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“I’m fine.” His laugh sounded strained. “Anyway, you’ve seen me far worse than this. Bleeding like a stuck—”
“Don’t!”
“Not funny yet?”
“It never will be.”
“Never’s a long time.”
“Yes, it is.” Vinnie pushed the automatic button for the SUV’s tailgate, opened it and pressed the transfer board into Shane’s hands.
Apparently, the subject of the shooting was closed, at least for tonight. Shane wasn’t the only one who carried scars from that night. His might be on the outside, but Vinnie’s scars were every bit as real and, perhaps, even deeper.
“Any chance you’d consider just taking me home instead of going out tonight?” Shane asked as he shifted himself from the chair to the SUV’s bucket seat.
“Is that what you want?”
“It’s just that I’m pretty tired.” Maybe his friend would let him off the hook after all.
Vinnie closed the door and, after loading the chair in the back, settled in the driver’s seat. “The guys will sure be disappointed if you don’t come.”
“Is that right?” Shane grinned into the darkness. He’d spoken too soon.
“How about we just make an appearance? Thirty minutes...tops,” Vinnie said. “Just so they all won’t think you’re avoiding them.”
“Okay. Fine,” he said, although their visit tonight should have been enough proof that he wasn’t dodging anyone.
“Great.”
Shane gripped his hands in his lap. As great as it would be to spend time with the rest of the team, hearing the war stories and chuckling at Vinnie’s classic jokes, going to Casey’s would serve as a reminder of everything he’d lost when that bullet had penetrated his back. The laughter. The fellowship. The unique understanding of the risks they willingly faced every day, for each other and for people they’d never met.
All the things he might never have again.
* * *
APPLAUSE BROKE OUT the moment Vinnie pushed Shane’s chair through the front door of Casey’s Diner, the bells jingling like a charity bell ringer with an empty kettle.
“Thank you. Thank you.” Vinnie took a bow. “I’ll be signing autographs for those who would like to cover my dinner.”
“Then put your signing pen away,” Trooper Trevor Cole called from across the room.
Shane’s coworkers usually sat at two booths across from each other, the separation wall between them lowered, but tonight they’d moved to a line of square tables. One of the chairs on one end had been removed, leaving an empty spot for Shane.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” Vinnie said as he pushed Shane’s chair into the spot.
“You knew I would be.”
And he was. These were some of the best people he’d ever known. The most honorable. From the senior officers to the new arrivals. A dozen officers crowded around the table, more than would usually go out on any given Thursday. It couldn’t have been more obvious that they’d come because they’d heard he would be there.
As Vinnie took a seat farther down the table, Ben Peterson leaned over and patted Shane’s shoulder. “It’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wondering how you’ll live without all of these people if you can’t come back.”
Shane blinked at Ben’s directness, but the lieutenant knew what he was talking about. Not so long ago, Ben’s job and freedom had been in jeopardy when he’d been a suspect in an evidence-tampering investigation at the Brighton Post. The officer responsible was in a cell now, but Ben had faced his own long days of uncertainty.
“You’ve got that right,” he answered finally.
“You’ll have to forgive Vinnie for trying too hard. He’s still beating himself up for not being there.”
Shane shot a glance down the table, but Vinnie was deep in another conversation. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Yeah, try telling him that.”
“I have. Repeatedly.”
“And yet here we all are.”
Shane shifted in his seat, sweating but not ready to take off his coat. A waitress, a little older and harder on the eyes than their usual server, stepped up and started taking orders.
“Too bad Sarah isn’t working tonight,” Lieutenant Scott Campbell said. “She could pretend you’re invisible, like always.”
At the opposite end of the table, Kelly leaned forward.
“Hey, Shane, I was just telling Delia about your new physical therapist.” She paused long enough to exchange a meaningful look with the other female trooper across the table. “That she seems to be keeping you on your toes.”
As if all the officers took a collective breath and held it, the side conversations stopped. Only a clattering of pans could be heard coming from the kitchen.
Kelly cleared her throat. “Well...you know what I mean.”
Shane did the only thing he could do—he started laughing. “She’s right. The PT’s not even bothering with regular steps. I’ll be dancing en pointe in no time.”
When a collective groan replaced the awkward silence, he was relieved. The elephant in the room had at least garnered a mention.
A short while later the waitress delivered their orders, and they all got down to the business of consuming too many late-night calories. Shane couldn’t help watching them as he ate. These unique individuals shared something larger than any one of them: the commitment to serve and protect.
With a gesture toward his phone, Shane signaled to Vinnie that his thirty minutes had run out. Instead of stalling, Vinnie stood up from his seat.
“I’m gonna call it a night. Days off are exhausting.” He glanced Shane’s way. “You ready to go?”
“I could go, I guess.”
After zipping his coat, Shane backed away from the table, waved and started toward the door. He wouldn’t think about not being able to work with these people again, of losing a family built on mutual respect and shared risk. He would have to find his way back to this work and these people, just like Ben had. And he would look at these past few months as more a temporary detour than a permanent road closure.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ua87565cf-a895-50ea-b0b6-b0526d83e239)
“SO WE MEET AGAIN.”
A startled sound escaped Natalie’s throat as she froze in front of the closed curtain. She didn’t need to see the spoked wheel and the running shoes beneath to identify the voice that filtered out like a sneaky caress from the base of her neck to her tailbone, but she peeked anyway.
Shane.
Her mouth was suddenly dry. Of course, his name was on the appointment schedule. She’d set those appointments herself. And two days had seemed like plenty of time to prepare herself to have to work with him again. Apparently it wasn’t long enough.
How had he known she would be the one passing by his exam room right then, anyway, and not one of the other PTs or the office staff? In her navy scrubs and basic white tennis shoes, she could have been any one of them. Was there something unique about her shoes or the way she walked? And had he been watching her closely enough to notice? But then her gaze caught on the narrow opening where the two curtains met. He grinned out at her.
She schooled her surprise into a frown, but she couldn’t stop the sudden rush of her pulse or the dampness on her palms. Proving what a coward she was, she opened the chart in her arms and studied it as if she hadn’t just reviewed it with her last client. She hoped he wouldn’t notice it wasn’t his.
“What are you already doing in here?” She stepped to the counter outside his visual range and switched charts. Once she opened his, she pulled the curtain wide.
“That young receptionist helped me out since you were running late.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the front desk. “She was very helpful.”
“I bet,” she said under her breath and then grimaced, hoping he hadn’t heard. But he was reading an exercise chart on the wall, the one designed for clients with knee injuries. She would speak to Anne-Marie about her helpfulness later, though she wasn’t sure what she would say beyond hands off the clients. She could have used that reminder herself the other day.
“My last appointment ran over. Sorry.” She stepped to the sink and washed her hands, even though she’d just done so prior to switching clients. She spoke over her shoulder as she dried them. “Did one of your chauffeurs have to get back on patrol?”
“Four-car pileup on Interstate 96. Trooper Cole took the call. Priorities.”
“Trooper Cole?” She pursed her lips, trying to recall the name of the attractive woman she’d met the other day. “So it wasn’t...either of the officers from last time?”
His smile was slow, knowing and so sensual that it was all she could do not to fan her face with the chart. Heat rose up her chest and neck. If only she’d worn a turtleneck under her scrub top. She didn’t even want to think about any of the other places she felt warm.
She wished he would look away, and at the same time, she dreaded the moment he would. What the hell was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she stop asking dumb questions? She shouldn’t even be thinking the things she had been. She was acting as if he was the first guy she’d ever met. Well, he wasn’t, and she refused to get all flustered by this guy, who had probably turned that sexy smile on every woman in the office by now, including dowdy Beverly Wilson.
She cleared her throat, banishing thoughts that could only get her into trouble. “Have you been doing your exercises?”
“I was supposed to do them at home?”
“Are you—” But she stopped herself before adding “kidding” as Shane’s grin spread wide.
“Gotcha.”
Natalie rolled her eyes and looked at the chart. She couldn’t just keep staring at him.
“You’re not the first of my clients to say something like that on a return visit,” she said without looking up.
“I’m not like your other clients.”
He had that right in more ways than he could know. “How do you know you’re different?”
“Because I did my homework. Five times a day.”
She set his chart aside, stood and opened the curtain. “You put in the work. Probably more than you should have. Let’s see how much improvement you’ve made.”
Deftly maneuvering his chair out of the tight space, he followed her into the hall.
“You’re about to be impressed. Which of the exercises do you want me to demonstrate first? I’m an expert at each.”
“None of them.”
When the grind of his rotating wheels stopped behind her, she turned to find him watching her.
“What do you mean?”
She started forward again, hoping he would follow. He did. Continuing into the activity room, she led him past some of the machines they’d used the first time to a low-tech area filled with gym mats. She stopped in front of a pair of parallel bars on a wooden platform.
“I thought we’d give these a try.”
He just stared at the contraption. “Already?”
“Why not already?”
But he was still looking at those parallel bars the way some people gawked at a line of fire trucks and ambulances racing toward someone else’s tragedy.
“I just thought we’d build up to that,” he said finally. “You know...try some other things first.”
He still wasn’t looking at her when he said it, but she couldn’t stop watching him. This didn’t fit. For the first time since he’d appeared in the clinic, Shane exuded something less than unshakable confidence. His face looked downright ashen.
“You were already using the parallel bars at the intermediate treatment center, weren’t you?”
“Just once.” He paused and licked his lips. “It was too soon.”
“But you’re stronger now.”
“Maybe.”
He didn’t sound convinced. Which didn’t make sense. He’d been so determined to get back to work. And he’d worked so hard in the clinic and at home. So why was he reluctant to even try the most important step? Why was he stalling? Was he afraid of trying to walk again...or terrified he never would?
Natalie turned her head toward the wall of windows as if she could find answers in that angry sheet of gray. She shouldn’t become personally involved. Her only job was to use her skills to help an injured client become stronger. If he chose not to—or was too scared to—improve the quality of his life, that was none of her business.
It couldn’t matter that his reticence reminded her of her mother’s choice not to reclaim her life. She couldn’t go there. Shane and her mother might both be in wheelchairs, but they couldn’t have been more different. One knew the risks when he’d put on that uniform. The other had just been living her life until she became collateral damage in a public-sanctioned joy ride.
She shouldn’t allow herself to be drawn in by someone who represented all her family had lost. She shouldn’t wonder if he was hurting in a way that had nothing to do with the bullet-size scar on his back. She shouldn’t stick her nose into other people’s problems when she had enough of her own. But something was keeping Shane from walking when he should have been, and now that something was keeping him from even taking the critical first steps. And, God help her, she had to find out what it was.
* * *
SHANE STARED UP at the pair of parallel bars and then lowered his gaze to his gripped hands, his nail beds turning white halfway down from his tight squeeze. He could feel the sweat building just under his hairline, but there was no way he would reach up to swipe his forehead. Not with Natalie already watching him closely enough that she had to know what he was feeling, and it wasn’t confidence. Chicken, maybe? He hated like hell that he couldn’t shake off all those feathers.
Of course his PT would expect him to stand up from that chair eventually. Had he expected to walk again from a seated position? Maybe he should have tried it while lying flat on his back.
No, he hadn’t expected either of those things, but like he’d told her, maybe it still was too soon. It probably didn’t say anywhere in his file that he’d had a bad fall the first time the hospital PT staff had used that sling thing to lift him out of his bed and that half of his sutures had to be sewn again. If he’d believed that just by changing his treatment location he could exorcise his fear of falling again, he was dead wrong.
Was this why his recovery had stalled?
He glanced at the bars again, and a seed of panic embedded itself in his gut.
“Okay. Have it your way. For today, anyway.”
