“I was,” Jake said. “I really was in the beginning. And then I got angry and belligerent. I hated the world and everyone in it.”
“Except me and Buster.”
“That’s a given.”
“And then you met Branna.”
“And then I met Branna,” Jake confirmed.
“And?” Ethan questioned, giving a shapely brunette a slow smile as she walked past their table.
“And she has as many issues as me, and just before I called you to make the appointment, we fought about them.”
“Ah, now it makes sense.”
“She deserves the best of me, Ethan, and I’m not sure whether that means I return to medicine or not. But right now, none of that matters, only getting the stuff inside here—” Jake tapped his head. “—right.”
“What’s between her and her father?”
“A whole ton of shit that they need to work through.”
“Well, boy, you got another session tomorrow, so how about a steak and an early night?”
“What?” Jake looked at his friend. “You not on the prowl tonight?”
“Nah, I’m giving you my undivided.”
Jake watched as Ethan rotated his left shoulder joint.
“What’s up with that?”
“It’s been giving me trouble for a few days. I need to get it checked out. Hurt it throwing a curveball at Debronskie. Struck him out, though.”
Scapular dysfunction, neurovascular compression, and inherent structural pathology in the glenohumeral joint, including the rotator cuff, labrum, and capsule.
Jake didn’t try to push the dialogue running inside his head aside this time. Instead, he tested the words and found they didn’t create as much panic as they usually did.
“Have to say, I’m honored about having your undivided attention, Tex.”
“As you should be.”
They ate and talked, and then he found himself in Ethan’s spare room staring into the dark as he thought about Branna. Was she thinking about him? Had she read his text? Would she talk to him when he got back? Did she love him? Closing his eyes, he let the questions come and go in his head until finally sleep claimed him.
Branna drove backinto Howling at two in the morning. She pulled up her driveway and saw the lights on in her house and the blue sedan parked in front of her barn. Sitting in the van, she contemplated her next move. Would people intent on scaring her have left their car in plain sight and the outside porch light on? Who did she know that drove a car that color? Was she about to walk into a mess; would there be other cat body parts pinned somewhere?
Too tired to care, she grabbed her bag and the sack of, luckily, non-perishable groceries that had been in the back of her van all day and stomped onto the porch and opened the front door.
“What are you doing here?”
Her father sat in the chair beneath her mother’s photo facing the door. On his knees rested his laptop; he wore glasses perched on the end of his nose, and she saw in a glance how tired he looked. Not that she cared.
“I couldn’t be anywhere else after what you said to me before you left today. I had to be here, waiting for you.”
“No.” She wasn’t angry now; she was done with that. She’d spent the day getting rid of that emotion. She’d cried and yelled as she’d driven, and now she was just tired. “You don’t need to be here. Now please leave.”
He put down his laptop and regained his feet.
“I went back to the McBrides’ and packed my things and came here. I can’t go back there now.”
