Page 67 of Wild Then Wed
I nod, dragging my sleeve across the back of my neck. “Yeah. That was me. I’m off.”
She tilts her head, thoughtful. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” I exhale through my nose. “Definitely don’t.”
She laughs under her breath but doesn’t push. “Okay, well…I did notice you switched to pressure-and-release near the gate. You’ve been using more observational with him—”
She breaks off mid-sentence. Not because I interrupted, but because something flickers across her face—tight, abrupt. A second later her hand clamps over her mouth.
“Sorry,” she says, voice muffled. “Oh god, I—”
And then in a blink, she’s gone.
Up and out of the bleachers like she’s been launched, notebook forgotten, boots kicking up dust as she makes a hard sprint for the bathroom near the tack room. She doesn’t make a sound besides a gag, but the speed tells me everything I need to know.
I stare after her, my heart knocking against my ribs.
She was fine five minutes ago. No sweating, no color change, no signs of anything. Focused. Sharp. Entirely normal. And now she’s—God, I don’t even know.
I jog across the barn and stop at the bathroom door, knocking once, then twice. “Anna? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Nothing.
Then the unmistakable sound of retching echoing against tile.
I wince and lean my forehead against the doorframe. “Shit. I guess that’s a no.”
She’s in there for a while. Long enough that I start mentally calculating how far away the clinic is and whether or not I should be googling signs of carbon monoxide poisoning or something. But then the faucet turns on, the sharp hiss of water against porcelain.
A minute later, the door creaks open.
Anna steps out, pale and sweaty, eyes wide and apologetic.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she says, voice too fast, too breathy. “I—I don’t know what happened, I was totally fine earlier.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I tell her, holding up both hands like I’m trying to calm a skittish colt. “Seriously. If you’re sick, it’s okay. You’re always free to skip the sessions and go home, I won’t be offended.”
She glances over her shoulder, making sure no one might be listening, then takes a step closer and drops her voice. “I’m not sick.”
I blink at her. “Oh?”
She swallows hard, then says, “I’m pregnant.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, wow. I had no idea, Dottie didn’t tell me or anything.”
“I haven’t told Dottie yet. I’m about twenty weeks,” she says quickly, like she’s trying to get ahead of my reaction. “The nausea has been bad through the whole thing.”
She says it so casually, like she’s not blowing my mind. Twenty weeks? She’s twenty weeks pregnant? I blink at her stomach, which, by all logic, should be announcing it louder than she just did. But it isn’t. She looks incredible—glowy and pulled together and…not visibly halfway through growing a human. If that’s what twenty weeks looks like, then she’s basically a magician.
I blink again. “You lookamazingfor twenty weeks.”
She gives a tired laugh. “Apparently I have something called an inverted uterus—it tilts back instead of forward. Makes it harder to show.”
I nod, processing. “How are you feeling about it? Like—is this a good thing, or a not-so-good thing?”
Anna lets out a soft laugh, the kind that sounds like she wasn’t expecting to laugh at all.
I immediately backpedal. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that. That was too much. I didn’t mean to—”
