Jesse
Imade it back to the stables just before dark, and Lucas seemed to be waiting for me, sitting on a hay bale with Mouse in his lap.
That was the first time I’d ever seen Mouse deign to interact with a human—seemed Lucas had a magic touch with both the most private barn cat of them all and me.
I leaned down to give him a kiss, aware I smelled of cow shit and sweat, but he kissed me anyway.
“I have something to show you when you’re done,” he said, standing with Mouse in his arms.
“I’ll fix Boone, get a shower, be in soon, yeah?”
“Can I stay and watch you work with Boone?”
“Sure, City, you can watch.” Sue me if I didn’t flex every muscle I’d honed through ranch work, and if I stole a couple of kisses along the way, that wasn’t my fault because Lucas was my addiction.
He watched me tend to Boone—fussing over the big baby cat that refused to leave him alone—and followed me back to the house, and as much as I suggested he join me in the shower, he clearly had something on his mind.
He said he’d wait for me in the kitchen, looking determined, and I got the awful feeling that we were going to end up having a fight over Snow Creek.
Lucas didn’t ease into whatever he wanted to talk about.
“I’m not selling,” I said from the door, “it doesn’t matter what we are.” Because what we were was already dangerous, and I didn’t trust myself not to choose him over the ranch if I let it go any further.
“Shhh, Cowboy,” he said and set his laptop on the table, turned it so the screen faced the chair I typically sat in, and gestured for me to sit down. My first instinct was that this was the endgame, and I wanted to keep my feet under me and my options open, but then, he smiled at me.
“Please? It won’t take long.”
I grumbled and huffed, but those puppy dog eyes seemed to have a power over me I didn’t understand. I dragged the chair out and sat, folding my arms to give my hands something to do.
He stayed standing. Not looming, but edgy.
The screen was already showing a presentation. Black background. White text. Snow Creek Ranch on the front and a small line at the bottom of the slide: Lowstat-Meyer Advisory Group.
“This is what’s left of their report, after I stripped out all the padding,” Lucas said. “The conclusions are theirs, not mine, but I added some extra things based on my observations.”
My heart hurt. He wanted to sell. He was going to destroy my life and the lives of so many others.
How could I love a man who wanted to do this? And yeah, I loved him. He was sunshine, and I needed him so badly it hurt. But… how could I be thinking everything would be okay? Focus!
He rested one hand on the table, the other on the trackpad, and I caught the way his fingers flexed, the faint tension there, as if he was bracing himself even while leaning in. Oh fuck, what was he going to say?
He clicked, and a page appeared with the words Baseline Assessment.
“Lowstat-Meyer started their analysis based on ninety-five thousand acres.”
I felt a familiar flare of irritation rise, and with it the urge to stand up and shut this down before it went any further. I must be a sucker for punishment to watch him try to persuade me to sell, because I stayed where I was, eyes on the screen.
The next slide showed a land profile, along with a familiar map of the property.
“High elevation,” Lucas said, his voice steady. “Short grazing season. Snow retention into late spring. Large sections of rocky or broken ground, particularly out near the ridge. Usable, but inefficient. Their terms, not mine.”
“Well, fuck them and the horse they rode in on,” I grumbled.
He glanced at me briefly. “They classify it as operational land, not premium,” he added. “Which matters when you’re talking resale.”
He clicked again, a fraction too quickly, on a screen titled water access, and I winced because I knew what it would say.
“Non-senior rights,” he continued. “Primary reliance on seasonal runoff and deep wells. Several legacy agreements restrict usage. In dry years, water security is fragile. From their valuation standpoint,” he went on, “that caps growth and increases risk for them, because buyers discount heavily for uncertainty.”
Another click, this time legal constraints.
“There are conservation easements across multiple tracts,” Lucas said.
“Protected wildlife corridors.” He shifted his weight, clearing his throat, the faintest tell that he was pushing as well as presenting.
“The infrastructure is solid but aging, with long distances between water points. Roads that require constant repair. This operation is land-rich and cash-limited.”
“We turn a profit every year,” I defended.
“I know, I’ve seen the books.” He paused. “But ongoing cost is one of the reasons they flagged selling as a rational option for me.”
There it was. Clean. Clinical. Still landed like a shove.
I felt the pull again, the instinct to get up and walk out, to put space between myself and the way he was framing this as arithmetic instead of blood and ground.
Please leave it, Lucas. You’re breaking my heart.
“I don’t need to hear this—”
“You do. Listen to me, please.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, his breath warm familiar against my skin, and his blue eyes were bright with emotion.
Then, he clicked again. “Lowstat-Meyer looked at conservation-aligned investment, or parceling it out to legacy purchasers who aren’t looking to develop, just to hold, and it dropped the value a whole load, but…”
The final slide came up.
ESTIMATED CURRENT MARKET VALUE - $85–95 MILLION
I stared at the number, waiting for the surge of emotion that our lives here were reduced to a number, but what came instead was a dull, grinding awareness of how neatly it all lined up for Lucas.
Why would he want to stay here? This wasn’t his blood in the soil; this was just a stepping stone to money.
He was only here for a few more months before the inheritance became real, before this place stopped being temporary for him and started being something he could choose to walk away from, even if I still blocked the sale.
He was still talking, and I tuned back in.
“… achievable for us to sell. On paper, that means you would receive north of twenty million for your twenty-five percent share. Selling was the sensible move for me, because when I came here, I had no attachment to the land, and projects I could fund with the money.”
I nodded once, because it seemed to be what was expected of me, though the words had lodged somewhere between my chest and my throat and wouldn’t come out. My mouth felt dry, my head oddly light, as if the room had shifted an inch to the left, leaving me struggling to catch up.
Lucas shut the laptop. “So that’s the report,” he said, and the words mattered less than the fact he hadn’t moved away.
I stayed seated, the room feeling tighter than before, not because of the figure on the screen, but because of how clearly Lucas had framed the exit.
“I won’t agree to sell, Lucas,” I said at last.
Lucas slid into the narrow space between the table and my 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 instructed Lowstat-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?”