“Motorcycle club presidents aren’t exactly low-risk environments.”
I smile. “You’re literally a Marine.”
“Exactly.”
That makes me laugh, really laugh, and I realize with a small, startled jolt that it’s the first time I’ve laughed properly in weeks. Since before Ryan. Since before everything.
Annie pulls me into a tight hug that doesn’t leave much room for argument. “Call me for anything,” she says into my hair. “Any time. Any hour. I don’t care.”
“I will. I promise.”
She pulls back and looks at me with those sharp, steady eyes.
“And if that biker messes up, you’ll fly to Vegas too?”
“Try and stop me.”
***
The Vegas heat wraps around me the moment I step outside the airport.
It’s like walking into a furnace. I feel the heat immediately, and it’s completely unforgiving.
Standing there on the sidewalk with my carry-on, I blink against the brightness while the air shimmers off the asphalt in visible waves, the sky above so blue and vast it feels almost aggressive.
Shielding my eyes against the glare, I scan the pick-up area.
And then I see him.
Tate is leaning against a black truck with his arms crossed and dark sunglasses hiding his eyes, completely still in the middle of all that noise and movement, like the heat doesn’t touch him, and the chaos around him simply doesn’t register. Even from across the lot, he looks exactly like what he is.
Tall.
Broad.
Covered in tattoos.
Authority rolling off him like a second skin.
When his eyes find mine, he straightens and starts toward me, closing the distance with that long, unhurried stride of his. He’s wearing light blue ripped jeans, a white tank top with his cut over the top, and he moves through the crowd the way men like him always do, as if the space around them belongs to them by default.
He reaches me, pulls off his sunglasses, and that’s when the resemblance hits me properly.
He smiles a gorgeous, easy smile, and my stomach drops.
Because I’ve seen that smile before.
It lives in the same place on Ryan’s face. Comes from the same corner of the same mouth. Reaches the same depth in the same green eyes.
The resemblance knocks the breath out of me. For a second, I can’t breathe around it or decide if seeing Ryan in Tate’s face is the most comforting thing in the world or the most frightening. Maybe both. Maybe that’s always going to be the answer.
Forcing myself to breathe, I smile back. “Hello, Tate.”
“Hello, Soph.”
Soph.Ryan used to call me that. I hadn’t realized until just now how much I needed to hear it.
For a moment, neither of us moves or speaks. We stand there in the furnace heat with all that unspoken weight between us—the grief, the promise, and the strangeness of this moment. Two people who had Ryan in common and very little else, standing outside a Vegas airport like this was somehow always the plan.
