Page 90 of Claimed on the Ridge

He's lying. I hear it in the single syllable and the set of his jaw. Whatever is on that screen is a problem he's choosing to carry alone. I file the observation. Not my problem to push on. Not today.

Cameron walks through the kitchen with his phone in his hand. It buzzes against his palm. He reads the screen, steps outside without a word, and closes the door behind him. His voice is low through the pine, too quiet to make out words. The call is short.

When he comes back inside, the easy looseness Cameron usually wears is gone. His mouth is a flat line. His eyes are somewhere else entirely. He picks up his keys from the hook by the door.

"Where are you going?" Alex asks.

Cameron doesn't answer. He doesn't slam the door. Cameron doesn't slam things. He closes them with the quiet precision of aman who fixes what's broken and doesn't discuss it until the job is done.

The truck starts in the yard.

Alex watches the door, then looks at Bryan.

Bryan shakes his head.

The exchange is brief and says everything neither of them will say out loud. The shorthand between these brothers is a language I'm still learning to read.

I've spent enough mornings in this lodge to understand the grammar.

Bryan handles the information and the decisions nobody wants to make.

Cameron handles the things that need fixing, including the things nobody asked him to fix.

Dash handles the perimeter, the silence, and the exit routes nobody else watches.

Alex holds the center.

The weight settles differently on each of them, but they carry it together. They've been doing it so long they don't have to talk about it anymore.

These are people who would go to war for each other.

They went to war for me, and I wasn't even family yet.

The wordyetregisters.

I let it sit.

Dash is on the porch when I take my coffee outside. The blood from yesterday is still visible. Nobody has cleaned it.

The sight doesn't make me flinch. Looking at the evidence of what Alex did to the man who broke my ribs leaves me with the same flat, savage satisfaction I felt yesterday when Morrow's report came through.

Dash doesn't comment on the blood. He's in his chair with his boots up on the railing, tipped back, his gaze fixed on theroad south. He's been out here a while. The cold hasn't moved him.

"Beautiful morning," I say.

"Depends on which direction you're looking."

He doesn't turn his head. His gaze stays on the road.

"You going somewhere?"

The silence that follows lasts a beat too long.

"Not today," he says.

I drink my coffee and stand beside him without pushing.

Dash and I have that in common.