Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Sterling made a sound. Quiet. Involuntary. The kind that came from somewhere behind his sternum when something got through before the armor had time to engage.
Caleb tipped his head back against Sterling’s shoulder and closed his eyes with the satisfied expression of a man who had just landed a joke exactly right and was extremely pleased with both of us for our participation.
Sterling’s arm tightened around Caleb’s shoulders.
The movement was automatic—no decision visible, no hesitation, the way he did things now that three months ago would have cost him something measurable.
His hand settled against Caleb’s upper arm, warm and certain, and the gesture was so ordinary it almost hurt to watch.
I crawled up the bed. Dropped beside Sterling on his other side, close enough that our shoulders pressed together, and Sterling shifted without comment to make room, the sheet pulling tighter across his lap, which I noticed because I was paying attention and also because I was a man with priorities.
I got my hand on his jaw. Warm through the stubble, the texture of Sterling first thing in the morning, and I kissed him slow. Deliberate. Coffee-warm and unhurried, the kind of kiss that said I had all day.
Sterling kissed back. Fully. One hand coming up to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair with a grip that was firm without being tight, holding me there like he was making sure I was real.
Caleb made a small approving sound against Sterling’s shoulder without opening his eyes, and the coordination of it—three bodies in a bed, two kissing, one approving—short-circuited something in my nervous system that had been holding the line since the first week.
I pulled back. Kept my hand on Sterling’s jaw because I was allowed to now, apparently, and the fact that I was allowed to was still doing things to my chest.
“I am insufferably happy about this,” I said, low.
“I can tell,” Sterling said.
“You’re also happy about it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Sterling’s jaw worked. The muscle jumped once, hard. “Don’t do the thing where you tell me what I’m feeling.”
“I’m not telling you what you’re feeling. I’m confirming what’s already on your face.”
“My face isn’t doing anything.”
Caleb, eyes still closed: “Your face is doing everything.”
“You’re not even looking at me.”
“I have it memorized.”
Sterling opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at me for a long beat with the dark green gaze doing the reading thing—the full tactical assessment, the focus he brought to situations that required precision—and then he said, quiet and flat and completely unguarded: “Yeah.”
Just that. One syllable. Load-bearing.
I grinned so wide it probably looked unhinged and did not care even slightly. The kind of grin that took over my whole face and carried no apology for how much joy it contained, and Sterling held my gaze through it, which was its own kind of courage.
Caleb opened one eye. “I have been thinking about breakfast since approximately four in the morning, and someone needs to go downstairs and make it.”
“I made coffee,” I said. “That’s my contribution.”
“Coffee is not breakfast.”
“It’s the foundation of breakfast.”
“The foundation of breakfast is eggs.” Caleb looked at Sterling. The look was warm and entirely without subtlety, the expression Caleb deployed when he had decided something was happening and the universe was welcome to adjust accordingly.
Sterling set his mug on the nightstand. The left one. His one. He did it with the deliberate economy he brought to everything, and then he said, without inflection, “I’ll make eggs.”
The room went completely still.
I looked at Caleb. Caleb looked at me. Sterling sat between us like a man who had announced the weather and was mildly confused by the atmospheric response.
“Sorry?” I said.
Sterling’s jaw tightened. Slightly defensive. “I know how to make eggs.”
“We know that,” Caleb said. His voice had gone very quiet. “I’m processing.”
“It’s not a complicated offer.”
“It’s not the eggs that are complicated,” I said.
Sterling looked at me. “Then what’s complicated.”
“The fact that you just volunteered to cook breakfast in our kitchen in our house on a Tuesday morning like it’s a thing you do.”
“It is a thing I do now.”
“Is it? I asked.”
“I said it, didn’t I.”
“You say a lot of things.”
“I say things I mean.”
I held his gaze. “I know.”
The way I said it—all the way down, no performance, no armor, just a man stating a fact he had built his life around—landed between us with the weight of something that had been true since the first week and had only just now been allowed to breathe.
Sterling held my gaze for one long second.
Then he got out of bed with the deliberate ease of a man who had made a decision and was not reversing it.
His feet hit the floor. He pulled yesterday’s jeans from the chair, stepped into them without ceremony, and disappeared down the stairs with the particular heavy stride that said he had decided to make eggs and the eggs had better cooperate.
Caleb watched Sterling’s feet disappear. Turned to me with the bright-eyed look he got when something he’d been planning for finally arrived on schedule, and I watched his face do the thing it does when joy is too large to hold without leaking at the edges.
“He’s making eggs,” Caleb said.
“He’s making eggs,” I echoed.
“In our kitchen.”
“In our kitchen.”
“On a Tuesday.”
“On a Tuesday.”
Caleb’s voice went soft. “Mitch.”
“I know.”
“I need you to understand how long I have been waiting for a Tuesday like this.”
“I’ve been waiting for it too.”
“You’re going to be insufferable about it.”
“I’m going to be insufferable about it forever.”
Caleb smiled. The kind that lived in his eyes first and reached his mouth second, warm and certain and entirely without performance. “Good.”
He meant it completely. Every syllable. The kind of good that lived behind your sternum and didn’t need evidence or argument.
From downstairs came the sound of cabinets opening. A drawer. Then Sterling’s voice, flat and carrying up the staircase with the authority of a man who was conducting an inventory and expected answers. “Where are the eggs?”
“Bottom shelf of the fridge,” Caleb called back. “Left side. In the blue carton.”
A pause. Then: “There are seventeen eggs.”
“I know.”
“Why are there seventeen eggs?”
“It’s a large recipe.”
“I’m using six.”
“Use whatever you need.”
“I’m going to use six.”
“I heard you.”
I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and grinned so wide my face hurt.
The sound of Sterling Callahan negotiating with a refrigerator about egg quantities carried up the stairs and filled the bedroom and landed in my chest with the warmth of something I had been building toward since the first week we arrived at Black Butte Ranchwith two backpacks and a determination to finally, actually stay.
I was not going to stop being insufferable about this. Not ever. Not for one second of one Tuesday in one house that was actually ours, and I was not even slightly sorry about it.
I went downstairs because the smell of eggs cooking was doing things to my stomach that bordered on indecent, and also because I wanted to be in the room where Sterling was, which was a want I had stopped pretending was complicated somewhere around week three of his absence.
Sterling stood at the range in yesterday’s jeans and nothing else, hair still pushed back from sleep, working the eggs with the same focused efficiency he applied to everything that mattered. He had found the salt. He had found the pepper.
He had somehow located the specific cast-iron pan Caleb used for eggs—the small one with the rounded edges that I had been unable to find on multiple occasions despite it living in the same cabinet it had always lived in—and he was using it correctly, which was both impressive and mildly irritating.
I leaned in the door frame and watched. The morning light caught the line of his shoulders, the spread of muscle that mapped a career I understood in theory and would never fully comprehend, and I let myself look because I was allowed to now.
“Stop looming,” Sterling said without turning around.
“I’m not looming. I’m appreciating.”
“Appreciate from a chair.”
I pulled out a chair and sat in it backwards, arms crossed over the top rail, chin resting on my forearms. Sterling slid the spatula under the eggs with a flick of his wrist that said he’d done this nine thousand times and would do it nine thousand more.
“You’re still doing it,” he said.
“I’m sitting down.”
“You’re doing the thing where you look at me.”
“I’m always going to look at you.”
Sterling went quiet for a beat. The eggs hit the plate with a soft sound, golden and exactly right, and he set the plate on the counter and said, still not turning: “I know.”
He said it the same way I had said it upstairs. Flat. Direct.
I had to look at the table for a second because my face was doing something I’d rather Sterling not clock before I was ready, which was approximately never, but the never had gotten more complicated since Sterling started making eggs in our kitchen on a Tuesday morning.
Caleb came downstairs. His hair was combed now, or something adjacent to combed, and he’d exchanged Sterling’s shirt for one of his own that actually fit, which was its own kind of disappointment.
He kissed Sterling on the shoulder as he passed—brief, warm, the particular casual intimacy that cost nothing and gave back considerably more—and then we were all at the table, elbows close, Sterling’s knee touching Caleb’s under the wood and neither of them moving it.
I ate two servings. Told Sterling they were good, because they were, objectively, the kind of eggs that made you reconsider your relationship with morning.
“I know,” Sterling said.
“You’re not supposed to say that.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“It’s immodest.”
“The eggs are good. That’s a fact, not a boast.”
Caleb nodded. “He’s right. They are good.”
“I just said they were good.”
“Sterling said it with more authority.”