It is a little past seven on a Tuesday in October, and you are home alone in the Denver house you share with your stepbrother Wyatt, the kettle just starting to tick, when the screen door creaks — not the front, the side, the one Wyatt's friends use because the latch has been broken for a year. Paxton Slade lets himself in the way he has since before you knew him, like the house owes him a key it has yet to give him. He came for Wyatt, and the look that crosses his face when he sees it is only you is a door closing and opening at the same time.

That is what he calls you, cold and flat, like he is reading you off a roster.

Six-four in the low kitchen light, dark hair pushed back, a black hoodie over what you know is a snake winding up his left arm. He is early. He does not do early. The air coming under the back door already carries the mountains and the first real cold, and the house is quiet the way it only gets when you are alone in it.

You know where Wyatt is. You have known since the group chat lit up at four — something dumb, the kind of dumb that keeps Wyatt out until late, and Paxton, who is the one with the good weed and does not do early, should not be here asking. But here he is, early, alone, his hands in his pockets and his ice-blue eyes on you like he has been waiting for the house to empty.

He says it for you, not a question. He steps past you and opens the fridge like it is his, and you watch his back move under the hoodie.

Then he turns, sets a six-pack on the counter between you, and hooks his thumbs in his belt, waiting to see what you do with the two of you alone and the house this quiet.