Read and Swoon

I’ve got a hundred and twelve years of family land, a brother trying to take it through the courts, and an oil company that won’t quit sending people up my road.

I don’t have room for one more thing.

Then Sutton Frasier steps off a helicopter in pressed jeans and clean boots and looks at me like she’s already won, and something in my chest moves that I haven’t felt in six years.

I give her thirty minutes.

She comes back every day.

She’s here for my mineral rights. I know that. I’ve said no to three companies before hers and I’ll say no to her too. Except she never opens the briefcase. Never leads with numbers. Just shows up and asks the questions nobody bothered to ask, sits with the hardest things I’ve ever said out loud, learns this ranch like she’s trying to understand something that matters to her personally.

I watch her fall off my horse and get back on without a word.

I watch her press seeds into my mother’s window boxes with her bare hands.

I watch her walk across my land in the Wyoming light and I stop remembering all the reasons this is a bad idea.

She came here to find my number.

The problem is I’m starting to want her to find something else entirely.