“Oh, bold,” Penny whispers.
Gwen’s eyes narrow, and Finn lifts both hands. “Respectfully.”
She presses both palms flat against the bar. “Hotshot, you have known me for thirty minutes and already committed two offenses.”
Finn’s mouth tugs at one corner. “Only two?”
“Three, if you think that dimple will get you a discount.”
Finn’s grin deepens, but he wisely stays put.
Tucker laughs into his drink. “He’s gonna die here.”
“Come on, Ashgrove,” Penny pipes up. “Everyone knows it’s Ginger, anyway.”
Fletch slaps the tabletop. “Correct. That's why we keep her.”
My hand tightens around Penny’s as the words hit me in the chest, because yeah. We do. I do.
Penny looks down quickly, and I know she feels it too.
“Anyway.” Fletch leans back against the booth. “Lawson loved Sporty Spice.”
Remi’s head lifts, and the silence fills the space fast. Fletch’s face changes, his jaw tightening around whatever grief just punched through him.
“Sorry. I—”
“No, he didn’t love Sporty Spice,” Remi says quietly. “He only said Sporty because it made Fletcher mad.”
Everyone stills, and her eyes stay on the glass in front of her. “He loved Baby Spice the most.”
For a second, nobody moves. Then Fletch lets out a broken laugh and lifts his beer toward her. “That manipulative bastard.”
Remi’s mouth trembles, and she lets out the smallest sound beside Rhodes. It's more a breath than laugh, but everybody notices it, including Rhodes. His eyes close briefly, like the sound of his daughter trying to laugh through her heartbreak physically hurts him. I look away.
Penny leans into my side. “You okay?”
The irony of her asking me nearly makes me laugh. We’ve both answered it too many times this week.
“Nope.”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “Me neither.”
I look down at our joined hands. Bruises still shadow the inside of her wrist, peeking out from under my hoodie sleeve, and anger flashes through me, hot and sudden.
Stacey is in custody, with charges and a no-contact order stacked between her and my family. But the man who hurt Penny is still out there, and it sits wrong under my skin every time I think about it. Tucker says they're looking, and Beck is handing over everything they need from our side.
But none of that changes the fact that Penny has bruises. Both the ones on her skin, and the ones I can't see.
Her thumb strokes once across my knuckles.
“I’m here,” she murmurs. “Not going anywhere.”
“I know,” I say, squeezing back.
The noise rises again, and I realize maybe this is how people survive it. You take the good with the bad, and the happy with the sad. That’s all anyone can manage right now. Laughing through their pain, because silence is heavier—and nobody in this room is willing to let Remi carry it alone.
The moment shatters when somebody calls out from behind us. “Prince, your kid’s hustling retirees at pool!”
