15. Chapter 15
Quinn
The porch boards hold the memory of yesterday.
The ghost of his lips on my wrist. Cade stepping back deliberately, like he was making sure I could still choose.
I sit in Noah's kitchen with my laptop open, my phone face-down, and my coffee going cold while I try to remember how to be a physical therapist before he walks through that door again.
Instead I keep thinking about who I was yesterday.
A woman who stopped being careful for exactly one moment.
The session notes from yesterday are filed. Timestamped, meticulous, and completely useless at convincing me that five more weeks of careful documentation is enough distance.
Five more weeks of watching him walk around Noah's property in worn flannel and knowing exactly what his lips felt like against my skin.
Through the kitchen window, I can see him in the south pasture with Noah, driving fence posts like he was born to it. His compression sleeve catches the morning light. He looks like he belongs here.
My patient is recovering beautifully.
The same patient who kissed the inside of my wrist yesterday and promised to take me somewhere that wasn't a clinic or a barn. And I let him.
The session notes I need to write have nothing to do with any of that.
I pull up the template and start typing. Range of motion. Pain scale. Grip strength. The numbers are excellent. Better than excellent.
Dr. Reyes will be pleased. The committee approved my work. Kristen withdrew her proposal.
I am safe.
So why do I feel like I am standing at the edge of something I can't see the bottom of?
My phone buzzes, face-down, and I flip it before I can stop myself.
Graham: Heard about the committee. Nice work, sis. Also heard Cade defended you. We should talk about that.
I set the phone down without responding. Graham means well. He always means well. But there's nothing to talk about yet, not until I understand what I'm doing well enough to explain it to someone else.
The back door opens, and I know it's Cade before I look up. I've learned to track his weight on Noah's floors, his steps fall slightly heavier on the right side from years of catching. He brings the smell of morning with him. Cold air and honest sweat and something underneath that's just him.
I keep my eyes on my laptop.
He sets something on the counter. Coffee, probably. He's started doing that without being asked.
He doesn’t come closer.
I can feel him waiting, and I want to be the kind of woman who can look up and smile and pretend yesterday hadn't changed everything. But I spent five years being that kind of woman, and it almost broke me.
I look up.
He stands at the counter with his sleeves pushed to his elbows, watching me like he already knows what I'm about to do before I do it.
My fingers fiddle with the rubber band.
He notices.
The kitchen isn't large, but he stays where he is. Three feet of distance that feels like nothing. And also like miles. His jaw is tight, the muscle there ticking twice, and I understand suddenly that he's as uncertain as I am.
That helps.
I close my laptop. I'm not going to be able to concentrate anyway.
He doesn't take that as permission. He stays exactly where he is, hands flat on the counter behind him, and waits for me to decide what happens next.
I could end this now. Tell him yesterday was a mistake. He would accept it. I know that about him.
But I don't want to.
"I need to finish your notes," I say instead.
"Okay."
"I have to file them by five."
"I know."
"If I don't, Reyes will ask questions."
"Quinn." His voice is low, steady. "You don't have to explain the work to me."
"I'm not explaining. I'm...stalling."
His mouth curves, just barely. "I know that too."
The light catches the scruff on his jaw, three days past a proper shave. I'd noticed it yesterday when he leaned across the kitchen table. I'm noticing it again now.
"You have a session at ten," I say.
"I'm aware."
"I should set up the barn."
"Probably."
Neither of us moves.
He pushes off from the counter, and my breath does something involuntary.
But he only crosses to the table, pulls out the chair across from me, and sits down.
Close enough that I can smell the cool cedar and a hint of sweat on him.
Close enough that I can see the small scar on his left hand he's never explained.
"I'm not going to push," he says.
"I know."
"I meant what I said last night."
"I remember."
His fingers tap the table once, twice. The same rhythm he uses when he's thinking through a pitch sequence. Then he flattens his palm against the wood like he's stopping himself from reaching for me.
"Finish the protocol. Do everything right. And then I said the rest."
"You said you'd take me somewhere that wasn't a clinic or a barn."
His eyes darken. "Did you forget what else I said?"
"No."
I hadn't forgotten. I'd replayed it forty-seven times between two and five in the morning, lying in my bed with the pillow over my face like that would somehow make it stop.
He'd said he was going to tell me all the things he couldn't say while I was his therapist.
He'd said it while his lips touched my wrist. Then he'd walked away.
"We have five weeks," I say.
He nods.
"That's five weeks where I'm still your PT and you're still my patient."
His jaw flexes. "I understand what five weeks means."
"Do you?"
He leans forward, just slightly. The flecks of gold in his eyes are visible from here. One more inch and we'd be somewhere we couldn’t take back.
"I understand," he says, "that five weeks from now, when you sign my clearance and I walk out of that barn for the last time, I'm going to take you somewhere you've never been.
And I'm going to tell you everything I've been thinking since the day you walked into that conference room and told me my career wasn't over. "
"I didn't say your career wasn't over."
"You said you didn't lose patients. Same thing."
I shrug. He’s not wrong.
"I watched you play guitar last night," he says.
"I know."
"I watched you play, and I thought about the fact that you didn't play for two years. Because of what happened. Because someone hurt you and you stopped doing the thing you loved."
"I don't want to talk about that."
"I know that too. But I need you to hear something."
He reaches across the table. Not for my hand. For the rubber band. He touches it with one finger, barely any pressure at all, and I feel it everywhere.
"I'm not going to be the person who makes you stop," he says. "Whatever this is. Whatever we figure out. I'm not going to be the reason you have to rebuild again."
My throat tightens. "You can't promise that."
"I can promise I'll try harder than anyone else ever has."
I look at his finger on the rubber band. At the scarred knuckles and the callused palm, his hand close enough that I can feel the heat of it.
"Five weeks," I say again.
"Five weeks." He pulls his hand back, and I miss it immediately. "And then I'm going to tell you everything."
"What if I don't want to wait?"
His breath catches. "Quinn."
I hadn't meant to say it. But it's out there now, honest and terrifying. And I watch his face process it with the kind of intensity that makes my chest ache.
"If you don't want to wait," he says, voice rough, "then I need you to tell me that when I'm not sitting three feet away from you with every reason in the world to close that distance."
"I could tell you right now."
He shakes his head, slow and deliberate. "Not like this. Not when you've got session notes to file and I've got a protocol to finish and we're both running on no sleep and reminders of yesterday."
"That's very reasonable."
His mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious.
"I'm trying." He pushes back from the table and stands, and the distance between us feels immediately wrong.
"I'm going to go help Noah with the south fence.
You're going to write your notes. At ten o'clock, I'm going to walk into that barn and be your patient for exactly ninety minutes. "
"And after that?"
"After that, we get through today. And tomorrow. And every day until five weeks from now, when I can finally stop being reasonable."
I watch him walk toward the door.
At the threshold, he stops. Turns back.
"For what it's worth?" He holds my gaze. "Waiting five weeks is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. And I've rehabbed a shoulder that was supposed to end my career."
He's gone before I can respond.
I sit in the kitchen with my cold coffee and my open laptop, the warmth of his finger still on my skin, and I can't seem to remember how to breathe.
Five weeks.
I can do five weeks.
I pull up my session notes and start typing. Date, time, patient name. The familiar structure of documentation; the thing that saved me once before.
My phone buzzes again. Paige this time.
How's it going?
I think about the question. About the truth of it.
Ask me in five weeks, I type back.
Her response comes immediately: That good, huh?
I don't answer. I file my notes, pack my equipment bag, and walk out to the barn to set up for a ten o'clock session with the man who has dismantled five years of careful distance without even trying.
Five weeks.
The countdown starts now.