2. Chapter 2 #2
After, we lie tangled in sheets that smell like cheap detergent and sweat.
She traces the weathered scar on my shoulder with one fingertip, and I tell her how I got it.
She laughs when I describe my own stupidity, low and unguarded in the dark, and something in my chest eases before I can name why.
She falls asleep with her back to my chest, her curls tickling my nose, and I allow myself to hold her, to breathe her in, to pretend that morning won't come with its complications and its costs.
Morning comes in gray. For a few seconds I stay where I am, one arm bent under my head, the other stretched across cold sheets, and let myself catch up to the fact that I’m awake somewhere I never meant to stay
Then I register the empty space beside me.
My hand is still half-open on the mattress where her body was, the indentation of her barely visible in the thin light.
I sit up, scanning the room … her clothes gone from the floor, her boots missing from beside the door.
The bathroom door stands open, dark inside.
The silence has a quality I recognize from years of waking alone, but this time it carries an edge I haven't felt before.
She left, which is, objectively, the best possible outcome.
No awkward morning conversation. No reason to pretend I am the kind of man who lingers.
So why am I still looking at the empty side of the bed?
Annoyed now, I swing my legs over the edge and sit there for a moment, elbows on my knees, staring at the warped wood floor.
One pillow sags more than the other, and the sheet beside me still holds the rough outline of where she slept.
I resent how fast I clock that.
I get up, cross to the window, and pull the curtain back with two fingers. The gravel lot glistens. No telling whether she’s left or just gone downstairs.
If she’s just downstairs, that should make this feel less final. It doesn’t.
This is why I don’t let a night like that stretch into morning.
Not because I regret it. Regret is useless.
The problem is what comes next, when your head starts building meaning into things that didn’t need any.
A woman I meet in a roadside inn during a storm is only a complication if I let her become one.
Montana is one sleepless night I have no intention of turning into anything more.
While I dress, I start putting things together.
No promises were made. I don’t know her last name, her history, or where she was headed before weather shoved her into my path …
but that’s ok. I pick up my jacket from the chair and reach into the inside pocket for my phone.
Three emails and two missed calls from Wade.
The discipline of ordinary life begins reassembling itself almost immediately.
When I get back to Wild Mercy, this will have reduced itself to what it was supposed to be from the start.
One night, and one mistake I have no intention of repeating.
By the time I leave the inn, the sky’s cleared enough to let actual daylight through. The roads are wet but passable. My phone sits on the console lighting up every few minutes with things that matter. Wade again. A supplier email.
Good.
Routine has always been a corrective, and I know exactly what my mornings are supposed to look like: coffee black, calls returned in order of cost, horses first, people after.
When I hit the county road that leads toward Wild Mercy, I’m already mentally back inside the rhythm of the ranch.
The stallion prospect evaluation still needs a final decision.
One of the broodmares is close enough to foaling that I want eyes on her before noon.
Wade will have opinions about all of it.
The gates of Wild Mercy come into view a few minutes later, black iron flanked by limestone columns. Beyond them, the long drive curves toward the main house and breeding barns.
I punch in the gate code, wait for the iron to swing inward, and drive through. The main barn rises ahead in red-painted confidence, immaculate even after weather.
I park beside the office entrance and sit for one second before getting out. My phone is already ringing again.
Wade.
I answer on the way up the steps. “What’s up?”
“No good morning?” he says.
“Did something improve overnight?”
“That depends how much you enjoy bad timing and shipping problems.”
I push through the office door, already reaching for the folder left on the front desk. “So, what's going on?”
Wade’s already in the office by the time I step fully inside, one hand braced on the desk. He is dressed like he always is … work boots, dark jacket, ball cap, and wearing the expression of a man who has been dealing with other people’s mistakes since before sunrise.
He disconnects the call and slides a transport file toward me. “Travis is stuck forty miles south with the Johnson mare shipment. Flooded low crossing. He can backtrack, but that adds two hours minimum, and the mare in the third stall is already getting worked up.”
I drop my keys beside the folder and flip it open. Three mares. Delivery window tight enough that pushing too far starts causing problems down the line.
“Why am I hearing about this now?” I ask.
Wade gives me a flat look. “Because at five-thirty I was trying to solve it before it became your problem.”
“And yet.”
“And yet here we are.”
I scan the route notes. “Did Travis send a video?”
“Two clips. Mare’s sweating more than I like.”
Wade taps his phone and hands it over.