Chapter Seven
~ Hooper ~
I had steered Liam through the front hallway and straight into the kitchen, hand at the base of his spine, not pushing, but making sure he had no chance to go ghost again.
The house was built before insulation was a thing people bothered with, so the kitchen was where heat lived all winter: the woodstove ticking in the corner, the air heavy with the complicated sweetness of pine smoke and whatever had last been fried in the old cast-iron pan.
I put him in the good chair, or what passed for it—a slab of oak with a cracked spindle, closest to the stove. Even in March, the cold liked to sit on your boots, and I wasn’t going to have him shaking all night if I could help it.
I didn’t say anything about the chair, just took Emilio and set him in his basket at the table’s edge, the way you would a centerpiece, and went to fill the kettle.
I could feel Liam watching me, trying to memorize the angles of the room: the sag of the counter under three generations’ worth of ugly mugs; the battered drying rack, packed with bottle parts and a single chef’s knife; the splay of mail and empty formula cans and the bag of rice that was half air and refusing to stand up.
There was a smell under the wood smoke, too—something almost metallic, a note of old iron and scorched milk, not unpleasant if you grew up with it, but probably a punch to the face for anyone fresh off a highway.
I got the kettle on, turned the knob until the hiss started, then opened the fridge and took inventory.
Leftover rice, a full three eggs, the heel of the bread loaf gone stiff at the cut.
I didn’t make a meal of looking, didn’t stand with the door wide like a man showing off.
I just pulled the rice, cracked the eggs into a chipped bowl, and set the bread down on the board.
I had seen the way Liam’s eyes flicked to the fridge at the noise—one fast, involuntary glance, the kind you see in men who’ve spent too much time rationing—and I made a point of not clocking it.
He was thin, but not wasted. The kind of thin that came from moving all the time and never quite eating enough to make up the difference.
I got the skillet hot and the rice in first, then the eggs, whisked rough and poured on top, the whole thing moving fast enough not to give a man time to object or offer to help. The bread I tore into hunks, not bothering with butter.
I set the plate in front of him without comment, and only when I had a fork in his hand did I fill two mugs from the kettle, black tea with a single packet of sugar for each.
Liam ate the way you do when you’re used to performing gratitude for someone else’s benefit—small bites, eyes on the food, never the man across the table.
But I watched his hands: the tremor there, slight but stubborn, the way his left kept wanting to curl up under the table and had to be brought back out, again and again, by the force of will.
The set of his jaw was tight, but the food was doing its job. By the third bite, his shoulders had dropped a fraction. By the time he reached the bottom of the plate, the white-knuckle grip on the fork had faded to just normal human tension.
I said nothing, because any attempt to narrate the event—welcome home, glad you made it, eat up—would have made him shut down on the spot.
Instead, I picked Emilio up and sat across from him, the baby’s weight a grounding point, and watched the steam from the mugs climb up into the dead air above the table.
For a while, the only noise was the scrape of Liam’s fork on ceramic and the soft, mouthy noises of the kid, who’d taken to smacking his lips in his sleep like he was reviewing the flavor profile of an imaginary buffet.
The woodstove kicked out a steady crack and pop, the metal expanding and contracting as it worked to keep the night on the other side of the walls. There was something good in the silence. Not the absence of trouble, but the absence of expectation.
Liam finished his food, set the fork down with a careful click, and wrapped both hands around his mug. He stared into it for a long minute, the tea still swirling from the pour. His hair, longer than I remembered, kept falling into his eyes, and he made no attempt to brush it back.
He looked up, finally, and when he did, his face was different—less hunted, more like a man who’d crawled out of a deep hole and was waiting to see if the sky was safe.
I let him have the silence as long as he wanted. Emilio shifted, made a high, animal sound, and I bounced him once, gentle, just to remind us both that he was still there.
Liam set his mug down, traced the rim with a finger, and when he spoke, his voice was the same as the night in Billings—soft but direct, with a current underneath it that warned you not to mistake kindness for weakness.
“I have to ask,” he said, eyes on the table, “is it really safe here?”
I shrugged, because the question deserved better than a prepackaged assurance. “Nothing’s ever really safe,” I said. “But it’s as close as you’ll get within a thousand miles.”
He nodded, not quite convinced, but not ready to argue.
I poured him more tea, topped off my own, and waited.
The rest of the house was silent—no Rawley, no Jojo, not even the phantom creak of someone lurking the hallway to get a read on our conversation. I’d give them points for that.
The baby had gone slack against my chest, full-on ragdoll mode, his mouth open and one arm wedged up under his chin like he’d fallen asleep mid-argument.
I shifted him so the warmth from my body would bleed through the fleece and keep him down for another hour or two.
Liam stared at the baby, but not in the way I’d expected. Not like a man weighing the cost of what he’d given up or even what he might get back. It was more scientific than sentimental—a cataloging, a memorization, as if he was prepping himself for a lineup later.
“He looks like you,” he said, but his tone left the question open.
I grinned, didn’t show teeth. “That’s what everyone keeps saying.”
He nodded, once. Then he picked up the mug, sipped, and said, “I almost turned back, you know. Twice.”
I let that sit, and then I asked, “Why didn’t you?”
He met my eyes, and for a second I saw something like the man from the photo in the letter—tired, but not out. “You told me once you never run from a problem you can just drive around,” he said. “Figured I’d take the scenic route.”
It was the first time all night he’d come close to a joke. I laughed, quiet, and the sound made the baby stir and resettle.
Liam finished his tea, set the mug down, and folded his hands together. The tremor was gone now. He squared his shoulders, and I recognized the move—not submission, but the prepping for a fight, or maybe just a confession.
I braced for it.
He said, “Thank you. For keeping him safe.”
Not much, but enough.
I nodded, and the clock on the microwave clicked over to midnight.
We were still there, two men and a sleeping baby, when the woodstove finally ran out of noise and left only the breathing of the house to fill the silence.
It took him a few more minutes to get to the talking part. I didn’t rush him, just let the time go soft at the edges, like the heat around the woodstove. The kitchen clock clunked through every second, the tick so loud it sounded like it belonged to another house entirely.
Liam watched the baby, then the woodstove, then the grain of the table, as if looking anywhere but at me. I could see him winding up, picking an entry point for whatever it was he’d come to unload.
He started in the middle, which was classic.
“They posted my picture to three different community boards,” he said, voice low enough that the baby wouldn’t have woken even if he was listening.
“Not me, technically. My old work badge photo. The lawyer wrote up a whole thing—‘concerned family, missing, last seen near Casper.’” He picked at a splinter in the table, worrying it loose and then setting it gently aside.
I didn’t say anything. Just waited.
He licked his lips, took another run at it.
“I wore a coat from the donation bin at the gas station. Not even close to my size. I kept the hood up, even when it wasn’t snowing.
I mapped two different routes and changed cars three times.
I stopped in Cody for an hour because there was a rumor she—Eleanor—had a spotter at the westbound junction.
” He paused, let the words settle. “Nobody followed, but you can never be sure.”
He didn’t go for the big reveal, the moment where a man might look up and ask for help or sympathy.
He just rolled on, matter-of-fact: “There was a post up on the main page for two days before someone took it down.” He glanced at me then, just a flicker, not quite meeting my eyes.
“That’s how I found out she was using the lawyers already. ”
The kettle let out a low hiss as it cooled. I was surprised at how much of this I already knew, or had guessed. Maybe Rawley’s paranoia was contagious.
He picked up his mug, hands steadier now, and drained it. “I made it here with one stop, but I wasn’t sure the car would make it up the drive without someone noticing.” His mouth twitched up at the corner. “Should have worn better shoes.”
I nodded. “You did good.” There was no right thing to say, so I just said the thing that was true.
He looked at me, really looked, like he was trying to determine if I was just saying it to fill the air. “She’s not going to stop,” he said. “You know that, right?”
I did. But I also knew what kind of stopping power a pissed-off ranch full of ex-military weirdos and queer farmhands could generate. “She’s not going to find him here,” I said, and I let the certainty stand. No softening, no promise I couldn’t cash.
He stared at me, and there was a moment where something behind his eyes flickered, then reset. Not surprise—more like confirmation.
“Sheridan?” he asked.
“Sheridan,” I confirmed. “Her people were seen at the feed store. Rawley’s got runners on every road out of town. Even the goats know to keep their heads down.”
That got a sound from him. Not laughter, not quite, but a soft snort that let me know I’d bought him another minute of peace.
He leaned back, looked at Emilio, then at me, and said, “I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to thank you enough.”
I shook my head. “Don’t bother. He’s as much mine as yours.” It was a lie, but not the kind that mattered.
He nodded, then closed his eyes for a second, like he was resetting his system.
Emilio shifted against my chest, a little shudder of breath and then a slow, automatic curl of his fist. I pressed my palm to the baby’s back, rubbing circles there.
Liam watched my hand, then reached out—hesitant at first, but then with a kind of bone-deep certainty—and pressed his finger to Emilio’s hand.
The baby’s fingers closed around it, even in sleep. Pure reflex, no thought. But it landed somewhere in Liam, a sharp and quiet thing that took him by surprise. His face did something complicated—grief and relief and maybe a little bit of joy, all tangled together and fighting for real estate.
He let the moment stretch, then let go. His finger lingered for a beat, then withdrew.
I shifted Emilio so that Liam’s hand could rest on the baby’s belly if he wanted.
I didn’t say anything about it. He took the offer, and we sat there for another half hour, three of us in the low light, the only noise the click of the cooling stove and the faint rattle of the wind outside the old glass.
There were questions waiting for us just outside that circle of warmth: where would Liam sleep, what would Rawley want to know, who was going to watch the roads come dawn.
But for now, there was just the kitchen, the baby, and the man across from me—the one who’d run every mile between here and hell to make sure his son was safe.
When the silence got heavy, I broke it with the only thing I could think of.
“You ever played chess?” I asked.
He smiled, a real one this time, wide and open. “I’m terrible at it.”
I grinned back. “Good. Me too.”
We sat there, side by side, until the world stopped feeling dangerous and started feeling just a little bit possible.