“I like you fucking me in your van. And I like watching the sunrise while you sleep. I do not like the birds that peck my food out of my fingers.”
I never imagined that laughter would come so easy around Alexei. That his dry, disgruntled humour would be so potent. But laugh I did, glad it no longer felt like I had razor blades in my stomach.
The chapel doors opened. Nash walked in, minus the crutches he’d been stuck on for three months. Rubi was behind him, frown lines of constant migraines absent for today.
Embry was next, the picture of health when he contained the wild emotions he couldn’t seem to quite shift, a wreck when he couldn’t. Even Cam was boxing again. Somehow, against the odds, we were all fucking whole.
“Easy, brother.” Rubi clamped a hand on my shoulder and kept it there, testing me. Cos I’d asked him to. Watching Alexei cringe at every touch that wasn’t me or Cam had taught me a lot about myself.
Five, four, three, two, one.
I shook him off.
Rubi laughed and stuck a blunt in my mouth. “It’s the good stuff from Mateo’s last shipment.” He shot a mock scowl in Alexei’s direction. “Thanks for that, Lord Sugar.”
Alexei blew him a kiss. “You are very welcome. Do you need another lesson in viable economics?”
“I need a spliff, mate. You’re the numbers man.”
Thetreasurer.He’d finally agreed, but on his own terms,of course.No patch. No cut. No rules that he hadn’t written himself. He spoke to no one outside the council but Orla, Decoy, and Ivy, and he didn’t give a shiny shit.
I love him.
And lucky fucker that I was, he loved me too.
“Daydreaming?” Cam brushed the back of my neck with warm fingers, then his lips, before sinking into the seat beside me—cos that was the other thing about Alexei: he refused to sit in the same seat twice. Right now? He slouched at the head of the table, twirling Cam’s gavel in his elegant fingers, smirking at our president.
Cam smirked back but returned his attention to me. “Doing okay?”
He asked me this quiet question a lot, as if he was afraid I’d wither away the second his back was turned. Turned out, me not having a spleen gave him worse nightmares than getting jacked up with special K against his will.
I felt bad about that. I didn’t regret that night, but sometimes I wished I’d put Cam first. The pain in his eyes while I’d been laid up was worse than any blunt-force trauma to the gut.
He was still waiting for an answer, hanging on every word I didn’t have.
I nodded.
Not good enough.
I rolled my eyes.
Better.
Cam turned to face the table, swiping the gavel from Alexei as he did. “Where’s Decoy?”
“Still on the haulage run,” Nash said. “Told him to go home if he was running late so he can pick Ivy up.”
Cam nodded. “We got figures on that,treasurer?”
Alexei threw him a hot stare. “Yes.”
“And?”
“And... they are good. You should have utilised this man long ago. He is wasted as bar staff.”
“He asked to work the bar,” Nash protested. “Helped him settle when he left the army.”
“That was a long time ago. The man has a brain. Let him use it.”