Maybe he meant his love life, but with his relationship status with Orla as ambiguous as it had ever been, I couldn’t be sure about that either.
“You should go home,” Nash said when I failed to answer him. “Folk’s as tough as they come, but even he’s probably wanting for a good night’s sleep after a road trip with the accountant.”
The accountant. Alexei. Sometimes I forgot who he’d been to us all before he’d become Cam and Saint’s permanent lover. And despite the fact that Folk often fell asleep on my couch, I found it hard to imagine him truly tired. It was a rare day we spent together that his boundless energy didn’t put me to shame.
Still, the fact that Nash assumed Folk was coming home with me eased the scraped feeling in my chest. I washed dishes and listened to Nash talk about bikes and music before he braved the elephant in the room that had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the brothers that weren’t here.
“They moved Embry off the HDU ward.”
I shut the plate cupboard. “Liliana told me. She’s been texting me a lot from his phone.”
“She gets the tea first.” Nash grinned a little. “But I got it from Mats. I spoke to him when I got up.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Terrible. I sent Orls to mother him. We’re going to stay with him when he gets back tonight.”
“What about Liliana?”
“Rubi’s going to keep her until Juana gets her from school tomorrow.”
I heaved a sigh. I’d ducked the gritty details of what had put Embry back in hospital, but I knew from the trauma I’d seen in Rubi and River that it had been horrific. And I missed my friend. Being a parent hadn’t been high up on Embry’s bucket list, but fuck, he was good at it.
Better than me.
“Hey.” Nash fist-bumped my arm. “He’s going to be okay, brother. It’s Mateo we need to worry about. Not sure he’s going to get over watching his husband flatline anytime soon.”
And there it was. The reality I’d avoided until now. “Fucking hell. Did Liliana see that?”
Nash shook his head. “River got her out. Rubes did, though. And he’s all kinds of fucked up about it. If he asks you for a cuddle, do me a favour and give him one, eh?”
“Whatever he needs.”
We were pretty much done with the washing up. I peered through the open kitchen door, searching for Folk with little conscious thought. He was with Rubi, listening the way he always did to everyone, empathy swimming in his deep gaze. I wondered if he was having the same conversation I was. How muchheknew about what had happened to Embry. And if it made his stomach twist the way it did mine.
How much I cared about that scared me.
You’re not together. It’s not real, remember?
The negative beast I’d carried my whole life was hard to ignore. But as Folk glanced up and found me, it got easier. I left the kitchen while Nash was still talking and moved closer.
Folk rose and inclined his head to the door.
Without a word to anyone else, I walked out of the chapel and didn’t blink until he caught up with me by my bike.
He already had his keys in his hand. That slow, gentle smile on his face. “Wherever you want to go, I’ll follow.”
“What if I want to go home?”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
Folk spun away to his own bike. Seconds later, the deep rumble of his Fat Boy vibrated through me.
I started my battered old V-Rod, the same one Saint had given me when he’d offered me a brotherhood that had ultimately saved my life. It was as basic as I was, stripped back to its bare mechanics.
But without it, where would I be?
I knew the answer to that question, and it wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate without revisiting a conversation I’d shared with Folk the day I’d watched him hurl himself off a cliff.
