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His gaze burned into mine. My heart fluttered a bit, reading more into his expression than it should’ve.
“Yeah, of course.” I swallowed hard and tore my eyes away to focus on the wound.
It didn’t take long to clean it up. Jayden was a good patient. He sat as still as a statue, not showing a hint of pain, even when I dabbed his arm gently with an alcohol wipe. The injury wasn’t as bad as I’d originally thought. It looked like a minor road rash that traveled the outside of his right forearm up to mid tricep.
With the bleeding mostly slowed, I worked at placing some pads and wrapping it with gauze. All the while, I tried not to focus on the shapely curve of the muscles along his arms. Or the way his skin twitched each time I gently touched him. Even through my glove, I could feel the heat of his skin. It was making me feel a little off balance, as if I were the one suddenly afraid of blood. But it definitely wasn’t the wound making me feel this way. Tensing my jaw, I kept my head down and worked, not letting myself remember who I was treating.
“Jay-bear!” A woman with a short, blonde pixie cut and a bright neon green t-shirt with the number twelve sewn on it came rushing up to the back of the dugout. “Are you okay? How’s the arm?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Jayden tucked his chin so I couldn’t see much of his face, but I could’ve sworn that the back of his neck was reddening against the white collar of his uniform. “You don’t have to make a scene.”
A grin worked its way onto my face as Jayden’s mom continued to fuss over him, despite his protests. Jay-bear? That was officially my favorite nickname of all time. And way more humiliating than my full name.
“I just had to be sure you didn’t break anything,” she said, her worried face nearly plastered to the fence. “I was having major flashbacks to when your brother broke his leg sliding into home base. That injury almost ended his baseball career.”
“Nothing’s broken and I’m nearly back to normal,” he said, finally lifting his head to give me a look that begged me to intervene. “Right, Mandy?”
“Yeah, totally.” I held up a ball of gauze. “No broken bones here. Just a scrape.”
The grateful expression he shot me made my insides melt a little.
“Good.” Jayden’s mom sighed with relief. “If anything changes, let me know. I’d better get back. I left my box of popcorn with your dad and if I don’t stop him, he’ll eat the whole thing. You know how he is around salty snacks. Thank you for taking care of my baby, Mandy.”
She rushed off and I couldn’t hold in my laughter any longer. As soon as she was out of earshot, I threw my head back and giggled.
“Jay-bear?” My gaze met with his. “Seriously?”
Indignation rolled off of him and there was a slightly pink tint to his cheeks. “She’s been calling me that since I was a baby. I can’t break her from the habit. It’s not worth the effort.”
I laughed again, thoroughly enjoying the way the tips of his ears turned red. The baseball uniform was one thing, but a blushing Jayden was somehow even more attractive. As he tried and failed to shoot me an unamused scowl, I felt something inside of me move toward him, as if a string were attached to my organs.
The sudden and unexpected sensation made the laughter die inside my throat. I clamped my mouth shut and bent down to cover the strangled noises I was making by adding another layer of gauze to his arm.
That was weird. Apparently, I’d inhaled too many of the fumes from the alcohol wipes.
“So...” I needed a topic—anything to distract me from the shapely muscular arm I was currently wrapping. “Where’s your brother at now?”
His body tensed at my question. “What?”
I lifted my chin just enough to look him in the eyes. “Your brother? Your mom said he broke his leg. Did he go on to play baseball in college?”
“Oh, yeah.” He relaxed slightly, but his expression was guarded. “Um, Ricky played at State for a year, but decided it wasn’t for him.”
I wasn’t sure why talking about his brother was bringing out this weird, stiff side of Jayden. Maybe he didn’t like talking about his family. Some people were kind of private about that stuff.
“Wow, impressive. I’ve heard they have a really good team. Baseball must run in the family for you guys.”
“Hopefully, it’s the only thing that runs in our family,” he said in a low, dangerous tone as he stared down at his wrapped arm and flexed it.
I sat up straight, curious about what he’d meant by that cryptic statement. It sounded serious. But by the time Jayden finished checking out his arm and looked up at me, the tension was gone from his face and the cocky half-grin was back.
“Thanks, Amanda. You’re pretty good at that. They just might let me keep my arm now.”
“Anytime, Jay-bear.”
I snorted with laughter at the pained grimace that passed over his face. But as soon as our eyes met again, the silliness abruptly ended. Jayden was looking at me with an expression that contained a flicker of heat hot enough to set the leftover gauze in my hands on fire. My throat thickened and my head went fuzzy. I felt that tug again, right below my ribcage.
The slight parting of his lips was all it took to redirect my attention to them. I knew from experience how soft those lips could be. Longing swelled up inside me in a way that I wasn’t prepared for. I bit my bottom lip and dared to flick my eyes up to his. What I saw there made the longing all the stronger. He watched my mouth so intensely that it caused my cheeks to heat.
