I’m at Grace’s place.
She’s enormous.
Eight months and change, carrying the boy low and forward, her hand on her belly every thirty seconds in the unconscious way of a woman whose body has become a conversation she’s having with someone she hasn’t met yet.
Shadow has gone from protective to borderline deranged—I watched him try to stop her from lifting a bag of dog food yesterday and she gave him a look that could strip paint.
We’re on her couch.
Tea for her, coffee for me.
She’s supposed to be resting, which means she’s reviewing vet records and texting instructions to the vet tech who’s been covering her appointments while simultaneously folding tiny onesies with one hand.
“You’re not resting,” I say.
“I’m horizontally productive. There’s a difference.” She folds a onesie the size of my hand. Blue. Tiny cowboy boots printed on the fabric. “Shadow thinks resting means I should stare at a wall and breathe deeply for eight hours. Shadow can bite me.”
I laugh.
The ease of it still catches me off guard sometimes—the way laughter comes now, natural and frequent, like a muscle I forgot I had that’s been slowly rebuilding.
Grace did that.
Not just Grace—this whole place, this whole life that assembled itself around me while I was busy shoeing horses and falling in love—but Grace specifically.
The first real friend I’ve had since Rose.
Different from Rose in every way that matters—harder edges, sharper humor, the steel spine of a woman who was kidnapped and caged and walked out the other side refusing to be defined by it—but the same in the one way that counts.
She sees me. Not Rose’s friend. Not Banshee’s woman. Bex.
“Lee asked me to move in with him,” I say.
Grace sets down the onesie.
She looks at me with the expression of a woman who has been waiting for this information and is now going to enjoy every second of receiving it. “The cabin?”
“You knew?”
“Shadow told me. Who Lee told. Who apparently spent three days talking himself into asking Phantom about it before Shadow told him to stop being an idiot and just ask.” She grins. “These men can face down rival MCs and shoot their way through ambushes, but asking their president to sell them a cabin? Paralyzing.”
I shake my head, but I’m smiling so hard my face aches.
Grace picks up her tea and blows on it.
The light from the window catches the side of her face and for a moment she looks older than she is—not tired, exactly, but seasoned.
The look of a woman who has lived through things that aged her in ways that don’t show on the surface.
“I noticed something at the last club dinner,” I say. Carefully. Because I’ve been sitting on this for weeks and Grace is the only person I’d ask. “Phantom. He sits alone. There’s always an empty space next to him, and nobody takes it. And when Lee and I sat together—when he put his hand on my knee under the table—Phantom watched us for a second and then looked away. Fast. Like it hurt.”
Grace is quiet. She sets her tea down. T
he playful energy recedes, replaced by something more measured.
“My mom,” she says. Not a question.
“Phantom’s ex.”
