“It’s okay.” His features relaxed into a grin that was all Folk as he repeated his question. “You need anything?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
“All right, then.” He moved past me, clapping my shoulder before he disappeared into the house and I remembered I’d left Rubi in my pocket.
Fucking-A.
I retrieved my phone. He’d hung up, but left me a one-star review of my people skills. He’d also informed me I’d drawn Alexei in the secret Santa, which had to be a fucking wind-up, but the distraction felt good. My lungs remained gnarly with unspent angst, but Rubi had lightened the load enough that I began to appreciate the beauty of the land we’d rolled up to in the dark.
Glittery sunshine broke through the clouds, sparkling on the frosty fields and rustic outbuildings. Polytunnels had been blended into the landscape with natural materials, interspersed with orchards and ancient trees, rope swings hanging down.
Saint would love it here.
“Everyone says that.”
I shifted my gaze from the horizon as Folk filled the space beside me. “I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”
“Why not? It’s not a bad opinion to voice.”
“Ain’t a good look to be talking to myself, though, eh?”
Folk chuckled and pressed a mug into my cold hands. “It’s not the worst.”
We took a seat on the bench I’d vacated.
Folk stretched his legs out, in jeans for once instead of the cargo shorts he usually lived in, more relaxed than I’d seen him in forever. “Any word on Saint getting home?”
“You felt him too?”
“Actually, no. I wouldn’t have noticed a herd of elephants chasing us tonight. He rode past Poet’s place a while ago, heading home.”
“I thought your brother lived here.”
“He does, sometimes. But he likes his own space too—or even his own farm, one day. Our parents are a lot.”
“Mine are too, but they’re nothing like yours.”
“What are they like?”
I wasn’t in the mood to explain, but Folk’s kind and twinkly gaze was hard to resist. “Religious. Violent.”
Folk didn’t blink. “I’m sorry, brother.”
“Not your fault. I never really told anyone, except my uncle.” I sipped the drink he’d brought me, expecting tea, but it was some weird shit with a cinnamon stick I stared at while decades old bullshit scraped at me.Change the subject. “I didn’t know Rocco was from here, or that you’d been friends as long as you had. I’m sorry you lost him the way you did.”
Folk accepted the sentiment with a wry smile. “It was all right in the end. I got to keep an old promise and there’s a lot of peace in that, for all of us, not just me.”
I pictured Ranger’s face when Cam had climbed into his cab to give him the news. The relief, as if he’d feared the world was about to fall on his head, and Folk’s words meant something to me. They meant everything.
“How old is your brother?”
Folk turned away from the lightening sky. “Twenty-six.”
I whistled. “You’ve got a decade on him.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Feeling old?”
