Try - The Complete Romance Series (2 page)

I unlocked the car and climbed in,
thinking about Landon waiting for me. He was the only thing I had left of my
wife, the only thing that made sense in my world since she left us. He was
getting to the age where kids always think their parents are too protective—and
maybe he was right in my case. He was at the best private school in the city,
and I’d found a PhD-holding tutor for him before he’d even gotten in, just in
case he ever fell behind or ran into trouble. Without his mom around, I had to
take on both roles—mother and father.

I started up the car and waited for the
heat to come up, slapping my hands together to keep the circulation going. I
pulled out of my parking spot and navigated the parking garage, thinking about
the crazy situation that had led to Landon needing physical therapy in the
first place. Traffic’s never really light in Chicago, but I was at least
beating the worst of it by getting out early; I slipped out of the garage and
into the street, matching the speed of the cars around me. Landon had been such
a trooper—he’d barely even cried. In fact, I’d cried more than he had.

I shuddered as I remembered the game when
Landon had broken his leg. He had been playing as well as I’d ever seen, really
going for it on the AstroTurf. His coach had been teaching him more evasive
maneuvers, and Landon had really brought them all together, darting and
weaving, making me proud. I was cheering for him in the stands, on my feet,
acting like a madman. Landon had looked up into the stands more than once to
see me there cheering for him; it felt good to be there for my son, especially
since I missed out on so many other things going on in his life.

I’d missed the game the week before—which
was why I’d made such a big point of going to his game that day. I was glad
that I’d taken the time away from the office, especially when Landon tried to
pivot to get away from the other team’s defense and instead of darting left he
moved right, and I saw him moving in slow motion as he fell over. At the time,
I almost imagined I could hear the snapping sound as Landon hit the turf on his
side.

In an instant, I had started up the row,
heading for the stairway. I almost screwed up my own leg tripping over my feet
as I pounded down the stairs in my rush to get to my boy. He didn’t get up; he
was obviously more injured than some twisted ankle. I remember thinking of how
worried his mother would be, of how her heart would have been in her throat
just as much as mine was. I stumbled onto the sidelines and looked around; the
coach had already hurried out onto the indoor pitch, and I followed in his
wake. Landon’s other teammates were clustered around him, one of the refs
hovering. Someone signaled a medic and the man arrived just as I came to a
stop, dropping to my knees at my son’s side. “Landon! Shrimp, are you okay? You
took a bad fall there.”

The medic came in on Landon’s other side
and started asking questions. My little boy, my five-year-old son, was on his
back, his hands wrapped around his leg right underneath the knee. My heart
pounded in my chest as the medic said the words I was dreading to hear: “His
leg is broken. He’s going to need to go to the hospital and get a cast on it.”

I had lifted Landon into my arms and
hurried him out to the car. My little boy—who always made a fuss about having
to put on his seatbelt—didn’t even argue with me strapping him down in the back
seat to get him to the hospital. We waited for what seemed like days instead of
a few hours, but finally we went back to see a doctor. The diagnosis wasn’t
great; Landon had fractured both bones in his lower leg, just under the knee.
If it didn’t heal properly, he could have trouble just walking for the rest of
his life.

Now, two months later I pulled into the
pickup loop at Landon’s school and spotted him next to one of the teachers. Once
the bone had started to knit, the doctor had said that the best thing Landon
could do when he was able to get the cast off would be aggressive physical
therapy—several times a week, for a couple of months. The doc had recommended a
place and I’d set up Landon’s first appointment there right away, before the
cast had even come off. Landon took one hand off of his crutches and raised it
to wave at me as I drove up to where he was standing. Now, even though the bone
was whole, my little boy still had a lot of healing to do.

I put the car in park and jumped out,
smiling at my son.

 
“Almost
makes breaking your leg worth it, to get out of school early, doesn’t it
champ?” I looked at the teacher; she was tall, with blonde hair, and absolutely
dedicated to the kids. She’d worked with me as much as the school rules allowed
when Landon had had to take a few days away from class during a bout of strep,
making sure that my son was able to catch up. I wasn’t surprised to see her
standing with him to wait for me.

“Landon has been waiting very, very
patiently,” the teacher informed me, smiling a little. “He’s been so excited
for physical therapy.” She turned to me, frowning slightly. “You’ve explained
that it’s going to be hard work for him, right?” I nodded.

“Landon knows it’s probably not going to
be very comfortable for him for the next few weeks at least,” I said, reaching
out and tousling my son’s hair. He giggled. “But he’s so excited to finally get
rid of the crutches and the cast, and hopefully be able to get back to the
team.” The teacher’s smile came back and she turned to head back into the
building.

“We’ll see you tomorrow Landy,” the
teacher said. I helped my boy get into the back seat of the car, putting his
crutches off to the side.

“We are running late, buddy,” I told
Landon as I climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car back up. “We’re
going to have to make good time to get there for your appointment.”

“Will they give us a tardy?” he asked
quietly.

I laughed.

“Something like that,” I said, pulling
around the pick-up loop and heading back towards the streets. “The most
important thing though is that we want to make a good impression. You only get
one chance at that.”

“Are you going to be in trouble at work
for leaving early? Ms. Fitz said that it’s important to have an excuse if you
have to leave early.”

“They know I’m taking you to get therapy,”
I told my son. “I’m sorry I was late though, bud. Someone needed me to help
them with something right when I was getting ready to leave.”

“Everyone gets you to help them, don’t
they?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw
Landon playing with one of his Skylander figures.

“Is it because you’re the boss?”

“I’m not
the
boss; I’m one of the bosses,” I told him. “People want to make
sure they’re doing things the right way, so they come to me to make sure before
they keep going.”

“Like when I needed your help with the tie
for Grandma’s party?”

“Just like that.” I smiled.

Traffic slowed a bit and I forced myself
to take a deep breath, to stay patient. “How was school? Did you talk to that
girl you like—Jessica?”

“Jessie is nice,” Landon informed me. “She
was sad that I wasn’t allowed to keep my cast, because she’d spent so long
drawing on it.” I laughed.

“That cast smelled nasty,” I pointed out.
“You don’t want to hang onto something like that. It’d stink up your whole
room.”

“We learned about all of the holidays in
class today,” Landon told me. “Did you know that there are tons of holidays in
December Dad?”

“Tons? I can think of three,” I replied. “What
else is going on?”

“Ms. Fitz says that almost all of the
cultures of the world have some kind of holiday at the end of the year,” Landon
said. “So that’s why a lot of people say happy holidays instead of Merry
Christmas—because they want everyone to feel included.”

“That’s right,” I said, smiling to myself.
“But I think for us, we’ll stick with just Christmas—what do you think bud?” I
glanced at the time; we were almost certainly going to be late, especially the
way that traffic was starting to tangle up.

“Everyone usually goes with their family,”
Landon said after a moment. “Jessie and her mom always make cookies together
for Hanukah.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun!”

“I wish mom was still here,” Landon said
quietly. “Did mom like to bake cookies for Christmas, dad?” I felt my heart
give a lurch in my chest at the question.

“I think so,” I said; I had to give him
some kind of answer. “But you know buddy—I don’t remember her ever doing it.
Maybe she baked cookies with her mom when she was your age.”

“Do you think that we’d be baking cookies
if she was still alive?” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I think if she was still alive and you
wanted to bake cookies, she’d be on board.” I felt my eyes stinging with the
threat of tears and blinked a few times. “We could bake cookies, you know…chocolate
chip, or butter cookies. Your grandma has a great recipe for my favorite
oatmeal raisins.”

“I don’t like the raisins,” Landon said.
He has no idea that he just twisted the
knife in my heart. Don’t let him find out.

“Then we’ll do oatmeal-chocolate chip, how
does that sound? And maybe if we get permission you can take some with you to
school to share with the other kids.”

“That could be fun,” Landon said from the
back seat. I turned my attention onto the road in front of me, asking Landon to
go through his vocabulary words for the week to review them while we made our
way to the office; it was called Kid Care Pediatric Physical Therapy, and I
kept my eyes peeled to see the sign for it.

Chapter Three - Mackenzie

It was almost the end of the day, and I
was ready to leave; I had to wait to make sure my last patient either became a
no-show (if they were more than fifteen minutes late) or came in after all. It
was a new patient—a little boy by the name of Landon Willis, who according to
his chart had suffered a severe fracture two months before during an indoor
soccer game. It was a pretty straightforward case; mostly I would be helping
the little boy regain the range of motion and rebuild the muscle he lost while
the bone was healing, and make sure that there weren’t any long-term problems
with his mobility. Fortunately he had just missed shattering the growth plate
at the top of the bone—so he hadn’t had to have surgery.

“Girl, what are you sitting around for?” I
looked up from the computer where I was reviewing the case to see Amie leaning
against the counter a few feet away. I shrugged.

“My four-thirty isn’t here yet,” I said,
glancing at the time quickly. It was 4:32, and in another thirteen minutes I
could consider the patient a no-show. I could—in theory—make a run to the
coffee shop a block down from the building and maybe pick up some treats for
the other people in the office before making an early start on my Christmas
shopping.

“Which one is that?” Amie came to the desk
and peered at my screen. “Landon Willis, five years old.” I scrolled down to
let her see the x-ray on the file, sent to the office by the child’s primary. “
Oof, that
is a tough fracture! Just missed the growth
plate.”

“He’s lucky,” I said, nodding as I looked
over the X-ray again. “He’s been cleared for PT, and his father is supposed to
be bringing him in for eval today.” I shrugged, dismissing the file for the
moment.

“Probably one of those helicopter
parents,” Amie suggested. “Parents constantly trucking the kid to this or that
or the other thing.” Between the two of us—and the other therapists and therapy
assistants—we’d seen it all: kids whose parents were too busy for them, who
just dropped them off at the office and picked them up and signed paperwork
without even looking at it, kids who’d been born with birth defects like spina
bifida or hemiplegia or something else, whose parents thought their children
were made of glass. I’d chosen to work with kids because they were so
resilient; when I’d done my rotations, I’d worked with all kinds of people
needing physical therapy, from elderly patients to athletes to kids to regular
adults suffering from the long-lasting effects of an injury. Athletes were
almost as much fun as kids—they were used to the ache of working out, and
usually they were interested in the process of recovery—but I couldn’t stand
the fact that I would have had to regularly tell people in the prime of their
lives that they would have to change their careers completely. Kids, even when
we couldn’t bring them back up to what they’d been able to do before their injuries,
were more adaptable.

“It’s a five-times-per-week schedule,” I
told Amie, crossing my arms over my chest. I’d worn a thick thermal shirt under
my scrubs, but even still I’d definitely need to change before I left the
office; it was too cold outside, colder than it had been when I left my
apartment that morning. “If he can’t even make it to the eval session on time…”

I heard the bells at the door ringing and
stood up quickly to see who was coming in. Most of the other therapists were
working with patients in the therapy area, and the assistants were doing
paperwork. I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man with brown hair, clean-shaven and
wearing a tailored suit. In his arms he carried a young boy; the little boy was
maybe five years old, with big blue eyes and dark hair, paler skin than his
father but the same curve to his lips. The man had a pair of child-size
crutches tucked under his arm, dangling behind him as he hurried to the desk.