Updated Mar 22, 2026 • ~4 min read
Chapter 1: Mud
WREN
The rental car went in up to the axles about forty feet from the gate.
Not on the gate, not past the gate — forty feet short of it, in a stretch of red Texas mud that had looked, from a distance, like ordinary ground and had turned out to be something closer to a trap. The wheels spun. Wren pressed the gas. The wheels spun more. The car settled another inch into the earth with a sound she would describe, if she were writing about it, as resigned.
She sat there for a moment.
She had been awake since 4:15am Chicago time. She had taken a flight to Austin, a connecting flight to a smaller airport that barely warranted the name, and then driven four hours on roads that narrowed progressively until she was on what the GPS cheerfully called a county road and which was, in practical terms, a suggestion. She had found the gate. She had turned the corner and promptly lost her vehicle to a puddle.
She was going to write this into the piece. She was already writing it in her head. *The first thing Hargrove Ranch teaches you,* she would write, *is that the land is not on your side.*
She got out of the car.
The heat was enormous. Chicago in August was hot; Texas in August was something else entirely, a particular aggressive warmth that came from every direction and suggested that shade was theoretical. She stood on the mud shelf next to her rear wheel and surveyed the situation and pulled out her phone to see if there was a number to call.
There was a truck.
It had appeared at the gate — a dark green pickup, dusty and work-worn, engine idling with the unhurried quality of something that had nowhere urgent to be. Behind the wheel: a man in a grey t-shirt and a hat with the brim pulled down, watching her.
He did not get out.
She watched him not get out.
He watched her watch him.
She counted, silently: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven —
The truck door opened.
He climbed out with the specific economy of someone for whom this was a minor inconvenience rather than an emergency, reached behind the seat for a tow strap, and walked toward her. He was larger than she’d expected from the magazine’s background research — broad-shouldered and unhurried, moving like a man who knew exactly how much of the ground was his. The hat shaded his face until he was close enough that she could see it: early thirties, strong jaw, the kind of tan that came from years outside rather than an afternoon on a deck.
He looked at the car.
He looked at her.
“Forty feet,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Gate’s forty feet back.” He crouched to look at the wheel. “You didn’t make it forty feet.”
“The mud wasn’t visible from—”
“It’s always there after rain.” He stood. “Which was yesterday.”
She looked at him.
He was not smiling. He was not frowning, either — his expression was the particular neutral of a man who had formed an opinion and was choosing not to share it, which was somehow worse than the opinion itself.
“I’m Wren Porter,” she said. “From—”
“I know who you are.” He was attaching the strap to her bumper with the brisk competence of a man who had done this before. “Get back in and put it in neutral.”
She got back in. She put it in neutral. The truck pulled her out in approximately fifteen seconds, the mud releasing with an undignified sucking sound, and then she was on solid ground and the tow strap was off and Cole Hargrove was standing by her window.
She rolled it down.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Follow close,” he said. “The driveway has two more soft spots.”
He walked back to his truck without waiting for a response.
She followed close. She made note of both soft spots.
She was going to write the most thorough ranch feature this magazine had ever published, and it was going to start with forty feet of red Texas mud and a man who had watched her struggle for seven seconds before deciding she’d had enough of a lesson.
She was already looking forward to the next round.
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