Healing Hearts (New Hope Falls #6) - Kimberly Rae Jordan Page 0,5

the other day.”

Ryker sighed and took a bite of roast beef so that he didn’t have to respond.

“Whose Lydia?” Emery asked as she looked at her mom, then at her dad.

“She’s an old friend,” Donna said. “You’re too young to remember her.”

“I could tell she was disappointed when I told her you still weren’t practicing.”

“Is she dating anyone?” his mother asked.

Ryker kept his attention on his food, not really interested in hearing about his ex-fiancée. It wasn’t that it would hurt him to hear that she’d moved on. He hadn’t taken much time to dwell on the demise of his relationship with Lydia in the last year.

Back when everything had fallen apart, the breakup had seemed like the least traumatic thing that had happened. They were both alive. They would both go on with their lives. Not everyone could say that after that awful day.

He knew that his family wondered how Lydia had managed to move forward after what had happened, picking up her plans for the future with only the briefest of breaks. The truth was, Ryker also wondered why he’d been impacted so much more than Lydia appeared to have been.

Was he just weak? Emotionally fragile where Lydia had been strong?

During his residency, he’d always been sympathetic to the children he’d worked with, along with their families. But he’d been able to deliver bad news without feeling like he was going to break down in tears at the sight of the parents’ distress. He’d been able to comfort them without allowing their grief to overwhelm him.

But the horror of that day and the ones that followed, along with his feeling of helplessness, had blown apart that ability, leaving him too vulnerable to be able to deal with patients’ emotions or those of their parents. So while maybe he hadn’t been weak before that day, he sure felt weak afterward.

And Ryker was so weary of thinking about it—being forced to think about it—every time he was around his family.

It was why he was so thankful for the job he had now where no one knew who he’d been before and what had happened to him. He wasn’t Doctor Ryker Bennet, survivor of the bombing of a Syrian refugee camp. He was just Ryker Bennet, right-hand man to Michael Reed at Reed Landscaping.

The job was physical, which usually wore him out enough that his body overruled his brain when it came time to sleep. He needed to be physically exhausted enough that his nightmares weren’t able to drag him up to wakefulness.

“Jonah, why don’t you tell everyone about the project you’ve been working on?” Donna suggested.

Ryker shot his sister-in-law a grateful look. She gave him a small smile in return, and he was once again reminded of how thankful he was for Silas’ wife. Her presence was always calming in a way that Callie’s wasn’t.

More than anything, he just wanted to escape the house. But he stuck it out because he knew that fleeing the gathering would just be one more thing his parents would be disappointed over and would give Callie more to rag on him about. He just needed to keep it together, and everything would be okay.

Once he got back to his apartment, he’d work out for awhile to make up for the lack of physical exertion that day. While his family might think his job was nothing special, it still required him to be focused and physically able to work. And though they might not understand, he gained a certain amount of satisfaction in the work he did with Michael.

For now, it was enough.

CHAPTER TWO

Ryker pulled his truck to a stop at the curb, checking the bronze numbers on the post of the porch that stretched across the front of the small house. He ran his gaze over the property, taking in the towering trees and the scraggly bushes along the front of the yard.

Gripping the steering wheel, he shifted his gaze to stare out the windshield of his truck. He took a minute to remind himself that he was doing this to help out someone he considered one of his best friends. Unfortunately, that didn’t necessarily make it any easier.

Just pick up the baby and take her to Michael.

He could do that. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already had small interactions with her.

With a sigh, Ryker opened the door of his truck and climbed out. It didn’t take long to get to the front door, where he pressed the doorbell, stepping back as it rang