It took me a second to unpick his words. Then a few more to dissuade myself from a pointless counter argument. If the next twenty-four hours took us to a point where I needed Alexei to keep me alive, he had to know why it was so important to me that he moved heaven and earth to do it. “I love him.”
Alexei didn’t blink. “The soldier?”
“He has a name.”
“Decoy is not a name.”
“Call him Seth then.”
“I am not sure he would want me to do that.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure either. I shut the van doors and turned to face Alexei. “Call him whatever you want. I’m just saying, you’re right. I’m not the same dude I was when we started this.”
Alexei studied me, his poker face on point. I’d had to work hard to ever know what he was thinking, and on this he was a closed book.
I couldn’t even tell if he was surprised, and for whatever reason, that bothered me. “You didn’t already know?”
“That you love him? No. I thought maybe you were fucking.Decoyis a handsome man and you have been sharing his bed. To me that seemed inevitable. I was not sure either of you had the... headspace—I think that is the word—for anything more right now.”
“Headspace works. But I can’t speak for him and how he feels.”
“He has not told you?”
“No.”
“And you have not told him.” Not a question this time. Just a flat statement I couldn’t entirely deny. Vague declarations didn’t count.
Alexei sighed. “You should tell him, Veles. This night, we do not know what it will bring, and you do not want to face death knowing you have not said all that you should.”
“We’re not going to die.”
“I know that. Is just...” Alexei shrugged. “You do not feel this? In the air? Maybe a storm is coming, but sometimes I think that storm is us, no? Or at least it isyou.”
I considered his riddle. Alexei often spoke in questions I had no answers for. He saw the world through eyes that reminded me of my baby brother. Black and white, with shades of grey no one else could see. But his words now sounded more like something Saint would say, and I wondered if he was missing his lovers as much as I was missing mine.
Lover. It sounded trite. But it wasn’t. Because I did love him, and maybe Alexei was right.
Tell him. Properly this time.
We left the van and moved back to our bikes, my Fat Boy parked next to Alexei’s menacing Ninja.
I swung a leg over mine.
Alexei was slower, frowning at something on his phone.
I started my engine, gripping the throttle, already halfway to our next location, leaving this one behind until we returned here tonight.
Alexei was usually six steps ahead of me. I wasn’t used to waiting on him. But as I rotated to face him, alarm coloured his grey eyes and the look he gave me turned me to stone.
“What is it?”
“We need to ride.”
“Why?”
He passed me the phone. I studied the grainy video on the screen, and the lump of meat in my chest splintered into a thousand pieces.
26
