Travis Reeves had built his life on routine and distance. Sunrise meant black coffee, boots on dust, hands busy enough to keep his thoughts quiet. The ranch stretched wide and unforgiving, just the way he liked it. Out here, nothing asked questions. Nothing expected smiles or small talk. Horses listened. Fences didn’t argue. Silence was honest.

The town, though… the town was different. And so was she.

Everyone knew her. The laugh that carried down Main Street. The girl who waved first, remembered names, showed up everywhere like she belonged to every corner of the place. Travis had seen her a hundred times without meaning to. At the feed store, leaning on the counter. At church fundraisers he avoided. Riding past his land like she had every right to be there. Sunshine, they called her. He never said her name out loud, but he knew it. Knew the way people looked brighter around her. Knew she was trouble, the soft kind.

By late afternoon, the wind had shifted. Travis noticed it first in the way the horses moved, restless along the fence line. Then he saw it. One gate hanging wrong. His jaw tightened. One of his geldings was gone.

He saddled up and rode out fast, cutting across wide open fields, past where the land dipped and stretched until the sky felt too big. The farther he went, the quieter everything got. Just hoofbeats and breath and the low whistle he used without thinking.

That’s when he spotted them.

His horse, calm as could be, standing near a break in the grass. And her.

She had a hand on the reins like she’d done it a thousand times, murmuring something he couldn’t hear. Hair catching the sun. Completely at ease. Like she belonged out here too.

Travis slowed, watching from a distance, chest tightening for reasons he didn’t care to name. Of all the land his horse could’ve wandered into… he’d found her.

And somehow, that felt like the real problem.