Chapter Four
HOME FIELD
Rain followed them most of the forty-five-minute drive back to Fern.
Axel sat beside him, quiet. Quiet as if deep in thought.
Whip studied the road while the sheriff’s office replayed itself automatically in the back of his head anyway. Tomas leaning against the counter. The coffee. Axel stalking over and stealing the damn thing straight out of his hand like he owned it.
Whip snorted.
“Don’t start,” Axel muttered without looking at him.
That got a short laugh out of him. “You’re the one stealing drinks from law enforcement now.”
“He was irritating me.”
“Tomas irritates everybody.”
“Yeah?” Axel finally glanced over. “Looked like you were having fun.”
Whip caught the edge buried under the words instantly. Not anger exactly. Something rougher than that.
Possessive.
Not that Axel seemed aware of it.
Whip sure as hell was.
His chest tightened.
The funny part was that most people assumed he and Axel had always worked together.
They hadn’t.
They’d crossed paths plenty over the years. Shared jobs. Shared warrants and the occasional operation when circumstances lined up.
But Boone had only partnered them roughly a year ago.
Sometimes it felt a hell of a lot longer.
It was hard to remember a time when Axel hadn’t been there.
Harder still to remember what the job looked like before him.
Whip slowed as Fern slowly emerged through the mist ahead of them.
Friday-night football traffic still lingered around parts of town.
Small town.
Everybody still awake.
Everybody still watching everybody else.
Which meant by tomorrow, half the town would know Axel stole the sheriff’s coffee.
Axel shifted in the passenger seat, flexing his right hand once before stretching his arm out along the door beneath the glow of passing streetlights.
Whip noticed the movement automatically.
“You swelling up again?” he asked. “You knocked it inside Mike’s trailer.”
Axel glanced over briefly. “You’ve always tracked injuries like a damn medic.”
Whip didn’t bother replying.
The old neon beer sign in the front window buzzed blue and red through the drizzle when Whip pulled into the gravel lot beside his family’s pool hall.
He’d owned a dance hall over in Crumpet, Washington, for a while, but sold it last winter. One business was enough with a full-time job.
Axel climbed out beside him, stretching his shoulders once beneath the damp Oregon night air.
“When are you going to paint this place?” Axel muttered.
Whip snorted softly. “Waiting on you, buddy.”
The old wood siding needed paint.
Axel brought it up every damn time they came here.
One section of gutter sagged near the corner while faded football banners still hung crooked in the front windows beside neon beer signs older than some of the locals inside.
Still packed for a Friday night.
Warm air rolled over them the second they stepped through the door carrying fried food, beer, old wood, and rain-soaked denim. Pool balls cracked somewhere deeper inside the building beneath low conversation and football commentary drifting from mounted televisions over the bar.
“Whip!” somebody shouted immediately from the back.
Another voice followed before he even located the first speaker. “About damn time. You bring trouble with you again?”
Axel huffed quietly beside him.
Whip’s lips twitched.
Five seconds inside and half the room already had opinions. Some things never changed. He’d take it.
Because this bar right here?
This was home.
A couple guys near the dartboards lifted beers toward them while one older woman behind the bar pointed directly at Axel.
“You still breakin’ furniture when you lose pool games?”
“One time, Carrie. One time,” Axel shot back automatically.
“Bullshit,” three people answered together.
Whip laughed under his breath while Axel glared at the entire room like he was considering homicide.
Nobody looked remotely concerned by Axel’s expression. Not one damn person in the room even blinked.
Somebody near the dartboards yelled, “Hell froze over. Tauber’s voluntarily in the bar before midnight.”
“Your tab’s still unpaid, Randy,” Whip called back automatically.
Laughter rolled through the room.
Axel barely made it three steps before somebody else pointed toward the state championship plaque hanging behind the bar.
“Bain! You still hittin’ people like a damn freight train?”
Axel cracked his knuckles. “Builds character.”
“Breaks bones,” somebody yelled immediately.
Whip snorted and ducked behind the bar, grabbing two beers from the cooler beneath the counter.
The back-office door swung open behind him.
Retired U.S. Marshal, Wade “Crash” Tauber stepped out carrying a ledger book beneath one arm.
“Bout time you showed up,” Crash grunted toward Whip automatically.
Whip slid one beer onto the counter. “Missed you too.”
People still underestimated his father because of the gray threaded through his hair.
That usually lasted right up until Crash looked at them.
Age had settled onto him like worn leather instead of weakness.
Broad shoulders still strained the faded Henley beneath his flannel, and his rough, scarred hands looked capable of sanding wood bare.
Old injury stiffness touched his left knee for exactly one step before disappearing beneath habit.
Then Crash’s sharp gaze landed on Axel.
“Well,” he drawled. “Look what the rain dragged back in.”
Axel snorted softly. “Good to see you too, Crash.”
Crash grunted like that covered enough sentiment for everybody involved.
Then his attention shifted toward Whip and the beers from the cooler.
“You been feeding him?” Crash asked.
“When I have to.” Whip slid a bottle toward Axel and nodded. “Besides, feedin’ strays builds character.”
Axel scowled at him and cracked the beer open. “Explains a lot about you.”
Crash’s mouth twitched briefly. Not quite a smile. Close enough.
Then his dad leaned both forearms against the bar and studied Axel for a second too long.
Whip recognized the shift immediately.
Marshal look.
The one that quietly cataloged exhaustion, bad sleep, old injuries, and lies without needing anybody to say a word first.
Hell, he’d used that look himself plenty.
“You sleeping at all?” Crash asked.
Axel’s shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly before he took another swallow of beer.
“Yeah,” Axel said.
It was bullshit.
Whip knew it. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet late at night. Either in the kitchen for snacks or pacing from insomnia.
Crash clearly knew Axel was lying too.
But the older man only grunted once and nodded toward the empty stool nearest the bar.
“Sit down before Whip starts hovering weird.”
“Come on,” Whip said, nudging Axel away from the bar toward the wall of old football photos near the dartboards.
He jerked his chin toward one plaque.
“Still crooked.”
Axel followed his gaze.
The state championship plaque still sat mounted beside a row of faded framed photographs and old football banners from Fern High. One corner leaned slightly lower than the other like somebody had slammed into the wall hard enough to shift it years ago and nobody ever bothered fixing it afterward.
Dust clung faintly around the edges beneath the neon beer lights.
“Thought your dad said he was gonna straighten that thing,” Axel muttered.
“He says that every year.”
“I heard that,” Crash called from the bar.
Whip took another swallow of beer while Axel scratched once at the back of his neck like neither of them had said a damn thing.
After a moment, Whip wandered closer to the wall.
Every time he came here, the old newspaper clippings framed beside the plaque drew him.
Team photos.
Muddy uniforms.
Teenagers trying too hard to look tough for the camera.
One picture held Axel mid-hit during a rain game, helmet lowered while Whip disappeared beneath the collision entirely.
“Got you good that game,” Axel smirked, aiming his bottle at the photo.
“Don’t forget who owns that trophy,” Whip pointed out.
Axel smirked. “Don’t forget who put your ass in the hospital.”
“Cheap shot.”
“Legal hit.”
“You outweighed me by forty pounds. Still do,” Whip pointed out.
“That’ll teach you to play with the big boys.”
“Ya’ll played some of the best ball I ever seen,” old man Snook said from his spot at the bar.
“Hell, right they did. I paid two dollars just to watch those two try to kill each other on the field,” Stacy hollered from a nearby table.
Whip took another swallow of beer while his gaze drifted across the old photographs automatically.
Rain game. Fourth quarter. Fern down by three against Bend. Axel coming off the line like a freight train with mud halfway up his legs.
Whip remembered all of it.
The smell of wet grass. Stadium lights glaring white through the rain. The exact second he’d realized Axel wasn’t slowing down before impact.
“You brought flowers to the hospital,” Whip said lightly.
Axel snorted beside him. “My mom made me.”
Whip smirked. “Pretty sure she made you bring chocolate too, but you ate it.”
“She did, and I did.”
“And I remember asking you out on a date.”
Axel barked a laugh so sudden that a couple of people glanced over.
“You were drugged, and I punched you.”
“Technically, it was a hard push.”
“I still did it.”
“Then the doctor kicked you out.”
Axel grimaced into his beer. “Fucker called the school and got me suspended for three days for that.”
Whip smirked faintly. “Worth it?”
“Punching you?”
“It was a push.”
Axel looked over at him then. Long enough for Whip to remember how tight they’d been back in school.
“Kinda,” Axel muttered.
“Thank god they finally put them in the same high school,” Carrie yelled, lifting her beer mug.
The rest of the room erupted with a variety of agreements.
Whip remembered.
It had been the best fistfight he’d never planned on having.
The locker room fight he’d had with Jensen Cramer and his gang of bullies. How Axel had shown up out of the blue and waded into the crowd of boys. Bloody knuckles and a few black eyes later, they’d become best friends through the rest of twelfth grade.
By the time they finally left Tauber Pool Hall, the rain had settled back into a steady cold drizzle over Fern.
Axel walked beside him with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, shoulders looser now than they’d been all week—like a river once it got beyond the rapids.
People had stopped them three separate times on the way out. Old football stories. Questions about work. Somebody inviting them hunting next weekend. Another guy asking Axel if he still owed him twenty bucks from high school.
Axel had laughed more tonight than he had since May left.
Not forced either.
Real.
Good to hear it.
The drive to the house stayed quiet. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just tired. Windshield wipers dragged steadily across the glass.
Whip pulled into the gravel drive a little after midnight.
The house greeted them exactly the same way they’d left it.
Dark porch.
Wet steps.
Light over the stove still on inside.
Axel stepped through the front door first.
And just like that, the ease disappeared again.
The silence inside the house landed differently than the silence at the pool hall. Heavier somehow. Smaller.
Whip hung his keys beside the door automatically while Axel stopped near the hallway leading toward the spare room.
The black garbage bags still lined the wall exactly where they’d been all week.
Nothing unpacked.
Nothing moved.
Axel noticed him noticing.
For a second, neither of them said anything.
Then Axel scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
He let it go.
They could clear a house in under thirty seconds.
Getting Axel to unpack a garbage bag might take longer.