“Thank you,” Rosa whispers.
“Do you want a hug?” Phoenix asks.
Rosa nods. Phoenix gives her one like she means it.
When they stand, the rumor mill pretending to be the hotel begins doing what it does. The front desk girls peek and whisper. The night janitor who used to flirt with me when he was bored gives me a look that flat says I’m outclassed.
The cocktail waitress from the mezzanine—who once told me she’d let me ruin her life even if I tipped in stories instead of cash—walks past and doesn’t even blink at me.
Every eye in that lobby is on Phoenix and it isn’t with hunger; it’s respect. Something rolls through me in a way that feels like pride.
In my head I see a future that doesn’t make me want to set anything on fire. Phoenix at a front-office desk in a role that actually carries weight. Phoenix making schedules that keep people safe and reorganizing routes and writing a policy that becomes a model for hotels we don’t even own. Phoenix with keys that open rooms on purpose, not cages. Phoenix ruling a lobby like it’s a court and not a battlefield.
Our queen. Her kings around her. A court that exists to do real work.
We get Rosa home and then we come back to ourselves.
All four of us walk Phoenix back through the staff corridor and the small sounds that used to break her skin don’t land the same way. She’s upright, chin up, hoodie pocketed and messy. A valet holds a door for her like a knight figuring out what to do with a sword now that someone showed up who knows how to use one.
On the ride home, she presses her forehead to the window again, but it’s not a plea for silence. It’s like she’s making herself a promise she has to keep. She is quiet until we hit the causeway and then she exhales heavily.
“You did good,” I tell her.
“I just talked,” she says, shrugging like it wasn’t a big deal.
“You didn’t just talk. You set a tone. There are men who spend their whole lives pretending they can do that. You just did it.”
She looks down at my hand where it sits on the console between us and covers it with hers. “I like your peaches,” she says, and ittakes me a second to realize she means all of it—the kitchen, the laughter, the yes, the hotel, the not-arrest, the ride at three a.m. with the windows cracked an inch because the air is clean and we can stand to breathe it.
She likesmypeaches. She’s living with us, inourchaos, and it hits me in one sharp, bright flash that she loves all of us, not just the idiot driving.
If we want to keep that, to be the ones she keeps choosing, we’re going to have to fight like hell—for her, for each other, for whatever this is turning into.
And for the first time in my life, I’m not running from a fight like that. I’m already in it and I can’t wait to win.
21
Maverick
Drivingup to the Tybee house feels like I’m holding a live grenade and praying it doesn’t go off in my hand.
The porch light we left on is still on. The security team rotates with the same quiet economy that’s starting to feel like a lullaby instead of a warning.
Conrad meets us in the foyer. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t have to. The set of his jaw says it all.
“You took her,” he says to me, and there’s anger in it but not accusation. He looks at her next, and that’s the look that matters. “Are you okay?”
She goes to him without any guilt, steps into his space and sets her palm on his chest. “I’m good,” she says. “I wanted to go. It was right.”
He breathes through his nose. His hands come up like they’re not sure which job to do first—touch, check, hold, surrender. He picks the one I would’ve picked. He cups the back of her neck and bends his head like he’s matching his breath to hers. Some of the fury leaves him like steam.
Atticus gives us a once-over—for blood, for cracks, for tells—and when he finds none, he nods to Storm. Storm nods back. Spencer leans in the doorway of the den like a man who didn’t sleep but might now.
“We’ve been briefed. I’ll update the policy,” Atticus says. “Trash routes. Lighting. Escort protocol. We’ll add a line for officer interactions so no one improvises under pressure.”
“Thank you,” she says. “Make sure Rosa gets the day. With pay.”
“Done.”
