Chapter 13
WREN
Zeus walks slower than usual beside me, as if he’s trying to tell me I was the problem today.
He’s not wrong. I didn’t sleep for longer than twenty minutes last night. My brain just looped the same ten seconds over and over again—me sitting in Sawyer Hart’s kitchen, saying the words, “I think we should get married.”
God.
Just thinking about it makes me want to peel my skin off. There was no ring, no kneeling, no grand gesture. Just a quiet, desperate suggestion in a too-clean kitchen with a dog curled up on the floor and a man who looked just as wrecked as I felt.
My boots scuff against the compacted earth as we walk, his lead rope slack in my hand, my body trying to mimic calm even though my brain hasn’t shut up since last night.
It wasn’t a bad session. Could’ve been better, though—and that was mostly on me.
Zeus picked up on it right away. I was fidgety, over-correcting, second-guessing every shift in his posture.
It didn’t help that my heartbeat was somewhere in my ears the entire time.
Which is what happens when you agree to marry a man you’ve known for fifteen minutes, give or take a run-in at the feed store and a shared moment over a half-decent cup of hot chocolate.
I’m getting married.
I let that thought hang there, sharp and stupid and enormous. Like it’s hovering three feet above my head waiting to land on me again.
Married. For water.
For some fucking water.
I slide open his stall door and unclip the lead, giving Zeus a quick once-over with my palm as he moves inside—just enough pressure to say I’m still here, even if I wasn’t much of a leader today.
His flank shifts under my hand, muscle tense but not coiled, and I let the door thud shut behind me with a little more force than necessary.
Anna’s perched on the middle bench near the round pen, legs crossed, notebook balanced on one knee like always. Her pen’s already poised midair, ready to dissect the entire session before I’ve even taken a breath.
She offers a soft smile. “He looked good today. A little off, maybe.”
I nod, dragging my sleeve across the back of my neck. “Yeah. That was me. I’m off.”
She tilts her head, thoughtful. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” I exhale through my nose. “Definitely don’t.”
She laughs under her breath but doesn’t push. “Okay, well…I did notice you switched to pressure-and-release near the gate. You’ve been using more observational with him—”
She breaks off mid-sentence. Not because I interrupted, but because something flickers across her face—tight, abrupt. A second later her hand clamps over her mouth.
“Sorry,” she says, voice muffled. “Oh god, I—”
And then in a blink, she’s gone.
Up and out of the bleachers like she’s been launched, notebook forgotten, boots kicking up dust as she makes a hard sprint for the bathroom near the tack room. She doesn’t make a sound besides a gag, but the speed tells me everything I need to know.
I stare after her, my heart knocking against my ribs.
She was fine five minutes ago. No sweating, no color change, no signs of anything. Focused. Sharp. Entirely normal. And now she’s—God, I don’t even know.
I jog across the barn and stop at the bathroom door, knocking once, then twice. “Anna? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Nothing.
Then the unmistakable sound of retching echoing against tile.
I wince and lean my forehead against the doorframe. “Shit. I guess that’s a no.”
She’s in there for a while. Long enough that I start mentally calculating how far away the clinic is and whether or not I should be googling signs of carbon monoxide poisoning or something. But then the faucet turns on, the sharp hiss of water against porcelain.
A minute later, the door creaks open.
Anna steps out, pale and sweaty, eyes wide and apologetic.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she says, voice too fast, too breathy. “I—I don’t know what happened, I was totally fine earlier.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I tell her, holding up both hands like I’m trying to calm a skittish colt. “Seriously. If you’re sick, it’s okay. You’re always free to skip the sessions and go home, I won’t be offended.”
She glances over her shoulder, making sure no one might be listening, then takes a step closer and drops her voice. “I’m not sick.”
I blink at her. “Oh?”
She swallows hard, then says, “I’m pregnant.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, wow. I had no idea, Dottie didn’t tell me or anything.”
“I haven’t told Dottie yet. I’m about twenty weeks,” she says quickly, like she’s trying to get ahead of my reaction. “The nausea has been bad through the whole thing.”
She says it so casually, like she’s not blowing my mind.
Twenty weeks? She’s twenty weeks pregnant?
I blink at her stomach, which, by all logic, should be announcing it louder than she just did.
But it isn’t. She looks incredible—glowy and pulled together and…
not visibly halfway through growing a human.
If that’s what twenty weeks looks like, then she’s basically a magician.
I blink again. “You look amazing for twenty weeks.”
She gives a tired laugh. “Apparently I have something called an inverted uterus—it tilts back instead of forward. Makes it harder to show.”
I nod, processing. “How are you feeling about it? Like—is this a good thing, or a not-so-good thing?”
Anna lets out a soft laugh, the kind that sounds like she wasn’t expecting to laugh at all.
I immediately backpedal. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that. That was too much. I didn’t mean to—”
“You’re not overstepping,” she says, waving me off. “It’s fine. Honestly, I don’t know. It’s not really how I pictured my life going, you know?”
I nod again, slower this time. “Yeah. I get that.”
“I’m only twenty,” she says, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I’m still in school. I’ve got…plans, I guess. I want a career. Maybe my own training program someday. A life, you know?”
She nudges me gently with her elbow, a tired smile tugging at her mouth.
“You’d be great at that. The training program,” I say, and I mean it.
She’s smart. Quick. She notices the small stuff most people miss—the flick of a tail, the shift of weight, the things a horse is saying even when it’s not moving at all. And she’s got this natural brightness to her, like she could get a stallion to follow her just by asking nicely.
Anna sighs. “That’s why I’m giving the baby up for adoption.”
I blink again. “Oh. I didn’t…I mean—wow.”
She gives me a look that tells me she’s used to people not knowing what to say.
I rub my hands over my thighs, suddenly very aware of my own silence. “The dad doesn’t want to be involved?”
At that, she rolls her hazel eyes and lets out a long, dramatic groan. “God, no. He was this tourist I met at the Lucky Devil over the summer. A one-night stand. I called to tell him I was pregnant and he said, and I quote, ‘good luck with that,’ and then hung up on me.”
“What a bastard.”
“Right?” she says, laughing now. “But it’s okay. I found an adoptive family already. They’re great. Like, really great. So…”
She shrugs again, but there’s something steadier behind it this time. Like she knows what she’s doing, even if it’s not the life she mapped out for herself.
“I’m proud of you,” I say, meaning it. “For doing what’s best for you. And your baby. That’s not easy.”
Anna’s smile softens, grateful and a little tired. “Thanks.”
Then she shifts, nudging her toe against the dirt. “What about you? Did you ever picture yourself having kids?”
And there it is. That question. That landmine. I stiffen—just barely. It’s a reaction you learn to mute after enough times being asked the same thing, after enough times of having to find a version of the truth that doesn’t feel like being sliced open.
“I did,” I say quietly.
And I did. I wanted it more than anything. I was the little girl carrying baby dolls around the ranch, giving them names, swaddling them in torn-up pillowcases.
When Ridge and Sage were babies, I’d follow my mom around like a shadow, begging to help with bottles and diaper changes, climbing into their cribs just to be near them.
Back then, I thought it was a given. That someday, I’d have that too.
And then came the pain.
It started as cramps that knocked the wind out of me. Then nausea. Bleeding that didn’t stop. Days where I couldn’t stand upright without seeing stars. Years of being dismissed, misdiagnosed, told it was normal for my age.
It wasn’t. By the time they found out how bad the endometriosis really was, it had already taken too much.
I was nineteen when I had the hysterectomy.
I remember everything about that year. The sound of the shower echoing off the tile while I cried hard enough to gag.
The cold of the barn floor against my cheek when I couldn’t pull it together long enough to finish the feedings.
The weight of my mother’s hand stroking through my hair while I laid in her lap, not saying anything, not asking for anything—just trying to exist through it.
I cried more in that one year than I have in the rest of my life combined.
It wasn’t just about the pain. It was what it took from me. What it left behind. The knowledge that no matter how much I want it—no matter how deeply I love, or how fiercely I show up—I will never have children of my own.
That sort of loss doesn’t come with a clean break. It just folds itself into the quiet parts of your life and waits for moments like this to remind you it’s still there.
Anna seems to get it—whatever’s sitting heavy in the silence between us.
“I should probably head home,” she says gently. “Eat something before the whole puking thing comes back.”
I nod. “Good plan.”
She hesitates like she might say something else, but instead just gives me that soft, grateful smile again. “Thanks, Wren. For listening.”
“Anytime.”
She grabs her bag from the bench and walks off. I wait until I hear her car start before I head toward mine.