“If he’s around.”
“Can Alexei come?”
I turned, hiding my smile. “Sure, if he wants to. Come on. It’s time to go.”
We hustled downstairs. Alexei was gone and Folk waited for us in the hallway, the patio doors locked and shut, the alarm system already engaged.
Outside, I put Ivy in the back of my car, then faced Folk.
He swung a leg over his bike. “Want me to follow you?”
“To Lauren’s?” I considered it for a split second. Then shook my head. “She gets extra shitty about everything if I have someone with me.”
“She doesn’t like you having friends?”
“She doesn’t like anything I do.”
“Then she’s a fool.” Folk leaned in and kissed my cheek, darting his tongue out at the last minute, a hot swipe along my jaw that spun my head off my shoulders. “Are you going straight to the compound after?”
I nodded,mytongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Folk grinned and gunned his engine. “I’ll tail you as long as I can. Be lucky, Seth.”
I was lucky. To call him brother. To have the imprint of his kiss on my face. Driving away from him was a privilege because he’d been with me in the first place.
Maybe that’s why it twisted my guts so hard.
I drove Ivy to Lauren’s house, bracing myself for a bollocking.
It didn’t happen. Lauren took Ivy from me and slammed the door in my face, and somehow that was worse.
I got back in my car, the weight of the anti-climax heavy on my shoulders. The thud of the slamming door echoing in my head. Leaving my kid was always hard, but this felt like death. My stomachached, but that might’ve been the shit ton of fruit I’d eaten over the weekend.
My phone lay on the seat beside me.
I picked it up and a message lit up the screen.
Folk:There’s always a reason to come home.
Alexei’s words. But from Folk, they hit different, even if I was too dense to understand the sentiment, and too caught up in my feelings to formulate a reply.
I put the car in gear and drove to the compound. Opened the bar and ate the dinner Rubi plonked in front of me sometime around ten.
It felt like midnight on the other side of hell. Couldn’t say why. With Folk beside me, I’d slept better than I could ever remember. But he wasn’t beside me now. I had no damn clue where he was or when I’d see him again, and the longer I sat alone with an empty plate, the more I realised how much I hated that.
I spent the rest of the night ignoring any brother who tried to make conversation with me. I shut the bar, slept on a beer-scented sofa, then got up at the crack of dawn to take a cold shower and open the sales desk at the front of the compound.
Tradesmen drifting in for their gear kept me busy until midday when I found the time to email Jeanette and tell her I’d taken her advice to pep up my love life.
She responded as Orla breezed through the door.
Seth,
That’s great news. I did a rudimentary background check, just so I could see it through the eyes of anyone else doing the same, and I honestly couldn’t have picked a better profile for you. A veteran, a lifeboat volunteer,anda children’s swim coach?
As your solicitor and your friend, it’s a thumbs up from me.
Wasn’t sure when Jeanette had decided we were friends, but her enthusiasm felt too fucking good to ponder it much. Herjustifiedenthusiasm, because everything she’d said was fact, not opinion. Folk was all those things and so much more.
