Chapter 2
SAWYER
Mrs. Patterson’s cat is dying. Again.
This makes it the seventh time in two years. Which is impressive, considering the cat is currently sprawled across my exam table, purring like she owns the place.
“Her breathing sounded different this morning,” Mrs. Patterson says, wringing her hands as she paces a slow loop behind me. “Sort of raspy. I thought it might be fluid. Do cats get fluid in their lungs?”
“They can,” I say, slipping my stethoscope into my ears. “But that’s not what this is.”
I press the diaphragm gently to the cat’s chest—Bubbles, a twelve-year-old short-haired tabby who’s been in my clinic more often than some of my staff.
Her heart rate is steady. Lungs are clear.
Eyes are bright. No wheezing. No resistance when I palpate her belly, no tenderness in the joints.
I lift her lips to check her gums—pink, healthy.
Nails are a little long, but that’s not new.
She’s fine. Again.
I keep my tone even. “Her heart sounds strong, and her lungs are clear. I don’t see anything concerning.”
“You’re sure?” Mrs. Patterson says, clutching her purse. “Because she was acting… distant .”
“She’s a cat,” I remind her gently. “That’s kind of their thing.”
She gasps. “But she didn’t sleep on my bed last night. Not even for five minutes. That’s never happened before.”
Bubbles blinks at me slowly, then lays her head back down.
“She’s not in any pain,” I assure her. “Her weight is stable. Her appetite?”
“She ate. A little.”
“Any vomiting?”
“No.”
“Litter box normal?”
“Far as I can tell.”
I give Bubbles one last check, then scoop her gently into my arms and place her back in the soft, flannel-lined carrier. It smells like dryer sheets and catnip.
“She’s healthy, Mrs. Patterson. No signs of illness. No change in vitals.”
She lets out a shaky breath, sagging a little in her coat. “I just—I lost my Marty last spring, you know. And now it’s just me and her. She’s all I have.”
I nod. Not because I didn’t know—she’s told me every visit—but because sometimes people need to keep saying it out loud.
“She’s still got a lot of life in her,” I say. “You’re taking good care of her.”
That seems to soothe her for about three seconds.
“You know,” she says, glancing at me with a raised brow. “My granddaughter Melanie just moved back to town.”
Here we go.
“She’s thirty-two. No kids. Works in real estate. Very driven and she loves animals. I just know the two of you would hit it off, Dr. Hart.”
I keep my expression polite as I strip off my gloves and toss them in the bin. “That’s very sweet of you, but I’m not dating right now.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s still true.”
She tuts under her breath. “You work too hard and you’re too handsome to be alone this long. It’s not…normal.”
I give her a tired half-smile. “I appreciate the concern.”
She studies me for a beat longer like she’s trying to find the crack in the armor, then sighs and snaps the top of the carrier shut. “If she starts breathing funny again, can I bring her back in?”
“Absolutely.”
She gives a small smile, then heads out the front door in a swirl of perfume and fleece-lined boots.
The bell over the door chimes, and then it’s quiet again. I take a breath, let it settle.
The clinic smells like antiseptic and cedarwood from the candle my receptionist insists on lighting. It’s clean. Sleek. Brushed steel counters, white walls, modern track lighting overhead. No clutter. No mess. Everything in its place.
It looks like a clinic you’d find in any city. That was intentional. The ranch back home is all rough edges and weathered wood and rooms that remember too much, and I needed a space that felt nothing like that.
I built it a couple years before Julia and I started trying for a baby. I wanted something that just worked. A place that was mine. Clean, quiet, and easy to keep in order.
Growing up the oldest of seven, I didn’t have much that ever felt like it was fully mine. Not a bedroom. Not a meal. Everything was shared, loud, and constantly moving.
Some people find that kind of chaos charming. They’ll tell you it means you were surrounded by love. That big families are warm and lively and full of built-in best friends.
And maybe that’s true—for them. But for me? It was a lot.
It wore on me in ways I didn’t know how to name when I was younger.
The noise. The mess. The way you could never think straight because someone was always yelling down the hallway or fighting over a chair or trying to get your attention.
My brain never liked that kind of thing.
It still doesn’t, even at thirty-five years old.
I like order. Systems that make sense. Spaces that stay the way I left them. It’s not about perfection, necessarily—it’s about control. About knowing something in my day is going to hold up.
That’s why I built this place the way I did.
I didn’t want just another clinic—I wanted something I could depend on.
The layout, the materials, how everything fits together—it wasn’t random.
I planned it down to the inch. Every drawer, every light switch, every line of sight from one room to the next.
It needed to feel solid. And I didn’t want it in Summit Springs.
Bozeman’s not that far, but it’s far enough.
Out here, people know me as a vet. That’s it.
They don’t know about Julia. Or Violet. Or the lavender-painted room I locked up and never went back into.
They don’t lower their voices when I walk in.
They don’t look at me like I’m going to fall apart if someone says her name.
My mom—she gets this soft look in her eyes sometimes when I talk, like she’s holding back everything she really wants to say. My siblings change the subject when anything drifts too close to Julia or Violet. Even my niece, Nora, at five years old, reads the room better than most adults I know.
And I don’t blame them.
But I needed space from it. From them. From the version of me they all remember from almost five years ago and aren’t sure what to do with now.
So I leaned into what’s always made more sense to me anyway—animals.
I’ve always liked animals more than people. They don’t lie. They don’t pretend they’re fine when they’re not. You show up the right way, you earn their trust, and if you don’t—they let you know. There’s something about that sort of honesty that’s hard to come by.
I was eight when one of our calves got caught in barbed wire and split its leg open real bad.
Everyone else panicked. I didn’t. I knelt next to it while my dad cut the wire, kept pressure on the wound with my T-shirt until the bleeding slowed.
Stayed there until the vet arrived. He said I had a steady hand for a kid.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. But later, when the calf made it—when I saw it get back on its feet like it hadn’t almost died right there in the dirt—I felt something I hadn’t before.
Like maybe I was good at something that mattered.
A few years later, one of our dogs—Willow—got sick.
Stopped eating, lost weight fast. I told my mom something was wrong, but nobody listened.
Said she was just getting old. She died two weeks later, and I still remember the way her body felt when I picked her up to bury her.
I remember how the heat from her body was gone.
And I remember thinking, if I’d known more, maybe I could’ve done something.
That’s when I started reading. Not books for school—books about animals. Health. Signs. Prevention. I wasn’t looking for a career back then. Just trying to make sure I never missed something like that again.
Vet school came later. After I tried a semester of engineering and hated every second of it. Walked out of a lecture one day, switched majors that afternoon, and never looked back.
It’s not that I love the science. I don’t wake up excited to run bloodwork or clip nails. I just like being the one people call when their animal’s in trouble, or when something’s wrong and they don’t know what to do.
It’s not flashy. It’s not always comfortable. In fact, it rarely is. But it matters.
The door opens with a gust of wind and the sound of boots dragging across the tile.
“Why,” Jenna says loudly, her voice half-muffled by her scarf, “do we live in a place where the air hurts your face?”
She’s wrapped in what has to be three scarves, a jacket that could pass for tactical gear, and fingerless gloves, which seems pointless.
There’s an apple in her hand, half-eaten.
Her hair is lavender this month, twisted up in a knot on top of her head.
She’s got a silver nose ring, winged eyeliner, and despite looking like she just fought through a blizzard, she’s somehow still put together. Polished, even.
She sinks into her chair behind the desk with a dramatic groan and sets the apple down. “I need you to tell me, Sawyer. Remind me why the hell we live here.”
“Good land. Cheap beer.”
She lets out a humorless laugh and drops her forehead onto the desk. “You forgot to mention snow eight months of the year and windburn in places windburn shouldn’t reach.”
“Perks of mountain living.”
“Should’ve taken my ex up on that offer to move to Phoenix.”
“You’d melt.”
“Yeah, but at least I’d go out with a tan.”
I glance over just as she peels off her gloves. Skeleton hands on black fabric. Fitting.
“You see Mrs. Patterson again?” she asks, sitting upright and spinning her chair halfway toward me.
“Yeah. Bubbles blinked too slow this morning, so naturally she assumed the worst.”
Jenna snorts and shakes her head, pulling her tablet toward her. “That cat’s been dying for, what? Five years now?”
“Seven.”
“Did she bring up the granddaughter?”
“Naturally.”
She laughs. “Maybe you should just give her a shot. Could be your soulmate, and you’re missing out on true love and homemade banana bread. Or some shit like that, I don’t really know.”
“I don’t even like banana bread.”