“No.” His voice is firm enough that I stop talking. “You’re not going anywhere. And you’re not stepping back from anything.” He holds my gaze. “I told you, you have a place here. That doesn’t change because of Raven.”
I nod slowly, something unspoken passing between us, before he straightens.
“Give me five minutes.”
Watching him cross the room back to where Raven is standing, I turn deliberately away and look at the pool table instead, because whatever happens in that conversation is not something I need to witness.
Luke appears beside me and holds out a fresh beer. “You want to play?” he asks, nodding at the table.
I take the beer. “I’m terrible,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “Me too. We’ll be terrible together.”
Smiling genuinely, I take the cue he offers.
I don’t see what passes between Tate and Raven, but when Tate comes back twenty minutes later, Raven is gone, and whatever had needed to be said has clearly been said. The set of his jaw tells me it hadn’t been a comfortable conversation for either of them. He comes and stands beside me at the pool table, watching Luke miss an embarrassingly straightforward shot with the kind of quiet judgment that requires no commentary.
“You good?” he asks, without looking at me.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Chapter Thirteen
RYAN
The safe house is empty by the time I finish.
Everything that was Ryan has been packed away, which isn’t much, because Ryan doesn’t exist anymore, and hasn’t for days. The apartment was never his. The clothes were never his. Even the burner phone sitting on the kitchen counter belongs to no one now.
I pick it up, turn it over in my hands, then set it back down.
I don’t dial her number this time.
I already said goodbye to Sophia, the only way I could, from the back of a car, watching her cry at a graveside while the world went on around her, not knowing any different.
That was the goodbye.
There isn’t another one.
I pick up the jacket from the back of the chair. Dark and expensive—the kind of thing a man wears when he wants people to know he has money without having to say it. The photograph sits in the inside pocket, folded and invisible to anyone who doesn’t know it’s there. I press my thumb against the seam I stitched closed myself the night before.
Just Sam knows it’s there.
He’d slid it across the table after Cole left, no explanation or ceremony. Just pushed it between us and looked away like he hadn’t done anything. Sam has always understood the things that don’t need words.
Then I look at my arms. Ten days of laser sessions and cream, and the Blood Brothers’ ink is gone from my forearms, faded and burned away, the skin still tender in places where the work was deepest. The rest has faded enough to read as old and indistinct.Nothing that would mark me as anything specific to anyone who didn’t already know.
Except the compass.
Inner left forearm.
Already faded significantly, and with another few sessions it will be completely gone. For now, it sits there like a ghost of itself, the needle still pointing north even as everything around it has been erased. I stare at it for a moment longer than I should.
Then I put on the jacket and step out.
Cole is waiting outside in a black SUV, offering no conversation, which suits me fine. We drive to the airfield in silence, forty minutes through San Antonio streets that are already busy in the early morning, the city going about its business completely indifferent to what’s happening in this vehicle.
