Chapter 6
six
Evie
"Four days." Darcy holds up four fingers like the number needs visual confirmation, her other hand wrapped around a glass of rosé she acquired approximately eleven seconds after the elevator doors opened.
"Four days of relentless and emotionally devastating persuasion, and he finally caved like a man who never stood a chance, because he didn't."
"I said yes on day two." Remy leans against the railing with a bourbon he hasn't touched, the city dropping away behind him in layers of steel and fading gold.
His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and the evening light catches the tendons in his forearms where one hand rests on the railing and the other holds the glass loosely, a man with no intention of drinking it.
I know what those hands feel like. I know the strength of them, the steadiness that turns into something else entirely when the lights go off, and I should not be watching his fingers close around cut crystal while his sister is mid-sentence three feet away from me.
"You just kept talking for two more days. "
"That is a lie and a rewrite of history.
" Darcy points at him with her glass, wine tilting dangerously.
"Day two you said, and I quote, 'Darcy, I'm not throwing a dinner party.
' Day three you said 'I don't do dinner parties.
' Day four you said 'fine, but I'm not cooking,' which is basically a white flag. "
"It was a white flag." I settle into the low couch beside Darcy, tucking one leg under me because the cushions are deep enough to swallow a person whole.
"I was there for day three. He set his bourbon down and looked at the ceiling, which I guess in Tripp language means the structural integrity of the argument is failing. "
Remy's gaze finds mine across the rooftop, and for half a second, something flickers behind the easy expression he's been wearing since we stepped out of the elevator.
Not the hotel or townhouse version. A version I haven't seen yet, and I'm tracking versions of this man like I used to read my father's donor moods.
"I don't look at the ceiling."
"You absolutely do." Darcy and I say it at the same time, and Darcy cackles, grabbing my arm with her free hand and squeezing. "See? Corroborated. Admissible in court. You're done, Tripp."
The rooftop is prettier than I expected. String lights crisscross overhead in lazy diagonals, turning the whole space golden and slightly unreal against a skyline that's shifting from amber to violet.
A long table set for nine anchors the far end. Nine chairs, no extras, which means he had a very specific guest list in mind, and we are the addition. Beside the table, a food station that makes my chest ache.
A Louisiana spread on one side, the whole station radiating cayenne and warm dough. San Francisco on the other, sourdough rounds, Dungeness crab cakes, a charcuterie with honeycomb and fig jam.
"Oh my God." Darcy freezes beside me, rosé tilted at an angle that should concern everyone in splashing distance.
"Evie. That's crawfish bread. That's Natchitoches meat pies with pepper jelly.
That's, oh my God, those are muffulettas.
" She grabs my wrist. "He remembered. My twelfth birthday.
I ate four meat pies, he stole the last one off my plate, and I chased him around Grams' kitchen until the dog started howling. "
He was twenty. She was twelve. Four years before he disappeared.
He didn't cook, but he found all of it three thousand miles from home, and I file that away and don't look at him.
The fire pit pops near the railing where a few chairs are clustered, and the wind carries salt and city noise up from the streets below. My arms prickle with it, bare in a sleeveless top that felt like a better idea before the sun went down.
Footsteps on the stairs and then the rooftop fills fast. Six men who move through a space like they're assessing it and settling into it at the same time.
"Everyone." Remy straightens from the railing they drift closer, his words carrying without effort. "This is my sister Darcy, and Evangeline. Evangeline is Darcy's friend."
Evangeline.
My stomach pulls tight, a quick contraction I cover by crossing my legs and settling deeper into the cushions.
The name I hear at podiums. The name printed on programs and the placard at my father's fundraiser table.
Not the name he said against my throat in a hotel room, and I hold my face exactly where it is because I have been smiling through worse than this since I was fourteen years old.
Darcy's friend.
"I'm sorry." A tall man steps forward, all restless energy and open body language, the kind of person who takes up space not because he's big but because he's in constant motion. He raises one hand like he's stopping traffic. "Back up. Sister? You have a sister?"
"That's generally what the word means, Jax." Remy takes a sip of his bourbon, finally.
"No, no, no." Jax looks at the dark-haired man to his right, who I'm fairly certain is the one running this room based on the way the space organizes itself around his silence. "Did you know about this?"
"I did."
"And you just, what, kept that information to yourself? For how long?"
"For as long as it wasn't your business."
"Years." Jax turns back to Remy, both hands out now, palms up, a man presenting evidence to a jury that isn't buying it. "We have worked together for years and you never once mentioned, not casually, not in passing, not in a 'hey fun fact about me' kind of way, that you have a whole entire sister?"
"It never came up."
Jax turns to me with the same hands-out exasperation, and then he stops. Extends a hand. "Jax. And for the record, everything you think you know about him is probably a lie, because he tells us nothing."
His grin arrives before his hand drops. The warmth is instant, unguarded, without calculation. Up close, his eyes are clear and bright beneath dark brows, and his whole face operates like a mood ring, every thought landing on the surface before he's finished having it.
I take his hand, smiling. "And he tells us nothing either, so at least you're not special."
Jax's face breaks into a grin so wide it restructures his whole expression. "I already love her." He points at me, then swings the finger toward Darcy. "And you, sister of the vault, I have approximately nine hundred questions."
"Oh my God, ask me everything." Darcy is already off the couch and moving toward him, rosé sloshing. "I have been waiting to meet you people for literal months because Tripp tells me nothing, and I mean nothing, not even what he had for lunch."
"He does that to us too, and we're his coworkers." Jax falls into step beside her like they've known each other for years instead of seconds, their voices layering over each other, chaos that somehow works. "I'm assuming you knew about the motorcycle, but did you know he talks to it?"
"He does NOT."
"He does. I've heard it. Full conversations. More words than he gives any of us."
"Tripp!" Darcy shouts over her shoulder, and Remy lifts his glass in a gesture that could mean anything.
I watch them move away, Darcy's laugh carrying over the ambient noise of the city, and a knot loosens in my ribs that I didn't realize was tight.
"Evangeline." A low voice draws my attention to the left. The man Jax had looked to, the one organizing the room's gravity without appearing to try. He's taller than Remy, broader, built like something permanent. His handshake is firm and brief, nothing lingering. "Kade. Glad you could make it."
"Evie, please." The correction is small and automatic.
The same one I've been making at functions since college.
But this is the first time it's felt like reclaiming something instead of just trimming a name down to size.
Kade nods once, files it, and his blue eyes are startlingly direct, the kind that make you feel assessed and welcomed in the same glance.
"Evie. Remy doesn't bring people around. This is good for him, whether he knows it or not."
I hear the welcome. I hear the boundary underneath it.
"Thank you for joining us." I mean it, and the whole exchange takes maybe fifteen seconds before he moves toward the food station where Jax and Darcy are already arguing about something I can't hear.
"So." A massive presence lands in the chair across from me, and I look up into brown eyes and an open, conspiratorial delight that announces trouble before it arrives.
"You're Darcy's friend. Which means you know things.
Things about our boy that the rest of us have been trying to crack out of him for years. "
"Xander." He extends a hand that could comfortably palm a basketball, and his grip is gentle, like he's aware of his own size and compensating.
"Evie." I shake his hand. "And I might know a few things, but I'd need to understand what's in it for me before I start sharing."
Xander's grin widens, and he leans forward with his elbows on his knees, the chair creaking under him. "A woman who negotiates. I respect that. What's your price?"
"You first. What's the most surprising thing about him that you've learned on your own?"
"That he talks to his plants." Xander says it like a confession. "I came up here to take a call one night and he was having a full conversation with the basil. Not muttering. Talking. Like it owed him money."
I laugh, the kind that escapes before the filter catches it. Across the rooftop, I feel more than see Remy's attention shift. Not his head, not his body. Just a quality in his stillness.
Xander tracks my glance. "That's Cole working him over. Cole talks like he's drafting a contract every time, and Remy listens because Cole's usually right."
I don't look directly at Remy. I don't need to.
"All right." I lean back, rewarding the honesty. "He's terrified of frogs."
Xander's face lights up. "No."