Chapter Twelve
“They didn’t follow you back here. They don’t know where you live.”
“But you do.”
Those words. They hit harder than a baseball bat to the head, and I’d had my share of those.
“Do I scare you, Sophie?”
She cocked her head to the side, the faintest sign of her control returning.
“I don’t know yet, Ry. You’ve changed so much. I don’t know you anymore.”
She was right of course. I’d been in the club a decade, and over half of that in prison. Whatever version of me she remembered, it wasn’t the one standing in front of her now.
“Yet you’re still the same.”
A smile touched her mouth. Faint. Sad. Filled with something heavy.
“You know nothing about me, Ry.”
“Then tell me, Soph. Tell me what I’ve missed.”
She stared at me, an unfathomable storm building in those grey eyes. I didn’t know whether I’d angered her or upset her. But then something shifted.
“Come in, and I’ll tell you.”
She turned her back on me. Not trust. Never that. But a risk she was obviously willing to take. I’d always been that to her.
I followed her up three flights, the sound of her feet just a little too fast on the steps.
Not quite calm. She didn’t look back once.
Didn’t slow. Didn’t speak. At the top, she paused at the door, shoulders tight as she slid the key into the lock.
Even that small movement wasn’t smooth, just enough tension there to tell me she felt it. Me. Behind her.
The lock clicked. She pushed the door open and stepped inside without waiting.
I gave her a second. Then followed. The space hit me first. It opened out in one sweep.
The kitchen bled into living space, light pouring in from wide windows that looked out over the street below.
Everything in its place. There was no clutter.
No chaos. Nothing like anywhere I’d ever lived.
It smelled different. Not stale beer or smoke or engine oil soaked into walls. Not the lingering weight of bodies and bad decisions and weed to get through the nights when I couldn’t sleep and my mind wouldn’t still. It was clean. Almost too clean, like she never really lived in it.
I stepped further in, boots sounding heavier than they should’ve been against the floor, out of place, like I didn’t belong there.
I didn’t. I never had. People like Sophie, they grew up with this.
Clean lines. Safe streets. Doors that locked and stayed that way.
People like me learned early that nothing stayed yours unless you fought to keep it.
And even then, some fights you just couldn’t win.
I gazed at her. She’d never been small. Average size for a woman, but now her figure was full, like she’d finally grown into her height.
Her hair was wilder today, thick, tight curls held together in a ponytail.
Her jeans clung to her hips and her thighs.
Curvy, not thin. Strong. Firm. I didn’t need to take her clothes off to see that.
Shit. I winced, thankful that she couldn’t see me, and shifted my gaze elsewhere.
I scanned the rest of the room, marking off entry points, exits, sightlines.
Habits dying hard. There was nothing off.
No sign of anyone else. No disturbance. Just her.
She stood a few steps ahead of me now, not quite turning to face me fully, not putting her back to me either. She was being careful. I felt the small smile pull at the corner of my mouth. Good. She should be.
“No point offering you a coffee, no?” she asked, still angled slightly.
“Unless you’ve got beer in that fridge, then I’m good.”
“Actually. I have lager.”
“That’ll do.”
She stopped mid movement, poised over the top of the coffee machine, a little pod in hand. Then she put it down. She still didn’t completely turn her back as she moved from one side of the kitchen to the other, glancing at me before she opened the fridge door and obscuring her view.
When the door closed, there were two bottles in her hand, and she levered the top of each against the metal plate mounted against the side of the bench top. She brought them across, holding one out to me and then sitting on the smaller sofa on the other side.
“Nice place.” I took a long swig from the bottle, the liquid cold and refreshing over my tongue.
She nodded. “It will do.”
I detected the note in her voice.
“Until you up and leave again?”
“Rich, coming from you.”
A strike to the chest.
“I…”
“What happened, Ryan? Thirteen years ago. What happened?”
“I went to prison, Soph.”
I watched her face. The slight shift of her anger.
A flash of surprise that she suppressed almost instantly.
There it was. Just for a second. Raw. Unfiltered.
And then it was gone. Smoothed away like it had never been there at all.
And she was in control again. The kind you don’t learn overnight.
The kind you built, piece by piece, until nothing slips unless you let it.
I knew what that was, and I knew how it was built.
Her fingers curled slightly against her arm, nails pressing in just enough to ground herself, but her voice, when it came, would be steady. I’d bet on it.
“That night? That very night?”
“Yes.”
“I stood there in the rain waiting for you, Ry. I was soaked through. I waited an hour. An hour. You didn’t come. Didn’t ring. Ever. You just disappeared.”
“I’m sorry, Soph. I never meant to not turn up. I just got…”
“Arrested. I heard you.”
We both went quiet. Both took a mouthful of beer as if that would break the atmosphere.
“You didn’t call. Write…”
“I wrote to you, Soph. Every day at first. Then every week. For a while. But you never wrote back.”
“I didn’t get any letters, Ry.”
“Well, I wrote. For a while. I tried for six months to reach you.”
“I didn’t know you were inside,” Sophie’s voice quietened, just a mumble now. “As far as I knew, you just walked away, and I didn’t know why.”
She dropped her eyes to the neck of the bottle, or the floor; I couldn’t tell which.
But I didn’t need her words to feel the swell of emotion.
I felt it too. Before I knew it, I’d crossed the floor, sinking into the crushed velvet sofa next to her.
The movement sent the air between us swirling.
And in it, a sharp floral smell that screamed intent.
Composure. Control. Even if that control was wavering before my eyes.
I closed mine as I breathed it in again.
Concentrating on the smell. The taste. The feel of my heart as the beat changed.
“The night before,” I stopped suddenly, wondering whether I should continue. “Me and Demon were in a bar. A fight broke out. Some local lads trying to look hard by taking on the prospects.”
“Were you a prospect then? I don’t remember that.”
“No, I wasn’t then. Demon was. I was just hanging around the club, trying to get noticed.”
Sophie nodded, satisfied. “Go on.”
“Demon went in hard, like he always does. And the minute that blood shed, he went batshit crazy. The one who started it didn’t get up off the floor.”
“He killed him?”
“He changed his life. And his face forever.”
“So, Demon went to prison too?”
I shook my head.
“I took the fall. For all of it.”
“What. Why?”
I sighed. No matter how much I explained it, she would never be able to understand.
“I’d roughed a few of them up too. Then we scarpered. When I realised what Demon had done…”
“You didn’t help the guy?”
“Not that one.” Sophie frowned, those grey eyes darkening. “We weren’t even eighteen. Kids. And not with the life experience we have now. Now I would have done things differently.”
I wouldn’t have needed to fight. And if I did, those people wouldn’t go to the cops. But that didn’t need to be said.
“We were on camera in that bar. At one point I must have turned, and they caught my face. I already had a record.”
“I remember,” Sophie muttered, her eyes falling to the bottle of beer again, as her fingers picked at the label. “My dad hated that.”
That wasn’t the only thing her Dad hated. Another thing I wouldn’t say in front of her.
“The police kicked my door in the next day. Nearly gave my Granda a fucking heart attack. They dragged me out. Roughed me up. Claimed I was resisting. If you call resisting asking if I could at least put some pants on before the whole street saw my naked arse.” I tried to smile.
To make light of it, but Sophie’s face was hard, so I continued.
“At the station, they wanted me to hand over the Demon. Apparently, the camera hadn’t got much of the detail on his cut.
They wanted our club’s name. His name. Everything.
I said absolutely nothing. I was in court in a week.
I didn’t see the outside world until three years later. ”
“What was the conviction?” she asked, but I could hear the reluctance in those words. A question she felt she needed to know the answer to, but didn’t really want it.
“GBH. Five years. Got out in three.”
“You didn’t think about telling me what happened. Finding me. Explaining why you just vanished?”
“Why? I wrote. You never answered.”
“I didn’t get them.”
“But I didn’t know that. All I knew was that you’d turned your back. That your father got what he wanted.”
Sophie went silent again. Her eyes dropping back to the label now half picked off the beer bottle.
I closed the gap on the sofa between us, my hand covering hers, stopping the relentless picking. She squeezed her eyes shut, opening them a second or so later, her gaze returning to me, composure returning.
“I waited in the rain,” she whispered, staring straight ahead like I wasn’t there, my hand on top of hers. Her skin warm under mine. “I waited in the rain until I was soaked and shivering. My dad always said you’d get bored of me eventually. That I would never be the high you needed.”
I squeezed my hand tighter over hers, the action mirroring the feeling in my chest.
“I never got bored, Soph. I got arrested. And I never stopped loving you.”
The words hung between us. For a moment again, neither of us moved.
Until I did. Reaching up, I cupped the side of her face, immediately scattering countless supercharged emotions into every corner of my body.
But I swallowed them back, desperate not to lose control.
Sophie lifted her eyes, locking them straight onto mine. And the bottom fell out of my stomach.
I leaned forward, bringing her face to mine. Knowing the risk I was taking as I pushed my lips to hers. She hesitated. A half second that felt like a whole hour, and then slowly she pushed into me, her lips moving and grazing.
Soft. Too soft. Like she didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust me. Something in my chest cracked open at that, and I tightened my grip on her face, just enough to hold her there, and kiss her properly. Not gentle. Not careful. Real.
She made a small sound against my mouth, barely there, almost a breath, but I felt it all the way through me.
Like I used to. Like something I’d known before I knew anything else.
Her lips parted tentatively. Not an invitation just yet, but like she knew she was stepping into something familiar and forbidden all at once, and not sure whether she should.
And then that breath came again. Acceptance.
Surrender. Her tongue met mine in a different rhythm.
I moved my hand around the back of her head, my fingers curling into her hair, and she exhaled against my lips as our tongues moved fast. Striking.
Feeling. Tasting. Warm. And for a second, I wasn’t here.
I was back there. Rain on her skin. Her laughing into my mouth.
My hands tangled in her hair like I’d never let her go.
My grip tightened. Because I had let her go.
Sophie moved slightly. A tiny noise against my mouth.
And I knew she’d felt it too. She’d felt me shift.
Felt the weight of me, of us. Her fingers curled into my cut, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away, and fuck, was that about to crush me.
She kissed me harder then. Less hesitation.
More need. Like she was trying to find something she’d lost. Or prove it was still there.
I met her there. Matched it. Took it. Gave it back.
Every movement slower than it should’ve been.
Like we were both dragging it out, refusing to rush it, because this, this mattered more than anything that came after.
Her breath caught against my lips, and I felt it, every tiny reaction, every flicker of something breaking through that control she held so tight.
I eased back just enough to look at her. Big mistake. Her eyes were already on me. Not guarded. Not composed. Gone. And I knew that look. Knew exactly what it meant. Because I felt it too.