Chapter Four
~ Knox ~
The next morning I woke to the sound of someone splitting wood outside my window. I knew from the rhythm—two hard strikes, a grunt, and a third to finish the job—that it was Ransom, and that he was either making a point or burning off a hangover.
Maybe both.
I lay there for a minute, cataloguing the sounds. The house was already alive, floorboards groaning under the weight of breakfast prep, pots clattering, radio dialed to a station that played only bluegrass and funeral dirges.
I gave it five minutes, then pulled on a shirt and pants and then made my way down the hall. The air was thick with cinnamon and coffee, plus the undertone of burnt sugar that said someone was about to fuck up a tray of sticky buns.
I found Newt in the mudroom, curled into a corner and trying to make himself invisible. He’d gone back to his own clothes—washed and dried and folded with military precision—but he still wore my hoodie under his windbreaker.
It made him look younger, like the kind of kid you saw standing by the vending machines at a truck stop, counting change for a soda.
He saw me and straightened, color blooming under the bruise on his cheek. “Hey,” he said, voice scratchy from sleep.
“Hey,” I replied. Then, before I could talk myself out of it, “You sleep alright?”
He nodded, then shook his head. “Your brother snores.”
“He does,” I said. “You get used to it. Or you die.”
He laughed, then clamped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t built for morning conversations.
We stood there, the silence drawing out like a rubber band. I noticed the way he kept picking at the seam of the sleeve, twisting the fabric between his fingers.
“You ready for this?” I asked.
He hesitated. “I don’t know what ‘this’ is.”
I shrugged. “Neither do I.”
That was a lie, sort of. I knew exactly what this was—the McKenzie family breakfast, a ritual equal parts meal and blood sport. The only thing that kept it from devolving into a full-blown brawl was the threat of Ma’s wooden spoon.
I led the way to the dining room, which was already packed. The table ran nearly the length of the house, warped by decades of elbows and hot dishes, but it was solid oak, built to survive wars and holidays.
Overhead, copper pots hung from a rack, reflecting the yellow glow of oil lamps. Every surface was crowded with food—eggs, bacon, biscuits, three types of gravy, a literal mountain of fried potatoes.
Ransom was at the far end, halfway through a stack of pancakes, syrup running down his wrist like blood from a wound. Harlow sat next to him, hunched over a bowl of oatmeal that looked more like cement than breakfast.
Ma stood at the head of the table, pouring coffee into mismatched mugs. She spotted me, then clocked Newt over my shoulder. Her expression didn’t change, but the temperature in the room dropped a good five degrees.
“Morning,” I said, steering Newt toward an empty chair. I kept a hand at the small of his back, not for show but because I could feel him trembling and didn’t trust him not to bolt.
He made it to the seat, barely. His eyes did a quick lap of the table, taking inventory—Ransom, Harlow, and Ma, then a couple of cousins whose names didn’t matter. All of them staring at him like he was the first snowflake in August.
Ma set down the coffeepot with a thud. “So you’re the Bridger boy.”
Newt went pale, then red, then something in between. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry.” He tried to smile, but his lips caught on the scab and he winced. “Thank you for letting me… be here.”
Ma didn’t blink. “Knox says you’re staying. That true?”
I felt the room contract, every eye flicking from me to Newt and back again. I squared my shoulders, made my voice level. “He’s staying. With me.”
Silence, thicker than the gravy.
Ransom made a noise that might have been a laugh, but Ma shut it down with a look. “You know what you’re doing?” she said.
I nodded. “Always.”
She snorted, then turned to Newt. “Eat up, boy. You look like you haven’t had a decent meal in a month.”
Newt flinched, but managed a shaky “Thanks.” He reached for the biscuits, nearly dropped the whole basket, then caught it and clutched it like a lifeline.
The others went back to their food, but the tension lingered, circling the table like a mean dog waiting for scraps.
Newt busied himself with breakfast, eyes on his plate. He ate with the cautious efficiency of someone used to guarding every bite. Every few minutes he’d glance at me, like he was checking to see if I’d vanished or if this was some elaborate setup for a punchline.
I didn’t mind. I watched him right back, noting the color coming back into his face, the way his hands steadied after a few bites. Ma refilled his mug, then nodded at me.
It was as close to an endorsement as I’d ever get.
The meal ground on. Ransom and Harlow argued over who got the last cinnamon roll, then split it in half and shoved the halves in their mouths at the same time. One of the cousins tried to bait me into talking about the old man’s will, but I ignored him and kept my focus on Newt.
Halfway through, he blurted, “Your table is really beautiful—is that oak? I love how the grain patterns look like little rivers. Sorry, that’s weird to notice, isn’t it?”
The entire table froze. Even the clock on the wall seemed to stop for a second.
Then Ma smiled, slow and razor-thin. “It’s old oak, cut from the property line back in ‘43. My husband built it.”
Newt looked relieved, then caught the smile and seemed to realize it was a challenge. He ducked his head, muttering, “It’s just really nice, is all.”
I reached over and squeezed his knee, felt him jump, then settle.
Ransom watched the exchange, one eyebrow arched. He had a piece of tattoo peeking from under his sleeve, something new and unfinished. I’d bet money it was a snake, or a skull, or both.
He said, “So, Newt, you planning to stick around or is this just a pit stop?”
Newt hesitated, then looked at me, waiting for a cue.
I gave him one. “He’s staying,” I repeated. “As long as he wants.”
That seemed to end the matter. Ransom shrugged, popped a toothpick in his mouth, and said, “Good luck, man. This place has a way of chewing people up.”
Newt smiled, shaky but genuine. “I’ll try not to get splinters.”
Ma barked a laugh. “You might fit in after all.”
The rest of breakfast passed in a blur of food and chatter. Newt relaxed, a little, enough to make jokes about the size of Harlow’s biceps and ask Ma for the recipe to her gravy.
I sat back, watching him navigate the storm, and felt something settle in my chest. Not peace, exactly, but the sense that, for the first time in a long time, the table was set the way it should be.
When the meal ended, Ma stood, wiped her hands on her apron, and said, “You boys clear the table. I need to call your father.”
She swept out, leaving the aftermath behind.
I stacked plates with Ransom, who watched Newt the whole time, eyes sharp but not unkind.
“He’s cute,” Ransom said, voice pitched low enough not to carry. “You gonna fuck this one up, too?”
I didn’t answer, just grinned and carried the dishes to the sink.
Newt followed, hands full of mugs, trying not to drop them. “Should I—where do these go?”
“Just leave them,” I said. “You’re the guest.”
He set the mugs down, then turned to face me. He looked different in the morning light—less fragile, more present.
“Thanks,” he said. “For… I don’t know. Not letting them eat me alive.”
I shrugged. “They’re wolves. You learn to bite back.”
He smiled. “I think I could, if I had to.”
I looked at him, really looked, and saw the steel under the nerves. He’d been through hell, and he was still standing.
“You will,” I said. “Trust me.”
He did.
We cleaned up the rest of the kitchen in silence, side by side, the way people did when they’d been doing it for years. Every so often, our hands would brush, and neither of us pulled away.
Ransom whistled as he finished the last of the silverware, then headed for the back porch, leaving us alone.
Newt leaned against the counter, twisting the hem of the hoodie. “So what happens now?”
“Now,” I said, “we see if you can survive a full day at the shop without losing a finger.”
He laughed, a real one, and for a second I wanted to freeze the moment, keep it safe. But the world didn’t work like that.
I gestured toward the door. “Come on. I’ll show you what real work looks like.”
He followed, still in my hoodie, still a little shaky, but with something new in his eyes.
Hope, maybe.
Or just the knowledge that, at least for now, he had a place at the table.
Either way, I wasn’t about to let go.
The real test came at dinner that. If you survived breakfast, the rest of the clan would try to break you at supper, when everyone had all day to build up a fresh set of grievances and insults.
The McKenzie dinner table was controlled chaos. We didn’t do courses, just a steady rotation of whatever dishes survived the feeding frenzy, everything passed from hand to hand until the bowls came back empty.
Ma presided over the proceedings, Queen of the Carbs, arms folded and eyes narrowed, but she didn’t have to say much. The rest of us kept the conversation going, even when it wasn’t strictly about food.
I kept Newt on my left, between me and the window. It wasn’t strategy, exactly, but it meant nobody could blindside him with a cheap shot or a surprise question about his family.
Ransom slid in on my right, already three beers deep and picking at the label like it owed him money.
His tattoos had multiplied since breakfast—a fresh black serpent coiling over his wrist, a few lines still raw.
Harlow took the seat across, the span of his shoulders nearly eclipsing Newt’s entire field of view.
The food was next-level, even for us. Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans with bacon, rolls slicked with butter. Harlow passed the gravy boat to Newt like he was handing off a live grenade.
“You ever had real gravy?” Harlow asked, face earnest.
Newt blinked. “Uh. I mean, we had gravy sometimes. But it was—”
“Powdered mix?” Ransom guessed.
Newt nodded. Harlow looked like he’d just been told about a famine.
“Try it,” Harlow said. “Ma says gravy builds character.”
Newt poured a measured waterfall onto his potatoes, the steam curling around his hands. He cradled the bowl for a second, eyes closed, breathing it in.
He ate like a man who didn’t trust the food to last. Not wolfing, exactly, but with the concentration of someone who’d been hungry for a long time and wasn’t sure it was allowed to stop.
He tried to play it casual, but the way his fingers dug into the bread roll, the way he licked the edge of his lip to catch a smear of butter, it was like he was feeding a need deeper than just the belly.
Harlow smiled at him, wide and guileless, then turned back to his own plate. Ransom watched the exchange, head cocked, mouth curled up in a smirk.
I pretended not to notice, but my hand found the edge of Newt’s chair, fingers curled so I could brush his knee under the table. He startled, but didn’t pull away.
Conversation drifted to the usual topics—who was fixing the fence, how much firewood we’d need, which of the cousins had been arrested most recently. I let the noise wash over me, tuned my focus to the boy at my side.
He looked softer in this light. The bruise had faded from purple to yellow, and he’d lost the defensive hunch to his shoulders.
There was a stain of gravy on his shirt, and he didn’t seem to care.
Every so often he’d glance at me, then look away just as quick, like he was afraid I’d catch him watching.
I liked the attention. I liked him. More than I’d planned to.
Halfway through the meal, he choked on a biscuit. Not a dramatic, Heimlich-maneuver situation, but a legit moment of panic where he thumped his chest and turned bright red.
Harlow reached over, ready to do whatever needed doing, but I waved him off. I put my hand on Newt’s back, between the shoulders, and said, “Breathe through it. You’re alright.”
He coughed, wiped his mouth, then smiled weakly. “Sorry,” he croaked, voice hoarse. “I forgot how to swallow, I guess.”
Ransom didn’t miss a beat. “Happens to the best of us.”
Newt went redder, but the tension broke and he even managed a laugh. Ma shot Ransom a glare so severe it could have wilted a cornfield, then shoved another serving spoon into the mashed potatoes.
After the plates were cleared, the men lingered at the table, pushing crumbs into piles, talking in that slow, meandering way that meant nobody wanted to be the first to leave. Newt sat quiet, but not withdrawn, tracing patterns in the condensation on his glass.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, saw the way he was paying attention to every joke, every shift in the conversation. He wanted to belong here. He might never admit it, but it was all over him.
The room hummed with inside jokes and memory, the kind of shorthand you built over decades.
Every so often, Newt would risk a comment, or answer a question about school, or let Harlow load his plate with another helping.
Nobody called him out, and nobody mentioned the bruise, or the reason he was here.
It was the closest thing to acceptance you got in this house.
When Ma excused herself to the parlor, I cleared my throat. “Listen up,” I said. The table went silent. “Newt stays,” I said, repeating what I had said this morning for those that weren’t there. “Anyone has a problem with that, they can take it up with me.”
Ransom lifted his glass, shrugged. “Fine by me. He’s better company than most of your exes.”
Harlow grinned, and even the cousins just nodded and kept chewing.
I looked at Newt, let him see it was final.
He smiled, slow and real, then let his hand slip under the table to find mine. Our fingers tangled up, awkward but firm.
For the rest of the night, we didn’t let go.