Page 107 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

Boone opened the back door with sleep still clinging to him, expecting quiet. Maybe bacon if he was lucky. Instead, he walked into the kitchen and froze.

Rea and Colter sat at the table in the half-light of dawn, steam curling from their mugs like they'd been up for hours—waiting.

Neither spoke. Neither blinked. They just looked at him with the patience of people who had already decided how this was going to go down.

It felt like walking into a sentencing.

"Oh, hell no," Boone muttered, reaching for the coffeepot. "Whatever this is, I'm not awake enough for it."

Colter kicked out an empty chair, and it skidded across the floor. "Sit."

Boone poured coffee instead. "Pass."

"Vivi's gone."

"She's probably helping set up for the fair."

"No, dear." Rea's voice was soft. "Not out-for-the-morning gone. Gone-gone. She packed a bag and left for Jo’s last night."

Boone's jaw tightened as he stared into his cup. "People leave."

"That's what happens when you're a dick," said a flat, cutting voice from the laptop screen on the counter.

Boone looked up and saw Eli sitting in full fatigues, from what appeared to be the opposite side of the hemisphere. His expression was absolutely neutral and entirely judgmental.

"What the hell?" Boone said.

"Nan would kill me if I missed a family meeting," Eli said, like that explained anything. "Joining you live from an undisclosed location. Now, about Kayla." He paused. "I mean Vivi."

"Fuck you," Boone said. His took a sip of coffee, then set it down. It tasted like ash.

The final moments with Kayla flickered across his thoughts—her suitcase by the door, her little shrug like he'd never been worth unpacking for in the first place. The familiar sting twisted into something uglier.

Boone pressed his knuckles to the counter. "We are not talking about Kayla. Not this morning."

"Then stop acting like Vivi is Kayla," Colter said. "They're not even in the same species."

"She went behind my back." The anger rose fast. "She sent Virgil that letter without a word to me. I was blindsided. I didn't have time to think, didn't have time to prepare. I just had to stand there and take it."

"Wow,” Eli said with zero emotion in his tone.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Boone snapped.

"Vivi tried to help you," Eli said, his face coming closer to the screen. "Like actually help. And it didn't wind up the way she hoped. What a monster. Lock her up."

"Don't do that sarcastic bullshit."

"Then stop giving us material." Colter leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "You're angry that someone cared enough to try? Well, get over it because that's what we're doing here."

"She went rogue." Boone's voice came out rougher than he’d like. "I told her I had a plan. I told her I'd handle it. I told her to stay out of it, and she did the exact opposite and then let me stand there unprepared when Virgil essentially killed our ranch."

His hands clenched at his sides while his chest rose and fell in uneven bursts. He looked between Rea and his brothers, searching for something—an argument, a lifeline, anything that would hold up under their steady, unflinching stares.

Nothing did. Because beneath it all, in some corner of his mind that he didn't want to look, he already knew.

"You were flailing," Colter said quietly. "And you didn't want anyone to see it. Especially her."

"Boone." Rea met his eyes and held them. "She wasn't trying to undermine you. She was trying to save something for you because you matter to her. That's not betrayal. That's the opposite of betrayal."