Chapter Ten
MILLIE
I have always loved this house in the morning.
The light comes through the kitchen window at just the right angle, turning everything golden and catching the dust motes so they look almost magical.
It has always felt safe.
This morning, it feels different.
Fuller, somehow.
When I pad out of my bedroom in my socks, hair loose and still warm from sleep, I stop in the kitchen doorway because the scene in front of me is not one I was prepared for.
Dad is already at the table, his reading glasses sitting low on his nose, the newspaper folded open to whatever section he starts with on Sundays.
His coffee mug rests to his right, a faint ring of condensation marking the wood.
He looks utterly at ease, the way he always does on his one real day of rest. And across from him, on the other side of the table, sits Will.
He holds his own mug in both hands, gaze angled toward the window in that peaceful, watchful way of his.
Neither of them is speaking. Not because anything’s wrong. But because it feels more like the two of them have already had the conversation without words somewhere along the line and decided exactly how this morning was going to go.
That there’s value in sitting somewhere familiar and letting silence do the work.
Dad turns a page.
The newspaper rustles, then settles.
Will takes a slow drink.
I press my shoulder into the doorframe and watch them for a moment longer than I should, because something about the image catches in my chest like a hook.
Will at my father’s table.
Will drinking from the green mug that has lived in the third cabinet from the left for as long as I can remember.
Will fitting into this space as though he’s always known where everything belongs.
It feels startlingly, terrifyingly… natural.
I clear my throat and push off the doorframe, because standing there staring at the two of them is not going to make any of this less complicated. “Morning,” I say, and my voice comes out softer than I intended.
Will’s eyes find me immediately. They always do. “Morning, Mills.”
Dad glances up over the rim of his glasses as I step into the kitchen. “Blueberry pancakes,” he says, like he’s already answered whatever question I might have had. “I made enough for three.”
Will lifts his mug slightly in silent confirmation.
“I can see that,” I say, moving toward the table and pulling out my chair. “This is… ambitious for a Sunday.”
“Thought I’d give you the day off,” Dad replies, sliding a plate toward me. “Sit.”
The table feels smaller than usual once we are all seated, plates close enough that passing the syrup becomes shared rather than an individual choice.
Will nods toward the stack. “They smell incredible.”
Dad gives a brief grunt that could mean anything from appreciation to dismissal.
“They’re edible,” he says. “That’s the goal.”
I wrap both hands around my mug and take a careful sip, pretending this arrangement feels entirely normal.
Dad refills Will’s coffee before he even asks.
“So,” Dad says after a few minutes, cutting into his pancake with the same precise movements he applies to everything. “How long have you been with Defiance?”
“Just under two years,” Will replies.
“And the prospecting suits you?”
“It does.”
Dad studies him for a second, then nods, as if that answer passed inspection. “The mine started smaller than this table,” he says, almost conversationally. “One shaft. Six men. More debt than sense.”
Will leans forward slightly. “What changed first? Output or investment?”
Dad’s fork pauses mid-air. “Output,” he says. “Investment follows proof. It always does.”
Will nods, absorbing that like it’s data he intends to use. “And the extraction process now?” he asks. “Still primarily mechanical, or have you integrated more advanced survey tech?”
Something shifts in my father’s expression.
Interest.
Genuine interest.
“We’ve updated the surveys,” Dad says, setting his fork down entirely now. “Geological mapping’s more precise. You can’t afford guesswork at depth.”
Will asks another question.
Dad answers with satisfaction, like he doesn’t often get the chance to talk shop with someone outside his own field.
At one point, Dad gestures with his knife toward the window. “You see that ridge? We nearly lost everything drilling there in 2016.”
“What happened?” Will asks.
“Misread the composition. Cost me three months and two good men.”
The kitchen goes quieter around that.
“And now?” Will says.
“Now it runs clean,” Dad replies. Then, almost as an afterthought, “It’ll need to keep running clean when I’m not the one signing off on it.”
My fork stills against the plate, and I stare down at my pancake, taking a breath through my nose.
Will doesn’t rush to fill the silence. “That kind of operation doesn’t build itself,” he says finally.
“No,” Dad agrees. “It doesn’t.”
They hold each other’s gaze for a beat.
I look up just in time to catch my father looking at Will like he’s measuring something.
Not suspicion.
Assessment.
Approval flickers through his expression, subtle but impossible to miss.
I take another sip of coffee because there is absolutely no neutral ground at a table this small.
My coffee has gone lukewarm by the time Will’s phone vibrates against the table.
He glances at it, and I catch the subtle shift in his posture, the almost imperceptible straightening that means it’s club business.
“Sorry, I need to take this,” he says, and pushes back from the table without fuss, carrying his mug with him out to the porch.
The screen door swings shut behind him, leaving the kitchen suddenly a whole lot stiller than before.
Dad picks up his newspaper and turns a page, and I think for a moment that he’s not going to say anything at all, that the moment is going to pass unremarked. Then, without looking up from whatever article he’s reading, he says, “He’s very comfortable on that sofa.”
I set my mug down. “Security detail. Club’s orders.”
“Yeah… that’s all it is.” He turns another page.
There’s the ghost of something dry and amused at the corner of his mouth.
He lets a moment pass, and then another, and then he sets the newspaper down properly and looks toward the window, where Will is visible on the porch, his back to us, his broad shoulders curved slightly inward the way they get when he’s focused. “He’s good, Millie.”
“Dad.”
“I’m not saying anything.” He picks up his coffee. “I’m saying what I see. Every morning, for the last week, from my kitchen table.”
I don’t have an answer, I’m not sure there is one.
So I collect the breakfast plates, carry them to the sink, turn on the faucet, and stare at the soap bubbles forming over the dishes.
I try very hard not to think about the fact that my father, who has never once in my life pushed me toward anything he didn’t believe was genuinely worth it, is sitting at his kitchen table telling me he approves of the guy he once warned me away from.
The same guy who’s been sleeping on our sofa all week.
The same man I have desperately, comprehensively been in love with for two years.
I’m rinsing the last plate when I hear the screen door open and close again, and Will’s footsteps cross back into the kitchen. He sets his mug in the dish rack without me asking him to, which is such a small thing and somehow completely undoes me.
“Sorry about that,” he says.
“Club stuff?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the faucet.
“Nothing major. Just checking in.”
Dad reappears from the hallway, his jacket on, keys in hand. “I’m going to drive out to the site for an hour,” he says, pausing at the back door, and he looks at Will directly, the way my father only looks at people he’s decided to take seriously. “Walk with me to the truck.”
I widen my eyes, but Will doesn’t hesitate and heads outside with him.
I stay at the sink.
I don’t follow them, I don’t need to. I can see them through the window above the faucet, two figures standing in the driveway beside Dad’s truck, and I watch my father say something and watch Will go very still and then nod, once.
A nod that seems to mean something. Dad claps a hand onto Will’s shoulder for a second, solid and deliberate in that way he gets when he’s decided somebody’s earned his respect, and there’s no taking it back.
Then Dad gets in the truck and backs out of the driveway.
Will stands there for a moment after the truck turns onto the road, looking at nothing in particular. Then he comes back inside, moving through the kitchen differently somehow. He’s calmer, more locked in. I feel the shift from across the room, even if I can’t fully explain it yet.
He looks at me, and I look at him, and neither of us says a word about whatever just happened in the driveway.
“I’ll do the rest of the dishes,” he says.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” He takes the sponge from my hand, and neither of us says another word.
***
By mid-morning, I have driven over to the clubhouse, because Marley texted to say Sage was dropping by, did I want to come, and yes, honestly, yes I did.
I need somewhere loud, familiar, and populated with people who will make me laugh, because the silence of Dad’s house with Will in it is getting to me in ways I can’t explain.
The clubhouse carries a different energy on Sundays, slower, easier, the kind that settles into a place where people genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
Marley is at the counter when I walk in, halfway through another coffee, and Sage is perched on a barstool, legs crossed, already talking to Ghost at a volume that suggests she’s been going since she woke up.
Possibly forever knowing Sage. She and Penny are a lot alike in that way.
Ghost is in the corner near the laptop he keeps in the main room.
He’s completely locked into whatever he’s doing, all sharp focus and careful concentration, which is Ghost’s default state.
He has the toothpick between his teeth, the one that appears when he is concentrating, and his gaze hasn’t moved from the center screen in what I suspect has been several minutes.
The clicking of keys is steady enough to pass for background noise until Sage’s voice slices clean through it. “Okay, but why can’t I just restore it to factory settings and start fresh?”
Ghost doesn’t answer immediately. He keeps typing, the faint glow of the laptop lighting the lower half of his face while the rest of him disappears into the corner like he put himself there on purpose.
A toothpick shifts from one side of his mouth to the other.
He hits enter, then another key, then he exhales through his nose.
“Because you’ll lose everything on the hard drive that wasn’t backed up,” he says finally, without looking up.
“And based on what you’ve described, nothing is backed up. ”
“I back things up.”
“To where?”
“To... the cloud.”
“Which cloud?”
Sage opens her mouth and then closes it. “The cloud, Ghost. The… cloud. The one everyone uses.”
Ghost finally, slowly, turns his head to look at her over his shoulder, with an expression that is not quite exasperation or amusement but lives somewhere in the territory between them. “There are multiple cloud services. They do not share data. You need to know which one you’re subscribed to.”
“Fine, I’ll just send you my login information.”
“You will absolutely not send me your login information.”
“Why not? Don’t you trust yourself?” she quips, with a mocking smile on her face.
“I trust myself just fine. I don’t trust you to change your passwords afterward, which means every device you own becomes a liability.”
Sage turns to Marley with an expression of complete bewildered offense. “He’s being mean.”
Marley, who has been watching this exchange with the serene, unhurried attention of someone watching wildlife through a spotting scope, lifts her mug and takes a very slow sip.
“He’s explaining network security to you at a level that assumes good faith on your part,” she says. “That seems like the opposite of mean.”
“He’s being technical at me, you know I don’t do technical,” Sage says, as though this is interchangeable with being mean.
Ghost turns back to his screen. He is almost smiling.
It’s a very small, very contained almost-smile, the kind that has never quite made it all the way to his face, tucked away somewhere just below the surface.
The toothpick shifts from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Bring the laptop in on Tuesday,” he says. “I’ll look at it.”
Sage immediately brightens like someone turned a dial. “See, this is what I needed. Why couldn’t we have started here?”
“Because you spent forty-five minutes asking questions you already knew the answers to.”
“I was making conversation, Ghost. You know you like talking to me!”
“I know, and for some fucked up reason… I do,” he says, and this time the almost-smile is fractionally closer to an actual one.
I settle onto the barstool beside Marley, and she nudges a plate toward me without a word, the way she’s started doing things around the clubhouse lately, with an ease that says she belongs here even though it still sometimes surprises her when it feels that way.
Snickerdoodle cookies. Mine. Still soft in the center.
I pick one up more for the motion than the hunger, the sugar and cinnamon clinging faintly to my fingers.
“Long morning?” Marley asks, soft enough that it’s just for me.
I think about the kitchen table. The newspaper, the two mugs, Will’s nod in the driveway, and the thing that settled in him afterward, and the way my father looked through the kitchen window with that unknown expression.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Good long or bad long?”
Across the room, Sage is now explaining to Ghost, at length and with considerable hand gestures, why her current desktop background is relevant to her laptop’s technical issues. Ghost listens with a focused patience, like he’s learned it’s easier to let her finish than to try and cut in.
I glance at them.
I watch Marley watching them.
“I honestly don’t know yet,” I admit.
Marley nods slowly, accepting the answer without hesitation.
There’s understanding in her expression too, the kind that says she’s spent time in that same uncertain space herself and knows it takes a while to figure out where your feet belong.
She doesn’t push, because Marley never pushes.
She simply takes a bite of one of the snickerdoodles, with a warm smile that says, ‘Welcome to being in love with a Defiance biker.’
I just haven’t figured out whether this is a good thing…
Or a mistake waiting to drown me.