He looked at me then, his eyes full of things we'd both been trying not to feel. "Everything. Nothing. Just... more than I have a right to want."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only stand there under the harsh lights with this man who'd once been my everything, feeling the pull between us like gravity.
"I should go clean up," I managed finally, my voice barely a whisper. "I have that meeting with the breeding committee at eight."
"Yeah. Me too. Ranch doesn't stop just because we were up all night."
But neither of us moved. We stood there as the sky started to lighten in the east, painting the world in grays and soft pinks that looked like the inside of a seashell. The ranch was beginning to wake—a truck door slamming in the distance, cattle starting their morning chorus, the automatic feeders clicking on in the barn.
"That calf," Wyatt said suddenly, his voice thoughtful. "She'll be special. The ones born hard usually are. Fighters from the first breath. Survivors."
"Like Lucky's line?"
"Yeah. Like Lucky's line." He pushed off the fence, turned to go, then paused. His hand came up like he might touch me, then dropped. "We should do this again sometime."
My heart jumped. "Deliver calves at 2 AM?"
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, and for a second, I saw the boy who'd taught me to ride, who'd kissed me for the first time under these same stars. "Work together. Just... work together. Like we used to."
"I'd like that," I admitted, surprising myself with the honesty.
Something flashed across his face—surprise, hope, maybe fear. Then he nodded once and walked away, his long stride eating up the distance to his truck. But at the door, he turned back.
"Ivy?" His voice carried across the morning air. "You still wear that old t-shirt to sleep?"
I looked down, horrified, having forgotten that the shirt I had on was one of his old high school rodeo shirts, faded and soft with age. Heat flooded my face.
"I—it's just comfortable," I stammered.
His smile was slow and knowing. "Keep it. Looks better on you anyway."
Then he was gone, truck disappearing into the growing dawn, leaving me standing there with my heart racing and my skin burning and the memory of working beside him branded into my bones.
My phone buzzed. Mark, again.
I know it's early, but I couldn't sleep. Missing you. This break doesn't make sense, Ivy. We're good together. Just come home.
I deleted the message without reading the rest. Mark and I had been good together on paper—successful careers, similar ambitions, compatible lifestyles. But we'd never saved anything together. Never worked in wordless synchronization. Never lookedat each other over a newborn calf and felt like we'd witnessed a miracle. Never had our bodies remember how to move together even when our minds were trying to forget.
I headed back to my cabin, stripping off my ruined clothes—his ruined shirt—and stepping into the shower. The hot water washed away the physical evidence of the night, but not the memory of working beside Wyatt, of that moment when we'd just been us again, of the way he'd looked at me like maybe, possibly, we could find our way back to something.
"We make a good team," I'd said.
"Always did," he'd replied.
And that was the problem, wasn't it? We'd always been good together—until we weren't. Until I'd made the choice that shattered everything.
But for a few hours tonight, in a barn with a struggling heifer, we'd found that rhythm again. And it had felt like coming home in a way that had nothing to do with geography and everything to do with the person standing beside me.
I pressed my forehead against the shower tile, letting the water run over me, and wondered if some things really didn't change. Or if we were both just fooling ourselves, trying to find something in the present that we'd lost in the past.
Either way, I knew one thing for certain—working with Wyatt, being near him, remembering what we'd been like together—it was getting harder to remember why I'd left in the first place. Harder to maintain the walls I'd built. Harder to pretend I didn't still love him with every broken piece of my heart.
And that terrified me more than any breech birth ever could.
Chapter 12
Wyatt
