Page 180

I’m improving. Not as quickly as I’d like, but enough that I’ve stopped asking when I can return to full practice at every appointment.

Now I ask at every other one.

For today, I have somewhere else to be.

Baylor comes out from behind the counter with a stack of menus.

"Can you put these on the tables?"

"Absolutely. Paper is well within my physical ability. Anything else you need?""

"Not yet, but I’ll let you know," she says as she hands them over, then catches my wrist before I move away. "Thank you, by the way."

"For the menus?"

"For being here. For believing in me."

I lean down and kiss her. "There wasn’t a chance I was missing this."

"I know." Her smile widens. "I’m still glad."

"Baylor?"

Her mother stands in the doorway with a vase of flowers held against her chest. Her dad follows with Beau, who ducks beneath the balloons just as Trey finally gets the tape to hold.

"Don’t touch those," Trey tells him.

"I wasn’t planning to."

"They’re structurally sensitive."

JP looks at the tape. "They’re going to fall."

"Not if everybody stops breathing on them," Trey shoots back.

Baylor laughs and hurries over to hug her mom. I take the vase before either of them spills water down her dress.

Her mother turns toward me.

"Thank you, Wolf. How was the trip back?"

"Good. Much better than the trip out."

Her expression softens. "I imagine it was."

Baylor takes the flowers to the counter while her dad stops beside me.

"Good to see you."

"You too."

We shake hands. It’s easier than the first time we did this in Boston, when he came to Dad’s house and we sat on the back porch for a conversation neither of us particularly enjoyed.

He apologized for the hospital. I apologized for the hit. He thanked me for making sure Beau got the surgeries and help he needed that they could never have afforded.

We had coffee afterward, and it went fine. We’re both trying for Baylor.

I’m not expecting him to start wearing my jersey, but he asked about my shoulder before he left. That felt like a decent place to start.