Page 4 of Midnight Surrounds Us

“I tried talkin’ to him again about changin’ up the way we do shit here.” I sighed, but as I mounted Blue, I winced and then admitted, “And I might’ve, sorta, contacted one of those farms I told you about up in Oregon. The owner called him yesterday to try to talk to him about regenerative farming and all its benefits. You shoulda seen his face. I thought his eyeballs were gonna pop out of his skull. But in my defense, that guy took it upon himself. I didn’t ask him to call.”

Presley laughed. “Oh, Rye. When you gonna learn? Your dad has no plans to change this ranch. You know that. Why won’t you give it up?”

Blue stomped his hooves into the dirt. If the horse could talk, he’d say, “Let’s fuckin’ go!”

“The old man likes money, right?”

“Yeah,” Presley agreed, “he sure does, but he makes plenty the way things are now.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Pres, if we made some changes, there’s a whole world of customers out there who’d pay double what we charge now. Everything’s changin’. People wanna feel good about what they eat. They wanna know their food ain’t killin’ the planet.Weshould want to know that. We should be able to look out at this land every mornin’ and be proud that we’re protectin’ it and the animals and that we’re doin’ more good than harm.”

I shrugged. “Ain’t like it’s hard. It’s the way things used to be done, before crop yield and numbers became more important than the food we put in our mouths or the air we breathe. I mean, yeah, we’d need to hire more cowboys, and we’d work harder for a few years than we probably ever have, but then it’d pay off. He’s just stubborn, and he don’t wanna pay out the initial investment. He’s bein’ bullheaded.”

“Yeah,” Presley said, laughing, “and he’s got his horns aimed right at your ass this mornin’. C’mon, let’s get to that fence. No sense in makin’ the man irate before the weekend. He’ll stew the next couple days and just be a bigger asshole come Monday.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed, and I clicked my tongue twice, nudging Blue with my boots into a trot.

My horse knew it was almost the weekend too. He protested the slow pace with a kick of his hind legs and a bratty whinny, but then he switched into high gear, pushed into a run, and we raced west, with the Wyoming Range in front of us calling us forward and the rising sun at our backs.

After work,I headed to my little house half a mile behind my parents’.

I needed a break from my dad’s attitude. He’d been at it all day, and I could only take it so long.

It had been a couple weeks since I’d driven the fifty miles up to Wisper to visit my uncle and see my friends, so that was my plan for the next couple days. If I didn’t get off this ranch and away from the disappointment I knew my parents had in me, I’d lose my shit.

The only thing I’d ever done wrong was being the last son born to a successful first-generation cattle rancher. Apparently, it was a sin I’d never escape. Everyone knew the high accolades and honors went to the firstborn.

I grabbed a shower, pulled on a fresh pair of skivvies and jeans, and as I grabbed my hat from the hook by my front door, someone knocked on it.

Having my own place was the key to being able to work alongside my dad every day. It wasn’t much, just a small living room, an even smaller kitchen, a tiny bathroom with a standing shower, and my bedroom. No damn closet. But it was all mine. That I’d built it with my own two hands and Presley’s and some of the summer cowboys’ help made it even sweeter.

“Ryder?” my mama said through the door, though I knew she was itching to barge in. “You in there?”

We’d had to have several conversations about boundaries and privacy when she walked in on me drinking beer and watching Rodeo championships on TV in my underwear, but another one couldn’t hurt.

“Yes, ma’am. Comin’.”

When I opened the door, she pushed right into my sacred space, holding a metal Thermos and a brown paper bag. She set them on the end table next to my couch, then straightened with her hands on her hips.

“Why do you antagonize your daddy? You know how he is.”

“Antagonizehim?” I said, trying not to show her just how much her lack of trust in me hurt.

She was as supportive of my ideas as my dad was. If either of them had a rational reason for dismissing what I’d proposed, I could understand. But they disagreed because it wasmeproposing a new idea. Grady and Calla Graves’s baby boy couldn’t possibly have an intelligent thought in his head. No way. His brothers, they were the geniuses of the family. Too bad they’d both ditched their family just as soon as they could have after they graduated from school.

I was the one who stuck around. It was me busting my ass on a daily basis, trying to keep the cash my dad liked so much flowing in on the regular, fixing shit when it broke, caring for the animals. But in my parents’ eyes, I was just the muscle. Another employee.

I could’ve gone off to school like my brothers. The opportunity had been there, but I chose not to. Ranching was my life. I learned it from my dad, lived it with him. I didn’t need a college degree or some professor in a classroom to tell me how to know if an animal was sick or the land was. That shit came naturally to me. It always had. Just ’cause my idea was a little progressive—it wasn’t like I was some environmentalist douche going around spouting off all the ways the world should work but never giving real-life solutions.

Now, the business stuff, that was another matter entirely. But I’d been reading up on it.

It seemed funny to me that my parents looked down their noses at my brothers for leaving, but they looked down on me ’cause I hadn’t.

How did that make a lick of fucking sense?

If I didn’t stand to inherit the whole outfit, minus the shares I’d give my brothers unless my dad really had written me out of his will, I probably would’ve escaped this place too. But was running Graves & Sons enough anymore? My sanity and autonomy kept telling me no.

My loyal heart said otherwise.

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