Chapter 9 Kade #2
I find Calder leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest. He looks like Roman used to look when he was about to hand out orders, and the similarity feels like a dull knife twisting behind my ribs.
Sawyer sits at the table, with one perfectly polished dress shoe crossed over his knee, watching me with that calm, calculated expression he wears like armor.
And Levi—Levi’s sprawled on the couch pretending to be relaxed, but his knee is bouncing a hundred miles an hour. The kid never could sit still.
“Well,” I say, stopping just inside the door. “The gang’s all here.”
Calder doesn’t smile. “Sit down.”
“I’m good standing.”
“Wasn’t a suggestion.”
We stare at each other. Calder’s got a few inches on me, and right now, he’s using every one of them. His eyes are steady and hard, not cruel the way Roman’s were, but immovable. The kind of look that says I will wait here all goddamn day if I have to.
What-the fuck-ever. I pull out a chair and drop onto it. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” Calder pushes off the counter, turns around, and grabs a bowl that he sets down in front of me. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care. Saint made it, and it would hurt her feelings if you didn’t eat it. If you hurt her feelings, then I’ll have to hurt you, brother. Now eat.”
I stare down at the bowl. The steam curls up and hits my face, and my stomach cramps so hard it almost hurts.
Okay, fine. I’m hungry. I just forgot what it felt like.
I grab the spoon and take a bite to get him off my back.
Unfortunately, that turns into another, and then another, and soon, I’m shoveling it in like I haven’t eaten in days. Which I probably haven’t.
Nobody says anything while I eat. That’s how I know this is bad.
If it were just a check-in, Levi would be cracking jokes, and Sawyer would be on his phone handling some secret family business.
None of those things is happening. They’re all quiet.
Watching. Waiting for Calder to do whatever Calder’s going to do.
Once I’m finished, I push the empty bowl away and lean back. “Alright. Get on with it.”
Calder pulls out the chair across from me and sits. He plants both forearms on the table and leans in. “You look like shit.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“When’s the last time you slept? And I mean actually slept, not passed out for two hours and stared at the ceiling the rest of the night.”
I don’t respond because we both know the answer.
“How about eating something, and I mean before just now?” He jerks his chin at the empty bowl. “Showered before today? Left that room for anything other than coffee?”
I lift a brow. “You keeping tabs on me?”
“Somebody has to.” His voice is flat. Not angry. Worse than angry—tired. “God knows you don’t give a shit what happens to you.”
I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache. “I’m fine.”
Sawyer makes a sound from the table that’s almost a laugh but not quite. I shoot him a look, but he just raises an eyebrow. Sure you are, that look says.
“You’re not fine.” Calder’s voice drops lower.
Not softer—lower. Like a warning. “You killed our father six days ago, and I know that weighs on you. I can’t even imagine that, but you did what you had to do.
It was him or us. But I fear that ending him killed something inside you, and I can’t sit here and watch you fall apart without at least trying to help.
” The words land like fists. I want to shove back from the table and tell him to go to hell, but my legs won’t move.
I’m exhausted. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. The kind of tiredness you carry in your soul. “You’ve been hanging out with Saint too much. Don’t go getting mushy on me.”
“This isn’t a heart-to-heart, Kade. I won’t hold your hand and tell you it will be okay. This is me telling you to knock your shit off.”
Levi shifts on the couch. I can feel him watching me, but I keep my eyes on Calder.
“You’ve got questions eating you alive. I know you do. We all know you do.” Calder’s eyes don’t waver. “Roman’s confession shocked us all, so I imagine it more than rattled you.”
“Do we really need to talk about this?”
“Yes, we really need to talk about this.” Calder shakes his head at me.
“Emma Porter is your mother, and you deserve to know her side of the story. You deserve to know what the fuck happened.” The name hits me like a gut punch.
I flinch before I can stop myself, and I hate that they all witness that level of vulnerability.
“She’s been calling you,” Calder says. It’s not a question. I’m not surprised he knows. You can’t hide anything from him.
“Texting,” I correct, because apparently that distinction matters to me.
“And you haven’t responded.”
“No.”
“Why?”
The laugh that comes out of me is ugly and bitter.
“Why? Because fuck her, that’s why. Because she had my entire life to reach out, and she didn’t.
Because everything I know came out of Roman’s mouth, and that man didn’t say a single honest thing in his life unless it was designed to destroy someone.
Because—” I stop. My pitch is climbing, and my hands are fisted on the table.
Everyone in this room can see me unraveling.
Calder lets the silence sit for a beat. Then two. Then he says, “That’s exactly why you need to go talk to her.”
“The hell I do.”
“You just listed every reason yourself. You don’t know what’s true. You don’t know her side. And you’re never going to get back to any version of normal until you find out.”
“What if I don’t want to be that version of myself anymore?”
“Then don’t be, but you won’t know who you are until you unpack all this shit, and moping around and sulking ain’t going to fix the problem.”
That one stings. I glare at him, but Calder doesn’t back down.
He never does. That’s the thing about my oldest brother.
He’s not cruel about it, but he will look you dead in the eye and say the thing nobody else has the balls to say.
Roman ruled with fear. Calder leads with the kind of blunt honesty that makes you want to punch him in the mouth even when you know he’s right.
Especially when you know he’s right.
“I’m not ready,” I say. It’s annoying how small my voice sounds.
“You’re never going to be ready. That’s not how this works.” Calder leans back and crosses his arms again. “So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get in your truck, drive to the Porter ranch, and have a conversation with Emma Porter. Today.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” I growl. “Since when do you all get to dictate how I handle my problems?”
“When they start to affect the rest of us. That’s when,” Calder snaps.
Fucking assholes. They can’t make me do anything. In fact, I want to do it less now that they’re demanding it of me. “You all can fuck off. I’ll do it when I’m ready.”
The look he gives me is almost amused. Almost. “You’ll do it today, or I’ll hog-tie you, throw you in the back of my truck, and drop you on her doorstep myself. And believe me, brother, I will enjoy every second of it.”
Levi snorts from the couch. “Fuck, hold on. Let me get the popcorn before you two start fighting.”
“Shut up, Levi,” I say, but there’s no heat behind it.
Sawyer finally speaks up from the end of the table, his voice measured the way it always is. “He’s right, Kade. Not about the hog-tying—although, yeah, he absolutely would—but about going. You can’t keep circling the drain.”
I want to continue arguing, to dig my heels in and tell them all to fuck off, but under the anger and the pride and the stubborn Bishop streak that Roman beat into all of us is something quieter. Something telling me that they’re right.
I think about Emma’s texts. The ones I’ve been reading and rereading like they’re going to change if I stare at them long enough.
There is so much we need to discuss. I think about Roman’s voice in my head, telling me the truth about my mother like he was handing me a loaded gun.
I think about Allie—and then I stop thinking about Allie because that road leads somewhere I can’t afford to go right now.
“Fine,” I say through my teeth.
Calder nods. There’s no victory in his expression, no smugness. Just the steady resolve of a man who’s been holding this family together with his bare hands since long before Roman was buried six feet under. “Glad you saw it my way.”
I stand so fast that the chair scrapes against the hardwood. “Just so you know, I’m not doing it for you. Or for her. I’m doing it because I need answers, and I’m tired of the dead man in my head being the only one who has them.”
“The only person you should do it for is you,” Calder says.
I nod and swallow, feeling vulnerable and weird because my brothers and I have never been the type to solve our problems with words and discussion. I’m tempted to tell them thanks, but I stop the words at the last second.
Without a backward glance, I walk out of the cabin and close the door behind me.
The sun is high in the sky, and I pause on the porch, admiring the beauty of nature and soaking up a few rays.
The ranch stretches out in every direction—land that was Roman’s and is now ours, land soaked in blood and bad memories and whatever the hell we’re supposed to build on top of the wreckage.
I pull my phone out and stare at Emma’s last message one more time.
There is so much we need to discuss.
“Yeah,” I mutter to myself and shove the phone into my pocket before I step off the porch. “I guess there is.”