Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Cody
The Silver Bit has always irritated me in a very specific way.
Not because there’s anything objectively wrong with it. The bar is clean enough by tavern standards.
The staff are competent, the food consistent, and the crowd predictable in the way small-town crowds usually are once you’ve lived among them long enough to distinguish between harmless repetition and actual nuisance.
The problem is that this place encourages a kind of social sprawl I’ve never found useful.
People linger.
They circle the same stories. They interrupt each other mid-thought and somehow consider that conversation rather than structural failure.
Nothing in here moves in a straight line, and while most nights I can tolerate that in measured doses, tonight the lack of order feels less atmospheric than invasive.
It doesn’t help that Reid is already two fingers into a whiskey and watching me with the expression he gets whenever he thinks I’ve become unintentionally interesting.
“You’ve been glaring at that glass for long enough that I’m starting to think it owes you money,” he says, leaning back in his chair because he has all the time in the world and no concern whatsoever for efficiency.
I look down at the bourbon in front of me. I hadn’t realized I’d gone still with it. “I’m not glaring at it.”
“You are. You’ve got the same look you get when someone formats a spreadsheet wrong.”
“That’s an entirely reasonable response to misformatting.”
Reid’s mouth twitches. “Sure. In an office. Less so in a bar.”
Across the room, Carl Benson is already arguing with Margaret O’Hara about some incident involving a fence, a truck, and a level of user error that could’ve been prevented with better planning.
Riley is behind the bar, drying glasses with the expression of a man who has long since accepted that half the job isn’t serving drinks but observing people implode with as much dignity as they can manage.
Somewhere near the jukebox, someone’s laughing too loudly at a joke that almost certainly didn’t deserve it.
I take a drink, more because it gives me something to do with my hands than because I particularly want it, and make the mistake of letting my attention drift.
That’s what starts it.
Not the bourbon or Reid. Not even the potluck, though that probably qualifies as contributing context. The actual issue, inconveniently enough, is that I can’t stop replaying details I have no business replaying.
Annie in the church hall looking simultaneously braced for impact and annoyed at herself for it. Annie laughing at something Abilene said with enough surprise in it that the sound seemed to catch even her off guard.
Annie sitting between Duke and one of the Willow women, shoulders gradually dropping over the course of dinner because her body had begun to believe it wasn’t under active threat.
None of that should still be occupying space in my head, and yet it’s there, persistent as static, interfering with every attempt I make to sort my thoughts into something more productive.
“You’re thinking too loudly again,” Reid says.
I set the glass down carefully. “That isn’t a thing.”
“It is when I’ve known you for fifteen years.” He tilts his head, study disguised as laziness. “So, what exactly are we pretending this is about?”
“We’re not pretending anything.”
“Good. Then tell me.”
I should redirect. I know that. There are at least six cleaner conversational exits available to me, all of them preferable to the current trajectory.
I could mention Jake and the delivery logs. I could mention the contract inconsistency Tessa flagged. I could mention the access timestamp that still hasn’t aligned with anything I trust.
All of those would be grounded, useful, and true.
Instead I say, “She’s becoming a variable.”
Reid’s eyebrows lift. “That’s a very Cody way to refer to a woman.”
“I’m speaking precisely.”
“You’re avoiding.”
“I’m not.”
“Cody.” He waits until I look at him. “The accountant?”
I don’t answer immediately, which is answer enough.
Reid leans back, exhales through his nose, and smiles the way he always does when he thinks he’s reached the center of everything before I’ve finished constructing the walls around it. “Well. That took less time than expected.”
“This isn’t what you think it is.”
Riley appears at the edge of the table with a fresh round I didn’t ask for and sets it down without comment, though the fact that he hangs around for half a second longer than necessary suggests he’s already decided this conversation is worth passive monitoring.
“That depends,” Reid says. “What do I think it is?”
“That I’m interested in her.”
Reid glances at Riley. Riley glances at him. The two of them don’t say anything for one whole second, which is enough to make me regret having gone anywhere near direct language.
Then Riley snorts. “You are.”
“No, I’m not.”
Margaret, who’s somehow materialized close enough to involve herself without my consent, turns on her stool and says, “Is she the blue-haired one from Ironwood?”
“That’s not relevant,” I say.
“Oh, it absolutely is,” Carl says, pointing at me with the conviction of a man who shouldn’t be allowed to point at anything after his third drink. “Because if it’s the blue-haired one, then yes, you are.”
I stare at all of them in mounting disbelief. “This is an absurd conversation.”
“And yet you’re still in it,” Riley says pleasantly.
Reid folds his hands around his glass and gives me the kind of look that has historically preceded either excellent advice or deeply irritating accuracy.
“Alright. Let’s strip the nonsense out of it.
You’ve got a new accountant who’s smart enough to make you uncomfortable, pretty enough that every idiot in town has noticed her, and new enough to Ironwood that she doesn’t understand where the real fault lines are yet.
You’ve also got something ugly moving around in your books.
If all you’re saying is that you’re concerned, then fine.
That’s rational. What isn’t rational is the way you’ve been acting about it. ”
“I’m acting appropriately.”
“You’re not,” he says. “You’re wound so tight I can hear the pressure from here.”
I laugh once, low and humorless. “Concern isn’t the same thing as attraction.”
“No,” Riley says, “but in your case it’s very obviously sharing a border.”
“I’m not attracted to her.”
The lie lands badly even to my own ears.
Margaret smiles into her drink. “Oh, sweetheart.”
I rub a hand over my mouth and immediately regret the gesture because it signals a level of exasperation I don’t want read aloud. “What exactly is it you all think you’re observing?”
“That you like her,” Carl says.
“That you’re trying very hard to make ‘like’ sound like a systems issue,” Riley adds.
“That you’re already halfway in trouble,” Reid says.
I look at him. “Trouble.”
“Yes.”
“On what basis?”
He shrugs. “The basis that you don’t spend this much energy trying to define something you’re indifferent to.”
That would be easier to dismiss if he were wrong.
“She works for us,” I say instead, because that, at least, is measurable.
“She lives in the house. She’s already become visible faster than is strategically useful, and the combination of Duke’s inability to exercise discretion and Silas’s tendency to react to risk by tightening everything around it has created a situation I don’t trust.”
Reid’s expression shifts at Duke’s name, some of the teasing giving way to actual attention. “So this is about Duke.”
“It’s also about Duke.”
“Also,” he repeats, and that one word makes it obvious he heard exactly what I didn’t intend to admit.
I take another drink, which is how I know I’ve had too much already, because the bourbon has stopped tasting tart and started tasting functional, and that’s generally when people make poor decisions under the illusion they’re making clear ones.
“She’s not stupid,” I say. “In fact, she’s the opposite, which may be part of the issue. She’s observant enough to find things quickly and stubborn enough not to back off once she has. That makes her useful.
“It also makes her vulnerable in ways I don’t think she fully appreciates yet, because there’s a difference between being able to identify a pattern and understanding what happens when you identify it in the wrong place, around the wrong people, before the structure around you has decided whether you belong. ”
Reid goes very still, the kind of stillness he only bothers with when he’s stopped joking entirely. “You’re worried she doesn’t belong?”
I should say no. I should say that isn’t the issue.
Instead I hear myself answer, “I’m worried that everyone else will decide what she is before she gets the chance to be anything else.”
Riley is the first to speak. “That,” she says mildly, “sounds an awful lot like caring.”
I push back from the table. “I’m going home.”
Reid doesn’t stop me. He just watches me stand with the resigned expression of a man who knows exactly what comes next and has decided not to interfere with it until after the damage is done.
“That’s probably wise,” he says.
“It is.”
“It won’t stop you from doing anything stupid.”
“No,” I say, reaching for my jacket. “But it’ll at least let me do it in private.”
Carl laughs too hard at that, Margaret tells me not to brood and drive, Riley tells me to drink water before bed as if I’m twelve, and Reid, because he is, at his core, still my best friend even when he’s insufferable, just says, hushed enough that the others don’t catch it, “Whatever you think you’re going to do, decide whether you want the answer before you ask the question. ”
I don’t respond, because if I do I’ll have to admit that I already know he’s right.
By the time I get back to Ironwood, the house has settled into its late night version of itself, which is muted but not actually silent.
Floorboards shift. Pipes murmur somewhere in the walls. The old bones of the place redistribute temperature and memory in small mechanical sounds I’ve known long enough that they no longer register as interruption.