I clear my throat, nod once, step away before something warmer can take root.
We make it halfway down the driveway when Lola bumps her shoulder into mine.
“Don’t look now,” she says under her breath, “but a certain Calloway is brooding after you.”
My neck prickles, heat climbing up my spine. My feet slow. My head turns before I can stop it, as automatic as blinking.
Gage stands at the edge of the garage light, broad shoulders cut in gold, expression shadowed. His gaze follows me with the intensity of someone trying to solve a puzzle they once knew by heart. My skin prickles under his attention, and I find myself counting my steps away from him—one, two, three—as if measuring the exact distance needed to breathe normally again.
I snap my gaze forward. “Good. Let him look.”
Lola snorts. “Oh, yeah. Totally convincing.”
“I have a job to do,” I mutter. “No time for whatever the hell he thinks he’s promising with those dark eyes of his.”
“Mm-hmm,” she hums with a grin on her face.
Beck falls into step beside us, juggling keys. “Can we table the Calloway Thirst Conference until we get home? I’d like to survive tomorrow night.”
I exhale, my shoulders falling as the tension bleeds out. My middle finger flicks the shell of Beck's ear with a satisfying thwap. “Just drive the car, Beck.”
“You know you love me,” he fires back, his body twisting sideways as Lola's hand cuts through the air where his bicep had been a millisecond earlier.
“Unfortunately,” she draws out each syllable, her eyes rolling skyward.
Beck and Lola's voices rise and fall like a tide as we cross the quiet residential street, their words washing over me. My fingers drum against my thigh in a staccato rhythm I can't control. My heart flutters like a trapped bird beneath my ribcage while my mouth still tastes of frosting, sickly sweet. I inhale deeply, letting the night air cool my lungs. Goosebumps rise along my bare shins as a breeze catches the hem of my shorts. With each step toward Beck's car, my shoulders drop a fraction lower, my jaw unclenches just a bit. Five steps. Ten. The concrete beneath my feet solid and real, just like every job before this one.
Just another job, I tell myself.
A traitorous voice whispers,Liar.It’s sharp, feminine, and annoyingly familiar. It’s my mother’s voice. A persistent pessimistic ghost. Always ready to list the thousand ways something could go wrong.
Lola glances over at me. “You okay? Or are you in some weird Calloway-induced sugar high?”
“I’m fine,” I grunt out, rolling my eyes.
Beck slings an arm around my shoulders. “Of fucking course you are. We’re clearing seven figures tomorrow. I can feel it.”
“That’s the Santa Ana winds, dumbass,” Lola says, shoving him. “Not whatever fake intuition you think you have.”
He shoves her back, laughing. “Don’t worry, little sis. One day you’ll be as intuitive as me.”
“God, I hope not,” she mutters. “And just because you’re taller doesn’t mean you’reolder.”
I shake my head, warmth spreading through me despite the cold.
Tomorrow night, everything changes. For better or worse.
And I know exactly what I’m risking, which makes it worse that I’m still choosing it.
23
BELLAMY
The van idlesin the alley, engine humming low beneath my boots. It’s one o’clock in the morning. The world back here is all shadow and concrete—brick walls, a pair of overflowing dumpsters, the faint sour-sweet reek of old dough and bleach from Honeybee Bakery’s back door. Somewhere beyond the buildings, I can hear the distant rush of a highway.
Mostly, though, it’s just the sound of all of us breathing.
Lola exhales beside me, her spine straightening with a soft crack as she rolls her shoulders back. Across from us, Gage's knee bounces once, twice, then stills as he flips his burner phone between his fingers like a casino dealer with a chip. Cruz's eyes are half-lidded, his burner resting on his thigh, thumb occasionally brushing the screen to check the time. Rafe's breath fogs a small circle on the window glass, his gaze fixed on something beyond our cramped metal box.
