Chapter Fifteen
SOPHIA
Remy is already outside when I pull the front door shut behind me.
He is leaning against the SUV with his arms crossed and his sunglasses on, looking out at the desert the way he does when he is waiting, not impatiently, just present, like waiting is simply another thing he is good at.
He straightens when he hears the door and looks me over once, not the way he’d looked at me that first day at the clubhouse, nothing like that, just the assessment of someone whose job it is to make sure I am ready to go.
Trevor had called yesterday with the details of a client he wanted me to see in person—the Ember Hotel.
He’d sent across the brief, and I’d spent the afternoon pulling my portfolio together, building three concept directions with what little I could find online about the place.
The client’s name is Victoria Chen. When I told Tate, he reminded me that Remy would take me there. I didn’t argue. What’s the point?
“You look good,” Remy says. Then immediately, “I mean, professional. You look professional.”
“Professional.” Looking down at my dress and back at him. “That’s the best you’ve got?”
He grins. “I was told not to say anything else.”
And the fact that Tate had apparently felt the need to have that conversation with Remy before we’d even left the house does all kinds of things to my insides that I am not going to examine too closely at eight thirty in the morning.
Laughing, I climb in, smoothing my fitted, cream-colored dress, the most professional thing in my wardrobe that still works in the Vegas heat, and settle my laptop bag on my lap.
The Ember Hotel is my first proper client meeting since everything fell apart. Drawing in a slow breath, I tell myself the nerves are normal.
Remy knows the city the way you only know a place when you’ve grown up in it, the real version, not the tourist one.
He moves through it as if it is second nature, and as the streets go past the window, I think about the concept boards in my laptop bag with three directions, each different and built around the name and what it promises.
The Ember—to me means warm, intimate, and the kind of place that feels like a secret worth keeping.
“So, what exactly do you do?” Remy asks after a while.
“Graphic design. Brand identity mostly.”
“Like logos and stuff?”
“Logos, yes. But more than that, the whole visual language of a brand. How it looks, how it feels, how it speaks to people before a single word is said.” I pause, finding the version that will make sense to him. “Think about the Sinners’ patch.”
He glances over at me.
“That patch tells you everything about the club before you know anything about the men who wear it,” I say. “The skull, the flames, the colors, all of it says something. That’s brand identity. Someone designed that. Someone made those choices deliberately.”
Remy is quiet for a moment.
“Never thought about it like that,” he says.
“Most people don’t. That’s why it works.”
He nods, turning that over. Then, “And this hotel. You’re doing that for them?”
“If the meeting goes well. Full rebrand, logo, signage, digital presence, print materials, everything.” I look back out the window, the city still moving past. “It’s the biggest project I’ve ever been assigned.”
“You nervous?”
I consider lying, but decide against it.
“Yes.”
“Don’t be. You know what you’re doing.”
Looking at him, this young man who’d worked construction in Phoenix, found his way to a motorcycle club in Vegas, and somehow ended up driving me to client meetings, a warmth moves through me that has nothing to do with obligation.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Just do.”
Simple. Completely unbothered. Entirely Remy.
Not long later, The Ember Hotel comes into view as we turn off the main road onto a quieter street running parallel to the Strip, close enough to feel the energy of it but far enough to feel like its own world entirely.
Remy slows the SUV, and we both look at the front of the building.
It is beautiful.
Not in the way of the big Strip hotels, not glass, spectacle, and scale designed to make you feel small, but something quieter and more deliberate.
A converted building, older bones showing through the modern renovation, warm stone, copper detailing catching the afternoon light, window boxes with trailing greenery softening the edges.
A discreet sign above the entrance in a clean serif font. The Ember.
“Impressive,” Remy says under his breath.
“Yes.”
He pulls up to the entrance and puts the SUV in park. “I’ll wait here. Take your time.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to—”
“Sophia.” A look. “Go impress the woman. I’ve got water and a podcast. I’m fine.”
“A podcast?” A laugh escapes me.
He frowns. “Yeah, so… what’s wrong with that? I’m listening to how a man traveled the US on his motorcycle.”
“Absolutely nothing,” I say, my hand briefly on his shoulder, and get out of the car.
The lobby stops me in the doorway.
It’s intimate and alive, the kind of space designed to make you exhale the moment you walk in.
Rich amber tones in the upholstery, copper light fittings that cast everything in a soft golden glow, and natural stone floors polished to a quiet gleam.
A fireplace is against the far wall, unlit in the Vegas heat but present, the whole room oriented around it, built outward from that central warmth.
The designer part of my brain wakes up fully for the first time in months, lighting up with everything it is seeing, cataloging, and already beginning to respond.
This is what the brand needs to feel like. Every touchpoint. This exact feeling the moment you walk through the door.
At the reception desk, a young woman smiles warmly, reaching for the phone the moment I give my name.
Victoria Chen comes through the lobby doors two minutes later, and I understand immediately why she’d built something like this.
She has the same quality as the hotel, deliberate, genuine, and without performance.
She’s in her late thirties, with sharp eyes behind clear-framed glasses, dressed simply in a linen shirt and tailored trousers, the kind of woman who knows what she is doing and doesn’t need anyone to know she knows it.
She crosses the lobby with her hand already extended. “Sophia. I’m so glad you could come in person.”
“Thank you for making time.” I shake her hand. “The hotel is stunning. I had to stop for a moment when I walked in.”
Her face opens into a real smile. “That’s the reaction I want every guest to have.” She gestures toward a seating area near the fireplace, two low chairs in amber velvet, a low table between them, the whole arrangement feeling like a living room rather than a business meeting. “Shall we?”
Victoria is the kind of client every designer dreams of.
She knows what she wants in terms of feeling but trusts the right person to translate that feeling into visuals.
She asks the right questions. She listens to the answers.
She pushes back when something doesn’t land and says ‘Yes, exactly that’ when it does, and those three words are worth more than any amount of polite agreement.
She asks about my background early on, where I trained, who I’d worked with, and what I’d built.
The degree, Trevor’s agency, and the client list were developed over five years in Vixen Falls.
Mostly small-town work but thorough, with brand identities built from the ground up and maintained over the years.
The Swan Auto Electrical rebrand, forty years of history given a visual language that honored its roots while speaking to a new generation.
She listens carefully before speaking, “Do you have a portfolio?”
Opening the laptop, I turn it toward her.
She goes through it page by page, unhurried, really looking. The logos, the brand guidelines, the before-and-afters. The way each identity has been built around something true about the business, rather than just something that looks good on a page.
When she looks up, her expression has shifted, something confirmed rather than just considered. “These are really good,” she says, simply and directly, the way people say things when they mean them.
“Thank you.” It lands somewhere real.
“I’ve been working on some initial concept directions,” I say. “These are starting points rather than finished ideas, but I wanted to bring something to this meeting rather than just words.”
Victoria straightens slightly. “Please.”
Three directions, each built around the name, that lobby, and the feeling I’d walked into forty minutes ago and immediately understood.
Direction One—The Glow. Warm amber and deep copper are the primary palette.
A logo mark built from the shape of an ember, abstract, organic, glowing from within.
Typography that is classic but alive, with enough warmth in the letterforms to feel human rather than corporate. Where luxury feels like home.
Victoria leans forward.
Direction Two—Ember and Stone. The amber tones paired with the coolness of natural stone provide balance and contrast with the fire and the earth. A more architectural approach, clean lines softened by warmth. Strong in print, strong in signage, strong in digital.
Direction Three—The Hearth. The most intimate of the three.
Smaller in scale, more personal, built around the idea of the fireplace as the heart of the hotel, everything radiating outward from that central warmth.
Hand-drawn elements in the logo give it a crafted feel rather than a manufactured one.
When I look up, Victoria is already looking at the first direction, and then at me.
Her finger lands on Direction One. “This one. This is it. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to articulate for six months and haven’t been able to.” Back to the screen. “How did you get this so quickly? You’ve been here twenty minutes.”
The moment of walking through the lobby door. The way the room had hit. The designer part of my brain lights up fully for the first time in months, without grief getting in the way.
“The hotel told me.”
Victoria looks at me for a moment, then she smiles, wide, certain, and completely decided.
“When can you start?”
We chat for a while longer before Victoria leaves.
Her card is in my hand. A follow-up meeting is already on the calendar. The weight of ‘When can you start,’ is still sitting warmly in my chest.
The amber light. The copper fittings. The fireplace waiting against the far wall.
The tears arrive before I understand why. That ambush grief delivers when a genuine moment of happiness gives it the opening it needs.
Ryan would never know about this.
He’d always kept me separate from his world, protecting me from it, and I’d never gotten to show him mine. He’d never sat across a table from me while I talked about brand identity and watched my face when I was in the middle of something I loved. He’d never seen this version of me.
And I’d never get to show him.
Pressing my lips together, I breathe through it, in and out the way I’ve learned, letting it move through without fighting it.
Then a buzz from my phone.
Tate: How’d it go.
No question mark. Direct, simple, and completely him, the way all his communication is with no excess or performance, just the thing itself.
A smile breaks across my face in the hotel lobby as I type back.
Sophia: Really well. She loved the concept.
Three dots appear immediately.
Tate: Good.
One word.
That single word sits with me for a moment longer than it should. Picking up my bag, I walk back out through the lobby and into the Vegas afternoon, where Remy is leaning against the SUV exactly where I left him, podcast in his ears, water bottle in hand, unbothered by the world.
He pulls the earbud out when he sees my face and smiles, young, genuine, and entirely uncomplicated. “Told you.”
“You told me.”
He opens the door, I get in, and we drive back through the city toward the desert, Tate’s house, and the life I am quietly, unexpectedly, building inside it.