I wasn't going to do anything else. I had both arms wrapped around her and she was still shaking and I wasn't putting her down.
—
Wyatt had a room off the back of the barn he used for exactly this—not a full clinic, but close enough. A metal exam table, a locked cabinet of supplies, a utility sink, good overhead lighting. I'd been in it a hundred times for ranch calls. He got the dooropen and I followed him in with three pups still against my chest while Dakota and Stetson brought the rest.
"Table," Wyatt said, and I set the still one down first—she was the priority, the wire wounds needed proper cleaning—and kept a hand on her while Wyatt got supplies out of the cabinet.
Forrest appeared in the doorway with a cardboard box he'd found somewhere, already lined with an old horse blanket.
"For the ones that are okay," he said.
"Perfect." I nodded at the corner. "Put it there where they can hear us."
He set it down without comment. Forrest was like that—he just did the useful thing and didn't make anything of it. I liked that about him.
Dakota lowered the four healthy pups into the box and they immediately piled on top of each other, a squirming anxious heap, making sounds that were going to make it very hard to concentrate.
"Saline," Wyatt said, already gloved up.
I found it in the cabinet. Handed it over.
We worked through them one at a time—cleaning wounds, checking for anything we'd missed in the field, assessing the limping one's sprain. Wyatt talked me through each step the way he did sometimes, not condescending, just—teaching. The way he always had. Like it was the most natural thing in the world to have me beside him.
"Swelling here," he said, fingers on the limping one's leg. "Feel that?"
I pressed gently where he indicated. "Yeah."
"What does that tell you?"
"Soft tissue. Not the bone."
"Right." He reached for the wrap. "She'll be okay in a few days with rest. Keep her from putting weight on it."
I held the pup still while he wrapped it, neat and practiced, and she bore it with grace.
Grace, I thought. That would be a good name for her when all this was over.
When we were done Wyatt stripped his gloves and leaned back against the counter and looked at all six of them—four in the box, two still on the table being supervised—and did the quiet calculation I recognized. Running the math on what they needed, what it would take, whether it was manageable.
"Round the clock for at least a week," he said. "Maybe two."
"I know." I looked at him. "I can help. I'm here every day anyway."
He held my gaze for a second.
There it was again—all the things we hadn't finished saying, sitting in the air between us.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Yeah. I know you are."
FIFTEEN
Wyatt
We stayed in the small barn clinic most of the day. My brothers and cousins took shifts helping out with the cattle and the horses…me and Haven took shifts checking on Juniper and the other horses, then going back to the pups. The one that had been worse was still a little rough, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to pull through.
And there was still this thing happening between me and Haven.
A baby…her keeping it, my opinions be damned.
