Now, it’s no strain for him to see Robbie’s crow’s feet, and the inky darkness of his eyelashes, and the shorter, fine hairs as his beard feathers away to bare, smooth skin on his cheekbones.

“If you’re in trouble,” Robbie says firmly, his murmur low and distracting, “then I can help you.”

Lance can’t contain an incredulous laugh, but there’s a tremor to it that makes Robbie’s eyes grow steely, determined. He leans a fraction of an inch closer, but still they’re not touching.

Even now, all these years later, he’s so very careful not to touch Lance.

“I mean it, kid.”

That word—kid—brings Lance back. He doesn’t have to force the flint into his voice when he says, “I don’t need your help.”

He shoulders past Robbie, feeling a rush of adrenaline that carries him down the rest of the steps and out the heavy glass and oak doors onto the snow-covered steps, where a gust of wind penetrates his fleece jacket like a punch.

Lance stops there, frozen by that burst of wind. Like a character in The Team, struck by Mister Ice’s storm gun, he thinks, with a bolt of longing for Danny. They’ve barely spoken in years, but he still knew when he called that Danny would do whatever he could for him. Lance feels guilty for manipulating that neglected, but still-strong bond. Then again, it isn’t like he did it with cool calculation. Tears had streaked his cheeks for the entire forty-five second duration of listening to the phone ringing unanswered, and then leaving a clumsy voicemail.

Robbie is behind him. Lance knows it without seeing or hearing him. The wind twists around him, its icy fingers penetrating Lance’s jacket and stinging him from head to toe, but some of it is blocked by Robbie’s body, and it’s not quite as bad as it was a moment ago.

“Lance,” Robbie says in that soft voice Lance remembers him using around skittish horses. “If you haven’t already made other arrangements,” he continues, slow and measured—like they’re meeting under pleasant circumstances, and not on the steps of the building where Lance just spent the night in jail, “I’d like it if you stayed with me at the ranch for a couple of days.”

The courthouse square is spread out in front of Lance—lawn and flag poles and two oak trees. Beyond it is the facing row of downtown storefronts lining the block, all looking just as he remembers. He supposes six years isn’t exactly a lifetime. There’s the corner pharmacy with the old-fashioned soda fountain in the back. There’s the Wicked Cut, where he got every terrible haircut he received in the first eleven years of his life, before rebelling and growing his dark curls out into a ponytail. There’s the hardware store where his dad once yelled at him so violently, right in the middle of the aisle beside the big bins of nails and screws, that Lance dug his hand into one of the bin’s sharp contents and squeezed. He’d made his palm bleed in six places, but he didn’t think his father had even noticed. He’d spent the next couple of weeks terrified he was going to get tetanus.