Page 13 of Digging Deeper

My gaze snaps back to his. “Huh?”

His brow furrows as if he’s concerned. “Are you alright? You’re being weird today.”

“Me? You’re like… a happy version of yourself, and I don’t know what to do with you when you’re like this. If anyone’s being weird, it’s you.”Defensive much?

“I wouldn’t say I’m happy or whatever, but if you want, I can go back to being super grumpy.” He shoots me a grin… a shit-eating grin because he knows he’s being a butthead.

“Wow, did you just admit you were being an ass before?”

“I didn’t say I was being an ass.”

“Yes you did. I heard it. You said, ‘I’m sorry I was being such an ass before.’ Man, I wish I had recorded it, you apologized and everything.”

He chuckles. “I didnotsay that.”

“I heard you. It’s burned into my memory forever… I’ll cherish it always. The day Hendrix Weston admitted he was a dick.”

“Oh, it’s dick now? Not ass?”

I quickly scan the area to make sure no one else is around to hear my mouth. I really shouldn’t be cursing at or with a patient, but I can’t seem to help myself around him. This is almost fun. And he’s being such a good sport I almost don’t recognize him. “You called yourself a dick and an ass because you were totally both.”

He laughs and pushes my shoulder. “Thanks for the name calling.”

“Hey, you said it.”

He snorts. “Uh huh, sure I did.”

I grin at him, and he smiles back, and I swear there’s a fucking twinkle in his eyes. He’s totally amused by me and truly happy for once. I haven’t seen him look like this in all the years I’ve known him. Not that I saw him all that often, but when he visited Holden those few times over the years, he’d never seemed happy then, either.

Once we finish our regular exercises, I push the chair over to the arm and leg bike and say, “I want to try something new since you’re down here. Is that alright?”

I see him take a deep breath before he nods. “Yeah, alright.”

My grin is huge. I hook him up and get him settled before setting a timer and walking over to the nearby computer so I can pull up Drix’s records and fill out all the information about each exercise we did today and make a note about adding the bike into his daily routine. I’m so damn excited that he’s doing so well today. I hope that means we’re over the hump and that he won’t fall back down the wrong side again. I’m sure he’ll have his ups and downs, but I’m hopeful there’ll be more ups from now on.

After he finishes, I can tell he’s pretty worn out so I take him a cup of water from the water jug in the corner. As I unstrap him from the machine, I say, “You did really well today, Drix. You should be proud of yourself.”

His jaw tenses for a moment as he tosses the now-empty cup into the nearby trash can, but then he nods and mutters, “Thanks.”

Figuring he’s probably annoyed that the bike had to move his legs instead of the other way around, I don’t push him. “You ready to go back to your room? I’m off in about five minutes, but if it’s okay with you, I’d like to hang out for a bit so I can show you the dogs and everything.”

He looks surprised, but says, “That sounds good.”

I flash him a smile before we make our way back to his room in silence. Once I have him in his bed, I rush to clock out before returning with a smile and my phone out. I lean my hip against his bed and pass the phone over. “Swipe to the right. This one is named Nana, like from Peter Pan, and she’s really freaking sweet.” The dog on the screen is around fifty pounds, is black with white around her face and on her chest, and has one ear that sticks up in the air and the other that flops down. She’s goofy and adorable.

“What kind of dog is she?”

“She’s a mutt, but they think she has pit bull in her, which mea—”

“Which means her chances of being adopted are really low. Yeah, Holds tells me all the pit bull facts, too.” He smiles softly at me.

“Right? He’s all about the pit bulls.”

His grin grows a tad. “He is.” He swipes through the billion pictures I took of Nana before stopping on a picture of a bigger dog with a tan body and one black paw, but the fur around his neck grows in weird from the scars there, left behind by an embedded collar. His previous owners never removed his collar when he was a puppy, so it cut into his neck leaving permanent damage. His face is almost bulldog-looking, and I swear he has the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. “What’s this guy’s name?”

“His name is Brutus.”

Drix chuckles. “That kind of fits him.”

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