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Her lips twitch. "The thing where your hands keep moving, but your face goes somewhere else."

"Oh. Sorry."

I look back at Cash. He's a seventeen-hand warmblood with a suspensory injury that's kept him out of the show ring since October. Since it's now April, it's long enough that Marlene's learned my tells better than I have.

"You've been rubbing that same spot on his hock for a full minute," she claims.

I glance down, and sure enough, my hands have gone on without me, working the same three inches of muscle like it's the only spot on this horse that needs attention. I repeat, "Sorry. Long morning."

"Mm-hmm." She doesn't push, which is another reason she's my favorite client. If I had to tell her the same lie I've been telling myself for four months, I might die of embarrassment.

I hate that I still think about Jagger. Not the way you think about a bad decision, either, but the kind you laugh off at brunch and never repeat. He might as well be a song stuck in my head, except the song has a jaw that could cut glass and a laugh that made my whole chest go warm.

I wish Carla had never told me about his engagement. I despise knowing more than I've hated almost anything. I think way too much about a faceless California woman named Phoebe who has no idea what her fiancé was doing with me on New Year's Eve.

But mostly, I think about the sex and the way Jagger made me feel. And that's the worst part. I should forget about it and only feel disgust, but I don't. I actually long for it, and moments like this, where my mind drifts while I'm at work, make me feel even more horrible about the entire situation.

I finish out the cold laser treatment, walk Cash through his stretches, and load my gear back into the trailer.

Marlene writes me a check on the tailgate of her truck.

It's the part of the day I love the most. Not the checks, though those help plenty. But the quiet stretch of gravel driveway, horse breath, and a job that doesn't normally leave room in my head for anything but tendons and range of motion.

I built Cooper Equine Rehab out of a decommissioned horse trailer and a business degree nobody thought I'd use for something this dusty. Most days, it works exactly the way I need it to. It keeps my hands busy enough that my brain doesn't have the bandwidth to wander three hours south to a cowboy bar and an apartment I never should have walked into.

Most days.

Today isn't one of them.

I've had six appointments since sunup, which used to be the kind of day that left me too tired to think about anything by supper. Instead, I spent every drive between farms with one hand on the wheel. The one hand was pressed flat against my stomach, which has been having little flutters for weeks now. It also twists up tight after meals I used to love, and sours at smells that never bothered me before.

I'm sure it's stress. My schedule has gotten more packed, and I've added extra work to help my parents out. They're struggling to keep their farm running. But if I'm honest, I also keep growing my client list so I won't have time to miss a man who's probably forgotten my name by now.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket while I'm coiling the last lead rope. Carla's name lights up the screen with a string of texts I haven't answered since this morning.

Carla: You never texted me back about Saturday.

Carla: Also, I need to know if you're still alive because it's been six hours since I texted you.

Carla: LAINEY

I type back one-handed while I climb into my truck.

Me: Still alive. Just busy. Six appointments today.

Carla: Sounds exhausting. Are you sleeping?

Me: I'm fine.

Carla: That's not an answer.

She's not wrong, and she'd know, because Carla's spent the better part of four months checking in on me. I love her for it, and I resent it in equal measure some days. Mostly because being fine has become the easiest lie I tell, right behind I'm not thinking about him.

I toss the phone in the cup holder and point my truck toward town. I have my annual gynecologist appointment, and I've put it off for several months since I've been so busy.

Dr. Tricorn's office isn't far. I park and go inside. The antiseptic smell mixes with the aroma of the lavender diffuser they've had running since I was in high school. For some reason, it makes me a bit nauseous.

I get past the waiting room, and the difference in the air helps. The nurse who takes my weight and blood pressure clucks a little at both numbers before she hands me a plastic cup and points me toward the bathroom down the hall. "Set it in the cabinet when you're done."