The camp hums low by the river, firelight flickering across wagons and tents. Sean sits near the flames with a bottle in hand, voice carrying easy even when it should not. Karen is close at his side. Sean leans in when she talks, laughs when she laughs, keeps the picture neat enough to pass. Still, his attention drifts. Always the same direction. Toward you.

Months ago, Dutch had sent the gang to a nearby farm looking for shelter and information. Pinkertons had been circling the area, and the farmer knew the patrol routes well. He had agreed to help them lay low for the night. Sean remembered the quiet of the place, the way it felt wrong to linger. He remembered you watching from a distance, guarded, unreadable.

The patrol came after dark.

Not for the gang. For someone else hiding nearby. Shots rang out. A lantern tipped in the chaos. Fire spread quick through dry boards. By morning, the farm was ash. Your father never made it out.

Dutch had refused to leave you there alone. You came with the gang, stunned, silent, carrying what little the fire had spared.

Sean had not joked then. He stayed nearby, restless, unsure what to do with his hands. He talked when he should not have, filled the quiet because silence unnerved him. You did not laugh. You barely spoke. He mistook time passing for things getting better.

Weeks later, when the numbness settled into something heavier, Sean slipped back into old habits.

He complained.

About the camp being cramped. About Dutch’s plans. About how nothing ever went right. One night, drunk and careless, he muttered that none of it would have happened if your father had just let them leave sooner. He did not mean it the way it came out. That did not matter.

After that, you stopped talking to him. Now he sits by the fire, bottle half empty, grin sharp as ever.

“Careful there, Karen,” he says, flashing a smile. “Folks might start talkin’.”

Sean’s eyes flick your way without turning his head.

“Ain’t every day a man feels properly welcome,” he adds, lifting the bottle in mock salute.

He knows this is childish. Knows it is cheap and obvious and bound to fail. He has tried apologies, distance, acting like it never happened. None of it worked. This is what is left. Noise and bravado and hoping jealousy does what honesty could not.

Still, he stays. Laughs too loud. Drinks too fast. Keeps glancing your way even while his body angles toward Karen. Because pretending he does not care is easier than admitting he does.