A heavy sigh escaped Cam. “Why is everything always so messy?”
“It’s not messy. I love him.”
“I meant everything else.”
“You told me five years ago that we’d be lucky to live through our twenties.”
“Meant it.”
I dragged on my vape. “And here we are, gunning for our forties. Don’t worry about things you can’t control.”
Cam speared me with his bestyou’re a fucking idiotstare, but I knew he heard me. These O’Brians. They’d been hurt so much, sometimes it took them a while to absorb positivity. They liked to heap the worst of the worst on top of it, so life couldn’t ever disappoint them, which made Cam’s next words more in context than they seemed.
“He was on his way to attack her.”
For a split second, I thought he meant Orla.
“Willow,” Cam clarified. “River kicked the truth out of him. He was heading to Kara’s place. Saint was there. Mateo. They’d have got him before he laid eyes on her, but my skin is still fuckingcrawlingthinking about it.”
“Don’t think about it then.” I forced my clenched fists to loosen, tolet go, even as my gaze drifted to the window, Willow’s uproarious laugh chasing Rubi out of the bar. I was going to pay later for whatever new and sticky thing coated his hair, but I didn’t give a shit. Not a single one. Cam could keep his nightmares. I chose this. “We need to update our Russian friends on last night.”
“Jakov?” Cam grunted his agreement. “I’ll do it.”
“Ask him how Viktor is.”
“What do you care about Viktor?”
Willow ran back inside. I gave Cam my full attention again. “Locke hasn’t asked, but he will. And I want to give him a straight answer. Besides, he wouldn’t be here to ask the question without Viktor. Neither would you. If that isn’t enough to care, I don’t know what is.”
Cam conceded my point with a smile that seemed to release something in him. That taut coil of responsibility holding him hostage, sucking the joy out of life. I knew it well—those shackles were mine too—but I wasn’t in the mood to be anyone’s bitch.
I fired up the burner Cam needed to contact Jakov the Russian and handed it over.
He left to make the call in the dead zone on the roof, and I took a moment for myself, glad it wasn’t me crawling out of the window in gale force winds, typing a message out with one hand while I jammed my vape between my lips with the other.
Nash:last bag of rubbish went out last night
I wasn’t expecting a response. Ranger had been out of pocket since he’d ridden out the day after Locke came back. I had no idea where he was at, if he was even safe. But I’d spent enough time with him over the past month to know that wherever our nomad was, whatever he was doing, this news would bring him the grim kind of joy this life was all about.
Ranger didn’t reply. I erased the message, only half watching Cam on the roof, the rest of my attention trained on Locke as he ventured out of the bar to rescue Rubi from Willow.
I rose to stop him, because honestly, fuck that. Rubi deserved both the drubbing he was taking from a gaggle of girlsandthe hooting laughter he was deafening the birds with. It took a moment to register that Cam had been on the phone longer than the six seconds I usually spent talking to Jakov. That he was having an actual conversation that made him pace and glare at the sky.
Couldn’t imagine what about. Or maybe I didn’t want to. I’d spent most of the last decade overloaded with secrets, and you know what? I needed a fucking holiday, preferably one that involved sunshine and sex, or at least a couple of days without murderous pandemonium.
I needed the sanctuary of Locke’s arms and the sorcery of Orla’s wicked lips, but as I considered which lover to accost with my needy self first, Orla’s dark warning returned to me.“...compare notes, so we don’t find ourselves back here in a year’s time.”
Fuck’s sake. Sighing,I pushed the ache in my heart aside and went to find Alexei instead.
20
ORLA
Willow left in the early afternoon. Her little car zipped out of the yard with River for subtle company, and I didn’t dwell too much on why my little brother still felt the need to shadow her. Priest was dead, and the stain he’d left behind would stay with us all forever, but I had better things to think about than him.
Also, my period arrived to ruin my day.
I took a shower, staining the water red all over again, but for reasons that didn’t disgust me. Locke waited for me when I got out, one shoulder propped on the tiles, his hair damp from the steam.