"I hear you."
He goes off the porch, his boots crunching on the gravel. Diesel doesn't even open an eye.
Halfway across the yard, Thunder turns back without breaking stride. "And Cross?"
"Yeah?"
"Today's gonna be a long day. You hold your head up. Hear me?"
"I hear you."
He goes.
The sun comes over the cottonwoods at the edge of the east pasture and pours itself across the gravel.
The screen door opens behind me at some point I don't track.
Rogue comes out in jeans and no shirt, his hair every direction at once, with his own coffee in his hand.
He stops behind my chair, bends down, and presses his mouth against the top of my head. He stays there for a moment. "Mornin', baby."
"Mornin', Silas."
The name still lands a little differently every time I say it. His mouth presses harder against my hair when I say it.
He sits in the chair Thunder was just in. His hand finds mine in the space between the chairs, thumb tracing the back of my knuckles.
He looks at the bare place at my throat. His eyes stay there for longer than they need to.
The thumb tightens around my hand.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
We drink our coffee while the cicadas start up for the day.
* * *
The bunkhouse fills up faster than normal.
Banshee comes in for breakfast before his gate shift, eats standing at the counter, kisses Bex on the temple and puts a hand on her growing belly when she comes through with a load of horseshoes for Spur's barrel horses, and leaves.
Spur grabs coffee and three biscuits in a paper towel and thanks me on his way out the door.
Blaze sits down at the bunkhouse table with the radio he uses for ranch coordination next to his plate and eats while he listens to the gate rotation.
I cook for ten men in the span of an hour and a half. My hands are busy. The kitchen smells like bacon and the coffee pot doesn't sit empty for more than a minute at a time.
Buckley comes in from the south access gate at the end of his shift. Hat off when he sees me at the stove. "Mornin', Cross."
"Mornin', Buckley, but it's Hadley to you. Thunder's the only one with the right to call me that. Sit and eat. I'll bring ya over some food."
He sits.
The brothers move around me differently than they did a week ago.
I'm the cook on this ranch and I'm also something else now.
I bring Buckley eggs, bacon, and a biscuit. He eats with the focus of a man who has been awake on a fence line since before dawn.
