Chapter Six #2
The line goes dead, and I sit there for a moment in the quiet, Memphis’ warm weight pressed against my leg, the desert stretching out silently and vastly in every direction.
The Sinners have been operating a car detailing and customization shop on the east side of Vegas for the last eighteen months.
It looks legitimate on paper and useful in ways that don’t need spelling out.
It’s been bringing in steady money and giving the club a clean face in the city, but the opportunity in front of me now would take it to another level entirely.
A developer has approached us about taking over a second, larger premises on the Strip, a high-end customization shop catering to the kind of Vegas clientele who drop fifty thousand on a paint job without blinking.
The numbers are good. The location is better.
And the front it would give the Sinners is worth more than the money.
I need to call church about it. But first, I need to speak to Sophia. So, I dial her number.
It rings three times before she answers, “Hello.” Her voice is husky, the sound of someone who’s been crying, hasn’t slept, or both.
“Soph.” My voice stays low. “You okay?”
A pause.
“You calling to check on me? Or did someone call you about my plans?”
“I called to check on you.” Standing, I walk down the porch steps into the front yard, Memphis falling into step beside me. “Are you packing?”
“So what if I am?”
“For New York?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not happening.”
Sophia lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Since when do you get a say in where I go?”
“Since my brother bled out in my arms and made me promise to look after you.”
The words land hard.
The line goes still.
When she speaks again, her voice is softer, the fight in it pulled back just slightly. “That promise doesn’t give you the right to control my life, Tate.”
“It means I don’t let you walk straight into danger.”
“The cartel is gone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” she shoots back. “Ryan is dead. They got what they wanted.”
She really has no idea.
My voice stays level. “Going to New York doesn’t change anything, Sophia. Tracker isn’t there.”
“It changes everything,” she says. “It’s where he lived.
It’s where he died.” Her breath catches, just slightly, and when she speaks again, there’s a raw, desperate honesty in it that hits me somewhere I wasn’t expecting.
“I need to be there, Tate. I need to be in the place where he lived, where he breathed. I want to understand the life he had when he wasn’t with me. I want to know that part of him.”
Dragging a hand through my hair, I say, “You think that’s going to give you peace?”
“I don’t know,” she snaps, emotion cracking through. “But sitting in this town pretending he never existed sure as hell isn’t working.”
Moving in slow circles around the front yard, Memphis pads alongside me like a shadow.
“You don’t belong in that clubhouse, Sophia. I know they’re family to you now and what they mean to you, but your actual family is in Vixen Falls. Your life is there.”
“You don’t know what living here feels like.” A pause. “And Jasmine and Quill said I can stay.”
“I know they did. Why do you think I’m calling?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’d be surrounded by everything that reminds you of him. His bike. His room. His brothers at every turn. How is that going to help you heal, Sophia? How does drowning in it help?”
Her voice trembles when she replies, “That’s the point.”
“No.” My voice drops. “That’s torture.”
Silence stretches between us.
Then, “So what?” she asks, a bitter edge to it now. “Your solution is that I stay in Vixen Falls forever? Pretend I never had a life with Ryan and what? Just move on?”
“No.”
“Then what, Tate? What are you suggesting?”
Memphis sits at my feet and looks up at me.
There it is.
“You come to Vegas.”
Silence.
Complete and total silence.
“With you?” The shock in her voice is genuine.
Why is my heart beating this fast right now?
“I have a house,” I say, pushing past whatever that feeling is and focusing on the words.
“Plenty of space. My clubhouse isn’t far, so if I’m not here, you’re never far from me if you need something.
You said yourself you can work remotely.
Vegas works just as well as New York for that. And it’s safer, Sophia.”
“Safer than what?”
“I can’t talk club business with you.”
A pause.
“You want me to actually live with you?”
“It’s temporary.”
“Tate. You’re the president of the Sinners.”
“Correct.”
“And you think that’s less dangerous?”
“Right now… yeah, I do.”
She lets out a slow breath. “You really think Ryan would want this? Me living with his brother?”
“I know he would.” The certainty in my voice surprises even me. “He asked me to take care of you. I can’t do that properly from a distance.”
“Taking care of me and me living with you are two very different things.”
“Not to me, they’re not.”
She goes quiet again, and I let her sit in it and turn it over. Memphis has flopped onto his side in the dirt beside my feet, completely unbothered by any of this.
“There’ll be nights I stay at the clubhouse,” I add. “So you’ll have the place to yourself whenever you want it. You won’t be in my way, and I won’t be in yours.”
“If I go to Vegas…” she says slowly, “… I’m farther away from him.”
“Sophia,” I say patiently, even though I can feel it fraying at the edges. “You’re chasing a ghost. Even if you go to New York, Tracker isn’t there. He’s not anywhere you can reach him, and I think somewhere underneath all of this, you already know that.”
Her voice breaks.“I-I just want to be close to him again,” she whispers.
I swallow hard before answering. I hate having to be blunt with her, but this is the only way through it.
“Soph, if you go to New York, you’re walking into a life he deliberately kept separate from you and for a long time.
He did that for a reason. He was protecting you from it.
” A pause. “But if you come to Vegas, you’re with someone who loved him as much as you did.
Someone who would do anything to protect the people he loved. That’s what I’m offering you.”
The words hang in the air between us.
Memphis lifts his head and looks at me.
“You’d really let me stay?” she asks. “For as long as I needed?”
“Yes.”
“And what about your club? What would they think?”
“They’ll respect whatever I decide. And they’ll treat you like one of their own. I’ll make sure of it.”
Another long silence.
Then, “You’re really not going to let me go to New York, are you?”
“No. That’s me being straight with you, Sophia.”
“What if I go anyway? Quill and Jasmine already said yes.”
“Then I get on the next plane to New York and drag you to Vegas myself.”
A reluctant laugh slips out of her, small and surprised, like she didn’t mean to let it happen.
“You are so stubborn.”
“Runs in the family, I’m afraid.”
A beat, and we’re both thinking about Tracker in that moment, about the arguments he and I used to have, both of us too hard-headed to back down, both of us too similar to ever admit it.
She sighs. “I need to think about it.”
“You do that.”
“Tate?”
“Yeah?”
A pause, soft and careful. “Thank you for trying.”
“I’m not trying, Soph.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m keeping my promise.”
Standing in the front yard long after the call ends with the phone loose in my hand, I feel Memphis press his big head against my hip. My hand finds his back without thinking.
The guest room down the hall from the master has a sliding door that opens directly to the pool deck. Good light in the mornings where it’s quiet and private. I’d never given it much thought before. It’s just a room, like every other room in a house I mostly use for sleeping.
Standing here now, I’m already thinking about what it needs. Maybe some color. A decent lamp. Something to make it feel less like a space and more like somewhere a person could breathe.
I’ll get her some books too. I have no idea what she reads, but I’ll figure it out. Can’t be that hard.
Heading back inside with Memphis at my heels, I make a mental note to call church about the Vegas shop deal, call Quill back, and figure out approximately forty other things before the week is out.
But first, I stand in the hallway outside the guest room for a moment, hand resting on the doorframe, looking at the space like I’m seeing it for the first time.
Temporary, I told her.
Reaching into my pocket for my phone, I pull up Raven’s name. Give her a heads-up. Common courtesy.
My thumb hovers.
And then I think about why I’m doing it.
Raven isn’t my ol’ lady. She’s never going to be my ol’ lady, and I’ve made that clear enough times that she’s got no right to be surprised by it. Who I bring into my house or my clubhouse isn’t her business. It never was.
So I put the phone back.
Nobody gets a vote on that but me.
And I simply walk away.