Chapter 13 #2
The yellow paint of my Bug is dulled with dust and sun. I slide behind the wheel and sit there for a second before starting the engine. The heater kicks on, wheezing warm air against my knees. The radio stays off.
The road home is mostly empty. Flat stretches of frost-covered fence line, the sky above already shifting to that deep late-afternoon blue that feels like winter—even if the calendar says it’s still fall.
I keep my hands on the wheel, steady.
Seeing pregnant women used to wreck me.
I’d see them in the grocery store, or at the feed supply, or at town events with their hands resting over round bellies and I’d feel like someone had reached into my chest and taken something I wasn’t done hoping for.
It doesn’t hit me that way anymore. Not exactly. The sharp edge of it has dulled over the years, but there’s still a sting. Still that quiet ache of knowing I’ll never be the woman who feels a kick from the inside or buys a car seat or hears someone call me Mom.
Which is why my training program matters, because if I can’t have a child of my own, I need something that feels like a legacy. Something I can build. Something I can pour into.
And this—these horses, this land, the kids who come here to learn—this has been that for me.
I started my training program a year after my surgery. Mostly because I couldn’t keep walking around the ranch with nothing but pain in my hands and chest. I needed to make something useful. I needed to prove—to myself more than anyone—that I still had something to give.
My dad saw it before I did. He was always the one who could name something in me before I had the words for it—especially when it came to horses.
He used to say they listened to me because I didn’t make noise just to hear myself talk.
That I moved slow and spoke quieter than most people ever bother to.
When everything happened—when I lost the one future I thought I’d have—he didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t say anything at all for a while. Just watched me. Gave me space. Let me find my footing again in the barn, where it was quieter, steadier. Where the rules still made sense.
And then one day, out of nowhere, he said I should start something of my own. That I had a gift. That there were horses out there who needed what I could give, and kids who needed someone like me to teach them how to listen.
So I did. We did, my dad and I.
We cleared out one of the old barns and converted it into a proper facility.
We built out the round pen, mapped out a rotation schedule, printed flyers and fielded phone calls.
At first, it was just a few horses—some green, some anxious, a couple with buckshot trauma in their eyes—and one teenage girl whose parents thought learning groundwork might help her with her anxiety.
Now it’s a full program. One of the best in the state, if you go by word of mouth and the waitlists and the owners who fly in for consults and send thank-you notes three years later.
I work mostly with performance horses—race-horses, barrel horses, anything high-energy with something to prove and something to unlearn.
I don’t break them. I don’t believe in that.
I get them to listen. I get them to trust. I get them to come back to themselves so they can do what they were born to do without fear getting in the way.
Some days I’m in the saddle, some days I’m in the dirt. I teach groundwork and balance and pressure. I teach kids, too. I teach them to stand their ground and mean it. I teach them to read the room and the horse and themselves.
It’s hard work. Dusty. Unforgiving. But it’s mine.
And if I can’t raise a child, then I’ll raise this—this program, this place, this rhythm of early mornings and sore legs and the quiet satisfaction of watching a skittish colt settle under your hands.
It’s not the life I planned. But it’s one I built.
And that matters, too.
I wonder if Sawyer ever thought about kids. Not with me—obviously—but in the before version of his life.
I don’t know him well enough to be thinking about this. But then again, we’re getting married, so maybe that line’s already blurred.
Something about him makes me think he’d be good at the whole parenting thing.
Not in a let’s-play-catch-and-go-camping kind of way.
In a real way. The kind that shows up early and stays late.
The kind who buys vegan hot chocolate just because he realizes you go through your water too fast and it’s cold out.
The kind who hands it to you without needing any of the credit.
He feels…solid. And if anyone deserves to get to be a dad, it’s someone like that.
I pull into the ranch just as the sun slips above the ridge.
It casts everything in that soft, low light that makes even the frost look warm.
The kitchen windows glow faintly from the inside, and I can already picture the scene before I walk in—Mom in her usual corner of the kitchen, Ridge being loud and entirely too proud of himself about something.
Sure enough, when I push the door open, Ridge doesn’t even look up from his coffee before saying, “You look like hell.”
“Dickhead,” I mutter, flipping him off as I walk past.
Mom shoots him a look from where she’s organizing leftovers at the stove. “Ridge. Really?”
He raises his eyebrows like he’s innocent. “What? I said it with love.”
I open the fridge, grab my dairy-free yogurt, and pull a bowl from the cabinet. My hands move on autopilot—cutting up strawberries, slicing a banana, scattering some blueberries in.
Mom leans one hip against the counter, watching me carefully. “How was it over at the Hart’s?”
“Fine.” I shrug, digging the spoon into the yogurt. “Could’ve been a little better. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“We can tell,” Ridge says, which earns him a blueberry to the forehead. It bounces off and lands in his mug. I don’t apologize.
Mom, without missing a beat, glares at him. “That must’ve been hard,” she says, her voice softening. “You doing okay?”
I nod. “Yeah. It was still fine.”
And that’s when my phone buzzes. I glance at the screen, half-expecting something about the horses.
Sawyer: What kind of ring does my soon-to-be fiancée want?
I stare at it.
Then read it again. Mid-chew, I freeze, the spoon hovering in the air.
He’s not being serious. There’s no way he’s being serious. We talked about this. We weren’t doing the whole big show. I figured we’d hit up one of those cheap jewelry counters where everything costs twelve bucks and comes in bubble wrap.
I wipe my fingers on the towel hanging off the oven door and text him back.
Me: You’re not getting me a real ring.
The response comes instantly.
Sawyer: Of course I am. What kind of man lets his wife walk around town with a fake one? You want people thinking I’m cheap?
I try not to laugh. Mom and Ridge are still in the room, and the last thing I need is either of them asking questions I can’t answer.
Me: I’m perfectly fine with fake. And cheap.
Sawyer: If you don’t pick something, I’ll pick it for you. And I have terrible taste.
I roll my eyes.
Me: Fine. Just stick to something simple. If it’s heart-shaped or pink, we’re getting divorced.
Sawyer: Deal .
He follows it with a smiley face emoji that makes me irrationally annoyed and vaguely amused at the same time.
I lock the screen and toss my phone back onto the counter, trying to ignore the way my pulse picked up. Not because of the ring. Not because of an emoji.
Just…because.
“Wren has a boyfriend,” Ridge says with a wolfish grin.
I don’t even look up from my bowl. “No, I don’t.”
He takes a long sip of coffee, slow and smug. “Sure.”
Mom glances over from where she’s stacking dishes by the sink. “Wait—do you?”
I sigh, stabbing a slice of strawberry. “No. Ridge just likes to stir the pot, per usual.”
Ridge lifts a brow. “I know that look.”
“What look?”
“ That one. Where you’re trying not to smile or something.”
“I’m not trying to not smile,” I say flatly. “This is just my face.”
He tilts his head, unconvinced. “You’ve definitely got a crush on someone.”
Before I can stop myself, I chuck a full handful of blueberries at his head.
“Ridge,” Mom says without even turning around, “pick those up.”
“But I didn’t throw them!”
“I don’t care,” she says, grabbing a dishtowel. “That’s what you get for being a little shit.”
Ridge, still chuckling, starts scooping berries into his palm. I stick out my tongue at him and go back to my yogurt like I didn’t just engage in fruit-based warfare.
My phone buzzes again.
Sawyer: Before I forget—what’s your favorite flower?
I stare at the message for a second before typing back.
Me: Why?
His response comes fast.
Sawyer: For your bouquet. And the venue.
I just stare at the screen.
Of course. Of course we’re doing bouquets. And venues. And whatever other things people do when they’re pretending to get married in a very real, very public way.
It’s not like I thought we’d show up at the courthouse in hoodies and sign some papers, but I also hadn’t…processed this part yet. The visual of it. The way it’s all going to look from the outside. The fact that there’s going to be a dress. An aisle. Photos.
I haven’t let myself think that far ahead.
But Sawyer clearly has, and he’s right to. It’s the end of the year. Venues are probably already booked. Florists, too. Dress fittings. Caterers. Seating charts. This fake wedding is going to require some real logistics.
God, I’m really going to have to do this. Stand there. Be looked at. Be the center of attention for a full day with strategically curled hair and someone blotting my forehead for shine.
My own personal hell.
I stare down at my phone.
Me: Violets.
My dad used to bring them home folded into damp paper towels, the stems bent, the petals a little bruised from the ride over from the pastures.
I was six the first time I planted them—in the corner of the garden bed outside the barn, where the soil stayed warm even in early spring.
I used to draw them in the margins of my math homework, tiny and crooked, the only thing I knew how to get right every time.
I press send and it takes him longer to reply this time.
I stare at the screen for a beat, then set the phone face-down on the counter and rinse out my bowl. The water runs too loud in the sink and my brain’s louder, already narrating possibilities that don’t need narrating.
He’s probably just busy. He works more than I do, and I don’t exactly keep a thriving social calendar, so I forget sometimes that most people don’t respond within seconds.
I dry the bowl. Set it back in the cabinet. Turn off the faucet.
When I check again, the message is there.
Sawyer: Pick something else.
I frown. Um. Okay. That’s…weird.
Me: Why?
A minute passes.
Sawyer: Because.
Because?
I stare at it, waiting for…more. A winky face. A joke. Something to suggest he’s being playful or at least sarcastic. But nothing else comes.
Me: White roses, I guess.
I don’t really mean it. They’re fine. Pretty in a distant, glossy kind of way.
His response comes fast. A thumbs-up emoji. That’s it.
No follow-up. No sarcastic commentary. No passive-aggressive flower jokes or fake arguments about whether roses are too cliché.
Just…a thumbs-up.
I stare at it longer than I should.
Something feels off. Not big, not loud—just a small shift.
A subtle disconnect from the way he’s been the past few days.
He’s been asking questions, sending jokes, pushing this thing forward like he’s determined to make it believable.
Asking about rings and venues and what kind of flowers I want to hold in front of people who think they know us. This feels…clipped.
I know better than to read into texts. I know how easy it is to misread tone, how silence can mean a thousand things that have nothing to do with me. He’s probably just tired. Or caught up in something. Or thinking about everything else he has to manage that doesn’t involve me.
Still, it lands. A small sting I wasn’t braced for.
I turn my phone over and press my palms to the counter, grounding myself in the cool surface. It’s nothing, I tell myself. People pull back all the time. Texts feel different than they’re meant to. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to.
But even so, it lingers—soft and persistent.
And I feel it anyway.