“Not sure.”
“Saint thinks you’re about to pass out.”
“Saint’s a drama queen.”
Mateo chuckled, dark and rich. “Say that to his face.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Because I know what happens when doctors prod your guts too hard, and I’d bet my left nut you can’t open your eyes without puking right now.”
He was depressingly right.
I hummed a response.
He laughed again and the world stopped fucking spinning.
Back in the room, I opened my eyes. Saint was still in front of me, not touching, just there. He peered at my face, interpreted what he saw, and rose, stepping out of my eyeline to disappear who the hell knew where.
I sat back in my seat, gripping the phone Saint had left on my shoulder, and expelled a slow breath, registering for the first time the deep rumble of an HGV engine filtering down the call line. “How’s life on the road?”
“Boring,” Mateo said. “Decoy’s music taste is shit and he doesn’t like football.”
“You don’t have anything else in common?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know... your love of all things Sergeant Malone?”
Mateo grunted. Then I heard Decoy in the background and a muttered curse. “I gotta go. Roadworks coming up and I need to stay sharp. You gonna be okay?”
“Always was.”
“Yeah, yeah. Call you later?”
“If you like.” He wouldn’t. Mateo hated talking on the phone even more than Saint.
Mateo snorted and hung up. I lowered Saint’s phone and stared at the cartoon unicorn he used as a lock screen. Pretty cute for our ferocious sergeant-at-arms, but it worked for Saint. If you knew, you knew.
And he knew everything, apparently, cos wouldn’t you know, I followed him out of the hospital with a fucking smile on my face.
When I’d righted my equilibrium, we spent the rest of the day training on the remote campsite he owned and sometimes lived on when the claustrophobic nature of club life overwhelmed him.
It was a new thing—the open invitation he’d extended to me. And I wasn’t on my best form, but Saint was a patient man. He sparred with me for hours, until my frustration morphed into something else and I got the better of him, just once.
He wasn’t coming back to the compound. I borrowed a beat-up hog from his collection and swung my leg over the saddle.
Saint handed me a helmet. “Don’t eat dirt. I don’t want to fight Mateo to the death over yours.”
“You think I’m gonna crash?”
“I think you’re batshit crazy without supervision.”
“Don’t say that in court, brother.”
Saint rolled his eyes and turned away. I gunned the engine on the battered softail. It was rough and loud and spoke to me in ways that erased the fatigue in my muscles. The grit in my eyes. My blood family were horse people, but this... the speed, the torque. The power between my legs, it was home.
I cast one last glance at Saint. “Hey, brother?”
