Chapter Eight
Skylar held her burning cheeks the entire way to the clinic, where Travis had just held her for all of Los Magueyes’s five residents to see, his thumbs reverently caressing her like he’d used to do when he wasn’t fooling around but saying goodbye to her as he dropped her back at Rhett’s trailer, as if seeing her like he used to see her. Her forehead tingled from the unexpected kiss. The blazing sun continued blinding her. The corner of that envelope from Alpine stuck out from beneath the charts, as if vying to be seen…
A niggling feeling, unmistakable but unidentifiable, too, had been born. The way Trav’s finger had curled around hers, for the briefest of moments, the way he’d cupped her cheek desperately, caressing her with the wanton desire in his eyes, had flooded her with need she hadn’t felt in such a long time and the foolish desire to throw caution to the wind and sink into him.
God, when was the shock going to dissipate?
It swirled with mounting frustration about the stray in his truck bed, and once more, she peeked in her rearview mirror while white-knuckling the steering wheel to see Red Lightning steady behind her. How could people be so cruel? She wouldn’t fault someone for not being able to miss an animal that darted out in front of them. But not even caring to stop and help? That was twisted.
Yet Rhett had taught her a valuable, lifelong lesson: Those entrusted with important jobs to care about others often didn’t—the driver of the truck just now a prime example. Travis popping into the emergency department with his earbuds hanging around his neck only reinforced that, and she’d never imagined he could be so heartless. Yet she’d seen shock just now when she’d dressed him down. Pain that had no words to describe its intensity when she’d laid the truth on him. Why on earth would he think he’d not been good for her anymore? Why couldn’t he have let her be the judge of that for herself? Was it just an excuse? Had he found someone else after returning home and not wanted to admit it? Had he just been too much of a coward to admit he didn’t love her anymore?
No, he loved her, she could see that—in the way he’d just practically begged her without so many words for another chance, in the way he’d captured her finger with his, and in the excitement-inducing suggestion that they see what sort of team they’d make. But he was changed. Something about his stint overseas had done that to him. Maybe the wheelchair-bound shell of a man in that grainy photo hadn’t been himself after the trauma he’d endured. The maybes of all the things that might have happened to him filled her with unease. What had happened to him in Afghanistan? He’d left a young, fresh-faced man with a smile for days and a joke for longer, ideals about his future as solid as Sierra Blanca, and a stubborn streak a mile wide and a hundred miles long. But the young man who called her baby, teased her mercilessly, held her reverently had never come back. Deployment had done that, tightened up the once-charismatic kid inside a brooding drum of a man and replaced him with a focused, distant, accolade-decorated surgeon.
She’d somehow missed it all. Did she want to learn about him now? Or let him go, while continuing to live on her own trajectory? Could she bear knowing he lived in her vicinity without seeing him? No, she couldn’t. Could she continue faulting him for never finding her? That hollow-cheeked guy in the grainy photo had seen things she couldn’t imagine. Had he even been in his right mind back then? Or had he, too, just been trying to protect the parts of his soul that hadn’t been blown up in the bomb he’d mentioned, the way she’d protected herself by running away? She’d tried to hide so others couldn’t find her, to lick her wounds and pull some semblance of her shit together. News of his death had sent her reeling. She’d lost the most important things in the world because of it—
Her hand slid over her belly again, gripping at the phantom pain.
Alpine had become a place of bad memories she couldn’t bear to set foot in again. Rhett, Travis… She knew if she’d gone to stay with Deborah and Harold Dixon as they’d requested she’d only search his brothers’ faces for traces of him every time she looked at them. The heartache would have been too crippling. The Dixons had known how to rely on each other, no matter what Travis had once thought about his dad. In high school, it had been easy. They’d been too young to screw up like this. But now, it seemed so hard.
The arctic AC cooled her heated cheeks as she tempered her speed to keep herself in Travis’s vision.
She braked, flipped on her blinker, and roared into the gravel lot surrounded by badlands, pulling the dually alongside the clinic and parking it. Travis pulled in behind her. A car sat in the corner. Her eight forty-five cat? It was eight forty-nine. Crap!
Color her late for work, for the first time. She could never gloat to Jasper again.
“Game face, Skylar.” She pinched her cheeks, swilled her coffee straight from her thermos, and pushed open her door.
“Hey, Skylar,” a guy in dark blue scrubs, name badge clipped to his top and brown hair pulled back into a knot at the base of his head, called as Skylar jumped down, landing deftly on her ropers.
“Hey, Josh!” she called, overly chipper.
Red Lightning’s door creaked open behind her. She could feel Travis’s eyes on her again, as if honed in like a tracking device on his every move, every glance. She could hear his boots crunching around to the back of his truck, could envision his muscle-thickened thighs stretched beneath his denim, that muscle-thickened waist rippling beneath the belt, his obliques torqued as they stretched toward those firm glutes—
“Cat’s in Exam One. Exam Two is prepped like you asked. What’s the emergency?”
“Stray hit by a truck. Did you reach Judy-Lynn yet?” Skylar asked. With only one appointment on her books today and her clinic technically closed, her tech-slash-receptionist was off work and might not even be home. Of course the fates would pour patients on her now that she’d been caught unawares.
“Nope. Still trying,” Joshua replied.
“Well, roll up your shirtsleeves ’cause you’re getting a crash course today. Bring the transport.”
“On it.” Joshua vanished inside.
Cheeks still burning, she rubbed her eyes beneath her sunglasses, which thankfully shielded the redness, and hustled over to where Travis stood by the tailgate. Her game face tried to falter. She couldn’t let it. If it faltered, Travis would see the wounds beneath the surface. Yet that same divot of concern that he’d regarded her with as his thumb had caressed her face and his palm had held her steadily was still marring his brow, as if he could see beneath the surface anyway.
“How is she?” she asked.
She could feel his heat, his proximity, like tension pulling tight, drawing her close. He didn’t speak at first, and she glanced sidelong up at him. He was taking her in. He nodded once.
“As calm as can be expected.”
Joshua jogged back out a moment later, handing her the dog stretcher she’d requested, and Travis backed up, as if to extricate himself from the operation.
“No—here, I could use your help.”
She grasped his forearm, her fingers curling over his tattoo. He glanced sharply at their point of contact, as if to determine what it meant.
“Sorry,” she whispered at the harsh expression, letting go.