“It means I don’t let you walk straight into danger.”
“The cartel is gone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” she shoots back. “Ryan is dead. They got what they wanted.”
She really has no idea.
My voice stays level. “Going to New York doesn’t change anything, Sophia. Tracker isn’t there.”
“It changeseverything,” she says. “It’s where he lived. It’s where he died.” Her breath catches, just slightly, and when she speaks again, there’s a raw, desperate honesty in it that hits me somewhere I wasn’t expecting. “I need to be there, Tate. I need to be in the place where he lived, where he breathed. I want to understand the life he had when he wasn’t with me. I want to know that part of him.”
Dragging a hand through my hair, I say, “You think that’s going to give you peace?”
“I don’t know,” she snaps, emotion cracking through. “But sitting in this town pretending he never existed sure as hell isn’t working.”
Moving in slow circles around the front yard, Memphis pads alongside me like a shadow.
“You don’t belong in that clubhouse, Sophia. I know they’re family to you now and what they mean to you, but your actual family is in Vixen Falls. Your life is there.”
“You don’t know what living here feels like.” A pause. “And Jasmine and Quill said I can stay.”
“I know they did. Why do you think I’m calling?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’d be surrounded by everything that reminds you of him. His bike. His room. His brothers at every turn. How is that going to help you heal, Sophia? How does drowning in it help?”
Her voice trembles when she replies, “That’s the point.”
“No.” My voice drops. “That’s torture.”
Silence stretches between us.
Then, “So what?” she asks, a bitter edge to it now. “Your solution is that I stay in Vixen Falls forever? Pretend I never had a life with Ryan and what? Just move on?”
“No.”
“Then what, Tate? What are you suggesting?”
Memphis sits at my feet and looks up at me.
There it is.
“You come to Vegas.”
Silence.
Complete and total silence.
“With you?” The shock in her voice is genuine.
Why is my heart beating this fast right now?
“I have a house,” I say, pushing past whatever that feeling is and focusing on the words. “Plenty of space. My clubhouse isn’t far, so if I’m not here, you’re never far from me if you need something. You said yourself you can work remotely. Vegas works just as well as New York for that. And it’s safer, Sophia.”
“Safer than what?”
