Fractured Ground

Chapter 6: Fractured Ground

Atlas Kane

"We didn't finish this six years ago in Chicago, Conner, but we can settle it right now."

Hunter stopped pacing long enough to look at me like I'd said something worth hitting me for. "Careful, Kane."

"I'm always careful." I poured the coffee slow, deliberate, not looking away from him even as the pot filled. "You've been wearing a track into my floor for twenty minutes. He's asleep down the hall. Keep it up and you'll wake him."

"Maybe I want him awake."

"No, you don't. You want him quiet and safe and entirely focused on you, which he can't be if you're stomping around this kitchen like you're back on the ice looking for someone to put through the boards."

His jaw ticked. "You think you're the only one who's earned the right to be here."

"I know I am." I set the pot down, unhurried, and finally let my eyes track fully onto him. "You've wanted him for months and done nothing but watch. I've done the same, except I actually planned for what happens next. That's the difference between us, Hunter. It's always been the difference."

"Careful," he said again, lower this time, and took a step closer, like proximity could substitute for an argument he didn't have.

I didn't move. Let him close the distance. Let him think it meant something.

"He doesn't belong to you," Hunter said.

"He doesn't belong to either of us yet." I held his stare. "That's the part you keep forgetting."

The doorbell cut through whatever he'd planned to say next.

I set the coffee down and crossed to the door before Hunter could decide whether answering it or continuing our conversation mattered more. Ty Brooks stood on the porch, gym bag over one shoulder, grinning until he actually looked past me into the house.

"Hey, I heard Cody was staying here for recovery, figured I'd swing by and—" His eyes moved past my shoulder to where Hunter stood, arms crossed, blocking half the hallway like a second door. "Whoa. Didn't realize this was a whole production."

"Come in," I said, stepping back just enough to let him through, not enough to give him a clear read on the house. "He's resting, but he'll want to see you."

Ty stepped inside, glancing between us with the kind of caution he usually reserved for reading a locker room after a loss. "This is a lot of house for one guy on the couch."

"It's a lot of house for anyone," I said evenly.

"Cody!" Ty called toward the living room, forcing brightness into his voice that didn't quite land in a room this tense. Cody's head turned from the couch, pale, tired, clearly relieved to see a face that wasn't looming.

"Ty. Hey." Cody's smile was real, at least, the first easy one I'd seen from him all day.

Ty crossed the room and dropped onto the arm of the couch, glancing back once at where Hunter and I had both, without discussion, positioned ourselves at angles that kept Cody fully in view. "So you're just — staying here. With them. Both of them."

"Recovery," Cody said, too fast.

"Sure." Ty's eyes flicked toward Hunter's crossed arms, then to me, then back to Cody with a small furrow between his brows. "You good, man? You look kind of—"

"He's fine," Hunter said, before Cody could answer for himself.

"Right," Ty said slowly, clearly filing that away. "You guys always answer for him now?"

"When it's relevant," I said, smooth, final, the kind of tone that ended conversations rather than opened them.

Ty didn't push, but I watched him notice — the way neither Hunter nor I had let Cody drift out of our sightline once since he'd walked in, the way the air in the room sat thick and wrong. He stayed twenty minutes, made careful small talk, and left with a look on his face like a man walking away from a house fire he couldn't quite name.

The second the door shut behind him, the temperature in the hallway changed entirely.

Hunter rounded on me immediately. "You didn't have to shut him down like that."

"I did, actually. He was two questions away from asking something neither of us wants to answer yet."

"Or you just like being the one who controls what people see." He stepped into my space, closer than strictly necessary, close enough that I could feel the heat rolling off his chest.

"Careful, Hunter." I didn't step back. I never stepped back. "You're doing that thing again where you mistake proximity for leverage."

"Maybe I've got leverage." His voice had dropped, rough, low, more challenge than words. "Maybe I'm done letting you run this house like you run a boardroom."

"You're not done with anything. You're just angry you can't win this by throwing a punch." I held his eyes, refusing to blink first, refusing to be the one who backed off the inch of hallway between us. Our shoulders brushed. Neither of us moved to correct it.

Something in the air between us had stopped being only about Cody.

Hunter's breathing had gone heavier, shallower, matching mine in a way neither of us would have admitted out loud. Six years of resentment sat coiled tight in the two feet of space we refused to give up, and for one long, dangerous second, neither of us seemed entirely sure what we were fighting for anymore.

Then Cody's voice cracked through the silence from down the hall — a low, pained groan, half a name lost in it.

We moved at the exact same instant.

No discussion. No hesitation. Just both of us covering the hallway in three strides each, arriving at his door shoulder to shoulder, neither willing to let the other cross the threshold first.

Hunter's hand hit the doorframe same second mine did.

"He didn't specify which one of us he wanted," I said, low, final, "so we're both stepping through that door."