Sleek white leather swallowed me up, alien to anything I was used to.
Alexei laughed as he put the automatic car in drive and eased out of the space where Mateo had parked his car.Nextto my bike. “Would it help if I found a death metal radio station?”
“Help what?”
He didn’t answer. Just laughed again and drove us out of the compound.
My house was six miles away, fifteen minutes that I was prepared to spend in silence, but my loose tongue had other ideas. “This doesn’t work without you,” I blurted.
“What doesn’t?”
“Me and him. He needs more than I am.”
Again, Alexei said nothing, and it felt like I was in the car with Saint. Was that it? Were they so similar and yet so different that I couldn’t handle one without the other?
I hadn’t been thinking about Saint when I’d first met Alexei. Years of practice had left me proficient in pushing him out of my mind, a skill that filled me with fucking shame. Saint didn’t just need more than me, he deserved it. “You understand him,” I realised. “Don’t you?”
Alexei sighed. “Sometimes. He is a unique man, though. I do not think he understands himself.”
“He’s not used to anyone giving a fuck. Did you know he was born in prison?”
Alexei muttered something in Russian, then he sighed again. “No. I know nothing about him except that he loves you, and...”
“And?”
“There is something about him I cannot look away from.”
I chuckled. “Trust me, I get it.”
“I do trust you.”
“Yeah?”
Alexei cut me a dry scowl. “Yes. And you do not have to look so delighted about it.”
I was delighted. So much of him was still a goddamn mystery, but I felt this victory. Claimed it, as much as I claimed him.
His phone pierced the heated air. HisRussianphone.
Alexei’s expression shut down.
Fuck that. I snatched the phone from the console and tossed it out of the window. “No more.”
Alexeichuckled, shaking his head. “You are unmanageable.”
“I’m a choir boy compared to Saint. Good luck managing him.”
“Maybe I will not try. It is not like he can manage me. And neither can you. You should know that before you ask things of me. I am not like you—an open book with new secrets on every page. I burned those pages a long time ago and I do not want them back.”
There were too many metaphors for my tired, uneducated brain to contemplate. “I don’t care about any of that. I just want you. And him. And you and him. Fuck, that sounds like a lot, eh?”
I was losing it, and he knew it, of course. I might’ve been unmanageable, but he was too fucking clever to care.
We pulled up outside Angel Cottage.
Alexei helped me out of the car and to the front door, taking the keys from me to unlock it.
Inside, he leaned me against the wall and took my face in his cool hands. “I am not going anywhere. We do not have to understand it to let it be.”