I said nothing.
Cooper had come in behind his father and was looking around the kitchen with the expression of a man who'd expected a quick stop and found himself at a dinner party. His eyes movedaround the table, landed on Haven—nineteen and pretty and watching the newcomers with open curiosity—and brightened in a way I noted and filed.
Wyatt noted it too. I saw it happen across the table, that particular stillness moving into his shoulders.
"Sit down," my mother said.
We sat.
Dinner was civil for exactly as long as my mother controlled the conversation. She kept it moving—passed the bread, asked Cooper about the Midland field, got my dad talking about a piece he was working on. It was low-stakes table noise that fills a room and leaves no space for anything sharp to get in edgewise. My dad played along the way he always had, easy and unhurried, giving Arlo nothing to grab onto.
Arlo ate. Watched. Smiled when spoken to.
I kept one eye on him and one on the table.
Millie had sat back down between me and Sawyer and she was doing what she did—reading the room, adjusting, keeping her face open and her mouth mostly quiet. I could feel her thinking beside me. She'd picked up enough from my mother's breakfast conversations to know the shape of this, even if she didn't know all the details.
Haven was talking to Cooper.
That was the first thing I didn't love.
Not because Cooper was dangerous—he wasn't, not the way Arlo was dangerous—but because Haven was nineteen and Cooper had that grin. She’d been working on our ranch for a long time, had been Wyatt’s honorary assistant almost as long. Wyatt was protective of her.
And Cooper? He was the kind of guy who got nice girls in trouble.
"Midland's not bad," Cooper was saying, leaning back in his chair. "Pay's good. Work's hard. You get used to it." He looked at Haven with that easy attention. "You from here originally?"
"Born and raised," Haven said. "I've worked the ranch since I was fifteen."
"No kidding." He looked genuinely impressed. "That's real work."
"It is," she said. There was a blush on her cheeks. “I work with Wyatt mostly—helping out when the baby animals come, that kinda thing.”
Wyatt ate his dinner and said nothing. The line of his jaw twitched.
At the other end of the table Arlo was talking to my dad about the property taxes, of all things—an innocuous subject that was not innocuous at all—and my dad was answering in that measured way he had, not giving ground, not taking the bait, just steady.
"County's been reassessing a lot of the Hill Country parcels," Arlo said. "Heard some families have had trouble keeping up."
"We keep up fine," my dad said.
"Sure, sure." Arlo broke off a piece of bread. "Big operation though. Must be a lot to manage for one man."
"Gage manages it," my dad said. “And he’s got his brother and the cousins, of course. Wyatt, Sawyer, Stetson…they’re good men.”
Stetson.Arlo’s oldest. He didn’t interact with us that often, but he lived on the property, took care of the outskirts and the woods.
And my dad knew it was a sore spot for Arlo that Stetson didn’t speak to him.
He was fucking with him.
“Stetson,” Arlo said, his smile just a little more tense…a little more tight. “You seen him lately?”
As if on cue, I heard tires in the driveway. My eyes darted up to the window, and I could see another truck pulling up—this one battered and covered in mud, a cage on the front and floodlights on top.
“Speak of the devil,” I said. “Looks like he came to dinner tonight.”
The truck door opened and Stetson climbed out, hands shoved in his pockets as he took a breath. Work clothes, hat pushed back. He stood in the drive a moment looking at Arlo's truck, then came toward the house.
