Page 41

Rue stares at me eyes wide before clearing her throat. “Listen, I really do care about him, and just want what's best for him.” Her voice cracks, making my bitchy demeanor soften just slightly. “Dallas deserves all the love in the world, he’s a special kid who was born not to stand a snowball's chance in hell, but he deserves one.” Her hands tremble as she dabs the corner of her eyes on her cardigan.

“He is going to test every limit you have to see if you’ll give up on him, but something tells me he’s met his match with you.” She smiles warmly, making me squirm. A woman who isn’t woman enough to have children is being lectured on not giving up on a child. Oh, the motherfucking irony.

Even after this little facade ends I’ll still be in his life, just more as a super fun aunt like I am to Charlie and Bash.

Once Rue finishes her inspection and Henry shows Dallas the last of the house, she steps toward me with a polite but unreadable smile. She presses her card into my palm like it’s a verdict.

“I’ll be in touch to schedule the formal home study sometime this week,” she says. And just like that, she’s gone—leaving the door swinging shut behind her and something heavier hanging in the air.

We gather at the kitchen table without speaking, the silence thick with everything we’re feeling but can’t say. Fatigue. Hope. Fear. It’s all there in the way we slump into our chairs.

Dallas is the only one who can’t stay still. His eyes keep darting—door, Henry, door again. He’s trying to be subtle, trying to play it cool, but I know him too well. I see it in the tight set of his jaw, in the restless twitch of his fingers.

He’s already halfway gone, lost inside his head.

I lean forward, my voice low but firm—measured, the way you speak when someone’s standing on a ledge and you’re begging them not to jump. “Dallas, I wouldn’t think of running if I were you.”

“Don’t you mean ‘honey’?” Dallas shoots back, his voice sharp with that mocking edge he’s been practicing.

“Honey, Sheriff, Henry,” I say with a lazy wave, like it’s all the same—like my heart isn’t hammering from the emotional minefield we’re tiptoeing through.

Dallas turns to Henry, maybe hoping for backup, but Henry just leans back in his chair, arms crossed, the corner of his mouth tugging into something like amusement. He’s watching us like we’re his evening entertainment.

Then my gaze lands on the fresh scratches marring Henry’s face—a reminder of the wild territory we just found ourselves in. My stomach twists.

I jab a piece of chicken like it insulted me and point my fork squarely at Henry. “We don’t hit in this house,” I say sharply. “You’re angry? Fine. Punch a pillow. Go for a run. Scream into the woods. But we do not lay hands on each other.”

Dallas doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t roll his eyes or crack a joke. He just looks at me, and when he speaks, his voice is low—steady, but raw.

“What if that doesn’t work?”

God, the way he says it—quiet, broken—it carves right through me. He’s not trying to be difficult. He’s asking because he genuinely doesn’t know. Because he’s drowning in something too big for fists or feet to outrun.

My throat tightens. There it is—the ache of knowing this boy isn’t just trouble. He’s hurt, and no one’s ever shown him what to do with the pieces.

I lean in, lowering my voice. “Then I’ll take you to the baddest motherfucker I know to work that anger out.”

“Lou, watch your mouth, for crying out loud!” Henry scolds, but I don’t flinch. I don’t even blink. I just keep my gaze locked on the boy across from me, because I can see it—the question rising in his mind like steam off a too-hot plate, and it makes me laugh.

I nod toward Henry without looking away. “Not him, kid. His brother.”

That’s when I see it—that flicker behind his eyes, the shift. The moment he chooses not to bolt. At least not tonight. A part of me wants to collapse in relief, but I swallow it down. This isn’t a victory. It’s just the beginning.

“What kind of name is Louisiana?” he asks, his mouth full of chicken, eyes still testing every inch of me.

I lift a brow. “What kind of name is Dallas?”

“So, you were named after a state?”

“So, you were named after a city?”

He shrugs. “Guess I was, Louis.”

“Guess you were, Dally,” I say with a slow grin, dragging my fork through my food before scraping it across my teeth as I take a bite.

That’s when the staring contest starts—him, all wounded pride and caged-animal tension; me, too tired to back down and too stubborn to let him win. It stretches long and taut between us, a silent dare passed over dinner.

His fingers tighten around his fork, knuckles turning white. He’s fighting something—me, himself, maybe the whole damn world. And for a moment I wonder if he’ll explode again, if the pressure inside him will blow the roof right off this house.