“Sophia.”
Finally.
“I’m here, Tate. It’s just, when you say you’d do anything for me, do you mean it?”
“Of course, I mean it. I’m a man of my word. What is it? What do you need?”
“I don’t want to be here anymore, Tate. I want to go back to the Blood Brothers’ clubhouse. I need to be with them. I need to be close to where Tracker was, even if he’s not there anymore. I can’t keep living in Vixen Falls. I was going to call my boss today and see if I could work remotely from New York. I don’t think it’d be a problem. He’d probably love having the business reach clients there.”
Exhaling slowly, I close my eyes, trying to stay calm. The last thing I want is Sophia moving back into that clubhouse. Tracker wouldn’t have wanted that for her. He’d have wanted her to live her life, move forward, not anchor herself to a ghost. Not to the memory of what she lost.
“Sophia,” I say carefully. “I understand where you’re coming from. You miss my brother and want to be close to where he lived. It makes complete sense, but Tracker wouldn’t have wanted—”
“No.” Her voice sharpens instantly. “Don’t tell me what Tracker would have wanted for me. Tracker isn’t here. I am. He left me here alone with nothing but grief and sorrow, and this ismy life, Tate, mine. And I choose how I live it. I want to go back to New York. I need to leave Vixen Falls. Can’t you understand that?”
I run a hand through my hair, jaw tight, scrambling for something, anything, that might change her mind.
Nothing comes.
“Sophia, don’t do anything drastic just yet. Give me a couple of days, okay? Let me talk to Quill and Jasmine, see what we can work out. Just sit tight and let me make a few calls. I’ll get back to you.”
“Really?” The surprise in her voice is instant, and underneath it something else, the faintest trace of hope creeping back in. “You’re actually going to help me?”
“Yes, darlin’. I’m going to help you.”
What she doesn’t know is that what I’m actually going to do is figure out how the hell to talk her out of it. I need time to think, time to work out an angle, but something tells me that no matter what I come up with, Sophia already knows exactly what she wants.
And she’s not going to settle for anything less.
I toss my phone onto the bed and sit there for a moment in the quiet of my room, staring at nothing in particular.
The call with Sophia sits in my chest, heavy in the way conversations about Tracker always are, leaving behind that particular hollow feeling that no amount of whiskey, noise, or company ever quite reaches. She’s struggling. I’d heard it underneath every word, the sound of a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will and starting to run out of reasons to keep doing it.
And I’d made her a promise I didn’t have a plan to keep yet.
A knock at the door.
“Yeah.”
The door opens, and Raven slips inside, closing it quietly behind her. She’s wearing next to nothing, a small dark dress that leaves very little to the imagination, her long black hair loose around her shoulders, dark eyes finding mine immediately across the room. She’s stunning in that way she always is, effortless and confident, like she’s been put together specifically to make a man forget whatever was on his mind.
Right now, I could use exactly that.
“Heard you got back,” she says, her voice low and smooth as she crosses the room toward me.
“Word travels fast.”
“Always does in this clubhouse.” She stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell her perfume, something dark and warm, and tilts her head slightly, reading me the way she always does. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She looks at me for a moment with that particular look she has, the one that sees more than I usually let people see, and I exhale slowly.
“Raven.” Keeping my voice low, easy, giving her the honesty she deserves. “You know I’m not going to be able to give you more than this. That’s not where my head is, and it’s not going to be. I need you to know that.”
She holds my gaze. “I know,” she says.
And the flicker of something underneath it, something she’s already made her peace with, or is doing a very good job of pretending she has, is brief, quiet, and gone before either of us can make anything of it.
