The ranch hands had gone back to their work—mending fence along the north pasture, checking irrigation lines in the east field, the rhythm of a place that existed beyond any single day’s crisis.
Sterling’s people were still visible at key points across the property, but they’d relaxed into the stillness of men who knew the immediate threat had passed.
Jasper came out of the house and sat beside me without asking, his shoulder nearly touching mine. He’d changed clothes since the morning—jeans and a flannel shirt I recognized as Jojo’s, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hands loose and open in his lap.
The bruise on his cheek had darkened slightly with the day’s warmth, a smear of yellow along his jaw line that would take weeks to fade completely.
Neither of us spoke.
I thought about the version of Jasper that existed when he wasn’t bracing for something: Jasper with the ranch children, explaining why goats ate tin cans in picture books but not in real life, his voice in the soft tone adults used with curious kids. Jasper talking shop with Jojo over the kitchen table, hands moving with the confidence of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Jasper on this same porch in the early morning looking at the mountain like it was the first thing in a long time that hadn’t asked anything of him.
That version had been showing up more and more—not performing competence, but actually building it, one careful interaction at a time. I’d watched him finding his footing—not as a problem to be solved or a situation to be managed, but as a person who brought something to the community and had earned his place in it through the simple fact of who he was.
I didn’t say any of it out loud. I didn’t need to. Jasper’s shoulder was warm against mine, the mountain was the same mountain it had been this morning, and the waiting was over.
Whatever came next would be our own—not a solution to a problem or a response to a crisis, but something built from choice rather than necessity.
Jasper’s hand came to rest on my knee—not a gesture, just the presence of a man who’d decided he was done being careful. I covered it with my own, palm flat against his knuckles, and felt him relax slightly at the contact.
The mountain filled the western horizon—dark and solid and exactly where it had been when we’d faced Gerald in the yard that morning. Some things changed; some things stayed. The difference was in knowing which was which, and in having the patience to wait out the things that couldn’t be forced.
I let myself have that—the warmth of Jasper’s hand under mine, the solid presence of the mountain, the rightness of a problem handled and a line held.
It wasn’t a plan or a promise or anything that needed a name. It was just a moment—one of many to come—and I was exactly where I needed to be for it.
Chapter Thirteen
~ Jasper ~
I woke to the distinctive lurch of my stomach and barely made it to the bathroom before the nausea hit full force. Three long strides across the bedroom, hand clapped over my mouth, heart hammering in my throat. The tiles were cold under my knees as I gripped the edge of the toilet bowl, body heaving while my mind raced through possibilities.
Not food poisoning—Decker and I had eaten the same dinner. Not stomach flu—no fever, no other symptoms. The hot, sour taste in my mouth wasn’t giving me any clues I hadn’t already considered in the four previous mornings.
Decker slept through it—or pretended to. His breathing remained deep and even from the bed, one arm outstretched to where I’d been curled against his side ten minutes ago.
Morning light cut through the gap in the curtains, painting a thin strip of gold across the bathroom floor. I watched it inch forward while I waited for the worst of the nausea to pass, one hand braced on the tub, the other wiping my mouth with toilet paper.
The fifth morning in a row. When my breathing finally steadied, I stood on legs that didn’t quite feel like my own and walked to the sink. The mirror showed a face I was still getting used to—pale now, with dark circles under the eyes that hadn’t been there a month ago.
The bruise on my cheek had faded completely, leaving behind smooth skin that would never quite match the color it had been before Nebraska. My hair stood up on one side, flat on the other, rough from sleep and the humidity of Decker’s body heat through the night.
Three weeks. Three weeks of Decker’s mouth and hands and the warmth of being wanted by someone who meant it. Threeweeks of sleeping against his chest with his heartbeat as the last thing I heard before consciousness slipped away. Three weeks since I’d fled Nebraska with nothing but a duffel bag and bruises.
Three weeks since I’d sexually active.
The realization landed in my stomach with the same weight as the nausea. I gripped the edge of the sink and forced myself to do the math I’d been quietly avoiding since the first morning I’d woken sick: three weeks since I’d fled Nebraska with my prescription bottle still sitting in the medicine cabinet. Three weeks of Decker’s body, Decker’s hands, Decker’s powerful focus on making sure I came before he did.
Three weeks of not being on the medication that had kept me from getting pregnant since my designation as an omega had presented at seventeen.
I ran through the symptoms the way I used to run through a patient’s chart—not as a man living them, but as a nurse who’d seen this combination a thousand times before. Nausea on waking. Nipples tender to the touch. Bone-deep fatigue that sleep didn’t fix. The low, dull ache in my lower back that wasn’t from injury.
The picture they added up to was the one I’d been refusing to look at directly since the first morning I’d woken with my heart in my throat and bile on my tongue.
I needed a test.
I hadn’t been off the ranch since the day I arrived. I had no idea how to get a pregnancy test without telling someone why—without having to explain to Decker or Rawley or any of them that I’d been careless enough to get pregnant less than a month into whatever this was between me and Decker.
I got dressed with careful movements—jeans and a t-shirt from the drawer I’d emptied my duffel into, socks from the floor beside the bed where they’d landed the night before. Decker wasstill asleep, face turned into the pillow, one arm extended toward the space I’d been occupying, his breathing deep and even.
