Chapter 35
Rane
Beckett found button-downs.
I don’t know where. I don’t know how. The man hasn’t connected to a single useful network in a month but he somehow produced six button-down shirts and a pair of jeans for each of us that actually fit.
Trey’s is slightly too tight across the chest which he’s pretending to be annoyed about and is clearly thrilled by.
We’re standing outside the house. Waiting. Because Beckett said “give her twenty minutes” an hour ago and nobody’s brave enough to knock.
Locke looks uncomfortable in anything that isn’t tactical gear.
His sleeves are already rolled to his elbows because apparently committing to a full sleeve is too much to ask.
Vaelor looks like he was born in a button-down.
Kyron’s got his collar open and his rings on and he looks like trouble.
Beckett is leaning against the porch railing looking calm but his foot hasn’t stopped tapping since we came outside.
We’re fine. This is fine. Definitely not nervous.
The door opens.
Nova steps out and there’s nothing else.
The white outfit. The one from the mall. The one she wore on our date. The one I couldn’t take my eyes off of. Even back then she was beautiful. Even though she was too thin and trying to hide.
She doesn’t look like that anymore.
Her shoulders are set. Her arms have definition that wasn’t there before.
Her skin has color and her hair is pulled back on one side, silver-blonde catching the last of the evening light.
She’s filled out in ways that make my mouth go dry — Vaelor’s cooking and training and months of actually being cared for written across every inch of her.
She looks healthy and strong. She looks like someone who flew over a forest on fire.
She looks like mine. Okay, ours.
I can hear Locke stop breathing beside me. I feel the shift in every man standing on this porch. The collective oh fuck that nobody says out loud.
She looks at us. All of us. Standing there in our button-downs like idiots. And her mouth curves into a smile that I’m always going to remember.
I step forward and take her hand. Bring it to my mouth with a smirk and kiss her knuckles.
“Would you do me the honor?” I say.
“Oh my god,” Kyron says behind me. “He’s doing it again.”
Someone laughs. Beckett, I think. Locke makes a sound that might be a groan.
Nova looks at me with those pale eyes. The mark on her wrist pulsing warm under my fingers.
“It’s tradition,” she says.
Everyone shuts up. And I grin, because she’s right.
She threads her arm through mine. Deliberate and certain. This is how it is. This is ours.
We start walking. Two steps before Trey appears on her other side. He doesn’t say anything. Just offers his arm. She takes it. Threads her other arm through his without missing a step.
So we walk to the community hall like that. Nova in white between me and Trey. The rest of them falling in behind us.
The community hall glows from a block away. Lanterns strung from the porch to the trees. Music already playing through the open doors and windows — live, loose, people are laughing between songs. Kids running around and Mara yelling something from the kitchen.
Brent is leaning against the porch post. He sees us coming and lets out a whistle that carries halfway down the street.
Cal is beside him. He doesn’t whistle. He looks at me, looks at Nova, and gives us a nod. Then his eyes flick toward the side of the building. Subtle. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d miss it.
I don’t miss it.
We make it to the front steps and Lena appears from somewhere — she’s good at that — and catches Nova’s arm.
“Hey,” she says. Pulls a small bottle and two cups from behind her back. Pours shots into the cups that materialized from nowhere. “For courage.”
“For what?”
Lena grins, “Drink it anyway, cheers!”
They tap their cups and Nova drinks. Coughs as her eyes water. “What the hell was that?”
“Max stole it from Memory.” Lena shrugs. “I stole it from Max.”
Nova laughs and Lena squeezes her arm and disappears back into the crowd the same way she appeared.
I lean down to Nova’s ear. “Come with me.”
She looks up. “We just got here.”
“I know. Come on.”
She searches my face. I don’t know what she finds but she nods.
I take her hand and lead her around the side of the building. The guys follow. We pass the kitchen windows where Mara’s voice carries. Past the garden where the training yard sits dark and quiet. To the back, where a ladder is propped against the wall.
Nova looks at the ladder. Looks at me.
“Seriously?”
“Trust me.”
“You always say that.”
“And I’m always right.”
“You are not always right.”
“I’m right enough. Go.”
She climbs. I follow. Then the rest of them, up a ladder at the back of a community hall while a party happens inside it.
Nova reaches the top and goes still.
The roof is flat and wide enough for all of us with room to spare. Cal and Brent helped us set it up this afternoon while Nova was getting ready — blankets spread out in one corner with food laid out on a board, wine in actual bottles. No lanterns. We didn’t need them.
The light from below bleeds up around the edges in gold. The music drifts through the open windows and doors, clear enough to feel. And above us — nothing but stars and a full moon so bright it turns Nova’s hair silver-white.
She stands there. Looking at the blankets. The food. The space that’s just for us with the whole Hollow celebrating underneath.
“You guys did this,” she says.
“Cal helped,” Trey says, pulling himself onto the roof.
“And Brent,” Beckett adds.
“But it was Rane’s idea,” Vaelor says. And the way he says it makes my face go hot because it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. It was just — she deserves something that’s ours.
Nova turns to me. The moonlight is catching her face and her eyes are bright and I can’t tell if it’s the stolen Memory liquor or something else.
“Rane,” she says.
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“It’s a thing.”
“It’s a roof.”
“It’s the best roof I’ve ever been on.”
“It’s the only roof you’ve ever been on.”
“And it’s the best one.”
I give up trying to downplay it because she’s smiling at me like I just handed her the moon and I’m okay with that.
It already belongs to her anyway.