“I am.”
I laughed and closed my eyes to the sun. “I can’t remember what it was like without you.”
“I will take that compliment.”
A quiet fell over us. Alexei was silent and still enough that I forgot he was there. I was half asleep when he spoke again. “You said your family here did not know about you for a long time. How did that change?”
I cracked an eye. “Appleby. My mum’s family always went. Carter was a known name, and one year, when I was about ten, I think, someone realised who I was, and Joe just happened to be up there rescuing any horse that got left behind.”
Alexei nodded, digesting. “Appleby is the horse fair, yes? For Travellers and the Romani people?”
“Yup.”
“It is where you killed a man.”
“You hacked my prison file too?”
“I did.”
For Alexei, it was as normal as him telling me he liked sugar in his tea. For me... it wasn’t as disturbing to hear as it usually was. Maybe saying it out loud to Mateo had shifted my soul.
All I knew for certain was that Mateo had been gone long enough, and because he was always there when I needed him most, he clomped back into the lay-by a split second later.
He came close enough to crouch at my side, his amber gaze as close to an apology as it ever got. “Sorry.”
Alexei waved him away. “Please, enforcer. I live with a man who throws his boots at the wall when he cannot find matching socks.”
“Cam? Really?”
“You think it is Saint?”
Mateo cracked a smile.
It was beautiful, even from a side view.
Head-on when he turned to me?
Fucking hell.
Mateo reached out. My breath caught in my chest. Was he going to touch me? Really? In front of Alexei?
No.
Apparently not. He was going to pick hay from my hair instead. Lots of it.
Fucking Joe.
It was late afternoon. Mateo and Alexei went back to talking about weapons while I daydreamed about Mateo’s tattooed skin. The horses on his arms and their connection to a life I might’ve lived if my dad hadn’t died. The delicate fairies that were too pretty for a man like him but somehow worked.
I thought of the heat of him too, as he’d let me explore his bare chest. Four days had passed since he’d fallen asleep on the roof, and we hadn’t been alone much since. I didn’t know what would happen when we were. Or where we’d be. Mostly I wondered how it would feel to sleep with his arms around me. I wonderedhard, twisting my brain in every direction it could bend without breaking. I was in a brand-new world when a phone buzzed with a message.
It wasn’t mine. I opened my eyes to Mateo squinting at his screen. I watched emotions pass through him, each one darker than the first.
Then he held the phone up to me while he growled at Alexei.
“We gotta fly. There’s a Russian who ain’t you in Cam’s face.”
* * *
