“How?” I shook my head. “We gained half a million subscribers from that video last week. Best numbers we’ve had in years. How are sponsors pulling out?”
“Because subscribers don’t pay the bills, Graham. Content does.” Dex sat on the desk edge. “Half a million new eyeballs showed up and found a dead channel. No uploads. No engagement. The algorithm doesn’t care how many people subscribed, it cares what you posted today. And we’ve posted nothing for eight days.” He held up his phone with a graph that looked like a ski slope. “Fourteen percent drop in suggested views. Another dark week and we’re invisible.”
I sat on the bed. “Right.”
“I have a content idea,” Jamie said, testing the room before she committed. “No staff. No Rose. No ranch drama. Nothing personal.” She turned her phone toward me. On the screen was a fan-edited compilation, clips from our older videos spliced with screenshots from the viral barn footage. The caption:Fraser Kincaid is a ranch hand now???Two million views.
“The audience is obsessed with you and horses,” she said. “It’s all over the comments. They’re making fan edits, Graham. Of you. On a horse.”
“That’s... unsettling.”
“That’s an opportunity.” She swiped to another post, a blurry shot of me and Brutus that looked like it came from a drone hovering over the county road. “Here’s my pitch. Short-form content. You and the horses. Learning to ride, grooming, mucking stalls, the stuff you’ve actually been doing, except on camera. You getting outsmarted by a fifteen-hundred-pound animal. It’s funny, it’s authentic, and it doesn’t involve a single person on Rose’s staff.”
“Fraser Kincaid: Ranch Hand,” Dex said flatly. “Not exactly the brand pivot we discussed.”
“It’s better than a dead channel.” Jamie met his tone and raised it. “And it’s the most on-brand thing we could do right now. The whole channel started because Graham was a regular guy doing extraordinary things. What’s more extraordinary than a Scottish tech bro learning to wrangle horses in Colorado?”
“I’m not a tech bro.”
“You are to the internet.”
I looked at Dex.
“It could work,” he admitted.
“Rose would have to approve it.”
“Obviously.” Jamie leaned forward. “Her horses. Her call. But Graham, this is comedy gold and we’re justleaving it on the table.”
She was right. I was already doing all of it. We might as well film it.
“I’ll ask her,” I said.
I foundher in the arena, working a gray mare on a lunge line. Long, fluid circles, the horse moving through transitions at the lightest flick of Rose’s wrist. She saw me coming. Didn’t stop. Didn’t acknowledge me. Just kept the mare moving, her focus absolute, her body a wall.
I stood at the rail and waited.
Three full circles before she spoke.
“I told you not to approach me.”
“This is business.”
That got her attention. She kept the mare moving but her eyes shifted to me, sharp and assessing.
“What kind of business?”
“The kind that might actually help you.” I leaned on the rail, keeping my voice even. Professional. Like I was pitching a client and not the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about. “My team needs to post content or the channel dies. Jamie has a proposal. Short videos of me working with the horses. No staff. No you. Just me and Brutus and whatever other animals want to make me look stupid on camera.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “You want to film on my property. After everything.”
“I want to filmhorseson your property. There’s a difference.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the fan video. “People are already obsessed with the idea of Fraser Kincaid learning to ranch. That interest exists whether we film it or not. But if we control it, we control what people see when they search.”
She glanced at the screen. Her jaw tightened.
“What’s in it for me?”
“Right now, when people Google your ranch, they find a viral video and gossip. Jamie’s content will bury that. Every video will tag Gracen Ranch. Every comment section becomes people asking how to book here. You go from ‘scandal ranch’ to ‘that incredible place in Colorado where Fraser Kincaid learned to ride.’”
