A smile breaks across my face in the hotel lobby as I type back.
Sophia:Really well. She loved the concept.
Three dots appear immediately.
Tate:Good.
One word.
That single word sits with me for a moment longer than it should. Picking up my bag, I walk back out through the lobbyand into the Vegas afternoon, where Remy is leaning against the SUV exactly where I left him, podcast in his ears, water bottle in hand, unbothered by the world.
He pulls the earbud out when he sees my face and smiles, young, genuine, and entirely uncomplicated. “Told you.”
“You told me.”
He opens the door, I get in, and we drive back through the city toward the desert, Tate’s house, and the life I am quietly, unexpectedly, building inside it.
Chapter Sixteen
TATE
The Blood Brothers arrive in the late afternoon.
The sound reaches us before they come into view, that low-rolling thunder of multiple bikes carrying down the street, the kind that gets into your chest before your ears have caught up with it. Luke and Flame stand on either side of me without a word. Some things are just instinct.
Five bikes come around the corner, the Blood Brothers’ patch visible from a distance, the late Vegas sun catching chrome, leather, and the road dust of four days riding.
Quill leads them in.
He cuts the engine and climbs off his bike, pulling his helmet free, and when those blue eyes find mine across the lot, something in my chest loosens that I hadn’t realized was wound that tight.
Crossing the distance between us, we embrace the way brothers do, hard and without ceremony, brief enough, and it still says everything it needs to.
When we pull back, I look at him. “Are we good?”
He holds my gaze, long enough that I feel the weight of everything between us, the call I’d made without him, all of it sitting in that one question.
Then he nods. “We’re good.”
The breath that leaves me is slow and quiet.
“How are you holding up?” His voice drops into something that has nothing to do with presidents, patches, or the business that brought us all here.
“Miss him every day. Every single one.”
Something moves behind his eyes, like grief, recognition, and the pain of a man who felt it, too, deeply and without pretending otherwise.
“So do I, brother.” Quiet. Like the words cost something.
Neither of us needs to hold it longer than it lasts, then it passes, and we turn to the rest of them.
Hawke appears first, blond hair loose from whatever he’d had it tied back in for the ride, rolling his neck side to side, that watchfulness already mapping the clubhouse, the lot, and the surrounding streets. We shake hands, and he claps me once on the shoulder, and that is enough between us.
Torch is next, enormous and steady, moving with the economy of a man who’d spent years being exactly where he was needed most. He grips my hand and looks at me with those calm eyes. “Good to be here, Tate.” And I know he means every word of it.
Trigger is behind him, nodding at Luke, who nods back. Those two had met before, during the Lexi situation, and the ease between them doesn’t need rebuilding.
And then Rhyder. Last off his bike, and slowly, not from exhaustion, though the ride had been long. He pulls off his helmet, runs a hand over his face, and when he looks at me, his jaw is set, and his eyes are dark and steady, which says everything his mouth doesn’t need to.
