Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rogue
I've been up since an hour before sunup.
The coffee is made. The bacon is on. The biscuits Hadley brought over from the bunkhouse yesterday are wrapped in foil in the oven keeping warm. The eggs are in a bowl on the counter waiting for me to crack them when she gets up.
I'm not used to cooking for somebody else.
I lay another strip of bacon in the pan and watch the fat go translucent at the edges. The kitchen smells like a real kitchen for the first time in ten years, masking the cedar wood scent I've grown used to.
I pick up my phone off the counter and thumb open the club group thread:
*You're fendin' for yourselves at the bunkhouse this mornin. Y'all are grown men.*
I hit send, set the phone face up on the counter. The first reply comes in inside of thirty seconds.
*Banshee: Copy.*
*Spur: 'Bout damn time!*
*Blaze: Tell her good mornin'.*
*Thunder: Tell her good mornin' from me too.*
I leave the phone where it is and I crack the first egg.
The yolk goes into the pan perfectly and I stand at the stove looking down at it and the thought hits me.
*I'm going to marry her.*
It's not a thought I work my way to. It's not something I argue myself into. The thought arrives in the kitchen the way a man arrives at his own door at the end of a long day. Steady. Tired. Home.
I crack the second egg.
I'm going to marry her, and I'm going to ask her soon. I'm not going to fucking wait, and I want Nash to call me Dad before the year is out.
I move the bacon to the paper towel I have laid out on the cutting board. I add the third egg. The whites are setting at the edges of the first two.
The ring is in the back of the drawer of my nightstand under a roll of socks I haven't worn since I bought them.
My mother's ring. Plain gold band with two small dark green emerald stones set flat in the metal with a two carat diamond in the center.
She wore it for thirty-two years. She gave it to me the week before she died and she told me to give it to a woman who deserved it, and I told her I didn't know any women like that.
She had told me eventually I would, but I never believed her.
I've had it for fifteen years. I probably haven't looked at it in twelve of them.
I'm going to look at it tonight, after Hadley is asleep, and I'm going to find the time and the place and the way to put it on her hand.
The third yolk goes brown at one edge. I flip it.
Hadley appears in the kitchen doorway with her hair a mess, and her bare throat in the pink morning light with one of my t-shirts skimming the tops of her thighs.
She stops. Looks at the stove. Looks at me. Looks at the plate I've already set at the small kitchen table—biscuits split open, butter melting, jam from the bunkhouse pantry, fresh-cut peach on the side that I drove to Buc-ee's at five this morning to get.
Her mouth opens and nothing comes out.
I lift the spatula. "Sit down, baby. Coffee's already poured."
She crosses the kitchen barefoot and stops next to me. Goes up on her toes and presses her mouth against the side of my jaw. She stays there for a moment. "You did all this?"
"For you."
"Silas..."
I take the spatula out of the pan and set it on the spoon rest, then turn to face her with my hands on her hips. "Sit down, baby. Eat. Drink your coffee. Tell me about your dreams. Then I'm gonna make you do the dishes 'cause I'm not your maid."
She laughs against my mouth. She sits.
I bring her the eggs and slide them onto her plate next to the bacon and the biscuits and the peach, fill her coffee from the French press, and sit down across from her with my own plate.
She eats.
Her bare collarbone is in the morning light and the place where the chain used to lie is in plain view, and I can't take my eyes off it for the first thirty seconds.
She catches me looking. "You're staring."
"I'm lookin'."
"Same thing."
"It isn't."
She bites her biscuit and watches me. "What?"
"I'm tryin' to figure out how I got here."
She sets the biscuit down. Her thumb goes to the chain that isn't there and catches itself. "You got here because I walked over."
"That right?"
"That's right."
She picks up the biscuit and takes another bite.
I drink my coffee and watch her eat and it hits me—this is what I want.
With any luck, Hadley will be barefoot and pregnant by the end of the year too.
* * *
Thunder's truck pulls up at the cabin around mid-morning.
The engine rumbles in the gravel before the boy's voice does.
Then the passenger door opens and Nash comes flying out of the cab with Stitch under one arm, his hair every direction at once, and Diesel hops down behind him with the slow careful jump of an old dog who has somehow had a better night than I have… and my night was damn good.
I open the door. Nash hits me at full speed in the thighs.
"Rogue! Mama Lou let me pour my own milk!
I poured Raine's too and I didn't spill it and Mama Lou said, 'That's a fine job, Nash Garrett Cross!
' And then we watched two movies but I fell asleep in the second one and Raine fell asleep first because she always falls asleep first because she says being a nine year old is exhausting. "
I put my hand on top of his head and look up at Thunder, who has climbed out of the driver's side with a coffee cup in his hand and a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Mornin', brother."
"Mornin'. Boy was good as gold."
"Thank you, Thunder."
He nods once. "Mama says she's keepin' the boy any time you need her to."
"Tell her thank you."
He lifts a hand and climbs back into the truck. The engine turns over and he rolls back down the gravel toward the gate.
Hadley is at the door behind me. She drops to her knees on the porch boards and opens her arms and Nash launches himself at her. "Mama! I told Rogue first because he was at the door, but I missed you the most."
She laughs into the top of his head. "You missed me the most for one night?"
"It was a long night."
*It was a long night, kid… but I'm sure we all made the best of it.*
"Was it?"
"Yeah! Mama Lou let us stay up till ten."
Hadley raises both of her brows. "Ten."
"Ten."
I crouch down next to them. "Nash."
"Yeah?"
"That's a fine job, partner. Pourin' the milk."
His face lights up.
Diesel pushes between us and lays down on the porch boards with a long groan, satisfied that his family is reassembled and his morning is now allowed to start over from a stationary position.
Hadley reaches for my hand without looking up from her boy. Her fingers thread through mine on the porch boards between us.
I stay crouched.
*This is my family, this, right here.*
We head inside, and Hadley makes Nash a plate of leftover eggs and bacon. He sits at the kitchen table and eats with the focused single-mindedness of a six-year-old whose movie-night cereal has worn off. Hadley does the dishes because I'm not, in fact, her maid. Diesel settles on the rug.
I sit at the desk. Three monitors come alive. I pull the Bell file first.
The audit at Bell has moved faster than I expected. Todd has been called in for a meeting at the home office in Houston tomorrow afternoon. The meeting is on his company calendar under the subject line *Compliance Discussion*. He doesn't know what it means yet. He will tomorrow.
That's the slow burn. It's working.
I close the Bell file. I'm about to open the Hartley feed when my phone rings.
Banshee.
I pick up. "Yeah?"
His voice is even, but it's the even voice he uses when something has just happened. "Boy in a black Explorer just rolled up. Says he's here to see Hadley Cross. Says she's expectin' him."
I stand up from the chair. "She isn't. Tell him to leave."
"He's not leavin'. Bastard is stubborn as a fuckin' mule."
Anger boils in my chest. "I'll be down."
I look at Hadley. She is at the sink with the dishtowel in her hand, her back to me, but her shoulders have gone still. She heard. She turns around with the dishtowel still in her hand. "What is it?"
"Todd's at the gate."
The dishtowel goes very still. She doesn't drop it but her chin lifts. She looks at Nash on the rug, then looks back at me. "Are you handlin' it?"
"I'm handlin' it, baby. Stay here. Door locked behind me. Diesel stays inside."
Her voice shakes a little. "Okay."
I cross the kitchen, cup her jaw in my hand and press my forehead against hers for one second. "You're okay, baby."
"I'm okay. Go."
I let go of her, slide my cut over my shoulders, pick the hat off the hook, and step out into the morning.
Hadley locks the door behind me. The bolt turns under her hand.
* * *
Banshee is leaning against the side of his bike with his arms crossed and the sidearm visible at his hip. The black Explorer is fifteen feet back from the gate, idling. Todd is in the driver's seat with his window down and his hands on the wheel.
I park my bike, get out, and walk past Banshee toward the Explorer.
Banshee speaks low as I pass him. "Sleep-deprived. Shirt's wrinkled. Hands shake when he reaches for things. He's not armed that I've seen but I haven't searched him."
"Good work, brother."
I keep walking.
I stop at the open driver's window. Todd looks up at me. His eyes are too wide. His face is pale under the morning beard stubble. His shirt collar is creased the wrong way like he slept in it. "You're Rogue, right?"
"Yeah, and you're done. Turn around and go back to Marble Falls."
He shakes his head three times in fast succession. Like he's trying to clear something out of it. "I need to talk to Hadley. There's been a misunderstandin'. She's the only one who knows the truth about Garrett and me and what we—what I was to him—"
"Stop usin' his name."
He blinks. "What?"
"Garrett told his mama on his deathbed to keep you away from her. He told her a couple of times in the last week of his life. Mama Cross told Hadley. We all know it now. Stop usin' his name like you got the right."