“No, Rubi’s fun. He showed me some maps today and we drew one together.”
Every shitty thing I’d ever said and done to Rubi came back to haunt me. I faced the ocean, the wind in my face, the sand in the air gritting my eyes. “What about your ma? She okay?”
“She’s tired. Rubi’s making her eat lots of spinach and rest.”
“Are you eating lots of spinach too?”
“Er, no. It’s disgusting. Me and Embry have baked beans instead.”
Embry.I dropped into a crouch, pressing my fist into a pile of smashed shells, grounding myself in the biting pain. “Watch that Embry. He’s your best friend until he makes you read a lot.”
“He already did that. There’s an app on the iPad, but I don’t mind. He’s nice.”
Nice. I wasn’t a wordsmith, but even I knew that one didn’t come close to describing what Embry was. I missed him so fucking much. “Is he okay? He gets tired too sometimes.”
“Hang on. I’ll go look...”
“You don’t have to do that—”
The line muffled. My industrious kid was on the move. A door opened, then a distant voice.Embry’svoice. I couldn’t make out what he said. Just that he didn’t seem as furious as he had when I’d last seen him.He wasn’t just angry, bro. You fucking broke him.
Go me.
The rustling on the line came back. Another door opened and closed. “Lili?”
“I’m here. He was asleep. I woke him up and told him you said hello.”
Amazing. “What did he say back? Was it a swear word?”
“Only a little one. Then he said you should be sleeping too and not to stay up all night throwing knives at your dartboard.”
I couldn’t do that because Saint had taken all my fun knives away. Two hours later he had me hoofing Glocks around, but I got the sentiment. “I’m not throwing knives at anything. I’m at the beach with Saint.”
“In the dark?”
“Saint likes getting his feet wet.”
“When are you coming to see me?”
The half-smile twisting my lips fell. I rubbed my chest with my free hand and sat back on the sand. “I don’t know if I can... not for a while. Your mum told you what we have to do, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, but Embry and Rubi are here, and you said they’d keep us safe.”
“They will.”
“Then why can’t you come?”
Explaining it broke my fucking heart all over again. Liliana didn’t cry. She never had, not with me, but her pain and frustration hit me like a sledgehammer all the same.
We said goodbye and she went back to Rubi, and it was a fucked-up thing that I wished he was her dad instead of me.
“Better?”
I glanced up.
Saint stood over me, his hair blowing all over the show. He peered down and frowned. “Worse?”
I shrugged and hauled myself to my feet. “It was good to hear her voice. I, uh, I’ve never spoken to her on the phone before.”
