Chloe’s POV
Dinner wrapped up slow, the way it does when nobody’s in a hurry to go anywhere.
Long tables. Paper plates. Smoke hanging in the air from the grills. Grease on fingers and laughter cutting through the noise of engines cooling down. Someone cracked open another cooler. Somebody else yelled about burnt ribs like it was the end of the world.
Layla sat beside me, shoulders finally relaxed for the first time since I got here. She laughed when one of the guys dropped his plate. Real laughter. Not the tight kind. That alone told me this place wasn’t just danger and guns. It was family. Loud, messy, rough-edged family.
When we stepped outside after eating, the night had settled in good and thick.
The desert cooled fast. Stars spread wide overhead like somebody dumped glitter acro
