Chapter 45
Grace
The High Card is loud and glittering by the time Victor and I make our way through the crowd, champagne already working its way into my bloodstream and easing the last of the day’s nerves.
Skylar and Matteo hold court near the bar, fielding a steady stream of well wishes, and Skylar catches my eye long enough to blow me a kiss over someone’s shoulder.
“Nervous about New York?” Victor asks, his hand settling at the small of my back, steady the way it always is in crowds like this.
“Terrified. I’ve never been in a wedding party before. What if I trip walking down the aisle?”
“Then I catch you, and everyone talks about it for years instead of the ceremony.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “Bookstore’s coming together beautifully, by the way. I stopped by the storefront this afternoon.”
“You did?” I hadn’t mentioned wanting him there, but my chest goes warm anyway.
“Couldn’t help myself.” He says my actual name instead of butterfly, which he only does when he wants me to take him seriously. “I’m proud of you, Grace.”
“Owen’s already sent me three emails about the New York security detail,” Victor adds, more to himself than to me. “Hotel sweeps, car service, a contact at the venue who owes Luke a favor. You won’t even notice most of it.”
“I noticed you noticing it, though.”
“Old habits.” He shrugs, unapologetic. “I’ll relax once we’re back.”
“You’ve never relaxed a day in your life.”
“Not true. I’m very relaxed right now.” He pulls me closer, resting his chin on top of my head. “See? Practically horizontal.”
Matteo finds us not long after, already two drinks in and sentimental about it. “Can you believe it? Married in a week.” He throws an arm around Victor’s shoulders. “You’re next, you know. I give it a year, tops.”
“Careful,” Victor says. “I might make you a liar and beat your timeline.”
Matteo’s eyebrows shoot up, and I feel my whole face go hot, though Victor doesn’t elaborate, just grins and steers the conversation somewhere safer before Matteo can ask a single follow-up question.
Skylar peels away from the crowd around her long enough to pull me into a hug that smells like champagne and expensive perfume.
“Look at you. Bookstore owner, published author. And now you’re standing up in my wedding.
” She pulls back, grinning. “I feel like I should be asking you for career advice at this point.”
“I feel like I should be asking you how you’re not more freaked out. You’re getting married in a week.”
“Oh, I’m freaked out.” She laughs, glancing over at Matteo, who’s deep in an animated conversation with Owen about something that has Tobias laughing hard enough to need the wall for support.
“I just decided a while ago that freaked out and happy aren’t mutually exclusive.
Turns out that’s most of what love actually is. ”
Lili appears at my elbow before I can respond, sliding an arm around my waist and resting her chin on my shoulder. “Are you two talking about feelings without me? Rude.”
“Just how terrifying marriage is,” Skylar says.
“Don’t look at me. I’ve made my peace with never doing that particular flavor of terrifying again.” Lili presses a kiss to my cheek. “But I hear it works out great for some people.”
Victor appears with fresh drinks for all three of us, and for a few minutes the four of us just stand there, easy and unbothered, while the party moves around us.
It’s such a small thing, standing in a crowded room with people who love me.
It still knocks the wind out of me some days.
I used to hide behind a stack of romance novels instead of dealing with people at all.
“You alright?” Victor asks quietly, catching whatever expression just crossed my face.
“Better than alright.” I mean it completely. “Just having a moment.”
“Good moments are allowed, butterfly.”
“I’m learning that.”
Bellamy finds me not long after, Owen and Tobias trailing behind her, both of them wearing the expression of men who’ve been dragged through one too many boutique conversations already tonight.
“Tell me everything about the shop,” she says, looping her arm through mine. “I want to know if the reading nook worked out the way you pictured it.”
“Better, actually. People keep falling asleep in the armchair by the window. I’ve started keeping a blanket back there.”
“That’s the dream, honestly.” She sighs, wistful. “A whole store built around encouraging people to do nothing productive.”
“High praise from the woman who runs an entire underground club,” Owen says, kissing the top of her head.
“Different kind of nothing productive.” Bellamy grins. “Equally important work.”
Tobias laughs, low and easy, and for a moment I just watch the three of them exist together, comfortable with each other after years and a kidnapping and a lot of hard conversations I wasn’t there for.
Love takes a lot of different shapes in this corner of the world.
Not one of them looks like what I grew up believing was the only right one.
Sabrina finds me by the bar a while later, tucked into Tyson’s side. It looks so natural now that I forget sometimes they haven’t always been like this.
“Big week for you, huh?” she says, nudging my shoulder. “Bookstore. Wedding trip to New York.” She grins. “Oh, and a stalker finally behind bars. You’re really cleaning house.”
“When you put it that way, it sounds exhausting.”
“It is. You’re allowed to be tired.” She squeezes my hand, and for a second her smile falters. “Can I tell you something without you making a whole thing of it?”
“I make no promises, but go ahead.”
She glances at Tyson, who’s deep in conversation with Luke a few feet away, then back at me. “I’ve been thinking about New Orleans a lot. Like, a lot a lot.”
“Yeah?”
“I love it here. I love this club, this group, you.” Her voice drops lower. “But I love him more, and I think I already know what I’m going to choose. I just haven’t figured out how to say it out loud yet, to him or to anyone.”
My chest goes tight. “Bri.”
“Don’t.” She shakes her head, laughing a little wetly. “If you get sentimental on me right now I will absolutely lose it in front of the DJ booth, and I refuse to cry at someone else’s engagement party.”
I squeeze her hand back instead and let her have the moment without pushing further. I know what it’s like to sit with a decision a while before you can say it out loud.
Tyson calls her name from across the room, and she wipes under her eyes before plastering her party face back on.
“To be continued,” she says.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Three days later, I find out what it was. Sabrina and Tyson are leaving for New Orleans early, weeks ahead of when his new job actually starts, so they can find a place and get settled before the move eats every free hour they have.
Sabrina embraces me with tears in her eyes. “It’s so nice to see you and Victor so happy. You were a wonderful roommate,” she says as we stand in the parking lot next to the car taking her and Tyson to the airport.
“Thank you, Bri. I’m going to miss you. But this new life I’m building with Victor and Lili is so thrilling. I can’t wait to see where things go for us.”
“And I can’t wait to read your next book, ma’am. It’s rude of you to have hidden that talent from us all these years.”
My face heats in even in the cool Vegas air, but I let out a nervous laugh. “Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed the first one. I have two more almost ready, but I’m trying to be strategic about my releases.”
“As you should be.”
“Don’t overthink your relationship with Tyson,” I tell her, kissing her cheek as Tyson steps out with a suitcase and puts it into the trunk of the waiting car.
“I’m doing my best. Living together is going to be very different. He’s a lot more dominant in his private space. He’s about to find out what a brat I can be.”
“I heard that, brat.”
Sabrina giggles. “That was kind of the point, Sir.”
“Mmhmm. We’re flying private, little girl. Just remember that.”
Sabrina has the decency to pretend to look worried, but I can see the twinkle in her eyes.
Tyson rounds the car to pull me into a hug of his own, solid and brief, the kind he gives when he means it but doesn’t want to make a thing of it. “Take care of my kitchen. Whoever we hire to replace me at the club better not touch my knife roll.”
“I make no promises about the knife roll.”
“Unacceptable.” But he’s smiling when he says it, and he holds on an extra second before he lets go. “You’re good people, Grace. I’m glad I got to know you before all this.”
Victor comes around the side of the house just as Tyson climbs into the passenger seat, Lili trailing a step behind him still in yesterday’s clothes, clearly having come straight from the Sapphire the second she heard the timing moved up.
Victor claps Tyson on the shoulder before he can duck fully into the car. “Call if New Orleans gives you any trouble you can’t handle alone.”
“Not planning on needing to.”
“Call anyway.” Victor’s voice goes flat, which means he isn’t actually asking. “You’re still ours, job title notwithstanding.”
Tyson’s grin drops for half a second before he puts it back. “Careful, Serrano. Almost sounded like you’d miss me.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.” Tyson rolls the window down as Jeanie starts the engine. “Watch your back, all three of you. And eat something other than takeout at the club once in a while. I taught Sabrina a few of my recipes. She’ll pass them along if you ask nicely.”
“You couldn’t wait for a real goodbye?” Lili demands, planting both hands on her hips at the open car window.
“You have my number,” Sabrina says, laughing. “Use it. Often. I expect updates on all three of you constantly.”
“Obviously,” Lili says, softening, and leans in through the window for a hug that goes on a good while.
We hug one more time and I watch as the car drives away to take them to the airport.
Jeanie honks twice for good measure as she pulls out of the driveway, and then it’s just the three of us standing on the curb watching an empty street.
The house feels different with them gone, even standing in the same spot I’ve stood in a hundred times before. Victor’s hand finds mine, and Lili’s finds my other one.
“The saga winds down one goodbye at a time,” Lili says eventually.
“Don’t get poetic on me too,” I tell her. “One of you doing that a day is my limit.”
She laughs, and Victor tugs us both back toward the house, and the day picks back up where it left off, quieter than it was this morning.
I make tea I don’t really want, just to have something to do with my hands, and think about how strange it is that two people leaving can feel enormous and change absolutely nothing.
The club opens tomorrow. The shop needs restocking.
New York is a week out, and I have a dress fitting Thursday that I’m dreading slightly less than I was this morning.
Victor finds me in the kitchen a few minutes later, tea untouched, and doesn’t ask what I’m thinking about. He just wraps his arms around me from behind and rests his chin on my shoulder until Lili wanders in too, stealing my mug without asking and wrinkling her nose at the first sip.
“This is cold.”
“It’s been cold for ten minutes. You’re welcome to it anyway.”
She drinks it regardless, because that’s Lili, and the three of us stand there in the kitchen a while longer, not talking about much of anything, just being in the same room together on a Tuesday that has no business feeling this good.