Page 55 of Midnight Surrounds Us

“Oh really?” His eyebrows pitched up in surprise. “Who’s the unlucky woman?”

“You don’t know her. She lives in Wisper.”

“I go to town just like everybody else up in this place.”

“I don’t kiss and tell. Oreatand tell.” I smirked at him, and he shook his head, but then I realized I could come clean with Presley. He was one of my best friends. “Her name’s Aubrey.”

“So, she’s what’s up?” he asked again.

“Yeah, she’s part of it. Listen, I wanna talk to you about somethin’.”

“Shoot.”

“What would you say if I told you I’d like to buy my own ranch and start up the alternative agriculture program I keep dronin’ on about?”

“I’d say you’d lost your mind.”

“Call me crazy then. I’m doin’ it.”

“You invited a guest?’Mama asked when I told her Aubrey would be arriving soon. “Ryder, that’s rude. You should’ve asked me first.”

“I invited Aubrey, mygirlfriend. I thought that’s what you wanted. Besides, it’s my birthday, but I apologize for the late notice.”

“Don’t backtalk your mama,” my dad said, like I was nine years old, as he snagged a beer from the cooler he kept set atop the kitchen counter.

No matter how many wine and beer fridges he could afford, that beat-up plastic beer trap drove my mama nuts every day of her life. The bags of ice he bought every week and kept in the deep freezer in the garage to fill the cooler didn’t make her much happier, but Dad said the beer tasted better from a cooler.

“Well,” she said, sliding the roast back into the oven after she tested the temp with a meat thermometer. “That’s fine, I s’pose, but Marta’s already gone home, and I’m not prepared for guests. I didn’t set the table or even sweep the floors. What will she think?”

“She’ll think you’ve been busy, just like she has, and she’ll be gracious and thankful that you made dinner, just like I am.”

Mama grumbled something, but then we heard a knock on my parents’ front door, and now Ifeltlike a nine-year-old on Christmas, my pretty present waiting for me to grab her and hug her so hard she’d break, but then I’d just fix her right back up and do it all over again.

I had plans to break her and build her back upallnight long.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AUBREY

Rye answered his parents’door when I knocked, but his mama pushed past him to grip my hands and pull me inside.

The bag over my shoulder containing the bottle of red wine I’d picked up at the Liquor Depot in Wisper slipped down my arm, and for a second, I panicked, imagining walking into Calla Graves’s home and then dropping the bottle and spilling middle-of-the-aisle Merlot all over her expensive Brazilian walnut floors.

Grady Graves Sr. stood several paces behind his wife, looking irritable and put out. Rye’s parents reminded me of the well-known painting,American Gothic, the one with the strict farmer holding a pitchfork, standing next to his daughter, who I’d always thought was his wife, like a scene fromThe Grapes of Wrath.

But the Graveses’ home was nothing at all like one the Joads would’ve lived in. It was grand and featured shiny, impossibly tall, waxed-log walls.

Taking up most of a focus wall in the great room, the decadent fireplace had been made with large, polished stones, and the enormous, long-horn skull above it felt excessive, like some kind of display to speak to the Graveses’ wealth andstanding within the Wyoming cattle community, but did I really need a desiccated cow head to tell me that?

Suddenly, the old cowboy boots I’d dug through my closet to find because I thought they’d be appropriate on a cattle ranch didn’t seem to fit this gilded wooden castle that looked like it came straight out ofMountain Livingmagazine.

Whiskey colored couches and pale-gold fabric armchairs surrounded a classic and ornate Persian rug. Hand-carved wooden end tables bookended the long couch, and there were enough trinkets and expensive knick-knacks expertly placed around the room that Rye’s mama could’ve started her own gift shop if she wanted to.

Simple art hung on the walls, from a beautiful Native American blanket hand-woven in oranges, white, and reds, to large monotone photographs of what I assumed was Graves land, framed in a similar wood to the end tables. And in the middle of it all sat a knotted-wood-style coffee table that looked big enough for me to sleep on. How the hell had they gotten that thing into their living room? It had to weigh a ton and looked to have been cut from the base of a five-hundred-year-old redwood tree.

I saw excess everywhere I looked, though Rye’s mama had made an effort to keep her home’s decoration understated and not too flashy, but still, it was clear the Graves family had money. I’d known that. Rye had said it, but I’d had no clue just how affluent his family was now. The house hadn’t been this big or fabulous when I was here in my teens and early twenties. They’d added onto it and shined it up nice and pretty.

“Come in, come in,” Calla said, pulling harder. “Welcome. Forgive the mess. I was only informed five minutes ago that we’d be entertainin’ tonight.”

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