“You read that on a toilet door?”
“Cosmopolitan, as it goes. The Chuckle Brothers have all the good mags in the garage.”
Rubi had been part of my life as long as I’d been alive to live it, and I still lacked the ability to tell if he was serious any day we weren’t facing certain death. I lit another cigarette, fighting off his grabby hands. “Fucking stop. Unless you want to fall off this roof in a terrible accident.”
“You’d never do that to Riv.”
“Try me.”
Rubi grinned but let me smoke, and I was grateful for it. We didn’t spend much time together. Our busy lives and conflicting personalities kept us apart most days, and so I lived for moments like these, even if I rarely got round to telling him.
He knows.
And the quiet didn’t last, naturally. Rubi knocked his head on my shoulder and sighed. “You ever wonder what they’d make of it all?”
He meant our parents. Two couples who’d been the best of friends to the bitter end. And fuck me, it had been bitter. Rubi’s dad had gone first—heart failure brought on by years of hard living, fighting, and drinking on the road. Then his ma had succumbed to breast cancer. With Lark gone too, he’d lost his entire family in ten years. Except he hadn’t, cos I was still here.
I stubbed out my half-smoked cig and slung an arm around him. “Clare would’ve loved the art walls.Myma would’ve got a kick out of watching Mateo paint over them every other week.”
So Liliana could have as many fresh starts as she liked.
Rubi hummed a quiet laugh, leaning on me. “That’s cos Mary was a frustrated psychologist. She knew how everyone ticked, even complex motherfuckers like you.”
“I wasn’t always so complicated.”
“You’re not now, to be fair.” Rubi sat up again, leaning forward as more bikes and cars trickled in. “Bitta sex, maybe a hot dinner, and you’re happy enough.”
“How much is a bit?”
Rubi laughed for real this time. “All right, alotof sex—you are a fucking O’Brian after all. But that’s why you’ve got two stallions in your stable, innit?”
I wasn’t here for the horse metaphors. Despite Saint and Alexei both packing some serious heat, I’d been around the block enough to know big didn’t necessarily meangood.
Rubi had too, but he’d lost interest in pigeonholing my personality, distracted by our brothers collecting in the yard.
Nash, Mateo, and Embry on their hogs. The others in cars, carrying precious cargo. I watched my sister’s SUV pull into the yard, driven by Locke, Juana behind them, with Decoy and Folk bringing up the rear. A full house, nearly, but not for long.
Embry rolled his Tiger to a stop and stood on his seat, gazing around before he jumped off, wild and fucking free.
Beside me, Rubi rumbled his approval. “Don’t get old, does it?”
Seeing Embry as agile as he’d been when I’d first scooped him up from the prison gates all those years ago. And no, it fucking didn’t. Not when we’d spent so long terrified we’d lose him. I’d had nightmares about that shit, and I knew Rubi had too. “Does that fucker ever wear his own clothes anymore?”
“Uh...”
I turned my head to catch Rubi’s sheepish pout. “What did you do?”
“Me?”
“You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The same one you had when you pavedbellendinto that copper’s driveway.”
“That was fifteen years ago.”
“Have you changed that much, brother?”
