Page 194 of Reckless

The floor creaks under her bare feet before I hear her voice. She comes in wearing one of my shirts, sleeves pushed up, hair loose and tangled from sleep, and she doesn’t say a word before she takes her cup from the counter and hops up to sit beside the sink, legs swinging slightly, eyes on the window and the gray light easing into gold outside. I sit at the table and watch her do it, the same as I have most mornings for three months now, and I still haven’t gotten used to how much I need these ten minutes of my day.

I spent years convincing myself that quiet was something I did alone.

Turns out I only had half of it figured out.

My phone buzzes against the table.

Sin: Marcus’ six-month thing today. Church at two, party after. Bring Sage.

I type back a single word…

Me: Yep

And set the phone face down.

“Sin?” Sage asks, not looking away from the window.

“Marcus is six months old today, and you know what Vick is like. She loves a damn milestone.”

She smiles into her cup. “He’s going to run this club by the time he’s five.”

“He’s already running it. That kid has all of us wrapped around his tiny puffy fingers.”

She laughs, the real one, low in her chest, and slides off the counter to stand behind my chair, arms draped over my shoulders, chin resting against the top of my head. I reach up and cover her hand with mine, and neither of us moves for a while.

And this, right here, is the entire reason I get up at six every morning instead of eight. I would build my whole life around ten more minutes of this if she let me.

Her phone lights up on the table next to mine. She reaches past me to check it, and I feel her go still.

“Millie,” she says. “The mine hit its quarterly number early. She wants to know if we’re coming to the bakery first before the clubhouse so she can brag about it in person instead of over text.”

“We’re going.”

“You already knew, didn’t you?”

“I ran the projections three weeks ago.” I don’t tell her I’ve watched Anchor find reasons to be at that mine every single day Millie is scheduled there, because that’s a thing Millie will announce on her own timeline and not a second before, and I respect that about her.

By the time we’re dressed and out the door, the morning has turned properly warm, the kind of Vegas heat that arrives early and sticks around, and we take the bike instead of the truck because Sage asked, and I don’t say no to her about the bike anymore.

At the bakery, Millie is already covered in flour to the elbow, grinning at us over the counter like she’s been waiting all morning to say the number out loud, and when she does, Sage whoops loud enough that a customer near the window jumps. Millie laughs under her breath, shaking her head as if she still can’t quite believe this is her life.

Piper is waiting at the clubhouse when we arrive, sitting out the front with her laptop balanced on her knees, and she signs at me before I’ve even parked. ‘Your coffee situation here is criminal. I’m fixing it. Don’t argue.’

I don’t argue. She’s been in this city for months, and she’s already got opinions about the clubhouse coffee, the design studio’s lighting, and, more recently, the amount of time a certain brother has taken to spend parked outside her apartment building on a bike that doesn’t need to be there.

I know about Deek.

I haven’t said anything to Sage.

Deek is my brother, and he’s never once, in the years I’ve known him, stayed interested in a woman past three weeks, and he’s been circling Piper for six months now like he’s forgotten how to want anything else. I’m not getting in the middle of that. When Piper is ready to admit what’s obvious to every single person who isn’t her, I’ll be first in line to buy the drinks, and I hope to God it doesn’t take them as long as it took Sage and me.

Church runs long, the good kind of long, Sin walking the table through mine numbers that would have sounded like a fantasy two years ago. When we come out, the main room has already filled with the noise, Ro behind the bar, the television in the corner running local news on mute. I catch the crawl at the bottom of the screen.

State Senator Calloway announces he will not seek re-election, citing health…

Sage sees it, too, and I watch her read it. Something in her shoulders drops half an inch, the kind of release that happens in a body before the mind has caught up to why.

Maria arrives a little after three, dressed in jeans instead of her uniform, carrying a gift bag that looks like it took her far longer to choose than she’d ever admit.