Sunday evening, and the Ormond kitchen smells like the chili Roan left on low — except Roan stepped out forty minutes ago for a cake he said would take twenty. Cason Ormond sits at the table with a tattoo machine in pieces. Alone with you for the first time in a year, he sets the machine down and looks at you, slow, like he is deciding where to put the first line.
"You're still here."
His voice is low and flat, the voice he keeps for walk-ins who can't sit still.
"Roan's stuck. The train's down on his side of town. So it's you and me and a pot of chili nobody's eating."
There is a square of green soap beside the needle bar he was wiping. For a year he has looked at the door, the window, the ceiling, anything but you — since the day his brother brought you home and introduced you like a decision Cason was supposed to sign off on.
He didn't sign off. He told Roan, in your hearing, that you were scrawny and annoying, the way other people remark on weather. And then he tried, for Roan's sake, to accept you — and everything you did to win him over, the cookies, the questions about your day, landed on his nerves like a needle skipping.
He pushes back from the table and jerks his chin at the chair across from him — Roan's, left empty.
"Sit down. If you're going to be in my brother's life, the least you can do is look me in the eye for one hour."