Chapter 3 – Jensen #3
I spread my arms wide. My frustration has reached its peak now. “Is that what you want from me? A ‘thank you for fixing my heart?’ I’ll fucking thank you for the rest of your life if it’d make you happy. Thank you, Doctor Alba for saving my life.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I want. I was just doing my job.”
“Well, what is it then? The scar’s the proof. My heart’s good.” I tap my chest with two fingers.
“How’d that heal up?” she asks, casually. There's an edge to her voice and something in her gaze that tells me she genuinely wants to know.
I tug the collar of my t-shirt down, exposing the scar so she can get a good look at it. I didn’t use the scar tape and cream she suggested, only because I didn’t care about the mark she left behind. It still healed up just fine.
“Like it never happened.”
Her gaze falls slowly to my chest. I watch her study the faint, raised line of skin where she cut me like she’s reading a book that she wrote herself. The breath she sucks in is tight, almost pained, and something hot shoots through me when she does it.
I wonder if she ever sees the scars that she gives patients months after they’ve healed. I wonder if any of them ever come back to show and thank her.
There’s a softening of her gaze when she looks at it like she's appreciating the way the body can heal. Something loosens in her posture, and I feel it connect to my core. Then just as quickly as it appeared, her eyes dart away, looking down at the bar table before back to me. The hardness is there, but the slip happened. I saw it. And that tells me I don’t think she’s as mad as she’s pretending to be.
“Good,” she says. “That’s how all my scars look.”
“Because you’re so perfect,” I mutter.
Her lips twitch into an almost smile but she doesn't respond. For a moment neither of us says anything. It’s just her eyes on my chest and my eyes on her face, and the bartender somewhere in front of us pretending they’re not listening.
I think it might be the quietest moment I’ve ever had with another person in a long time without overthinking it.
“So, what’s your deal with me then?”
“My deal…” She starts, but the bartender sets our drinks down, interrupting her.
She takes a long, heavy sip of her blood red wine before finishing.
“…My deal is that you had open heart surgery five months ago and you’re back on a bull like that didn’t happen.
Back to doing the thing that’ll most likely kill you.
You aren’t appreciating the second chance you’ve been given. ”
I lean back, eyebrows climbing. “That’s your problem with me? That I’m still riding?”
'Don’t waste this second chance.’ Her words echo in my mind.
“One of many, yes. But probably the main one right now. You’re not thinking about whoever’s at home watching you and holding their breath every eight seconds, because they didn’t get a say in the risk you’re taking with your health.”
I lean forward, close enough to catch the scent of her—sweet, warm, cocoa butter.
Something soft that shouldn’t fit with the razor edges she’s showing me.
Maybe it's her lotion. Maybe it's her perfume.
Hell, if I know, but she smells good. Like warmth.
Like someone who cares too much about her patients.
She's sharp and beautiful. Smart but a whole lot guarded.
And she's not trying to flirt with me just to earn a ride on this cowboy like most women would be.
If she wants to pretend like she’s carved from ice, indifferent about most things, I know she’s not.
No one does what she did for me and stays cold inside.
No one heals people’s hearts every day and sends them on their way with a quiet warning whispered through their drug daze and doesn’t care about their future beyond the table.
Catalina cares.
Maybe more than she even realizes. She cares so much that I don’t have the heart to tell her that no one is at home holding their breath for me unless you count my eighty-year-old grandma.
And yeah, she’d be devastated if something happened to me, but it’s the cold truth that she’d also understand if that’s how I went out. She won’t be far behind me anyway.
I look at her. At the real worry that’s sitting behind all that frost. Something in me wants to tell her she doesn’t have to worry about how other people spend their second chances.
I wonder if that’s what she’s doing here in Austin If she’s living her own second chance out.
I wonder if that’s why she walked away from surgery.
“I am appreciating it,” I say quietly. “And that’s why I’m still riding. To show my appreciation for the second chance I’ve been given. Bull-riding is how I show my appreciation.”
She scoffs. “You don’t appreciate the time, experience, and professional wisdom I have that tells you to stop.
You riding shows that you don’t respect what I did for you.
It tells me you don’t respect your own life.
But worst of all, you don't respect the people who care about you. The ones who worry every night you get on that animal.”
That has me seeing red.