A break would mean a cast. It would mean weeks of being unable to help with water troughs, feeding schedules, or being out in the elements—rain or shine. It would mean another able-body down when we’d just finally gotten back to the number of hands we should have been at.
I couldn’t risk it.
“I’ll make an appointment tomorrow if the swelling isn’t better.” I sighed.
Jackson crossed his arms over his chest, raising a brow. “Tucker, I’ve lived most of my life around cattlemen. I know this song and dance, and it ain’t going to work. Which is why I’ve already made an appointment for you in town at the local urgent care.”
“Now wait a fucking minute!” I sputtered, looking up into stern eyes like the unwavering trunk of an evergreen. “How the hell could you make an appointment for me? You don’t know any of my information.”
“They had online booking. Granger helped me.”
“You told Granger?!”
Jackson shrugged. “He was going to find out eventually. It was either him or Millie, and I figured you’d rather your best friend than your mom.”
I’d rather my mother, honestly, even if I knew it would turn into concerned texts and well-meaning phone calls just to check in. But at least she knew when to afford me some privacy. With her, I could at least be sure my business wasn’t going to spread around like some churchyard gossip over a cup of coffee.
“You had no right.” I tried to infuse my voice with as much discontent as I could muster, but it was fucking hard to find any for the man before me.
“Would you go otherwise? Tell me honestly, Tucker. Don’t bullshit me, and I’ll call up the urgent care right this second to cancel theappointment. Would you really go if the swelling wasn’t better tomorrow?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
Jackson shook his head. “Like I said. I know men like you. That’s also why I’m here to take you to said appointment.” He made a motion like one would when trying to get a defiant child to get a move on.
“You don’t need to take me,” I grumbled, standing up to follow him out of the room. “I don’t need a chauffeur.”
“You can barely close your hand. How do you expect to drive?”
“I’ve got one good hand. It’s not like I’m driving in a big city. I can make it to the clinic just fine driving one-handed,” I retorted.
Jackson shook his head, flashing me a placating smile as he opened the front door.
I should put my foot down and tell him no. Drive myself out there. I shouldn’t be spending any more time alone with him. Because it was moments like this, where it was just the two of us, that I couldn’t stop myself from falling into those endless hazel eyes. And that got me in trouble.
If I went with him, it would send the wrong message—make it seem like there wasn’t any issue with what happened only a few hours before. There was, though. There was so much wrong with it.
But as I stood there, looking at him with the door open and the rain falling steadily outside, I was struck by where his eyes were.
On me.
A storm had rolled in, and his eyes were watching me with so much light burning in them. Maybe I was a boat, cast out in a turbulent sea in the dead of night, and Jackson was my lighthouse.
So I followed the light.
“Not broken!” Jackson declared as we got back into the truck a few hours later, like that hadn’t been the consensus from the beginning.
I grunted something back to him in acknowledgment, messing with the taping around my fingers. The doctor at the urgent care said my x-rays didn’t show any signs of fractures, so it was most likely I’d just sprained my hand and fingers. I’d been given a brace, the kind that only immobilized the wrist and hand but kept the fingers free, and then they’d taped my two injured fingers together. The nurse had explained buddy taping them, as it was called, would keep both fingers straight, and they’d act like a splint for one another.
“And the healing time isn’t that bad either. For as bruised as it is, I was expecting you to be out of commission for a lot longer,” he mused chipperly.
Two weeks.
While he was right that two weeks in the grand scheme of things wasn’t much time at all, I could already see myself climbing the walls to get back to work. As it was, my hands were already itching to be back on the farm, in the dirt, being productive.
But instead, I’d been given strict instructions to keep things still and iced periodically for the next two weeks. If I did that, then I should be cleared to return to full activity. In the meantime, I was supposed to just be a bump on a log, apparently. No lifting with that hand, no handling the horses, no activity that could inhibit healing.
“At least it wasn’t your dominant hand,” Jackson continued despite me not contributing to the conversation. “I’m sure that would’ve caused a lot of problems.”
