Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 120186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Calder is not Roman. But standing in this room, watching him from behind that desk, it all bleeds together in my head in ways I can’t stop.
I plant myself near the bookcase. Levi holds out the second glass. I don’t move for it. Taking a drink right now feels like agreeing to something I haven’t heard yet.
“You’re having a meeting without me,” I say.
“Hard to have a meeting with a man nobody can find,” Sawyer says. He doesn’t dress it up. “You’ve been gone half the time, Kade. Show up when it suits you and disappear the rest.”
He’s not wrong.
“While you were out sulking about last night,” Calder says, setting his papers down, “cattle rustlers hit the south pasture.”
The back of my neck prickles. “What’d they take?”
“Eleven head. Probably more, still counting.” He says it flat, like he’s already past the shock of it. “But the number’s not what matters. What matters is they came at all.”
“When’s the last time anyone tried that?” Sawyer has moved away from the desk, arms crossed, jaw set. He looks wrung out. The kind of tired that’s been building for weeks. “Years, Kade. Nobody’s touched this land in years. And what, weeks after Roman’s in the ground, and somebody’s walking our fence line and helping themselves. That’s not a coincidence.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
“They see the gap. They’re watching to find out who fills it. And us being split up, with you off God knows where every other day—”
“I’ve been handling the Lowry situation.”
“I know what you’ve been handling.” The way Sawyer looks at me says he knows more than that. “But that’s not all of it, and you know it.”
I look around at the three of them. That feeling of walking in late, of everyone already knowing their lines, presses on my chest like a fist. They had this conversation before I got here. Decided what they were going to say and how they were going to say it. And now I’m standing in the room I hate most in this house while they wait to see which way I fall.
Second round. I missed the first.
“We need a decision,” Calder says. The patience is gone from his voice. Just the straight edge of it now. “This family decides what it is. What we are to each other, to this ranch, to everybody watching from outside. Because a split answer to that question is the same as no answer.”
Fuck. I should have seen this shit coming after what happened at the gala.
“Either you’re with us,” Sawyer says, “or you’re not.”
“You want me to fall in line,” I say.
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what this looks like. All three of you in here with your minds already made up, and I’m the one who walks in and gets to agree or disagree. That’s not a conversation. That’s an ultimatum.”
Sawyer’s mouth opens. Shuts. Calder looks at me from behind the desk and doesn’t argue, which tells me I've landed somewhere true.
“You’re right,” Sawyer says, and I can hear what it costs him. “We should’ve waited on you. But you’re not easy to find lately, and the ranch doesn’t sit still while we go looking.”
Not an apology. But it’s something.
“What I’m asking,” he says, quieter now, the hard edge gone, “is that we get your head here when it counts. Not asking you to be over it. Not asking you to pretend things are fine. Just show up, so we’re not sitting in rooms making calls about your life while you’re somewhere else.”
I look at him. Then Calder. Then Levi, who has been studying the wall trim like it owes him money.
“He used every one of us,” I say. “Had something on all of us, pointed us wherever he wanted. I’m not the only one still hauling that around.”
“You’re not,” Calder says. He’s not looking at his papers anymore. Something in how he’s watching me—it’s not pity. It’s more like he sees what I’m saying because he’s said it to himself. “You’re not the only one, Kade.”
“Then quit looking at me like I’m the problem.”
“We’re not.” Sawyer drags a hand through his hair. “I know that’s how it feels.”
The room goes quiet.
Levi holds out the glass again. This time, I take it.
I look at all three of them. Really look. Calder has been grinding through this with circles under his eyes because somebody has to, and he’s decided it’s him. Sawyer just admitted I had a point when everything in him was set against it. Levi would take any excuse to be at a rodeo right now but is here instead.
They keep showing up.
I think about Roman behind that desk. Then I look at Calder behind it, and I see the difference plain for the first time. These three are watching me like I belong in the same room. Roman never looked at me that way. Not in his whole life.