This was the other thing I appreciated about Rubi and River. The honesty. The openness. Neither one of them hid anything about who they were, and I felt that. It made my own skin easier to live in.
Still muttering, Rubi ambled away to light the barbecue and put the kids to work making a salad neither of them would eat, and the goofy smile on his face remained as Nash rode in with Orla and joined us.
They pulled chairs into a circle, coaxing me and River from the ground.
Orla disappeared to fetch Locke. The way Nash’s gaze followed her was familiar, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it before she returned with not one ex Crow at her back, but two.
Locke took the free chair beside River. The only other spare was beside me. Folk folded his long-limbed, tanned self into it, and I just about died.
Then he looked at me—hesmiled—and I realised I was very much alive.
“Seth.”
“Folk.” I started to grin back, then something occurred to me. “Is that your real name?”
Folk propped an ankle on his bent knee and turned his face to the re-emerging sun. “Does it sound like a military nickname to you?”
I thought about the blokes I’d served with and their various aliases. Shitballs. Dump. Shetland Tony, because he was short. “Not really. Just never heard it before.”
“I have a sister called Finch, if that helps understand the kind of parents we’re dealing with. And a brother, Poet, but I always thought that sounded kinda gangster.”
“Is he a gangster?”
“Farmer. Rock climber.”
“Still sounds cool.” Then again, so did FolkWhitlock, the name I’d seen on the club records it was my job to keep, and I realised I’d known all along that Folk wasn’t a nickname.Sure you’re awake?
With Folk less than a foot away, yeah... I really was.
Ivy was engrossed in picking cherry tomatoes out of a punnet to throw in the huge bowl Liliana was tossing lettuce into. It gave me a moment or ten to focus on other things, namely the golden glow to Folk’s ruggedly handsome face. The damp wave in his hair from his apparent afternoon cliff dive.
Folk was a competent man. A Royal Marine. An SBS commando if my years old suspicions about him were accurate. But the thought of him hurling himself from any kind of height made me shiver. And he noticed. A tiny head tilt. A flicker in his clever gaze.
“You okay?”
He spoke softly enough that no one else heard him. Not that we were on anyone’s radar. River wandered off to help Rubi cook, Nash and Orla were wrapped up in each other, and Locke? He’d dozed off, his six-five frame barely contained in the deck chair he’d crammed himself into. “That can’t be comfortable.”
Folk chuckled. “He’s used to being giant. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You were stressed last time I saw you.”
“I was a lot of things last time you saw me.” Folk’s eyes were a deeper blue at the centre. A kaleidoscope of marine colours, it was easy to get lost in them. In his long fair lashes and soft half-smile. “Sorry if I made that weird.”
“Nothing was weird. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah?”
Folk shifted his gaze beyond me to Rubi, who was bearing down on us. “Of course. Who wouldn’t want to feel like that every day of their life?”
Rubi banged a spanner on a pot. “Ladles and jellyspoons, dinner’s up. Fill yer boots.”
When I wasn’t pushed for time to open the bar, it was habit for me to wait until everyone else had a plate. Folk didn’t move either, and before long, we were alone again. “Not hungry?”
He tipped his head back again, exposing his elegant neck. “Not for hot dogs. I don’t eat meat.”
“Vegetarian?”
