Morning brings silence and avoidance.
Weston is gone before sunrise. I hear his truck rumble down the drive while I'm still lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, sheets tangled around my legs like evidence of a crime.
I replay every moment from last night. The tenderness. The desperation. The way he said my name like it meant something—like I meant something. His hands learning my body with the reverence of a man who'd forgotten how to worship.
And then—silence. Clothes gathered in the dark. A door closing without a goodbye. He didn't have to call it a mistake. His retreat said everything his mouth couldn't.
I drag myself through morning chores, nausea rolling through me in waves I can barely hide. The pregnancy feels more real now, more urgent. Every day my body changes in small ways—tender breasts, heightened smell, exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch.
I'm running out of time to figure out what to do.
Theron finds me in the barn, struggling to lift a feed bag that would've been easy a week ago. My arms shake with the effort. Sweat beads on my forehead despite the cool morning air.
He takes it from me without comment, hoisting it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing.
"So," he says lightly. "Want to tell me why my brother left before dawn like the house was on fire?"
I focus on measuring grain into buckets. Scoop. Pour. Scoop. Pour. "No idea."
"Raven." His voice is gentle but firm. "I'm not blind. Something happened between you two."
I can't look at him. Can't face the hurt I might find there—or worse, the understanding that would make this even more complicated than it already is.
"He told me about Elena."
Theron goes still. The easy posture stiffens. "He never talks about Elena."
"I know."
"To anyone. Not even me, most of the time."
I finally meet his eyes. "He also told me I deserve someone better than him. Whatever happened between us. Classic Weston move, right?"
Something complicated crosses Theron's face. He sets down the feed bag and leans against the stall door, arms crossed over his chest.
"Whatever he did—don't let him push you away."
"He's made it pretty clear he doesn't want—"
"That's bullshit and you know it."
The sharpness in his voice surprises me. Theron, who jokes through everything, who deflects with charm, suddenly sounds like someone else entirely.
"West wants. He wants so much it terrifies him." His honey eyes hold mine, deadly serious. "So he hurts himself before anyone else can do it first. Pushes people away because he thinks he's protecting them, but really he's just protecting himself from having to feel anything again."
I stare at him. "You're defending him. Even though—"
"Even though I want you too?" Theron's smile is sad. A ghost of his usual grin. "Yeah. Even though."
He pushes off the stall door, closing some of the distance between us.
"He's my brother, Raven. I've watched him hollow himself out for four years. Turn into a shell of the person he used to be." His voice roughens. "If you're the one who can bring him back..."
He shrugs, leaving the sentence unfinished. But I hear what he's not saying.
"Why would you help him?" I ask quietly. "Why not just—"
"Fight for you myself?" He reaches out, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear with devastating gentleness. His fingers linger for just a moment. "Because I'd rather see you happy than win."
The words hit me somewhere deep. This man, who makes me laugh, who sees through my performances, who loves without demanding anything in return—he's stepping aside. For his brother. For me.
I don't deserve either of them.
I find Weston in the far pasture, repairing a fence he already fixed last week. Classic avoidance behavior. Find unnecessary work. Stay away from the house. Pretend nothing happened while the evidence of it burns between us.
I watch him for a moment from a distance. The efficient movement of his hands. The rigid set of his shoulders. The way he attacks the fence post like it personally offended him.
He knows I'm here. I can tell by the way he doesn't turn around.
"We need to talk," I say.
"Nothing to talk about."
"Bullshit."
The word comes out sharper than I intended. He finally turns, and I see the damage—dark circles under his eyes, hollow cheeks, the look of a man who hasn't slept and doesn't plan to.
"What do you want me to say, Raven?"
"The truth would be nice."
"The truth?" He laughs, but there's no humor in it. Just jagged edges. "The truth is that I'm a broken man living in a dead woman's house, going through the motions of a life I don't deserve."
"Weston—"
"The truth is that last night shouldn't have happened." He drives the words like nails. "Because you deserve someone whole. Someone who can give you things I don't have left to give."
"That's not your decision to make."
"It is when I know how this ends." His voice cracks. Something raw bleeding through. "I can't watch someone else I—"
He stops. The unfinished word hangs between us, heavy with meaning. Someone else I love. Someone else I lose.
I step closer. "Someone else you what?"
He looks at me with those storm-blue eyes, shattered and desperate and fighting so hard against something he's already lost to.
"You deserve someone who isn't broken."
"Maybe I don't want someone who isn't broken."
I'm close enough to touch him now. Close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat, the way his hands have curled into fists at his sides.
"Maybe I want you. All the sharp edges and sealed-off rooms and grief you carry like armor." My voice drops to something barely above a whisper. "Maybe I want exactly who you are."
For one moment, I see it.
The want breaking through his walls like water through cracks in a dam. The desperate hunger he's been fighting since the moment I showed up on his doorstep. His hand rises, trembling, almost touching my face.
Then it falls.
"I can't."
He walks away. Long strides eating up the distance between us and the horizon, putting as much space as possible between himself and whatever just almost happened.
I stand there in the pasture, wind whipping my hair into tangles, and feel my heart crack down the middle.
But this time, I notice something different.
The way he paused before leaving. The way his hand trembled when he raised it toward my face. The way he said "I can't" instead of "I don't want to."
There's a difference. A massive, important difference.
"I can't" means something is stopping him. Fear. Grief. The ghost of a woman he couldn't save.
"I don't want to" would mean he didn't feel it.
But he does. I saw it in his eyes. Felt it in the way his whole body leaned toward me even as his words pushed me away.
Weston Callahan is terrified of loving me.
Which means, somewhere beneath all that armor and all those walls and all the grief he wears like a second skin, he already does.
I press my hand against my stomach. Still flat. Still hiding its secret.
And I think: How am I supposed to walk away from a man who loves me but can't say it, when I'm carrying a child that might be his?
How am I supposed to tell him the truth when the last baby he loved died in his arms?
The wind howls across the pasture, and I have no answers. Just questions that multiply every time I think I've found solid ground.