Chapter 160 Lunch, For A Change

Chapter 160 Lunch, For A Change
Rosa spotted them the second they walked through the clubhouse doors.

"There you are." She came around the bar wiping her hands on a towel, looking at all three of them with the particular scrutiny of someone who'd been keeping tabs. "You've all been ghosts lately."

"We've been busy," Cade said.

"Busy doing what, exactly." Rosa's eyes narrowed slightly. "Nobody tells me anything anymore. I used to know everything happening in this club within a day."

"Some of it isn't really lunch conversation," Renzo said.

"Everything's lunch conversation if you frame it right." Rosa pointed toward the back room where Mara and Lina were already setting the table, clearly having anticipated exactly this outcome. "Sit, all three of you. You look like you haven't eaten a proper meal in days."

"We've eaten," Lyra said.

"Sandwiches in a bush don't count as eating," Rosa said, and Lyra glanced at Renzo, wondering how much detail he'd actually shared.

"I might have mentioned the sandwiches," Renzo admitted, not looking remotely apologetic.

They ended up around the long table in the back room, plates filling fast as Rosa brought out more than any of them had asked for, the way she always did when she'd decided someone needed feeding properly.

"So," Lina said, sliding into the seat across from Lyra, "what exactly have you three been doing that's kept you out of the kitchen for a week."

"Club business," Cade said, deliberately vague.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer you're getting."

Mara set a plate down in front of Renzo, studying him for a second longer than necessary. "You're moving stiffer than usual."

"I'm fine."

"You've said that every single day this month," Mara said. "At some point it stops being reassuring and starts being suspicious."

"It's not suspicious. It's consistent."

"It's concerning," Lina said. "Same thing, different word."

Renzo shot her a look that had less irritation in it than his words suggested. Dante appeared in the doorway just as everyone had settled, pausing when he saw the full table.

"Didn't realize this was a gathering," he said.

"It's not," Rosa said, already pulling out a chair for him without asking. "It's lunch. Sit."

Dante hesitated for half a second, glancing at Cade like he was checking whether this counted as a break he could actually afford to take, then sat. "You never eat with us anymore either," Rosa told him, setting a plate down.

"I've had a lot on my plate," Dante said.

"That's a terrible joke."

"It's an accurate one."

Rosa gave him a look that suggested she wasn't fully buying either the joke or the excuse, but let it go, moving on to refill Renzo's water without being asked.

The conversation drifted easy for a while, the kind of unhurried talk that hadn't happened in the apartment or the clubhouse in longer than Lyra realized until she was actually sitting in the middle of it.

Lina told a story about a supplier who'd tried to deliver the wrong order twice in a row and then acted personally offended when Rosa refused to accept it.

"He said I was being difficult," Rosa said, outraged all over again just retelling it. "I ordered chicken. He brought fish. Twice."

"Maybe he thought you'd like a change," Dante said, mild.

"Nobody asked for a change. I asked for chicken."

"Terrifying woman," Renzo said to Lina, under his breath but not quiet enough.

"I heard that," Rosa said.

"You were meant to."

Dante actually laughed at that, low and real, something Lyra realized she'd rarely heard from him.

He looked different sitting here, less like the man who ran meetings about deadlines and land filings and more like someone who'd simply forgotten, for a few minutes, that any of that existed.

"You should do this more," Mara told him, refilling his glass. "Sit with us. Eat something that isn't standing up at your desk."

"I don't have time most days," Dante said.

"You have time today."

"Today's an exception."

"Make more exceptions," Mara said simply, and Dante looked at her for a moment like he was actually considering it.

Lyra watched the whole exchange, something warm settling in her chest at the ease of it, the way this room held all of them together regardless of titles or roles or whatever crisis was unfolding two fields away from where they sat. "You've gone quiet," Lina said, nudging her.

"Just thinking," Lyra said.

"About the busy nothing you've all been doing?"

"Something like that."

Lina studied her for a second, clearly reading more into the deflection than Lyra meant to give away, but let it drop with the ease of someone who understood there were things that weren't hers to press on.

Halfway through the meal, Renzo reached for the bread at the same moment Lina did, their hands brushing briefly before he pulled back, murmuring an apology that seemed slightly too formal for something so small. "You can have the bread, Renzo," Lina said, amused. "It's not a competition."

"I know it's not."

"You looked like it was."

"I didn't look like anything." He took a piece, deliberately unhurried now, like proving a point to nobody in particular.

Lyra caught Rosa watching the exchange from across the table, something knowing in her expression before she smoothly redirected the conversation elsewhere, asking Dante something about the club's supply schedule that pulled everyone's attention away.

Cade, beside Lyra, leaned in slightly. "You saw that too."

"Saw what," Lyra said, keeping her voice low.

"Whatever that was, with the bread."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." Cade's mouth twitched, amused, and she elbowed him lightly under the table, both of them letting it go without saying anything more.

By the time the meal wound down, the plates mostly empty and the conversation settling into something slower and more comfortable, Dante pushed back from the table with a small, genuine sigh.

"This was good," he said, looking around at all of them. "I don't do this enough."

"You don't do this at all, usually," Rosa said.

"Fair."

"Come back next week," Mara said. "All of you, not just when someone drags you here."

"I'll try," Dante said, and for once it didn't sound like a deflection.

He stood, nodding to Cade and Renzo. "Back to it, when you're ready, but finish eating first. Nothing's collapsing in the next twenty minutes."

He left, and the table settled back into its easy rhythm for a while longer, nobody in a hurry to break apart the rare.

Lyra leaned into Cade's side, watching Lina and Renzo across the table, the careful distance between them that didn't quite manage to look careful at all.

"We should do this more," she said quietly, echoing Mara's words to Dante.

"We should," Cade agreed, his arm settling around her shoulders. "Before we forget how."