Page 12 of Scythe & Sparrow
“I can tell.”
“You’re not really helping.”
My deadpan joke seems to slap Dr. Kane out of his own thoughts and into action. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. He lets the door close gently, resting it against my elbow before he bends to collect my crutches. His faded gray T-shirt pulls tight across his back as he leans forward to pull them from beneath the motor home. Hard planes of muscle bracket his spine, his shoulders broad and defined beneath the thin cotton.
I swallow when he straightens to his full height and stands before me. I’m a hint taller than him where I stand on my little landing inside the motor home, but he still seems to take up all the space in my field of vision.
“Thank you,” I say, a little breathless. I wrap a hand around one of the crutches and try to pull it toward me, but he doesn’t relinquish it. “I’ll manage.”
“Yeah, I heard that. But you’d manage better at my house,” he blurts out. His eyes widen as though the words have escaped his control.
“Um … what …?”
“I mean … you should come to my house. This setup,” he says, waving his free hand toward my home, “it’s not ideal. You can barely get into it.”
“I just need some practice.”
“You don’t have air-conditioning.”
“I do …” Sort of. When Dorothy is moving and the windows are open. Also, when she feels like it. Which is basically never.
The doc gives me a suspicious frown. For a moment, I’m not sure if I said my thoughts out loud. “What about a shower?”
“I’m sure they filled my water tank before they left,” I say, scanning the grounds beyond his shoulder. “And when it runs out, there’s a communal shower over there.”
Dr. Kane turns to follow my gaze to a small wooden cottage with aSHOWERsign painted on the side, the building’s green paint as faded as the unmowed prairie grass surrounding it.
“Looks totally safe.”
“They only murder people in there on the weekends.”
Dr. Kane faces me once more, his expression both wary and clinical. “You need to look after that incision and come back in a week to get the stitches out and the cast put on,” he says. “You can manage that?”
I swallow down the assurances that would only be half-truths at best. With every moment that passes, I’m increasingly nervous about being the star in what is clearly a horror movie entitledPrairie Princess Campground: The Grisly Murder of Rose Evans, but I don’t really want some guy I barely know to realize that. As much as McSpicy is hot as fuck and seems genuinely sweet, I’m used to looking after myself. And it’s tough enough to face the fact that Ican’t get around the way I’m used to without a constant reminder that I need help.
“Rose …” A darkness settles into the hollows beneath Dr. Kane’s eyes. He searches my face, hunting for something, like he’s weighing options and pathways set before him. The longer the silence stretches on, the more I long to fill it. When I shift to rest my swollen foot on the step behind me, he takes a sharp breath. “Matthew Cranwell.”
I try to keep my expression neutral. But we both know he caught me off guard. “Who?” I say a beat later than I should have.
“Matt Cranwell,” he repeats. “Do you know him?”
I swallow. Shake my head.
A shadow falls across his features, even in the bright light. Dr. Kane never averts his gaze, even when I try to break the connection and look away. He’s still right there, taking up the space in my door, sucking up all the energy that seems to crackle between us in the hot summer air.
The suspended moment seems to stretch long enough that I can imagine every thought and accusation that’s probably swirling in his head. He leans closer, his voice a lethal whisper when he says, “Did he do this to you?”
I want to back away. But I don’t move. I want to shake my head, but I can’t seem to make myself do that either. I’m like a fawn, unable to run when danger discovers it hidden in the grass.
“I suspect you’re not the only person he’s hurt,” Dr. Kane says. His shirt stretches over his biceps, the muscles more tense than they need to be for the simple action of running his hand through his hair. Strands fall across his brow, his forehead creased in a frown. “Do you want to tell me what really happened that night?”
Each breath I take is so shallow, it might not even exist. My heart riots in my chest. I still can’t shake my head, even though it could be the difference between me and the back of a police car.
Be tough. Be tough be tough be tough. You drive a fucking motorcycle in a metal cage in front of an audience of two hundred people in a goddamn circus. The fuckingGlobe of Death, for fucksakes. Don’t cry, Rose Evans. Don’t you fucking cry.
I totally fucking cry.
A single tear slips past my lashes, sliding down my burning cheek. The crease softens between his brows as the doctor watches me sweep it away with a frustrated flick of my fingers. “I’d better go. Thank you, Doc,” I say, trying to pull the door closed behind me. But he doesn’t let it go.
