It was still ringing, messages lighting up the screen. If it had been my other phone, I’d have expected friendly abuse from my brothers, but it was a burner, and the number on the screen was one that stopped me in my tracks.
The call rang out.
I sent a message back.
K2:give me 5
I left my room again and moved to the landing, texting Alexei from yet another phone, asking him where I could talk safely while the chapel was occupied by my brothers having breakfast.
His reply was lightning fast.
Alexei:Go to the roof.
For fuck’s sake. I ashed my cigarette, stomped to the window, and threw it open, clambering out onto the roof with zero grace or enthusiasm. I wasn’t Embry or Saint or Folk. Or even Locke who seemed to like pissing around at stupid heights. I was strong, not elegant, and this shit was outrageous.
I found a spot that didn’t give me vertigo and lit another smoke, returning the call I’d ignored in favour of rolling around my bed with Locke.
Ranger’s gruff voice greeted me a split second later. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. Where the fuck have you been?”
“I’ve been around.”
“No, you haven’t. We looked. And you haven’t picked up the phone in yonks. I was getting ready to tell Locke and Folk you’d been offed by the other lot.”
The Albanians in the north. We weren’t fighting that war, but to the best of my knowledge, which wasn’t great, Ranger was, and I had no fucking cluewhy.
“Yeah, well, you can save that delight for another day,” he rumbled. “They okay?”
I moved closer to the edge of the roof and took a peek inside the chapel, searching out Folk, but I found Decoy first, standing behind his lover, arms around him, chin on his head, body blocking Folk from my view. “Folk’s good.”
“And Locke?”
“He’s all right.”
“You don’t sound so sure about that.”
Because I wasn’t. And I was rattled enough by this weird-as-fuck morning that I didn’t have it in me to pretend otherwise. Because ithurtthat something awful had happened to him and he’d never been able to tell me.
Locke chose that moment to exit the bunkhouse, hair damp from the shower, a different T-shirt covering his scarred skin like it always did. Before this morning, I’d never seen him shirtless... Had I?
No.
Course I hadn’t.
Even without the scars on his back, I’d have remembered the hard planes of his chest. The body hair. The ink. The abs that were apparently an adventure playground for my dick.
Fucking rattled, I had to look away, rerouting my attention to a brother who’d been in the wind for weeks. “Can I ask you something?”
“About what?”
“About Locke.”
Ranger’s tone turned wary. “If you like.”
“What happened to his back?”
“Fuck. Really?”
