Then, because I couldn’t entirely help myself: “For what it’s worth, I thought the bait idea was smart.”
Sterling said, “It’s not your idea.”
“I know. I’m complimenting your idea.”
“That’s not what it sounded like.”
“Sterling.”
“What.”
“Take the compliment.”
A pause. The kind that contained a recalibration, a reassessment, and the particular struggle of a man who had spent years rationing praise the way he rationed everything else.
“It’s a solid play,” Sterling said, flat.
I grinned. “There you go.”
I straightened up and went to help Caleb with the dishes. Didn’t turn around to confirm it. Didn’t need to. I could feel the weight of Sterling Callahan’s attention settling between my shoulder blades like something deliberate, something chosen, and the feeling of it was warm and specific and entirely its own thing.
Caleb handed me a dish towel. Under his breath, voice low enough that only I could hear it: “He watched you the whole way across the room.”
“I know,” I said, also under my breath.
“He’s not even pretending.”
“I know.”
“This is very exciting.”
My lips lifted in a smirk. “I know.”
“Are you going to say anything other than I know?”
I thought about it. Dried a plate. Thought about it some more.
“Probably not right now,” I said.
Caleb nodded, satisfied, and handed me another plate.
From the table, Sterling said, without looking up, “The cinnamon rolls were good.”
Caleb said, “Thank you.”
Sterling said, “Mitch should have left the last one.”
I said, “Burke got the last one.”
Sterling said, “That’s what I said.”
I laughed. Caleb laughed. The sound of it bounced off the ceiling beams and the cast-iron pans and the open shelving where the mismatched mugs lived, and Sterling went back to his phone, but the corner of his mouth was doing the thing—the small, stubborn warmth that lived in the crease beside his left eye and never quite made it to full deployment.
I turned back to the dishes. Dried a plate. Got on with the morning.
There was a threat on the perimeter. There was a traitor somewhere in the network. There were boot prints in the mud and a cut fence and a dark truck idling on a county road with windows too tinted to see through.
And Sterling Callahan was sitting ten feet away with that small stubborn warmth at the corner of his mouth, his eyes on his phone, his bad leg stretched out under the table where the stiffness didn’t show, and somehow all of those things were true at the same time, existing in the same kitchen, under the same roof, in the same Montana morning that smelled like cinnamon and warmth and something worth staying for.
