“The shit music,” I clarified. “It’s not as bad as the middle school samba concert Ranger once sat through, but it’s not far off.”
“I like it.”
“Are you okay?”
Saint’s lips turned up in a smile too nice for a life like this. “Your kid is magic. She’s played me a different gig every night for the past month.”
This brother didn’t waste his precious words on bullshit. I took his answer at face value and said something else that had been on my mind in the rare moments I’d been coherent enough to think straight. “Thank you for keeping her safe. I’m glad it was you.”
Saint nodded around a sigh I wouldn’t have heard if we hadn’t been standing so close together in the narrow space by the old oak trees. “Folk’s brother has been watching Logan.”
That wasn’t new information. Folk had told me. Nash too. It just hadn’t sunk in, like it didn’t quite fit the sketchy mess in my head. As if I knew that deploying Poet Whitlock to guard my grumpy big brother was overkill to a situation that already didn’t make sense. Guarding himnow,I understood, and I was fuckin’ grateful. But all this time? While Priest’d had me where he wanted me? I didn’t get it, and thinking about it too hard made me weak at the knees for all the wrong reasons.
Nash. A stab of yearning hit my heart.Orla. Fuck, I loved them. More than that, Ineededthem in ways I’d never needed anyone.
Willow’s band switched to a dodgy Nirvana cover.She doesn’t even like grunge.
Neither did I, not while I had a distressed wasp for an eardrum.
I rubbed the side of my head, smoothing the ache out of my temple, wondering why the fuck it felt like I was teetering on the edge of a turntable ladder when my feet were planted in the dirt.
“Vertigo?”
“Hmm?”
Out of words, Saint tilted his head, waiting for me to catch up while affinity flared in his eyes, empathy that seemed troubled with something else.
It wasn’t unusual for Saint to be too nuanced for me to comprehend. But it was for me to be alone with him long enough to feel obligated to puzzle him out.
And I failed, of course. Nothing about Saint was ever obvious.
“We didn’t cross the river,” he said eventually.
I turned my head to find him staring at me. “Who didn’t?”
“Me and Nash. The night you got away, we went into the woods, but we didn’t cross the river.”
I fought to wrap my spinning head around that. Pictured the rushing water as I’d seen it that night, picturedNashup to his neck in it and rooted my equilibrium to Saint’s tree. “I’d rather have fuckin’ died than you two had put a toe in that river.”
“We might’ve found you if we had and I’m sorry about that.”
“You’re sorry?”
Saint shrugged. “Nash would’ve done it if he hadn’t been worried about me.”
“Well, I’m fuckin’ glad he didn’t.” Truth. And it blew my mind that Saint thought he needed to be sorry about anything, let alone that he’d stopped Nash taking the same death swim that had almost killed me and Viktor. But I didn’t know how to articulate that, not without wrapping my fucked arms around him.
And maybe it showed on my face, cos Saint huggedme.
Not for long, but his embrace was warm and fraternal, and knowing he didn’t give it easily settled something inside me. A tiny fragment of the mess I was right now healed over, and it was all down to the brother standing in this godawful noise all night.
Willow’s band eventually tired of murdering nineties classics. She drove home unaware of me tailing behind, of Saint in the shadows, and took herself to bed. Part of me wanted to loiter outside until the sun rose, but fatigue, Saint’s silent persuasion, and my complete and utter trust in him sent me on my way.
That and a message from Cam, summoning me to his beachfront cottage.
It wasn’t far from Kara’s place. I drove there on autopilot, sensing a faceless brother at my back and half-expecting to see Orla’s car parked outside, forgetting that my thick-as-mince self was already driving it. Missing her when I realised she wasn’t here. That no one was, save the president of the Rebel Kings and the guard of trusted brothers stationed at the end of the drive.
I was a council officer. Despite some lingering bad feeling for my ex-Crow status, most of them dipped their heads in respect, a phenomenon I was still getting used to. Ignoring them, I tapped the code into Cam’s front door and let myself in.
