"Okay."
She kisses the top of Cal's head and looks at me over his hair. "Whatever you and Rogue are figurin' out, you might as well figure it out while my husband isn't around to make a face about it."
She winks and walks out before I can think of a single thing to say.
I stand at the stove with a spatula in my hand and my chest doing something I don't understand.
Then the screen door bangs open at the front of the bunkhouse and Banshee's voice carries down the hall, and all of a sudden I have brothers to feed.
They come in over the next ten minutes the way they always do.
Banshee first, pouring his own coffee.
Spur smelling like the sweat he worked up in the round pen.
Blight with his hat low. Thunder with a slow nod for me that's the same nod he gave me the night he carried Nash's stuffed Stitch in from the kennel after Diesel almost got hold of it.
The prospect whose name I can't keep in my head, who sits at the end of the table and doesn't speak.
I move through service. Plate the eggs. Set the biscuit basket on the table. Bring the gravy boat. The brothers serve themselves and the room fills with the sound of forks against ceramic.
Rogue comes in last.
White hat. Sleeves rolled to the elbow.
He doesn't look at me when he comes in—he scans the room first, the way he scans every room, and only after he's read it do his eyes find me at the kitchen pass-through.
The look lasts about a second longer than it needs to.
My pulse goes up in my throat. I feel it pressing against the chain.
He sits in his seat at the head of the table, hangs the hat on the back of the chair the way he always does and I bring him his plate last.
When I set it down in front of him, I bend over slightly and speak under the sound of the brothers' forks. "Mornin', Rogue."
He looks up at me. "You sleep, Hadley?"
"Some."
He nods. "Me too."
Two seats down, Banshee doesn't look up from his plate. "Y'all sound like a couple of insomniacs."
The laugh that comes out of me is the first easy thing my chest has done all morning.
I straighten and head back to the kitchen and Banshee gives me a wink without ever lifting his head, and I realize it.
They know. Every man in this room knows. And nobody is going to say a word about it. That’s the kind of room Phantom built.
I love them all a little bit more than I did yesterday.
* * *
Back at my cabin, I go to Nash’s room and he’s still asleep. I wake him up and within ten minutes he’s dressed and ready.
He sits at the kitchen table in his pajamas with Stitch in his lap and asks if we can have pancakes.
I tell him yes.