12. Nora
— ? —
Nora
The fire was visible from my bedroom window.
My phone rang before I’d finished pulling on my boots.
“Dr. Smith?” The voice was shaking, young, barely controlled. “This is Tommy Henderson. Our barn’s on fire and there’s a horse still inside and the fire department says they can’t get to her and she’s screaming, she’s been screaming for twenty minutes, and nobody knows what to do.”
I was already running for my truck. “I’m on my way. Keep everyone back from the structure. Do not let anyone try to go in after her.”
“But she’s going to die in there.”
“She might. But you won’t. Stay back. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The drive felt eternal. I could see the glow growing brighter as I got closer, and by the time I turned onto the Henderson property the whole sky looked wrong, stained orange and choked with smoke that made my headlights useless.
Fire trucks were already there, three of them, hoses spraying water that seemed to disappear into the flames without making a dent.
The barn was fully engulfed on one side, the other half still standing but filling with smoke, and I could hear the horse.
Tommy hadn’t been exaggerating about the screaming.
I’d heard horses in distress before. Colics and foalings and accidents that left them broken and terrified. But this was different. This was a sound that came from somewhere past fear, past pain, the kind of sound an animal makes when it knows it’s dying.
I grabbed my kit and ran toward the fire chief, a woman I recognized from June’s diner, her face streaked with soot and sweat.
“How long has she been in there?”
“Too long.” The chief’s voice was grim. “We tried to get a line to that section but the structure’s compromised. Whole thing could come down any minute.”
“Which stall?”
“Third from the left. There’s a side door that’s still accessible but the smoke’s so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face.”
I was already moving toward it when I heard tires on gravel.
A truck I recognized. An engine I knew as well as my own heartbeat.
And then Hunt was there, running across the firelit chaos, still buttoning his shirt over the healing scars I could see on his chest, his hair wild from sleep, his face tight with the particular focus he got when animals were in danger.
“What are you doing here?”
“Saw the fire from town.” He fell into step beside me without breaking stride. “What’s the situation?”
“Trapped mare, smoke inhalation, probably injured. The structure’s unstable and the fire crew can’t reach her.”
“Then we reach her.”
“There is no we.”
He stopped walking. Turned to face me with the fire reflected in his eyes. “Nora, I’m a certified large-animal handler. So are you. That horse is going to die if someone doesn’t go in there, and you can hate me all you want but you can’t do this alone.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him to get back in his truck and drive away and let me handle this myself. But the mare was screaming again, and the sound cut through everything else, and he was right. I hated that he was right.
“Stay behind me. Do exactly what I say. If the structure starts to go, you get out whether I’m behind you or not.”
“Like hell.”
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
He didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself, but I didn’t have time to fight about it. The chief was already handing us masks and wet cloths and instructions I barely heard over the roar of the fire. Then we were moving, Hunt on my heels, into the smoke.
The heat hit first. Thick and suffocating, pressing against my skin even through the barrier of wet fabric.
Then the darkness, so complete that the flames seemed like a distant dream, and only the sound of the horse guided us forward.
Left. Right. Around a fallen beam that glowed orange at the edges.
The mare was in the third stall, exactly where the chief had said, and she was worse than I’d imagined.
She’d gone down at some point, her legs tangled in the wreckage of her stall door, the whites of her eyes showing all the way around.
Burns along her flank where embers had landed and stayed.
Smoke damage I couldn’t assess in this light.
And she was still screaming, still fighting, still alive despite everything the fire had done to try to kill her.
“We need to get her up.” I was already at her head, my hands on her halter, my voice dropping to the low steady tone I used for frightened animals. “Easy, girl. Easy. We’re going to help you.”
“Tell me what you need.” Hunt was beside me, his hands ready, his focus absolute.
“The door fragment’s pinning her front legs. Can you shift it?”
He moved without hesitation, bracing himself against the twisted metal and pulling.
The muscles in his forearms stood out with the effort, the tattoos I’d traced a hundred times distorting as he strained.
I watched him work, watched the smoke-stained fabric of his shirt pull tight across his back, watched the pink ridge of scar at his collar where the bear had gotten him, and I hated my own body for noticing any of it.
The metal shifted. The mare lurched.
“Now. Get her head up, I’ll guide her hindquarters.”
We moved in tandem, the old rhythm sliding into place whether I wanted it or not.
His hands anticipated mine. My voice guided where words weren’t needed.
The wordless call-and-answer we’d built over seven years of working together, back to back with a thousand pounds of panic between us, and I felt it in my chest, the familiar rightness of it, the way our bodies still knew how to do this even when everything else was broken.
The mare staggered to her feet.
“Go.” Hunt was at her flank, steadying her, his voice calm despite the fire getting closer. “I’ve got her. Lead us out.”
I led. Through the smoke that was getting thicker, around the debris that was getting worse, toward the door that seemed impossibly far away.
The mare was limping badly but she was moving, following my voice, trusting me to get her somewhere that didn’t hurt.
Behind me I could hear Hunt talking to her, low and steady, the same tone I’d heard him use on scared children and wounded animals and me, once, when I’d been crying too hard to breathe.
Then we were out.
The air hit my lungs so hard I nearly went to my knees.
People were cheering, firefighters and neighbors and Tommy Henderson sobbing with relief, but I couldn’t process any of it.
I was shaking, my hands trembling on the mare’s halter, my whole body vibrating with adrenaline and smoke and the ghost of Hunt’s presence at my back.
He was already checking the mare’s legs, his hands moving over her with the careful efficiency I remembered from every emergency we’d ever worked together. “No major fractures. The burns are superficial, mostly. She’s going to need treatment but she’s going to live.”
“I can see that.”
I should’ve said more. Should’ve thanked him, or acknowledged what we’d just done, or at least looked at him like a colleague instead of an enemy.
But my heart was still slamming against my ribs, and the taste of smoke was thick in my throat, and every cell in my body was furious that he could still do this.
Still slip into the space beside me where he’d always been.
Still be exactly what I needed when I needed it.
I didn’t want him to be what I needed.
“Good assist.” The words came out clipped, professional, dismissive.
Hunt’s jaw tightened, but he just nodded. “I’ll stay with her until the trailer’s ready. You should get some water.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was dehydrated and exhausted and the baby was making my stomach lurch in ways I couldn’t afford to think about right now. So I walked away, let someone wrap a blanket around my shoulders, drank water that tasted faintly of ash.
And then I looked back.
Hunt had moved the mare to the trailer, away from the chaos and the noise.
He was alone with her in the dim space, his hands on her neck, his head bowed close to hers, and I could hear his voice through the open door.
Murmuring. Nonsense words, comfort sounds, the things you say to an animal when you want them to know they’re safe.
His forearms were bare where he’d pushed up his sleeves.
Covered in soot and scratches, the muscles shifting as he stroked the mare’s neck.
I found myself tracking the movement without meaning to.
His hands were huge, capable of violence I’d witnessed, and yet impossibly gentle on the frightened animal’s coat.
He looked up like he felt my eyes on him, and the murmuring stopped.
The trailer was dim and close and smelled of smoke and horse and the particular clean-sweat scent of him that two months of distance hadn’t let me forget.
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, adrenaline still coming off both of us in waves, and I’d crossed the space without deciding to, standing close enough now to see the soot caught in his lashes, close enough that the heat pouring off his skin found mine.
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
I felt it like a hand.
He shifted, barely, the smallest lean, the ghost of a man about to close a distance, and every treacherous cell in my body swayed toward him before my brain could get a vote.
One more inch. His breath went ragged. My hand came up, and I honestly didn’t know whether it was going to shove him off or fist in his shirt and drag him down, and not knowing scared me worse than the fire had.
“Doc!” Tommy’s voice, right outside the trailer, cracking. “Doc, the vet from Marigold’s on the line, she needs to know about the burns-”
I stepped back so fast I hit the trailer wall.
Hunt let out a breath that shook on the way out. He didn’t reach for me. He just watched me put the distance back one careful foot at a time, and neither of us said a single word about what had almost happened in a smoke-filled trailer with half the county right outside.
The drive home was silent except for my own ragged breathing.
I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles ached and I forced myself to think about the mare’s injuries, the treatment plan, the follow-up calls I’d need to make.
Anything except the way Hunt had looked with soot on his skin and gentleness in his hands.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, the anger had settled into my bones.
Waffles was waiting on the porch, bleating his concern, and I let him follow me inside and curl up at the foot of my bed while I lay in the dark and tried not to remember.
The weight of Hunt’s presence at my back.
The way our bodies had moved together. The heat in his eyes when he’d looked at me across the trailer.
I didn’t sleep.
The next morning, I drove to the clinic on autopilot, my eyes gritty and my stomach uneasy.
The sun was barely up, the streets empty, and I told myself I was going early to catch up on paperwork.
Told myself it had nothing to do with avoiding the main breakfast rush at June’s diner.
Told myself I wasn’t hoping for anything at all.
The wildflower was on the step.
Yellow, bright, slightly wilted from the night air. And beside it, a folded piece of paper weighted down with a smooth river stone.
I should’ve left it there. Should’ve thrown it away without reading it, erased this latest attempt at manipulation, refused to engage with his campaign of small gestures and patient waiting.
I picked it up.
Mile marker 61. The sound you made when the calf stood up.
I read it twice. Then a third time, my hands shaking slightly, the memory hitting me in waves.
I hadn’t thought about that night in years. And what I remembered wasn’t the calf. It was the light. Hunt had held that flashlight for twenty minutes without letting the beam drift an inch, without saying a word, not offering help I didn’t need, not making it about him.
And when the calf finally came free, when I made whatever sound I made, the beam had wavered. Just once. I’d thought his arm was tired.
It hadn’t been his arm. I hadn’t known he’d noticed. Hadn’t known he’d remembered. Hadn’t known it’d meant anything to him at all.
I stood on the clinic step with the note in my hand and the wildflower bright against the morning sky, and I felt the anger waver. Just for a second. Just long enough to scare me.
This note was going in the trash. The wildflower was going in the compost. I was going to walk inside and start my day and pretend none of this had happened, because Hunt Anderson did not get to win me back with paper and flowers and memories of who we used to be.
I put the note in my coat pocket.
Just for now. Just until I decided what to do with it.
Just until I figured out how to stop wanting a man who had broken me so completely I’d had to run half a state away just to remember who I was.
The wildflower went in a cup of water on my desk. Temporary. Meaningless.
I didn’t believe myself for a second.