Chapter Ten
Even in the dull light of the pub, Sophie’s eyes sparkled.
They were wide. Frightened. The grey almost blue, but not quite.
They betrayed the strength I knew was underneath.
Betrayed her usual composure. Her control.
The prospects lingered. Close enough they could intervene if needed, far enough they couldn’t hear me speak.
They watched, looking for any sign that Sophie might, for some reason, be a threat.
But even under the scrutiny, they wouldn’t have noticed the tiny tells in her body.
The faint tremor in normally steady fingers.
The stiffness in her shoulders like she was trying to hold herself too still.
“Soph,” I said her name softly, watching her eyes move to mine.
It was quiet in the pub. Mostly. There was no background music, just a faint hum of tension in the air. A low rumble of voices upstairs. A shuffle of a seat or feet above us. Prospects murmuring between themselves.
“What are you doing here? Are you ok?”
Sophie nodded, an untamed curl falling over her forehead.
“The other day. At the hospital. I… I just wanted to see if it was really you. I dunno.”
She was mumbling. Unable to form the words.
Words had always come easy to Soph. She’d never been the girl who stumbled over sentences.
Not Sophie Mercer. She’d always been quick with her mind, quicker with her tongue, able to pick apart an argument before most people had even finished making it.
She was more than just clever. She was astute. Observant.
Too clever for the estate I’d grown up on.
Too clever for the life I’d already been sinking into even back then.
I’d always known then she was far too good for me.
Known it long before she did. I knew, even back then, she was going somewhere I’d never belong.
I just never got the chance to see if she’d have taken me with her, anyway.
“You’re safe here, Soph,” I encouraged. “But I need to know why you are here.”
“To see you.”
My heart jolted. Just the once. Like it was as stunned as I was. I wanted to smile. Desperately. But her being here didn’t mean we could pick up where we’d left off. Too much time had passed. We’d both changed, and I was a completely different person now. Inside and out.
“Well, it’s good to see you, too. You could have just called.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“Same one.”
“Really? You never changed it?”
I shook my head. ‘Course not. Because if I did, she could never have found me again. Even though she didn’t look.
I watched her for a moment. Her face was fuller.
But it didn’t hide her cheekbones. Just showed the years between us.
Tiny smile lines at the corners of her eyes, but I’d yet to see her smile.
At one time it would light up a room, even when she’d just been angry at me or upset at her dad.
Or when I’d had some shit to deal with, it changed everything when the corners of her mouth picked up into that grin.
My fingers dug into the flesh of my thigh. Hidden under the table, as I fought the urge to stroke that piece of hair from her face.
“Never changed it,” I said eventually, releasing my hand from my leg. “So, you just came to see me, huh? Why?”
“Because I wanted to.” Her voice had steadied now. Her composure returning. “You caught me by surprise at the hospital that night,” she continued. “You’ve changed so much. I just needed to see you again.”
Now that smile threatened at the corner of my mouth. I couldn’t be doing this. Couldn’t be obsessing over her again. There was too much going on. I needed my head clear to protect this club. Protect my brothers. And she was throwing me a curveball.
Chairs scraped above me. The coalition meeting was over. The clubs would be leaving. And here she was, sticking out like a sore thumb. Too many questions.
“Shall we get a coffee?”
She watched me, her head slightly tipped to the side, those grey eyes probing. She’d noticed the sudden shift in my demeanour. The sudden change. Always watching. Just like the way she’d always been.
“Yes, please,” she answered in a whisper.
I stood, and she followed my lead, sliding out of the booth and standing beside me.
I pointed to the door at the back, knowing there were only seconds to get her somewhere else.
My hand pressed gently into the small of her back, fitting in that space too comfortably, and for a second my chest swelled.
Sophie hadn’t missed the movement either, her gaze dropping, but she didn’t pull away and let me guide her through the pub and the door at the back.
Footsteps started on the stairs. Multiple.
Heavy. And I could see the first set of legs through the spindles at the bottom of the staircase.
Carefully, I pushed her into the kitchen, the heavy doors closing behind us.
Outside, the floor vibrated like an army marching.
Deep voices. Unintelligible conversation.
“Have I disturbed a party or something?” Sophie asked, her voice suddenly loud amongst the steel cabinets and bench tops.
“Just something.”
She stared at me then with those wide grey eyes. Eyes that pierced my soul, no matter how hard I tried to keep them out. She’d always had that effect on me, like she could see right through me and beyond.
“That’s a lot of something.”
“Meetings. Other bike clubs.”
“That’s why it’s so busy tonight? The car park…”
She cut herself off.
“Yeah. It’s a busy night tonight,” I answered, stepping around her. “Filter. Or do you want one of these pod things?”
I picked up a tiny plastic cup and waved it over my shoulder.
“One of those pod things would be great.” Her voice changed. Lightened.
If I turned around right now, she’d be smiling. Just a little. One side of her lips would be slightly curled. The grey in her eyes lifted. A small glow to her cheeks. I didn’t need to look at her to know. It was burnt into my mind.
“We’ve got latte, cappuccino, americano…” I sorted through the pile of pods loose in a box beside the machine, making a note to get the fucking prospects to sort this shit out so I could see what was here better.
“Latte, please, Ry.”
I paused, my hand just over the top of a pod with a purple lid. My jaw tightened, and I swallowed hard, something blocking my throat. The pod thudded as I dropped it into the machine, the sudden click as it got to work, deafening in a silence that had already stretched too long.
“Latte,” I repeated roughly, like the word meant more than the coffee.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The machine took up the silence as I watched the stream of thick, brown liquid fill the cup below it. Bitter coffee filled the air, sharp and warm. I focused on that instead.
“Thank you,” she answered softly when I passed the mug back to her, watching her press both palms around it tightly.
“Cold?”
“A little. This place isn’t very warm.”
She smiled. My heart beat harder.
“Takes a lot to heat. And Indie doesn’t like having to pay the bill.”
“Indie?”
“Yeah. He’s a tight fucker,” I deflected. We both knew it, but Sophie didn’t push.
She blew on the liquid in the mug cupped between her hands, her eyes searching mine as she looked for answers where I didn’t want to give any.
“You not having a cuppa?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Don’t drink the stuff.”
One eyebrow lifted very slightly before she controlled it again. And I remembered the hours we’d spent drinking coffee in little cafés to stay out of the rain.
“Beer is better.” I tried to lighten my voice.
“Hmmm,” Sophie murmured through the mouthful of latte, and I watched her throat move as she swallowed it. “You just going to stand there and watch me then?”
“Maybe.”
Silence. Both of us, now. Each watching each other. Neither of us saying anything. Sophie stared at me over her coffee, a storm now in that grey. And that meant she was dealing with something. Some sort of internal conflict. I wished I knew what that was. I wish she knew what mine was.
Out in the bar of the Dog on the Tyne, there were twenty or so bike clubs.
Any one of them could have turned. None of us really knew, despite our threats and our intelligence.
Collectively they outnumbered us, and that was dangerous.
And here I was having coffee with a woman in the clubhouse kitchen instead of out there watching.
Listening. Ready to strike at the earliest sign that shit was going down.
“How long have you been back?” I asked eventually.
“Three, maybe four months now.”
That long. She’d been under my nose for months.
And all it had taken was one order from Indie to go to one of my most hated places.
She’d always wanted to be a doctor. She’d declined so many parties just to sit at home in those books.
Like a few hours of letting her hair down would have made a difference.
I’d sometimes been jealous, watching her pore over the textbooks in front of her when I could barely fucking read, let alone understood the shit she read.
The door beside me squeaked suddenly. Both of us started.
“Reap. There you are…” Indie’s voice trailed away, his eyes fixing on Sophie, then on me. “Word?”
I nodded, smiled at Sophie, and followed him out into the corridor.
“Who’s that?”
“Sophie.”
Indie’s eyebrows furrowed. A flash of familiarity, but not sticking around long enough for him to grasp.
“An old friend.”
“And what is your old friend doing here?”
“That I don’t really know.”
“She really shouldn’t be here.”
“I know,” I answered.
Indie’s head turned back to the door.
“DCI Mercer’s daughter,” he said. Not to me. Just into space. But I knew he’d finally made the connection.
“Yeah,” I muttered, even though it hadn’t required an answer.
“What is she doing here, Reap?” Indie asked again, his eyes on me, piercing.
And now Indie wasn’t questioning Sophie’s intentions but mine.
“She stitched me up in the hospital last week. Guess I couldn’t let the past stay where it was, so I went back to see her.”
Indie nodded. Not angry. Thoughtful. And I knew, no matter how pissed he was at a copper’s daughter in our clubhouse, he also understood.
Emmie had changed him. In some ways, he was more ruthless.
More protective than ever of us, of her, and of the club and its interests.
But he saw life through a different lens now that she was in it.
And none of us knew whether that was always a good thing.
“And she turned up here, huh? Been talking to her father, I’d guess.”
“He’s retired now.”
“And you don’t think he keeps talking to all his copper mates who are still there?”
I stopped a moment, knowing Indie was right. He met them at the pub every Friday and Saturday night when their shifts would allow. I’d watched him intermittently for the last few years. He’d drive to the metro station. Get the train into town. A taxi or a lift back. Sometimes the last bus.
I could never hear what they talked about, watching from a distance. Some days I thought about driving a knife right into his back. I would fantasise about it. Other days I’d just stay in the shadows, because even then, I felt closer to her.
And here she was in our kitchen. A coffee mug wrapped between her hands as I awaited Indie’s instructions to get her to leave.
“When this lot clear out, get her out of here.”
I nodded.
Back inside, Sophie hadn’t moved. Her lower back rested against the steel worktop, her eyes fixed on the door and then me as I walked through it. The kitchen door was thick. Thick enough to slow a fire. And our voices. But I still wondered whether she’d heard anything.
“You’ve changed so much,” she said suddenly, her eyes diverting from me and into the coffee.
“You haven’t.”
She smiled faintly.
“Yeah, I have. I know it. I can feel it.”
“You still look like you, Soph.”
“You don’t.”
“This is me now.”
She stared a little more. Her eyes wandering over my piercings, the tattoos at my throat, part hidden by my beard. Across my folded arms, over the tattoos hidden under the sleeves of my hoodie, then down to the ink staining my hands.
“I probably should go,” she muttered, placing her cup behind her.
I nodded.
But that’s not what I wanted. I wanted her to stay.
Just so I could look at her. So I could trace the angles of her face with my eyes.
Just in case I never saw her again. My memories had never faded.
She still had a few scattered freckles. Five or six.
She’d always hated them. Seen them as a blemish.
There was never anything about Sophie that was a blemish, though.
Every freckle, and now every tiny line on her face.
“Come on, then.” I pulled the kitchen door open. “Take you out the fire exit. The bar will be busy.”
The car park was as full as I’d ever seen it. Bikes squeezed into every space there was. Pity we didn’t have turnout like this in times of peace.
Sophie led me to her car. Parked just to the side of the entrance. Mercedes C-class. Sparkling white.
She opened the driver’s door and then paused, glancing back at me.
“Nice to see you, Ryan.”
“You too, Soph.”
The car pulled out smoothly, purring as it glided down the road, the taillights growing smaller. Then another engine turned over. A car further down the road stuttering to life, the white of headlights slicing through the dark before it rolled out after her.
Too quick.
My jaw tightened. Most people hesitated. Checked the road. Took a second. This one didn’t. It just followed.