24. Chapter 24
Tana
I’d left Miller Creek before full light with my clothes in the truck, my muddy boots on the floorboard, and Mrs. Miller standing on the porch like she’d already decided there was no point trying to stop me.
It’s just fact now, that there’s no hiding my pregnancy anymore, not from Mrs. Miller, and sure as hell not from the ranch I’m driving back toward. But I’m ready for it.
By the time I kill the engine and climb out, the thermos Mrs. Miller shoved at me is still warm in the cup holder and her look from the porch is riding with me.
The first thing I notice when I step back into Wild Mercy is that the place still knows how to hit a bruise.
The barn smells the same … fresh hay, Absorbine, and horse sweat sunk into wood that’s had too many hard days over the years.
Somewhere down the aisle, one of the horses gets up.
I hear the familiar rustle as it tries to shake off the shavings, and it goes straight through me.
This place still knows exactly where to hurt.
No one says anything at first, but the looks are there … quick, practical, impossible to misread. I’m back, and I’m pregnant enough now that even a barn full of people trained to mind their own business can’t help registering it.
I make it as far as the office doorway before memory catches up to me, and hits me before I can think my way around it. I can almost hear the exact tone of his voice asking for facts while I stood there carrying a truth bigger than both of us.
Then I look down at my hand on the doorframe, and notice how steady it is against the old paint.
A cart rattles past the open barn doors behind me. Cassie calls for a wrap and gets one tossed from the wash stall without anybody breaking stride. She glances at my stomach. “All right,” she says. “So we’re doing this pregnant too.”
I put a hand over the side of my belly just as the baby shoves back like it has opinions. “Apparently,” I say.
After a hefty laugh with Cassie, I step into the office, set my bag on the chair, and start sorting the morning charts.
Sable tells me where to start before anyone else can decide what my return means.
She's halfway through her grain when I reach her stall and then she just stops. She stands over her front end a fraction too guarded, muzzle hovering over her feed.
One of the younger hands, Eli, is already in the aisle with a second scoop.
"Morning," I say, already watching Sable. "How long has she been doing this?"
"Since early check," he says. "She’s been off her feed. Wade thought maybe it was the weather."
I watch Sable take one token mouthful, then shift her weight and stop chewing.
"Has she been drinking okay?"
He blinks. "Just as much as the rest of them, I guess."
"Temperature?"
"Haven’t taken it yet."
I set my coffee on the half-wall and step into the stall. Sable tips one ear toward me and lets out a breath when I lay a hand high on her shoulder. Her skin flinches once under my palm farther back than I like.
I run my hand slowly along her barrel, press in again with more attention, and Sable tightens, swings her head, and looks back at her own side.
"No more grain," I say. "Walk her. Take her temp, check her pulse, gums, and gut sounds. Then get Doc and tell him I want him looking at her for brewing colic."
Eli hesitates just long enough to remind me what it feels like to be new in a barn full of hierarchy.
Then Cassie appears behind him and says, “You heard her. Move it.” Her eyes cut to me once. “Glad to see you’re back,” she says, and then she’s already on Sable.
He goes.
I stay with Sable, one hand braced on her neck while she breathes through the first tight wave of discomfort. Outside the stall, everyone in the barn has gone more alert.
For the first time since walking back into Wild Mercy, I don’t feel like a woman returning to the scene of a wound … I feel like myself.
Doc Rhodes is halfway down the aisle by the time Eli gets Sable moving.
Wade comes in right behind him. Rebel steps through the north doors a few seconds later with his sleeves shoved up, hat in one hand, and that focused look he gets when there could be trouble.
His eyes find mine, registering that I’ve already got a handle on things.
Then Wade says, "Tube her now or let Doc listen first?"
He’s looking at Rebel when he asks it.
Rebel doesn't even turn his head. "Tana called it first. Follow her lead."
No one says anything, but I can feel the aisle register it. Not just that I’m back. That whatever sits between Rebel and me has stopped looking temporary.
Doc steps in beside me and says, "Talk me through what you’ve seen so far."
Sable shifts again, discomfort tightening through her flank. I keep my hand on her neck and listen to the sounds she is making with the rest of her body … the way she braces, the way the tension comes and goes instead of building into a harder spiral.
"Listen first," I say. "If her gut sounds are as reduced as I think they are, we tube. If they’re not,I want her walked harder before we throw anything more at her."
"Good," Doc says, already moving.
No one questions it.
We all step in to assist, as Doc goes in with the tube kit. Rebel stays where he is, one forearm on the doorframe. A month ago that stillness would have scraped at me, because I would have read it as withheld control. Today, it just feels like there's more room to relax.
I move around Sable’s shoulder to check her gums again, then listen low along her flank while Doc works.
The mare blows out warm against my sleeve and shifts closer into the pressure of my hand instead of away from it.
Behind me, someone asks for mineral oil.
Someone else curses softly when a bucket handle catches on the latch.
When I straighten, Rebel's already holding out the stethoscope I left on the half ...wall, not stepping in with it, just making sure I don’t have to turn and hunt for something in the middle of the call.
He has the earpieces folded the way I like them, bell turned outward so it doesn’t catch in my sleeve.
"Thanks," I say.
His eyes meet mine for half a beat. "I knew you'd need it."
I take the stethoscope and go back to Sable, but something in me has shifted with a quiet finality.Loving him no longer feels dangerous in the same way. It feels like this: me doing my job, him letting me do it, and both of us knowing where to stand.
For ten minutes it looks as if we caught it early enough.
Sable starts giving us a little more belly, a little less bracing. Doc gets enough response from the tube that the whole aisle loosens by degrees. Someone goes to dump the feed she missed. Cassie tells Eli to keep walking her until Doc says otherwise.
Then Wade swears.
He's standing at the open back of the med cart, looking not at the mare but at the clipboard clipped to the side.
"This isn’t today’s transport packet," he says.
Every head in the aisle turns.
Sable flicks both ears at the change in us.
I move my hand higher on her neck before my own body can remember the wrong thing too vividly, and from the corner of my eye I catch Rebel doing the same with the stall door …
one palm flattening against the wood like he knows exactly what memory just hit and refuses to let it stay.
Wade flips the top sheet back. "Wrong route copy. Old loading time. Backup contact missing. Whoever stocked this cart pulled the archived packet instead of the live one."
It isn’t exactly sabotage. The forms are dated, the signatures legitimate, the mistake human. But fear hits me before the logic does.
Doc looks up from Sable. "How long until you’ve got the right packet?"
"Five minutes if nobody starts talking over me," Wade says.
Sable throws her head once and tries to slip past Eli, and the mood in the aisle changes with her.
The old version of this place would have let that moment turn ugly fast … too many people talking, and everybody trying to seize hold of the problem before Sable had room to tell us what she needed.
"Take her out to the round pen," I say. "Give her a little room, and I want those old forms off this cart before anybody touches anything else. Cassie, come with me."
It’s a lot, fast, in the kind of moment where men like Rebel used to step in and get everybody’s attention immediately.
He doesn’t.
"Well, you heard her … get going," Rebel says.
That’s all it takes. The whole aisle breaks into movement around my call instead of waiting on him.
As we move, Rebel falls in on the side, opening doors and staying out of the way. At the door Sable crowds the turn, and his hand finds the small of my back for one brief, sure second before he takes it away again.
"Careful," I mutter without breaking stride. "You keep that up and I’m going to think you like putting your hands on me."
Beside me, he lets out the smallest breath of laughter. “You’re a little late figuring that out.”
We hit the yard at a controlled run, timing narrowing, and what catches me off guard is not his trust but how natural it feels to be back in the middle of this with him.