He’d recruited the nearest Rebel Kings chapter to bring me a bike and leave it some place where I could reach it undetected. Where I could saddle up and fly home.
Except I wasn’t going home. My heart was calling me in the opposite direction and I couldn’t tell him why.
My brother.
My family.
The man I lied to every damn day of the week.
I’d asked God to forgive me a thousand times, but I’d never forgive myself.
10
MATEO
“There you are. Dirty stop out.”
I yanked off my helmet and turned my head in the direction of the hollered greeting. Over the rumble of my borrowed Fat Boy, the faint Irish lilt could’ve belonged to any number of my brothers.
This time it was Cam, my president, his handsome face creased in the easy smile I didn’t see from him much these days. He stepped back from the outdoor kitchen counters he was oiling and came to my side, clapping me on the back, then pulling me in for a one-armed bro hug. “Thought we’d lost you. Sorry I was a grumpy cunt before you left. Lot on my mind, you know?”
His affection had always been hard to take. His natural warmth bittersweet. I forced myself not to duck out of his hold and shrugged. “Mate, I’m the last person who deserves a cunt-themed apology.”
Cam grinned, no argument forthcoming. “Regardless, I’m giving it to you like I have everyone else. I’m not... fuck, you know I’m a grouchy fucker at the best of times, but I’m not myself at the moment.”
“I know, pres. We got you.”
“Works both ways.” Cam eyed me. “You seemed jumpy before you left. Something bothering you?”
“You asked me that already.”
“I’m asking you again. Talking to me doesn’t have an expiration date.”
I knew that too. But there was nothing I needed to talk about that Cam could hear, so I swallowed the words and let him draw his own conclusions, taking an educated stab in the dark where his thoughts would go.
“Em’s okay,” he said, right on cue. “In case you were worried while you were under whatever brass you picked up.”
“Brass? You an Essex boy now?”
Cam’s smile widened. “My Kilkenny born ma used to say that shit about club girls all the time.”
“Either way, I ain’t been under anyone.”
“Wouldn’t be a bad thing if you had. You and Em... the fuck is that going?”
“Where’d you want it to go?”
“Me?” Cam stepped back as I swung my leg over the bike, emptied my saddle bag, and straightened up, easing the kinks from my sore spine. “I want you both to be happy and neither of you are any closer to that then when he first came here.”
I failed to see how me banging other people fixed that. My face flattened to the dead-eyed stare our enemies saw in their nightmares, but Cam was unaffected. Dude only had to roll his head on his motherfucking pillow to find scarier freaks than me.
He took my arm. “Come with me, brother.”
Awesome. I was about to get lessons in love from a bloke who’d only figured his own shit out six months ago.
Cam led me back to the outdoor kitchen. It had been a work in progress for a couple of years, but this summer, Embry had finished the bricklaying and Rubi had paved the ground. At some point, Nash had plumbed in the sink and Saint had built worktops and furniture—the only physical work Cam had allowed him to do all year until a few weeks back.
My job was to make it all pretty. Painting, staining, fixing up the odd bits my brothers left behind. Most people figured my favourite job in construction would be fucking shit up, but I liked the finer things. Focusing on tiny details kept me calm, and Cam knew it.
