I called Tate the day after our phone call and told him I was coming. He hadn’t made a big deal of it, just said he’d have everything ready, that I could arrive whenever I wanted. What I hadn’t expected was to find out he’d already sorted a room for me, bought furniture, and made it a proper space. That had caught me off guard more than anything else. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting from a motorcycle club president, but it wasn’t that.
Going back to the bedroom one last time, the apartment already feels emptier. The surfaces are cleared, drawers are shut, and there’s the quiet of a place being left behind. The photograph is still on the nightstand where it has lived for the past two months. Ryan is laughing at something off camera, his face completely unguarded and entirely himself.
I leave it where it is.
It belongs here.
Mom has known about Vegas from the moment I agreed to go. I’d called her the night I decided, needing to tell someone before I talked myself out of it. She’d fought me on it at first, gentlybut clearly, telling me my family was here and that we could get through this together. But when I told her I needed a change, that staying in Vixen Falls was slowly suffocating me, she’d gone quiet for a long moment and then softly said, ‘Okay, baby.’That had been harder to hear than the argument.
She’d kept it from Dad as I’d asked her to because I wanted to tell him myself.
Mom is already on the couch when I come back into the living room, a dish towel twisted between her hands, her knuckles pale. She’d had two weeks to make her peace with it.
Dad hadn’t.
He stands by the window, arms crossed, jaw tight, and his dark hair, shot through with gray, catches the afternoon light. I find myself staring at it for a moment.When had that happened? When had the gray crept in so far?I’ve been so buried in my own grief that I haven’t really looked at my parents in weeks, not noticing what worrying about me is costing them. The guilt of that settles quietly somewhere in my chest and stays there.
Annie leans against the wall across from me, arms folded, watching the room the way she always does, calm and sharp, taking everything in before she commits to a single word. She hadn’t heard any of this yet. Annie got no warning call, no gentle heads-up. Whatever she thinks about Vegas, she’s forming it right now in real time.
I take a breath.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Mom’s head snaps up even though she’d known it was coming. “Tomorrow?” Her voice comes out smaller than she intended.
Dad’s expression hardens slightly, but he stays by the window.
Annie raises one eyebrow.
“Where exactly are you going, Sophia?” Dad asks.
“Vegas.”
Silence drops across the room.
“With whom?” Mom asks carefully, even though she already knows the answer.
I swallow. “Tate.”
Dad’s jaw tightens visibly.
“Tracker’s brother?” he asks.
“Yes.”
Mom looks at me with those tired, worried eyes. “The brother who has his own motorcycle club?”
“That’s the one.”
Dad runs a hand slowly over his face. “You’re moving across the country to live with a biker you hardly know?”
“He’s not a stranger,” I say, holding my ground.
“You’ve met him what… three times?”
“More than that, actually.”
“That’s not helping your case, Sophia.”
