I held on, and let the rest of it go.
Chapter Seven
~ Hooper ~
I had steered Liam through the front hallway and straight into the kitchen, hand at the base of his spine, not pushing, but making sure he had no chance to go ghost again.
The house was built before insulation was a thing people bothered with, so the kitchen was where heat lived all winter: the woodstove ticking in the corner, the air heavy with the complicated sweetness of pine smoke and whatever had last been fried in the old cast-iron pan.
I put him in the good chair, or what passed for it—a slab of oak with a cracked spindle, closest to the stove. Even in March, the cold liked to sit on your boots, and I wasn’t going to have him shaking all night if I could help it.
I didn’t say anything about the chair, just took Emilio and set him in his basket at the table’s edge, the way you would a centerpiece, and went to fill the kettle.
I could feel Liam watching me, trying to memorize the angles of the room: the sag of the counter under three generations’ worth of ugly mugs; the battered drying rack, packed with bottle parts and a single chef’s knife; the splay of mail and empty formula cans and the bag of rice that was half air and refusing to stand up.
There was a smell under the wood smoke, too—something almost metallic, a note of old iron and scorched milk, not unpleasant if you grew up with it, but probably a punch to the face for anyone fresh off a highway.
I got the kettle on, turned the knob until the hiss started, then opened the fridge and took inventory. Leftover rice, a full three eggs, the heel of the bread loaf gone stiff at the cut. I didn’t make a meal of looking, didn’t stand with the door wide like aman showing off. I just pulled the rice, cracked the eggs into a chipped bowl, and set the bread down on the board.
I had seen the way Liam’s eyes flicked to the fridge at the noise—one fast, involuntary glance, the kind you see in men who’ve spent too much time rationing—and I made a point of not clocking it. He was thin, but not wasted. The kind of thin that came from moving all the time and never quite eating enough to make up the difference.
I got the skillet hot and the rice in first, then the eggs, whisked rough and poured on top, the whole thing moving fast enough not to give a man time to object or offer to help. The bread I tore into hunks, not bothering with butter.
I set the plate in front of him without comment, and only when I had a fork in his hand did I fill two mugs from the kettle, black tea with a single packet of sugar for each.
Liam ate the way you do when you’re used to performing gratitude for someone else’s benefit—small bites, eyes on the food, never the man across the table.
But I watched his hands: the tremor there, slight but stubborn, the way his left kept wanting to curl up under the table and had to be brought back out, again and again, by the force of will.
The set of his jaw was tight, but the food was doing its job. By the third bite, his shoulders had dropped a fraction. By the time he reached the bottom of the plate, the white-knuckle grip on the fork had faded to just normal human tension.
I said nothing, because any attempt to narrate the event—welcome home, glad you made it, eat up—would have made him shut down on the spot.
Instead, I picked Emilio up and sat across from him, the baby’s weight a grounding point, and watched the steam from the mugs climb up into the dead air above the table.
For a while, the only noise was the scrape of Liam’s fork on ceramic and the soft, mouthy noises of the kid, who’d taken to smacking his lips in his sleep like he was reviewing the flavor profile of an imaginary buffet.
The woodstove kicked out a steady crack and pop, the metal expanding and contracting as it worked to keep the night on the other side of the walls. There was something good in the silence. Not the absence of trouble, but the absence of expectation.
Liam finished his food, set the fork down with a careful click, and wrapped both hands around his mug. He stared into it for a long minute, the tea still swirling from the pour. His hair, longer than I remembered, kept falling into his eyes, and he made no attempt to brush it back.
He looked up, finally, and when he did, his face was different—less hunted, more like a man who’d crawled out of a deep hole and was waiting to see if the sky was safe.
I let him have the silence as long as he wanted. Emilio shifted, made a high, animal sound, and I bounced him once, gentle, just to remind us both that he was still there.
Liam set his mug down, traced the rim with a finger, and when he spoke, his voice was the same as the night in Billings—soft but direct, with a current underneath it that warned you not to mistake kindness for weakness.
“I have to ask,” he said, eyes on the table, “is it really safe here?”
I shrugged, because the question deserved better than a prepackaged assurance. “Nothing’s ever really safe,” I said. “But it’s as close as you’ll get within a thousand miles.”
He nodded, not quite convinced, but not ready to argue.
I poured him more tea, topped off my own, and waited.
The rest of the house was silent—no Rawley, no Jojo, not even the phantom creak of someone lurking the hallway to get a read on our conversation. I’d give them points for that.
The baby had gone slack against my chest, full-on ragdoll mode, his mouth open and one arm wedged up under his chin like he’d fallen asleep mid-argument.
