The morning sun hits my face like a cast-iron skillet to the forehead, and I'm already regretting last night's life choices.
I peel one eye open. Then the other. The ceiling fan wobbles overhead like it's had one too many Lone Stars itself, and I'm ninety percent sure that's a rooster crowing somewhere inside my trailer.
A rooster.
In my trailer.
"Colt!" I holler, slapping the mattress beside me. But it ain't my cousin Colt Cooper passed out on my secondhand sheets — it's a literal chicken. A big, mean-looking rooster with beady eyes and an attitude problem, perched on my nightstand like he pays rent.
He crows again, six inches from my ear.
"Son of a—" I swat at him, and he hops onto my chest, flapping his wings like I personally offended his ancestors.
I sit up, shoving the rooster off me, and immediately regret that too because the world tilts sideways and my head pounds like a bass drum at a Friday night football game.
Last night comes back in flashes. Tequila. The Cooper Family Annual Barbecue. My cousin Hadley's engagement party. And—oh Lord—the part where I told Beau Cooper the Third that his brand-new Ford Raptor looked like it was compensating for somethin'.
In front of his mama.
Smooth, Sutton. Real smooth.
I stumble to the bathroom, splash water on my face, and stare at my reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink. Blue eyes, sun-kissed skin, dark hair that's currently doing its best impression of a bird's nest—and not the kind you pin on Pinterest. The kind you find in a barn after a hurricane.
"You look like walked on dog crap," I tell my reflection.
My reflection doesn't argue.
I brush my teeth, pull on my least-offensive pair of Wranglers, and check my phone. Twelve missed calls from Mama. Three texts from my sister Hadley. And one voicemail from a number I don't recognize.
I ignore all of it and step outside.
The trailer sits on the back forty of Cooper Ranch—three hundred acres of prime Hill Country land that my family has owned for five generations. Five generations of stubborn-as-mule Coopers who built this place from nothing, who bled into this red Texas dirt, who turned scrub brush and cedar breaks into one of the most respected ranching operations in Gillespie County.
And then there's me.
Sutton Cooper. Twenty-six years old. No husband, no degree, no prospects, and a reputation that follows me around like a dust cloud follows Pig Pen in the Peanuts cartoons.
I'm what you'd call the black sheep of the Cooper family. The one who didn't go to A&M like Daddy and Granddaddy. The one who didn't marry a nice rancher's son and pop out two-point-five kids by twenty-four like my sister Hadley. The one who left Fredericksburg at eighteen with big dreams of making it in Austin and came crawling back three years later with a busted-up Honda Civic and a maxed-out credit card and absolutely zero explanation for what went wrong.
The one they whisper about at the beauty shop.
Poor Sutton. Bless her heart. She's just... lost.
I climb into my truck—a 1997 Chevy Silverado that's older than some of my cousins and twice as stubborn—and crank the engine. It coughs, sputters, and finally roars to life with a sound like a dying cat in a blender.
"Good girl," I pat the dashboard. "That's my girl."
I pull out of the gravel drive and head toward the main house, windows down, the hot late-May air whipping through the cab like a blow dryer on high. The radio's playing George Strait—Amarillo by Morning—and for a minute, everything feels almost okay.
Almost.
Because in about twenty minutes, I have to walk into the Cooper Family Ranch headquarters and face the firing squad.
And by firing squad, I mean my mama.
The main house sits on a hill overlooking the ranch like a queen surveying her kingdom. Three stories of limestone, a wraparound porch, bluebonnets in the flower beds, and a Texas flag hanging from the porch beam.
I park the truck and take a deep breath.
You can do this, Sutton. You've survived rattlesnakes, stampedes, and Beau Cooper the Third's cologne. You can survive Mama.
I push through the front door and immediately smell biscuits and gravy, which means Mama's in a mood. When Ruthanne Cooper is upset, she cooks. When she's really upset, she bakes. When she's on the warpath, she makes a full Southern breakfast with enough food to feed the entire Gillespie County Sheriff's Department.
The kitchen looks like a Cracker Barrel exploded.
"Sutton Elizabeth Cooper."
There she is. Five foot two, a hundred and twenty pounds, honey-blonde hair highlighted to perfection, and eyes the color of a thunderstorm over the Hill Country. She's wearing an apron that says Bless Your Heart on the front, which is basically a Texan way of saying I'm about to end you.
"Morning, Mama."
"Don't you morning Mama me." She points a spatula at me like it's a weapon. "Do you have any idea what you did last night?"
I rack my brain. There's a lot of last night to rack through.
"Which part?" I hedge.
"Which part? Sutton, you told Beau Cooper the Third—in front of his mother, in front of the entire family—that his truck was compensating."
"Technically, I said his truck looked like it was compensating. There's a subtle difference—"
"There is no difference! Linda Cooper hasn't spoken to me this morning! Linda and I have been best friends since the second grade, Sutton! Second grade!"
"I'm sorry, Mama. I had too much to drink, and Beau was being—"
"Beau was being Beau. He's always been that way. You know that. And instead of being the bigger person, you decided to air out his—his—" Mama can't even say the word. "His shortcoming in front of sixty people."
"Sixty-two," I correct, and immediately regret it.
Mama's eye twitches.
"Sorry."
She takes a deep breath. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet, which is a thousand times worse than the yelling.
"Sutton, your daddy is the head of this family. The Cooper name means something in this county. And every time you pull a stunt like this, you chip away at that."
Each word lands like a hoof to the chest.
"I know, Mama."
"Do you? Because it seems to me like you've been on a mission to embarrass this family since the day you came back from Austin."
"I didn't come back to embarrass anyone. I came back because—"
"Because you failed." Mama's voice is soft. "I know, baby. We all know. And I'm not saying that to be cruel. I'm saying it because I love you and I need you to stop self-destructing."
The kitchen goes quiet except for the sizzle of bacon and the ticking of the clock on the wall.
"What do you want me to do, Mama?"
She turns back to the stove. "Your granddaddy called a family meeting for tomorrow morning. Nine AM sharp. All the Coopers."
"A family meeting? About what?"
Mama's jaw tightens. "About the ranch."
My stomach drops.
Cooper Ranch has been struggling. I know it even if nobody says it out loud. The drought last summer hit us hard. Cattle prices are down. Feed costs are up. And my uncle Beau—Beau the Second—has been pushing to sell off the property to some developer who's been sniffing around like a coyote at a henhouse.
"Just be there, Sutton. And for once in your life, just... be present."
I nod and head for the door.
"Sutton?"
I stop.
"Your granddaddy asked for you specifically. He said it's time."
"Time for what?"
But Mama just turns back to the stove and doesn't answer.