23. Nora
— ? —
Nora
I didn’t wait for him to explain.
I didn’t give him time to prepare or plan or find the right words. I walked him through the clinic door, shut it on the last of the crowd still buzzing outside, and turned on him with coffee still drying in my hair.
“What state directorship?”
Hunt met my eyes. He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away, didn’t do any of the things the old Hunt would’ve done when caught keeping secrets.
“State Emergency Veterinary Director,” he said. “The position’s been vacant for two years. Someone put my name forward. They called me three weeks ago and offered it to me.”
Three weeks. He’d been carrying this for three weeks.
“And you said?”
“I said no.”
“Just like that.”
“Faster than that, actually.” His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, like he was describing what he’d had for breakfast. “The call came while I was at the feed store. Ray Delgado, my old mentor, telling me about the job I’d spent my whole career working toward.
Office in the capital, full budget authority, everything I thought I wanted.
And I said no before he finished explaining the benefits package. ”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t a sacrifice and it wasn’t a decision. There was nothing to tell. There’s no version of my life I want that you’re not in. Saying no to a job that would take me away from you wasn’t noble or difficult, it was obvious.”
I felt the words land, felt them settle into all the places where I’d been bracing for a different answer.
“I learned the hard way what happens when I decide things about us alone,” he continued. “When I make choices for you instead of with you. So ask me anything, anytime, and you’ll get all of it. I’m done keeping things from you. I’m done assuming you don’t need to know.”
“You should’ve told me anyway.”
“Yes. Every time.”
“Even if it seemed obvious to you.”
“I know.” He stepped closer, close enough that I could see the exhaustion and the hope and the fear all tangled together in his eyes. “I’m still learning. I’m going to get things wrong. But I’m trying, Nora. Every day, I’m trying to be the man you deserve.”
I wanted to stay angry.
I wanted to hold onto the fear and the suspicion and the self-protective distance I’d been maintaining for months. But he was standing there telling me he’d turned down the job of a lifetime without hesitation, without fanfare, without expecting anything in return.
The old Hunt would’ve made sure I knew about the sacrifice. Would’ve wielded it as proof of his devotion, as leverage for forgiveness.
This Hunt had kept it to himself because it hadn’t felt like sacrifice at all.
The weather radio crackled.
We both reached for it automatically, the habit of years overriding everything else.
“Flash flood warning for the county,” the dispatcher’s voice cut through the static. “All units be advised, water levels rising rapidly. The Meyer place reports a mare in labor, possible breech presentation, access road may be compromised within the hour.”
My eyes went to Hunt.
His were already on me.
“I know where the Meyer place is,” I said.
“Then let’s go.”
We didn’t talk on the drive out.
The radio kept updating us: water rising, roads closing, evacuation advisories spreading across the county.
By the time we reached the Meyer property, the creek that bordered their land was a brown, churning monster, and Mr. Meyer was standing in his driveway with a flashlight and an expression of profound relief.
“Thank God,” he said when we pulled up. “She’s in the back barn. Started laboring about four hours ago and she’s in trouble, I can tell.”
The mare was a beautiful gray Percheron, down on the straw and straining with every contraction. One glance told me everything I needed to know.
“Breech,” I confirmed. “We need to get in there and reposition.”
What followed was two hours of the hardest work I’d done in months.
Hunt and I moved around each other like we’d never stopped, handing off supplies without asking, anticipating each other’s needs, working in a rhythm that felt like muscle memory.
His hands were slick past the elbow, same as mine, and when the foal finally came out alive and breathing, we both collapsed against the stall wall with identical groans of relief.
“She’s beautiful,” Mr. Meyer kept saying, watching the foal struggle to its feet. “She’s absolutely beautiful.”
By the time we’d cleaned up and checked the mare’s vitals and done everything else that needed doing, it was two in the morning and the rain was coming down in sheets.
“Road’s flooded out,” Mr. Meyer told us, coming back from checking his phone. “County says no travel until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. I’ve got a guest room in the main house, nothing fancy, but it’s dry and there’s a bed.”
I glanced at Hunt.
He waited, letting me decide.
“Thank you,” I said. “We’ll take it.”
The guest room was small, clean, dominated by a double bed with a handmade quilt and a nightstand with a kerosene lamp. Mr. Meyer left us with towels and the promise of breakfast in the morning, and then we were alone.
Our clothes were soaked through.
“I’ll turn around,” Hunt said. “While you change.”
He turned. I stripped out of my wet clothes as quickly as I could, wrapping myself in one of the towels. The chill had sunk into my bones, and I was shaking as I pulled on the dry t-shirt Mr. Meyer had provided.
“Your turn,” I said.
He turned around. Started unbuttoning his shirt. The lamp caught the planes of his chest as he stripped it off, and I made myself look away, made myself focus on wringing out my wet clothes over the small sink in the corner.
Metal hit the floorboards, small and bright.
I turned.
Hunt had frozen, his wet shirt in his hands, his eyes tracking the floor. I followed his gaze.
A ring.
A plain gold band, worn familiar as my own hand.
My wedding ring.
It had fallen out of his shirt pocket and rolled across the worn wood floor, catching the lamplight as it settled against the leg of the nightstand. I watched it rock, back and forth, until it lay still.
I picked it up.
It was warm.
Warm from his body. Warm from sitting in his breast pocket, against his chest, over his heart. He’d been carrying it every single day since I’d folded it into his hand in that parking lot.
“You kept it on you.”
Hunt’s voice was quiet. “A man doesn’t give away the thing he’s fighting for.”
I turned the ring over in my fingers, feeling the weight of it, the history of it.
He’d bought this ring with the first real money he’d ever earned, before the promotions, before the success, before everything that had come between us.
I’d worn it for three years and taken it off in a parking lot and handed it to him like a goodbye.
And he’d carried it next to his heart ever since.
“I’m not ready,” I said.
“I didn’t think you were.”
I held the ring out to him.
He took it without a word of protest, without any pressure at all, and returned it to his breast pocket with the same care he’d shown for everything since he’d arrived in Primrose. Like it was precious. Like it was worth protecting even if he never got to put it back where it belonged.
“I know what I broke, Nora.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I’m not asking you to forget it. I’m asking you to let me spend the rest of my life making it irrelevant.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Two steps closed the distance between us, and I kissed him.
His hands came up to frame my face, careful, asking, and I didn’t want careful.
I fisted the front of his open shirt and pulled until he understood, until his mouth went hungry against mine and his hands dropped to my waist and dragged me flush against him.
He was already hard. I felt it against my hip through the thin cotton, and my mouth went dry.
“We shouldn’t,” I whispered against his lips.
“Probably not.”
“There are people down the hall.”
“Then you’ll have to keep quiet.” He said it low, right into my ear, and I felt it everywhere. My thighs pressed together against the ache that had been building since the tack room, since he’d knelt in my driveway in the rain and refused to leave.
We got to the bed without deciding how, and then it was his weight over me and the borrowed quilt and his hands sliding up under the thin shirt I’d changed into, finding my breasts, then the hard little curve of my belly, learning me in the dark like he meant to memorize it.
When his thumb dragged over my nipple I arched up and a sound slipped out of me, and he caught it with his mouth.
“Quiet,” he reminded me, and there was a smile in it, the bastard.
“Shut up and make me.”
He slid his hand between my thighs and I bit down on the inside of my cheek.
I was soaked, and he groaned when he felt it, rough and low against my ear.
“All this for me?” he breathed, barely a sound at all.
Then his fingers were on me and in me, working slow and exactly right, curling until my hips came up off the mattress and I had to clamp my own hand over my mouth to keep the whole farmhouse from hearing what he did to me.
He took his time. He built it and backed off and built it again until I was shaking, until I was biting the meat of my palm, until I caught his wrist and dug my nails in and told him with a look that if he edged me one more time I’d end him where he lay.
He gave me what I wanted.
I came on his fingers with my hand crushed to my mouth and my whole body drawn tight as wire, and he watched every second of it, lips parted, eyes black in the lamplight, like it was the best thing he’d ever been allowed to see.
Then he was dragging my underwear down and settling between my thighs, and when he finally worked his cock into me, slow, filling me by degrees, we both had to hold still and breathe or wreck the quiet entirely.
“Okay?” he mouthed, barely any sound to it at all.
“Move. God, please, move.”
He did. Careful and muffled, his hips rolling into mine, one hand laced tight through my fingers on the pillow and the other pressed flat and warm over my belly. I turned my face into his neck to keep myself silent and felt every word he wasn’t saying in the way he moved.
“I missed you,” he breathed, so quiet it was almost nothing. “Every day. Every hour. I missed you so much I couldn’t breathe right.”
I kissed him instead of answering, because answering meant saying it back, and I wasn’t ready to say it back.
His rhythm broke. I felt him climbing, felt myself climbing with him, and I squeezed down around him on purpose just to watch his control go.
“Nora. I can’t-”
“Then don’t.”
He came with a groan he muffled against my throat, his whole body shuddering, and the pulse of it dragged me over the edge after him.
We lay tangled under the twisted quilt, breathing hard, the kerosene lamp guttering low on the nightstand, both of us undone and silent and grinning like a couple of teenagers who’d gotten away with it.
After, when our heartbeats had slowed and our breathing had steadied, he kissed my shoulder and pulled me closer.
“This still doesn’t mean,” I started.
“I know what it doesn’t mean,” he murmured against my skin. “I’m patient.”
I fell asleep with my hand in his.
When I woke up, gray morning light was filtering through the curtains and his hand was still holding mine, exactly where I’d left it. He was awake, had been awake for hours by the look of him, and he hadn’t moved.
“You didn’t sleep,” I said.
“I didn’t want to risk losing this.”
I looked at our joined hands on the pillow between us. His fingers wrapped around mine, gentle, careful, asking nothing.
I took my hand back.
It felt strange without his touch, cold and oddly light, and I carried it against my chest as I sat up and started gathering my clothes. Hunt watched me dress without complaint, without pressure, without any of the expectations the old Hunt would’ve piled on after a night like this.
“Ready?” he asked when I was done.
“As I’ll ever be.”
We drove home in the early morning light, the flooded road passable now, the storm having moved on to terrorize some other county. I kept my hand pressed against my chest the whole way, because I already knew that if I let it, it’d find his across the console.
And I wasn’t ready to let it.