20. Hunt
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Hunt
The tension since the tack room was a living thing.
It followed me into the clinic, where Nora looked at me with heat she was trying to hide and failing, and into the fields, where I caught her watching me work and watching her watching and neither of us saying a word about any of it, and into the feed store and the grange and the streets of Primrose, where I walked around with the memory of her mouth and her hands and the sound she’d made when she came, and I was wrecked.
Absolutely, completely wrecked.
She was avoiding being alone with me. I understood that. What had happened in the tack room hadn’t been planned or discussed or negotiated, and she needed space to figure out what it meant. I could give her space. I’d give her anything she asked for.
But it didn’t stop me from wanting her.
It didn’t stop me from lying awake every night remembering the exact way she’d said “I’m in charge,” the exact feeling of her teeth on my shoulder, the exact look in her eyes when she’d seen my tattoo.
The ink still sat over my heart, healed now, and I pressed my hand to it sometimes like I could feel her name through my skin.
Thursday afternoon, I was at the feed store.
The clinic needed supplies and Nora had a full surgery schedule, so I’d volunteered to make the run. I’d been doing this kind of thing for weeks now, the small errands and large chores that kept the practice running, and the feed store employees had stopped looking at me like I was a zoo animal.
Mostly.
I was standing at the counter with a bag of wormer and a salt lick and the thermos I’d taken to leaving in Nora’s truck, ginger tea for the nausea, because she forgot to take care of herself when she got absorbed in the work, when my phone rang.
Ray Delgado’s name lit the screen.
I hadn’t talked to Ray in months. He’d been my predecessor at the foundation, the man who’d recommended me for the director position, and we’d kept in touch sporadically since his retirement. I’d assumed he was calling about his grandkids or his fishing trips or some other retired-man topic.
I was wrong.
“Hunt. Good to catch you.” Ray’s voice was the same gravel-over-honey it’d always been. “You got a minute?”
“I’ve got a few. What’s up?”
“Got a call yesterday from someone at the state level. They’ve been watching your work, even after you left the foundation. The restructuring you did, the emergency response protocols, the conservation partnerships. They want you.”
“I’m not interested in foundation politics anymore, Ray.”
“It’s not the foundation.” He paused, and I heard the weight of what was coming in that silence. “They want you for State Emergency Veterinary Director.”
I stopped moving.
“The position’s been vacant for two years,” Ray continued.
“They can’t find anyone qualified who’s willing to take on the scope of it.
Someone brought your name up and it got traction fast. Office in the capital, full budget authority, announcement Monday if you say yes.
They’d want you on a plane Sunday night. ”
State Emergency Veterinary Director.
The job my entire career had been built toward. The one that combined wildlife medicine and conservation policy and emergency response into a single position of actual authority. The one that would’ve turned every year I spent on animals into a title the whole field would’ve had to take seriously.
I could hear the offer taking shape in Ray’s voice, all the details he was waiting to share, the salary and the staff and the scope of responsibility. This was the call I’d been working toward since I first put on scrubs. This was the culmination of everything I’d sacrificed and built and achieved.
And God help me, for one long breath, I wanted it.
That was the part I’d never say to Nora, or to anyone.
Not that I turned it down, but that it wasn’t free.
Some old, hungry piece of me sat straight up at the sound of it, the piece my father had installed before I was tall enough to reach the truck pedals, the one that measured a man by the size of his office and the weight of his name.
State Director. Richard Anderson would finally have a title he understood to point at across a dinner table.
I saw the whole life unspool in a heartbeat, the capital, the version of me that finally added up on paper, and for that one breath it pulled at me like a current.
Then it let go.
Not because I’m noble. Because I’d already had the version of my life that looked right on paper, and I’d fallen asleep on the couch of it every night from the day I took the title while the only thing I’d ever actually wanted got quieter in the next room until she was gone.
I looked out the feed store window.
Waffles was standing on the sidewalk outside, his eyes fixed on me through the glass with the fixed stare he used for moments when he wanted me to know he was watching.
The goat had followed me from the clinic, apparently, or possibly from some goat dimension where my humiliation was broadcast for entertainment.
He bleated. It sounded like an accusation.
“No,” I said.
Ray was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry?”
“Thank you for thinking of me. I’m honored. But no.”
“Hunt, this is State Director. This is the job. The one you’ve been pointed at since you started in this field.”
“I know what it is.”
I could hear the pause where the old me would’ve leaped at it. “And you’re turning it down.”
“Yes.” No hesitation. The word came out easier than anything had since I’d first sat behind that desk.
“Can I ask why?”
I thought about Nora. About the clinic and the practice and the life she’d built without me. About the baby growing inside her, the heartbeat I’d heard on the ultrasound, the tiny flutter that had broken me open and rebuilt me from the ground up.
I thought about the tack room. The way she’d kissed me like she was staking a claim. The way she’d said my name.
“My life is here now,” I said. “But thank you, Ray. For everything.”
I hung up.
The feed store clerk was watching me with undisguised curiosity. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.” I pulled out my wallet. “Which wire gauge holds against a determined goat?”
“Depends on the goat.”
“This one.” I gestured toward the window, where Waffles was now pressing his nose against the glass. “Forty pounds of pure spite.”
The clerk looked at Waffles. Waffles looked back.
“Nothing holds against that one,” the clerk said. “That’s Waffles. He goes where he wants.”
“Fantastic. I’ll take the heaviest gauge you’ve got anyway.”
I paid for my supplies and walked outside, where Waffles immediately positioned himself between me and my truck. We stood there for a moment, man and goat, engaged in the kind of silent standoff that had become routine over the past few weeks.
“I turned down a job for her,” I told him. “The biggest job of my career. I said no without even thinking about it.”
Waffles bleated.
“I’m not asking for credit. I’m just saying, I thought you should know.”
The goat continued to glare.
“Okay then.”
I got in my truck and drove back to the clinic, and I didn’t tell anyone about the call.
Didn’t mention it to Nora or Doc Hale or June.
Didn’t bring it up as evidence of my commitment or my sacrifice or my reformed priorities.
There was no job worth taking if it meant leaving her, and a thing that obvious didn’t need announcing.
Back at the clinic, I put the supplies away and helped with the afternoon appointments and pretended I wasn’t watching Nora every second she was in the room.
She was wearing her hair up today, a few strands falling loose around her face, and I kept catching glimpses of the mark I’d left on her neck two nights ago, poorly hidden by her collar.
She saw me looking. Her cheeks flushed.
I went back to work.
At six o’clock, I was organizing the supply closet when my phone buzzed.
Sasha’s name lit the screen.
Third time this week.
She’d been calling since I resigned, leaving voicemails I deleted without listening to, sending texts I archived without reading. I didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t care what she wanted. Whatever conversation she thought we needed to have was a conversation I had no interest in pursuing.
But there was one scenario where I’d talk to her.
If Nora asked. If Nora wanted to hear it, wanted to witness whatever Sasha had to say, wanted to stand beside me while I answered her questions and addressed her concerns. I’d talk to Sasha with my wife next to me, hearing every word.
Or I’d never talk to her at all.
I declined the call.
The phone went dark.
I finished organizing the supply closet and drove back to the inn and lay on my bed in the room that smelled like industrial cleaner and broken dreams, and I thought about the job I’d turned down and the woman I’d turned it down for and the conversation I was refusing to have.
The wedding ring was in my breast pocket. I took it out and turned it over in my fingers, watching the light catch the worn gold.
Still only yours. Always was. That’s the part you got wrong.
I’d meant every word. She just had to believe me.