Robbie is smiling at him the way Lance has seen him smile at his brothers. It’s like his heart is in his eyes. Lance has imagined it before, inserting himself into the space occupied by Danny and Johnny when their brother looks at them, so many mornings at the end of the Chases’ driveway. But the reality is something else. Something beyond imagining.

“Lance,” Robbie says, his voice soft, like the wind in the lilac hedge. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m glad to meet you.” He passes the halter from his right hand to his left so he can hold it out to Lance for a handshake.

When his heart is done short-circuiting, Lance blinks and solemnly takes Robbie’s extended hand. He’s never shaken anyone’s hand before, and his is so much smaller than Robbie’s. He more or less clutches Robbie’s warm, work-rough fingers, never reaching his palm. Lance blushes, but just as Johnny put him at ease about emerging dirt-stained from the trees like a wild animal, Robbie’s smile ensures he’s unselfconscious about their handclasp.

For once, the words that Lance has to say come out easily—perhaps the only time they have in the presence of a grown man. Maybe that’s because he already thought Robbie was as different from his father as a man could be, but now he knows for sure. “I’m glad to meet you, too.”

Today.

Lance wakes up face-down on the most comfortable mattress he’s ever slept on in his life, which is saying something, considering that three weeks ago he was living in the penthouse of an upscale apartment complex in Chicago.

But he doesn’t smell Niall’s starched linens and furniture polish. He smells—

Robbie.

With a jolt, Lance wakes up fully, pushing himself up so that he’s sitting on his heels, blinking into what looks at first like a wall of sunshine. After a second or two, he realizes it’s actually the glass panels over the bed in the hayloft of the Chases’ barn.

He tries to orient himself, still not entirely sure which of the events floating like wraiths in his recent memories are real. Apparently, in the ‘real’ column is the one where Robbie retrieved him from the Trace County courthouse and drove him through a snowy oblivion to the hayloft of the old barn.

Now that his face isn’t planted firmly into the sheets, Robbie’s particular, natural cologne isn’t the only thing Lance smells. He can also smell coffee, and when he twists around to look for the source, he finds Robbie himself leaning against the countertop in the kitchen area directly behind him, sipping from a mug.

“Hey,” he says. “You sleep okay?”

Lance wrinkles his nose. Sometimes, right after he wakes up, words are even harder to get out than usual, but after he swallows, he finds to his own surprise that he can speak easily. “Yeah. Great.” He doesn’t have to pretend otherwise to be polite; it’s the truth. “This bed is amazing,” he adds.