Warm enough to make you believe winter finally surrendered, and
Cold enough to punish you for optimism.
Today? The sun is winning—barely.
I’m at our kitchen table surrounded by textbooks, lecture notes, and three empty mugs.
I worked with my old program to transfer to a partner vet school here in Montana.I’m continuing my third year remotely, withDr. Blake, the Havenridge vet who treated Maisie, as my clinical mentor.
Healing, learning, and rebuilding a life all at once. Some days I keep up. Some days, the past tries to nip at my heels.
But I’m back in.
Now I split my time between lectures, hands-on work with Dr. Blake, and trying not to overthink the future.
But for the first time, that future feels like something I get to shape on my own terms.
Maisie’s ears prick, and she lifts her head from the rug. A truck rumbles up the drive. Boots crunch. The porch creaks.
Before the door even opens, my chest warms. My body knows the sound of him.
Wyatt steps inside like the cabin shrank while he was gone—broad shoulders, wind-ruffled hair, cheeks pink from the cold. He pulls off his gloves, sets them on the counter, then gives me that slow, devastating smile.
“Hey, wife.”
My heart still skitters like it hasn’t learned he says that every day. “Hey, husband.”
We didn’t wait to get married. Not after everything.
When love shows up steady and real, you don’t put it on hold. You say yes. You build the life while you’re living it.
Wyatt leans down and kisses me. Slow. Warm. Annoyingly distracting from bovine hoof anatomy.
He glances at my notes. “You eat lunch?”
I lift an empty mug. “Does tea count?”
Wyatt snorts, then turns to the stove, reheating the soup he insisted on making this morning. He does this without commenting. He’s good at taking care of me in ways that don’t make me feel fragile.
“How’s it going?” he asks over the simmer.
“Good. My radiology professor called me ‘enthusiastically inquisitive,’ which I have decided isnotcode for annoying.”
Wyatt carries my bowl over. “Dove, that man wishes all his students were like you.”
I try not to blush like a teenager. Fail spectacularly.
He notices the building plans on the counter—our future house behind the barn. “Tom came by,” he says. “If the weather holds, we break ground next week.”
My breath catches. “For the house or the clinic?”
“Both.” He sits across from me, elbows braced on the table. “You’ll need a clinic once you’re licensed.”
