I’d fucked up with Jesse, and there was no way around that.
We were ghosts in the same house again. He was avoiding me outright, and I caught him long enough to open my mouth before he looked straight through me as if Iwere nothing and walked away. At first, my temper fought my guilt—I told myself he was being unreasonable, stubborn, territorial. Then, the temper burned off, and all that was left was guilt. After that came something worse. Sadness.
He wouldn’t talk to me. Not about selling, not about the benefits, not about what we could do with the money for everyone who worked at Snow Creek. I had plans—real ones. Staff funds. Long-term security. Parcels of land we could gift outright. I had all the figures.
I left the prospectus on the kitchen table where he couldn’t miss it.
He missed it anyway.
The first night, there was a perfect burned ring in the middle of the cover, suspiciously saucepan-sized, as if he’d used it as a coaster out of pure spite. The next morning, there were coffee stains, careless and deliberate at the same time. After that, junk mail crept over it, inch by inch, until one day it was covered.
Message received.
Some of the ranch hands talked to me now, at least they answered my questions and showed me things I needed to see, and I spent a ton of time in that middle guest cabin, dragging things over until I’d made a warm and cozy nest for the books I’d ordered that sat on the shelf alongside the Broncos mug. Gunner had even helped me to put an old easy chair in there that I’d found in the second barn. I covered it with crocheted blankets, and it was good as new. Well, if I didn’t look too closely. As the days turned into weeks, and I realized I was halfway through my six months, with springright here, something shifted. Not all at once. Quietly. In ways that were harder to argue with.
I stopped wandering aimlessly around the ranch.
I started listening to what people liked and needed, and even though it started as a way to give myself more options for setting these people up with good futures, I’d become friendly with them. Well, as much as you can be friendly with laid-back, closed-off, stubborn cowboys. At least Ruth made me edible eggs, and I ate mostly what everyone else did at night, and it was so damn good I’d started getting a healthy relationship with fresh home-cooked food.
Miguel was sweet. Sticking out like a sore thumb for his hair and the way he used eyeliner sometimes, and the traces of glitter on his cheeks. No one cared as long as he did his job. His sexuality didn’t define him, and that was refreshing.
They were all good people.
I spent more time in the house, cleaning when my hands needed something to do, running numbers when my head wouldn’t shut up. The rhythm settled me. Dishes. Floors. Coffee mugs lined up instead of scattered. Spreadsheets open late into the night, columns adjusting, assumptions tested and retested.
The ranch stopped feeling abstract.
It started feeling lived-in.
And somehow, I’d started spending time in my grandfather’s old room. The first time I went inside, I turned around and left. The next time, I lasted five minutes, the next ten.
This time, I sat on his bed and gazed out of the window.
I’d been staring into the middle distance for a while when my phone buzzed in my hand. Dalton had sent astupid meme featuring a cow with a caption about “corporate restructuring” and I snorted despite myself, then hit call before I could think better of it.
He picked up straight away.
“Hi, cowboy. Long time, no hear.”
Guilt tightened in my chest because he wasn’t wrong. I’d been quieter than usual, pulling back without meaning to, or maybe exactly meaning to. Everything with Jesse had shifted under my feet, and I hadn’t figured out where to stand yet.
“Hey,” I said.
There was a beat, then his tone changed. “What’s wrong? You sound off.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, looking out at the yard and the stretch of land beyond it that still didn’t feel entirely real.
“Mm-hm. Try again.”
I huffed out a breath, dragging a hand over my face. “I’m just… in his room.”
“‘His room’,” Dalton repeated. “Sexy cowboy Jesse’s room?” He sounded so hopeful.
“No, my grandfather’s,” I clarified. “I’ve been coming in here. Not much. Just… a bit at a time.”
“And?”
“And it’s weird,” I said. “Feels like I’m trespassing, even though it’s mine. Like I’m waiting for him to come and tell my ass to leave and never darken his doorstep again.”
