“Yeah.”
A shorter silence before, “I’d like that,” and the softness in her voice when she says it does something to the air in my chest that I don’t examine too closely.
“I’ll get Remy to pick you up. Six, okay?”
“Six is good.” A small pause, softer than the ones before it. “Tate?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for calling.”
Standing there in the yard after we hang up, the phone loose in my hand, I let that sit for just a second before going to find Remy.
Chapter Seventeen
SOPHIA
Changing my outfit twice and telling myself it is because of the heat is just an excuse I’m using. I know it’s not because of that.
I settle on a pale yellow, soft cotton summer dress, light enough for the Vegas heat, with my hair down and a little more effort with my makeup than usual, and absolutely no acknowledgment of why, I sit on the edge of the bed with my hands in my lap and breathe. Looking at the sliding doors, the pool, and the desert stretching out beyond, I tell myself very firmly that it’s a barbecue. Just a barbecue with people I already know and love, have spent time with before, and there is absolutely no reason for my hands to feel even slightly unsteady.
Remy knocks at six, three easy raps on the door, the knock of someone who is never late or early, just on time.
“Ready when you are,” he calls through it.
Walking out of the house with my bag, I find him leaning against the SUV, sunglasses on, scrolling his phone with the relaxed energy of someone who has absolutely nowhere else to be. The late afternoon sun catches his dark hair and turns it lighter at the edges, and I think, not for the first time, that Remy is going to be dangerously good-looking in about five years. He looks up when he hears me and does the thing he always does, that quick once-over that isn’t remotely the way he looked at me the first time we met, just the check of someone whose job it is to make sure everything is in order.
“You look nice.” Then a beat of silence. “I mean, you look good. Normal. Just… ready to go?”
“Remy.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop talking.”
He grins and opens the passenger door. Still smiling, I climb in and think about how Remy has a way of making the nerves less just by being himself.
The car radio is on low, the city moves past the windows in the early evening light, and neither of us feels the need to fill the quiet with anything. The silences have shifted somewhere in the last couple of weeks. What started as slightly awkward has become easy, the kind of quiet that means you don’t have to perform.
“Nervous?” he asks after a while.
“A little.”
He glances over. “Don’t be. You walked into that clubhouse full of strangers and held your own. Tonight’s the same people.”
That same feeling again, warm and slightly unnerving, settles somewhere in my chest and refuses to be entirely logical about it. Turning back to the window, I say nothing and let the city go past.
We pull up to the clubhouse as the sun starts to drop, and the evening light turns everything a deep, warm gold. I sit there for a moment, looking at the front doors with the sound of music and voices already carrying from inside. I feel the nerves arrive all at once, quiet, insistent, and entirely illogical given that I’ve been here before and already know these people.
Remy gets out, comes around, and opens my door. When I hesitate, he leans against the frame and looks at me with those young, steady eyes.
“Same people as last time,” he says. “Just more food.”
Taking a deep breath, I get out of the car.
The noise and warmth of the clubhouse wrap around me the moment the door opens, music, voices, the smell of food drift through from out back, and underneath all of it, that energy of people who are genuinely glad to be somewhere together. It is different from when I was here last time. It’s looser, warmer,two clubs instead of one filling the space, and the atmosphere expanded to match.
Standing in the doorway for just a moment and taking it in, my eyes find Tate before anything else. Across the room, he is standing with Hawke and Torch near the back wall, beer in hand, head tilted in that way of his when he is listening carefully to something. The evening light coming through the windows catches the planes of his face, his dark curls, and the tattoos on his forearms. Something in me settles the moment I see him, the way it always does, without asking my permission.
