Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hadley
I've been on the porch since before the sky started to turn.
The coffee in my mug went lukewarm twenty minutes ago. The flannel over my t-shirt is one of Rogue's that smells like him mixed with cedar.
Diesel is asleep against my left boot, which is odd. He sticks to Nash like glue. Maybe he knows I'm feeling a bit uneasy. But Nash is also at Mama Lou's.
She didn't mind Diesel going with her, but two kids plus the dog was a bit much for her.
The east pasture goes from grey to pink in the slow degrees of a Texas morning that's in no hurry to start. The dogs haven't started up yet, and the cicadas are still asleep.
My hand goes to the bare place at my throat without me telling it to. The skin is warm.
I drop my hand back into my lap.
I didn't sleep much. Hartley's name has been a thing in my head all night, along with the bunker map Rogue drew for me, the code word, the names of the brothers I trust in any emergency in the order I trust them. I repeated the whole list back to him five times before he was satisfied I had it.
I'm braced.
I'm also home.
Both things sit in my chest at the same time. Side by side. Neither one canceling the other one out.
The light comes up over the east pasture.
A figure crosses the gravel from the direction of Thunder's cabin. Big shoulders. Black hat low over his eyes. No cut at this hour. White t-shirt, cut, jeans and a coffee cup in his hand.
Thunder.
He comes up the porch steps the way an older brother comes up steps when he knows somebody has been up half the night. Slow. Quiet. He sits in the chair next to mine without asking.
He takes a long sip of his coffee. The east pasture goes from pink to gold. "Cross."
"Thunder."
We drink in the rising light.
After a minute he tips his head back against the chair. "You sleep?"
"Not much."
"Didn't think so. I was up at four. Mama got Nash and Raine up at six askin' for biscuits. Boy slept like he was hibernatin', she said."
I let Nash spend the night over at Mama Lou's last night. With everything happening, it felt safer to have him away from here. Miller and Ford are watching over her house, so they're being guarded.
The smile pulls at the corner of my mouth before I can stop it. "He sleeps best at her house."
Thunder huffs once into his coffee. "Mama Lou's house has somethin'. I was convinced it had healin' properties when I was a kid."
A laugh comes up out of me. The first one of the morning.
He lets the laugh sit on the porch between us for a moment.
Then his voice shifts—lower, more deliberate. "Phantom and Marlena pullin' out of College Station at first light. They'll be here by suppertime."
"Yeah. Rogue told me."
"Holt and Roan come in this afternoon. Holt comin' down from Abilene, Roan ridin' up from Lubbock."
"Yeah."
He's quiet for a long stretch. His thumb moves along the rim of his coffee cup. "How you doin', Cross? Be honest. I been watchin' you for a week. You ain't sayin' as much as you ought to."
I look at the bottom of my cup. The coffee has gone fully cold. I give him the real one. "I'm scared, Thunder. And I'm not goin' anywhere."
He nods once. Slow. He doesn't try to make me feel better about either of those things. "Anyone would be."
He sets his coffee cup down on the porch boards between his boots. His voice goes quieter. "Rogue is the best man I know. He's been alone a long time. He don't know how to do half of what's about to happen to him, but he's gonna figure it out. You hold on to him."
The back of my throat aches.
"He'll hold on to you twice as hard."
I press my mug against my chest because my hands need somewhere to be. "I… I think I'm falling in love with him, Thunder. I don't ever want to lose him. He's great to me and to Nash."
"Good." He picks his cup back up, stands, and drains it. Tips his hat at me. "You need anything today, Cross—anything at all—you come find me. You hear?"
"I hear you."
He goes off the porch, his boots crunching on the gravel. Diesel doesn't even open an eye.
Halfway across the yard, Thunder turns back without breaking stride. "And Cross?"
"Yeah?"
"Today's gonna be a long day. You hold your head up. Hear me?"
"I hear you."
He goes.
The sun comes over the cottonwoods at the edge of the east pasture and pours itself across the gravel.
The screen door opens behind me at some point I don't track.
Rogue comes out in jeans and no shirt, his hair every direction at once, with his own coffee in his hand.
He stops behind my chair, bends down, and presses his mouth against the top of my head. He stays there for a moment. "Mornin', baby."
"Mornin', Silas."
The name still lands a little differently every time I say it. His mouth presses harder against my hair when I say it.
He sits in the chair Thunder was just in. His hand finds mine in the space between the chairs, thumb tracing the back of my knuckles.
He looks at the bare place at my throat. His eyes stay there for longer than they need to.
The thumb tightens around my hand.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
We drink our coffee while the cicadas start up for the day.
* * *
The bunkhouse fills up faster than normal.
Banshee comes in for breakfast before his gate shift, eats standing at the counter, kisses Bex on the temple and puts a hand on her growing belly when she comes through with a load of horseshoes for Spur's barrel horses, and leaves.
Spur grabs coffee and three biscuits in a paper towel and thanks me on his way out the door.
Blaze sits down at the bunkhouse table with the radio he uses for ranch coordination next to his plate and eats while he listens to the gate rotation.
I cook for ten men in the span of an hour and a half. My hands are busy. The kitchen smells like bacon and the coffee pot doesn't sit empty for more than a minute at a time.
Buckley comes in from the south access gate at the end of his shift. Hat off when he sees me at the stove. "Mornin', Cross."
"Mornin', Buckley, but it's Hadley to you. Thunder's the only one with the right to call me that. Sit and eat. I'll bring ya over some food."
He sits.
The brothers move around me differently than they did a week ago.
I'm the cook on this ranch and I'm also something else now.
I bring Buckley eggs, bacon, and a biscuit. He eats with the focus of a man who has been awake on a fence line since before dawn.
I refill his coffee.
He looks up. "Thank you, ma'am."
"You're welcome."
I move back to the stove. My back is to the room. My hand goes to the bare place at my throat for the third time today before I catch myself.
I drop it and crack four more eggs, needing to stay busy.
My mind is a mess.
* * *
The afternoon comes on slow.
Rogue is at the cypress desk at his cabin, or maybe I should call it our cabin since we pretty much live with him now.
The brothers cycle through. Lunch is sandwiches I prepped two trays of and left on the bunkhouse counter under a clean towel.
Mama Lou pulls up in her station wagon in the early afternoon. Nash is out of the passenger seat and across the gravel before she has the engine off. "Mama!"
I'm on the bunkhouse porch when he hits me. He's grown three inches in twenty-four hours, I swear it. "Hey baby. You have a good time?"
"Mama Lou let me help make biscuits this mornin' and Raine and me watched a movie about a horse, but it wasn't as good as the next one we're gonna watch. I ate three sausages!"
"Lord, Nash."
"Mama Lou said it was okay."
I lift my eyes to Mama Lou, who has climbed out of the station wagon and is walking across the gravel with the slow ease of a woman who has been on her feet for sixty years. "Mama Lou. How are you doing today? The kids suck the soul out of ya?"
She giggles cheerfully. "Hadley, sweetheart, I'm quite all right, and soul, no. Energy, yes."
She comes up the porch steps and pulls me in. She smells like lavender and biscuit flour.
When she pulls back, she takes my face in her hands. Her thumbs brush my cheekbones once. Her eyes go to the place at my throat where the chain used to be. They go there once. Then they come back to my eyes.
She doesn't say a word about it.
But her mouth pulls into the small slow smile that women give other women when they have seen something and are deciding to keep it. "You take care, sweetheart. I'll come by for the boy whenever you need. Just give me a couple of days to recoup. He and Raine have kept me busy."
"Of course, thank you, Mama Lou. Nash loves spending time with you and Raine."
She tips her head at me, climbs back in the station wagon, and backs down the drive.
Nash runs into the bunkhouse hollering for Diesel.
I sit down on the porch steps because my knees go a little.
Mama Lou is the second woman in two days who has *seen* my bare throat without commenting on it.
I don't know what to think about that yet.
* * *
Phantom and Marlena pull up at the cabin just before supper.
The dust hasn't settled before Marlena's door is open and she's spilling out of the cab with Cal on her hip. Her face is wet. Her hair is in a knot that's coming apart. She's wearing a cardigan over her sundress like she's been on the road since first light and hasn't taken it off.
Phantom climbs down slower. Both hands on the open door. His eyes go to the gate first—Banshee leaning against the side of his bike at the front—then to the south access, the round pen, the kennel, the bunkhouse porch where I'm standing with a dishtowel over my shoulder.
The look on his face is the one a man gets when he's seeing a house he built with his own hands.
His jaw works once.
He tips his hat at the ranch like he's tipping his hat at an old friend.
Then he sees Rogue coming down the steps of his own cabin across the gravel.
Without a word, he walks across the gravel.
The two of them meet in the middle and stop a foot apart. They look at each other for a long second.