Chapter 21 Sadie #2
“Okay,” she said, dragging a hand down her face. “So you’re bailing on sex to go play horse doula. Cool cool cool. Totally normal.”
He grinned. “You make it sound unreasonable when you say it like that.”
“It is unreasonable.”
“Linda’s family.”
She groaned. “Oh my God, you’re one of those horse guys.”
He didn’t deny it. He just winked. And somehow, tragically, she was still turned on. Apparently her libido had no standards.
She narrowed her eyes. “Who names a horse Linda? That’s not a majestic horse name. That’s someone’s mom who runs the PTA and complains about gluten in the bake sale brownies.”
He cracked up, but she wasn’t done.
“I mean, poor Linda. She worked until she gave birth. Do horses not get maternity leave? A birthing ball? A scented candle?”
“Apparently not,” he said with a sigh. “The crew didn’t even know she was pregnant until today. The vet’s three hours away. So guess who just got promoted to emergency horse midwife?”
She stared. “So let me get this straight. Instead of literally anything else, and I mean anything, you are about to go help deliver a baby horse.”
“Apparently.”
She nodded once, processing. Then she turned on her heel and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” he called, clearly alarmed.
“To help deliver your weirdly named horse-child,” she said, yanking her coat off the hook. “Obviously.”
“You’re coming with me?”
“Oh, absolutely. If I’m being sexually edged by a man who chose livestock over me, I deserve at least one unhinged anecdote out of it.
” She shoved her arms into her sleeves. “Also, I’ve never seen a foal be born, and my life has already gone completely off the rails this week. Might as well commit.”
He chuckled, the kind of warm, low laugh that usually ended with her pressed against something solid. “Alright. But I’m warning you, things can get messy.”
She glanced back at him as they stepped into the cold night, frost crunching under their boots. “Messy doesn’t scare me. I work in makeup and film production. I’ve seen things no one should see before noon.”
“Such as?”
“Redoing an entire gore sequence because the director said the blood lacked emotional depth. Or calming an actor who felt his corpse makeup didn’t make him look hot enough.”
He grinned. “Fair point. But I bet none of them were four-legged and actively crowning.”
“No,” she said sweetly, “but several behaved like it.”
That made him laugh again, a sound she was really starting to hate that she liked.
As they reached the stables, the faint sounds of restless hooves echoed into the night. Sadie had to pause and take it in: she was about to midwife a horse with the man who’d made her question her life choices and soak her panties multiple times in one day.
God help her. She was not nearly paid enough for this.
“Oh my God, thank God,” Avery cried, nearly colliding with them as they stepped inside. “I think her water broke. Do horses even have water? I’m not emotionally prepared for this.” Avery looked one panic spiral away from lying down on the floor.
Sadie glanced at Quentin, biting back a laugh. “Don’t worry. Doctor Quentin will take a look,” she announced, attempting to sound reassuring. It didn’t work. Avery did not calm down. She vibrated harder.
As Quentin moved to the restless mare, who kept getting up from the stable ground only to circle anxiously, Sadie leaned closer to him, lowering her voice.
“Be honest,” she whispered. “Do you actually know what you’re doing?”
He shot her a grin that was wildly inappropriate for the situation and rolled up his sleeves. “I’ve seen it done a few times.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“How hard can it be?”
Sadie nodded solemnly. “Amazing. I hope that sentence ends up engraved somewhere permanent.”
Linda, as if sensing the sheer idiocy in the air, let out a deep, guttural snort and stomped her hooves, looking one tail flick away from kicking someone into next week.
Quentin clapped his hands together. “Alright, everyone, breathe,” he commanded, his voice cutting through the chaos like he actually knew what he was doing.
“Let’s give her some space. Sadie, grab some clean towels if you can find any.
Avery, either calm down or wait outside before you need medical attention.
And someone, get me a bucket of warm water. ”
The crew listened. People scattered, orders were followed, and Linda finally had some room to process the fact that she was about to become a mother.
Sadie absolutely should have been focused on the horse. Or the miracle of life. Or the fact that she was standing in hay in boots, witnessing something that would definitely come up in therapy later.
Instead, she was watching Quentin. There was something about the way he took charge, his voice steady and sure, that sent a slow, lingering heat curling through her. It shouldn’t have been so hot, the way he commanded the situation, but it was.
Sadie shook herself out of her daze, hurrying to grab the towels from a nearby shelf. She returned just in time to see the foal crowning, a tiny nose peeking out as the horse strained with a push.
Her gaze drifted to Quentin, his hands steady on the foal, guiding it as if he had done this a hundred times before.
His focus was absolute, brow furrowed in concentration, and she noticed how his dark hair kept falling into his eyes.
There was something undeniably captivating about him in that moment.
Raw, capable, and completely in his element.
Sadie’s breath caught in her throat as the foal emerged, slick and trembling. There was something profoundly raw and beautiful about it, the way life just happened right there in front of her. She hadn’t expected to be so moved, but before she knew it, tears were slipping down her cheeks.
Quentin hands deftly working to tear open the sac around the foal.
“C’mon, little one,” he murmured, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it. He cleared the foal’s nose and mouth, his broad hands surprisingly gentle as he wiped the tiny creature clean with the towel Sadie had brought.
It was a miracle, how something could emerge so whole, so perfectly itself.
And that was like Quentin. He wasn’t searching, wasn’t uncertain. He simply was, maddeningly, unapologetically whole. Infuriatingly complete in a way that didn’t seem fair. And he knew it. Wore that certainty like a second skin, like gravity bent around him a little differently.
Where she was all pieces, scattered and jagged, too much in some places and not enough in others, he was steady. There was something about someone who didn’t need fixing. Something terrifying and impossibly beautiful.
She watched him kneel in the hay, jaw set, brow creased in focus, murmuring encouragement to a creature that couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
“There you go,” he murmured, voice low and tender. He seemed kind. Not performative-kind. Not charming-for-an-audience kind. Just… kind. The kind you only saw when no one was watching.
Sadie realized she hadn’t blinked in a while. She had never seen him like this. Not on set, not in rehearsal, not even in the quieter moments between. And suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever truly seen him at all.
He looked up, eyes finding hers across the soft shadows. “Beautiful, right?” he asked, a small smile ghosting across his lips, the kind that turned her inside out without even trying. She stared at him and couldn’t bring herself to disagree. It was beautiful. He was beautiful.
She nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks before she could stop them. “Yeah,” she whispered, wiping them away quickly. “It’s... something.”
Quentin didn’t comment. Didn’t tease. He just turned back to the foal, giving her the mercy of silence.
And that was when something shifted. Like the barn seemed to tilt softly on its axis.
Like some unspoken thing between them had shifted, subtle as a breath caught in the throat.
She couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t define the weight of it.
But it settled in her bones all the same.
She didn’t like him. She was still very sure of that. She was just no longer sure she knew exactly who he was. And for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t sure if she was standing on solid ground anymore.