He’d twisted in her lap and had his head buried against her chest and his hand tucked between them. He still cried but only a little.
“Justice, son, your mother is going to carry you to the car while I pack our stuff up super-quick,” Ross said, already gathering their supplies.
“Batman-quick?” Justice asked from between quivering lips.
“Faster,” Ross assured him, setting everything down in a pile and reaching for Brielle’s hand. “Here, let me help you to your feet.”
She could stand from a sitting position while holding Justice, but doing so was becoming more and more difficult the older he got. Thinking Ross deserved bonus points for being so considerate, she took his hand while holding securely to Justice with the other. Not that her son was going anywhere anyway. Not with the tight grip he had around her neck with his arms and her waist with his legs.
Her belly flip-flopped at the skin-to-skin contact of her hand gripped tightly in Ross’s firm grasp. The man exuded more electrical current than a power plant. Had to.
His fingers lingered longer than necessary, his gaze meeting hers, making her wonder what he felt when they touched. Was he bombarded with tiny zaps of excitement or drowned with memories? Or perhaps he felt nothing at all.
“I’ll take Justice to the car and get him in his seat.”
He still didn’t let go of her hand.
“I’ll meet you there,” he said, his voice soft, steady, full of promises she didn’t understand. Why did it sound as if he meant so much more than meeting her at the car?
She wiggled her fingers within his. His gaze dropped to their hands, as if he’d forgotten he held her. So much for her causing an electrical storm within him, the way he did her.
He let go and looked as if he was about to say something, but stopped, shook his head, and gathered up their gear.
Without another glance at him she headed towards the car with Justice. When she reached the vehicle, opened the back seat door and started to put him into his safety seat, Justice tightened his hold.
“No.”
“No? Baby, I have to put you into the car so we can get your knee and hand taken care of where Mommy works.”
Justice pulled his hand protectively close to his belly. “I don’t want to go.”
“We have to, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want us to leave my daddy. He migh
t not find us again.”
Brielle’s heart constricted at the sincerity and concern in her son’s voice, at his four-year-old logic, at what she’d deprived both Ross and her son of—each other. “Honey, we’re not going to leave your daddy. He’s just gathering our fishing gear so we can go fishing again some time. Together.”
Despite her cajoling, Justice wouldn’t let her go until Ross joined them.
“Everything okay?” he asked, eyeing them curiously as he popped the trunk with her key fob, which he’d stuck in his pocket after driving them to the lake.
“Fine,” she answered, not wanting to repeat what Justice had said. At least, not until later when she and Ross could talk in private.
They needed to talk. They had a lot to say to each other. She had a lot to say to him.
Ross didn’t look completely convinced, but he loaded the gear and put on a spare shirt he always carried in his hospital bag, which was stowed in her trunk, while she strapped a mostly co-operative Justice into his car seat.
Rather than get into the front seat beside Ross, she climbed into the back seat next to Justice so she could attend to him better should the bleeding worsen. Blood still hadn’t soaked through the makeshift bandage on his knee, but the material held in his hand was quite messy.
Ross didn’t say anything, just drove them to the hospital while she talked softly to Justice the entire ride, reassuring him about what would happen when they got to Mommy’s work.
When they got to the ER, Brielle went to get Justice out of his car seat.
“I’ll carry him in.”
Arguing with Ross would only cause another scene in front of Justice and, really, what would be the point?