Chapter 4
four
Remy
The fog hasn't burned off.
Eight in the morning and San Francisco is still wrapped in it, the Financial District skyline reduced to gray outlines behind glass.
Twenty-eight days since Louisiana and the cold still hits first, sharp and damp against my throat.
The climate-controlled air swallows me whole, clean, recycled, seventy-two degrees year-round because Roman believed temperature was a variable you eliminated, not endured.
I badge through the security turnstile and cross the lobby toward the elevators.
A woman steps into my peripheral vision from the west corridor.
Dark hair, nearly black, falling past her shoulders with a wave that isn't quite natural and isn't quite flat-ironed either.
I track her for two steps before the math finishes.
Wrong build, taller by four inches, narrower through the hips, and her stride belongs to someone who runs before work, not her.
I press the elevator button harder than necessary.
The doors open. I step in. A man in a gray suit nods at me and I give him the practiced smile, the one that puts people at ease before they think about why. He relaxes.
The doors part on the 37th floor and the floor unfolds in its usual geometry of glass walls and city views, fog pressing against the windows like something trying to get in.
I'm three steps toward my office when someone laughs behind the glass partition of the planning room.
A woman, pitch landing in the register that catches my ear before I can stop it, warm and sudden.
But the cadence is wrong, not the kind that builds and trips over itself because the person laughing forgot to edit the sound before it left her mouth.
I keep walking to my office.
The plant on the windowsill needs water, just like the past twenty-eight days, because between the hours of eight and six I still can't remember it exists.
My phone buzzes on the glass. Miguel's name, a text: Covered your 10am. You owe me lunch. Somewhere with real food this time, not that sad grain bowl place.
I forgot the shift. The words sit on the screen and won't resolve because I don't forget shifts, or anything with a time attached to it. But I've spent twenty-eight days measuring every dark-haired woman in this building against her.
I type back: Name the place. I'll even let you order an appetizer.
I pull up my calendar and start reading it line by line until the next meeting's agenda replaces the math.
The common area on the 37th floor runs along the window wall, a stretch of low couches and a coffee station that produces espresso good enough to justify the machine's price tag but still not chicory coffee.
Jax is already holding court when I round the corner, one leg bouncing against the arm of the couch he's draped across, hands moving while he talks because Jax's hands are contractually obligated to participate in every conversation his mouth starts.
"I'm just saying, right, if you factor in the torque differential and the weight distribution on the new Corvette versus the GT, it's not even a competition, and I know Cole's gonna argue aerodynamics but Cole drives like someone's grandmother so his opinion is automatically disqualified."
Asher is in the chair across from him, posture perfect without looking rigid, stylus balanced between his knuckles and turning end over end in a rhythm only he hears. His expression hasn't changed since Jax started talking.
"Cole's grandmother probably corners better than you," Asher offers, not looking up.
"That is genuinely hurtful and also statistically impossible."
I settle onto the arm of the adjacent couch and let the smile slide into place, easy and practiced, the guy they know. "Jax, you lost a bet to Cole last month racing at Laguna Seca. Your credibility on vehicle comparisons is currently sitting at about a four out of ten."
Jax clutches his chest. "That was a FLUKE, and also the track was wet, and also Cole cheated by being boring and consistent, which should be illegal in motorsport."
"Fourteen points of failure in that argument," Asher says. "I counted."
Kade appears from the direction of the conference room, coffee in hand, moving with the quiet that shouldn't be possible for a man his size. He doesn't join the couch arrangement. He stands, and his presence reorganizes the room's gravity without a word.
"Lockwood's settling in," Kade says, directing it at the group but landing it on me. "R&D seems to suit her. Still on probation, but she's performing well."
"Good." I mean it. Victoria earned a clean landing after everything she went through.
Jax pivots seamlessly. "Okay but speaking of performing well, did anyone catch the feedback from the security audit I ran for Whitfield Corp?
Because I ran those defensive driving modules three times and the client feedback was, and I quote, 'exceptional and only mildly terrifying,' which I'm choosing to read as a compliment. "
"Bold interpretation," Asher deadpans.
"Thank you, Frost. Your support means everything to me. Truly."
I open my mouth to jump in, and for a half-beat nothing comes.
The comeback is there, fully formed, sitting behind my teeth.
But the delivery stalls because somewhere between Jax's voice and my response, my brain supplied the way her body gave under mine, the softness of her against every hard angle I own.
Then the resistance I wasn't expecting, the hitch in her breathing that my hands read before my brain caught up, the moment I understood that no one had ever been where I was.
My slacks tighten, and the image costs me a fraction of a second I can't get back.
"Mildly terrifying is your baseline, Jax." The timing lands close enough, almost right. "The real question is whether you can get them to 'moderately alarming' by the next session."
Jax grins. The room keeps moving. Nobody catches the delay.
Almost nobody. Asher's stylus pauses its rotation for exactly one beat, his dark eyes lifting to my face. He doesn't ask. He never does. The stylus resumes its rhythm.
Miguel passes through on his way to the elevator, white coat over one arm, the easy warmth he radiates even at a distance.
He points at me without breaking stride.
"Lunch. Thursday. That Thai place on Market, and I'm getting the appetizer AND dessert because your 10am had a lot of feelings about his rotator cuff. "
"Deal," I call after him. The common area feels slightly colder once he's gone.
The group separates. Jax unfolds himself from the couch, still talking about torque ratios to no one in particular as he heads toward his office. Asher rises without sound and disappears down the corridor. Miguel's elevator arrives with a soft chime.
Kade doesn't move.
I feel his eyes before I see them. Bright blue, too sharp for the stillness of his face. Of course he noticed.
He takes a slow drink of his coffee. Holds my gaze for one more second.
Then he walks away, having said nothing at all.
The phone buzzes against the desk at half-past two. Darcy's name on the screen, and I want to answer it. I also don't, and that's a problem.
I pick up.
"Tripp." Not a greeting, more like an order to keep listening.
"Okay so I know you're probably doing something important and broody and whatever but I need you to not freak out because I'm in San Francisco, like right now.
Like I landed two hours ago and I need your address and your door code and also do you have an alarm because I will absolutely set it off and then your neighbors will hate me before they even meet me and that is NOT the first impression I'm going for. "
"When did you get here?" The question comes out measured, work-mode, the careful spacing of a man who controls information by controlling pace.
"I literally just told you, two hours ago, keep up."
"How long are you staying?"
"I don't know, a while, does it matter? I have my laptop and my hotspot and I can work from literally anywhere, Tripp, I've explained this to you like every time I see you."
"Don't you have..." I start, and she's already talking over me.
"Work? Yes. Which I can do from your couch because that's the whole point of remote work, Tripp.
Clients? Yes. Who do not care where I am as long as I post on schedule.
A reason for showing up unannounced? Also yes, because my brother lives here and I just got him back and I'm not gonna sit in Louisiana waiting for you to ghost me for another eight years, so.
" A breath. The first one. "I need your address. Pleeeease, Tripp."
The please stretches across three syllables, weaponized little-sister frequency she's been deploying since she was six years old.
I rub my temple with two fingers. Every responsible instinct I have says this is a bad idea.
Darcy in my space means Louisiana in my space.
And Louisiana is the thing I've spent twenty-eight days trying to seal back into its compartment.
"You got a pen?"
"I have my phone, old man. Just text it."
She chose me. Eight years of no contact, not because she didn't want it but because Corbin was the only one who had my number and I made him swear to keep it that way.
The second Odette got sick and Corbin broke his promise, Darcy called without hesitation. Didn't ask why I'd stayed gone, or ask me to explain eight years of silence. Just called, and within six months she'd rebuilt more of us than I thought was left.
The thing about someone choosing you when the cost is real is that you don't ever get to pretend the debt is settled.