I was too caught up in the notion of being in Decoy’s bed. It took me a second to process, but I’d coined a reputation as a quiet man, so I styled it out until his words sank in, and it dawned on me that he was right. Nothing about Rubi’s outlandish proposition was anyone’s truth. Which meant it was temporary. It would have to end. And if there was one thing worse than never having everything you’d ever wanted, it was having it—livingit—then having it ripped away. “We could do it nicely. I’d never hurt your kid.”
“I know you wouldn’t. But even in a universe where any of this actually happened, she’d have to lose you, and I could never put her through that.”
What if she didn’t lose me? What if I stayed?But I didn’t utter the words aloud because they were ridiculous. None of this was about us having a genuine relationship. None of it was about me at all. I was a moving part in a bigger picture. One that mattered a lot more than the tender spot this bloke had left in my heart so long ago.
“Anyway.” Decoy rose and arched the kinks out of his spine. “I really am sorry it was something so gnarly that forced you to talk to me.”
“Forced me?” I tipped my head back to look at him. He was taller than me—I remembered from that darkened room, stretching my neck to kiss him. To lose myself in his spellbound reaction to how touching me made him feel. “That’s not why I came out here.”
Decoy raised a sandy brow, and I didn’t blame him for his scepticism. But I wasn’t the only one who’d kept a distance since the club had given me and Locke a home. And giving him space had felt like the right thing to do. Now, though...
Now I wanted to climb inside him and never come out.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to talk to me,” I said by way of the explanation Decoy seemed to be waiting for. “If you were out, or whatever. Or if it was something you wanted to forget about. And then enough time passed that I lost my nerve.”
It was the truth. And it hit Decoy hard enough that he crouched to my level again. “You think I could forget you?”
Somewhere behind him, the drunken shout of a fractious brother rang out over the yard.
Decoy didn’t blink.
Neither did I, both of us swimming too deep into a moment we couldn’t have guessed would happen today. “I didn’t think you forgot. Just that maybe you had enough going on without a trip down memory lane. I’m sorry if I was wrong about that.”
“You weren’t wrong. I just... damn, I don’t know.” Decoy braced his elbows on his knees and scraped his hands down his tired face. “Maybe it’s me who should’ve said something, but I’ve always kept it so close, so locked up, it was almost like I thought talking about it would taint it somehow.”
He could’ve plucked those words out of my head. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but another fight-laced roar pierced the air and drove Decoy to his feet.
I was less worried about scrapping brothers, but I followed him upright anyway, mourning the loss of sacred solitude as he left the bin yard and disappeared around the fence.
With a sigh, I followed him there too and reached the front of the clubhouse as Decoy inserted himself between two Rebel Kings I hadn’t cared to learn the names of.
One was more belligerent than the other. He got in Decoy’s face. Regretted it. And, man, if seeing him put that idiot down didn’t get my blood pumping a little harder.
The fight broke up. One combatant went home. The other waddled off to pass out in the bunkhouse, putting paid to any ideas I was harbouring about staying the night in this godforsaken place.Should’ve taken Embry’s room.Maybe, but that kid still wasn’t right. He needed a place to lay his head on site more than I did.
Decoy came back to where I stood with one boot kicked up against the fence. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. And after years of silence, it should’ve felt wrong.
It didn’t. Before I left, though, there was one thing I needed to know.
I took a chance and gripped his elbow, guiding him into the shadows and out of sight. “Can I test something?”
Curiosity burned in Decoy’s soft gaze. He braced a hand on the brick wall behind me and glanced at the narrowing space between us, as drawn to me as I was to him.
In Cyprus, I’d grabbed his rugged jaw with little conscious thought. I didn’t think now, either. I let my palm cup his face and stood taller. “What happened after me?”
Decoy took a slow breath, leaning into my touch before he seemed to stop himself. “That night? Or the drought that followed it?”
“Drought? Are you telling me no one else ever kissed this pretty mouth?”
That tiny smile returned to Decoy’s face and he let out a low snort. “Not really. I tried a few times... with other dudes, but it didn’t feel like it did with you, and forcing it didn’t pan out.”
Force. There was that word again, and it belonged nowhere near us. I let my thumb trace his bottom lip, the primal attraction I’d always felt for him gathering pace in my belly. “It was like that for me, and I always wanted you to know that walking away from you was one of the hardest things I ever did.”
He didn’t believe me. I saw it in the self-conscious flicker of those honey-brown eyes, and my original request still stood. Giving him every chance to stop me, I leaned in and kissed him, a light brush of my lips over his.
Soft.
Gentle.
