“I won’t agree to sell, Lucas,” I said at last.
Lucas slid into the narrow space between the table andmy knees—close enough that I could feel his warmth—and leaned back against the edge of the table. One hand braced behind him, the other resting loosely at his side. He was softening, and the dark part of me wondered if it was a deliberate change of tactic to persuade me, but I was too tired to pretend I didn’t notice.
“If we sold outright,” he added, his voice lower, “I’d get sixty, maybe seventy million after tax, fees, and cleanup.” I stared at the floor. The numbers that slid past me were white noise. “I could fund safe housing,” he went on. “Programs in Denver. Outreach that actually sticks. Education, counseling, stability. I could change lives.”
“I get it,” I said, cutting in before he could gather momentum, because I loved him enough to understand why this mattered to him. I knew exactly what he was talking about, knew where that conviction came from and why it sat so deep in him, and the guilt hit hard and sudden for even needing to interrupt. I knew what those programs had done for him when no one else had stepped in, how they must have caught him when he was already falling, and understanding that didn’t mean I had to want this, didn’t mean I had to be ready to give up the only thing that had ever felt mine.
He nodded, accepting the interruption, but he didn’t move away.
“But,” Lucas said, softer now, “we’d be selling the ranch to fund something in the city. And I keep thinking—what if I’m looking at this the wrong way?”
I peered up at him. “What way?”
He straightened slightly, energy returning. “I instructedLowstat-Meyer to run alternative scenarios,” he said. “Conservative ones. If we carved off a limited parcel—no prime water, no core grazing land, no easement violations—we could sell around eleven thousand acres without destabilizing the operation. Which could bring in roughly ten to twelve million,” he said. “We invest it back here,” Lucas said. “We fix the cabins. Properly. Extend with more buildings, maybe. Then, this could be a place for kids who have nowhere,” he said. “Queer kids who’ve been thrown out. Kids aging out of care with no support. Unhoused teens who don’t trust systems but might trust horses, or the land.”
He looked back at me then, eyes bright, voice steady but threaded with something personal.
“We give them education and counseling opportunities. Skills. Structure without cages. A fresh start that doesn’t feel like charity,” he said, then hesitated, chewing at his lower lip before pushing on. “But not all of the cabins, or maybe we build more… I mean, not the whole place.”
“What do you mean?”
He lifted one shoulder in a small, self-conscious shrug. “We stay a working ranch as is, no one loses their livelihoods, then a portion of the cabins for those who need it most, and the other half expands, and we become a proper dude ranch like the ones in the plans you drew up for Walter.”
“You’ve seen those?”
“I did.” He gave a shy, almost hopeful smile. “Cabins fixed, new builds, trails mapped, horses worked. A place where city people pay good money to escape for a week and remember how to breathe. We bring in a marketing guy whocan fix up the website, make brochures, and get us on booking sites, maybe? Keep it low-volume, high-quality. No crowds. That side funds the refuge and keeps the ranch solvent.”
Silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t empty. Lucas’s thumb brushed my arm, tentative at first, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to do it, and I unfolded my arms to hold the fabric of his shirt, choosing each other even with this sitting between us.
I swallowed; my throat hurt. “Lucas?—”
“Horse therapy!” he said, words tumbling out of him now that he’d found momentum. “I mean, I read up on it, and it’s not just riding around in circles.”
I huffed out a breath despite myself. “Of course it’s not.”
“I’ve seen you with Boone,” Lucas said, the words coming faster now, less polished, more him. “I’ve watched the way that horse settles when you’re calm, and the way he pushes back when you’re not. You don’t talk much, but he listens anyway. You set a boundary, he respects it. You lose focus, he lets you know.”
“Okay.”
His hands moved as he spoke. “It works with teens and young adults who don’t trust, who flinch at questions, who shut down the second someone tries to get inside their head.”
“Come here,” I murmured, tugging him away from the table. Without meaning to, this had become how we found our way through hard things—bodies first, then trusting the words would follow. I helped him straddle my lap, which he did without argument, only one wince of pain.
“Jesse,” he whispered, his breath warm against my skin as he curled into my neck, arms sliding around me as if he needed the contact to get the words out. “I love you.”
I tipped my head just enough to press my mouth to his hair. “I love you too.”
“I want to find a way through this,” he said, pulling back a fraction, his hands gripping my shoulders before loosening again. “I want?—”
“What?” I asked quietly.
He swallowed, forehead dropping to mine. “I want to stay. I want you. I wantus.”
My heart skipped, and something changed inside me. Love made room where there hadn’t been any before, made everything feel possible. “Where are the acres you want to sell?”
“East of the ridge, down to the road?” He phrased it as a question and half-hopeful, his gaze flicking up to mine and then away again as if he wasn’t quite ready to own the idea. I huffed a quiet laugh, because of course that was the stretch he meant—the site of the almost-dying incident and land we couldn’t really use for much of anything practical anyway.
“And this company has people who actually want that?”
