Chapter 20
Somewhere between the pancakes, the coffee, and Lynlee informing Colter that syrup counted as a breakfast beverage, Sutton had taken a call on the porch and, just like that, he found himself alone in the living room with a four-year-old and absolutely no exit strategy.
No exit strategy and, worse, no interest in finding one.
He'd gone to refill his coffee and had come back to find every available inch of rug covered in plush livestock. The room looked like a toy store had detonated.
Casualties included: one dragon, one bear, and, from the looks of it, his entire morning.
A sparkly dragon with one wing bent sideways lay on its back near the fireplace and a one-eyed teddy bear slumped against the coffee table with the posture of a man who'd given up or was having a bad week.
Three horses were lined up along the edge of the rug in what appeared to be an orderly waiting room, and sitting proudly in the middle of all of it was Lynlee, bright pink backpack unzipped beside her, watching the doorway with the patience of someone who had never once doubted he'd come back through it.
The moment she spotted him, her whole face opened up like her morning had a Colter-shaped space in it and he'd simply stepped back into place. "There you are."
He stood there for a moment longer than made sense, coffee cup in hand, feeling that greeting do something to him he wasn't entirely prepared for.
"What happened in here?" he asked.
Lynlee patted the empty spot beside her with the certainty of someone who had already decided how this was going to go. "I brung some patients that need patienting."
Patienting. Not a word. Also, apparently, a full-time job now.
He should have said something reasonable or mentioned he had a clinic opening in an hour, paperwork, and a dozen actual animals waiting on him—because what the hell did he know about two-legged two-foot-talls. Instead, he set his coffee on the end table and lowered himself to the rug beside her.
So much for the exit strategy.
"I knows you was gonna be here," she said, already unzipping the backpack further, to reveal bright-colored, plastic doctor instruments. "So I packed them before we left."
Something in his chest shifted that he had absolutely no protocol for.
Because it was such a small thing to say, an offhand, matter-of-fact, an in-the-way-kids-stated-things vibe that adults spent years learning to hedge.
She'd known he'd be here—not hoped or wondered.
Known—with the clean, uncomplicated confidence of a child who had decided someone was reliable.
Somewhere along the way, without his permission, this little girl had started counting on him and he didn't know what to do with that. It sat in the center of his chest like something warm that he hadn't earned and wasn't sure he deserved.
A black horse emerged first from the backpack and, naturally, it had the dignified, well-worn look of a toy that had been through things—slightly flattened, soft in all the places that got held most, carrying a few mystery stains that were probably better left uninvestigated.
Standard occupational hazard. He'd seen worse on real horses.
Lynlee lifted him with both hands and placed him carefully in Colter's lap, the gesture so deliberate it felt like a formal transfer of responsibility. "This is Sir Neighs A Lot and he has a problem."
"Does he now?"
She nodded solemnly. "He won't stop sneezing."
Colter looked the horse over twice, making a big show of how thoroughly he was inspecting their first patient. "Has he always had this condition?"
"Since Tuesday."
"Tuesday specifically."
She gave a single nod that sent her blonde ringlets bouncing. "That's when it started. You’ll need this."
She handed him a pink stethoscope.
A pink stethoscope. He was going to be found dead in a field somewhere from an aneurysm caused entirely by how much he liked that she'd handed him the pink one without a second thought.
He placed the hard plastic nubs in his ears and turned Sir Neighs A Lot over in his hands with the full weight of clinical gravity—pressing an ear to the chest and inspecting each hoof with a concentration the situation absolutely did not require.
Lynlee watched him with the focused, unblinking attention of someone who had not once considered that he might not know what he was doing.
There was no test in her expression. No wait-and-see. Just trust, offered freely, the way she apparently offered everything — all the way, without conditions, without a fallback plan. It settled someplace that he couldn't quite locate. Some place past the ribs.
Or was it near his heart?
"Hmmm," he said.
Lynlee's eyes went wide with concern. "What is it?"
"I'm afraid it's exactly what I suspected." He lowered his voice. "Classic case of being critically dramatic."
For one full beat she stared at him. Then laughter burst out of her—big, whole-body laughter that nearly tipped her sideways, and Colter felt the sound of it move through his chest like weather.
He'd made kids laugh before at the clinic when tensions were high.
This was different and he couldn't explain how, except that it mattered more than it should have—that specific laugh from that specific kid, aimed at him.
One kid, one horse, one terrible diagnosis, and he was already ranking it above every laugh he'd earned in thirty-three years of trying.
"You fix him," she said, once she'd recovered enough to ask.
He looked down at the horse, then back up at her face—that wide-open, completely trusting face, every feeling right there on the surface where anyone could see it, nothing held back, nothing protected. She wasn't asking if he'd try. The possibility of failure had simply not occurred to her.
She'd handed him the problem because he was here, and being here meant it was handled, and that was the entire equation. Besides his family, Colter couldn't remember the last time someone had believed in him without making him prove it first.
Something quiet moved through him, rusty and unannounced. The way the important things always arrived. Not loud enough to name, just there, suddenly, the way a bruise announces itself only after you press on it.
She'd given him permission to call her that, back in a grocery store cereal aisle the first day they'd met.
“I’m a fairy but you can call me princess if you wants,” she’d said, like it was a title she'd decided he'd earned before she even knew him. He hadn't forgotten it. Hadn't used it until now, either, some instinct keeping it in reserve for a moment that matched the weight of it.
This felt like the moment.
"Princess," he said, "I can absolutely fix him."
The relief on her face was instant and total, the uncomplicated satisfaction of a thing that had gone exactly as expected.
She scooted closer without asking, her small shoulder pressing warm against his arm, already reaching back into the backpack for the next patient.
She didn't check whether it was okay or look up to see if he'd moved away.
She'd simply decided he was safe, and safe meant close, and close was where she put herself.
He didn't move away. Instead, he worked through the waiting room—Sparkleflame the dragon, extremely dramatic; the one-eyed bear, in denial about his condition; a small stuffed rabbit who, according to Lynlee, was faking the whole thing for attention.
He gave each one a diagnosis. She received each verdict with the gravity it deserved.
They developed, without discussing it, a rhythm—her presenting, him examining, both of them arriving at the same conclusion every time: critically dramatic, but survivable.
By the fourth patient he'd started keeping a mental tally. Zero fatalities. One malingerer. Best clinic day he'd had in months, and he hadn't billed a single client.
At some point Sutton's voice drifted in from the porch, still on the call, and neither of them looked up. It was just the two of them in the makeshift waiting room, Colter with a stuffed horse in his lap and a little girl curled against his side.
She fit there and that was a big problem. Because sitting there with her felt way too easy for a man who’d spent most of his adult life making damn sure nothing ever got this complicated.
Lynlee held up the last patient—a small, battered elephant missing one leg and half its trunk—and looked at him with complete seriousness. "This one's the worst."
He accepted the elephant and considered it carefully. "How long has he been symptomatic?"
"Since forever," she said. "But I think he just needed the right doctor."
Colter looked at the elephant for a moment longer than necessary, then he looked at Lynlee—this small, certain, entirely unsuspecting person who had packed her stuffed animals into a backpack because she'd known he'd be here, who had scooted close without asking, who had handed him her most important things as though it were obvious he'd take care of them.
He cleared his throat. "Good news. I know exactly what he needs."
Lynlee leaned in. "What?"
"Same thing as the rest of them." He handed the elephant back with appropriate gravity. "He needs someone who shows up."
She considered this with great seriousness. Then she nodded, tucked the elephant under her arm, and reached over to pat his hand once.
"That's you," she told him, like it was already settled fact and had been for a while.
He didn't correct her. He wasn't sure he could.