Bear pulled the door around, leaving a bar of yellow light across the floor from the hall. And then… he couldn’t make himself move away. Like if he left this hallway, he’d never see hisson again. He stood with his back against the wall, and stared at the ceiling.
He counted the seconds until he could breathe again. When he got to sixty, he pushed off the wall and walked back down the stairs.
sixteen
The kitchen was loud.
Logan was glad school was over for the year, but Dad had to go help Dr. Garrison with her packed surgery schedule at the clinic, and had vetoed his staying home alone. Probably thought he’d try to run again.
So, here he was at Valor Ridge, standing in Walker Nash’s kitchen.
He hadn’t known what to expect. Maybe something out of an old western. Grizzled old cowboys bonding over a campfire.
But not… this.
Walker stood at the stove in a denim shirt with the sleeves shoved up, scraping eggs around a cast-iron skillet the size of a hubcap. Johanna was at the table with a mug in both hands, her reading glasses pushed up into her dark hair, a stack of papers at her elbow that she wasn’t looking at. Across from her, a lean, dark-haired man sat with a coffee and a plate of toast, one boot hooked on the rung of his chair.
King went straight to Johanna and put his enormous head in her lap. She didn’t miss a beat, just freed one hand and scratched his ear.
None of them looked at Logan like anything had happened yesterday. It was just a regular Tuesday morning for them.
“Sit down,” Walker said from the stove, without turning around.
Johanna got up and pulled out the seat beside her. “Here, you look hungry.” She crossed to the cabinet, took down a plate, loaded it with bacon from the pan on the back burner, and set it on the table in front of the empty chair. She sat back down and picked up her mug again.
Logan slid into the chair. The bacon was still hot. He picked up a piece and ate it without thinking, and only after he’d swallowed did he realize he hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and he hadn’t even finished that. He picked up another piece.
“Coffee?” Walker asked, still without turning around, like it was a normal question to ask a fifteen-year-old.
“Uh. No.”
Johanna scoffed at her husband’s back. “How about milk? Or we have apple juice, or orange?”
“Orange, I guess.”
Johanna got up again. He almost told her he could do it himself, but she was already at the fridge, and the dark-haired guy across the table watched her go with a faint, tired expression that wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular. He had hazel eyes, Logan noticed, and a couple days of stubble, and a tattoo creeping out from the collar of his shirt.
Johanna set a glass of orange juice in front of him, drawing his attention back to her. “Thanks.”
“You bet.” She nodded to the man across the table. “That’s Hatch. Hatch, Logan.”
Hatch lifted his coffee mug an inch in greeting. Logan got the impression this was a complete sentence for the guy.
Walker turned. “You take your eggs scrambled or fried?”
He looked at the plate in front of him. “Whatever.”
“That’s not an answer. Everybody’s got a preference.” Walker turned back to the stove. “You’re getting scrambled.”
Logan almost said “whatever” again, but caught himself. Instead, he ate the bacon and drank the juice and kept waiting for somebody to bring up the fact that he’d tried to run away last night.
They had to know. Dad would’ve told at least Walker and Johanna.
But nobody said anything.
Walker just slid some fluffy eggs onto his plate and added a generous spoonful of salsa next to them.
“Hot sauce is on the table. Don’t drown ‘em. Just enhance ‘em.” He sat down at the head of the table with his own plate and shook out a napkin across his lap.
