I set the plate down in front of him.
Brisket, beans, cornbread, a small dish of pickled jalapeños because he eats them witheverythingI serve and I figured out his habit the first week.
He says, "Thank you, Hadley."
Not sweetheart this time.
He doesn't look up at me when he says it.
I stand there for half a second longer than I should and then I walk back to the kitchen.
I refill the iced tea pitcher and the cornbread basket.
Anything so I don't look at the head of the table.
Thunder is making Nash laugh.
Whatever he's telling him, my boy ishowling—the open-mouthed belly laugh I haven't heard out of him in years, the kind that used to come out of him every night at the dinner table when Garrett was alive, the kind I had given up on hearing again.
Thunder is telling some story about a horse he tried to ride when he was twelve.
The horse is named Lucifer. The horse wins.
By the end of the story, Nash is laughing so hard he's wheezing, and Spur is laughing too.
Even Blight is laughing through his hangover, and Thunder is grinning and shaking his head and pretending to be wounded by the memory.
I'm leaning against the door frame between the kitchen and the dining room with a dishrag over my shoulder.
I'm laughing too.
I catch myself laughing and I don't stop. I let it go. It feels good. It feels like something I forgot how to do, then I look up.
Rogue is watching me.
He's at the head of the table. His brisket is half-eaten. His coffee cup is between his hands. His face is doing the thing where it doesn't move, but also somehow looks like every thought he has is happening behind it at once.
He's not laughing. He's lookingatme.
For a second neither of us moves.
His eyes drop to Thunder. Drop back to me. Drop to Nash on Thunder's lap. Back to me.
I see it land.
It's not anger. It's not jealousy in the cheap way men get jealous.
It's something quieter and harder to name, the way a dog's ears go back without him growling—a warning that's not for me but is about me.
I look away first.
I've got to.
I push off the door frame and go back to the kitchen and I start scrubbing a pan that doesn't need to be scrubbed because I need to be focusing my energy on something.
Behind me, Thunder ribs him across the table. "Brother, you barely touched the second helping. Cross is gonna think you don't love her cookin' anymore."
Rogue's voice comes back two degrees lower than usual. "Had a late lunch."
