Chapter Nineteen #2
I let go. Stepped back. Ran the same visual sweep I’d give any tactical situation—two people, present, breathing, no serious injury. Caleb’s red mark was superficial. Mitch had a scratch along his forearm that he hadn’t noticed yet. Both of them were standing on their own feet.
“You are not allowed to do that again,” I said. Flat. Direct. The voice I used when I was not negotiating.
“We didn’t exactly plan it,” Mitch said.
“I don’t care.”
“That’s a very unreasonable position.”
“It’s the only position I have.”
Mitch held my gaze. His eyes were warm and a little wrecked, the look he usually kept just under the humor, and he said, quieter, “Yeah. Okay. We won’t do it again.”
I nodded once. Firm. The kind of nod that cost me something and was worth the cost.
Cruz’s voice came from behind me, flat and calm, the tone of a man reporting weather. “The one with the dislocated shoulder is asking for a doctor.”
“He can ask,” I said.
“I told him that.”
Mitch leaned around me. “How’d he take it?”
“About how you’d expect,” Cruz said.
Mitch grinned. “I like Cruz.”
Cruz said nothing.
“He knows,” I said.
Mitch turned to Caleb. His hands came up to Caleb’s face, tilting it toward the thin morning light, thumbs gentle along his jaw. The red mark on Caleb’s temple was angry against his pale skin.
“I’m fine,” Caleb said.
“You have a red mark.”
“It’s a seatbelt mark, not a wound.”
“I’m aware of what it is.”
“Then stop looking at me like I’ve been shot.”
“I’m allowed to look at you however I want right now,” Mitch said. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I scared you? You were the one driving.”
“I was driving excellently under the circumstances.”
“You ran a stop sign.”
Mitch stared at him. “There was a truck trying to push us off a cliff.”
“The stop sign was before the truck.”
“Are you seriously—”
“I’m just noting the facts.”
I watched them. Mitch’s hands on Caleb’s face, Caleb’s stubborn set to his jaw, the two of them standing in a road arguing about a stop sign while three zip-tied contractors bled on the asphalt behind us, and something in my chest loosened by several degrees.
They were fine. Specifically fine. The kind of fine that involved bickering and eye rolls and Mitch’s thumb tracing the edge of Caleb’s seatbelt mark like it was something precious he needed to map.
Then Mitch turned to me. Easy. Offhand. Warm. The warmth he deployed when he was covering something real with something light. “You should be careful with him,” Mitch said. His hand rested on Caleb’s shoulder. “Caleb’s carrying the next two Callahans, after all.”
The road went quiet.
I was not breathing. The words landed in the space between us and did not move. I looked at Mitch. At Caleb. At Caleb’s stomach, which looked exactly the same as it had ten seconds ago and also completely, fundamentally different.
“Two,” I said.
Caleb’s face did the thing. The quiet bright thing I’d been collecting since the first week—the warmth that lived in his eyes first and reached his mouth second—and then it broke into the full version, the grin that took over his whole face and carried no apology for how much joy it contained.
“Twins,” he said. Like it was the best word in the English language. Like someone had handed him a gift he’d been waiting for his entire life and it had turned out to be twice as good as he’d hoped.
The world rearranged itself. The contractors, the road, the Humvee, the thin Montana sky—all of it rotated around a new center of gravity that lived somewhere behind Caleb’s sternum and was currently the size of a walnut.
Two of them. Plural. The kind of plural that meant cribs and names and a lifetime of mornings that started at five-thirty with someone who wasn’t me deciding it was time to be awake.
My knees did something they had never done in my entire career. They buckled. Not dramatically. Subtly. The kind of buckle that said the structural integrity of my lower extremities had encountered a load they were not rated for, and the engineers were taking a coffee break.
Mitch caught me. Both hands on my arms, solid and certain, his grip firm without being tight. “Easy, sweetheart.”
“Don’t.”
“You almost went down.”
“I didn’t go down,” I insisted.
“You were going down. I have witnesses.”
Cruz’s voice came from across the road. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Cruz,” I growled.
“I was looking at the contractors.”
“Thank you, Cruz.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mitch looked between us with the expression of a man who had been betrayed by his own coalition. “You two are going to be insufferable together.”
“We already are,” I said.
Cruz, without inflection: “Yes.”
Mitch’s hands were still on my arms. Warm. Steady. Not going anywhere. He leaned in, close enough that I could feel his breath, and said, “You’re about to be a father.” The way he said it—low, certain, meaning it all the way down—landed somewhere behind my sternum and did not move.
I looked up at him. At Caleb, who had stopped talking about nursery colors and was watching my face with something patient and bright and completely certain. At Mitch’s hands on my arms, holding me upright on a Montana road where the world had just changed shape.
“Yellow,” I said. It came out rough.
Not a question.
Caleb’s face went soft. Open. Then into that quiet brightness, the kind that made rooms feel easier just by being in them. “Yes,” he said. “Warm yellow. Not the sharp kind.”
I nodded once. Straightened up. Got my legs under me. The contractors were still zip-tied. The radio was in my pocket. The day was not over.
“Cruz,” I said. “Call it in. Get them loaded.” I turned to the two hands standing at the perimeter. “You did good work.”
I picked up my rifle from where I’d set it against the Humvee’s tire. Barrel cool against my palm. My hands were steady again.
I didn’t examine why.
Then I reached out and took Caleb’s hand—warm, small, certain—and with my other hand grabbed the back of Mitch’s neck, fingers threading into his short hair, and held both of them for one more second. Felt Mitch’s pulse under my thumb. Felt Caleb’s fingers curl around mine.
I let go. Went to do my job.
Mitch was grinning. The kind of grin that said he had orchestrated this entire morning and the universe had delivered exactly what he ordered, and he was extremely pleased with both of us for showing up on schedule.
Caleb was already back on nursery colors. “Warm yellow with white trim,” he said. “Or is that too much? Do you have opinions about trim?”
“I do not have opinions about trim,” I said.
“Everyone has opinions about trim.”
Mitch slung an arm around Caleb’s shoulders. “Sterling’s opinion is probably tactical.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Caleb smiled. “I think it means white.”
I walked toward the Humvee. Behind me, Mitch’s voice carried on the thin morning air. “White trim is the correct call.”
“I know,” Caleb said.
“I just wanted credit.”
“You can have it.”
I got in the truck. Cruz pulled out behind me, the Humvee’s engine settling into a lower gear as we navigated the service road back toward the ranch. The radio chattered with updates—contractors secured, perimeter stable, the eastern ridge quiet again.
I stared at the windshield.
Twins.
Yellow.
White trim.
I was going to need a bigger house.