“Gunner Rockhill,” he said.
“Gunner, horses, right?”
He rolled his eyes, then he released my hand and turned back toward the ATV.
“Wait—uh.” I cleared my throat. “How do I get to the dude ranch cabins?”
Gunner paused, pivoted, and lifted one arm to point toward a narrow bridge half-hidden by trees at the edge of the property. Then, he climbed back onto the ATV, kicked it to life, and tore off, the engine’s roar cutting across the yard before fading into the trees.
I stood there a moment longer, hand dropping back to my side.
Fuck. Was everyone on this ranch miserable and rude, or was it just me?
I took a cautious step onto the bridge and grabbed the rail because the creek was half frozen at the edges and rushing with chunks of ice in others.Fuck it’s cold.
Under the trees, the snow thinned to ice, and tracks were frozen into it. Deer first—clean, split hooves moving in a straight, purposeful line. Smaller prints looped and crossed them: rabbits, I assumed. Then, there were heavier marks too, wider and splayed, where something with weight had shifted its balance, maybe a cow? No sign of paws and claws, but we were super close to civilization, and I made sure to make my footsteps deliberate and loud to scare off any creatures who dared to come close. I wasn’t big, but I’d learned in the last few years how to be as loud as I could to get noticed, and going back to being quiet seemed wrong.
Wait, was that wrong? Should I be walking quietly? Being noisy would scare bears, right? But what if coyotes and mountain lions would love a taste of my ass if they heard me? Ireallyhadn’t thought this through, but I didn’t have much time to think more, stepping into a clearing by the first cabin. I counted six of them and forgot all about being eaten.
They were wooden, each had a porch running along the front, railings half-buried in snow, posts weathered by wind and sun. From a distance, with the snow softening the edges and settling on the roofs, they were almost pretty, but as I got closer, the illusion dissipated.
The doors were shut but not sealed. Windows stared back blankly, some filmed with grime, others cracked enough to letthe cold creep in. No footprints on the porches. No human tracks coming or going. These weren’t places people lived in or even passed through. They were exposed, left open to weather and time, and whatever this place had been meant to become, it had stopped before it got started. My stomach fell—these were worthless to the valuation; they added nothing except being something else that would have to be torn down.
The last one—furthest from the main house—was the worst. Weathered to the point there were holes in the walls, gaps where water and ice had forced their way inside. Two windows were cracked. The interior was ruined, or at least it was to my untrained eye.
It stopped me cold because I knew places like this.
Not this cabin exactly, but what it represented. Abandoned. Unloved. Written off. But it was also the kind of place where a person could tuck themselves into a corner, out of the wind, out of sight.
When I’d been homeless, I’d learned fast to never find a place that was clean or intact. People noticed that. People got angry when you occupied something that still mattered to them. I survived by finding places no one wanted anymore.
If this cabin had been in the city, I would have chosen it to sleep in. Cold concrete under my boots, the smell of damp or rot, counting exits without thinking about it, mapping where I could disappear if someone came too close.
It was a shame, because the exposed position giving it a view of the acres in front of it was exactly what had ruined it. That was the part that stayed with me. Not just the neglect, but the contradiction. How something could be both worthless on paper and priceless, depending on where you stood.
“Unhoused with a view,” I muttered to the failing porch.
Being homeless had rewired the way I looked at places like this. I didn’t see square footage or potential returns first. I saw shelter, exposure, and escape routes. I saw whether a door would hold, whether a window could be covered, and whether the ground sloped enough to send rain away instead of pooling where you slept. Safety wasn’t comfort, and value wasn’t money. Value was whether a space could keep you alive when no one else cared if it did. “What a fucking waste.”
For a moment, I stood there. The wind cut through my coat, the cold sharp enough to sting, and I felt unmoored, as though I’d lost hold of why I was here at all. I’d come armed with numbers and purpose, with a plan, but standing in front of that cabin, I felt small and off-balance, disconnected from the ranch and from myself.
It scared me how easily that old sense of being unanchored slid back into place. How quickly the certainty I’d built for myself could thin out, leaving me with the same hollow ache I’d carried when survival was my goal. I shook it off.
“I’m not that person anymore.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket out of habit more than hope. No signal. I moved a few steps, then a few more, angling away from the cabin, lifting the phone—like that ever worked. One bar flickered into existence, and I stopped dead, holding still as if I might scare it off.
I called Rebecca—one of only two people who knew the version of me I didn’t talk about. Dalton was the other, and when I’d told him I’d been drunk, and we’d never discussedit again. I mean, he’d tried, but I wanted a friend who didn’t know all the awful bits. The phone rang once, twice, then fell silent. I swore under my breath and tried again, pacing this time, boots crunching on frozen ground, until the call finally connected in a wash of static.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I tried for steady and missed. “I just needed—” My chest locked, panic flaring out of nowhere, raw and unhelpful.
“Are you okay?” she asked again.
I exhaled and stared at the tree line, the cabins sitting in my peripheral vision. “I’m standing in front of these cabins on the ranch, and they’re a mess, broken up, and I don’t like what they’re doing to my head.”
“Are you upset they’re not worth anything?”
