backward, legs kicked out. His binder was propped open and his iPad asleep atop it. She swallowed, taking in the simplicity of his posture, the easy lifting and depressing of his diaphragm, his chin resting on his chest and cap still on backward. She’d always marveled at how easily he fell asleep—and in almost any posture—and smiled wistfully. He seemed peaceful right now; whatever demons that firmed his brow were at bay. She wanted to brush her thumb over it.
In the emergency of the morning, she hadn’t made her obligatory greeting to Trav’s loyal pup, currently curled in a doughnut beside his legs and perking its mismatched ears. Her gaze traveled the length of those legs, how Travis’s jeans hugged his toned thighs, firm with solid muscle, how his fly embraced that generous bulge that had brought her so much wild pleasure after they’d finally done the deed, how they tugged unnaturally around his left calf crossed over his right—
A prosthetic? Jeezus…
She’d noticed his gait was uneven, but in that old grainy wheelchair photo, the angle had been wrong to show a missing leg. She’d assumed he’d just been sitting. There was no leg there at all below his knee?
Breath stolen, she gasped. An amputation? Oh, Trav…
Her hand crept up to cover her lips. Had she honestly trivialized his confession at the café to “some scars”? How would he feel, knowing she was standing here, pitying him? Perhaps this missing leg had something to do with the tattoo of his friend. Perhaps his decision to pursue orthopedics was closely tied to the incident that had stolen this part of his body. Perhaps it was locked up tight within him so that he could function day to day.
Perhaps she was being too hasty in her feelings of betrayal and abandonment. Maybe he’d been unable to love her when he’d come home because he’d been unable to love himself. She’d seen that self-loathing on his face: You wouldn’t have wanted the guy who came home from overseas. She knew the feeling too well.
She cleared her throat. “Good prognosis.” An overly chipper smile brightened her lips.
He bolted upright on a sharp inhale as if ready for action, rubbing the corners of his eyes.
“X-rays came back—no fractures, but severe bruising to the tensor fasciae and minor tear to the left hip adductors. Some sutures did the trick, and I’ve prescribed an antimicrobial for the mange. She’s gonna stay at my annex so I can keep an eye on her wound and make sure she doesn’t chew at it. Lab panels look good now that her fluids are up. I suspect she’ll fully recover and make a great pet, once I do a behavioral analysis to make sure the snarling was just an isolated event.”
Travis cleared his throat, nodding. “That is good news.”
He smiled, gazing at her with a strange look of awe in his eyes. Her skin tingled as his eyes roved over her form, her scrub pants cinched with an oversize drawstring, resting on her hips. God. That hazy, semi-lucid smile. The same boyish one, a glimmer of the old Travis, that always dimpled his cheek when he’d woken up beside her at three a.m., realizing he’d needed to sneak out her window the same way he’d snuck in before he tempted fate too much and Rhett discovered “that damn Dixon bastard sniffing around again” as if she were a hussy sleeping around with the whole high school. The accusations had gouged an innocent girl’s heart.
It was as if Travis was seeing her for the first time.
Yet the smile slowly fell, like he’d realized something. He braced his hands on his knees, then pushed to standing as the injured one popped softly. So he had hardware in his knee, too. He cleared his throat, and her stare popped up from his knee to his eyes, then darted away.
“And who have we here?” she said cheerily, diverting her attention to the retired service dog.
The dog perked up and bounced to its feet, clearly an older dog judging from the white sprinkled in the dark fur around his muzzle and yet as spry as a puppy.
She pulled the treat jar across the counter, and the dog trotted to her and sat. She squatted down and stroked his head, palming the treat to his mouth as his tail swished back and forth.
“Aren’t you a good boy? Yes, you are a good boy. Thanks for using your fluffy tail to clean my floor, yes, thank you—” Yoda licked her chin as she tipped her head back and laughed. “Goodness, thank you…”
Travis’s face softened with fondness as she baby-talked the dog and wrapped him up for strong, assuring hugs. “I say that all the time to him.”
“Great minds must think alike,” she teased.
“Meet Yoda.” Travis grinned.
“Ah, love the name. I remember those buckets of Star Wars action figures you and your brothers had.”
Travis chuckled and spoke with an exaggerated drawl. “And those movie marathons, I bet.”
“Gawd, yes.” She smirked. “You’re lucky I liked you and your brothers enough to sit through three VHS tapes in a row.”
She handed Yoda another treat, relishing this history between them.
“You found the way to his heart,” Travis quipped. “He’s never found a treat he doesn’t recognize on the spot. Like any Dixon boy, he’s motivated by his stomach.”
“Oh man, you lot could eat your weight at a BBQ.”