I stepped closer before my thoughts could catch up, drawn in by the way she didn’t move away. She stayed right there, breath shuddering, body pitched forward just enough to feel like permission.
I could see the exact second she realized it, too. Her breath stuttered. Her eyes darkened, panic and want collided hard enough to leave her shaken.
She blinked once, like she was forcing herself back into her body, then stepped away as if the space between us burned.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she said, voice thin, too fast. “You helped me, that’s all. I still don’t trust you.”
My answer scraped out of me, rough and unfiltered. “Wasn’t counting on it.”
“Whatever that was, it won’t happen again,” she said, her words not convincing. The mare snorted behind me, sharp and impatient, and the sound cracked the moment open like a whip. I stepped back. “Keep her walking for ten more minutes, then water. Call me if the gut sounds drop again.”
Tessa nodded, her hair falling into her face. I left the barn before instinct beat restraint. And before she realized how close she’d been to asking me to stay.
Nineteen
Tessa
The mare was finally quiet. I’d walked her until my knees shook, checked gut sounds twice an hour, forced water under her nose until she drank, and bedded her down with fresh straw. She breathed evenly now, sides still damp but no longer rigid with pain. I pressed my forehead to her shoulder, exhausted, and whispered for her not to scare me like that again.
But the truth was, it wasn’t the mare that scared me. It was the man who’d shown up the moment I needed help. The way we’d moved together without thinking, like our bodies already knew the same rhythm. The way he’d pulled me out of the mare’s path without hesitation.
The way he handled Colin was nothing short of a relief. Maybe it was enough to scare him off.
But it scared me how much trust I’d given him without thinking. It scared me most that for one breathless heartbeat, I’d almost kissed him.
I grabbed my phone without thinking, without breathing, and thumbed Dani’s name. It rang once, twice.
“Tess?”
The sound of her voice cracked straight through the last thin wall I had left. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t need to.
“I’m coming,” she said immediately.
“No, you can't, you've got a job,” I sniffled.
“I can analyze data from anywhere, you know that.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I sank down onto the couch with a long, shaking sigh. Everything would be fine, I told myself. I knew what I was doing with the animals. Other than needing Wyatt’s help to get the mare on her feet, I could’ve handled it all alone. But as exhaustion dragged me toward sleep, the last thing I thought about was the man who’d wrapped his arm around my waist and held me so tightly against him that I could still feel the echo of it in my skin.
“Tess?” Dani shouted, already stomping through the kitchen. “Where are you?”
“Here,” I said as I rubbed my eyes.
She took one look at me, sweaty, streaked with barn dirt, eyes swollen, and her entire face changed. “What happened to you?” Her arms were already open before she reached me, and the full-body smother hug hit a second later. I didn’t exactly melt into her, but my knees did go weak in a way I wasn’t proud of.
She pulled back just far enough to see my face. “Tell me what happened.”
I swallowed hard. “The mare colicked.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Is she?—”
“She’s okay. I think.”
Dani blew out a sharp breath. “Good. Okay. That’s good.Now tell me why you sound like someone peeled your soul out through your ribs.”
I tried, I really did, but when the words finally came, they came out jagged anyway. I told her how bad it was, how the mare thrashed, how I couldn’t keep her on her feet alone and panicked. “I called Wyatt Hargrove for help.”
