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Chase started it, which told Dean exactly how bad things had gotten.

They cornered him at the loading chute. Chase with a wrench in his hand. Jett leaning against the rail. Mack thirty feet off pretending to mess with a coil of rope while obviously listening to every word. An ambush dressed up as ranch work.

"You got a plan here?" Chase asked.

Dean kept tightening the bolt he was working on. "For what."

"For any of this." Dean looked up slowly. Chase nodded toward the house. "Giana not talking. Levi not eating. You acting like a son of a bitch to everybody on the payroll."

"I'm working."

"No," Chase said quietly. "You're unraveling."

The bolt squealed under Dean's wrench.

"Four days, Dean." Chase set his own wrench down. "You gonna do something, or are we all just gonna stand here while you turn back into the guy you were after Lucia died?"

Dean straightened slowly. "Watch your mouth."

"Make me."

That surprised him enough he actually looked at Chase properly then. Chase almost never pushed.

Jett pushed off the rail before Dean could answer. "From where we're standing this looks real stupid," he said calmly. "You love her. She loves you. The kids love her. So what exactly are we doing here?"

Dean laughed once, without humor. "You think it's that simple?"

"I think your little girl won't look at you anymore," Jett said. "I think your boy cried into his cereal yesterday morning when he thought nobody saw him."

Dean's jaw flexed hard. "I'm protecting them."

"Don't." Mack hadn't raised his voice. Didn't need to. The old man turned slowly toward him. "Don't you bullshit me."

Dean felt heat flash straight up his neck.

"That woman would've loved those babies till the day she died," Mack said. "Everybody on this ranch knows it except apparently you."

"That’s enough." It exploded out of Dean before he even realized he was yelling. "You think I don't know that?"

The whole chute went silent.

Dean threw the wrench hard enough it bounced off the rail. "You think I haven't spent four damn days hearing every word she said on repeat in my head?"

Nobody answered.

"None of you were there," Dean snapped. "None of you were there when Lucia died and those kids were screaming and Dad could barely stand up himself and I was trying to figure out how the hell to keep everybody breathing through the next five minutes —" His voice cracked. He shoved through it anyway. "So don't stand here acting like you've got some magic answer now."

Silence.

Then Chase said quietly, "You know what I think?"

Dean looked at him with murder in his eyes.

"I think you decided a long time ago that losing somebody once meant you had to lose everybody eventually." Chase held his stare. "And now you're making it happen on purpose. Because at least this way you get to be right."

Dean couldn't breathe for a second.

"Get the fuck out," he said hoarsely.