Chapter 16
sixteen
The kitchen was loud.
Logan was glad school was over for the year, but Dad had to go help Dr. Garrison with her packed surgery schedule at the clinic, and had vetoed his staying home alone. Probably thought he’d try to run again.
So, here he was at Valor Ridge, standing in Walker Nash’s kitchen.
He hadn’t known what to expect. Maybe something out of an old western. Grizzled old cowboys bonding over a campfire.
But not… this.
Walker stood at the stove in a denim shirt with the sleeves shoved up, scraping eggs around a cast-iron skillet the size of a hubcap.
Johanna was at the table with a mug in both hands, her reading glasses pushed up into her dark hair, a stack of papers at her elbow that she wasn’t looking at.
Across from her, a lean, dark-haired man sat with a coffee and a plate of toast, one boot hooked on the rung of his chair.
King went straight to Johanna and put his enormous head in her lap. She didn’t miss a beat, just freed one hand and scratched his ear.
None of them looked at Logan like anything had happened yesterday. It was just a regular Tuesday morning for them.
“Sit down,” Walker said from the stove, without turning around.
Johanna got up and pulled out the seat beside her. “Here, you look hungry.” She crossed to the cabinet, took down a plate, loaded it with bacon from the pan on the back burner, and set it on the table in front of the empty chair. She sat back down and picked up her mug again.
Logan slid into the chair. The bacon was still hot. He picked up a piece and ate it without thinking, and only after he’d swallowed did he realize he hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and he hadn’t even finished that. He picked up another piece.
“Coffee?” Walker asked, still without turning around, like it was a normal question to ask a fifteen-year-old.
“Uh. No.”
Johanna scoffed at her husband’s back. “How about milk? Or we have apple juice, or orange?”
“Orange, I guess.”
Johanna got up again. He almost told her he could do it himself, but she was already at the fridge, and the dark-haired guy across the table watched her go with a faint, tired expression that wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular.
He had hazel eyes, Logan noticed, and a couple days of stubble, and a tattoo creeping out from the collar of his shirt.
Johanna set a glass of orange juice in front of him, drawing his attention back to her. “Thanks.”
“You bet.” She nodded to the man across the table. “That’s Hatch. Hatch, Logan.”
Hatch lifted his coffee mug an inch in greeting. Logan got the impression this was a complete sentence for the guy.
Walker turned. “You take your eggs scrambled or fried?”
He looked at the plate in front of him. “Whatever.”
“That’s not an answer. Everybody’s got a preference.” Walker turned back to the stove. “You’re getting scrambled.”
Logan almost said “whatever” again, but caught himself. Instead, he ate the bacon and drank the juice and kept waiting for somebody to bring up the fact that he’d tried to run away last night.
They had to know. Dad would’ve told at least Walker and Johanna.
But nobody said anything.
Walker just slid some fluffy eggs onto his plate and added a generous spoonful of salsa next to them.
“Hot sauce is on the table. Don’t drown ‘em. Just enhance ‘em.” He sat down at the head of the table with his own plate and shook out a napkin across his lap.
Logan picked up the fork. The eggs were good—actually good, not Bear-good, which was only somewhat edible—and he ate three bites before he registered that nobody was watching him eat.
Hatch was looking out the back window. Johanna had picked up the top page of her stack and was making a small mark in the margin with a pen that came from somewhere in her hair.
Walker was reading the local paper as he ate.
It was almost weird how not-weird it was.
The screen door banged open behind him, making him jump.
River came in on a gust of cold air and the smell of pine and something burnt, like he’d been standing too close to a fire pit. He was once again holding a glass mixing bowl full of cereal. A spoon stuck up out of it like a flag.
He was wearing the bunny slippers again.
“Morning, fuckers,” he said, and then he saw Logan and stopped halfway through the doorway with one rabbit foot still on the threshold. “Oh. Hi.”
“Language, Riv,” Johanna said mildly. “We have company.”
“Sorry. Morning, fuckers and Logan.” He kicked the door shut behind him with his heel and dropped into the chair beside Hatch. He tilted the bowl toward Logan. “You want some?”
“I have eggs.”
“You can have both.”
River pushed the bowl across the table anyway, like the offer was a formality and the answer was already yes. The cereal was something with marshmallows.
Logan looked at it, then at River, then at the bunny slippers, which had ears that flopped when River jiggled his foot under the table.
“I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” River pulled the bowl back and shoveled in a spoonful big enough to make his cheek bulge.
The back door opened again, quieter this time, and the one they called Ghost came in. He didn’t say anything. He went to the coffee pot and poured some into a mug that looked like it had been smashed and glued back together with gold. Then he leaned against the counter and glowered at the room.
Johanna glanced at him. “She’ll be back Wednesday, Owen.”
Ghost grunted.
River swallowed a mouthful of cereal. “He’s been like this since she left this morning. I caught him sitting on the Hub’s front porch, staring down the driveway like a puppy that got left behind.”
Ghost looked at him.
It was not a friendly look.
Logan went still, gaze bouncing between the two men.
“I’m just saying,” River said, scooping more cereal. “Kind of pathetic.”
“River.”
“Yeah?”
“You ever wonder how many ways there are to dispose of a body so it doesn’t get found?”
River chewed. “Not really.”
“I have a list.”
“I know you do.”
“It’s alphabetized.”
River grinned around his spoon, completely unbothered. “How often do you dream about killing me?”
“Every night,” Ghost said, without missing a beat. “Sleep like a baby after.”
Logan looked at his eggs.
Walker turned down the corner of his paper and scowled at River’s bowl. “Told you to stop eating my cereal.”
“Bunkhouse is a communal kitchen, boss.”
“It had my name on it.”
Johanna lightly smacked Walker’s side. “Stop hiding your sugary cereals from me in the bunkhouse, you old goat.”
“If you didn’t get on me for eatin’ them, woman, I wouldn’t have to hide ‘em.”
“Of course I’m getting on you for it. They’re full of red dye 40. One day I’m going to find you face-down in a bowl of Lucky Charms, and the coroner’s going to write ‘death by leprechaun.’”
Walker cracked a smile. “Worth it.”
“So worth it,” River agreed, twirling his spoon like a gunslinger after a high noon fight.
Logan stared at his plate to keep from laughing. He didn’t totally trust the laugh yet. It felt like something that might break if he let it out wrong.
The back door opened again. He was starting to think the back door was just always opening.
Jax came through it with a kid on his back—small, maybe seven, dark hair sticking up in the back like he’d lost an argument with a pillow. The kid had a sandwich in one hand.
“Morning,” Jax said to the room.
“Morning,” said Johanna, Walker, and, cheerfully, River.
Ghost grunted.
Hatch just raised his mug again.
“Want some eggs, Oliver?” Johanna asked.
The boy shook his head as Jax set him down. “Mom made me a sandwich before she went to the bakery.”
Johanna raised her brows. “A sandwich for breakfast?”
“All he’ll eat right now,” Jax said, sounding annoyed and affectionate at the same time.
Logan’s mom had often had the same tone when talking about him, and he suddenly missed her fiercely. A lump rose in his throat, and his eyes blurred. He dipped his head and poked at his eggs so nobody would notice.
“‘Cause sandwhiches are the best, duh.” Oliver looked around the kitchen, and his gaze landed on Logan. He bounced over and stopped at his elbow. “Hi! I’m Oliver. You’re Bear’s kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Jax is my dad. Well, he isn’t really, but he will be when he marries my mom.” He took a bite of his sandwich and regarded Logan with eyes far too serious for a seven-year-old. “You ran away last night.”
He choked on the bite of eggs he’d just taken.
“Whoa, hey,” Hatch said and thumped him on the back. “Breathe, kid.”
His face went hot.
What did he say to that?
There was no point denying it, not with the whole kitchen looking at him—or at least with the whole kitchen suddenly very not looking at him, which was worse.
He grabbed his orange juice to wash down the egg and waited for someone to tell him he was a fuckup, or that he should be grateful, or that he was lucky to have someone who cared enough to come looking.
But nobody said a damn thing.
Jax’s hand came down on Oliver’s shoulder. “Bud.”
“What? He did. I heard Bear telling Walker and Johanna on the phone last night.” Big brown eyes traveled from Logan to Walker and Johanna, then back to Jax. “Was it a secret?”
“It’s not really our business.”
“But it happened.” Oliver looked back at Logan and took another bite of his sandwich.
“It’s okay. I ran away once, too. Dad and Echo found me, and he told me you can run as far as you want, but the stuff that made you run is just sitting there waiting when you stop running. He said running away don’t fix shit.”
Jax groaned softly. “What have I said about the bunkhouse language?”
“It’s not for me to repeat. But you did say that,” Oliver said, the picture of innocence, and River snorted a laugh.
Jax ran a hand over his face, drank the rest of his coffee like a shot. “Okay, kiddo, we have chores.”