Chapter 13 Wyatt
THIRTEEN
Wyatt
I'd been up since four.
Juniper—Sawyer's best quarter horse, left behind when he went to California—had been restless since midnight and I'd known by two that it was happening. I'd texted Gage and set up in the foaling stall and waited, which was the job. Mostly the job was waiting.
The foal had come just before sunrise. A filly, dark bay, all legs, exactly as ungainly and perfect as they always were. Juniper had done everything right. I'd only needed to be there, which was sometimes all it took.
Now it was close to eight and the filly was nursing and I was crouched in the corner of the stall with my forearms on my knees just watching, the way I always did in the first hours.
Making sure. The barn was warm and smelled like hay and horse and the particular smell of something brand new, and it was quiet except for the sounds a mare made with her foal—low and private, not meant for anyone else.
I was tired. Happy, the way I got after a good birth. It was a specific kind of happy that didn't ask anything of me.
I thought about Haven.
Not on purpose. I never thought about her on purpose anymore—she just showed up, the way she'd been showing up for two or three years, slipping past whatever I'd tried to put between us.
I thought about last Tuesday morning, her in my bed watching me pull my shirt on, hair everywhere, eyes still heavy.
Good food going cold on the table because we'd gotten distracted.
Her voice in the dark saying this is my favorite night I've ever had two months ago, and the nights getting better ever since.
I wished she was here.
The filly took a wobbly step and caught herself and I watched her figure out her legs.
Juniper nosed her flank. Steady. I've got you.
I'd been telling myself for two months that this was what Haven wanted—the arrangement, the secrecy, the back gate. That she'd asked for exactly this and I was just giving her what she'd asked for. It had been a useful thing to tell myself.
The truth was I was the one who needed it to be an arrangement.
Because an arrangement had edges. An arrangement was something you could end when you needed to, something that didn't ask you to be a particular kind of man, something that couldn't look at you one day and realize what it had signed up for.
Haven deserved someone who hadn't been carrying Fallujah around for eighteen years.
Someone whose knee didn't ache every cold morning, who didn't wake up wrong sometimes and need a minute to remember where he was.
Someone her own age, or close to it—someone who'd grow alongside her instead of watching her from seventeen years back like a man with his face pressed to a window.
She was twenty-one years old and she was going to be a hell of a vet and she had her whole life stacked up in front of her like a promise.
I was forty and I was already in love with her.
That was the thing I'd been not-saying for weeks. It sat in my chest now, plain and inconvenient, while the filly nursed and Juniper made her low private sounds and the barn stayed warm around me.
I was in love with Haven Sinclair and she was too young and too good and I had no business being the man she ended up with.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I didn’t look up. Dakota had been coming by to check in every so often; he loved the horses damn near as much as Sawyer did, and he’d been in the barn with me most of the night. I raised my voice and stood, my knee creaking.
“Juniper’s doing fine,” I said, not looking. “Filly’s already moving, healthy—”
“Wyatt.”
That wasn’t Dakota.
I turned, and I found Haven standing there in the morning light.
She’d only been gone maybe five hours…she’d left when I got up to tend to Juniper, and I hadn’t expected her back until tonight, given that she had class today.
Something was wrong.
I knew it before I’d even fully taken in the sight of her; her voice was too careful, too calm, and her hair was wet and bound into a hasty ponytail with stray strands falling around her face. She looked like she hadn’t slept a wink after she left.
“Hey,” I said, stepping out of the stall and latching it behind me. “Thought you had class.”
“I do.” She paused. “Or…I did. I’m not going.” Her eyes went to the filly and something in her face shifted, just for a second. “She’s beautiful.”
My heart stuttered. Something was very wrong.
She was going to end it.
Right now. Right here…and I wasn’t fucking ready for it, even though I had to be for her sake.
“Haven,” I croaked. “What’s going on?”
She looked at me, holding her breath. Her spine straightened just slightly. She was bracing herself for the bad news.
I pre-empted it. “Haven, I knew this wasn’t gonna be forever. If you’ve met someone—if you don’t want to do this anymore, I understand—”
“I’m pregnant,” she interrupted.
The whole world went quiet.
I heard the filly shift. Heard Juniper’s soft whinny.
Heard my own pulse and my ears ringing.
The words came out before I could stop them. “I’ll pay for it,” I said. “Whatever you need. If you want to get rid of it, I’ll take you.”
I winced, closing my eyes for a second, desperately trying to breathe. Because even saying that…it hurt. It hurt like a motherfucker, because I wanted this, wanted to see what me and her could make—
“Wyatt,” she started.
“This is my fault,” I said. “The condoms, they were probably expired. I knew they were too old and I used them anyway because I didn’t care, I wanted you so fucking bad. I should have been the responsible one—”
“Wyatt, please listen to me—”
“You’ve got vet school and years ahead of you and I’m not gonna let you throw that away because I was careless with—”
“I lied about being on the pill.”
That stopped me cold.
She was looking at me straight on, chin up, not flinching from it.
"I was on it in January," she said. "Then my insurance changed and I missed a refill and I just—I let it lapse.
And when you asked that first night I said yes because I wanted you and I was scared it was my only shot.
" A beat. "I should have told you. I know I should have.
I kept meaning to and then the weeks went by and you never asked again and I told myself it was fine because you always used a condom.
" Her jaw worked. "It wasn't fine. I know that. "
Quiet.
I looked at her. At the careful steadiness of her, the way she was holding herself together by sheer will, giving me the whole truth even though she had no idea what I was going to do with it.
Something moved through me that I didn't have a name for. Not anger—or not only anger.
"Oh my god,” I exhaled.
"I know," she said. "You can be angry. You should be angry. I just—I needed you to know all of it."
I turned away from her. Pressed both hands flat on the top of the stall door and stared at the filly and breathed.
“And that means I need you to know I’m keeping it,” she said quietly.
I turned around.
"Haven."
"I know what you're going to say—"
"You don't." I crossed the distance between us in a few steps and she held her ground, chin up, watching me come. "You think I'm angry about the pill."
"Aren't you?"
"Yes." I stopped in front of her. "I'm also—" I stopped.
Pressed my jaw together. "I'm keeping up with a twenty-one year old woman.
I'm seventeen years older than you. I've got a bad knee and I wake up wrong half the mornings of my life and I've been to a war that you were three years old for.
" My voice came out rough. "And now you're pregnant and you want to keep it and you're standing here telling me you're not asking me for anything, which is the most Haven thing you've ever said to me—"
"Wyatt—"
"I don't want you shackled to me because of a baby." The words came out raw. "That's what I'm saying. I don't want you to be twenty-five and look at your life and realize—"
"That I'm with the man I've wanted since I was sixteen?" Her voice cracked on it, just slightly. "That I'm raising a baby with someone I'm in love with?"
The barn went quiet.
She closed her eyes briefly. Opened them. Like she hadn't meant to say it quite like that but wasn't going to take it back either.
"I have known what I wanted for a long time," she said.
"You keep trying to protect me from my own choices and I need you to hear me when I tell you—I am not a kid.
I am not confused. I know exactly what I'm choosing and I'm choosing it anyway.
" Her jaw set. "The question is whether you want it too. Not whether I'm allowed to."
I looked at her.
Stared.
Wanted to sweep her into my arms and kiss her senseless, but also to hide my face in shame that I’d stolen her fucking future.
I didn’t get to do either.
Because the barn door banged open.
Dakota came in fast, hair mussed and pushed back, out of breath. He took one look at me, one look at Haven, and his stride faltered for half a second.
"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "But we've got a situation."
I stared at him. "Dakota—"
"Two puppies caught in the fence down by the south pasture." He jerked his head toward the door. "Whole litter running loose, no mama anywhere. Neto thinks a coyote got her."
I rubbed a hand over my face.
"How many puppies?" Haven said.
I looked at her. She'd already shifted—shoulders back, focused, the conversation folded away somewhere behind her eyes. Already in work mode. Already thinking about what needed doing.
"Five? Six?" Dakota said. "Two of 'em are stuck bad. Barbed wire."
"I'll get the kit," she said, and walked past both of us toward the supply room without waiting to be asked.
Dakota watched her go.
The supply room door swung shut behind her.
“You good?” Dakota asked.
Thank fuck he wasn’t being a snarky little shit. I didn’t think I could handle it.
"I'm fine,” I muttered.
He nodded slowly. Didn't believe me, and didn't push it, which was the best thing about Dakota when he wasn't being an idiot. He knew when to leave something alone.
"Puppies need us," he said.
"Yeah." I grabbed my jacket off the stall door. "Let's go."