“It’s hard to be anything when you’re away nine months of the year.”
“What about now?”
This was it. The moment where I told him that even if he didn’t feel the same, there was never going to be anyone else. He was it for me. I had no clue what life had in store for us, but it had taken me thirty-five years to feel this way about someone. It wasn’t gonna happen again.
I love him.
And I wanted so desperately for him to know it, but my phone cut me off, vibrating up a storm on the floor where I’d dumped my clothes.
It was on Decoy’s side.
He rolled away to snag it, showing me the length of his bare back. His tattooed thighs. It reeled me in and I caught him before he could face me again, wrapping my arms around him from behind.
I took the phone and scanned the message.
Alexei:48 hours. Be ready.
Two days. Mixed emotions warred inside me. Leaving again so soon made my heart ache, but it was another step closer to it being over. Maybe the final step, if the war gods were on our side.
“Everything okay?”
Decoy couldn’t see me, but I realised I was death-gripping my phone, my body wound tight with tension.
I forced it away. “Yeah.”
It was all I had. I was never going to lie to him, but there was no way I could tell him the truth.
I stretched over him to drop the phone on the bedside table. It brought my chest flush to his spine and I couldn’t bring myself to move again. I buried my face between his shoulder blades and breathed him in.
He reached back and his hand came to rest on my hip. Warm. Stoic. Was it too much to hope I made him feel as safe as he did me?
I began to drift, ignoring my body’s natural reaction to being so close to him. My limbs grew loose and my breaths evened out. My mind was still busy, but the rest of me was getting the message.
“Can I tell you something?”
Decoy’s low voice washed over me like a tropical lake. I rubbed my cheek on his back. “Of course.”
“It’s about Rocco.”
My stomach twisted. I pulled my face away from the sanctuary of Decoy’s skin. “What about him?”
“The night of the fire. When Saint rescued him. It was me that gave him CPR.”
Something inside me splintered. Guilt. Anger.Grief. At this point, it was all the same, and it choked me. No one had ever told me what state they’d found Rocco’s body in months later, and Saint had hustled me away before I’d seen for myself. But it was a sad truth that Decoy’s efforts the night of the fire had been wasted. “I never saw him after that night. Before it happened, Butch Crow, he penned us in—me, Locke, and Ranger. They’d already killed Bish. We were locked up for days. By the time we got out, Rocco had already booted it from the hospital.”
“Youneversaw him again?”
“No.” I spoke without emotion. Like what had happened to my best friend was an old wound. But Decoy knew better. Of course he did. Because somehow fate had allowed us to live through it together.
As brothers, not lovers.But I’d come to learn that bond meant as much to me as the one we’d forged naked and alone in this bed.
“For what it’s worth—” Decoy rubbed my hip. “—I’m really fucking sorry you lost him.”
I took a slow breath and kissed his spine. “Me too.”
22
DECOY
