I sighed. “I’ll bend your ear if you eat your lunch. How’s that?”
“Works for me. Pass me the yoghurt?”
I obliged and waited for him to start eating while I stuck my head out of the curtain, scoping the place out. Embry’s bed was at the end, and the one beside was occupied by a sleeping old geezer with no visitors. If we spoke quietly, we were as safe as we were going to be.
Reassured, I sat back down, shifting my chair so I’d see any approaching feet beneath the curtain. “I’m okay. Honest. Just trying to find some balance in all this.”
“Two lovers too much for you?”
“It ain’t about that.”
“I know. I didn’t mean sex.”
“What did you mean?”
“Saint’s a lot to handle on his own—he’s intense, bad at communicating, and hard to read. I don’t know Alexei, but he seems complicated too.”
Complicated. Damaged. I couldn’t deny it, but though Embry was right and I loved him for it, a defensive rush boiled in my belly. “He’s got good reason for being how he is. Saint does too.”
Embry said nothing. Just ate his fucking yoghurt.
“I’m worried I’ll get so caught up in club business that I won’t notice I’m messing this up.”
There. I’d said it. And by Embry’s slow nod, it was exactly what he’d expected from me. “How’s Saint doing with sharing you?”
“Sharing me? He’s never had me until now. And I’ve never had him.”
“Yes, but you banging your way through the South West is pretty different to whatever the hell is going on now.”
“It scares me that you can’t label it either.”
Embry laughed. Then winced and lost colour from his already too-pale complexion.
I cringed. “Sorry.”
He took a second, then waved the apology away. “Tell me what it’s like?”
“Which bit?”
“The dynamic. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t work it out.”
He was the only fucker at my table who would ask me a question like that with a straight face. “It’s... something. Fuck, I don’t know. I thought it would be more awkward than it is. I haven’t asked them, but I’m pretty sure they were communicating with each other somehow before we got skewered by an incompetent hitman.”
“Communicating?”
“Yeah. Like, there’s familiarity there that doesn’t add up. They read each other too well for the contact I know about.”
“Does that bother you?”
“That they were up to fuck knows what behind my back this whole time?” I shook my head. “No. I’m just so curious, it’s more likely to kill me than any bullet.”
“You should ask them then.”
“I will.” And I would, when the right moment came. “To answer your question, though. Saint’s doing okay at the sharing part. It’s believing we want him that’s giving him the most trouble. He’s... jumpy, I guess. If you look hard enough.”
“Of course he is. Don’t you see he has so much more to lose than you?”
“What?”