Running Wild(Wild #3)(99)

I hold my breath to calm the dread already building along my spine as he pulls the barn door shut to keep the dogs from following.

And when his Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow …

I know, before the words have even left his mouth.

“I thought I was ready. But I’m not.” Hazel eyes plead with me to understand.

I absorb those words like a hard punch to my chest.

“I’m so sorry, Marie.”

“I just … What does that even mean?” I can’t help the sharpness in my voice. We both know what we did last night. And when he left me, he seemed to do so reluctantly, turning back three times for another kiss. So, what happened between then and now?

I’m afraid I already know the answer.

When I’m with you, I forget about everything else.

But then Tyler went home, and he remembered.

“I didn’t think about them once all night, Marie. Not once while I was with you. It’s as if I was ready to replace him, just like that.” His voice grows hoarse, his lengthy eyelashes blinking against the sheen materializing.

Him. He must be talking about his son.

My heart pangs with sorrow as I reach for him. “Tyler, that’s not what that was—”

“I know. But it’s how I feel right now.” He swallows again. “I’m not ready to move on. God, Marie, you are incredible. I love everything about you … and when I’m with you, I fool myself into believing that I’m ready, but I’m not.” He shakes his head with resolution. “I don’t know how to love two women at the same time.”

I’m not sure what that means—is Tyler admitting that he loves me? Or that he won’t be able to—but it confirms what I always knew would be a problem.

A snarl sounds outside. Too many dogs left waiting for too long.

“They’re getting impatient.” Tyler reaches for the handle but stalls. “I’ll stand by whatever you decide to do. You know, if it comes to that.”

He means if I’m pregnant. It feels like another punch, this time to my stomach. “How considerate.”

“Marie—”

“No. Just … no.” I spin and rush away, needing distance to process this.

Rolling in behind the nauseating wave of hurt and disappointment is resentment. At Tyler, for leading me so far down this path only to leave me stranded, but mostly at myself, for being so damn stupid. I knew Tyler was still very much in love with someone else. A woman he still reaches for in the night, who he races a thousand miles across the Alaskan tundra for while wearing her name on his sleeve.

I knew all this, and still I let myself fall for him.

I’m halfway through the barn before I remember why I came here. As much as I want to head straight for my truck and drive off, I veer toward the birthing room, gritting my teeth to keep my tears at bay.

When I emerge, Tyler and the dogs are long gone, and the kennel is quiet.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR





“Okay, so … what do you think about this?” Calla pauses for dramatic effect before spinning her laptop around on the clinic’s counter, revealing a home page of earthy greens and golden yellows against a white birch-patterned background, with bold buttons and scrolling pictures and tabs that shift to pages full of information—the clinic’s history, my credentials, our services. Content that was sparse on the old site is now paragraphs long.

I blink in disbelief. “How did you do all this?” And so fast.

“I’ve been doing this sort of thing for years.” She shrugs. “I’ve gotten good at it.”

“Yes, but …” I scroll through pictures of myself at eight years old, wearing my father’s stethoscope and attempting to check a puppy’s heartbeat as it gnawed on my fingers. I flip through the tabs, stalling on the one that details the clinic’s history in the valley, and smile at the pictures of my father in his white coat, standing outside the clinic’s front doors the day it opened for the first time. My mother is next to him, her belly swollen with me. “Where did you get these?”

“Cory. She went through some of your parents’ old albums.”

The only “albums” my mom has are a dozen shoeboxes tucked away in the back of their closet, with no rhyme or reason for how pictures are sorted.

“That girl is too good for me.” As is Calla. I was doing inventory when she messaged to see if she could swing by. I don’t know what I expected to see, but it wasn’t this.

“That summer when I came to visit my dad, I tried to help him with Alaska Wild by building a website for him. You know, because that would’ve fixed all his problems.” She chuckles softly to herself. “The whole thing turned out to be pointless, but I did learn about my grandparents and their lives while running it, and my dad’s life. There was a lot of family history there. Like this place.” Her curious gaze drifts around the lobby. “I thought it might be helpful for people to see that. It’s what a lot of the other clinics around here don’t have.”

I sink into my desk chair. The effort, the personal detail, even the nature-inspired design.

It’s as if Calla knows me.

Or is trying to get to know me.

“This is amazing. Honestly. Thank you.”