Page 26 of Forbidden Rancher's Return
My body goes cold.
Her voice breaks through the dark. Quiet. Sure.
"Rowan."
I'm already moving.
Calla
The alarm goes off at five and I'm already awake.
I've been awake since four-thirty, lying in the dark, listening to the house settle around me.
The pipes clicking in the walls. The refrigerator is humming low. The creak of the third step on the staircase that has been creaking since I was six years old and my father said he'd fix it every spring and never did.
Some mornings the quiet feels like company. Some mornings it feels like weight.
Today it feels like anticipation, and that irritates me more than the quiet ever has.
I dress in the dark. Jeans, thermal, flannel over the top. Wool socks because the kitchen floor is cold until the sun hits the east windows.
I pull my hair back and tie it with the elastic I keep on my wrist, and I don't look in the mirror because looking in the mirror at five in the morning is a vanity this ranch doesn't have time for.
Coffee first. Always coffee first.
The kitchen fills with the smell of it while I stand at the window and watch the yard come back in slow gray pieces. The fence line. The trough. The barn doors closed and latched from last night.
The bunkhouse window is dark. No light. No movement.
He's either still asleep or already gone.
I pour my coffee and tell myself I don't care which one it is.
The porch screen squeaks when I push it open.
The morning is cold enough that my breath fogs in front of my face. Frost on the pasture, thin and silver, the kind that burns off by eight but turns the whole ridge into glass at first light.
I cross the yard toward the barn.
The barn doors are already open.
My boots stop on the gravel.
Inside, I can hear the low murmur of a voice. Not words. Just sound.
The kind of steady, quiet talking that people do around horses when they want them calm. It works because horses don't care about the words. They care about the tone. They care about whether the voice belongs to someone who means them harm or someone who means them breakfast.
I step inside.
Rowan is in the first stall with the bay mare. He's already measured her grain. Already filled her water. He stands with one hand on her neck, the other running along her barrel, checking the way her ribs feel under her winter coat.
The mare leans into his hand and blows out a long breath through her nose, the sound of an animal that has decided to trust whoever is touching her.
He looks up when he hears me.
"Morning."
"You're up early."
