Page 89 of Breaking His Exile

She set the pen down. “It didn’t start out being about you. It was supposed to be about running away. Finding quiet. Somewhere nobody knew my name.” She looked at the mountains again because looking at him right then felt like standing too close to something hot. “Somewhere nobody expected anything.”

“And now?”

She turned to him. His eyes were dark and watchful, and she couldn’t read what was behind them except that he was waiting, the way he waited for everything that mattered, and the waiting itself was a kind of trust she wasn’t sure she deserved.

“Now I think maybe I found somewhere I wanted to be found,” she said.

The words sat between them. Not heavy, exactly. Present. The kind of truth that changed the air in a room without making a sound.

He looked at her a long moment. Then his gaze drifted past her, toward the ridge line, and she knew exactly where his mind had gone. His mountain. His cabin. The life he’d built out of silence and distance and the conviction that staying away was the only moral choice available to him.

“You figure out how it ends?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Probably shouldn’t force it.”

“No.” She picked up the guitar again, ran her thumb along the strings without playing. “I think I have to see what happens first.”

He nodded. Once. The conversation was over in the way his conversations ended — not because he’d run out of words but because he’d said the thing he came to say and the silence after was part of it.

She let the silence sit. Then she asked, “Any word on Sable?”

His jaw tightened. A small movement, barely there, but she caught it. “No.”

“Jonah’s still looking?”

“He went out again at dawn. Covered the east ridge and the game trail where we came down.” He drank his coffee. “Nothing.”

She didn’t offer reassurance. False comfort would have been an insult to both of them. Sable was out there somewhere, riderless, possibly injured, in country that had teeth even without Creed Calder in it. Evander knew that better than anyone. Offering hope he didn’t believe would have been taking something from him, not giving it.

So they sat with the worry. His worry, which he carried the way he carried everything — internally, without complaint, without the performance of burden that would have made it easier for someone else to reach for. She recognized the pattern now. He didn’t protect himself from pain. He accepted it. Welcomed it, even. The cut on his arm from the rooster yesterday, the way he’d glanced at the blood and then away like it was information rather than injury. The cracked ribs he worked through without mentioning. The fever he’d walked off a mountain with.

Pain was something he believed he deserved.

The thought settled in her chest like a cold stone.

The chaos arrived at a sprint.

River came tearing across the yard from the direction of the chicken coop with his arms windmilling and his voice carrying at a volume that suggested either genuine alarm or performance art. Behind him, General Mayhem moved with the focused fury of a fifteen-pound rooster who had identified a target and intended to extract payment in blood.

“Jesus Christ— somebody— would somebody please⁠—”

The men materialized from various points around the yard. X leaned against the barn doorframe with his phone already recording. Jonah paused halfway through carrying a bale of hay to the paddock. Boone stepped out of the equipment shed and folded his arms. None of them moved to help. They watched with the settled amusement of men who had seen this particular drama play out enough times to recognize it as entertainment rather than crisis.

River vaulted the picnic table, lost his footing on the far side, and went down hard on one knee. Mayhem closed the distance with the aerodynamic efficiency of something built for short-range combat.

Evander was on his feet before Rainey registered he’d moved.

He crossed the yard at a walk, not a run, and stepped directly into Mayhem’s path. The rooster launched — wings spread, combat mode engaged, targeting what appeared to be Evander’s left shin — and Evander caught him. Barehanded. One smooth motion, palm around the body, wings pinned, and Mayhem’s furious crowing cut off into an indignant squawk.

Evander held him at arm’s length. The rooster’s black eyes fixed on him with pure, undiluted hatred.

A thin line of blood welled along Evander’s forearm where Mayhem’s spur had caught him. He didn’t seem to notice it.

River picked himself up, brushing grass from his knees, and grinned. “See? This is why we keep him around. He caught that psychotic rooster mid-air! Man’s fearless.”

“He also caught a spur to the arm and didn’t blink.” X lowered his phone. “You just made an enemy for life, hermano.”