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“Damn it.” She sagged in on herself. “You’re always sneaking up on me.”
Harry braced for her to give him hell for his earlier hesitation. Instead, the plywood clattered to the ground, and she was in his arms in seconds. He buried his face in her hair as she clung to him, twisting her fists in the thick fabric of his sweater. For several minutes, they stood there, locked together in the eerie half-light of the clouded sunset through the open barn doors. As she balanced her breathing, her belly rose and fell against his.
God, she felt good.
The air was heavy with the scent of rain and the sweet, nutty fragrance of timothy hay. An undertone of animal musk and musty old timber filled Harry with some ancient, inexplicable sense of comfort.
Together, he and Rowan managed to sequester the flock into pens, while Asparagus watched, blinking big, curious eyes with lashes like peacock feathers. Once the laboring mother wasn’t crowded by the other sheep, she visibly relaxed, vocalizing less, occasionally lying down. Harry sat with Rowan on the packed dirt floor, backs against prickly hay bales.
“Thank you,” Rowan said.
“Don’t thank me. I’m a dick.”
“You’re not. It’s okay. You came.”
Across the barn, the ewe panted, watching them with her odd, wide-set gaze. When her barrel-like belly tightened with a contraction, she’d give a deep, gurgling bleat and raise her back leg, or scrabble to her feet for a bit before lying down again. The other sheep in the barn were restless too, intermittently peeking their weird faces out through the wooden slats of the stalls. Asparagus made occasional whistly, inquisitive donkey noises, and her ears were laid flat in apparent concern for her ovine friend.
“I bet this isn’t on the list of options for the ‘what should we do with Harrison today’ game.” Rowan’s head was tipped back, her eyes closed. Her mouth curved in a little smile. Harry wanted to kiss the sleek column of her neck, bury his nose at the pulse point under her jaw.
“Nope. It’s definitely on the lesser-known ‘how can we fuck with Harry today’ list, though.”
Her low laugh was like a shot of sunshine straight into his veins.
After an hour, Rowan fell asleep and slid bonelessly into him, her full weight bearing him sideways. He had to lean into her to keep her upright. Her hair smelled floral and minty, with an undertone of cold rain. She fell so deep into sleep that her ankles collapsed inward and flopped her booted feet together. She snored softly.
The last slash of light disappeared from the barn’s open doorway when the sun went fully down. A shuddering growl of thunder raised the hairs on the back of his neck like heat drawing infection from a wound. With each rumble, he heard Cora Woodward’s panicked breaths in the confines of the ambulance, blood leaving her body faster than modern medicine could manage.
A peal of thunder cracked the sky above, and he startled so hard he jostled Rowan off his shoulder. She sat up abruptly and rubbed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Don’t apologize. My shoulder is yours if you need it.”
Harry wanted to give her more than just his shoulder.Take it all,he wanted to say.It’s yours.
She did look tired. The usual bourbon gold of her eyes seemed as drab as the hay bales they leaned against. Her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks, emphasizing the smudgy discoloration of fatigue underneath. This Rowan was a pale version of the live-wire woman he knew.
“You okay?” he asked. “And I swear, if you make a doctor-patient wisecrack—”
“I got a ‘revise and resubmit’ request from the journal I most wanted—want—to publish in,” she said quickly. Harryknew it was the next step toward achieving the rigorous goals she’d set for herself. But her voice sounded toneless and flat. “They liked my manuscript, but it still needs improvement.”
“That’s still good, though. Right?”
“It’s good. None of this feels like I thought it would, that’s all. I thought I’d be—more excited, finally being this close.”
Before Harry had time to prompt her for more details, the ewe abruptly stood and walked stiff-legged around the edge of the pen, vocalizing loudly. Her lamb’s little face was visible now, a pink nose nestled between two tiny hooves. After a few stumbly steps, the ewe lowered herself back to the hay with a grunt.
Rowan shook off her fatigue and crawled to the sheep. She made soothing sounds, settling her hands on the big contracting belly. Harry stood to switch on more of the weak barn lights, and paced.
At every birth Harry had attended, the craft and competence of the labor and delivery nurses were always inspiring. Tonight, Rowan played that role for this smelly, eerie-eyed mother-to-be. She was patience and grace in grass-stained jeans, despite being covered in muck and clinging strands of hay. Her hair had worked loose from its ponytail and slid into her face. She impatiently blew curls out of her eyes.
Harry stopped pacing and bent behind her. Quietly, gently, he took hold of Rowan’s fallen ponytail, freeing it from the elastic. The curls shone like rosewood in the yellow light of the old bulbs. He withdrew several strands of straw, then gathered her hair with two slow sweeps of his hands, doing his best to re-create the kind of bun she favored. The end result wasn’t as artful as her own, but it would do. He sank into a squat beside her and tucked a few wayward tendrils behind her ears, and let his fingertip linger along her jawline.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Another bolt of thunder rocked the barn, and the sky shuddered open in release. Rain pelted the ground in thick, unrelenting sheets. Harry straightened, swiped his hands over his face, and sucked in a shivering breath through his nose.
The downpour battered the metal roof of the barn the same way it had hit the roof of Cora’s ambulance. The herald of all his nightmares, that white-noise scream of the rain.
