“How’s your moms feelin’?” Chip asked, cigar hanging from his lips, fedora tilted on his head.
“Doctor said she has a good shot at a full recovery.”
“Good. My old man had a stroke and came back stronger than ever. If she’s a fighter, she’ll be just fine.” He nodded as the engine of the bus roared to life.
Well, she wasn’t a fighter, but Chase hoped that she would still be fine.
“Where we headed?” Chip asked as his hand hovered over the GPS.
“3902 Crescent Drive.”
Chase was going home.
Chapter Five
Krista pulled into her driveway and slumped her head over her steering wheel. She wasn’t even sure if she had enough energy to walk the short distance required to make it inside of her house. She wanted to take a bath and go to bed.
Her sister Haley’s car was in the driveway, but fingers crossed, Haley would be across the street with her fiancé and her soon-to-be stepdaughter. Her two younger sisters Jessie and Becca were both staying with Krista and Haley at the moment, but Krista was hoping that either they weren’t home or at least, she could slip in unnoticed and make it upstairs before any questions were asked. She loved her sisters. She really did. But sometimes it felt like standing in front of a firing squad when they sniffed the blood of a juicy story, and Chase coming home was definitely a juicy story.
As she stepped onto the hard concrete of the driveway, Krista’s bones ached. With every step she took, her body reminded her of the workout she’d put it through during Mr. Yates’s session. As suspected, he’d had extremely limited mobility, which pointed to the conclusion that he had not been doing his prescribed exercises. So Krista had put him through the paces. Sometimes she wished that she could go home with her patients and force them to follow the protocol she’d laid out for them, because if they did, their results would be so much better so much faster.
Sighing as she put her key in the front door, she knew that she had to accept that she couldn’t will her patients to want recovery and results. Her job was to give them the best shot at it, but she couldn’t do it for them. Which was extremely frustrating for someone with Krista’s personality. If she set her mind to something, she made it happen. It didn’t matter what she had to sacrifice, what she had to endure, what she had to deprive herself of—results were all she cared about.
As soon as she entered her house, she was met with a large flash of brown fur and found herself knocked flat on her butt. Lifting her hand and trying to move away from the tongue bath she was receiving, Krista couldn’t help but laugh.
“Hi, Bear. Did you miss me?”
All one hundred pounds of muscle and fur wiggled as Bear continued to shower her with kisses and love.
“Good boy,” Krista said, scratching him behind his ear. “You are such a good boy.”
After a few minutes of giving Bear love and attention, Krista was able to scoot back from him and push up to a standing position. When she did, she saw that she might have sung Bear’s praises too soon. All of the throw pillows on her couch were ripped open, their stuffing scattered around the floor.
“Bear.” Krista tried to sound authoritative. “Did you do this?”
Bear sat like a good boy at her harsh tone and looked up at her, wagging his tail frantically across the tiled entryway. With his tongue hanging out of his mouth, he looked as happy as could be.
Going for stern, Krista pointed at the destruction that was strewn about her living room. “That’s a ‘no’.”
He answered her with a happy bark and ran to the back door, his nails click-clacking on the hard surface. Following behind him, she realized that her bath would have to wait. For the second time in this twenty-four hour span, she needed to clean up after Bear.
Using both hands, she pulled on the handle of the sliding glass door. It had a tendency to stick and she had to throw all of her weight into it for the thing to even budge. The moment that there was enough space for Bear to slip through, he was outside in a flash. Using just as much force, she pushed the door closed.
Standing for a moment, she caught her breath. What kind of shape was she in if opening and closing her sliding glass door winded her? She definitely needed to start running again. For months—no, years really—she’d neglected her own physical fitness. Mainly because she’d been solely focused on her schooling and career. The few precious hours in the week that weren’t totally devoted to those two things she liked to spend relaxing or with friends and family, not working out. In high school, she’d run track.
Only because Chase had run track, a small, annoyingly accurate voice in the back of her head chimed in.