Rubi rubbed my back. “Sometimes I wish you’d just bawl your eyes out, Nashie. Let it all go.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“If I let it go, it means he’s gone.” I jostled Rubi off me and stood. The bar tilted, but I ignored it as much as I ignored Rubi’s steadying hands and drifted to the door at the bottom of the stairs, my fingers moving of their own accord, punching in a code that meant nothing to anyone except Saint.
The door opened. I slipped through and let it slam shut behind me. The sound was hollow, the echo cramming into my overcrowded brain. It spun me out and I lit a cigarette to chase it away before I remembered Juana was in Cam’s bedroom with the baby.
I stubbed it out, waving the toxic smoke away, new guilt biting deep. As if it wasn’t enough that I’d failed to keep Locke safe, now I was poisoning Mateo’s kid.
Frustration ripped through me. I hurled the cigarette box at the wall. The lighter flew out and exploded on impact, a pathetic pop and a whole load of mess.
Dazed, I stepped over it and trudged upstairs, ignoring my open bedroom door and drifting through Locke’s instead.
He didn’t spend much time in here. If anything, it smelled more of Orla than of him, but there was enough of his scent in the air for me to take a greedy, deep breath and shut my eyes, my lungs moving freely for the first time since I’d last crept into this room twenty-four hours ago.
The peace didn’t last. I closed the door and kicked my boots off, moving to the bed, sinking onto the very edge before I gave in and flopped onto my back, the cracked ceiling taunting me.
You fucked up.
Logic and too many years as a Rebel King told me that wasn’t true. That sometimes it didn’t matter how hard we fought to stop it, shitty things happened anyway. And I stood by my reasons for not telling Locke. But fuck, we should’ve told Folk.Ishould’ve told Folk a split second after overruling Alexei. He’d had his reasons too, but none of them trumped Locke’s safety.
Folk could’ve shut this down.
Maybe.
And if nothing else, at least he could’ve stopped Locke from riding out alone two fucking weeks ago.
That’s what he was so angry about, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame anyone except myself.
“That ain’t fair,” Cam growled. “It was my decision to roll with Alexei and keep this tight. Don’t flay yourself. Locke wouldn’t want that.”
I closed my eyes, letting that thought percolate. Then letting it fade without resolution. I fell asleep, I think, coming to sometime later to the warmth of someone lying beside me.
Orla.
I’d lived long years of my life when that had been enough, but as I opened my eyes and found her bloodshot gaze, I knew it wasn’t anymore, for either of us. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She lay a sweet-scented hand over my mouth. “I’msorry. For making it hurt worse. I’m so fucking angry, but not with you.”
I gripped her wrist, tugging her hand away. Words played on my lips, but she shook her head.
“Just hold me?”
I wrapped my arms around her, tugging her flush against me, her soft curves slotting against the hard planes of my body, the most perfect fit until we’d realised there was a missing piece to the puzzle we’d messed up so much before we’d ever known him. Had we been waiting for him all along?
Course we had.
And now we’d lost him, and it hurt so fucking much I couldn’t breathe. “I need to go.”
“I know,” Orla whispered. “Folk sent the coordinates of the meet.”
“He say anything else?”
“Not that anyone was telling me.”
That didn’t mean much, but my heart knew my brothers had found nothing while I’d been comatose in my grief. My phone was by my head, unmoving and silent.