Lance bites his lip at that roundabout reminder that he hasn’t returned any of Danny’s calls in approximately five years. He isn’t sure how he would reply even if he could, but the question is moot. Unsurprisingly, considering Niall reported the car that he gave Lance as stolen, he’s already shut off his phone service, too.

He tucks the phone in his pocket just as Robbie climbs out of the ditch and comes back toward the truck.

Tension fills him at the prospect of sharing the tiny space of the Chevy’s interior with Robbie again in just a few moments. He isn’t sure how much longer he can control himself in this kind of close proximity. They’re just a couple of minutes away from Riverside now, though, and when they get to the ranch, he’ll at least be able to put a closed door between them.

Will Robbie put him up in Danny’s room? He hopes so. The memory of being tucked safely into that lumpy double bed is one that Lance has held close over the years. He hopes that Danny left up all of his dumb childhood posters that he still hadn’t gotten around to taking down by the time they were teenagers. Lance remembers that strange, incongruous wallpaper fondly: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Nintendo characters half-plastered-over with more recent band stickers, movie posters, and concert flyers.

Robbie climbs in, accompanied by a blast of cold air and icy snow that makes Lance shudder. He pulls out his own phone, which looks enormous because it’s in one of those practically bombproof cases. “He needs to fix his goddamn fence,” he mutters to himself, then frowns while, presumably, the phone rings unanswered several times. Then he sighs, pushes another button, and drops the phone on the dash. He casts Lance a quick glance as he puts the truck in gear. “Okay?”

Lance nods, clutches his knees, and tries to smile. “Yeah.”

They bump down the driveway without speaking to each other, but though Lance is still wrestling with his feelings, the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Robbie has never been much of a talker. Maybe that’s because his younger brothers didn’t know how to be quiet, between their fondly antagonistic banter, Danny’s endearing, know-it-all observations, and Johnny’s constant quips. The handful of times Robbie and Lance happened to be alone together for some odd reason or another, it was like this. Quiet.

Memories of that quiet companionship have led Lance through some of his darker moments, in fact.

The Chevy glides through the snow around the last bend in the long driveway to Riverside, and Lance’s heart speeds up. His gaze can’t help wandering to the tree line that clogs the slope down toward Chase Creek. How many times did he hike through that stretch of forest, wade through the shallow spot in the water or shimmy across the fallen tree that bridged the banks, and escape from his side of the creek to the creaky farmhouse and the Chases, safe on the other side?