Chapter Three #3
Mitch threw his head back and laughed. The real one, the full-bodied one that filled the bunkhouse and bounced off the ceiling beams, and I watched Sterling’s face while it happened—watched the way his mouth did that thing again, stronger this time, the warmth spreading from the corner to the whole left side of his face, and for approximately two seconds, Sterling Callahan looked like a man who was enjoying himself, and the sight of it did something to my chest that no amount of toast-flipping was going to disguise.
Sterling reached for the coffee pot. Poured himself a second cup, black, no cream, no sugar, the exact way he took it.
Then, without seeming to decide to, he reached across the table and refilled my mug too.
His hand was steady. His eyes were on the coffee, not on me, and he set the pot down and went back to his eggs like he hadn’t just done something that made my ribs rearrange themselves for the second time that morning.
Mitch was talking about the resident rooster now. The one that lived in the main barn and had, according to Mitch, a personal vendetta against anyone wearing a tan hat.
“He waits,” Mitch said, gesturing with his toast. “He plans. I’m not kidding.
I came around the corner yesterday and he was just standing there, looking at the spot where the path narrows, and I swear to God he was calculating trajectory.
This bird has operational training. I think Burke’s been giving him lessons. ”
“The rooster weighs four pounds,” Sterling said.
“And you weigh two-thirty-five, and I’d still rather fight you than him. At least you fight fair. This bird goes for the ankles. It’s personal.”
Sterling’s mouth did the thing again. Stronger this time. A near-laugh, the kind that lived in the back of his throat and didn’t quite make it out, but I heard it—the small, rough sound of it, like gravel shifting—and I added that to the collection too.
A near-laugh.
That was new.
That was worth cataloguing.
“The north pasture rotation,” I said, passing the butter. “Should we be moving the cattle this week, or waiting for the melt?”
Sterling looked at me. Something shifted in his expression—not surprise, exactly, but a recalibration, the same look he’d given the medication. Like he was reassessing what I knew, what I’d been paying attention to, what lived in my head besides toast intervals and stolen breakfast foods.
“Wait,” he said. “The ground’s still too soft near the creek. Another week, maybe two, depending on the temperature.” He paused. Cut into his eggs. Then, without looking up: “You’ve been watching the rotation?”
“I help with the feeding twice a week. Jasper showed me the schedule.”
Sterling nodded. Once. Sharp. The kind of nod that meant he’d filed the information and was moving on. Then he asked, “The garden beds behind the bunkhouse. What are you planting?”
The question landed in the space between us like something I hadn’t been expecting to catch. I set my fork down.
“Spring onions first,” I said. “Then carrots. Maybe potatoes if the soil warms enough. Why?”
“Just asking.”
Just asking. From Sterling Callahan, who rationed words like they cost him something, who spoke in sentences that averaged four words and rarely exceeded six.
Just asking about my garden beds, like it was a normal thing to wonder about, like he’d been paying attention to the patch of turned earth behind the bunkhouse that I’d been working on when I thought no one was looking.
Mitch was watching us both with the expression of a man who had front-row tickets to something he’d been waiting for. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His face said enough for both of us.
I stood up and carried my empty plate to the sink.
Turned on the water. Started washing, my back to the table, and let myself smile at the soap suds because there was no one to see it and because my chest was doing that thing again, the warm, heavy rearrangement that happened whenever Sterling did something human, and I needed a minute with a dish sponge to get my face under control.
Behind me, the table was quiet. Boots shifted on the floorboards.
A chair creaked. Coffee poured into a mug—Sterling’s, probably, his third—and then silence again, but not the kind that meant empty.
The kind that meant occupied. The kind that meant someone was sitting at a table they didn’t have to sit at, drinking coffee they didn’t have to drink, staying in a room they could have left five minutes ago.
Sterling was still there. Not leaving. Not finding a reason to be somewhere else.
Just staying, with his bad leg and his hat and his jaw that could cut glass, drinking coffee in a bunkhouse that smelled like bacon and wood smoke and the complicated warmth of three people who were, against considerable odds, learning how to share a morning.
I smiled at the pan. Listened to the sound of him behind me—the soft scrape of a fork against a plate, the low rumble of his voice answering something Mitch had said, the unhurried rhythm of a man who had decided, for reasons he wasn’t sharing, that he wasn’t in a hurry to be anywhere else.
It was enough. For now, it was more than enough. It was the sound of a door staying open, and the man on the other side of it choosing, for once, not to walk away.