Dad steps out first. My father, standing at the base of the steps with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression doing that thing it does when he’s feeling something large and has decided to contain it in the smallest possible gesture. His jaw is set. His eyes find mine the second I come through the door, andhe holds them there without moving, without saying a word, and a tension I hadn’t even realized I was holding loosens.
Sin stands to Dad’s left, the kind of president who doesn’t need to project anything because his presence is already a statement. Koa flanks him, broad-shouldered and easy, one hand braced on the fence post, watching me with a slow, warm grin spreading across his face. Nitro is there, VP solid and steady, his expression more restrained than Koa’s but carrying something in the eyes that looks a lot like relief. Ghost stands a few feet back, leaning against the hood of my truck with his arms crossed, and he tips his chin at me when our eyes meet, a small, precise acknowledgment.
And Deek.
Deek is standing slightly forward from all of them, hands in his pockets, wearing the kind of expression that says he’s been waiting for this exact moment and would very much like credit for it. “So,” he says, before I’ve even made it down the second step. “Jail.” He tilts his head with the considered air of someone posing a genuine inquiry. “Thoughts? Reviews? Would you recommend? We’re looking at a one-to-five-star rating,ideally.”
Dad groans, without turning his head. “Deek.”
“Three stars? Two? Were the accommodations at least consistent with the photos on the website?”
I can’t help but laugh. It comes out before I can decide whether to let it, rough at the edges, not entirely put-together, and for a second, the sound surprises me because I haven’t made that sound in days. Deek grins like he’s won something special, and he has, technically, won something, because getting a laugh out of a brother who just walked out of a cell after three days is no small achievement. The fucker knows it, and he is going to beabsolutelyinsufferableabout it.
Dad covers Deek’s face with one enormous hand, but Deek’s voice comes through, slightly muffled and completelyunbothered. “I’m taking that as a two-star review. Two stars, not recommended, decor left something to be desired.”
I’m moving before Dad even takes his hand away, stepping straight into him on instinct. His other hand lands on the back of my neck the second I reach him, firm and solid enough to crack something open in my chest. He doesn’t drag me into some big emotional hug. Doesn’t make a scene out of it. He just holds onto me for a couple of seconds, the same way he did when I was a kid and I’d scared the hell out of him. And I feel all three days of what this did to him in the strength of that grip. “You good?” he asks, low and private, meant for no one else.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m good, Dad.”
He releases me, and the brothers move in. Hands on my shoulder, on my arm, Koa pulling me into a full hug without ceremony because Koa is constitutionally incapable of not bear-hugging the crap out of anyone, his laugh warm and deep against my ear.
Sin grips my hand, and the handshake becomes something more. His other hand lands firm on my shoulder, and he looks at me for a moment with eyes that carry all of it, all the time, and I understand without either of us saying so that he didn’t sleep much while I was in there. “Ghost found it,” Sin says.
“I know,” I tell him. “Thank him.”
“You can thank him yourself.”
Ghost makes a sound from several feet away that is not quite dismissive but not humble either, a sound that means ‘obviously I found it,’and ‘you’re welcome’at the same time, without either phrase being spoken.
The noise hits me first.
Hands on my shoulders. Fists knocking into my ribs. Someone swearing loud enough to make a statement about it. Laughter breaks open around me as if the pressure has finally been released.
It’s chaos.
Familiar chaos.
Mine.
I’m laughing, the sound dragged out of me by relief, adrenaline, and the simple fact of being upright in open air instead of under fluorescent lights.
They close in.
Then they shift.
And the space they make shows meher.
My Millie.
She’s standing back from the group, near the chain-link fence, like she wasn’t sure where she was supposed to be in this moment.
Not part of the noise.
Not separate from it either.
Just… waiting.
Something inside me goes completely still.
