“You ate dirt?”
“Like a motherfucker.”
“Where are you hurt?” Rubi already had his hands on Mateo, peering beneath the clean T-shirt we’d rustled up on the building site. “Fuck me, that’s a lot of claret.”
“Hit a bouncing alloy. Gashed my shoulder to fuck, but Folk patched me up.”
Rubi glanced at me. “Where did this happen?”
I found some truth in the lie. “A38. Near Buckfast.”
“That junction is a bitch.” Rubi turned back to Mateo. “You need ice? Good drugs? Alexei has some benzos...”
I tuned him out. I was unshakeable when I needed to be, but I was still human.
Abandoning Mateo to Rubi’s sharp mind, I slipped away and ventured out of the main yard to a spot I’d discovered a while ago, a quiet suntrap near the timber store. The air smelled of fresh-cut wood, and it didn’t take me long to spot Decoy in his own secluded space, doing that thing he often did that drove mecrazy. Sitting with his leather-bound ledger and a pencil, his kid on his knee as he took those neat, diligent notes.
I’d seen this man naked.
I’d seen himcome.
But he was never hotter to me than he was right now.
For long minutes, I drank him in before I recalled my clothes were saturated with Mateo’s blood. Even my boots hadn’t escaped the carnage.
I retreated to the bunkhouse to clean up. Most of my clothes were at Decoy’s house, in my bag, despite his offer of drawer space. But I had some spare stuff stashed in a locker.
The bunkhouse showers were cold. It was a warm day, but the chill of the cool spray seeped into my joints, adding to the ache already there. A discomfort that irritated me more than it hurt, squirrelling under my skin, poking at the dormant devil I wasn’t in the mood to fight.
Talk to someone. Anyone. Take your mind off it.
But there was only one person I wanted to talk to, and he was busy.
“Knock-knock.”
I jerked around.
Nash stood in the bunkhouse doorway, a grim frown lining his face. “I got the debrief. You okay?”
I tipped him an easy nod. “All good. Have you checked on Mateo?”
“It was him who filled me in. Thanks for patching him up. Sorry everything around here turns into a shitshow.”
“Can’t think of a single reason why that’s your fault.”
Nash sighed, looking older as he rubbed fatigue from his face. “Still, I’m fucking sorry. We promised you a better life, and this is what you get.”
I pulled a clean T-shirt over my head. “Brother, I’d take a thousand bullets before I went back to where I was.”
Nash absorbed that. Then he came closer to wrap me in the kind of embrace I once believed I’d lost forever. “Come find me if you need anything. Otherwise, stay on Decoy and Ivy for the next couple of days. Get some rest, if you can, while Alexei figures out what hellfire he needs you for next.”
The words were dry, but closer to reality than Nash probably knew. I hugged him back, then watched him leave, my thoughts already drifting to the gift he’d unwittingly given me. It was Friday. To my knowledge, Decoy had Ivy until Sunday morning. That meant two nights in his bed and I was so ready for that.
I ditched my bloodstained clothes and left the bunkhouse. The sun hit my face and a high-pitched call pierced the air.
“Folksie!”
I spun around, smiling, and Ivy skipped towards me, her long hair free of the ponytail I’d watched Decoy wrestle with that morning. Part of me could still smell gunpowder in the air. Could still taste Mateo’s blood. But as she reached me and scampered up my leg to sit on my hip, it all faded away. “You jump better than any mermaid I’ve ever seen. Maybe you really are a bug.”
