Lucas
The next morning, the dining room was already alive when I got there, a good two hours after Jesse had left the bed. He’d gone way too early to fix something that needed fixing, but he was at the table now, hat off, and he glanced up with a smile when he saw me.
“Morning.”
“Morning,” I said, and headed to Ruth, asking for the same thing I always asked for—an egg white omelet—and she always gave me scrambled, but at least it wasn’t as gray anymore.
“Sit down, I’ll bring it over.”
“Thank you,” I said and went to sit facing Jesse.
He wasn’t out to the crew, and sitting beside him wasn’t an option—not when all I wanted to do was touch him, which was absurd.
His not saying anything was exactly right.
Whatever this was between us already felt as if we’d crossed lines that didn’t need naming in front of the ranch hands.
Ruth appeared at my side and put down a plate in front of me. A thick omelet oozing with cheese. She eyed me over the rim of her glasses. “I won’t do that white thing,” she said. “It’s the whole egg or nothing,” she went on, unmoved by me blinking at her. “You need feeding up.”
That was it. No invitation to argue. No space to explain.
“Thank you. It looks… wow.”
She gave me a nod and headed back to the stove, and I caught Jesse’s mouth twitching. I sat and ate because it was the most perfect omelet I’d ever eaten.
Miguel was animated this morning, his hands moving as he talked, and I tuned in as he was telling Jesse something at a mile a minute, “…and if we rotate the south herd earlier next year, let that grass recover, we could push weights up before winter. And year three,” he glanced at Jesse, eyes bright, “we bring in a few more head. Not many. Just enough to make it worth the extra fencing.”
Jesse listened quietly, the way he did when any of the hands spoke to him. He nodded once. “Means more feed through January.”
“Yeah, but better prices if we time the sale right,” Miguel shot back. “And if the calves take well—”
Jesse lifted his mug. “Slow down. One thing at a time.”
Miguel grinned, undeterred. “I’m just saying. There’s room to grow.”
I lowered my head and concentrated on my omelet, cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces, eating slower than necessary. I was already planning for there not being a year two. Or a year three. No herd expansion. No careful timing. Just an end date that none of them mentioned.
Jake leaned back in his chair and hooked a thumb toward the door. “Gunner, you hear back about that bay yet?”
Gunner shook his head. “Owner’s still pretending he doesn’t know what he’s got.”
Jake snorted. “He knows. He just doesn’t want to admit he’s selling because the horse won’t settle.”
“He’s young,” Gunner said. “Good bones, though. Nice shoulders.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Jake replied. “Give him a year, proper handling, and he’ll come good. I’ve got my eye on him.”
Gunner raised a brow. “You’ve got your eye on half the horses west of Denver.”
“Only the ones worth having,” Jake said easily. “This one’s different.”
“What’s special about this horse?” Miguel asked.
Jake rolled his shoulder, considering. “He’s smart,” he said finally. “Too smart for the rancher who’s got him now. A horse like that gets bored, starts acting up, and people think he’s trouble. He’s not. He just needs work. Consistency.”
Gunner nodded slowly. “He watches everything.”
“Exactly,” Jake said. “You put time into him, give him a job, he’ll give it back tenfold. You can’t rush that kind of animal.”
Miguel frowned slightly, thinking it through. “So, you wouldn’t work him hard straight off?”
“No,” Jesse said simply. “I’d let him settle. See what he is before you decide what you want him to be.”
Jake leaned back in his chair, considering. “He’s sound,” he added. “You rush him or change hands too fast, you’ll break what’s good in him.”
I loved listening to the ranch talk, the easy shorthand of it, the way everyone here knew their place without having to defend it.
They talked about cattle and horses the way other people talked about family, with history folded into every sentence.
If I’d come here when I’d been younger, if my grandfather had answered the phone instead of Abel, or fought harder to be part of my life, or not listened to what my mom told him, then maybe this would have been my education too.
I might have been sitting here like Miguel, absorbing it all without thinking, learning from men who understood the land and the animals because they’d spent their lives earning that understanding.
It felt wrong to reduce all of this to numbers.
I can’t take this away from any of them.
The thought arrived fully formed, unwelcome, and impossible to ignore.
“Wanted to say something,” Jesse said after a pause in the conversation. He didn’t rush it. He waited, quiet and solid, until everyone was looking at him. “I’m gay.”
For half a heartbeat, the room went still. Not tense. Just paused, as if everyone was deciding how much weight the moment deserved.
Miguel nodded first, easy as anything. “Same.”
Jake shrugged, clearly unconcerned, but his eyes flicked between Jesse and me before he could stop himself.
One eyebrow went up, slow and knowing, and heat rushed straight to my face.
I dropped my gaze to the table, suddenly aware of my hands, my breathing, the way my heart kicked hard against my ribs.
Gunner leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Well, duh. You’ve been, y’know…” He pointed at me, then at Jesse, made a loop with one hand and poked his index finger through it, grinning when Miguel nodded along.
“It’s cute,” Miguel added, then clapped a hand over his mouth as if he’d said too much.
Colt huffed a laugh. “More gorgeous women for me then,” he said, easy and joking.
Jesse cleared his throat. “And yeah, Lucas and I have been…”
“Oh, we know,” Colt said.
And that was it. No awkward silence. No questions.
No one looked at Jesse as if he’d changed, or at me as if I were something different.
The conversation picked back up, the world kept turning, and I sat there trying to get my head around how something that felt enormous inside my chest had landed so quietly in the room.
Seemed it had never been a big deal at all—except to me.
“You sleeping with the boss to make him agree to sell this place?” Colt asked.
I winced internally but tried not to react.
“That’s out of line,” Jesse snapped, although he didn’t sound convinced, and I hated that for us.
“Sorry, boss, but y’know, it’s a question we’re all thinking. No disrespect, Lucas.”
“None taken,” I lied. “And I’m with Jesse because… jeez, I’m not talking about this. And for the ranch, I’m working on possibilities,” I said after a moment, the statement almost as big as Jesse’s announcement that he was gay, and he was sleeping with me. Or not sleeping, as it happened.
Jesse drained his mug and set it down, the casual moment snapping neatly into work. “Okay,” he said, already standing, “Miguel, can you add the south pasture to your checks today, make sure that float valve is still behaving in the water trough.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Jake, can you get a call in to the veterinarian?”
“On it, boss.”
They both left, and as soon as the coast was clear and Ruth had gone into the back of the kitchen, I stole a kiss. “You told them.”
“I did.”
“They didn’t care.”
“Nope.”
I cradled his face, went up on tiptoes, and kissed him.
“So, calling the vet out, it’s not Boone that’s ill, is it?” I’d gotten fond of Boone with his head bumps and gentle ways, particularly since he’d carried me back from the whole nearly-dying-on-a-bluff incident.
“Boone’s good,” Jesse said, “regular checks on all the horses is all.” He paused then, gaze flicking to me for a brief second before he moved past close enough that his shoulder brushed mine.
I finished eating and stood, the room already shifting back into motion around me, and wondered when my reason for being here had started to feel like something else entirely.
I didn’t name it. Naming it would change things, and I wasn’t ready to admit how much I didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t about money anymore.
Leaving wasn’t the solution. I knew in my heart that even if this didn’t resolve the way I wanted, I wasn’t walking away.
Not from Jesse.
Not from the man I’d fallen in love with.