She racked her brain. But try as she might to blot out the memories of the only other time she’d been in an emergency room bed, reeling from the news that Travis’s unit had been bombed and there’d been no survivors, the memories refused to be vanquished as they flooded her mind like a swarm of angry wasps. Reality hit through the haze of confusion. He survived, somehow, and went on living without me—he abandoned me.
She sucked in a deep breath. Get Brandon treatment, then get home. Whatever is happening here, you have Anita—Brandon’s foster care worker—to worry about. Anita had just hinted that they might need to look into a new placement for Brandon in light of the accident, as if getting sideswiped had been her fault.
She gazed at Travis, unabashed and direct. Took in his form. Still so tall. So lanky. And yet, my God, he’d filled out, too. If she’d only seen him from behind and not heard him talk, she wouldn’t have recognized him based on the yoking muscle traveling over his shoulders from his neck and the corded straps of muscle bunching and releasing with each shift of his arms. How much did he bench press? He was built like a warrior. He was a warrior, remember? Travis Riley Dixon had joined the army, and they’d apparently done more than turn the boy into the man. They’d done womankind everywhere a favor and turned him into a physical powerhouse, the best kind of eye candy.
“Is she gonna be okay?” Brandon said from beside her, his voice rising as he pulled himself up on the bed rail, wincing. “Skylar?”
“Whoa, lie back down. Ain’t no one running bases right now,” Travis replied and encouraged her foster son to relax backward with a gentle hand on his good shoulder. “It’s all right, son. She’s just worried about you, but already she’s looking better. She’ll be fine.”
“I ain’t your son,” the boy said bitterly, his head lolling away again.
Had that been worry on Brandon’s face, when normally he was more closed off than a clogged drain? Did it mean more blessed progress? Was it possible that in a moment of crisis he’d been worried about her? Perhaps she was cracking through his prickly exterior. Anita had said he was a hard nut to crack, and after two months in her home, that was proving to be truer than she’d realized. But riding therapy was working. If Anita found a new placement for him, all his progress would be lost. Why break a kid all over again when he was finally showing signs of mending?
“I’m fine, really. I just need some water,” she said to Ashley, who was still fretting over the yanked-out IV. She swung her legs over the bed to the floor. “Worry about Brandon, please—no Band-Aid, I’m fine.”
“I’ll get that water.” Ashley set aside the Band-Aid she’d prepared to place over Skylar’s IV mishap, side-glaring at Travis, and got up, although it seemed more likely that she was searching for a reason to leave.
“All right, Brandon,” Travis drawled easily, fixing a grin on his mouth. Always so easy to grin, it shaved ten years off his face. “Let’s get a look at the damage. Mind if I examine your shoulder?”
Brandon shrugged. Or tried to. And in spite of Skylar’s thoughts still reeling, she couldn’t resist a thin smile. The boy shrugged for everything. Shrugged to say yes or no or whatever or that he didn’t care. Odd how mundane things like a shrug could be an anchor in a spinning world.
Travis folded back the sheet and nodded for the ED attending to move closer, unstrapping the Velcro and pulling open the sling. His focus sharpened admirably, thinking, prodding, as if in his element. “Inflammation still pretty bad. Muscle spasms… Okay, man, I’m gonna get you fixed up. Your muscles won’t relax, so we’ll give you some light sedation and roll it back into place. Sound like a plan?”
Brandon nodded but swallowed so hard Skylar saw his Adam’s apple bob. His eyes widened, suddenly lucid.
“It’ll be okay, Bran,” she said, smiling as reassuringly as she could.
“You good, man?” Travis asked more seriously, gripping Brandon’s other shoulder and dipping his head to get a read on Brandon’s eyes. The look.
Look at me. Acknowledge me. Reassure me that you’re okayis what it had always meant, and apparently still did.
“Yeah,” Brandon breathed. “What about my field trip on Sunday? Does this stupid accident mean I can’t go?”
That was right. In the aftermath of the accident an hour ago, Skylar had forgotten all about it.
“What kind of field trip?” Travis asked.
It was only the single most exciting thing Brandon was planning to do. Sullenly, Brandon turned his head away, and Skylar’s heart sank for the kid.
“A Texas Rangers game,” Skylar said for him. “It’s kind of a big deal—”
“Stop,” Brandon grumbled beneath his breath.
A rep for the team had arranged a special excursion for some of the kids in the foster care system, and when Brandon had found out Skylar had secured his ticket, it was the only time she could recall seeing unabashed excitement soften his normally hard face.
“No kidding,” Travis said, his face lighting up. So Travis was still a fan, too? “You keep your arm immobilized—no showing off for the scouts—” he teased, chuckling, “and there ain’t no reason you can’t go.”
Relief flashed in Brandon’s eyes in spite of him trying to play off her comment. Travis patted him and nodded, a tattoo of a soldier with an M4 Carbine propped on his shoulder emblazoned on his forearm—new since Travis had been deployed—that, on closer inspection, incorporated one of the more glaring welts of scar tissue littering his skin into the design. So many questions. So much of his past, no longer hers to know.
“Why do you have him tattooed on you?” Brandon asked with alarm, his words transforming from uncertain to surprised.