But there hadn’t been anyone to hear him.
Except me.
And I’d been a goddamned coward.
I tapped on the hood of Nolan’s car to get his attention, since he hadn’t lifted his gaze after asking about the raccoon. He wiped at his eyes a bit more before he finally raised them. His pain-filled expression was like a sucker punch to the gut.
I nodded my head and then motioned with my fingers for him to follow me. When he finally did, I noticed Loki nudging his hand as he walked, and I wanted to hug the animal for sensing how vulnerable Nolan was feeling. Nolan smiled at Loki’s attention and I heard him suck in a deep breath.
I led Nolan to a small building behind the office and opened the door for him. I motioned him through first and barely refrained from grabbing him when his body brushed mine.
Once inside the room, Nolan stood nervously in the middle. I used the room to house the orphaned babies in my charge and while it was often jam-packed in the springtime, the raccoon was, thankfully, my only resident. I handed Nolan a pair of heavy gloves that would minimize his human scent getting on the youngster as well as protecting his fingers on the off-chance the baby tried to bite him. I grabbed a pair of gloves for myself and then got the baby raccoon out of the small cage. There was some initial awkwardness as I handed the baby over to Nolan, but once we got it figured out and the little animal huddled against his chest, Nolan let out a small smile that eased some of the pressure in my chest.
“Oh my God,” Nolan murmured as he studied the baby who’d settled in his hold a bit. In the week I’d had the baby, I’d been feeding it in the hopes of getting some weight on it, so it wasn’t completely terrified by the contact now. “Are you going to let it go again when it’s older?” Nolan asked.
I was about to tell him yes but then paused. I moved to the large whiteboard I’d hung on one wall so I could keep track of each patient’s feeding schedule. Grabbing the marker, I quickly wrote, Have a mother raccoon with a baby. Going to see if she accepts him.
A big smile lit up Nolan’s entire face. “You are? So he’d get a new family?”
I was so caught up in how happy Nolan looked that it took me a second to nod in response. I knew that smile of his had to have done something to me because before I knew it I was writing, Was going to try it later today but can do it now. Want to watch?
Nolan nodded vigorously. “I’d love to.”
I nodded and then went for the door.
“Dallas, don’t you want to take him?” Nolan asked from behind me.
I shook my head and motioned at him. He got the message. As he neared me, I put out my hand to stop him. Nolan tensed as I reached for the zipper on the bottom of his jacket.
“Right,” he said, letting out a breath as I began zipping up the jacket. “Don’t want the baby to get cold.”
But as soon as he realized that with the way he was holding his arms, the raccoon wouldn’t benefit from the closed jacket, he tensed again and his eyes found mine. My fingers were still on the zipper as I held him with my gaze. Yeah, I didn’t really have an explanation either for why I’d been worried about him getting too cold.
I was leaning toward him before I realized what I was even doing.
I jerked back at the same time Nolan did and I had to grab his arm when he stumbled. Once he was steady on his feet, he tried to hand me the baby raccoon. “Um, here, you should take him. I might fall.”
If he’d just been babbling nervously, I would have passed his reaction off as a side effect of what I’d been about to do. But no, he was freaking out. Like he really thought he’d fall and hurt the baby.
I put my hands on his lower arms to push them back against his body and hold them there. Fortunately, the raccoon wasn’t reacting overly much to the commotion.
“No, Dallas, seriously, I might drop him. I’m a klutz and I don’t want to hurt him.”
Since I didn’t want to release him to go back to the whiteboard, I just held him there until he calmed. He fell silent and took several deep breaths, which seemed to ease some of his tension. When he finally looked up at me, he nodded, but said nothing.
I was tempted to reach out and touch his face just because I hated how pinched his features were.