I nodded. “Not as many as you, though. I think my dick would fall off if I used it that much.”
Mateo rolled his eyes, saying nothing. Then he yawned and I remembered he hadn’t slept in... fuck, I didn’t even know how long.
It was his trick to mess with pillows until he was happy I was comfortable.
I stole it and slid one under his head, pushing his hair out of his face with my other hand, thumb lingering near his mangled eyebrow—the opposite side to the scar he already had. Christ, he was so beautiful. “We should get some sleep.”
Mateo’s lids were already drooping. He fought them, though, naturally. It was a rare night—day, whatever—that he let himself rest before me. “Give me a sec. I’ll throw a pillow on the floor.”
“Eh?”
Unwelcome alertness flooded his features. “We can’t sleep in this bed now—not together.”
I bit back a smile. His fears were vivid and real and based on everything I’d ever told him. Everything he’d ever seen. But he’d missed something neither of us ever saw coming. “This isn’t my bed,” I stated a second time, louder, firmer. “I never slept here. And even if I had, in what fucking universe do you live if you think I’m gonna let you take a brick to the face, then sleep on the floor?”
A universe where he was the protector and no one looked after him. But I was done with that shit. Over it. And perhaps it showed on my face.
Mateo gazed at me a heartbeat longer.
Then he closed his eyes and passed the fuck out.
* * *
Four days was a long time to be away from home. I couldn’t fathom how I’d survived six years in a prison cell.
That was someone else’s life.
This was mine.
Mateo steered the HGV into the yard. I was still transfixed by his popping biceps as he expertly spun the wheel, but my fascination with him was different now.
Before, my heart had skipped a beat every time I’d laid eyes on him. Now, it jumped and it stayed there, lifted to a higher plane of awareness, and I couldn’t stop staring, even when he caught me.
His face was a mess, bruising darkening both eyes, the wound on his eyebrow freshly scabbed over. His answering half-smile, though?
I’d banked that shit the moment I’d woken up in the hotel room to find him hovering over me with a KFC, a nerve-free grin, and instructions from Nash to hurry the fuck up.
We’d survived the thing we were most scared of, and everything was going to be okay.
Yeah, right.Life had taught me that optimism was naïvety wrapped up as something different, but there were days when I couldn’t care less about how I should be predicting the future, and today was one of them.
The HGV came to a stop. Mateo killed the engine and turned to me, but his door was ripped open before he could speak and Cam appeared on the steps. He gripped Mateo’s jaw and turned his head this way and that, examining his war wounds. “You feel okay?”
Mateo detached himself from our president’s hold. “I’m good, boss.”
Cam grunted. “Come with me anyway.”
His tone left no room for argument. Mateo tossed me a droll look and slid out of the cab, and I missed him instantly.
Four days was a long time to be in your best friend’s pocket without an audience.
Friends with benefits, bro.
Mother of Christ. No. That wasn’t what we were. We’d barely kissed since that charged afternoon in the Best Western—every biker’s dream—but even if we never fucked again, what we’d shared was so far from FWB that a wild laugh escaped me.
I found our bags and jumped down from the cab. Decoy was waiting for me, his expression a million times less intense than Cam’s had been, and this dude hadstrictembedded in every feature when he wasn’t with Ivy.
He handed me a beer. On his wrist, he wore the same bracelet as me and Mateo, black, with gunmetal silver woven into the band. “Good work,” he said with a fraternal up-nod. “Not a minute behind schedule, even with the fight club interval.”
