So am I.
We eat outside.
The desert is going gold around us, the stars are beginning to appear overhead, the pool is shimmering below the deck, and the conversation moves the way conversations do between two people who have run out of awkward and found something easier on the other side.
She talks about growing up in Vixen Falls. Her parents, Frank and Diana, and her best friend, Annie. Sophia chose the graphic design degree because it was the only thing that had ever felt genuinely hers. Then she looks across the table. “Your turn.”
So, I tell her things not usually told to people. About growing up without our father and the decision made at fifteen to be someone who stayed. About finding the Sinners, Viper, and the brotherhood that filled something not known to be empty.
About Tracker.
Not the grief of him, but the memories of his laugh, his stubbornness, and the way he had of making any room feel like the right room.
She listens the way she always does. Completely present.
When finished, she is quiet for a moment before she says, “He talked about you constantly. Every story had you in it somewhere. You were always the reference point. The person he measured things against.” A pause. “He loved you so much, Tate.” My eyes find the desert, and I breathe it in, the dark and the quiet of it, the Nevada stillness that asks nothing of you.
“Yeah, I know.”
After a while, she reaches over and places her hand over mine on the table.
Just that.
Just the warmth of it.
I turn my hand over and hold hers. Then I lift it to my lips and press a kiss there, once, unhurried, like I have nowhere else I need to be.
Sitting there like that for a long time, the desert is dark, the stars are enormous above us, and neither of us needs to fill it with anything.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
TATE
I’m up early before the sun rises.
Sophia is still beside me, her hand warm against my chest, her breathing slow and even, and the desert completely quiet outside. I lie there for a moment and feel the weight of what today is going to be, sitting alongside everything else being carried.
Mexico.
With her, it had been different from the start. I wanted to take my time to learn every curve and print her to memory, making sure she felt everything, not just physically, but completely. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt like that. Possibly never.
Carefully getting up so as not to disturb her, I take a quick shower, change, and head to the kitchen.
I feed Memphis, make coffee, and stand at the window while it is still dark, letting the weight of what is coming to settle into me properly.
The phone buzzes on the counter.
Cable.
“Prez.” It’s that focused quality his voice gets when he has something significant. “I need you to come in. I’ve got something to show you.”
My eyes go down the hallway toward the bedroom.
“How urgent?”
“Urgent enough. It’s time, Tate. We’re ready.”
Putting the phone in my pocket, I get my cut from the back of the stool, and she appears in the kitchen doorway. Her hair is loose, her eyes soft from sleep, and she reads my face the way she always does before I’ve said a word. She looks at the cut, mykeys, and whatever is in my expression that hasn’t been entirely contained.