I hold my ground.
I don’t chase him.
Don’t bring it up.
Don’t apologize for something I’m not sorry for. I show up, I do my work, I keep my voice professional, my hands busy, and my eyes on the hooves in front of me instead of on the man pretending I don’t exist.
I’m done running.
If he wants to run, that’s his choice.
But I’m planted.
Grace notices first.
She’s getting big now—six months and change, moving slower, leaning against fence rails while she does her vet checks.
She finds me at lunch on the second day, sitting on the tailgate of my rig with a sandwich I’m not eating.
“You okay?” she asks.
Climbing up beside me with a grunt and a hand on her belly.
She smells like antiseptic and hay.
There’s a stethoscope around her neck and straw in her hair and she looks exactly like what she is—a woman doing hard, important work while growing a human.
“Fine.”
“Liar.” She says it with affection. Takes half my sandwich without asking. “You and Lee have been circling each other like cats in a cage for the last couple of days. What happened?”
I consider lying.
Grace waits me out.
She’s good at that—the patient silence that makes you fill the space because the quiet is worse than the truth.
She learned it from Shadow, who learned it from Lee, who learned it from horses.
This whole damn compound runs on the principle that if you wait long enough, the scared thing will come to you.
“He kissed me,” I say. “During the storm. In the bay’s stall. And then he told me he can’t do this because Rose was my best friend, and he walked away.”
Grace is quiet for a moment. Chewing my sandwich. Processing.
“Hekissed you,” she says. “He initiated it?”
“I—” I stop. Think about it. His hand on my back. His fingers flexing on my hip. His eyes on my mouth. But who made the first move? I did. I turned. I looked up.
I closed the six inches. But he was already there. He was already holding me like he wasn’t going to let go. “It was mutual. But he definitely didn’t stop it.”
“Until he did.”
“Until the ring touched my face. And then he remembered he’s not allowed to be alive anymore.”
Grace winces.
Not at the bitterness in my voice—at the pain underneath it.
