"I don't know," Dakota said. "Maybe ask her."
I looked at him.
He shrugged. "Seriously. You've spent all day deciding what she should and shouldn't want. Have you actually asked her what she sees?"
I hadn't. Obviously I hadn't. I'd spent the whole conversation telling her what her life should look like and she'd had to shut me down twice.
"She's twenty-one," I said. One more time. Like if I said it enough it would start meaning something different.
"You keep saying that like it's an argument." Dakota set his empty bottle down. "She's been working this ranch since she was fifteen. She's in vet school. She showed up this morning and told you a hard truth and then spent the whole day taking care of six orphaned puppies without complaint." He looked at me sideways. "She's more of a grown woman than half the people I know. The age thing is an excuse."
I didn't answer.
"What are you actually scared of?" he said.
The question sat there.
I looked out at the dark cedar line and thought about Ethan at twenty-two. About Pruitt, who'd been in country three weeks. About the specific way you could want a future so badly it became something to be afraid of—because wanting meant losing, and losing was something I knew better than most.
"Losing her," I said.
Dakota was quiet for a moment.
"Wyatt," he said finally. "You're losing her right now.”
I was on my feet before he finished the sentence.
Dakota didn't say anything. Just picked up both empty bottles and leaned back on the porch steps like a man who'd done his job and knew it.
I was already moving.
The path from the main house to my place was a quarter mile, familiar enough that I could walk it blind, and I walked it fast with my hands in my jacket pockets and the night air cold on my face and eighteen years of telling myself I didn't get to wantthings just—gone. Like it had never been there. Like all it had taken was my little brother saying the obvious thing out loud.
You're losing her right now.
I wasn't going to lose her.
The lights were on in my kitchen when I came around the back. I could see it from fifty yards out, warm yellow through the window, and something in my chest eased just at the sight of it. A light on. Haven inside.
I came through the back door.
The kitchen was empty but the box was on the floor in the living room, the lamp on low, and that was where I found her.
She was asleep on the floor next to the box with her head on her arm, her knees tucked up, still in her work clothes. The runt—the one I hadn't been sure about, the one that had gone still in the wire—was curled against her chest, tucked under her chin. Haven's hand was curved around it, loose in sleep, keeping it close even unconscious.
The other five were piled in the box. All breathing. All warm.
I stood in the doorway and looked at her for a long moment.
That's the mother of my child,I thought.
It arrived flat and certain and true, the same wayI love herhad arrived this morning in the foaling stall, and I stood there and let it be real.
I crossed the room and crouched down beside her.
"Haven," I said quietly.
She stirred. Her eyes opened slow, confused for a second, then finding me. The pup didn't move.
