Dutch's surgery was scheduled for the second week of December, and as the date approached, Wren watched the compound's usual easy chaos take on a new, careful quality — members going quieter, more attentive, orbiting their president with a protectiveness they mostly tried and mostly failed to hide.
"He hates it," Cruz said one evening, watching Dutch wave off yet another member's offer to carry something he was perfectly capable of carrying himself. "Being fussed over. Twelve years of being the one everyone leans on, and now the whole club's leaning back, and he doesn't know what to do with it."
"Let him hate it a little," Wren said. "Doesn't mean you should stop."
The night before the surgery, the barn filled with more people than Wren had seen gathered there since the firefight — not
