8. Penny
PENNY
By the time I reach the lights, I still haven’t caught my breath. In, out, slow. Doesn’t work. Hasn’t worked since I turned around out there and found him watching me the way he used to watch me across a crowded gym at seventeen, like I was the only thing worth looking at in the whole county.
I don’t know why I followed him.
That’s a lie. I know exactly why I followed him, and it has everything to do with that girl’s hand curling into his shirt and the ugly little twist that put in my chest, sharp enough to steal my breath before I even understood what I was feeling.
I’ve known for years how many women hang around that clubhouse, how easy and available they make themselves for men like him.
I never let myself picture it beyond the fact of it.
Never made myself wonder what they look like.
Never tortured myself with whether they favor me, or whether he went looking for the exact opposite just to prove he could.
Tonight I know. Blonde. A rounder face. Like mine was when I was a teenager. Light-colored eyes.
And I hate how much it mattered.
The conversation we just had accomplished exactly nothing except make it painfully, humiliatingly clear that I am not, in fact, over Evan Cole. I’ve built a life without him. That ought to count for more than one look across a wedding reception.
I press two fingers to my sternum, the way he did earlier, without meaning to, and then drop my hand fast when I catch myself doing it.
Get it together, Penny.
I nearly walk straight into Sasha coming around the corner of the cake table, both of us laughing at the near-collision before either of us says a word.
Up close, I see her cheeks are still flushed from crying, from dancing, from being twenty years old and freshly married to a man who looks at her like he can’t believe his luck.
“Officer Carpenter.” She says it like a joke between us, a little formal flourish, and grins.
“Penny’s fine.” I smile back, and it isn’t hard, not with her. “Congratulations. You look happy.”
“I am happy.” She says it simply, without hesitation, like she’s still a little amazed by the fact of it. “Thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Wasn’t sure either,” I admit. “Glad I did.”
And I am. Whatever mess is currently sitting in my chest thanks to a man out by the half-built houses, watching this girl glow like this isn’t a small thing.
She lost her father in the ugliest way a person can lose a parent, and here she is anyway, laughing, married, surrounded by people who clearly adore her.
“When you’re back from the honeymoon,” I say, before I can talk myself out of it, “we should get lunch. Just us. No badge, no cut, nothing complicated.”
Her face lights up, and I’m glad I asked. “I’d really like that.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to it.”
She’s still beaming when Jenson appears at her elbow, silver hair catching the string lights, one big hand settling low on her back like he can’t go more than a few minutes without touching her. He nods at me—civil, brief, nothing more—and then his attention narrows entirely onto his wife.
“They’re playing our song,” he tells her, low enough that it’s clearly not meant for me, and Sasha squeals before he sweeps her off toward the dance floor, her laugh trailing behind them both.
I watch them go for a second longer than I need to. Then I turn to find my way back toward Morris, and that’s when I nearly collide with two men coming from the opposite direction, one of them catching my elbow before I stumble.
“Whoa there, Officer.”
I look up and recognize them.
Noah. Theo. Grown men now, not the boys who used to run wild around that clubhouse parking lot while I sat on the back of Evan’s bike pretending not to notice how much trouble they’d all eventually be.
Ryder looks so much like Evan, though he has darker eyes and longer hair falling loose over his face.
Ace has filled out differently, broader through the shoulders, ginger-blonde with the kind of freckled complexion that goes with it, all muscle under a shirt that’s clearly tailored instead of thrown on.
They both know exactly who I am.
I brace for it. As far as they’re concerned, I left.
Left Evan, left the club, left the family that half-raised them right alongside their own blood, and they followed their older brother into the club.
They were just as hungry for those patches as Evan ever was.
They wouldn’t understand why I couldn’t stay, wouldn’t care that I had my reasons, and I steel myself for whatever cold civility they can manage to fake through gritted teeth.
“Penny Carpenter.” Ryder says my name slowly, and then he grins, wide and unexpected. “Damn. Been a long time.”
“Too long,” Ace adds, and pulls me into a hug before I can decide whether that’s allowed, solid and brief and entirely without malice.
I blink, thrown enough that it takes me a second to find words. “You two aren’t mad at me?”
“You used to sneak us candy when Mom wasn’t looking,” Ryder says. “Hard to forget the woman who kept a ten-year-old in Skittles.”
“I was twelve,” Ace corrects.
“You were annoying at any age.”
They fall into easy bickering—that clearly hasn’t changed since they were kids trailing after their brother—and my chest loosens slightly, making breathing easier again.
“You look good,” Ace says, more serious now, studying me with slightly narrowed eyes. “Haven’t heard much about you other than that you’re a cop now, of course.”
I don’t know what to do with that, so I let it pass. “You two look like you turned out just fine yourselves.”
“Define fine,” Ryder says, and Ace elbows him.
We talk for a few minutes—nothing heavy, nothing that gets anywhere near the reasons I left or the years since, just easy scraps of memory.
Ryder brings up a Fourth of July cookout where I apparently taught him to ride a bike in the back lot, something I’d half-forgotten until he says it, and I remember it at once—small hands on rubber grips, my palm steadying the seat, Evan laughing somewhere behind us.
My chest aches with it.
“I should find Morris,” I say eventually, before the pain gets any worse. “Good seeing you both. Really.”
“Anytime, Officer,” Ryder says, grinning softly, and I walk away feeling more unsettled than I have any right to feel over two men I haven’t spoken to in almost two decades.
Morris and his wife are near the edge of the lot when I find them, his wife already tucking a shawl around her shoulders against the cooling night air. I catch Morris’s eye and tip my head toward the gravel drive.
“I’m gonna call a cab,” I tell him. “Long night.”
“Nonsense.” He waves that off before I’ve even finished the sentence. “We’re headed out too. Come on, we’ll drop you.”
“You sure? I don’t want to—”
“Penny.” He gives me the look, the one he’s perfected over decades of telling deputies exactly how things are going to go. “Get in the truck.”
His wife laughs and pats my arm on her way past, and Morris fishes his keys out of his coat pocket, presses them into my palm instead of his own.
“Go on and get settled,” he says. “I need to say goodnight to Jenson first. Man’ll take offense if I sneak off without shaking his hand.”
I take the keys, the metal still warm from his pocket, and watch him make his way back toward the lights, his wife falling into step beside him, unhurried, comfortable, comfortable together even after a long night.
I head for the truck alone, gravel crunching under my heels, and let myself breathe out slowly in the quiet dark, away from the noise, away from blue eyes and old names and two boys—now men—who apparently never learned to hate me the way I assumed they would.