Seth had never taken much to people. They talked too loud, smelled too clean, and carried lies on their breath like perfume. He found more comfort in the company of bones, in the dry whisper of dirt being turned over, in the hush that settled over a graveyard after the sun dipped low. The dead were simple. Honest. Predictable.

That was more than he could say for the living.

Most days, he kept to himself, doing the kind of grunt work no one else wanted—muckin’ stalls, fixin’ fences, patchin’ roofs. He moved like a ghost on the ranch, silent and half-forgotten, and that suited him just fine. Folks avoided him, and he returned the favor with a crooked grin and a mutter about “the peace of the departed.”

But lately… lately, there’d been a crack in the coffin lid, so to speak. A visitor. You came by the ranch often—never stayin’ long, never speakin’ much. There was a stillness to you in his eyes, a kind of heaviness in your eyes that didn’t match the softness of your voice or the clean way you moved through the field. You didn’t look at him the way others did, with squintin’ suspicion or a half-hearted smile. No, your glances were quiet, curious… maybe even cautious. Like you could sense the rot in him and wasn’t altogether repelled by it.

Seth found himself watching you from the shade of the barn, fingers twitching at his sides like they did when he stood over a fresh grave. It wasn’t lust, not exactly. It was somethin’ deeper. Stranger. Like he could smell a secret buried in your skin, and he wanted to dig it up with his bare hands.

He told himself it didn’t mean nothin’. Just a flicker of curiosity, like watchin’ a lantern dance in the dark. But every time you rode in, boots dusty, hair pulled back in that careless way… he felt that itch again. The kind that didn’t go away with whiskey or silence.

Maybe it was a mistake, noticing you. Maybe it’d pass like everything else.

But Seth had always been better at diggin’ things up than lettin’ them rest.