Page 255 of Romeo

The ordinary memories hurt worse than anything King could’ve described.

Brandy had been ours long before any of us knew she had Silver Shadows blood.

Knowing Stone had put his hands on her made me wish death came with a fucking encore.

Torment got her out and Brandy was alive. The baby was alive.

Stone wasn’t.

That was what mattered.

It still didn’t erase the thought that followed me through the rest of church.

Hex had burned his cut, changed his name, moved away, and spent decades keeping his children outside the life he’d escaped.

Stone still found Brandy.

I’d spent months telling myself Fiona was safer in Virginia.

Tonight, fifteen hundred miles felt less like protection and more like endless fucking miles.

The scrape of chairs finally pulled me back into church. King had ended the meeting, and brothers were starting to move around me, conversations picking up in low voices as men headed for the door. I stayed where I was long enough for Ace to bump my shoulder on his way past.

“You coming?”

“In a minute.”

He gave me a look but kept walking.

I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.

Maybe for the feeling to pass.

It didn’t.

By the time I made it upstairs, I had my phone in my hand. Fiona’s name sat on the screen, and for once I didn’t want the buffer of a text. I didn’t want to type something, wait, watch the three little dots appear, then disappear while she decided how much of herself to give me.

I wanted the parts she couldn’t censor.

Fiona answered on the third ring, her voice soft enough that the last remnants of church finally loosened their grip on me.

“Hi.”

I pushed open my bedroom door and let it swing shut behind me. “There’s my girl.”

The breath she took was barely more than a hitch, but the phone caught it. I’d started collecting those little reactions without meaning to. A pause half a second too long. A laugh that went breathless around the edges. The way she inhaled when I slipped past whatever answer she’d been expecting.

“You called,” she said.

A smile tugged at my mouth as I shrugged out of my cut. “Starting to worry about that Virginia education, Cher. Usually when the phone rings and my voice comes out of it, that means I called.”

“You know what I meant.” Her laugh followed me across the room. “You usually text first.”

“Texting gives you an unfair advantage.” I hung my cut over the chair and sat on the edge of the bed, toeing off one boot. “You get to see what I said, glare at the screen, call me an asshole, rethink whatever you were about to send, then pretend I didn’t get to you.”

“I do not do that.”

The denial came too quickly.