Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Extraordinary, the human impossibility of it, bodies doing things bodies weren’t designed to do, the scale, light, and music filling the space whether you want it to or not.
Through most of it, I’m watching Sophia rather than the stage.
It’s easier and more honest. Her face is in the dark, completely open, leaning forward slightly, one hand pressed flat against her collarbone without realizing she’d put it there.
The careful composure she carries everywhere is simply gone, replaced by something that has no pretense in it at all.
At some point in the second half, the air conditioning drops, and her arms draw in around herself, that quiet stoicism of someone getting cold and deciding not to make anything of it.
I remembered she had placed her jacket in my saddlebag, completely forgetting it.
So, I take mine off and place it around her shoulders.
She turns and looks, something moving in her expression that she doesn’t finish, then pulls the jacket around herself and turns back to the show.
Her shoulder is warm against mine for the rest of the evening.
We are riding home through the Vegas night. The Strip falls away in the mirrors, the desert road opening ahead, dark and straight, leading back toward the house and whatever the evening becomes when we get there.
Her arms are around me, and her cheek is against my back.
The jacket is still around her shoulders. Riding, I feel her weight behind me and think about the canyon and how she asked for everything in my power to come back to her, her arms pulling me in at the edge of all that emptiness, my eyes dropping to her mouth, and the thought that came after.
The desert swallows the city behind us while the house appears in the distance, warm lights against the dark, the way it always looks from this road.
Something about it lands differently tonight.
Home.
When did that happen?
Parking the bike in the garage, Sophia gets off and hands me her helmet. Her face is open and easy in a way not seen in a while, and something settles quietly at the sight of it.
Memphis meets us at the door.
Sophia crouches down and lets him push his big head into her hands, scratching behind his ears, and he leans his full considerable weight into her, sighing with complete contentment. She laughs quietly, that small, unguarded sound, and presses her face briefly on the top of his head.
Standing in the garage doorway, I watch them. Sophia is on her knees with Memphis leaning into her, his tail moving in slow, satisfied arcs. Something about the ease of it holds me there a beat longer than intended before picking up the helmets and going through.
When I come back, she is standing in the kitchen with a glass of water, the jacket still around her shoulders, her hair neat from the ride, and her face quiet in the way it gets late at night when the day has been full and she’s used most of what she had.
She looks at me over the glass. “Thank you,” she says. “For today. The show was amazing, and the canyon…” she pauses, her voice going softer. “It was exactly what I needed.”
“It was my pleasure.”
She sets down the glass, slips the jacket off her shoulders, and holds it out.
Taking it from her, my eyes move over her, the neat line of her hair, the white shirt, the bare feet on the kitchen floor, and something that has absolutely no right to happen happens anyway.
Magnificent, I think. Entirely and completely magnificent. And completely off-limits.
Our fingers don’t touch.
“Goodnight, Tate,” she says.
“Goodnight, Soph.”
She goes down the hallway, and her door closes.
Standing in the kitchen with my jacket in hand, the house is quiet around me. Memphis settles on my foot and looks up with those amber eyes, the ones that see everything and have the good sense not to say a word about any of it.
“Don’t.”
He blinks.
I put the jacket over the back of the stool and stand at the kitchen window for a long time.
I gaze out at the pool, shimmering quietly below the deck, the desert beyond, and the dark of a Nevada night that has no interest in what is happening inside this house.
Eventually, the window runs out of answers, and my hands tighten briefly around the back of the stool, then I let go.
Going to bed is the only reasonable next move, and I do, but sleep is the last thing I can do right now.
Lying in the dark with the house quiet around me, and Memphis a warm weight at the foot of the bed, my brain does the opposite of what I need it to do.
The canyon.
Her arms were around me at the edge of all that emptiness.
‘I don’t want to lose you, too, Tate.’
‘Don’t promise me something you can’t keep. Just tell me you’ll do everything in your power to come back to me.’
I think of the weight of her on the back of my bike, and her cheek against my back on the ride home. The way she looked at the show, leaning forward in her seat, one hand pressed flat against her collarbone, completely absorbed and unaware of what she looked like from where I was sitting.
The way she handed the jacket back.
Our fingers not touching.
‘Goodnight, Tate.’
The moment at the canyon when her face was close, my eyes dropped to her mouth, and the thought arrived like cold water.
What are you doing? She’s not yours to kiss.
I stare at the ceiling, telling myself with considerable firmness that I am going to sleep because Mexico is coming. I need to be sharp, and whatever is happening in this house in the quiet hours of a Saturday night is not something I have the luxury of examining right now.
My eyes close and open again almost immediately.
Serious trouble, I think into the dark. In serious, serious trouble.
Memphis shifts at the foot of the bed and sighs, the sigh of a dog who is sleeping perfectly well and can’t understand why his human isn’t doing the same.
“Don’t,” I tell the ceiling.
***
The scream pulls me out of bed before I’m conscious of moving.
Halfway down the hallway before the thought arrives, naked, which is how I always sleep, which is not how I should be arriving at her door.
I turn back, grab the shorts from the chair, pull them up as I go, and move again before the thought is finished.
The sound came from Sophia’s room.
Pushing her door open.
She is sitting up in bed, covers twisted around her, hair loose and wild, hands pressed flat against the mattress on either side as if she is checking it is real.
Her eyes are open, but she isn’t fully here yet, still somewhere between the dream and the room, that disoriented terror of someone who has woken themselves screaming and hasn’t landed.
She is wearing Tracker’s T-shirt.
She is shaking.
I cross to the bed and sit on the edge beside her. “Hey,” I say quietly. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
She looks at me, her eyes focusing, coming back from wherever the dream took her, and something in her face cracks open all at once. “Ryan,” she says. Barely a whisper. “He was, the fire, I could see him, and I couldn’t—” She stops and presses her hand over her mouth. “I couldn’t get to him.”
“It was a dream. You’re safe. You’re here.”
She is still shaking.
Reaching out, a hand goes over hers on the mattress, just that, just the warmth of it, and her breathing begins to even slightly.
“It felt so real,” she says. “It always feels so real.”
“It was. And now you’re here.”
“Every time I think it’s getting better and then…” she exhales. “Then it comes back.”
I sit with her in the dark without saying anything, because there is nothing useful to say, and she doesn’t need useful right now. She needs the dark, the quiet, and someone beside her who isn’t going to try to fix it.
The moon comes through the glass doors and falls across her face. I look at her in it and feel something that has nothing to do with keeping a promise.
She is breathtaking.
Even now.
Even like this.
Especially like this.
After a while, her shaking eases.
She looks at me. “Stay,” she says quietly. “Please. I don’t… I can’t be alone right now.”
I look at her, the T-shirt, the hair, and the vulnerability of someone who has just been somewhere terrible, has come back, and doesn’t want to go there again alone.
“Okay.” Moving around to the other side of the bed, I get in beside her.
She immediately turns toward me, not hesitant or considered, just the instinctive movement of someone seeking warmth and safety. My arm goes around her, and she settles against my chest.
Her hand is flat against my chest. Her hair spreads across, loose and golden, even in the dark. Her scent is warm, soft, entirely hers, and settles around in the quiet.
I tell myself with considerable firmness that this is simply what it is.
A man keeping a promise.
Nothing more.
Memphis appears in the doorway, the soft heavy thud of him settling just inside it, keeping watch the way he always does when something in the house needs watching.
Good dog.
Sophia’s breathing deepens.
The ceiling keeps moving.
Eventually, without meaning to, sleep comes.