More like a phantom limb—the memory of having that, of being the man with his hand on a woman’s back in a warm kitchen, of fitting into someone so naturally it didn’t feel like a choice.
It felt like breathing.
I look away before the ache becomes something I can’t swallow down.
I had that.
I had every bit of that, and now I have the barn first thing in the morning and horses that flinch when I raise my hand.
Same thing, some days.
Grace finds me mid-morning.
I’m in the round pen with a chestnut mare we pulled three weeks ago—she’s coming along, letting me work closer, and started accepting the halter yesterday.
I hear the crunch of gravel before I see Grace, and the mare’s ears swivel toward the sound.
“Easy,” I murmur. The mare holds. Good girl.
Grace leans against the rail, arms folded on top.
She’s six months along now and the belly is impossible to miss—stretching the flannel she stole from Shadow, which was already too big on her.
Her pink hair is pulled back, stethoscope around her neck, boots dusty.
She looks tired in the way pregnant women get when they’re pretending they’re not.
“Morning,” she says.
“Morning.” I keep my eyes on the mare. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
“I walked two hundred yards from my front door to this pen. That’s easy.”
“Shadow know you’re out here?”
“Shadow can manage his own feelings about it.”
I almost smile.
Grace has been good for this ranch.
Good for Shadow.
Good for the rescue operation and good for the animals and good for the general morale of a club full of men who needed a woman with a spine to remind them they’re not as tough as they think they are.
She’s been good for me, too, in ways I don’t let myself think about too hard.
The sister I never asked for.
The person who saw my grief up close on that drive from Vegas and never once tried to fix it.
She just sat in it with me. That’s rare.
Most people want to hand you a platitude and move on.
Grace just… stayed.
“I checked on the new bay this morning,” she says, her voice shifting into vet mode. “He let me get close enough for a visual but wouldn’t let me handle him.”
