Page 204 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

For a second, I almost don’t recognize her.

Her hair is down. It’s such a small thing. But I have never seen her wear it that way by choice—it was always pulled back and contained. A habit, I think, from years of needing to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. And now it’s loose around her shoulders, soft, and she’s smiling—open and so achingly real that for a second I forget what I was going to say.

I pull her into a hug instead.

“Sophie,” I manage.

“Kit.” Her arms come around me, tight and fierce. “Kit, you came.”

“Of course I came,” I say into her shoulder.

She pulls back, laughing, and ushers us inside.

Griffin had shown me their files after the sabotage, so I recognize all three of them immediately.

Max appears first, coming down the hallway. He’s broader and more imposing than I expected, but the way his face softens when he sees Sophie tells me everything I need to know. He shakes hands with Griffin, Nolan, and Declan, then turns to me, his green eyes warm.

“Kit. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

Ethan is right behind him—glasses, gray eyes, a calm that seems built into him. He greets us politely, his hand settling briefly at the small of Sophie’s back as he passes.

Then Finn comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel, grinning. “Food’s almost ready—and nobody sets foot in that kitchen until I say so, I mean it.” He pulls Sophie into a kiss on the way past that is brief and makes her laugh, and I have to look away as I feel my throat tightening, because I’ve never heard her laugh like that before.

The house smells like garlic and herbs and something sweet baking, and there are books everywhere—stacked on shelves, piled on side tables, a paperback left open on the arm of the couch. Shoes by the door. A hoodie draped over a chair that is clearly Sophie’s.

I think of her apartment, the last time I was there, right before she started her assignment at Synthera. It had been so bare, more like somewhere she slept than somewhere she actually lived.

This is nothing like that. People live here. People who love each other live here.

By the time we sit down for lunch, I have to swallow past the tightness in my throat and we haven’t even started eating.

I sit between Griffin and Nolan, watching, and I can’t stop watching.

They all hover in their own ways. Max finds quiet reasons to stay near her, refilling her glass before she asks and passing dishes her way first. Finn keeps making her laugh, nudging more food onto her plate when he thinks she isn’t looking. Ethan notices when she gets cold and brings her a cardigan, laying it over her shoulders without a word.

And to my amazement, Sophie lets them. More than that, she leans into it.

Lucy and Fabian come up over the main course.

“Sentencing is next month,” Griffin says. “All three of them. Lucy, Fabian, and Marcel.”

“Good,” Sophie says. Her fork doesn’t even pause.

“Marcel gave up everything,” Declan adds. “How Lucy recruited him, how they planned the whole thing. Sang like a bird once he realized Lucy wasn’t coming to save him.”

“Fabian too,” Griffin says. “Access logs, cloned keycards, the data he’d copied. All of it.” He glances at Sophie. “It’s done, Soph.”

Sophie nods. “Let me know if you need anything from me for the sentencing.” Then she turns to Finn and asks him to pass the bread.

Not long ago, she would have been running the debrief herself, demanding every detail, unable to let go until every loose end was tied. Now she asks for the bread.

I catch Griffin’s eye across the table. He sees it too.

The conversation flows easily, lighter than I expected, warmer. Finn tells a story about the first time they made Sophie brunch, and how she’d eaten so many pancakes that he’d quietly started a second batch without saying anything.

“I was hungry,” Sophie says, flushing.

“It was seven pancakes, Soph,” Finn says. “We counted.”