Chapter 2 #2
“Everyone likes banana bread.”
“I like not being set up by a woman who thinks her cat’s blinking is the difference between life or death.”
Jenna grins and taps something into the schedule. “Fair.”
She doesn’t push. She never does. That’s one of the things I like about her. She jokes, but there’s no edge to it. No follow-up questions. No nudging me toward something I’ve already made clear I don’t want.
She shows up, does her job, and doesn’t try to peel me open.
She already has a serious girlfriend. I met her once—tattoos, buzzed hair, quiet smile.
The two of them seem happy. And for some reason, that makes things easier between us.
There’s no weird tension. No subtle glances.
No wondering if her friendliness means more than it should.
Just clean, easy conversation. A rarity in my life these days.
“Tomorrow looks light,” she says, scanning the screen. “You want me to block the afternoon for that equipment install?”
“Yeah. Might as well get it done before the snow gets worse.”
Jenna hums, nodding, already moving on. Just like that, the subject shifts. No pressure. No commentary. And I’m grateful for that. It’s a small thing, but these days, small things carry weight.
The bell over the front door jingles, and cold air follows a woman and her golden-doodle into the clinic. The dog’s big, fluffy, and immediately excited—tail wagging hard enough to shake its whole back end.
“Hi there,” I say, standing as the dog beelines toward me. He leans into my legs like we’ve been best friends for years.
“Sorry,” the woman says, laughing a little as she shakes snow off her jacket. “He knows where the treats are.”
“He’s not wrong.” I reach toward the glass bowl on the counter and pull out a biscuit. The dog sits without being told, eyes locked on mine.
“Someone’s well trained.”
“He’s just motivated by food,” she says. “Same as my husband.”
I offer the biscuit with a smile. The dog takes it gently, tail still wagging, then flops down with a satisfied huff.
“What brings you in today?” I ask, crouching to check his front paws, which are dusted with salt and snowmelt.
“Just a nail trim. But I also just needed an excuse to get out of the house. It’s been nothing but talk about this damn water thing back in Summit.”
That makes me pause. I glance up. “What water thing?”
“You haven’t heard?” She looks surprised. “New county regulation. Only shared households with property over the aquifer get water rights come January.”
I stand. “Shared households?”
“Married couples. Multi-family ownership. That kind of thing.”
She says it casually, like it’s just one more thing to complain about over dinner. But my brain stops right there—on those two words.
Shared households.
The phrase runs through me like a wire tightening in my chest.
I clear my throat. “That’s been confirmed?”
She nods. “I was at the town hall meeting last night. Everyone’s losing their shit. Honestly, it’s a mess. They’re talking about exemptions for widows and generational ranches, but nothing’s clear.”
“Right.” I nod once, trying to keep my face neutral. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Of course.” She smiles. “This guy would probably live without water if it meant he could keep getting treats from you.”
The dog looks up like he agrees.
I rub behind his ears and force a smile. “He’s got his priorities straight.”
She heads toward the exam room with Jenna, still chatting casually, and I just stand there for a second, staring at the spot where the dog had been sitting like I forgot what I was doing.
Technically, we’re fine. The Hart ranch checks the boxes. Whatever legal gymnastics the county needs, we can do it. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. Not even close. This isn’t just about us. This is about everyone else.
If any big operations like the Wilding Ranch lose their water access—and from what I just heard, that’s not hypothetical—it sets off a chain reaction no one’s ready for.
The Wildings have one of the largest spreads in Summit Springs.
Their cattle program alone sustains half the auction buyers we rely on.
If they go under, the auctions shrink. Prices drop.
Feed distributors cut routes. Hay suppliers raise costs because the volume’s no longer there to make it worth the haul.
There’s the farrier who depends on their horses. The mechanic who fixes their trailers. The guy who delivers diesel for their rigs.
And then there’s me—my clinic. Half my clients come from the outskirts of Summit Springs. You gut the ranches, you gut their livestock, you gut their budgets—and then I’m watching my schedule thin out, too.
You cut water off at one source, and eventually, we all feel the drought.
That’s the part nobody wants to admit. Everyone in this town thinks they’re running their own operation—but it’s a damn web. Pull one thread, the whole thing starts to unravel. And lately, it feels like all we’ve been doing is watching threads snap, one by one.
We just lost our best horse trainer last month, out of the blue. Took a better job down in Colorado training performance stock for some high-dollar breeder. Left us with half-finished colts and a gap in the auction lineup that’s going to be hard as hell to fill.
My younger brother, Crew, has been running himself into the ground trying to stay ahead of it all while being a single father. My dad’s pretending he can still keep up like he’s twenty-five. And my mom—she smiles through everything, but I can tell she’s barely holding it all together.
This water bullshit is one more thing we didn’t ask for and sure as hell can’t afford.
I feel my jaw lock. My shoulders tighten.
I don’t have the mental bandwidth for this today.
I’ve got a clinic to run. Dogs to treat.
Surgeries to prep. Stitches to pull. Appointments stacked until closing.
This is the part of my life that makes sense—the part that listens when I do everything right. So I hold onto it.
I shove the rest down—where all the other things I don’t want to deal with live—and push the exam room door open.
Back to work.