The room smelled faintly of lavender and old books.
Ella Morgan sat cross-legged in the center of her bed, wrapped in the same knit cardigan she wore almost every night. It had once belonged to her mother, and though the cuffs were fraying and the color had faded from cream to something closer to bone, it still held warmth in all the right places. The soft yellow lamplight pooled across the comforter, casting long shadows over the open laptop perched on her thighs.
Button, her cat, purred gently against her hip like a rhythmic metronome, rising and falling with each steady breath.
Outside, the wind had gone still. The street below was quiet, the town asleep. But inside Ella's small world—her carefully contained, unremarkable world—something flickered quietly to life.
She clicked open the chat.
DustyRider85: Online.
A soft smile touched her lips. She reached for her earbuds, slipping one in, and let the soft hum of her mother's old playlist wash over her. The songs were low, mournful—piano-heavy with lyrics about longing and wide open skies. Her mother had burned the CD from a playlist she'd named "Montana Evenings." Ella had digitized it after the funeral, playing it on nights like these when the silence grew too sharp around the edges.
Her last message still sat there on the screen.
"Tell me something you've never admitted out loud."
She hadn't expected him to answer.
DustyRider85—or whoever he really was—was careful with his words. Observant. Slow to respond but never distant. Like someone who had learned the hard way that saying too much was dangerous. Ella respected that. She was the same.
Her eyes traced the blinking cursor, waiting.
Then the screen flickered.
"I miss the sound of the gate swinging shut at my family's ranch more than I miss most people."
Ella stilled.
It wasn't the kind of response she expected. Not flirtatious. Not clever. It was something closer to sacred. A sentence written in the voice of someone who didn't waste words on strangers—and yet had chosen to say this to her.
She felt it land in her chest, quiet and true.
She inhaled slowly and typed:
"Sometimes I sit in silence just to remember what my father's voice sounded like. I'm afraid of forgetting it."
She didn't allow herself a moment to reconsider. Her finger hit send before her mind could convince her otherwise.
Then she closed the laptop.
And just... sat.
The music swelled softly in her ears, strings and piano interweaving in a slow, aching melody. Button adjusted his position, now curled tighter, as if sensing Ella's heart was working harder than usual.
She leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling.
She hadn't told anyone that before.
Not even Sam.
In his home office downtown, Weston Blake sat in the dark.
The only light came from the screen in his hand, casting a bluish tint over the hard lines of his face. His posture, usually so precise, had relaxed into something looser—his jacket gone, sleeves rolled up, tie discarded hours ago.
His phone buzzed.
He saw her name—SunsetHeart01—and tapped the message open with a swipe of his thumb.
"Sometimes I sit in silence just to remember what my father's voice sounded like. I'm afraid of forgetting it."
Weston didn't move.
He read it once. Then again. The words weren't dramatic. They weren't trying to impress. They just... were. Honest. Vulnerable in the way most people never dared to be in the real world.
He set the phone down on the edge of the desk and leaned back in the chair, staring at the framed photo resting on the nearby shelf—his father, tall and sun-darkened, standing beside a younger Weston with his arm slung casually across his shoulders. The old wooden gate in the background hung at a familiar tilt.
Weston closed his eyes briefly and let the memory of that gate swing shut in his mind—the groan of hinges, the heavy thud of wood meeting wood, the sound that meant someone had come home or someone had left.
The ranch was still there.
He still went.
But he hadn't told anyone that.
And now... he had.
He picked the phone back up.
His fingers hovered.
But he didn't reply yet.
Instead, he opened their chat thread and scrolled through all their previous messages. Nothing trivial. Nothing rushed. Just slow, soft truths passed back and forth like hands brushing in the dark.
He didn't know her name.
Didn't know what she looked like.
And yet she made him feel seen in a way no one in his office, his boardroom, or his past had ever managed.
She hadn't asked for anything—no expectations, no pressure. Just... a connection. Quiet. Steady.
Weston smiled without realizing it.
He stood, stretched, and walked to the window. The skyline shimmered in the distance—dull lights against the dark Montana sky. But beyond that, in the direction of the ranch, the stars burned clearer. The ridge stood like a dark silhouette, steady as ever.
I miss the gate, he'd said.
I'm afraid of forgetting, she'd answered.
Different griefs, same silence.
And somehow, in this small corner of cyberspace, they had both spoken out loud the parts they had hidden longest.
He turned back to the phone.
And, finally, he typed:
"You don't forget the voice. Not really. It just gets harder to hear it when the world's too loud. But it comes back when you need it."
He hit send.
Then locked the screen.
He didn't expect a reply tonight.
That wasn't how this thing between them worked.
It was slow.
It was soft.
And it was becoming real.
The message sat on the screen longer than it should have.
Ella Morgan stared at it in the dim light of her bedroom, curled in the crook of her quilt, the tip of her index finger tapping against the space bar like it might coax her courage to grow.
She'd hit send.
"Sometimes I sit in silence just to remember what my father's voice sounded like. I'm afraid of forgetting it."
It was too much.
Too soon.
Too close.
And yet... she hadn't wanted to take it back.
She was used to people glossing over things like that—changing the subject, offering canned sympathy, or worse, smiling with pity like she'd just tripped in public. But DustyRider85 hadn't replied with any of that. Not with awkward emojis or retreat.
His response had come almost instantly.
"You're the first person I've met who talks about silence like it's something sacred."
Ella reread it three times. It wasn't just the words—it was the fact that they were his. Quiet, grounded, with the kind of sincerity you didn't expect from someone you met through a screen.
A blush bloomed across her cheeks as her fingers hovered again over the keyboard. The warm weight of Button curled against her hip grounded her, and the playlist murmuring through her speakers—her mother's songs—filled the room with melancholy comfort.
She typed:
"I think silence is the only place some truths know how to live."
She hesitated.
Then added:
"Tell me one of yours. A truth you've never said out loud."
Across town, Weston Blake leaned back in his office chair, his phone dim in his hand, the rest of the room swallowed in darkness. He hadn't meant to let this go on for so long—this thread of messages, this string of moments he kept catching himself waiting for.
But something about her—SunsetHeart01—had a gravity he couldn't explain.
She didn't flirt. She didn't posture. She didn't ask what he did or where he lived or how much money he made. Her questions were quieter. Deeper. She asked things that slipped under armor before he had a chance to reinforce it.
Weston turned the chair slowly toward the window, letting the skyline stretch out beneath him. The city lights glowed soft and low. He could almost hear the gates of the ranch creaking in the distance of memory.
You're the first person I've met who talks about silence like it's something sacred.
He'd meant that.
Most people tried to fill the quiet. Talk over it. Distract from it. But not her.
He opened the chat again.
Her message blinked back at him.
"Tell me one of yours."
He didn't know why he told her what he did next.
Maybe it was because he was tired. Or because it was late. Or maybe—because it was her.
"I was engaged once."
He stared at the sentence. Then kept going.
"It lasted four months. She liked the way I looked on paper. But she didn't like silence. Didn't like who I was in it."
He paused. Then sent it.
No edits. No backspace.
Ella read the message with her knees pulled to her chest, heart quietly hammering.
He had been engaged.
It shouldn't have meant anything—she didn't even know his real name—but it did. It meant he was real. Flawed. Not perfect. Not performing. And willing to hand her something fragile.
She responded:
"That's brave. Not many people walk away when everything looks good from the outside."
Then added, in a burst of honesty:
"I almost sent in an application for a writing program once. I had the envelope sealed, the stamp on it... and I never mailed it. I told myself it didn't matter. But it did."
What followed over the next hour wasn't a conversation—it was an unfolding.
A slow, careful peeling back of layers. A list of truths, each one smaller and stranger than the last, like little treasures traded in secret.
"I still own a flip phone from high school. I can't throw it away."
"I have a scar behind my ear from falling off a horse when I was eight. Never told anyone that before."
"I can't fall asleep without noise. The sound of fans, old static radio stations, wind—it helps."
"I hate the question 'What do you do?' It feels like asking what you're worth."
Each line deeper, more personal than the last. Each one a step closer to a place neither of them had expected to go.
Ella typed slowly. Weston replied sparingly, but deliberately. There was a rhythm now. A current.
Then came the moment Ella didn't mean to let slip.
Her fingers moved too quickly, driven by something she hadn't examined.
"Sometimes I worry I'm not interesting enough to be remembered."
She stared at it.
Then, embarrassed, she scrambled to soften it.
"Sorry. That was a little too much."
She almost closed the laptop.
But then—
The reply came faster than she expected.
"Too much is exactly right. Don't apologize for being real."
Ella blinked.
That line—"Don't apologize for being real"—pierced something buried.
She'd once written nearly that exact sentence in a journal, in looping cursive, after a particularly lonely birthday. She'd never shown anyone.
Now it was back, reflected to her from a man whose name she didn't know, whose face she hadn't seen, but whose words felt like warm light through a thin curtain.
She didn't reply right away.
She just let it sit there, glowing on the screen, while her heart beat a little faster than it had in months.
The conference call ended with a half-hearted chuckle from a VP in Dallas, followed by the dull click of disconnection. Weston Blake didn't respond to the wrap-up, didn't bother with the fake cheer in the closing words. His hand moved automatically—phone down, folio closed, screen saver humming to life on the monitor behind him.
Two unread emails blinked on his screen.
He didn't open them.
Instead, Weston reached for his phone and tapped the dating app icon with a quiet sort of hunger—an instinct he hadn't admitted to himself yet. The moment the screen loaded, the tension in his shoulders eased. A new message waited. From her.
SunsetHeart01.
Weston's thumb hovered, his gaze fixed on the first line of her latest message:
"What's your safe place?"
He read it three times before answering. Not because he didn't know. Because he did.
His reply came slower than usual. Not calculated—just careful. Like a truth handled with reverence.
"My horse's stall after a storm. Smells like wood, leather, and peace."
He paused. Thought of the way the rain used to drum on the barn roof. The steam that rose from Clover's coat after a long ride through summer heat. She had been more than a horse—more than even a friend. She had been the last piece of his old life that made sense.
Clover had been his first responsibility after his father's heart attack. His first comfort after the man's funeral. His quiet witness. His constant.
Weston never mentioned her in conversation. Not to board members. Not even to his assistant. But now, the saddle in his profile picture—it had been hers. That photo, taken on instinct, had been the only thing he uploaded. The leather worn in the same spot where her left stirrup always tugged.
He let the memory linger. Then locked his phone and leaned back in the chair, the edge of her question still brushing his mind like fingers trailing across skin.
Ella Morgan stared at the string of messages on her laptop screen, her legs pulled up into the faded armchair by the window. Outside, Livingston's sky bled amber and lavender, the horizon glowing like a slow-moving fire. She hadn't answered right away—not because she didn't want to.
Because the sunset had caught her.
It always did.
She didn't think. She just watched. And then, softly, as her mother once did, she began to speak.
"This one looks like it's trying to apologize," Ella murmured aloud. "For being too late. Or maybe too honest."
Her voice barely carried beyond the room, but Button flicked an ear from his perch on the windowsill.
She remembered asking Weston—DustyRider85—about safe places. She hadn't expected his answer. The way he described the scent of wood, leather, and peace had stirred something deep and unspoken. It reminded her of walking through the hayloft on summer nights, her father's boots echoing in the barn below.
When she finally typed, the words were simple.
"Sorry. Got caught watching the sunset. I talk to it sometimes."
She hit send, then closed the laptop halfway and waited. The air shifted. She didn't check her reflection in the glass or reach for a snack or scroll social media. She just sat there, heart quietly straining toward a screen that hadn't replied yet.
Weston's phone buzzed against his desk.
He picked it up without hesitation.
"Sorry. Got caught watching the sunset. I talk to it sometimes."
A slow smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. Not a smirk. Not the polite curve he used in boardrooms.
A real one.
He let his fingers trail the keys, thinking of what to say. He didn't want to ruin the moment by over-explaining.
He typed:
"I think it listens to you."
He almost didn't hit send. The words felt too close to something poetic, too unlike him. But then again—what did that even mean anymore?
This wasn't the version of Weston Blake that filled quarterly forecasts or carved through logistics plans with surgical precision. This was the man who still visited the ranch alone. Who missed the sound of a gate swinging shut. Who hadn't realized until now how lonely that silence had become.
Ella read his reply twice. Then again.
"I think it listens to you."
Her breath caught. A ridiculous sound, almost a laugh, broke free in the quiet.
No one had ever said something like that to her. Not in jest. Not in earnest.
Certainly not in the voice of a man she hadn't met, whose face she hadn't seen, and who still managed to write words that felt like heat under her skin.
The conversation didn't stretch long after that.
They exchanged a few more lines—softer ones. Brief.
"Long day?"
"Long week."
"We're halfway there."
Ella typed her last message slowly, with a kind of ache blooming in her chest.
"Goodnight, cowboy."
It was half a tease, half a hope.
The reply came back almost immediately:
"Goodnight, sunset girl."
She stilled.
Not because of the words—but because he had never called her that before. And it didn't feel like a screen name. It felt like something private. Something that belonged only to her.
She brushed the lid of her laptop gently, like it was warm to the touch, and closed it without another word.
Weston stared at the glowing screen.
"Goodnight, sunset girl."
He hadn't meant to type it. Not consciously. But the second he saw the words appear, he didn't delete them. He didn't even question them.
He locked his phone and leaned his head back against the high leather chair. The ceiling above him was flat, white, and indifferent. But in his mind, he saw a Montana sky deepening to navy and stars—stars just beginning to creep in at the edges.
He'd named her.
Not SunsetHeart01. Not the woman in a sunset silhouette on a profile photo.
Her.
Sunset girl.
The thought lingered long after the lights went out.