Chapter 12
The kitchen smelled like coffee and green chile. I stood in the doorway wearing a borrowed shirt and no earthly idea how to walk through that door after having slept beside Ransom all night.
Sierra stood at the stove with his back to me. Rafe sat at the table, newspaper spread in front of him, reading like it was Sunday morning and not the day after his enforcer had walked into Rex Rawlins' dinner theater and thrown the first punch in what was probably going to be a war.
Ransom appeared at my shoulder in the doorway. He didn't say a word, just stood there, solid and steady, like we were two men walking into breakfast together.
Well, I thought. Here we go.
Sierra turned from the stove with a plate in each hand and stopped. Pearl lay at his feet on a rag rug. She lifted her head when I sat down, took one sniff of me, and put her head back down.
Sierra's eyes dropped to the shirt I was wearing. One eyebrow climbed a degree and stayed there.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning," I said back.
Rafe looked up from his newspaper. He took us in for a long moment without comment. My daddy used to look at men that way right before he made them wish he'd just hit them. Rafe folded the paper and set it aside.
"Sit," Rafe said.
Ransom pulled out a chair, sat down, and grabbed a tortilla from the warmer.
I followed because the alternative was standing in the doorway like an idiot.
Sierra set plates down in front of us, then went back for coffee.
He poured three cups and brought them over, setting mine down with enough care that I knew he was making a point about something, though what point exactly I couldn't say.
He paused on his way back to the stove, tipped his chin at the mark on my neck, and said with a smirk, "You pick a fight with a chupacabra last night or did you try to steal some of Pearl's kibble?"
My hand went to the bruise, and I glanced over at Ransom. "Fell into a scorpion's nest and got stung, more like."
"That'll happen around here." Sierra went back to the stove. "Best check your boots and hat before you put them on. Once they find someone they like, they tend to keep coming back." He winked at Ransom, who refused to acknowledge it.
My face went hot, and I drank my coffee to have something to do with my mouth.
Rafe turned a page of the folded newspaper he'd just set aside, looked at Ransom over the top of it. "Marked you like cattle," he muttered, staring at the bruise. "You intend to eat him, mijo? I thought I taught you better than to play with your food."
"I'm not playing," Ransom said, and it made my heart kick faster.
Sierra put a big pan of eggs on the table.
"Speaking of plays," Rafe started, "How is Rattlesnake Rex? Anything interesting up at Bonney last night?"
Ransom opened his mouth to answer, but Sierra shushed him and pointed a wooden spoon at Rafe. "No shop talk at the breakfast table. Now, Ransom, you better get some food in you. Birria's on the stove if you want to build a proper burrito. Tortillas are under the towel."
I built myself a burrito in silence, and Ransom did the same. His face was a mess in the morning light. Both eyes had gone purple-black overnight, and his nose was swollen enough that it changed the shape of his whole face. He looked like he'd gone ten rounds with someone twice his size.
He looked like he'd walked into a dinner theater and thrown a punch for Rafe's honor and taken the consequences.
I'd never seen him like this. He let Sierra fuss over him all through breakfast, making small talk about the truck and the horses and which boys were going to do what chores.
The answers came short and respectful and a bit chastened, like a kid getting his hair flattened by an aunt at church.
The man who'd put his teeth in my neck eight hours ago was sitting six inches from me eating tortillas and getting scolded for not looking after himself, and the scolding was working.
He was eating slower because Sierra had told him to.
Sierra dropped a hand on top of Ransom's head on his way past and gave it the same brief settling pat he probably gave Pearl. Ransom didn't lean into it. He didn't lean away from it either. Sierra kept walking.
My chest ached. My mama had touched me like that, once.
The kitchen window opened, and Coyote climbed in through the screen. He perched on the counter briefly before dropping to sit.
"Morning, Percy," Sierra called from the stove, not turning around.
I blinked. "Percy?" I looked at Ransom. "His real name is Percy?"
Coyote growled and flashed his teeth. "Not to you. Not to anybody but the wind and the water and to mamma and Sierra. And be thankful. Percy would eat your face. He would've left you buried and pissed on your face and made a trophy out of your hat."
"Language," Sierra prompted.
Coyote snorted and held out his arm, letting his snake curl around it.
"You hungry?" Sierra asked.
"We ate," Coyote said, and then hopped down off the counter. He stopped about a yard from my chair, leaned in, and inhaled.
Coyote tilted his head. Inhaled again, longer.
"You smell different," he said.
"Do I?"
"Yesterday you smelled like him on the outside. Today you smell like him on the inside." He said it thoughtfully, like a man reading weather off the sky. "That's a different smell. Deeper. Takes longer to wash off."
"Coyote," Ransom said. "Get that filthy snake out of here."
Coyote clutched his snake to his chest. "She is not filthy! We took a bath last week!"
"Dust baths don't count."
Coyote looked at Sierra like he expected him to intervene.
"Ransom's right," Sierra said eventually. "Mud baths are for pigs and horses, Percy. I'll hook up the garden hose and get you a bar of soap this afternoon. How's that?"
Coyote made an inhuman sound of protest and bolted for the door. "Can't. No bath. Too busy. Bye!"
Sierra sighed and shook his head.
I let myself breathe.
Ransom had one eyebrow up at me.
"What," I said. My voice came out level. That took work.
"Nothing." His mouth twitched. "You get used to him."
"Do you?"
"No. You just stop jumping."
Sierra snorted from the stove.
The back door opened again, this time the one that led to the yard, and voices spilled into the kitchen.
Ten or twelve young voices, loud and layered over each other, came in dusty and sweaty, like they'd already been up and working for hours.
Boots hit the hardwood and chairs scraped, and somebody laughed at something somebody else said.
They stopped short in the doorway.
The tall one in front had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw. He looked at Ransom's face and stopped walking. The kid behind him walked into his back.
"Holy..."
"Mateo," Sierra said from the stove, not turning. "Whatever word you were about to say, don't."
"I wasn't gonna." He had been. He was still staring at Ransom. "Who got you?"
"I fell."
"Off what, a building?"
"Drop it."
Behind Mateo, the kid he'd walked into was already grinning. He had his phone out, low at his hip, thumbs already moving. "Was it Rex's guys? Tell me it was Rex's guys."
"I said drop it."
"It was Rex's guys."
A phone buzzed on the bench beside Mateo.
Then another, two seats down. Then a third, somewhere in the back of the pack.
The kid behind Mateo bit his lip to keep from laughing and didn't quite manage it.
Down the table, a tall kid with a sunburn glanced at his screen, looked up at Ransom's face, looked back at his screen, and his shoulders started shaking.
Ransom's own phone buzzed once against the wood of the table. He didn't look at it.
"Phones," Sierra said from the stove, without turning.
"Sierra—"
"Bowl by the door. You know the rule."
There was a collective groan, and a slow shuffle of boys getting up and dropping phones into a wooden bowl on the sideboard like coins into a collection plate. The kid with the grin was the last to surrender his, and he held it to his chest a beat longer than the rest before letting it go.
"Cruz," Sierra said.
"I'm goin', I'm goin'."
The phones piled up. The bowl filled. Somebody's was still buzzing at the bottom of the stack when Cruz dropped his on top and the whole pile gave a muffled, communal rattle, like a nest of something underground.
Mateo turned to me with his hand already out. "Mateo. You're the Ranger. You let him throw the first punch?"
I shook his hand. "Winston. And hard to stop him when he puts his mind to doin' something."
"Which one'd you hit?"
A short silence before Ransom answered, staring straight at Rafe. "Otis."
Rafe didn't react. He just stared right back. It was like they were having a silent conversation, Rafe and Ransom, and the rest of us weren't invited.
"Boys," Rafe said without raising his voice. "Eat. There's a lot of work to do today. Horses won't manage themselves."
They sorted themselves out in about four seconds, grabbing plates, coffee, and then chairs around the table. The volume dropped to a level Sierra could live with, and not a hair below.
I'd been in this house for two days. The boys had been in it for years.
They moved around Sierra and Rafe and Ransom like they'd been built into the architecture, and the architecture was old.
Whatever this was, kitchen and ranch and operation and family all at once, it had been here a long time before me, and it wasn't going anywhere when I left.
If I left.
The bowl of phones rattled again on the sideboard. Sierra didn't turn around.
"They can wait, boys."
Rafe stood up and tucked his newspaper under one arm. "I'll be in my office if anyone needs me," he said, staring straight at us. He kissed Sierra on the cheek on his way to the back of the house.
"I do believe we were just told to report to his office after breakfast," I said to Ransom.
Ransom grunted in response.
I drained my coffee and stood. "Thank you for breakfast and coffee," I said to Sierra.