The evening air hits us as we step outside, cooler now that the sun is setting. We pile into Zay's truck—Valentina in the middle of the backseat between me and Xavier, Zay driving with one hand while the other reaches back to rest on Valentina's knee. It's comfortable, familiar, the kind of easy intimacy that comes from six months of learning how to exist in each other's space.
"I'm starving," Valentina announces. "That meeting lasted forever and then you three attacked me before I could eat."
"We attacked you?" Zay laughs from the driver's seat. "Pretty sure you were very on board with being attacked."
"Semantics," she says, but she's grinning. "Point is, I need food. Real food. Not whatever protein bars Xavier keeps in his office."
"Those protein bars are perfectly adequate nutrition," Xavier protests.
"They taste like cardboard and sadness," Valentina counters. "I'm getting the steak. And the potatoes. And probably dessert."
"Get whatever you want," I tell her, my thumb stroking across her knuckles where our hands are linked. "We're celebrating."
"Celebrating what?"
"Six months of successfully not killing each other," Zay offers.
"Six months of the best sleep I've had in my life," Xavier adds.
"Six months of you making us late to everything because you can't keep your hands to yourself," I say, and Valentina swats at me with her free hand.
"That's rich coming from you," she says. "You're the one who initiated that thing last week in the?—"
"We don't talk about that in public," I interrupt quickly, and all three of them laugh.
"This is public?" Valentina gestures around the truck. "It's just us."
"Still counts," I maintain, but I'm fighting a smile.
The restaurant is busy when we arrive, all warm lighting and the smell of expensive food and wine. We're underdressed—Valentina in her jeans and tank top, the rest of us in our cuts and boots—but the hostess doesn't even blink, just leads us to a table in the back corner where we can sprawl without bothering the other diners.
Valentina ends up between Zay and Xavier with me across from her, and she's right—we absolutely spend most of dinner eye-fucking her across the table. But we also talk and laugh and steal food off each other's plates and exist in that comfortable space we've carved out for ourselves.
This is us—stealing moments whenever we can, loving each other in ways both tender and intense, building a life together one stolen hour at a time.
And I wouldn't change a single thing.
EPILOGUE
VALENTINA
"You know I hate surprises,"I say for the third time as Zay's truck winds through familiar streets, his hand warm over my eyes, blocking my vision completely.
"You're going to love this one," he promises, and I can hear the smile in his voice, can feel the barely contained excitement radiating off him in waves. "Just trust me."
"I do trust you," I mutter, but my heart is racing with anxiety and anticipation in equal measure. "That doesn't mean I like being blindfolded and driven to unknown locations."
"It's not unknown," Asher's voice comes from the driver's seat, calm and steady as always. "You've been here before."
That doesn't narrow it down much. We've been a lot of places in the six months since that night in my depressing apartment when everything finally came back together. Six months of learning how to live together, how to love together, how to navigate a relationship that doesn't fit any conventional mold but works for us in ways that conventional never could.
Six months since we moved into the house with its actual functioning appliances and California King bed that Zay special-ordered because the full-size mattress nearly killed us all. Six months since Xavier walked again without assistance, since the club formally accepted our unconventional arrangement, since Talia brokered the ceasefire that ended the war with the Vipers.
Six months of something that feels dangerously close to happiness.
The truck slows, then stops. I hear Xavier shift in the backseat beside me—he insisted on coming despite Zay's protests that this was supposed to be a surprise, but Xavier doesn't do well with being left out of important moments.
"We're here," Zay announces, and his hand finally lifts from my eyes.
