Chapter 18
Ethan
The coffee is already made.
I stand in my kitchen at six in the morning with sleep still in my eyes and a cat on my foot, and the coffee is already made. Two mugs on the counter. The blue one Jenna picked out of the cabinet her second morning here and never put back is half empty. Steam curls from the second. Mine.
She beat me to it.
I’ve been making this woman coffee since she woke up on my couch with a leaf in her hair and terror in her eyes. Every morning. I’ve been saying I love you in coffee grounds and filtered water for weeks, and this morning she said it back. She woke up in our bed and came downstairs and measured the grounds and poured two mugs because that’s what people do when they live somewhere permanently.
Jenna is at the kitchen table with her laptop open, reading glasses on, hair tucked behind one ear, and one bare foot folded beneath her. The other is flat on the floor, pale toes on worn wood.
Last night the phone rang and Beckett said Vance was in custody and she pressed her forehead into my chest and saidokay. Then she fell asleep on me like she had nothing left to carry.
Now here we are. Morning. Two mugs. The go-bag that sat by the bedroom door for her first two weeks is in the closet now, emptied and folded flat on the top shelf. I found it there three days ago and stood in the doorway for a full minute, not breathing.
She unpacked.
“Morning.” Jenna doesn’t look up as her fingers move across the keyboard.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
Pixel threads between my ankles. Crowley is a judgmental orange mass on the windowsill, one eye tracking a bird he’ll never catch. And on the table next to Jenna’s laptop, Bug and Glitch are staging a coordinated assault on a pen.
Bug gets a paw on it. Glitch bodychecks him. The pen goes off the table edge and hits the floor.
Jenna still doesn't look up from her screen. “Tweedle Dee, stop.”
Daniel appears in the doorway with a mug of coffee in his hand and takes in the scene: Jenna on the laptop, cats on the table, pen on the floor.
“Which one’s Tweedle Dee?”
I look at the kittens. Bug has decided now would be a good time to lick his ass. Glitch is watching Bug. They’re identical gray blurs of chaos, and I genuinely cannot tell them apart, not the way Jenna can.
“I have no idea.” I take a sip of coffee. “Jenna named them.”
The corner of Daniel’s mouth lifts. He leans against the doorframe beside me and finishes his coffee in four swallows. “Ride?”
I look at Jenna. She’s already waving us off without looking up, the gesture of a woman who knows that morning rides are how Sutton men have conversations they can’t have standing still.
“Go.” She pushes her glasses up. “I’ll be here.”
I'll be here.She says those three words like they cost nothing.
Gabriel is in the barn when we arrive, already saddled on Sable—the dark bay mare who tolerates no one else. His hat is low over his eyes, and his posture is composed in the way that Gabriel is composed: a man who built his walls young and maintains them with discipline.
His eyes flick to us, and his shoulders ease a fraction. Gabriel’s version of relief. “You’re late.”
“You’re early,” Daniel replies.
“Both true,” I say, and Gabriel’s mouth twitches.
We ride out along the eastern fence line, the three Stoneridge sons on horseback, the way we’ve been riding since we were old enough to hold reins. The land opens around us, green hills rolling toward the ridge, morning light catching the creek along the south pasture. This land is ours. Our grandfather’s and our father’s and ours.
The leather saddle creaks as Scout moves beneath me with an easy gait. The air smells like cut grass and morning dew and horse. The land, the sky, my brothers on either side of me.Noscreens, no perimeters, no crisis. Just hooves on dirt and three men who grew up on this ground.
“Family meeting follow-up,” Daniel says. “Ben reached out about combining the water infrastructure. Henry’s coordinating.”