Chapter 33 Levi #2
Me and Cooper were standing just outside the front door.
Evening had settled on the landscape. Nelly had been quiet at dinner, now she was standing on the porch, leaning against a column with her arms crossed.
She was lost in thought, watching Sagebrush breathe.
As much as I wanted to know her thoughts, I was too scared to ask.
What if the only thing on her mind was how soon she could leave?
“Do you want to go see the new house? It’s nearly done, Nell. You’re going to love it.” Cooper spoke, trying to think of new ways to entice her to stay. I knew that was the case, because it was the only reason most of us spoke since she arrived. Make her comfortable. Make her happy. Make her stay.
Nelly shook her head. “I’m not ready for that.”
“We can just walk around the outside of it? You can look in windows?” He pressed, each suggestion a hopeful question.
“I’m going to go see Ghost,” she responded, walking off the covered porch and heading towards the stables.
“Mind if I join you?” I asked quickly, before Cooper could. He flashed me a look, but I pointedly avoided his gaze. I didn’t want him to come.
“I don’t mind,” she said neutrally, not looking back at us.
Progress. Every time she chose to be around us. Every time she let us get so close. Was progress. Maybe she’d fall in love with Sagebrush. Maybe she’d stay.
Yet each step forward, each sign that gave us aching hope, came with the same refrain: "I'm still leaving when Eros responds."
Like the Dread Pirate in that one movie Cooper’s made us watch a dozen times.
What did the character always say? Something like, “Good job. Sleep well. I’ll probably kill you tomorrow.
” Except, in our case, it was, “Nice dinner.
Admirable effort trying to keep me, but I'll most likely leave the second Eros emails. "
No email yet.
Thank, God.
She asked every day.
What the hell would we do when the Institute’s response finally arrived.
What the hell would she do?
I broke another fucking pencil.
That one went properly into the trash, but I didn’t bother to address the other two snapped halves from earlier—one still tossed on the desk, the other somewhere on the floor.
I reached for another from the chipped mug I used as a holder.
The ledger waited, patient and unforgiving.
I shook my head. Redundant or not, I’d do my job.
I’d keep being meticulous, focused Levi, making sure every cent was put to bed properly.
Straight lines, supporting numbers written by a perfectionist hand.
But as I stared down at the rows of descriptions and dates and figures, all I could see was Nelly's guarded, determined, beautiful face.
It made my chest ache. The walls she tried to maintain were formidable, but I'd glimpsed what lay behind them in rare, unguarded moments.
A fierceness. A vulnerability. A capacity for joy that had been beaten down but not extinguished.
What would it take to break through those final barriers? To make her see that what we offered wasn't captivity but belonging? That she could have a home here, with us—with me—if she chose it?
I sighed and closed the ledger, pushing it away from me across the desk. The task was hopeless tonight. My brain refused to cooperate, refused to focus on anything but her.
Standing, I stretched my back, hearing the satisfying pop of vertebrae realigning after hours hunched over paperwork. The house was silent around me, everyone else long asleep. I checked my watch—1:37 AM. Christ.
I stepped out of the office, easing the door closed behind me. The hallway was dark, but I knew every inch of this place by heart. My feet carried me silently past the living room, through the kitchen, and to the back door. Maybe some night air would clear my head.
The porch creaked under my weight as I settled onto the top step.
The Wyoming sky stretched above me, vast and glittering with stars.
The same stars Nelly had been marveling at the other night.
I wondered if she was looking at them now from the window in Cooper’s room, unable to sleep like me.
Or was she staring at the ceiling, thinking of Seattle and ballet studio and everything she'd lost?
The moon hung low and full, casting silver light across the yard. In its glow, I could make out the stables, where Nelly had spent nearly an hour earlier, just talking to the mare while she thought no one was watching.
I dropped my head into my hands, exhausted by wanting something, with someone, that I wasn't sure I could ever have.
Nelly was something that couldn’t be gained by good addition.
She couldn’t be forced into line by creative accounting.
We couldn’t buy her with Cooper’s fortune.
We couldn’t barter for her heart, like we used to on very tough months when the bank was dry and the livestock needed essentials.
The sound the door whining open softly broke through my footsteps. I froze, unwilling to believe that the light, hesitant footsteps which followed were hers.
Her scent reached me before she spoke, that subtle flower shop sweetness that had been driving me crazy since she arrived.
"Can't sleep either?" Nelly's voice ribboned out into the darkness, punctuating the night with a new constellation of stars. Each syllable glittered above me, making the sky more beautiful simply because now she stood beneath it with me.
My heart skipped, then raced to catch up. "Numbers keep me up sometimes."
That was a lie. It wasn’t the numbers. It would never be the numbers again now that she was here.
She came into view beside me, but she kept a few inches of space between us. Her hair was loose, falling in waves past her shoulders. The cool glow of night robbed the fire from the strands, turning them almost platinum.
"Numbers?" she asked.
"Ranch accounts." I gestured vaguely toward the house. "Someone has to keep track of what we spend on hay versus what we make on beef. Honestly, it’s not as important as it used to be. We’ve got money to burn."
She moved back out of view, and I thought I might die.
I turned, finding her sitting on one of the rocking chairs now.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
The oversized flannel shirt she wore slipped off one shoulder.
"I've never had a head for numbers," she admitted. "My mind doesn't work that way."
"How does it work?" The question slipped out before I could consider whether it was too personal. I moved to sit in the rocker next to her, feeling impossibly tense, like I was standing at a cliff’s edge waiting for a savage push.
Nelly didn't seem to mind answering. "Through movement. When I need to solve a problem, I dance it out. Or I used to." A shadow passed across her face. "Now I just pace a lot… and get angry."
The casual reference to her lost career landed like a stone in still water, ripples of implications spreading outward.
How much had she lost before she even came here?
I thought of what she'd told us about her injury, about Imperial Ballet rejecting her comeback attempt. About turning to stripping to pay bills when her dream collapsed. She’d given us small morsels of insight, injected into casual conversations.
The resilience required to survive that—to keep moving forward when everything you'd built your identity around was stripped away—staggered me.
"Sometimes I think I'm the opposite," I said, offering something of myself in return, trying to help her not fall down the rabbit hole of grief. "When I need to think, I go completely still."
Her curious eyes met mine. "Like meditation?"
"Not exactly. More like..." I searched for the right words. "Like I need to remove all external input to hear what's happening in my head. I sometimes think I need a sensory deprivation chamber."
She nodded slowly. "Makes sense for someone who works with numbers. But dance isn’t quiet.
It’s visual. You can’t stand still and figure out how to move your body to match choreography.
There’s a beat you follow to keep your rhythm even if the music’s turned off, because,” she tapped her forehead, “the chords are always up here.”
“I’d like to see you dance sometime, Nelly,” I breathed out the words, brain beginning to construct her on a stage. I built the view brick-by-brick, until she was twirling in a blur, that soundless beat leading her movements.
Her eyes darted away from mine, focusing on something beyond the porch railing. "I don't want to dance anymore," she said, voice flat. "That part of my life is over. I’m not going to try again. Club Midnight was my last shot."
The finality in her tone made my chest tighten. I wanted to argue, to tell her that talents like hers don't just disappear with injury, but I knew better than to push. Instead, I let silence settle between us, broken only by the soft creak of the rocking chairs and the distant call of a nighthawk.
"What are you really doing up this late?" she asked suddenly, changing the subject. "It can't just be ranch accounts keeping you awake."
I hesitated, caught between honesty and self-preservation. "Thinking about the future," I finally said. It wasn't exactly a lie.
"The future of the ranch?"
"Among other things." I couldn't bring myself to say the truth—
That I was thinking about two futures, and nothing much else these days.
A future in which she stayed.
And a future in which… she didn’t.