Chapter 15 Wyatt
FIFTEEN
Wyatt
We stayed in the small barn clinic most of the day.
My brothers and cousins took shifts helping out with the cattle and the horses…
me and Haven took shifts checking on Juniper and the other horses, then going back to the pups.
The one that had been worse was still a little rough, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to pull through.
And there was still this thing happening between me and Haven.
A baby…her keeping it, my opinions be damned.
A baby I wanted, a future I craved, a woman I knew now that I loved…but I was worthy of none of it.
Time moved quick that day, and the sun was already setting by the time I wrapped up for the day. I stepped out of the main house to find Dakota sitting on the porch steps—looking out at the big Texas sky, a beer in his hand.
He patted the step next to him. “Care to join me?”
I eyed him.
“Come on, brother,” he chuckled. “Indulge me.”
I sat down with a sigh.
Dakota handed me a beer, making it clear he’d been waiting for me.
I groaned, but took it.
We sat there for a minute, just the two of us and the sound of the ranch settling into evening—cattle somewhere in the distance, a bird cutting across the pink sky, the creak of the old porch boards.
"You gonna tell me what's going on," Dakota said, "or are we gonna sit here and pretend I'm an idiot?"
"I wasn't gonna say anything."
"Uh huh." He took a long pull of his beer. "Haven looked like she'd been crying when she showed up this morning."
I didn't say anything.
"And you looked like a kicked puppy." He paused. "No offense to the puppies."
I looked out at the sky.
Dakota let the silence sit for another minute. He was better at that than people gave him credit for—knowing when to push and when to wait. He'd learned it young, being the youngest, watching everybody else.
"How long?" he said finally.
I looked at him sideways.
He looked back, patient, not even a little surprised.
"You know," I said.
"Wyatt." He said it almost gently. "I sleep in that barn three nights a week. Her car's been parked out back since February." He shrugged. "Wasn't hard to figure out."
I rubbed a hand over my face. "Does Gage know?"
Dakota's expression answered that before he opened his mouth.
"Christ," I muttered.
“Neto too,” he offered. “And Forrest. And Stetson, even, and…I think Mom? But she wouldn’t say anything, of course. If she’d told Dad, he would’ve made a whole production of it already.”
“Fantastic.”
"The sneaking around was real cute though," Dakota said. "The back gate. Very spy movie."
"I know what you're saying." I took a long drink of my beer. Set it down on the step between my boots. "She's pregnant."
Silence.
Dakota went very still beside me. Not his usual still—the held-breath kind.
"Okay," he said carefully.
"She's keeping it."
Another beat. Then: "What do you want?"
I looked at him.
"I'm not asking what you think you should do," he said. "I'm asking what you want."
The sky had gone deep orange over the cedar line. Somewhere across the property a gate swung shut, metal on metal, somebody heading in for the night.
"Her," I said. It came out rough. "The baby. All of it."
Dakota nodded slowly. Like that was the answer he'd expected and he was just waiting for me to catch up to it.
"Then what are you doing out here talking to me?"
“Because I’m too fuckin’ old for her,” I said. “Because she’s got a future and her whole life and she should be with someone who…”
I stopped.
I didn’t know what the hell I was saying. Only half-believed it myself.
“Who what?” Dakota asked.
I still didn’t have an answer to that question.
“You saying she should have someone who suits her better?” He watched me, sipping his beer. “Someone younger? Someone with better hair and a better attitude?”
“You’re a dick,” I muttered.
“Wyatt, she’s been in love with you since we were in high school,” he said.
“Like…you know I had Bio with her, right? I was a dumb fuckin’ senior, she was a too-smart freshman, and she used to write Mrs. Holt in her notebooks.
Everyone said she had a thing for me. But I’d seen you two working on the ranch and I knew better. ”
I blanched. “I was way too old for her then.”
“But we both know that Haven is like…she’s always had her shit together, way more than a lot of forty-year olds.” He paused. “Way more than you.”
I let out a harsh laugh despite myself. "Thanks."
"I'm serious." He turned to look at me. "She walked in there this morning knowing it might blow everything up and she told you the truth anyway. All of it." He shook his head. "You know how many people would've just...not?”
Yeah, I knew.
I knew it all too well.
“Keeping secrets,” I said. “That’s not who she is.”
“Right,” he said. “She’s the woman you love. Not a liar. Not a cheater. A damn good woman you'd be lucky to spend the rest of your life with.”
“Dakota—”
“Am I wrong?”
I glared at him.
He sipped his beer.
“I just don't know what the hell she sees in me,” I finally said.
"I don't know," Dakota said. "Maybe ask her."
I looked at him.
He shrugged. "Seriously. You've spent all day deciding what she should and shouldn't want. Have you actually asked her what she sees?"
I hadn't. Obviously I hadn't. I'd spent the whole conversation telling her what her life should look like and she'd had to shut me down twice.
"She's twenty-one," I said. One more time. Like if I said it enough it would start meaning something different.
"You keep saying that like it's an argument.
" Dakota set his empty bottle down. "She's been working this ranch since she was fifteen.
She's in vet school. She showed up this morning and told you a hard truth and then spent the whole day taking care of six orphaned puppies without complaint.
" He looked at me sideways. "She's more of a grown woman than half the people I know. The age thing is an excuse."
I didn't answer.
"What are you actually scared of?" he said.
The question sat there.
I looked out at the dark cedar line and thought about Ethan at twenty-two. About Pruitt, who'd been in country three weeks. About the specific way you could want a future so badly it became something to be afraid of—because wanting meant losing, and losing was something I knew better than most.
"Losing her," I said.
Dakota was quiet for a moment.
"Wyatt," he said finally. "You're losing her right now.”
I was on my feet before he finished the sentence.
Dakota didn't say anything. Just picked up both empty bottles and leaned back on the porch steps like a man who'd done his job and knew it.
I was already moving.
The path from the main house to my place was a quarter mile, familiar enough that I could walk it blind, and I walked it fast with my hands in my jacket pockets and the night air cold on my face and eighteen years of telling myself I didn't get to want things just—gone.
Like it had never been there. Like all it had taken was my little brother saying the obvious thing out loud.
You're losing her right now.
I wasn't going to lose her.
The lights were on in my kitchen when I came around the back. I could see it from fifty yards out, warm yellow through the window, and something in my chest eased just at the sight of it. A light on. Haven inside.
I came through the back door.
The kitchen was empty but the box was on the floor in the living room, the lamp on low, and that was where I found her.
She was asleep on the floor next to the box with her head on her arm, her knees tucked up, still in her work clothes.
The runt—the one I hadn't been sure about, the one that had gone still in the wire—was curled against her chest, tucked under her chin.
Haven's hand was curved around it, loose in sleep, keeping it close even unconscious.
The other five were piled in the box. All breathing. All warm.
I stood in the doorway and looked at her for a long moment.
That's the mother of my child, I thought.
It arrived flat and certain and true, the same way I love her had arrived this morning in the foaling stall, and I stood there and let it be real.
I crossed the room and crouched down beside her.
"Haven," I said quietly.
She stirred. Her eyes opened slow, confused for a second, then finding me. The pup didn't move.
"Hey," she said. Her voice was rough with sleep.
"Hey." I looked at her. At the pup tucked under her chin. At the particular way she'd positioned herself on my floor to stay close to the one that needed her most. "How long have you been down here?"
"I don't know." She blinked. "What time is it?"
"Seven, eight maybe?"
She started to sit up and I put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. She went still and looked at me, and I watched her try to read my face.
"Wyatt—"
"I'm not losing you," I said. "That's what I came to say.
I'm not—I don't want to lose you, Haven.
I don't want to be the man who had everything he wanted and talked himself out of it.
" My voice came out rough. "I want you. I want the baby.
I want you in my kitchen and in my bed and I want to watch you become the best vet in this county, which you will, because you're already better at this than half the people I know.
" I stopped. Looked at my hands for a second, then back at her.
"I was scared. I've been scared since February and I kept dressing it up as doing right by you, but that was—that was about me. Not you."
Haven was very still.
The pup stirred against her chest and she steadied it automatically.
"I lied to you," she said quietly. "About the pill."
"I know."
"I should have told you."
"Yeah," I said. "You should have." I held her eyes.
"And I should have told you two months ago that this wasn't an arrangement.
That it hadn't been an arrangement since about the third night.
" I reached out and tucked a piece of hair back from her face, my thumb dragging across her cheek.
"We both kept things we shouldn't have. That's where we are. "
She looked at me.
"So what do we do now?" she said.
"You get up off my floor," I said. "And we figure it out together."
Her eyes went bright. She blinked it back, because she was Haven, and she didn't cry in front of people if she could help it.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," I said.
The pup made a small sound between them. Haven looked down at it, then back up at me.
"She made it," she said softly. "I've been watching her. She's gonna be okay."
I looked at the pup. At Haven's hand curved around it.
"Yeah," I said. "She is."