Page 5 of Love Fast

“How’s it look?” I ask.

“Pretty,” he replies.

There’s a beat of silence before I say, “I’d love to have you come and look around if you’d like.”

He sucks in a breath. “Listen, son. I’m not interested in fancy restaurants and spas and whatever the hell else you’ve got going on up there.” He takes a sip of beer and I wait for thebut. I know there’s one coming. “I’ve been walking through those woods and across those mountains for a good five decades now.” He glances around the bar. “Just like a lot of other people in this town.”

I nod, keen to hear what it is he’s trying to tell me.

“I do it less in the winter. Don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. But I still like to wander with my dogs. You know?”

“Right,” I reply.

“And we’re hearing rumors about electric fencing and checkpoints and… I’m not sure that’s going to go down so well. From what I hear, you’ve got your hands on fifteen thousand acres of land—that’s pretty much everything of the mountains and the valley that you can see from this town. Much more than the five hundred acres your father had.”

I take a swig of my beer. My father’s farm had been small by Colorado standards. He grew apples mainly, and some other fruit. The farm had been in the family three generations, and I was supposed to be the fourth. At least, that’s what Mom always told me.

When Dad died and we discovered the huge loans he’d taken out on the farm, I don’t know if I was more relieved or horrified. I was no longer locked into a future I didn’t want, but I also didn’t know what the future would look like otherwise. My father’s gambling meant I had to forge my own path, but it also meant the farm’s lineage had been cut short.

Until I bought it back five years ago.

“You’re right,” I say to Jim. “Fifteen thousand two hundred forty-four acres.”

“And as well as you buying up some of the neighboring farms, some of that land belonged to the state before you.”

I nod. I’d bet Jim knows exactly the boundary line of the Colorado Club. I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at, but no doubt I will soon.

The sound of chairs scraping against the floor catches my attention. Someone comes up from behind Jim and offers me his hand.

It takes me a minute before I realize it’s Walt fucking Ripley. Our mothers had been best friends since school and got pregnant with us both at the same time. “Hey, man,” I say. He’s unmistakably Walt, but older and forty pounds heavier. Then again, it’s been fifteen years since I laid eyes on him.

“Byron,” he says with a nod.

“Can I get you a beer?” I ask.

“You bet your ass, you can. I figure you owe me for going off to New York without me.”

Walt had been the guy who stood by my side at my father’s funeral. The guy who’d told me it was going to be okay when I found out we were going to have to move because the family farm was being sold by my father’s creditors to pay back all the loans he’d taken out to pay off his gambling debts. He was the boy who helped me formulate a plan to get out of Star Falls. Of course I hadn’t forgotten him. I just hadn’t let myself think about Star Falls after I left. It held too many painful memories.

“I’ve just been telling Byron that I still want to roam around with my dog,” Jim says.

I understand Jim’s frustration. The problem I have is that the promise the Colorado Club makes is exclusivity, privacy, and security. If celebrities want to escape LA, I want their first thought to be the Colorado Club.

“We can figure it out,” I assure Jim. “There aren’t going to be electric fences.”

“There shouldn’t beanyfences—electric or not,” Jim says. “This is wilderness. Wilderness isn’t fenced off and claimed by an elite couple of thousand people in the world.”

They’re both staring at me, and I know they’re right. It’s just, for the Colorado Club to work, it needs to have a boundary. I nod. “I hear you.”

“It’s God’s country,” Jim says. “Not Byron Miller’s.”

I don’t ask him whether he’d welcome people wandering across his land. It’s not worth the fight—I’m not going to win, even if it is a double standard. But if the idea of having the land I own fenced off is a problem for the residents of Star Falls, I’m not sure what I can do about it.

I’m saved from having to think up a reasonable answer when Jim turns to see someone come through the door. I pick at the edge of the blue and white label on my beer bottle, wondering if there’s a solution to the problem. There’s got to be.

I turn to assure Jim that we’ll figure something out, but his attention isn’t on me anymore. He’s looking over my shoulder. I turn to follow his gaze and see a woman in her mid-twenties with long dark hair, walking toward the bar. She looks a little bedraggled, although she’s pretty. She’s definitely not from around here. Nothing too unusual in that, aside from the fact this woman is wearing sneakers, a faded gray hoodie, and a wedding dress.

I glance at Jim and he shoots me a look that says,What in the hell?

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