“I’m fine,” he barked.
“I know,” I said, and pointed again.
Mitch shrugged, reaching for the coffeepot with his unscratched arm. “That scratch is decorative. Adds character. You wouldn’t understand the aesthetic.”
“That’s a fascinating medical opinion,” I muttered. The eggs were bubbling. I flipped them. “Jojo would like a word about your definition of decorative tissue damage.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“I’m aware. I was there for most of them.” The foster home in Billings. The shed roof in Helena. The time he’d taken a swing at a kid twice his size because the kid had called me something that rhymed with nothing polite. I’d been there for all of it. Twenty-four years of my brother acquiring scars and pretending they were accessories.
Then Sterling rose without a word.
I felt it before I saw it—the shift in the kitchen air, the particular stillness that happened when Sterling Callahandecided to move. He crossed to the shelf in three strides, pulled the first-aid kit down, and set it on the table in front of Mitch with the flat finality of a closed door.
The sound of plastic on wood was decisive. Final. The kind of sound that did not invite discussion.
Mitch stared at the kit. Then at Sterling, who stood unmoved with his arms crossed, his jaw set in that particular way that said he had made a decision and the decision was not negotiable. The scratch on Mitch’s arm glowed angry in the morning light.
Mitch blinked. “You too?”
“There are two of us now,” I said from the range. “You’re outnumbered.”
“This is a violation of my civil rights,” Mitch grumbled. He was already reaching for the kit. The grumbling was dramatic, but low toned. I’d seen this routine approximately nine hundred times—Mitch objecting on principle while his body did exactly what someone had told him to do.
Sterling opened the kit. Pulled out antiseptic, a gauze pad, medical tape. His hands moved with the same efficiency he brought to everything—methodical, unhurried, treating a scratch on Mitch Pruitt’s arm with the same focused precision he’d bring to field surgery. He wiped the scratch. One pass, firm, no fuss.
Mitch’s jaw tightened.
Sterling didn’t notice, or pretended not to. Bandaged it quickly—overlap at the edges, tape secure, the whole operation taking less than thirty seconds and containing exactly zero ceremony.
When he finished, Mitch’s expression did something I hadn’t expected. The performance drained away. The joke retreated. What was left was warm and a little undone, the man underneath the bravado deciding he was needed, and what heneeded, apparently, was to look at Sterling’s hands on his arm and mean what he said next.
“Thanks,” Mitch said quietly.
Sterling closed the kit. Set it back on the shelf. Turned and said, “Eat your eggs,” with the same flat delivery he used for weather reports and tactical assessments, and the contradiction of it—Sterling Callahan, tender and gruff in the same breath—made my chest do something complicated that I turned away from before my face could catch up.
I slid eggs onto Mitch’s plate. Mitch dug in. Sterling refilled his mug and remained at the table, his bad leg stretched out to the side where the stiffness didn’t show, and the three of us ate in the kind of silence that didn’t feel like silence at all.
After breakfast, none of us rushed.
Sterling refilled his mug a third time and stayed at the table, one elbow on the wood, his eyes on the east window where the light had gone full gold. Mitch leaned back with his boots on the bench and his hat tipped over his eyes—comfortable, not asleep.
I washed up. Dried my hands on the dish towel. Looked at the table—two men, two chairs, no third option—and claimed the counter instead, hopping up to sit on the edge with my knees drawn up, my back against the cabinet.
The kitchen held us. Warm from the stove, amber from the light, smelling of eggs and coffee and the particular mineral tang of work boots that had been in the barn and were now tracking a fine layer of Montana into a kitchen that Sterling would notice and not comment on.
I watched them.
Sterling with his mug, his jaw loose, his eyes on the window like he was seeing the ranch for the first time. Mitch with his hat tipped, his bandaged arm resting across his chest, breathing slow and even. Two men in a kitchen, existing in the same room without either of them running a threat assessment on his ownfeelings, and having this—this specific, earned thing—felt almost too bright to look at directly.
Sterling caught me staring.
His eyes shifted from the window to my face with that precision that still surprised me, the way Sterling noticed everything whether he wanted to or not. He raised an eyebrow. One dark brow lifting, the expression of a man who had caught something he wasn’t entirely sure how to categorize.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You’re doing a thing,” he said.
