20
TEX
Iwasn’t nervous.
I didn’t fuckingget nervous.
But sitting across from Rowan at that table, watching her lower herself carefully into the chair, her hair freshly washed and soft around her shoulders.
Yeah. Something in my chest felt tight.Different.
She glanced at the candle, then at me. “You always do this for your patients?” she asked, a small smile tugging at her lips.
I huffed. “Only the difficult ones.”
Her eyes flickered with amusement. “Good to know I made the list.”
“Sweetheart, you topped it.”
She laughed softly, and the sound hit me harder than it should’ve.
We started eating, the quiet settling between us, but it wasn’t awkward. Not like before. This was easier. Lighter somehow.
“Okay,” she said after a couple of bites. “This is really good. You’ve been holding out on me. I’ll never go back to just eggs and bacon again.”
I smirked. “Glad you’re enjoying it.”
“No, seriously,” she added, pointing her fork at me. “This is suspiciously good. Did you order this in?”
My smirk stretched into a full-blown smile. “Did I order it…fuck no,” I laughed, only a little bit offended, “growing up, I had to learn.”
She tilted her head. “Yeah? Why?”
I leaned back in my chair, holding the bottle of beer in my hand, the thin neck of the bottle between my fingers. “My old man wasn’t around much,” I said. “And my mom worked double shifts half the time. If I wanted to eat anything that wasn’t out of a can or edible raw, well, I had to figure that shit out.”
Her expression softened. “How old were you?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the way it always was. She was a good mom—she did everything she could to keep a roof over our heads.”
“I’m sure she was.” She smiled like she meant it. “And now you cook like this?”
“At least something good came out of it,” I said simply.
She smiled again, quieter this time. “I think a lot of good came out of it, Tex.” And by the way she looked at me and said my name, I knew she was talking about me.
I lifted the bottle of wine up, ready to pour her a glass. I’d asked Jordan to bring me a decent bottle when I’d called her about Rowan’s hair emergency earlier. Her eyes followed the movement of my hand.
“You want—” I started, then stopped, remembering she wouldn’t be able to drink.
She raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“You can’t,” I said, nodding toward her arm. “Meds.”
She groaned, leaning back in her chair. “Right. Fantastic. Another reason getting shot isn’t a good idea.”
She said it sarcastically and she clearly meant it to be funny, but my chest pinched with her words all the same. It wasn’tfunny. Not even a little bit. And every time I remembered her bleeding in my arms, her eyes rolling back in her head while guns went off all around us, a deep fury rolled through me.
I would kill every last one of them if it was the last thing I did.
