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I quickly refill Milkshake’s and Strudel’s food and water bowls and clean out Strudel’s cage. These two are not gettingalong, so I’m afraid the bunny has to be confined to his pen for now. I’ll need to try to find a more permanent home for one of them sooner rather than later.
I open the door to leave and glance down to see a brown bag on the step. Even after a middle-of-the-night coyote attack, Wyatt still doesn’t miss a breakfast. I glance inside, and my stomach rumbles when I spot a bagel and a yogurt. As I clomp down the wooden steps, I hear hammering outside of the barn and frown. Wyatt and his brothers should be long gone by now. Who’s here?
I glance into the pens to see that Wyatt has fed and watered Handsome and Reginald. I pat Millie’s head and make my way out to the pasture, where the banging seems to be coming from, but I stop dead in my tracks when I hear a familiar trill. I dart over to the stall on the end, taking in the chicken wire stapled up to the roof that was definitely not there yesterday, and look inside the pen.
“Holy shit, Heather?” I exclaim and drop my breakfast to the ground to frantically open the gate to close myself inside. Hunching over, I chase the three chickens around the pen for a few laps, trying to get my hands on one of them. “And Rooster!” I squeal, darting for him. Rooster jumps and attempts to fly away just as I get my hands around his wings. I press them down flat and hold his light body to my chest, eyeing the third chicken, who’s been nameless since the day she got here. “How did you guys get here?” I cry, my eyes welling with tears. Honestly, I can’t believe I have any tears left after crying myself to sleep last night.
“They were a bitch to catch,” Wyatt rumbles, and I look up to find him standing at the fence watching me. His fingers are laced in the chicken wire and covered in mud.
“You caught them?” I croak, squeezing Rooster to my face as his little beak pecks at me.
Wyatt squints and wipes his brow with the back of his hand. He’s wearing a tan Carhartt coat that’s damp along the shoulders from rain. His hair is soaked as beads of water drip down his forehead. He looks like he’s been up all night.
“The rain let up for a bit around four o’clock, and I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to come back out and look around to see if any of themhad wandered back. Sure enough, these three were pecking around the barn, eating worms, I suspect.”
“Oh my God,” I cry, my heart squeezing in my chest. “They came back?”
“Yeah, I managed to herd them into the barn, but they wouldnotgo into this stall. I had to chase them up and down the aisle for a good twenty minutes before I could wrangle them. I can’t believe I didn’t wake you up. Gave Millie and Handsome quite the show. Reggie snored the whole time.”
A garbled laugh erupts from my throat, and I clutch Rooster tightly to my neck. His pecking turns a bit more aggressive, so I set him down. Heather would have been the better choice, but she’s a fast bitch.
“I can’t believe you did all of this.”
He nods and exhales heavily. “I think it’s just these three that survived. I found some feathers in the woods that don’t look too promising for the rest.”
My lips turn down at that, and he shoots me a sympathetic look. “These three should be fine in here until I fix the coop.”
“You’re fixing the chicken coop?” I gasp and make my way out of the stall. “Wyatt, you don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t think your chicken coop was the problem,” he says, making his way back out into the pasture. I follow him, the noise of the rain on the roof increasing in volume as we turn the corner, and he points at the area he’s clearly put a lot of work into already. “We just need some electric fencing up to protect it from predators. I’m going to look for something in town today.”
My eyes water as I look at the nearly fully repaired chicken coop. It’s been reinforced with fresh lumber and looks a thousand times better than when I put it together. My chest aches at the gesture, but instead of telling him that, I elbow him playfully. “Don’t you have a job to get to?”
“Don’t you?” He quirks a brow at me, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a shy smile.
I shrug. “I’m always late.”
“I’m early all other days.”
Silence falls over us as we both stare out at the coop. I can’t imagine what a horrid mess I was down here last night when he found me crying. And when I saw Wyatt, I’ll admit, the weaker, more sensitive part of me wanted to fall into his arms and cry.
But I didn’t because that’s not what I do.
And now he’s done this.
His voice is thick when he says, “I should have helped you build the coop before.” His clear blue eyes find mine, looking stunning against the nature backdrop behind him. “I was a dick about the chickens, but you’re not a failure, Trista. This is just a part of nature you can’t control. It took me years of hard lessons out here to learn that sometimes…the mountain wins.”
His sweet, reassuring words comfort me in ways I didn’t even know I could be comforted, and I feel myself drawing closer to him, craving his embrace. His heat.
Today is an off day.
It’s morning.
I’m late for work.
He’s covered in mud.
He’s been up most of the night…
