“Maybe not.” Rubi sighed. “But I don’t like thinking about Embry’s clothes. Makes me picture him all dead and shit.”
“Why?”
Rubi sniffed. “Cos I shrank them all in the dryer when I couldn’t stand them hanging off him when he was so sick. Not my fault he got better and grew out of them again, is it?”
Truthfully, it probably was. Rubi had saved Embry’s life, and he’d been there for him every step of his recovery, like he had for Nash, for Saint, forme. But he didn’t seem in the mood to be reminded, so I hauled myself to my feet, still half watching our brothers vacate their vehicles, the sensation I’d forgotten something gnawing at my brain.
I left Rubi on the roof and made my way downstairs with an endless night of manual labour heavy in my limbs, emerging into the yard the same moment Ranger popped out of the bunkhouse, dishevelled and grouchy, a smoke already jammed in his mouth.
No Viktor.
Didn’t know where he was. Just that he wasn’t here and I’d come to accept that I didn’t like how that felt. That whether he wanted us or not, he was family.
I greeted Ranger. “All right?”
He grunted around his roll-up, something else I’d learned to live with in recent months—that this brother wasn’t himself without his lover at his side. And how could I judge him for that?
“You didn’t have to sign up for this,” I reminded him. “Your name got added to the CPC course by accident.”
Ranger exhaled a cloud of smoke, scowling at me with black eyes that were nothing like the sweet cornflower stare of his lovely nanna. “You didn’t think I’d pass.”
Guilty as charged. Driving HGVs took more than skill. It required patience, and I’d assumed enough about Ranger’s personality to lump him in with Embry and River on that front.
But he’d proved me wrong, and now here he was, about to hit the road for a month with Rubi for company, a Saint-inspired combination I couldn’t be sure was brilliance or bald madness.
Time would tell. I pressed a roll of cash into Ranger’s hand. “For expenses. Don’t be shy.”
“I don’t need your money.”
“It’s not mine, it’s ours.”
I moved on before he could argue, a luxury Rubi wouldn’t have over the next few weeks, and again I questioned the sanity of teaming them up. They were both clowns when their moods were right, which brought its own problems. But they were also a pair of belligerent shitheads who didn’t know—or care—when to shut the fuck up.
They might kill each other.
A risk, but one we had to take if we were gonna weather the black hole in our finances from buying that fucking land.
The fuck are we going to do with it?
My mind grew too busy to focus—a fault-line that had spread through my brain when some cunt had shot me and jabbed a ketamine-laced syringe into my neck. A lifetime had passed since then, and I was stronger now, in every sense, than perhaps I’d ever been. But it was the one trauma symptom I couldn’t shake unless Saint or Alexei were with me, and they weren’t. Alexei had already gone—that kiss on the roof, I realised now, had been his goodbye.
And Saint?
I had no fucking idea. Just that I needed him, and?—
Soft lips touched my neck, the scent of hemp and the wilderness washing over me. I turned in the same moment Saint filled the space beside me, and every stress, strain, and busy thought evaporated.
These forest-green eyes. I’d been a fool for them so long it was hard to remember I’d lived a whole fucked-up existence before I’d found him. That if my dad had lived, Saint might not have stayed.
Goddamnit.
Grief and fear fought a bloody battle in my battered heart. I’d idolised my father, and I missed him so much some days it felt like my chest had ripped open again, exposing the festering wound his violent death had left behind. But the thought of life without Saint was one I’d had to contemplate too often, and I couldn’t bear it. Not today, when he was about to leave me.
I coaxed him closer and the yard faded away. With Alexei already gone, it was just us and the clouds already starting to cover the early morning sun, matching my state of mind. “Be careful out there.” We weren’t anticipating trouble. But if we’d learned anything over the past few years, it was that trouble had many faces, too many to fucking count, and not a day passed without me knowing it. “I love you.”
Saint tilted his head with a slow smile. Then he kissed me even slower, the kind of kiss that drowned me atom by atom, stealing my breath until I was gasping for air.
It was how he fucked me, when his mood was right, and it near killed me every goddamn time. It killed menow, and he wasn’t even doing it.
