I can smell that light, sweet smell of hers again. “Sitting beside my wife.”
“I’m working.” She’s reading some medical journal, one long leg crossed over the other.
“I wasn’t planning on having a conversation.”
“Great.” Her heels are a copper color with gold buckles. I haven’t seen these before. “You don’t normally travel with the team.”
“What happened to pretending I don’t exist? Let’s do that again.”
“I’m just wondering why you’re here.” And why I didn’t know. This feels like something I should know. We live together, and yet we don’t know anything about each other.
It never bothered me before, but now it does.
She puts her reading down. “Mei’s kid is sick and she couldn’t get her parents to watch him.” Mei is one of the other team doctors. “I said I’d help her out.”
Athlete injury recovery. My thoughts keep going back to that. No wonder Ward hired her.
Maybe she can help me. The thought surfaces before I stamp it down. She’s a specialist in athlete injury recovery and she told me I was a lost cause. The message is loud and clear.
She goes back to her reading and my eyes snag on her shoes again.
“New shoes?”
“Volkov.”
I have the weirdest urge to smile. “You weren’t home this morning.”
“I came straight from the hospital.”
So she worked all day. “Tired?”
“Nope.” She lifts her chin. “Not even a little.”
Liar. I bet she’s exhausted. “Have you eaten?”
“Not this again.”
A bad feeling rises in my stomach. She needs to take better care of herself. “Have youeaten?” I give her a hard look and she narrows her eyes at me, starting to smile like she’s realizing something. “You need to be lucid when you’re treating the players.” Even I can hear the defensiveness in my voice. “I don’t care about you.”
She snorts, turning back to her work. “I don’t care about you, either.”
We sit in silence while the team and staff finish boarding and the plane takes off, and shortly after, a flight attendant makes her way to our row.
“Dinner?” she asks.
“Yes,” I answer in a firm tone, “for both of us.”
“Controlling,”Georgia sings under her breath, making my shoulders hitch. She thanks the flight attendant before her smile drops and she gives me an arch look. “I’m not eating because you told me to. I’m eating because I want to.”
“I don’t care.”
“Good. Me neither.”
“Great.”
Her phone pings, and when she pulls it out, a video plays on the screen of Svetta and the bunnies. One of them is on the sofa in the living room.
“What are those rodents doing out of your room?” And why the hell is Svetta playing with them?