“I’m not complaining. Just looking forward to freezing my tits off on the ride home.”
“For the last fucking time, you’re not riding home.”
“I’d be more inclined to give a shit if you gave me a reason beyond the usual idiots wanting to run me off the road and rape me.”
Cam flinched. “Are you trying to give me a fucking aneurysm? This shit ain’t a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.” I wasn’t. “I’m just trying to understand how much of my life you want me to give these people. I can’t lock myself away forever. It lets them win without ever laying a hand on me.”
“What about Locke?” Cam gave me a hard look. “And anyone else I recruit to escort you home? How are you going to feel if a brother gets hurt putting himself between you and a gun when you could’ve been behind bulletproof glass all along?”
“My car doesn’t have bulletproof glass, idiot.”
“Doesn’t it? Remind me who just took your car on the world’s longest test drive?”
Nash and Alexei. They’d been gone for twelve hours. Until this moment, I’d assumed they’d been distracted by other business along the way, and I hadn’t thought to check the soundness of my new windscreen.
But now I thought about it, it made sense. Nash was an overprotective fool, and Alexei was our regular assassination expert. “Fine.” I ripped Cam’s cigarette from his mouth and stomped on it. “I won’t ride. I won’t evendrive. Happy now?”
Cam scowled. “Ecstatic.”
His grumpy face gave me a 101 new reasons to be grateful for Locke. Without him, this would be my evening. My entire night until Nash came home.
No thanks.
I went back inside, my base instincts searching out not one soulmate, but two. And I found them together at the kitchen door, a bewildered frown creasing Locke’s handsome face, while Nash’s was folded into the same stubborn nonsense I’d left outside.
It was in moments like these that I missed my ma the most. Yearned for the sight of her five-foot frame and size-three boots clomping across the yard to bang some skulls together. I lacked her patience and the deft way she could pull a man’s head from his backside with a few kind words.
I lacked her instant understanding of a situation that, at first glance, made no sense. Nash and Locke got on so well because they agreed on most things. I could count on one hand the occasions they hadn’t, and each and every time had been about the other not doing something to take care of themselves.
Bingo.
I just needed the context and Willow stepped up to help me out.
“Dad wants to follow me home,” she whispered. “Nash wants to followhimand Dad’s being a dick about it.”
Okay. Maybe not. Then again...
I made eye contact with River, who moved in to distract her, and inserted myself between Locke and Nash. “What are you bickering about?”
“We’re not bickering.” Locke made an effort to school his features, but his heels remained dug in, arms threaded across his chest. “Just trying to save Nash some energy.”
Nash snorted. “I have plenty of energy.”
“Use it for the right things, then. You don’t need to follow me and Willow home. Eat your dinner. Take a nap. Stay withOrla.”
“Yeah.” I poked Nash in the chest. “Stay with me and do all of those things.”
Nash caught my finger, pushing me away for probably the first time in his entire life. “We’re heading out now anyway. Might as well give Willow an escort.”
“You just got back,” I protested.
“Orls, we’ve been over this.”
“And it’s still bullshit.”
“It’sbusiness, and if you want me back before dawn, you need to let me go.”
