21. Nora #3
I stopped beside him.
The music floated over us, some old country song about second chances and coming home, and Hunt turned to face me with an expression that was equal parts hope and terror.
“Dance with me.”
“Dance with you where?”
“I’m asking you to dance with me.” He held out his hand, palm up, an offering. “Please.”
I knew I should say no, remind him this wasn’t a date and we weren’t together and he was earning his way back inch by painful inch.
But the sun was setting gold over the fairgrounds, and our daughter was a small, warm weight in my belly, and he’d fallen off a stool this morning because he was so happy, and he was looking at me with those pale blue eyes that had seen too much and hoped too hard.
I put my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine, gentle and warm, and he led me toward the dance floor. Other couples were already moving, swaying to the music, but I barely saw them. I barely saw anything but Hunt.
He pulled me close.
Not too close. Close enough. His hand settled on my waist, and then slid lower, spreading warm across the small curve of my belly where our daughter was growing. The touch was gentle, reverent, and my throat went tight.
“Is this okay?” His voice was low, just for me.
“Yes. Don’t stop.”
We swayed.
The music washed over us and we moved together, not dancing really, just holding each other and letting the rhythm carry us.
His thumb traced small circles on my belly.
My head was close enough to his shoulder that I could feel the heat of him, smell cedar and clean sweat.
Every place we touched, his palm low on my belly, his thigh brushing mine as we turned, felt lit up and too warm, and I was glad the light was low enough to hide what it was doing to me.
“I keep thinking about her,” he said, quiet enough that only I could hear. “What she’ll look like. What she’ll be like. Whether she’ll have your stubbornness or mine.”
“She’ll have both.”
“God help us.”
I laughed, soft and quiet, and felt his hand tighten on my waist.
“I’m going to do better,” he said. “I need you to know that. Not just for you, but for her. She’s going to have a father who shows up. Who pays attention. Who puts her first.”
“Hunt.”
“I know you don’t trust it yet. I know I haven’t earned it. But I need you to hear me say it anyway, so that later, when I’ve spent years proving it, you’ll remember that I told you the truth.”
His palm was warm on my belly, and our daughter was a heartbeat away, and my husband was holding me like he had no intention of ever letting go, while the sun set gold and pink over the fairgrounds of the town I’d run away to.
My heart was committing treason.
I didn’t stop it.
Both radios crackled at the same time.
Hunt’s hand dropped from my waist. We stepped apart, reaching for our devices in unison, and the dispatcher’s voice cut through the music.
“All available units, we’ve got a loose bull on Route 9. Owner reports he jumped the fence about twenty minutes ago, last seen heading toward the Harrison property.”
I looked at Hunt. He looked at me.
His mouth curved into that slow, shy grin that I’d first seen over a bag of gas-station donuts years ago, the one that said we’re about to have an adventure and nothing in the world could make me happier.
“Shall we?” he asked.
I grinned back, couldn’t help it, and we ran.
The bull was a two-thousand-pound Angus named Romeo, and he had exactly one thing on his mind.
“He jumped a six-foot fence,” the owner told us, standing in his driveway in pajama bottoms. “I didn’t think he could jump a six-foot fence.”
“Love makes people do crazy things,” Hunt said.
“He’s a bull.”
“Same principle.”
We found Romeo in the Harrisons’ back pasture, standing at the fence and mooing plaintively at the heifers on the other side. The heifers seemed unimpressed. Romeo didn’t care.
“Plan?” I asked Hunt.
“You take the left flank, I’ll take the right. We guide him back toward the road, where his owner is waiting with the trailer.”
“That simple?”
“Probably not.”
It was not that simple.
Romeo didn’t want to leave his heifers. Romeo had opinions about our intervention. Romeo, it turned out, could move surprisingly fast for an animal that weighed as much as a small truck.
What followed was forty-five minutes of chaos by flashlight, involving a bucket of grain, two near-misses, and one moment where Hunt had to dive behind a water trough to avoid being trampled.
But we moved like we used to, calling signals to each other in the dark, anticipating each other’s positions, working as a unit.
Finally, around midnight, we maneuvered Romeo into the trailer.
The owner thanked us profusely. Hunt had mud on his jeans and grass in his hair. I had a scrape on my elbow from diving out of the way when Romeo made his break for freedom.
We stood in the owner’s driveway and caught our breath.
“Best date I’ve ever been on,” Hunt said.
I didn’t answer.
But when I looked at him, standing there rumpled and dirty and grinning, I didn’t have to.
My face said it all.