“That can’t happen.”
“I know.”
Orla took a breath, but whatever she wanted to say, she decided against it. “I’ll talk to her. What are you doing to my bike?”
I gave her a dull stare. “You can’t tell by looking at it?”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Okay.”
Irritation flared in Orla’s hot gaze.
Again, she poured water on it instead of unleashing it on me, and guilt threatened my apathy. My girl—mywoman—was fire and brimstone through and through. Without it, she was as dead inside as I was.
No one’s dead.Not without a body.
Cam appeared as the words he’d spoken to me a few nights ago echoed in my head. He shot me a grim frown.Time to go. To share oxygen with a creepy bastard copper when I needed to be on the road, searching for the man who’d made my heart so fucking full I couldn’t conceive how it hadn’t burst the moment I’d fallen in love with him.
I stepped away from Orla.
Sensing tension that didn’t fit the program, she blocked my path. “Where are you going?”
I couldn’t lie to her any better than I could lie to Willow. I didn’t even try. “Out.”
“Where?”
“Orla,” Cam warned, lacing his tone with authority she didn’t give two shits about. “Leave him alone.”
“Why? Where are you making him go?”
“He’s not making me go anywhere.” I manoeuvred around her. “It’s business.”
Her dark eyes flashed, and I waited for her to tell me that we had nobusinesswith anything except finding Locke. To snap. To scream it in my face.
She did neither.
My first love shrugged and walked away, and in that moment, I missed her so hard my facade nearly broke.
“Come on.” Cam clamped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”
I let him lead me out of the garage, trailing him to our bikes. To the metal and leather that were as much a part of us as our flesh and bones, my knee aching as I swung a leg over the seat I was sick to fucking death of sitting on, clinging to the handlebars and my sanity while it crumbled anyway.
Cam took off.
I followed and we headed north-east, out of Devon, through Somerset, and into Gloucestershire. A two-hour ride in driving rain that forced my focus to stay on the road, navigating poor visibility, dickhead drivers, and the fact that eating dirt didn’t worry me as much as it should’ve.
Reckless or depressed, I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t think about it too hard. I thought about Orla instead. About Locke, Willow, and his boy I’d never met. Locke said Nicky was quiet, more like Logan than him, but I’d never met Locke’s twin either, and the wrongness of that flared to life as Cam began to slow down, guiding me to the dead zone he’d selected to bury our phones and trackers.
You’re not numb, brother. You’re traumatised and your brain is in survival mode.
Mateo had sent that uncharacteristic nugget of wisdom in a text. But he’d typedbrianinstead of brain, and the sentiment had passed me by before I’d figured out how Mateo, of all people, was somehow reading my mind.
Cam took my gear and dropped it in a hole. “The meet is twenty minutes out.”
I grunted. I didn’t care.
He left me alone and we climbed back on our hogs.
