Can’t unhear the catch in her breathing when my thumb found the bare skin above her hip.
What scares me most is that I don’t want to.
I’ve been avoiding her for days now.
Days of short sentences and calculated distances and the kind of cold professionalism that fools nobody, least of all the woman I’m inflicting it on.
The problem is, I can’t stop watching her.
I catch myself doing it at the worst possible moments.
She’s working the paint mare and I’m supposed to be in the feed room. Instead I’m standing at the door watching her hands on the hoof knife, the controlled precision of her cuts, the way she shifts her weight and braces her thigh, and the muscles in her forearms flex and release in a rhythm I could watch for hours.
She straightens and rolls her shoulders. There's a strip of sweat darkening the collar of her shirt, and I’m looking at it like it’s a message written in a language I’m desperate to translate.
She lifts her braid off the back of her neck to let the air hit her skin and I forget what I came to the feed room for.
I listen for her truck in the morning.
That’s the thing I can’t explain away.
The diesel growl at 7 AM—I’m tuned to it now, the way you tune to a sound that matters.
I know when she pulls up before I see her.
I know the sound of her boots on the barn aisle, heavier than Grace’s, confident, no hesitation in the stride.
I know the way she greets the horses—low, practical, no baby talk, just a hand on a neck and a “morning” that sounds like she’s talking to a colleague she respects.
I know the sound of her laugh when Grace says something funny.
It’s different from Rose’s laugh—lower, rougher, surprised out of her like she didn’t expect to find anything funny and is annoyed that she did.
Rose laughed easily, at everything, the way sunshine happens.
Bex laughs like it’s been earned.
Like the thing that made her laugh had to work for it.
I’m cataloguing her.
Building a file I didn’t authorize and can’t delete.
The way she holds a rasp.
The scar on her left knuckle.
The specific shade of black her hair turns in direct sun—not pure black, darker brown, almost auburn at the edges where the light catches.
The way she takes up space without apology, her body occupying the room in a way that demands attention not because she asks for it but because she’s too much to overlook.
Rose was a whisper. Gentle, pervasive, everywhere at once without you noticing until she was all you could hear.
Bex is a statement. Loud and present and impossible to ignore, even when you’re trying. Especially when you’re trying.
I’m trying.
I’m failing.
