Saint didn’t move for a while, and together we found that hazy place close to sleep, but conscious enough to feel every touch and hear every sound.
It was fucking heaven. I missed Alexei’s sardonic presence, but only because I loved him. Saint was enough. He always had been. It was me who’d been lacking. Me who hadn’t given enough.
I’ve let him down.
The thought carried me a while. My blood was alight with what we’d shared, but now it was over, what had brought me to his remote sanctuary in the first place came back.
“He is scared of what he sees between us, Cam. Not jealousy. Something deeper. Something that is more about him than us.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Alexei was wise. But he was also cryptic as fuck, and I’d have appreciated that nugget more if he’d explained it.
Git.
Frustration threatened the warm bubble Saint had gifted me. He felt it and sighed, skating his palm up my torso, over my ribs and to my injured shoulder where he stopped just shy of the point where his touch would’ve hurt. “You’re worried about him?”
His voice was rough, as if speaking pained him.
I turned to face him, revelling in the soreness he’d left me with. “Alexei?”
Silence, but Saint’s gaze was sharp enough that I heard his response all the same.
Yes.
Fuck. His hair was a riot. I channelled Alexei and tidied him up, ignoring his confused half-grin. “I’ll be worried about him until he comes home safe. And I never stopped—I didn’t want to. You’re not a distraction from him. It’s all the same to me now. You. Him. It’s all thesame.”
Saint frowned. He didn’t understand. And he probably wouldn’t, no matter how many times I explained it to him.He doesn’t believe he matters. God, I was fucking sick of that page in our story. I wanted to rip it out, but it wasn’t my page to burn. It was his, and the bravest motherfucker I knew was scared of the fire.
We were impossibly close, more so than I’d ever dreamed, in every sense of the word, but it wasn’t enough. I edged further into his personal space, throwing a leg over his bare hip to draw him in. I pressed my forehead to his and let him stare at me, drinking me in. Then I kissed him until my phone and his buzzed with a message from a burner that made us both whole.
Alexei:I will be with you soon
10
Alexei
I liked Mateo. He was as simple as Saint was complicated, and as easy to read as Cam, but without the distraction of wanting to fuck him. Still, he drove like a babushka, so I was glad when he finally steered the terrible British car we’d commandeered through the compound gates.
He parked in a secure container.
Saint waited for us outside. I took one look at him and a lick of heat spread through me.Something happened.Something good. I could smell it, though not literally. Saint’s hair was damp from the shower, slicked back from his handsome face. He smelled like wildflowers and sunshine, if such a thing was possible, and I did not miss the darkness he had left with.
I drew closer to him.
His eyes blazed at me, lips twisted in a half-smile.
I smiled back, just a little. “You are okay?”
He nodded and his stare intensified.Are you?
I was. Living in the MC world was a million miles from where I’d ever expected myself to be, but despite themanybumps in the road, it flowed. The pockets of light were worth the storms, and on this cold and grey afternoon, the light came from the tiny person who wedged herself between us. The delicate arms that reached for him. The voice like a tinkling bell. “Saint! Pick me up.”
He lifted Ivy high in the air, spinning a slow circle. The underbelly of the world we lived in melted away, and it was just the two of them, smiling at each other, no words, just a giggle.
I could hardly stand to watch, but I made myself, and I hoped that somewhere Cam was watching too.Show him what he’s worth and he’ll give it back a hundred times.
Ivy had got the memo.
Or maybe, she’d written it. She fastened her arms around Saint’s neck and whispered in his ear. He laughed and shot Decoy a pointed, humorous frown as he appeared beside me. “Father Christmas?”