“Son, we tell them every morning.”
I knew that as much as I knew Jekka loved me.
We said our goodbyes. I stared at my blank phone screen a moment, but it wasn’t long before my gaze returned to the bar.
Decoy’s pain did something to me I couldn’t explain. It drew me forward when most nights I’d have hit the road already to make the five-hour trip home to check up on my family.
It’s what kept me in this life when I should’ve got out when Rocco died.
Not true. You’d never leave Locke.
Not yet, maybe. But that was a dance in my brain for another day. Now, despite the fact that I rarely drank, I needed in that bar more than anything.
I left my bike and crossed the yard.
Alexei met me at the steps, hands damp from the six cycles of washing he’d completed in the time it had taken me to get this far. I spent a lot of time with Alexei. I knew his nuances too. They just didn’t affect me so much. Also, he had other people to worry about him.
So does Decoy. And yet, here I was, ascending the steps with a dude who probably didn’t want a drink in the noisy clubhouse bar any more than I did.
Life was strange.
At the top, I reached around Alexei and opened the bar door for him.
He flashed me a wry look, but it died as his gaze found what he really needed after the long night we’d spent chest-deep in cold water.
Saint was waiting for him, and Alexei was as drawn to him as I was to the man who stood at the end of the bar, lost in bad thoughts as our brothers talked over him.
Alexei slipped between Saint and Rubi, his smaller build instantly engulfed by their towering frames. Nash and River were beside them, and I sensed mischief in the air as much as Decoy’s hushed misery.
“Folksie.” Rubi shot me a laddish grin. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“You want an update before Alexei comes to church in the morning?”
Rubi snorted and waved the notion away. “If you’d seen anything important, Mr Flipper, I’d know it by now.”
Alexei reappeared from Saint’s embrace. “Mr Flipper? That is the best you can do?”
Rubi blinked. “Huh?”
“Veles.”
Alexei swept his gaze over me as if his words made complete sense. But the Slavic term was lost on Rubi. On me? I spoke better Russian than Rubi would ever know, and if Alexei wanted to deign me a god, I wasn’t going to complain.
Alexei went back to his quiet conversation with his lover.
Rubi shook off his bemusement and beckoned me closer. “We need to talk to you.”
“No, we don’t.” Nash reached around River and grasped Rubi’s thick arm, tugging him back.
But Rubi was a big fella. And he was drunk. Determined. Whatever was on his mind was gonna come out.
Nash let him go and slid a glance at Decoy. An instinctive gesture he was less aware of than I was. But Nash was like that. Easy to read because he cared, and it didn’t bother him to let people know.
Decoy cared too, but he wasn’t in the room right now, still lost in thought as he wiped the bar down, gaze so distant my heart gave a little lurch I wasn’t prepared for. It pushed me into getting lost in his profile. His strict shoulders and scruffy jaw. The newer ink on his muscular arms that hadn’t been there the first time he’d caught my attention in a smoky bar.
Theolderink that had been there, but I’d failed to notice because I’d been too enchanted by everything about him.
Rubi poked me.
