The alarm shrieked at 5:47 a.m., its plastic casing chipped, its buzz more accusatory than urgent.
Ella Morgan slapped it silent with the precision of someone who knew how long she could lie still before the day claimed her. Two minutes. That was her compromise. Just two minutes of quiet before everything started again.
Button, her mottled gray tabby, padded across her blanket and meowed with disapproval. Ella exhaled, sat up, and ran a hand through her sleep-creased hair. The cold morning bit at her skin as she swung her legs to the floor. She moved in silence—bare feet across creaky hardwood, a flick of the switch above the kitchen sink, the soft rattle of dry cat food into a porcelain bowl painted with strawberries.
The apartment above Riley's Feed & Grain hadn't seen a new coat of paint in years. The walls bore old nail marks from whoever had lived here before, and the heater clanked like it was dying a slow, bitter death. Still, it was hers. Rent-controlled, walking distance to work, and—most importantly—quiet.
In the bathroom mirror, Ella met her own eyes and didn't linger. She brushed her teeth with methodical strokes, tied her honey-brown hair into a low ponytail, and pulled on a worn gray sweater over a white blouse. Plain, practical, forgettable.
That's what she needed to be today.
Back in the kitchenette, the kettle whistled. She poured boiling water over two spoonfuls of instant coffee, stirred without looking, and dropped into the chair beside her laptop. The mug steamed against the cool morning air as she cracked open the screen.
The blue glow lit her face.
"I couldn't sleep again. I think it's the wind. Or maybe my head. Probably both. Do you ever feel like you're running in place?"
The message hung in the text box. Half-typed, half-felt. Ella stared at the blinking cursor, then pressed the backspace key.
DustyRider85 didn't need her spiraling.
She exhaled slowly, fingers pausing over the keys, then typed again:
"Hope you slept better than I did. The wind was howling all night like it missed someone."
She hit send before she could regret it.
SunsetHeart01. Her screen name. Her secret. Her sliver of something that felt like hope. The handle came from a poem her mother used to recite while brushing her hair—The sunset has a heart, Ella. Yours. It still beats out there, waiting to be heard.
Ella closed the laptop and pushed her mug aside. Outside, the sun had barely breached the ridge of the mountains. The horizon was smudged with pinks and bruised purples. Livingston never looked awake this early—just paused, like someone holding their breath.
She grabbed her bag and headed out.
Main Street smelled like wet stone and thawing soil. Spring came slow to Montana, but Ella could feel it in the way the frost melted a little faster each morning.
She walked past Mrs. Granger's Flower Nook, pausing just long enough to wave. The old woman smiled from behind the glass, arranging lilacs with fingers that shook slightly.
Ella didn't stop.
Next came Goldie's Diner, where a cluster of receptionists huddled in matching scrubs, flicking ash and laughter into the street. They didn't notice her. Or maybe they did. One of them elbowed another and said something under her breath.
Ella kept walking, heels quick against the cracked sidewalk. Her blouse was already clinging to her back from nerves, and she hadn't even clocked in yet.
The bus hissed to a stop just ahead. She boarded without meeting the driver's eyes and slipped into a seat near the back. Same one every morning. Third row from the rear, window side. People tended to forget she was there if she didn't move too much.
The town slid past the fogged glass—weathered storefronts, a closed bookstore with "RENT REDUCED" slapped across the window, the old high school field overgrown with dandelions.
Ella pressed her forehead lightly against the cold windowpane and let herself imagine, for a moment, that she was on a bus to somewhere else. Anywhere else. A city with bookstores that stayed open past dusk, where no one remembered her family name or the ranch that used to sit proudly off Route 287.
Her father's voice stirred in her head. "Don't run from something just because it hurts. Most things worth doing hurt like hell at first."
She hadn't been back to the ranch since he died.
Hadn't even driven past it.
Just the thought made her stomach twist. She blinked fast, then pulled her bag onto her lap and clutched the zipper like a lifeline.
Inside was her notebook—soft-leathered, worn at the corners. It held her poems. Half-thoughts. Hopes too fragile to say aloud. She hadn't written in it for weeks, not since she started messaging DustyRider85 every night. Somehow, telling him her fears—her favorite books, her memories, her dumb dreams of Italy—felt like writing in her journal, only better. It talked back.
But he didn't know who she was. Not really.
If he saw her—this version of her, hunched on a rattling bus in a town she couldn't leave and wouldn't claim—he'd close the chat and never write again.
Maybe that was why she hadn't sent the longer message. The truth was too dangerous.
At the corner of Cedar and Maple, the bus jolted to a halt.
Ella stood, clutched her bag, and stepped off into the soft light of early morning. Frontier AgriCorp loomed at the end of the block like a glass sentinel—polished, angular, utterly indifferent.
She took a slow breath, squared her shoulders, and began the walk toward another day where no one would notice if she stayed quiet or disappeared entirely.
No one except, maybe, a stranger behind a screen who typed like he saw right through her.
And Ella? Ella still wasn't sure which version of herself he'd fallen for.
The building didn't belong here.
Frontier AgriCorp rose like a knife blade from the earth—gleaming, modern, and sterile—an awkward monument of glass and steel in the middle of rustic Montana. Surrounded by fields that still smelled of horses and machinery, it gleamed with ambition and silence. No creaks in its beams, no chipped paint or wind-chimed porches. Just quiet, gleaming authority.
Ella Morgan swiped her badge and heard the sharp, efficient beep of confirmation. She stepped into the lobby, past the copper-plated company logo mounted like a branding iron above the reception desk. It was always cold in here—climate-controlled, clean, efficient. No trace of the real world, no trace of home.
"Morning, Miss Morgan," said Donny, the security guard, tipping his cap from behind the high plexiglass counter.
Ella offered him a soft smile. "Morning, Donny. Staying warm?"
"Barely," he grunted. "Furnace's running like it hates us."
That made her smile for real, but the moment passed quickly. Her heels echoed faintly as she made her way toward the elevators, her reflection fractured across the polished marble floors. A pair of junior analysts brushed past her, chatting loudly about a weekend trip to Bozeman, never acknowledging her. She didn't expect them to.
No one really noticed the girl who'd been quietly working in data entry for three years without a single promotion, raise, or invitation to lunch.
And maybe that was easier.
The elevator chimed on the fourth floor. Ella stepped out and was greeted by a familiar wave of artificial citrus scent and softly humming fluorescent lights. The administrative bullpen stretched ahead—rows of cubicles, glass-partitioned offices, and the occasional weary plant someone had forgotten to water. The air buzzed with low conversation, the click of keyboards, and the underlying tension that always accompanied power.
Ella reached her desk in the far corner and dropped into her chair just as the quiet around her fractured.
The air changed.
She didn't need to look up.
Weston Blake was walking the floor.
The sound of his boots on tile was different than anyone else's. Measured. Heavy. Clean. He wore power like a coat—long, tailored, and impossible to ignore. A charcoal suit, crisp white shirt, tie loosened just enough to look effortless. There was always a little dust on his boots, as if he wanted the building to remember where he came from.
Ella sat up straighter.
Across the office, heads tilted and chatter died off, like animals sensing a predator. Not because Weston Blake yelled. He never needed to raise his voice. His silence did the work for him.
Ella didn't look up. Not directly. She caught the edge of his figure in the reflection of her darkened monitor—tall, composed, his eyes scanning the floor like a man who didn't expect to find anything of worth. He moved past her desk without a glance.
Still, her spine prickled.
He had that effect. On everyone. But it was worse when he didn't see her at all.
Behind him trailed Vanessa Trent—Marketing's golden girl—her heels clicking like applause, laughter trailing behind her like perfume. Vanessa always walked two steps too close, spoke just a little too softly when addressing Weston, and laughed a little too easily. Ella watched as Vanessa handed him a folder and said something Ella couldn't hear.
Weston didn't laugh.
He nodded once, tucked the file under his arm, and disappeared into his office. The glass walls were tinted—blackened just enough that you could see the shape of him, but not his expression. It was like watching a storm behind glass.
Ella turned back to her monitor.
The spreadsheets were endless.
Crop yield data, equipment requisitions, supplier invoices—she sorted through all of it for Operations Lead Carter Lenz, who hadn't spoken to her directly since early February. Ella's job wasn't glamorous. It wasn't even stable. Technically, she was still listed as a contract hire, though HR had stopped renewing the paperwork two years ago. She didn't complain. Complaining made people remember you.
She clicked open the latest purchase request from the field team in Billings and cross-referenced it against the March supply run. Her fingers moved fast—quiet, efficient, invisible.
"She still works here?"
The whisper came from two desks over. Ella didn't turn her head.
"Swear to God," someone replied, muffling a laugh. "Like a ghost. Appears, disappears. Creepy, right?"
More laughter. Low. Cruel in its safety.
Ella stared at her screen.
She could feel the weight of her presence—or rather, the lack of it—settling in the pit of her stomach. She didn't cry. She didn't snap. She just typed faster.
On the corner of her desk sat a small framed photo of a teenage boy with shaggy hair and crooked teeth—Sam Morgan, her younger brother. He'd just turned nineteen. The photo was old—taken the week before their father's funeral—but Sam's smile still made her chest tighten.
She touched the edge of the frame like a touchstone, steadying herself.
Sam was the reason she hadn't left. The reason she paid rent in a crumbling apartment above a feed store and took the bus to work instead of saving for anything better. He was two semesters into welding school, and she was damned if he was going to end up trapped the way she had.
Ella closed the spreadsheet and opened the next file. Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and drank the lukewarm coffee she'd brought in her thermos. Her keyboard clacked in steady rhythm. The office hummed around her.
Weston's door remained closed.
Not that she'd ever been called in. Weston Blake spoke to division heads, VPs, executive assistants. Ella Morgan? She handled numbers. Quietly. Alone.
Still, something about the way he'd walked past—like he knew she was there but refused to acknowledge her—stayed with her longer than she liked.
A part of her hated him for it.
A smaller, more dangerous part... wanted him to look.
The sun over Livingston was brutal in its honesty. No clouds. No haze. Just a wide, unforgiving blue that stretched over Ella Morgan as she stepped onto the rooftop of Frontier AgriCorp with a brown paper lunch bag and a notebook tucked under her arm.
The metal door clanged shut behind her with a sound that echoed like a secret being sealed.
Ella squinted against the glare. The roof was mostly unused—just vents, a rusting utility box, and a few forgotten lawn chairs someone from HR had dragged up here during last summer's failed "wellness week." She crossed to her favorite spot: a cracked strip of concrete along the far ledge where the sun warmed the back of her sweater and the town stretched out in miniature below.
Livingston looked peaceful from up here. Small houses. Slanted roofs. Faded signs. Rows of hayfields curling toward the mountains like pages turned to their final chapters. It didn't feel like a place people came to start anything. Only to endure, or leave.
Ella sat cross-legged, pulled out her sandwich—peanut butter on white bread, no jelly—and balanced the notebook on her knee.
The cover was soft black leather, the kind that felt lived-in. Inside were words no one had read. Not even Sam. Especially not Sam.
She flipped past old poems. Some unfinished. Some angry. Some scrawled so messily she barely recognized them as her own. Her pen hovered over a blank page for a moment before it moved, like her hand knew something her mouth didn't dare say.
The Man I Only Meet in Light
He exists where the world forgets its sharpness—
in the space between daydream and doubt.
He speaks in ways no real man ever dares to,
and I answer him like I'm someone worth speaking to.
He doesn't have a face,
except the one I give him.
And still,
I want to believe
he sees mine.
Ella blinked, then quickly closed the notebook, heart thrumming. Her fingers trembled just enough to smear the fresh ink.
It was too much.
Too close.
She shoved the notebook into her purse and reached for her sandwich—only to freeze at the sound of hinges creaking behind her.
The rooftop door was opening.
Her body snapped upright, every instinct braced for exposure. Weston Blake didn't come up here, did he? Or worse—Vanessa? She imagined the look on Vanessa's face if she found Ella writing poetry like a moony teenager during company hours.
But the footsteps retreated. Whoever had opened the door hadn't stepped through. A false alarm.
Still, the quiet didn't settle again. Not the same way.
Ella stared out over the town until her sandwich turned cold in her lap.
That night, Ella's apartment felt smaller than usual.
The overhead light flickered with a weak, yellow glow. Her soup—chicken noodle from a can—bubbled in a dented pot while the laugh track from her neighbor's TV bled through the walls. She could hear a man's voice in the show—saying something corny, followed by artificial laughter. Ella didn't know what show it was. She never asked. But she could tell when the joke was supposed to land by how quickly her neighbor laughed after it.
She poured the soup into a chipped white bowl and curled into her usual spot on the edge of her bed. One leg tucked under the other. Steam fogged her glasses.
With one hand, she opened her laptop. The screen lit up her face as her inbox loaded.
DustyRider85: "Do you believe in meeting the right person at the wrong time?"
Ella's breath caught. She stared at the words longer than she meant to.
He always messaged at night.
She'd told him once that her evenings were her favorite part of the day—when she could stop pretending to be part of a world that didn't see her. He never pressed for details. He just met her in the quiet with words that mattered more than they should have.
Ella hovered over the keyboard. Her fingers moved, then paused. Then moved again.
"Maybe the wrong time is still better than never."
She hit send. Her hands trembled, just slightly, as if her own honesty surprised her.
He replied almost instantly.
"Then let's not wait for perfect."
Her lips curved without permission. A soft smile. One of the few she'd offered all day.
She thought briefly about telling him the truth—about who she was, where she worked, how close he actually was without realizing it. But the thought curled into fear too quickly.
If he knew... if he saw her—the real her, invisible and ignored and used to being passed over—he'd vanish like all the rest.
So instead, she typed:
"Tell me something you've never told anyone."
And waited.
Later, under the faded quilt her grandmother had stitched by hand, Ella let her body sink into the mattress like it was the only place she was allowed to exhale.
The room was dim. The wind rattled softly at the windows, as if Montana itself whispered old stories no one remembered to tell anymore.
The Bridges of Madison County sat in her hands, open to a chapter she'd read a dozen times. She didn't need to read the words to feel them. They were etched into her memory now—like the way her father used to fold his arms when listening to the radio, or the way Sam used to fall asleep beside her during thunder.
Ella turned a page, eyes heavy.
She'd applied once—to a creative writing program in Missoula. Had written the essays, filled out the forms, sealed the envelope. But she'd never mailed it. The envelope still sat in the drawer under her socks, yellowing with indecision.
Not good enough, her mind always whispered. Not brave enough.
She blinked.
Her eyes drifted to the ceiling.
A crack ran diagonally above her bed. Slight, jagged, and unmistakably shaped like a heart that had been squished to the side. Lopsided and imperfect. But still there.
Ella smiled faintly.
Maybe someday, she'd show her poems to someone. Maybe even read them out loud.
But for now, she just watched the crack until her eyes slid shut.
The wind pressed gently against the windows.
And Ella dreamed—of faceless voices, of sunlit rooftops, and of a man she only met in light.