Page 17 of Crowbar

“Whatever they find,” I said, not looking at him, “doesn’t change a damn thing about tonight. You came to a cookout. You brought cupcakes. My dog loves you. That’s where we are.”

Spencer was quiet for so long I thought he’d stopped breathing. When I finally turned my head, he was pressing the heel of his good hand against his eyes, shoulders trembling in that silent, contained way that people shook when they’d been holding everything together for so long that the smallest kindness cracked the foundation.

“I hate this,” he said to the windshield.

“I know.”

“Not the urgent care part. The part where someone I barely know is being kinder to me than—” He stopped. His throat bobbed. “Never mind.”

I reached over and rested my hand on the back of his neck. Light. No pressure. Just warm and steady contact, letting him know I was there without boxing him in. His skin was cool under my palm, and I felt the tension vibrating through him like a plucked wire.

“Let’s go get you fixed,” I said.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”

I came around to his side, opened the door, and walked him in. The waiting room was half empty, lit by fluorescents in the same soul-crushing way every medical facility seemed contractually obligated to be. A receptionist with tired eyes handed Spencer a clipboard. She glanced at Gunner, then my cut, and had clearly decided she wasn’t getting involved. That’s how it was in Temptation. Half the residents liked the fact the local MC kept trouble out of our town. The other half thought we were trash, but too afraid to speak their minds.

Spencer filled the paperwork out, left arm resting against his side, and I sat next to him in a plastic chair that creaked under my weight while Gunner slept in the crook of my arm.

Spencer’s handwriting was even worse under duress. The intake form looked like it had been filled out during an earthquake.

“Can you read that?” he asked, tilting it toward me.

“Not a single word.”

“Good. Neither can they. It’s a system built on mutual illiteracy.”

A kid across the waiting room was playing a game on a tablet with the volume way too high. His mother was scrolling her phone, oblivious. I gave the kid a look. He turned the volume down.

I handed the club card to the receptionist without ceremony when we took the forms back to the desk.

She looked at the card. Looked at me. Looked back at the leather cut and the tattoos and the toothpick.

“Insurance?” she asked.

“Cash pay.” I tapped the card. “Use it.”

She entered the information into her computer then handed me back the card..

They took Spencer back within twenty minutes. He’d told me to stay in the waiting room, but when the nurse called his name and he stood, he looked back over his shoulder at me with an expression that said the opposite of what his mouth had.

I stood and followed him through the door.

The exam room was small, too-bright, and smelled like antiseptic. Spencer sat on the paper-covered table, feet dangling, looking like a kid waiting for a shot. I took the plastic chair in the corner, stretched my legs out, and scratched Gunner’s ear.

“You don’t have to stay,” he said.

“Yep.” I didn’t move.

The doctor was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain and a no-nonsense demeanor that reminded me of my grandmother. She looked at Gunner, actually smiled, then she examined Spencer’s arm with efficient hands, rotating, pressing, watching his face for every flinch he tried to hide.

“I’m going to need X-rays to rule out a hairline fracture,” she said, already writing on her chart. “But based on palpation, you’ve got significant tearing in the rotator cuff and the surrounding musculature. The bicep tendon is inflamed.” She looked at him over her glasses. “This didn’t happen from lifting.” She tapped the chart where he’d written the cause.

Spencer’s jaw tightened. He was refusing to look at me. “It was a twist. Someone grabbed my arm and…twisted.”

I saw motherfucking red, feeling a rage so deep and quiet it didn’t have a sound. Just a frequency. It hummed in my bones and promised that when I found out who’d put hands on my mate, the conversation would be short and final.

The doctor’s pen stopped moving. Her eyes shifted to me in the corner, and I watched her run the calculation—big man, leather cut, small patient with a wrenched arm. The math she was doing put me on the wrong side of the equation.