Chapter Twenty
~ Mitch ~
I stood in the bedroom doorway with my arms crossed, watching Sterling pack a tactical bag like he was ironing his own execution orders.
The man folded socks the way most people folded origami. Each pair laid flat, edges aligned, rolled into a tight cylinder, and placed in the bag with the kind of deliberate precision that made my jaw ache just watching it.
Sterling didn’t look up. He’d been at this for twenty minutes. Socks, shirts, the good field kit from the locked drawer. Each item selected, folded, placed. The process was so methodical it bordered on offensive.
Caleb moved around the bed handing him things. Extra socks—the wool ones, thick enough for Montana winter, which Sterling would never ask for and absolutely needed. The good field kit—the one with the better sutures and the clotting agent that cost more than my truck.
Caleb’s eyes were red-rimmed and dry at the same time, the way they got when he’d decided crying wasn’t useful and his body had agreed to hold the line. His jaw was set. He handed Sterling each item like it was a prayer he wasn’t saying out loud.
Sterling took everything without comment.
No acknowledgment that the wool socks were a kindness or the protein bars were excessive—I’d counted twelve, Caleb had bought at least twenty—just accepted each item and placed it in the bag with the same economy he applied to everything.
Words were a resource Sterling rationed.
This morning, the rations were tight.
“The leg,” I said from the doorway. First push. Testing the waters.
Sterling’s eyes came up. Flat green. The kind of stare that said he’d heard me and the information was being processed and I would receive no further data at this time.
He went back to packing.
I tried again five minutes later. Sterling had moved on to ammo—counting rounds, checking each magazine with the focused patience of a man who had done this nine thousand times and would do it nine thousand more.
His leg was braced against the bed frame, the bad one, weight shifted to take the pressure off the knee.
“Four hours of sleep,” I said. “A leg held together by stubbornness and spite. This plan has a significant flaw, which is you.”
Sterling’s stare came up again. Flatter this time, if that was possible. “The leg is fine,” Sterling said.
I nodded. “Stubbornness and spite. Two of your best qualities. We’re in agreement.”
Something flickered behind those green eyes. Not quite humor. The precursor to humor, maybe, the kind that lived so deep in Sterling Callahan it needed a mining permit to reach.
He went back to the ammo.
Caleb handed him the protein bars. All twenty of them, stacked in a neat tower that Sterling accepted without blinking and placed in the side pocket of the bag.
“He’s right about the sleep,” Caleb said. Quiet. Warm. The kind of warmth that cut through Sterling’s defenses when nothing else could.
“I’ll sleep on the plane,” Sterling said.
“That’s not what sleep means,” I said.
“It’s what sleep means when there’s work to do.”
“You’ve been awake since four.”
“I’m aware of what time it is.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Sterling’s hands moved over the bag, checking compartments, confirming closures, the ritual of a man who had packed for missions that left no room for error and no margin for second chances.
The bag sat on the bed between us, black, practical, too heavy for anything good.
Caleb reached across and adjusted the protein bars in the side pocket. His fingers lingered for half a second longer than necessary, touching the fabric of the bag like it was something that mattered.
“Please eat the protein bars,” he said so quietly I almost missed it.
Sterling looked up. Not the tactical glance, not the perimeter sweep.
He looked at Caleb. Really looked. His eyes moved across Caleb’s face—the red-rimmed eyes, the set jaw, the quiet stubbornness that lived underneath all that warmth—and something in Sterling’s face shifted.
The armor cracked. Just a hair, just enough to see through, and what was behind it was raw and certain and entirely without performance.
“I’ll eat the protein bars,” Sterling said.
Caleb nodded once. Tight. The kind of nod that cost him something and was worth the cost. He turned back to the bag, adjusting something that didn’t need adjusting, his hands busy because busy hands were better than hands that shook.
Sterling zipped the bag. The sound was final. A verdict being delivered in nylon and Velcro. He stood, shouldering the weight with the ease of a man who had carried heavier things for longer distances, and looked at both of us.
The silence in the room had weight. Physical weight.
The kind you could feel pressing against your sternum, crowding out the air.
The wood stove ticked. The gravel apron through the window held the weak pre-dawn light, empty and waiting.
The bag sat on the rumpled sheets of our enormous bed, black and practical and entirely too present.
Sterling looked at me, then at Caleb. His jaw worked. The muscle in his cheek jumped once, hard, and I watched him run the calculation—the thing he wanted to say versus the thing he could say.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. The bag said it for him.
The protein bars said it. The wool socks and the good field kit and the deliberate precision of every fold said it, and what they said was: I am coming back.
I am coming back to this. To you. To both of you.
To warm yellow and white trim and a house I haven’t built yet.
I heard it. Caleb heard it. The wood stove heard it and kept counting.
Sterling picked up the bag. The straps settled across his shoulders, and he stood in our bedroom doorway for one long second, a man between two worlds, and then he was moving down the hall, boots heavy on the staircase, and the bunkhouse held his weight the way it had been holding it for months, patient and certain and entirely his.
He set his bag by the bunkhouse door and turned to me first.
I wasn’t ready for it. Two hands on my jaw, firm and warm, and then his mouth was on mine and it wasn’t a quick goodbye.
It was the real kind. The kind that took its time, that said things words couldn’t, and I gripped the front of his shirt and held on because my voice had checked out for the morning and my hands were the only part of me still working.
He kissed me like he was memorizing something.
The set of my mouth, the taste of me, the particular way I breathed when his thumbs traced my jawline.
I thought, clear as anything: he’s memorizing us.
Cataloguing. The way he catalogues everything, except this wasn’t a threat assessment.
This was a man making sure he had something to come back to.
He pulled back. Looked at me for one long second. His eyes were dark green in the weak pre-dawn light, registering everything, giving back nothing except the slight dilation of his pupils that I noticed because I’d been noticing Sterling’s pupils for months and had charts.
“You come back in one piece,” I said, rougher than I meant to, “or I’m feeding your hat to the goats.”
Sterling’s eyebrow lifted. One dark brow, the expression of a man who had heard this threat before and was mildly disappointed by the lack of creativity. “You’ve threatened the hat before.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You meant it last time.”
“Then you know I’m serious.”
He held my gaze. One beat. Two. His jaw worked, the muscle jumping once, and then he said, flat and certain, “The hat will be fine.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
He held my gaze and said nothing. Didn’t have to.
The silence between us carried the weight of everything we weren’t saying—the contractors, the traitor, the mission parameters Sterling hadn’t shared and I hadn’t asked for because some questions were better left unasked when the answers would only make it harder to watch him walk out the door.
Sterling turned to Caleb.
He cupped the back of Caleb’s neck with one hand, fingers threading into that strawberry blond hair, and kissed him slow. Thorough. The kind of kiss that had no business happening at five in the morning in a bunkhouse doorway with a tactical bag sitting on the floor and a mission waiting.
Caleb made a small sound against Sterling’s mouth—caught breath, involuntary, the kind that came from somewhere behind his sternum when control slipped—and his hands came up to grip Sterling’s wrist, both of them, fingers digging in like he was considering not letting go.
Sterling pulled back. Looked at Caleb’s face for a long moment.
His thumb traced the edge of Caleb’s jaw, once, careful, and then his hand moved.
Down, across Caleb’s chest, and then his palm pressed flat against Caleb’s stomach.
Against the barely-there bump that wasn’t showing yet, but was there, absolutely there, two heartbeats counting seconds inside my brother’s body.
He held it there. No words. Just his hand, warm through Caleb’s thin t-shirt, palm flat against the place where everything had changed.
Caleb closed his eyes. His breath caught, short and tight, and I looked at the wall because some moments belonged to two people and a third set of eyes was surplus to requirements.
Sterling’s hand stayed where it was, and what he was saying without saying it landed in the room with the force of something that had been building since the clinic parking lot.
“Come home,” Caleb said. Very quietly.
“That’s the plan,” Sterling said.
“That’s not what I said.”
Sterling went still. Completely still, the way he did when something landed that he hadn’t prepared for, and I watched his jaw tighten. The muscle jumped hard, once, and then he said, low and certain, “I’m coming home.”
Caleb opened his eyes. Looked at Sterling’s face. Said, “Okay.”