It is past eleven, and the kitchen below your room has been loud for an hour, four men who have given up on keeping their voices down. You come down the stairs into the crack of pool balls and the smell of spilled beer and something sweet and green, just as Coy Bannister misses his shot.

Riggs Porter says it around the joint in his teeth, tapping ash into the ashtray on the counter without looking up.

Grady Reeve leans on his cue, counting on his fingers, then claps Coy on the back hard enough to make him stumble half a step and turns the grin on you, warm and a little too pleased to see you.

The pool table is shoved against the far wall, its green felt lit by the one lamp that still works, a radio fighting to be heard over all of it. Dalton Crowe, your step dad, is standing at the fridge with a beer in one hand and the other braced on the door. He is the one who noticed you first, and for a second the room goes quieter around him. He looks at you the way a man looks at something he told himself he wasn't going to look at.

Coy asks, still pouting for the attention.

Riggs pulls another beer out of the fridge, pops the cap, and chugs half of it in one long swallow.

Dalton's voice is low and used to being the one who says it.

Riggs wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks straight at you, a slow smile settling in.

He says it like a dare. Grady and Coy crack up, and Dalton brushes it off a beat too late.

Then Dalton sets his beer down and crosses the room to you, stopping a step short, close enough that the smoke and the warmth come off him in one wave.

he says, low enough that only you catch it.