Chapter Three #2
His eyes found mine. The walls locked into place. His voice, when it came, was steady and low. “Morning.”
I smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
“Morning,” I said, and turned back to the toast like my heart wasn’t doing something complicated behind my ribs. “Sit down. It’s ready.”
Sterling stood in the doorway for a beat longer than strictly necessary. His eyes moved over the table—eggs, bacon, the toast I was sliding onto a plate, coffee steaming in three mugs—and something crossed his face.
Brief.
Unguarded.
Not quite surprise and not quite longing, but something warm and startled, like a man who had walked into a room expecting empty countertops and found instead that someone had been thinking about him.
Then the flat green gaze locked back down. The jaw set. The performance of a hundred resumed, despite the leg I could see he was favoring, the stiffness in his right hip that he was trying very hard not to let anyone notice.
I’d noticed. I noticed everything about Sterling Callahan, which was becoming its own kind of problem.
I set a plate in front of his chair without ceremony. Eggs. Bacon. Two slices of toast with butter already melting into the crust. Sterling looked at the plate. Then at me.
“You didn’t have to,” he said.
“I know.”
I reached into my pocket and set the pain medication beside his coffee mug. Two pills. The white ones from the prescription bottle I’d spotted in his bag last night when he’d been in the bathroom, the label facing out because Sterling did nothing by accident, not even unpacking.
He looked at the meds. Looked at me. His expression didn’t change, but something moved behind his eyes—a calculation, a reassessment, the recalibration of a man who had just realized that the person across from him had been paying closer attention than he’d given credit for.
I looked back. Pleasant. Patient. Completely immovable. The same look I’d given Mitch five minutes ago, except aimed at a man who was considerably harder to move than my brother, which was saying something.
Across the table, Mitch was watching with the expression of a man at a very good sporting event. Leaned back in his chair, coffee mug cradled between both hands, eyes bright with the enjoyment of watching two stubborn people attempt to out-stubborn each other.
The silence held. One beat. Two.
Sterling picked up the medication. Tossed both pills into his mouth and washed them down with a swallow of coffee that didn’t so much as change his expression. Set the mug down. Looked at his plate.
The small shift that moved through my chest at that wasn’t triumph. Triumph was sharp and satisfied and had edges. This was warmer. Softer. The warm realization that Sterling Callahan had just taken an order from me without arguing about it, which might have been the first time in recorded history.
I turned back to the range before I could smile too obviously. The toast needed attending to. The toast was safe. The toast had no opinions about my internal organs doing complicated things.
“You want jelly?” I asked the skillet.
“No,” Sterling said.
“Yes,” Mitch said, around a mouthful of bacon. “He wants jelly. He’s lying. He’s pathologically incapable of admitting he wants things that aren’t bullets or tactical advantages.”
“I don’t want jelly.”
“He wants the blackberry. Not the strawberry. The blackberry tastes like actual fruit instead of candy, which is the only kind of sweet Sterling will acknowledge exists, because God forbid he enjoy something without a practical justification.”
Sterling cut into his eggs. “I’m capable of speaking for myself, Pruitt.”
“Debatable. I’ve known you four months and I’ve heard approximately twelve complete sentences, and three of those were about fence posts.”
“Fence posts are important.”
“See?” Mitch waved his hand at Sterling. “That’s thirteen. Progress.”
I slid the blackberry jelly across the table to Sterling’s right hand. His fingers brushed the jar, and he didn’t pull away, and that was progress too, though I wasn’t counting.
Mitch reached across the table and lifted a piece of toast directly off Sterling’s plate. Didn’t ask. Didn’t announce. Just took it, bit into it, and kept talking about something involving the irrigation line in the south field, like the theft had been pre-approved by all relevant parties.
Sterling moved his plate six inches to the left. Didn’t comment. Didn’t even look up from his eggs.
I dropped two more slices of bread into the skillet. “That’s for Mitch,” I said to Sterling. “He’s going to steal yours again in approximately forty seconds.”
“I was not going to do that,” Mitch said.
“You were absolutely going to do that.”
“I have boundaries. Dignity. A moral compass that—”
Forty-three seconds later, Mitch’s hand crossed the table and lifted Sterling’s second piece of toast.
Sterling looked at me. I shrugged.
“You timed it,” Sterling said.
“I’ve been studying the data for years.” I flipped the fresh toast. “He does it every morning. The interval is remarkably consistent. Forty to forty-five seconds. It’s almost impressive.”
The corner of Sterling’s mouth did the thing.
The small, stubborn warmth, the almost-smile that never quite made it to full deployment but lived in the crease beside his left eye, and I added it to the collection I’d been building since week one.
That made seven. Seven almost-smiles in four months.
At this rate, I’d have a complete set by the time I was ninety.
“The toast is excellent,” Mitch announced, through his stolen mouthful. “Caleb is my favorite person. Factual statement. Not up for debate.”
“That’s a low bar,” Sterling said.
“Wrong. Sterling is also my favorite person. Tied for first. It’s a high bar and you’re both clearing it with room to spare.”
“That’s the same bar.”
“Semantics.”
I carried the fresh toast to the table and set it between them. “You’re both tied for second,” I said. “Behind the sourdough starter.”
Mitch nodded, serious. “That’s fair. The sourdough starter has never once criticized my driving, which is more than I can say for either of you.”
Sterling was quiet for a moment. His fork moved through his eggs with the precision of a man who did nothing carelessly, not even breakfast. Then he said, “I agree with the ranking.”
I nearly dropped the spatula.
Mitch’s eyebrows went up. He looked at Sterling, then at me, then back at Sterling, with the expression of a man who had just witnessed something he’d been betting against for months.
“Say that again,” Mitch said. “Slower. I want to savor it.”
“I said I agree with the ranking.”
“The sourdough starter. You agree that the sourdough starter is better than you.”
“It produces consistent results with minimal input. That’s efficient. I respect efficiency.”