14. Chapter 14
Tana
By the time I get to the barn, I’ve already lost an argument with a piece of toast.
Half of it is still sitting heavy at the back of my throat, and the rest is in the trash beside my bathroom sink after one too many rounds over the toilet. I rinse my mouth, drink water I don’t want, and tell myself that I just need to get through these first few hours of the day.
I take the long way to the feed room so I can avoid the sharper smell of grain mash, and switch out my coffee for a bottle of water.
During first checks, I move slower than usual on the step stool beside a mare that keeps pinning one ear at me as if she knows I’m not fully here.
I keep my composure calm, finish the bandage wrap, and step down carefully enough that nobody would call it hesitation unless they were looking for it.
By the time I get to the wash rack, the bitter smell of liniment catches me wrong. Heat climbs the back of my neck so fast my vision blurs at the edges. I turn away under the excuse of reaching for a towel and breathe through my mouth until the wave passes.
"You look pale," Rebel says behind me.
Of course he doesn’t miss it.
I keep my hand on the rack hook a second longer than necessary, swallowing once before I turn. "It must be the lighting."
His gaze stays steady on my face. "Did you eat this morning?"
I make myself shrug. "Enough."
It’s a small lie, practiced and smooth, the kind that should end a conversation.
For one second, his expression shifts into something quieter than suspicion, and the concern in it feels worse because it never comes gently and never arrives without questions I cannot answer.
"Tana …"
"I’ve got Juniper next," I say, already reaching for the lead rope. "Unless you want to take over."
A beat passes before he steps back.
"Go on," he says.
I do, with my stomach unsettled, my pulse too fast, and the stupidest part of me warmed by the fact that he noticed at all.
Midge, the cocky little cattle dog who treats the lower barn like her personal kingdom, trots out from under the wash rack and presses her warm side against my shin.
I scratch behind one ear without thinking, and she leans harder, giving me the kind of steady, matter-of-fact comfort people usually ruin by talking.
"You and me both," I murmur. She huffs once, then lopes off toward Rebel like she’s on a mission.
By lunch, I’ve reduced the future to arithmetic.
I sit on an overturned bucket in the tack room with my notebook balanced on one knee and my sandwich untouched beside me, two pieces of bread going dry around turkey I stopped wanting as soon as I opened it.
The room is cooler than the aisle, and the leather has that dusty, worked-in smell I can still tolerate, at least for now.
I flip past a page of feed notes and start making a list in the back. Rent, if I leave. Utilities. Gas. Prenatal visits. Baby things I don’t know the real price of yet because I’ve never needed to know.
I fixate at the numbers on the page, then add another column.
If I stay: housing, at least for a while. A paycheck. Work I know. Rebel five days a week, maybe seven, with his voice in the barn and his boots in the hall and his attention landing on me often enough to undo whatever sensible plan I’m trying to build.
If I go: no him. No ranch housing. No protection from being one woman with too little money and a body already making decisions without asking what I can afford.
I make a note to call the clinic in town on my next half day, then cross it out and rewrite it under a different name in case someone sees. The caution annoys me even while I do it.
Outside, I hear boots walking at a pace I recognize as Rebel’s … so I quickly shut the notebook before he reaches the door.
"You planning on eating that thing?" he asks.
I put my hand over the sandwich like that means something. "Depends. Are you here to inspect it?"
His eyes glance over to the closed notebook, then back to my face. "I wasn’t sure if you were on your break. I can’t seem to keep up with you lately."
"I’m on one right now."
"That doesn’t tell me much."
No, but it’s all he’s getting.
I stand before he can ask anything worse, tuck the notebook under my arm, and brush past him with more steadiness than I feel. Behind me, the room stays quiet in that loaded way it only ever gets with him.
By the time I hit the aisle again, I have one more number to add to the list.
The cost of staying is starting to look a lot like the cost of leaving. I just don’t know yet which one can ruin me faster.
So I spend the next few hours letting the ranch use up my hands, my back, my attention ... anything but the part of me still trying to measure the damage.
The message hits while I’m stripping a stall.
My phone buzzes once in the back pocket of my jeans, and I ignore it because everybody wants something here and most of it can wait ten minutes. I finish dragging the last line of wet straw into the wheelbarrow before I pull the phone free with the back of my wrist.
Unknown number.
For one stupid second, I think clinic. Then I open it.
You make it to Texas okay?
That’s all it says.
No name. Nothing in it that should hit this hard. But my skin goes cold anyway, cold enough that I have to steady the rake against the stall wall while the horses around me keep shifting, blowing, pawing at the mats like the aisle hasn’t just tilted sideways.
I know who it is before I let myself say the name.
Not because I recognize the number. Because Derek has always had a talent for making the first line sound harmless.
You make it to Texas okay?
Like he’s checking the weather. Like he’s some decent man remembering somebody he used to know. Like he didn’t spend months teaching me that concern can be another way to get your hand back around someone’s throat.
I lock the screen without answering and shove the phone back into my pocket hard enough that it catches on the seam.
"Everything all right?" Cassie asks from the next stall over.
I turn too quickly and have to make myself slow down before the motion gives me away. "Fine. Just got jabbed by my own damn rake."
She snorts. "That’s what you get for working mad."
"Who says I’m mad?"
"Your face."
I give her a look meant to end it, and she lets me have that much.
But my pulse doesn’t settle. It keeps climbing while I fork the fresh bedding into place and try to tell myself this means nothing. A text from a man too far away to matter.
The lie doesn’t hold.
The worst part is not that he found me, but that he opened with concern.
I make it through another hour by refusing to look at my phone.
That would count for more if my body didn’t know exactly where it is, heavy in my back pocket like a second pulse.
Every time I bend for a bucket or reach for a latch, I feel the weight of it and the waiting underneath it.
By the time I duck into the supply room for fresh towels, my nerves are worn thin enough that silence starts feeling worse than whatever is on the screen.
I check it anyway.
Three more messages.
Heard you finally found a place that can use you.
Then, two minutes later:
Big horse place, right? Nice setup. Better than the last one.
And then:
You still always take the morning shift, or did Texas change that too?
For a second I only stare at it. The fluorescent light over the shelves gives off that thin, needling hum that starts behind my eyes and works forward.
The tack room suddenly feels too tight ...
bleach under the sink, saddle soap from the open tin on the counter, wet cotton rags going sour in the corner hamper. My skin goes cold anyway.
The first two messages I could maybe explain away. A lucky guess. Something he saw online. Somebody from home talking too much.
This one is different.
This one knows the shape of my days.
My thumb hangs over the screen.
I don’t answer, not even with a what do you want, because Derek never treated replies like conversation. He treated them like entry. The second you answered, he was in ... telling you what you meant, what you owed, what happened next.
A knock sounds against the doorframe behind me, and I flinch hard enough to tip a stack of folded towels sideways.
Rebel catches the top one before it hits the floor. "Easy."
I hate that he saw that.
“Jesus,” I say, too low, “do you make a habit of appearing out of nowhere?”
His eyes drop to the phone in my hand, then lift to my face again. “Depends what I’m interrupting.”
I lock the supply cabinet harder than it needs and shove the key into my pocket. “Right now? A very serious conversation with bleach and shop towels.”
He doesn’t bite on it. His attention stays on the phone. “Who keeps texting you that early?”
The question is simple enough that the lie comes out before I can stop it.
“No one.”
He goes still in a way that tells on him more than any change in expression would have. Derek used noise when he wanted control ... more words, more pressure. Rebel does the opposite. He gets quiet, and somehow that leaves me feeling more exposed, not less.
"Tana."
I lock the screen and shove the phone into my pocket before he can see more than my grip tightening around it. "It’s really nothing."
That’s not the end of it and we both know it. It’s only the point where I choose silence and he lets me keep it for now.
When he steps aside, I walk past him with the towels in my arms, knowing that Derek is not guessing anymore.
He knows enough to make this real.
I wait until I’m alone in my room to read the rest.
The house is too quiet in the late evening, all that polished stillness making every small sound feel louder than it is. I sit on the edge of the bed with my boots still on and unlock my phone like I already know I’m going to hate what’s there.
There are two more messages.
You’re quiet. I know you always did hate when people checked on you.
And under it, sent twenty minutes later:
Still sleeping light? Still keeping a chair under the knob when you’re somewhere new?
For a second I stop breathing.
My eyes go to the door before I can help it, to the brass knob, to the chair by the little writing desk, still where I dragged it earlier without even thinking why. My hand tightens around the phone hard enough that the edge bites into my palm.
I look at the window next. Then the closet. Then back to the door.
The room stays what it is … guest room, closed curtains, folded quilt at the foot of the bed … but my body has already made other decisions. I’m on my feet before I remember standing, crossing the carpet in three quick steps to check the lock with my fingertips.
Still locked.
I stand there with my hand on it anyway.
Then I go back to the bed, open the messages again, and delete the thread in one hard swipe.
The screen goes blank.
That should help. It doesn’t.
Now there is nothing there but the sound of the house and my own pulse climbing too fast.
I should tell someone. Cassie, maybe. Wade, if I want the practical version. Rebel …
My thumb hovers over his name and pulls back so fast it almost feels like getting burned.
Instead I set the phone facedown on the nightstand, then turn it over again a second later because I can’t stand not seeing it.
I mute it. Check the lock again. Pull the curtain back half an inch and look out into the side yard, even though there is nothing there but dark and the pale wash of the porch light catching the gravel.
When I let the curtain fall, I drag the chair across the floor and wedge it under the knob before I can talk myself out of how ridiculous that looks.
The scrape of wood on the floor sounds too loud in the room.
I sit on the bed and press both hands to my eyes until color sparks behind them.
Trying to explain Derek would mean backing up too far.
It would mean saying why that chair ended up under the knob before I consciously decided to move it.
Why my eyes went to the window first. Why one soft, harmless-looking line can still get my whole body moving like it remembers something my mouth has never learned how to tell cleanly.
From the hallway comes the muted sound of a floorboard giving under someone’s weight, then settling again. The old fear moves through me before reason can catch up.
I stand, cross to the door, and turn the lock.
Then, hating myself for it, I drag the chair over anyway.
Sleep never really shows after that.
I lie on top of the blanket in my clothes with one hand splayed low over my stomach …
as if that means anything yet. The house keeps settling around me in small sounds that would not matter on any other night …
the tick of pipes in the wall, a door opening and closing somewhere down the hall, the wind worrying at the window screen until it gives one thin metallic rattle and stops.
Every time I start to drift, some part of me jerks awake again before I get there.
By a little after midnight I give up and push myself upright against the headboard.
The chair is still jammed under the knob.
My phone lies dark on the nightstand, and I tell myself not to touch it. Ten seconds later I’m looking at it again. Then at the door. Then back at the phone. My body has already picked a side, and apparently the side is vigilant.
I listen.
Nothing.
No footsteps outside. No knock. No buzz from the phone.
Still, I get up and cross to the window barefoot, peel the curtain back with two fingers, and stare out into the side yard. Gravel. Porch light. The low black shape of the paddock fence. Nothing moving.
When I let the curtain fall, my eyes go straight to the phone again.
That’s when it lands.
Not cleanly. Not as a thought, exactly. More like something inside me lining up all at once.
The chair under the knob. My eyes on the window. The way I’ve been listening to the house instead of living in it.
This is not just Derek tossing a line into the water to see whether I’ll answer.
This is him getting close enough to make me bring him into the room with me.
And if he can do that from a phone, from states away, then he is not only reaching for me.
He’s already reaching for everything around me.
He knows I’m here, and enough about my work to make guessing irrelevant.
I push back the blanket and sit there for a second before my feet find the floor, trying to think like the woman in the tack room with the notebook, the one who believes every problem can be managed with a proper list.
I’m pregnant, broke, working for a man I cannot safely stop wanting, and now Derek is somewhere out there, testing the fence line.
I’ve been pretending those are separate disasters, but they're not.
By morning, that truth is sitting under my ribs with the nausea and the fear, heavy as something already moving.
Whatever comes next, it’s already pushing at the seams.