Chapter Eight #3
I reached out, hands still unsteady from the caffeine and the conversation, and took the baby. He was heavier than I remembered, his head a little too big for his body, eyes so blue they bordered on chemical.
He stared up at me, unblinking, and I saw it—the thing everyone always said about children, that you could see yourself in them if you looked hard enough.
Except it wasn’t just me. It was Hooper too, in the weird geometry of Emilio’s jaw, in the impossible breadth of his fingers, in the way his eyes didn’t so much blink as decide, abruptly, to look somewhere else.
I held him close, both hands supporting the length of his back, and found myself adjusting my grip twice in the first ten seconds—left hand lower, right hand firmer, then both hands locked and arms tight to chest, as if the baby was going to wriggle right through bone.
Emilio squirmed, let out a single high whine, and then settled again, his fist curling into the fabric of my borrowed shirt.
I breathed in and smelled him, that thin, slightly sweet note that baby books and sitcoms always lied about.
In reality it was formula, sweat, and something like warm pennies.
Hooper leaned against the counter and poured himself a refill. He didn’t say anything about my awkward hold, didn’t offer to correct or advise. He just stood there and watched the two of us, his face set in a half-smile that didn’t seem to require an audience.
Emilio let out a grunt, more of a threat than a cry, and for a brief second I thought he’d start up with the wailing again.
But instead he snuffled and pressed his face into my chest, as if he’d already made up his mind and the rest of the world could go to hell.
I didn’t talk. I just rocked, slow, and let my body memorize the new weight and shape of him.
We sat like that until the light shifted on the kitchen floor, the lines going from long and golden to short and blue, the sun burning off the frost from the edges of the window.
Eventually, Hooper said, “You want to get out of here for a minute?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and stood up with Emilio tucked to my chest. Hooper handed over his outside clothes. I dressed him quickly, but quietly.
After pulling on my own jacket, I followed Hooper through the hallway, past the mudroom, and onto the back porch.
The cold hit like a warning shot. Emilio didn’t care; he was bundled in three layers and a knit hat that made his head look like a cartoon onion.
He made a noise, then went back to watching the world with the unimpressed look of someone who had already seen all this before, maybe in a better lifetime.
The ranch sprawled out in front of us, the snowfields so flat and white they looked like they’d been erased and then drawn again by someone with a ruler and too much time. The air was sharp, crystalline.
Out by the barn, a line of black birds broke up the monotony, their calls sharp as broken glass. Somewhere to the east, I could hear the faint chuff of an engine, maybe a tractor, maybe someone clearing a path that would drift shut again in an hour.
Hooper leaned against the porch railing and watched the horizon. He didn’t force the silence to move. He let it hang there, stretched between the two of us and the fields beyond.
I bounced Emilio, just enough to keep the circulation moving.
His face was red with cold, but his eyes stayed wide.
I felt a strange, low-grade terror—one wrong move and he’d tip out of my arms and go tumbling down the porch stairs, a streak of blue against the white.
I clutched tighter, resisting the urge to say anything out loud.
Hooper finally broke the silence. “You know you can stay, right?”
I looked at him, not sure what to say.
He shrugged, never taking his eyes off the snow. “I mean it. This isn’t one of those situations where you patch yourself up and get moving. You can stay as long as you want. Nobody here is going to make you feel like an extra mouth.”
I let out a slow breath, my chest going tight with the effort. “I don’t want to bring the trouble here. Or to anyone else. I don’t want to end up with the ranch on fire because I couldn’t keep my problems to myself.”
Hooper snorted. “You think that’s how it works? Everybody out here is running from something. You’re just the only one honest enough to admit it.”
I blinked, unsure whether it was meant as comfort or just a statement of fact.
He turned to face me, arms folded. “That’s not your call to make alone anymore.”
There it was, plain as the sky. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just stood there, Emilio pressed tight to my chest, and watched the snow settle.
The world looked different when you knew someone else had already staked out your future for you, when the horizon wasn’t a deadline but a kind of promise.
The wind shifted, blowing straight in off the empty fields. The cold cut right through the layers, stinging my cheeks and making Emilio’s nose go pink. He blinked up at me, then at Hooper, then back again, as if he was trying to puzzle out which of us he belonged to.
I wrapped my arms tighter, holding him steady against the tremor in my hands.
We stayed on the porch until the first flakes started to fall, not thick but steady, the sky closing down from pale blue to a dull, soft gray. The distant engine noise faded, replaced by the hush of snow landing on already frozen ground.
Hooper’s phone buzzed, loud enough to make me jump. He pulled it from his pocket, thumbed the screen, and his face went still—a different stillness than usual, the kind that meant something important had just rerouted the day.
He looked at me, then at the road leading up to the ranch. “Rawley says we’ve got company.”
I felt my gut turn, the old panic starting up, but Hooper didn’t move. He just pocketed the phone and straightened his jacket, the same way you’d brace for a hard wind or an unexpected turn on a dirt road.
“Cops?” I asked, my voice raw in my throat.
He shook his head. “Not yet, but Eleanor’s people are in town. Maybe a day away, maybe less.”
“How much do you know about Eleanor?”
Hooper’s lips twisted into a sour expression as if he had just bitten into a lemon. “Enough.”
The word hit, but not the way I expected. Instead of the old, familiar dread, there was a different feeling—a kind of resolve, a readiness I didn’t recognize as my own.
I looked out over the white expanse, Emilio’s breath warm on my neck, and waited for whatever came next. Hooper stood beside me, silent and solid as the porch itself, and together we watched the snow erase the horizon, one flake at a time.