Chapter Three
~ Hooper ~
The kitchen had grown a crib overnight.
Not a real one, not a catalog showpiece—the kind you built with expectation and fresh paint, with a matching mobile and a basket of hand-knit nightmares.
This was a rescue, a battered white number with chew marks and a chipped side rail, parked six feet from the stove and maybe three from the trash. It looked like it had been carried in on someone’s back, probably Rawley’s, and set down wherever it fit best between the dog bed and the recycling.
Emilio was in it, staring at the ceiling like he was waiting for some message to arrive by Morse code through the hairline cracks in the plaster.
The smell of coffee and wood smoke braided the air, heavy enough to sting my nose as I thudded down the stairs.
Someone had turned the thermostat up high enough to thaw a meat locker, so the windows dripped condensation even though the world outside was locked in frost so thick you could see your own breath against the glass.
Jojo stood at the table, pencil behind one ear and a legal pad laid open like a command center.
He was in full triage mode, the way only an omega with a mission could be: hands fluttering between the paper, the kitchen drawers, the baby, and back again, checking off items like there was a pop quiz at the end.
“Bottles, check. Formula, check. Flannel blankets… probably not enough, but check for now. Diapers, check. What else do they need, Hoop?”
He looked up at me, blue eyes so bright they nearly poked a hole in my hangover.
“Liver?” I offered.
He did not even dignify it. “Seriously.”
I shrugged. “I was a baby once, but I don’t remember much.”
Rawley had taken over the coffee pot, moving with the precision of a man who’d calibrated every movement in the service of not being awake any longer than absolutely necessary. He poured a cup, black as battery acid, and set it on the table without so much as a glance my way.
He was dressed for ranch work already, thermals and jeans and a shirt that looked like it’d come off the back of a recently defrosted corpse, which meant he’d been up for at least two hours.
He set a mug in front of me, no comment, and then another across from him for Jojo. He even poured the kid’s, which Jojo never noticed because his entire body was already angled toward the crib, listening for the smallest suggestion of a whimper.
Rawley cleared his throat. “I did the perimeter sweep. Nothing in the tree line. No tracks except yours, and what’s left of the coyote from last week.” He said it flat, like reading a gas bill, but his eyes never left the baby.
I wrapped both hands around my mug, letting the heat burn off the numb. “So whoever did the drop-off wanted to ghost. No car, no snowmobile, no nothin’.”
Rawley grunted. “If you want to call in the sheriff, I will.”
“Please, don’t.” I lifted the coffee, burned my tongue, set it down again. “Guy can’t even find his own dick without backup.”
Jojo winced, just a micro-blip, then got back to writing. He narrated as he went, talking mostly to the air: “We’re gonna need a car seat. And maybe… oh, a changing table? Should we call someone, like a lawyer or a—what do you call it, a baby judge?”
He looked at me, desperate for guidance. I gave him a thumbs up.
Rawley tilted his head. “I’ll get the car seat today. You want me to pick up food for the kid, or are we expecting him to live on protein shakes and leftovers?”
Jojo cut in before I could answer. “Infant formula only for the first six months,” he said, all doctor’s office, “but I’ll ask Jasper for a list.” He circled something on the notepad and drew a little star next to it.
Emilio made a soft noise—maybe a dream, maybe an early warning. Jojo rocketed to the crib, leaned over the side, and the springs gave out a mournful creak, loud enough to set my teeth on edge.
“He’s awake!” Jojo announced, like he’d just witnessed a lunar landing.
Rawley nodded, businesslike. “Don’t pick him up yet. Let’s see if he self-soothes.”
“Is that a thing?” I asked.
“It’s a thing,” Jojo confirmed, but his hands hovered just above the baby’s chest like he couldn’t stop himself from intervening.
I watched the three of them—Rawley with his arms folded and his eyes slitted, Jojo vibrating at a frequency normally reserved for dental drills, Emilio just blinking at the world—and for the first time since last night it felt almost possible that this was normal.
Or could be, if we kept at it long enough.
I sipped my coffee and made a face. “You guys are acting like this isn’t the weirdest morning in Montana history.”
Rawley side-eyed me, a warning. “Kid needs stability.”
I saluted him. “Yes, sir.”
Jojo had gone from anxious to laser-focused in record time, running down the list with little mutters. “Diapers, wipes, baby lotion, we have to check for allergies, probably need to boil the bottles first. Do we need to call CPS?”
“Let’s hold off on that.” I said it quick, maybe too quick, but Jojo just nodded and wrote it down anyway.
“Should we name him?” Jojo asked, eyes wide as the moon.
“Already got a name,” I said. “Emilio.”
Jojo smiled at the baby, then at me, like it was the best thing he’d ever heard. He said it out loud, gentle, and the sound fit the room like a key in a lock. “Emilio.”
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he said it. Rawley caught the look, but he didn’t say anything.
I was grateful.
We all just sat there for a second, kitchen humming with the low noises of the heater and the faint, rubbery squeak of the crib mattress as Emilio squirmed.
In that moment, it felt like the house had always contained us, always known how to shape itself around whatever new disaster rolled in through the door.
Rawley broke the spell. “What’s the plan for today, Hoop?”
I grinned. “I was going to drink coffee and die, but now I’ll change the oil in the flatbed and then see if Emilio needs a new alternator. Kid’s got a strong starter motor, but I think he’s running a little lean.”
Jojo stifled a giggle and Rawley just shook his head, but I could see the tension leak out of his shoulders, a little.
I finished my coffee, scraped the chair back, and stood. “Gonna be in the barn,” I said, grabbing my jacket from the hook. I hesitated, just a second, before picking Emilio up. “If you need me, just holler. I’m on baby duty.”
Jojo beamed, Rawley grunted, and Emilio, for once, didn’t make a sound.
The air outside bit harder than I expected.
I stood on the porch for a second, letting the cold eat at the last of my sleep.
The windows behind me glowed with the promise of heat and coffee, and in the pale blue light of morning, the house looked less like a disaster and more like a map—lines and windows and rooms, each one filled with the strange and fragile hope that maybe this time, we wouldn’t fuck it up.
I pulled the door shut behind me and headed for the barn, the sound of Jojo’s pencil already fading into the rhythm of the waking day.
The barn in winter was a church: all cold breath and echo, the long confession of steel on concrete. Even the daylight kept its voice down, filtering through the high windows in thin strips that made everything underneath look like a diorama built for no one’s pleasure but mine.
I got the hood up on the flatbed before breakfast, the old 454 block half-gutted and leaking the last of last season’s optimism onto a pile of rags. Emilio watched me from a bouncy seat—Rawley’s idea of childcare, I guessed—secured to the floor with a ratchet strap and a sense of fatalism.
I’d folded a moving blanket under it, mostly for insulation, but also because the idea of his head smacking into the bare concrete, even at zero miles an hour, made me itch. Two feet from the grill, he sat there like a tiny, unimpressed foreman, judging my every move.
The barn stank of old grease and something fainter, sweeter, maybe the memory of livestock or maybe just the ghosts of ten thousand spilled gallons of gasoline.
Emilio’s powder-and-milk scent barely registered, but when I stopped moving, I could find it—soft, persistent, a molecule of something like hope.
I worked the way I always did when my brain needed boxing out: hard, fast, and just this side of reckless. Socket wrench, socket, socket, try again. Rinse the hands in brake cleaner, wipe on the jeans, repeat.
I sang to myself under my breath, the way I always had, mostly to keep the voices in my head from harmonizing. Emilio followed the sound, big blue eyes locked on my face, like he was cataloging every lyric for future blackmail.
“You wanna see a trick, kid?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
He gurgled, which I took as consent.
I twisted the tensioner arm with a length of pipe and popped the serpentine belt off in one move, letting it slap to the floor like a dead snake. I held up my arms in triumph.
“Ten points,” I said.
Emilio’s face didn’t change.
There was a thud at the barn door, then a slow swing and the unmistakable tread of Decker, boots soled with patience and a half-inch of stubborn. He let the door slam behind him, stood inside the threshold, and took in the scene without a word.
He walked the length of the barn without hurry, every step measured, like he was counting the boards underfoot. He stopped next to Emilio, crouched, and scanned him top to toe with the deliberate care of a guy who’d learned early that most emergencies came disguised as nothings.
“Color’s good,” he said, thumb brushing the kid’s cheek, eyes never leaving his face. “Temp’s fine. Did he feed this morning?”
“Formula at seven. Six ounces. I think. I was asleep for most of it.”
Decker grunted. “You get any sleep?”
“Sure,” I lied. “Didn’t you?”
He shrugged, which for Decker meant “no.”