On top of wanting to fuck, of course.
A strange shiver rattled my spine. I still wanted to have sex with him and I wished I didn’t. If I didn’t want to fuck him, it’d be easier to stop thinking about him. And I needed to stop thinking about him.
I needed a distraction. Just a day. Maybe two.Then I’ll go back and be the brother they all need.As I made the vow to myself, I came up on an abandoned car. It was old, a ’93 Ford Fiesta with mismatched alloys and a rusted bumper. In short, it was a worthless heap of shit, half hidden by undergrowth, with Mateo and Saint written all over it. A getaway car. Registered to a fake name and dull enough to be ignored.
Old enough to be hot-wired.
Works for me.
The traffic on the road was light, but I didn’t have a T-shirt on, so I kept to the bushes until I reached the car and slipped inside unnoticed.
There were tools in the footwell. Mateo and Saint were nothing if not efficient.
I grabbed what I needed and hot-wired the old car. It spluttered to life, the battery on its last legs, but it had enough petrol for where I wanted to go.
Keeping a sharp eye out for feds, I eased the banger out of the bushes and onto the lay-by that led to the road, slipping into the traffic behind a Tesco truck.
I hadn’t driven a car in... fuck, I didn’t even know, for multiple reasons, but the main one was that I hated it. Without the wind in my face and rain pelting my skin, it was claustrophobic as hell and a world away from the one I’d come from.
Wagons.
Horses.
Caravans.
I rolled the car window down and blasted myself with heady summer air, but it was laced with too much cheap diesel for me to enjoy it much.
Newquay couldn’t come soon enough. I turned off the A-road and dumped the car in another lay-by, this one deserted enough that no one saw me. Then I walked the last mile or so to my cousin’s horse farm.
The black stallion was in his field, stomping around. His energy made me feel lazy. Tired even. It was hard to believe I’d only been awake half a day and not three weeks straight.
I stopped to watch Shadow, un-offended and unsurprised when he ignored me. Leaning against the old oak tree felt good. With the sun in my face, I almost relaxed. Until I remembered Mateo had climbed trees to watch his daughter ride horses.
Fuck. That had really happened. The chafed, raw sensation in every nerve wasn’t a bad dream, and the guilt that I wanted that gorgeous little girl to be a nightmare was here to stay.
I pushed off the tree and continued down the lane. Joe’s farmhouse was up ahead, but I rarely found him there. I meandered along half expecting him to appear from behind a drystone wall. The distant sound of his laugh and a baby crying caught me off guard.
Squinting, I drifted to a stop, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand. Up ahead, my cousin and his husband stood by an open car door, a newborn baby in Joe’s arms while Harry stood behind him, wider and taller than even Rubi, looming protectively like only a father could.
Fathers. Plural.
They had a baby.Somewhere among the disaster I was, I was happy for my cousin. Ecstatic. He’d had a shitty life and he deserved to be happy. But the warm glow of proud parents was the last place I wanted to be, so I did the brave thing and walked away.
I took the long way back to the old car, still shirtless and a hot mess. There was a calm that came from being close to my kin, though, even if they had no clue I was here.
It made up for being without my brothers.
Without Mateo.
And the reality that when I went home, everything would be different. I’d sleep alone. Mateo wouldn’t sleep at all. And every time I looked at him, I’d wish he wasn’t a man who’d sacrificed his entire life for someone else and hate myself for it.
Musing on that kept me company till the end of the lane. I almost didn’t notice the luxury SUV pulling along beside me until the tinted window lowered and Alexei called my name.
Startled, I spun to face him.
He leaned across the empty passenger seat and opened the door. “Get in.”
“Why?”
