Rebel (Renegades #2)(12)
Author: Skye Jordan

“He’s tense,” Jax said. “His brother just had surgery.”

Rubi’s gaze darted back to Jax, but she didn’t really see him. Too many thoughts were jumping around her brain. Why hadn’t he told her? Was that the basis of this strange behavior? Her mind darted to the contraption they’d been messing with in the trailer, one she’d thought was a harness.

Before she could ask any questions, Wes returned.

“How is he?” Jax asked.

“She says the surgery went well.” He looked relieved, sounded calm. Seemed the edge was off his mood. “The surgeon said they got most of the scar tissue and that in a few weeks his mobility should improve a lot.”

Jax grinned and reached across the table to meet Wes’s fist in a bump. “Great news, man.”

“What kind of surgery?” Rubi asked. She couldn’t deny she was hurt that Jax, Lexi, and Rachel knew all about it, but she didn’t. She spent almost as much time with him as they did.

“Spine,” was all he said before Roméo came with their lunches. Once they’d all been served, Wes took the side of ranch dressing from his plate and set it next to Rubi’s salad. Then put a few fries on the rim of her salad bowl.

He grabbed another fry, popped it in his mouth, and chewed before saying, “He’s a Marine. He was on his third tour in Afghanistan when an IED exploded inside a building where his unit was doing recon and lodged a shitload of shrapnel in his spine. Today was his second surgery.”

“Oh no,” she said softly, absently picking the candied pecans from the top of her salad and collecting them in her palm. “I’m sorry.”

Wes acknowledged the utterly inadequate reply with a nod and took another pull on his beer, but hell, what did you say to news like that? Stress of that kind could completely explain Wes’s rash behavior. He’d mentioned his parents in passing, but never siblings. Granted, given their table had a three-out-of-five family-failure rate, it wasn’t a big topic of conversation when they were together.

“Younger or older brother?” she asked as she set the nuts on a corner of Wes’s plate, then picked up a fry, dipped it in the ranch, and bit it in half.

“Older,” he said, ignoring his burger and using one fry to move around the others, but not really eating. “By four years. He’s married with two little girls.”

Nieces. The thought made Rubi smile. Her view of Wes settled into place. He had a family that loved each other, worried about each other. He called his mother Mama and talked to her in a voice filled with warmth. Yes, this was Wes. She might lust after the golden Adonis in her fantasies, but this was the Wes she’d come to truly adore over the last two months.

“So that thing you were working on this morning was for him?”

“Yeah.” He tossed a pecan into his mouth. “But I’m not sure it’s going to support him. He’s my height, but he’s a big guy, maybe thirty more pounds than me. And he’s not going to have any strength for a while. He’ll be like dead weight until he heals and rebuilds muscle.”

Wes looked at Jax. “My dad is the only one in my family who’s strong enough to help him walk, and he’s in the middle of harvest. I know this is a bad time with the film, but I may need to go back every couple of weeks to help out.”

“Anything you need to do, man,” Jax said. “Family comes first. We’ll make do.”

He released a relieved breath. “Thanks.”

“Is there any way to make it stronger?” he asked Jax.

Jax wiped his mouth after taking a bite of his burger. “Can he stand on his own?”

Wes nodded. “It’s moving his legs he can’t manage.”

“Stronger metal on the thighs?” Lexi asked.

“Yeah.” Rachel nodded at Lexi, then Jax. “Maybe a double design, more like those harnesses you use for falling and climbing where the straps go all the way around the leg?”

Jax shook his head and took a drink of his iced tea. “Too much chance of hurting him if he falls.”

Rachel nodded and poked at her own lunch, deep in thought. Rubi recalled the apparatus as she forked up blueberries and the others continued to drum up ideas for strengthening the design. She wasn’t much good with machinery, but…

“Rubi,” Lexi said drawing her attention. “Didn’t you do some work for a tech lab?”

She nodded, thinking back to the robots and prosthetics she’d helped program, trying to fit that into this scenario.

Lexi glanced at Wes, then back at Rubi, a glint of suspicion in her bright blue eyes. “Why are you so quiet?”

She lifted a shoulder and feigned rapt attention in collecting as many blueberries as possible on her fork tines. “Just listening. Thinking.”

Wes’s lips curled on one side, and he glanced at her with a mixed look in his eyes she couldn’t quite read. “I kissed her stupid.” Wes’s low voice burned a path down the center of her chest. “Or so she said.”

Rachel’s fork hit her plate, her brown eyes flying wide.

Rubi stiffened and cut him a look. “Wes, that’s no one’s business.”

“Just answering the question.” He ate another fry. “So what do you have up your sleeve, Rubi? Any ideas?”

She lifted her fork and stared at the tines, thinking—and avoiding the others’ expressions at the news. “You could make the hinges at the hip stronger. Or…maybe add hinges at the knee and make them all stronger. I imagine the rig would have to handle more of his weight until his muscles strengthen, then less when he doesn’t need as much leverage to move them.”

Jax’s hand paused with a cucumber slice halfway to his mouth. He and Wes exchanged a look Rubi recognized—ideas were turning in their brains.

“What are you thinking?” Wes said.

She met his gaze and found him fully attentive, intensely focused on her. “I don’t really know anything about medicine or mechanics, but the round things at the hip on the rig, those are the hinges, right? They have some type of mechanism inside that makes them pivot?”

“They do. A spring mechanism.”

Her mind focused on physics and function, much easier on her churning guts. “That would produce a movement equal to the pressure applied to the spring. To support a heavy weight, you’d need heavy springs, which would need a certain amount of strength to operate. Strength your brother may not have initially.” She tilted her head and rested her chin in her hand, gazing at a spot over his shoulder. “You might get better control with electromagnetic conductors.”