Chapter Seventeen
SOPHIA
Changing my outfit twice and telling myself it is because of the heat is just an excuse I’m using. I know it’s not because of that.
I settle on a pale yellow, soft cotton summer dress, light enough for the Vegas heat, with my hair down and a little more effort with my makeup than usual, and absolutely no acknowledgment of why, I sit on the edge of the bed with my hands in my lap and breathe.
Looking at the sliding doors, the pool, and the desert stretching out beyond, I tell myself very firmly that it’s a barbecue.
Just a barbecue with people I already know and love, have spent time with before, and there is absolutely no reason for my hands to feel even slightly unsteady.
Remy knocks at six, three easy raps on the door, the knock of someone who is never late or early, just on time.
“Ready when you are,” he calls through it.
Walking out of the house with my bag, I find him leaning against the SUV, sunglasses on, scrolling his phone with the relaxed energy of someone who has absolutely nowhere else to be.
The late afternoon sun catches his dark hair and turns it lighter at the edges, and I think, not for the first time, that Remy is going to be dangerously good-looking in about five years.
He looks up when he hears me and does the thing he always does, that quick once-over that isn’t remotely the way he looked at me the first time we met, just the check of someone whose job it is to make sure everything is in order.
“You look nice.” Then a beat of silence. “I mean, you look good. Normal. Just… ready to go?”
“Remy.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop talking.”
He grins and opens the passenger door. Still smiling, I climb in and think about how Remy has a way of making the nerves less just by being himself.
The car radio is on low, the city moves past the windows in the early evening light, and neither of us feels the need to fill the quiet with anything.
The silences have shifted somewhere in the last couple of weeks.
What started as slightly awkward has become easy, the kind of quiet that means you don’t have to perform.
“Nervous?” he asks after a while.
“A little.”
He glances over. “Don’t be. You walked into that clubhouse full of strangers and held your own. Tonight’s the same people.”
That same feeling again, warm and slightly unnerving, settles somewhere in my chest and refuses to be entirely logical about it. Turning back to the window, I say nothing and let the city go past.
We pull up to the clubhouse as the sun starts to drop, and the evening light turns everything a deep, warm gold.
I sit there for a moment, looking at the front doors with the sound of music and voices already carrying from inside.
I feel the nerves arrive all at once, quiet, insistent, and entirely illogical given that I’ve been here before and already know these people.
Remy gets out, comes around, and opens my door. When I hesitate, he leans against the frame and looks at me with those young, steady eyes.
“Same people as last time,” he says. “Just more food.”
Taking a deep breath, I get out of the car.
The noise and warmth of the clubhouse wrap around me the moment the door opens, music, voices, the smell of food drift through from out back, and underneath all of it, that energy of people who are genuinely glad to be somewhere together.
It is different from when I was here last time.
It’s looser, warmer, two clubs instead of one filling the space, and the atmosphere expanded to match.
Standing in the doorway for just a moment and taking it in, my eyes find Tate before anything else.
Across the room, he is standing with Hawke and Torch near the back wall, beer in hand, head tilted in that way of his when he is listening carefully to something.
The evening light coming through the windows catches the planes of his face, his dark curls, and the tattoos on his forearms. Something in me settles the moment I see him, the way it always does, without asking my permission.
He looks up, and our eyes meet across the room.
And just like that, the nerves go, as if they’d never been there at all.
Saying something to Hawke and Torch, he crosses toward me, and we meet somewhere in the middle of the room with the noise and warmth of the evening all around us.
“You came.”
“You invited me.” Something in me smiles before I’ve decided to.
His eyes move over me then, slowly, just once. It’s the kind of look that takes its time and doesn’t pretend otherwise, and when they come back to my face, something in his expression has shifted into something quieter and more certain.
“You look beautiful, Sophia,” he compliments, low, direct, and without performance.
Something moves through me that I have absolutely no idea what to do with.
“Thank you.” I focus very hard on holding his gaze.
He’s got that almost-smile at the corner of his mouth that I’ve come to know well enough to look for.
He turns slightly to guide me through the room, that brief, warm pressure at the small of my back that lasts exactly as long as it needs to and not a second longer.
I focus very hard on walking in a straight line.
Almost immediately, Quill finds me. He is there before I’ve fully gotten my bearings, that commanding presence and the warmth underneath it all that I’ve always loved about him, and he pulls me into a proper hug before I’ve even finished reaching for one.
It’s the kind that holds on a moment longer than politeness requires because it means something, and both of us know it.
“Sophia.” His voice is warm against my hair.
“Quill.” I hold on.
When we pull back, he really looks at me the way Quill always does, taking inventory of everything he needs to know before he speaks, “You look better.” His blue eyes are warm and certain.
“Vegas apparently agrees with me.”
He smiles at that, warm and entirely Quill. “Apparently.”
Then he is gone, moving back through the room with both clubs needing his attention. Inhaling a deep breath, I turn to face the rest of the evening.
Hawke is next, blond hair loose around his shoulders, that watchfulness softening slightly when he sees me. “Good to see you upright.” From Hawke, that is the equivalent of a warm embrace.
“Good to be upright.”
The corner of his mouth moves in something that is almost a smile, and that is enough between us.
Raven is in the kitchen when I make my way through.
We crossed paths before, the white dress, that look across the room, but never been in the same space long enough for it to be anything.
She catches my eye once across the counter and gives me a look that is careful, measured, and entirely unreadable, and I give her one back that is exactly the same.
Then we both look away and get on with what we are doing.
No warmth between us, but not war either.
Finding my way to the counter beside her after a few minutes, I start helping without being asked, cutting, plating, carrying things out to the tables in the yard, and for a while, we work together in the same space without speaking, a careful truce between two women who understand each other’s position well enough that it doesn’t need discussing.
Carrying a bowl of salad out to one of the tables, I hear my name and turn.
Rhyder is standing a few feet away, slightly apart from the main group, the way he always seems to be, looking at me with an expression I hadn’t been prepared for at all.
It is gentle.
I steel myself for the gravity of him, the controlled intensity that I know is always there, but underneath it is something much softer than I expected. It catches me completely off guard, but in the best possible way.
“How are you holding up?”
“Better than I was. Getting there.” A pause. “How’s Lexi?”
Something happens to his face when I say her name, an opening, immediate and warm, like a door unlocking all the way.
“She’s good.” A break, something opening further. “Really good. She’s nursing now. Changed her plans after everything. Harvard felt like a different version of her life. But she found her way into medicine through a different door, and she loves it. She’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.”
“That sounds perfect for her.”
“She says hi. She wanted to come, but—”
“Club business. I understand.”
He nods slowly. Then, “She thinks about you, both of you going through what you did. She understands it in a way most people don’t.”
Swallowing against the tightness in my throat, I find my voice, “Tell her I think about her too. And tell her I’m glad she’s okay.”
He holds my gaze for a moment longer, something moving in his expression that is quieter and older than everything else he carries.
“He’d be glad you’re here.” His voice drops low. “Tracker. He’d be glad you’re somewhere safe.”
Not trusting my voice, I nod, and Rhyder nods back, that acknowledgment between two people who understand each other’s grief without needing to say another word about it.
Then he moves back toward the group, and I stand there with the bowl still in my hands and breathe in the cool desert evening and let it settle.
Across the yard, Raven has found her way to Torch.
Standing close to him near the far end of the table, not quite touching but not quite not, her dark hair catches the evening light, saying something that makes him turn toward her with that slow, focused attention of a man who has decided something is worth his full consideration.
He is smiling. Just slightly. On a face like Torch’s, that is practically a declaration, and watching for just a moment before looking away, I carry the salad to the table and let the evening keep being what it is.
The evening settles into something genuinely good, the kind of good that arrives without you planning for it, that comes from the right combination of people, food, cooling air, and the relief of having gotten through a difficult day and come out the other side still standing.