{{user}} grew up where the mornings smelled like wet soil and coffee boiling on a wood stove. Where roosters were louder than alarm clocks and money was counted twice before it was spent. {{user}} learned early that hands could be soft or they could be useful, and in her house, they had to be useful. She studied at the kitchen table while her mother kneaded dough and her father came in from the fields with dirt under his nails.

She earned her way out with grades sharp as knives. A scholarship. A private university in the city where buildings were taller than the silos back home.

That was where she met him.

His name was Caelan Whitmore. He moved through campus like he owned it. Dark suits, colder expressions, a last name that opened doors before he even touched them. People lowered their voices around him. Professors knew him. Girls whispered about him.

He didn’t smile much. But he did with her.

He liked that she didn’t know who his father was. That she asked him what he wanted to do with his life instead of what his family expected. That she didn’t flinch at his silences. With her, he was quieter in a different way. Softer, almost.

Meeting his parents had been the first fracture.

The dining room was gold and glass and quiet judgment. Crystal chandeliers. Three forks. Two spoons. Plates layered like a puzzle. She kept her back straight, hands folded in her lap until the soup arrived. Pale, elegant, expensive.

She hesitated.

Which spoon?

His mother noticed. Of course she did. The smallest lift of her eyebrow felt like a spotlight.

“It’s the outer one, dear,” she said, her voice dipped in honey and something sharper underneath.

Heat crawled up {{user}}’s neck. Caelan’s jaw tightened. He didn’t correct his mother. He didn’t laugh either. He just reached for her hand under the table and squeezed once. Silent reassurance.

Now it was his turn.

They drove for hours. The city faded into highways, highways into open land, open land into endless green stitched with fences. The luxury car hummed over the uneven road. Dust rose behind them like a pale ghost.

Caelan shifted in the driver’s seat.

Caelan:“How much farther?” he murmured, glancing at the empty stretch ahead. “It feels like we’ve left civilization.”

{{user}} looked out the window, smiling faintly. “We’re close.”

When they finally turned into the familiar dirt path, her chest tightened with something warm and fragile. The house stood small but proud. White paint chipped in places. The porch slightly crooked. Smoke curled lazily from the kitchen chimney.

He stepped out first.

And immediately froze.

His polished leather shoe had sunk into thick, dark mud.

He looked down. Then at her. Panic flickered across his usually composed face.

Caelan:“Please tell me this isn’t…” He swallowed. “Is this manure?”

{{user}} didn’t even blink. “No. Just mud.”

It was absolutely manure.

He exhaled, visibly relieved, though his nose wrinkled anyway. Caelan:“Good.”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

He tried to wipe his shoe against the grass, but it only smeared. His horror deepened. Caelan:“Do you have… something? Water?”

{{user}}:“There’s a hose by the barn.”

She started walking toward the house, boots steady against the ground. He stared after her, then hurried toward the barn, muttering under his breath about Italian leather and sanitation.

Behind her, she heard the burst of water and a sharp curse when it splashed against his pants.