I’d noticed. I noticed everything about Sterling Callahan, which was becoming its own kind of problem.
I set a plate in front of his chair without ceremony. Eggs. Bacon. Two slices of toast with butter already melting into the crust. Sterling looked at the plate. Then at me.
“You didn’t have to,” he said.
“I know.”
I reached into my pocket and set the pain medication beside his coffee mug. Two pills. The white ones from the prescription bottle I’d spotted in his bag last night when he’d been in the bathroom, the label facing out because Sterling did nothing by accident, not even unpacking.
He looked at the meds. Looked at me. His expression didn’t change, but something moved behind his eyes—a calculation, a reassessment, the recalibration of a man who had just realized that the person across from him had been paying closer attention than he’d given credit for.
I looked back. Pleasant. Patient. Completely immovable. The same look I’d given Mitch five minutes ago, except aimed at aman who was considerably harder to move than my brother, which was saying something.
Across the table, Mitch was watching with the expression of a man at a very good sporting event. Leaned back in his chair, coffee mug cradled between both hands, eyes bright with the enjoyment of watching two stubborn people attempt to out-stubborn each other.
The silence held. One beat. Two.
Sterling picked up the medication. Tossed both pills into his mouth and washed them down with a swallow of coffee that didn’t so much as change his expression. Set the mug down. Looked at his plate.
The small shift that moved through my chest at that wasn’t triumph. Triumph was sharp and satisfied and had edges. This was warmer. Softer. The warm realization that Sterling Callahan had just taken an order from me without arguing about it, which might have been the first time in recorded history.
I turned back to the range before I could smile too obviously. The toast needed attending to. The toast was safe. The toast had no opinions about my internal organs doing complicated things.
“You want jelly?” I asked the skillet.
“No,” Sterling said.
“Yes,” Mitch said, around a mouthful of bacon. “He wants jelly. He’s lying. He’s pathologically incapable of admitting he wants things that aren’t bullets or tactical advantages.”
“I don’t want jelly.”
“He wants the blackberry. Not the strawberry. The blackberry tastes like actual fruit instead of candy, which is the only kind of sweet Sterling will acknowledge exists, because God forbid he enjoy something without a practical justification.”
Sterling cut into his eggs. “I’m capable of speaking for myself, Pruitt.”
“Debatable. I’ve known you four months and I’ve heard approximately twelve complete sentences, and three of those were about fence posts.”
“Fence posts are important.”
“See?” Mitch waved his hand at Sterling. “That’s thirteen. Progress.”
I slid the blackberry jelly across the table to Sterling’s right hand. His fingers brushed the jar, and he didn’t pull away, and that was progress too, though I wasn’t counting.
Mitch reached across the table and lifted a piece of toast directly off Sterling’s plate. Didn’t ask. Didn’t announce. Just took it, bit into it, and kept talking about something involving the irrigation line in the south field, like the theft had been pre-approved by all relevant parties.
Sterling moved his plate six inches to the left. Didn’t comment. Didn’t even look up from his eggs.
I dropped two more slices of bread into the skillet. “That’s for Mitch,” I said to Sterling. “He’s going to steal yours again in approximately forty seconds.”
“I was not going to do that,” Mitch said.
“You were absolutely going to do that.”
“I have boundaries. Dignity. A moral compass that—”
Forty-three seconds later, Mitch’s hand crossed the table and lifted Sterling’s second piece of toast.
Sterling looked at me. I shrugged.
