“What about us?” I grit the words out around the viscous lump in my throat. “What the ever-loving fuck dowedo now?”
Folk and Alexei shared a glance that added an extra peak to the mountain of despair already bearing down on me.
“My friend,” Alexei said gently. “We go back to the start.”
And so we did, but we uncovered nothing we hadn’t found the first three times we’d looked, and aggravation that it had taken us so long to discover Locke’s bike ate away at me all the way home when daylight forced us in.
Saint and Alexei stayed out to follow Willow and Nicky to college and school.
The rest of us escorted Folk to Decoy’s house, leaving him with the unenviable task of figuring out how to bullshit Logan Halliwell.
Then we rode for the compound, reaching it as a morning rain shower broke through the clouds.
Mateo dashed inside to find his husband before Embry and Cam headed out to take over the search.
Ranger stomped to the bunkhouse, his foul mood all mine, but he wasn’t gone long. He re-emerged with training gloves. “Fuck it. Wanna spar?”
Spar? I wanted to kill someone, a state of mind that gave me no business getting in the ring with someone I cared about. And maybe if it had been any brother but Ranger, I wouldn’t have done it. But the gloves in his outstretched hand called to me, and I rolled off my hog and took them.
The ring was my domain, save the solar-powered fairy lights Orla had strung up around it. Lights that didn’t shine in the wet misery of daylight.
I vaulted the ropes.
Ranger rolled beneath them, his roughness eclipsed by the sharp agility I’d seen on the road over the years, Crow and King. We’d never fought hand to hand, but we’d been on opposite sides enough that I knew how he operated, fast and strong, more feet than fists.
I’m glad he’s ours.
As glad as I was that he was volunteering to let me thump him.IfI could catch him. And I would. Mood I was in, I’d have caught anyone.
Except Priest and his goons.
The frustration I’d brought home from the road burned harder.
Ranger held up his gloves.
I knocked them out of his hands and tossed my own. “You want to fight, let’s fight.”
He grunted, agreeable enough, and we settled into sparring stances as other brothers emerged from the depths of the compound to watch.
I was used to fighting with an audience. As I circled Ranger, I blocked out the eyes on me. Win or lose, I didn’t give a fuck. “You should’ve told me.”
Ranger slid his gaze from my fists to my face and back again, his sooty eyes more visible since he’d hacked off his hair. “About what?”
“About Priest.”
Ranger’s lip curled, his own fury and agitation roiling just below the surface. “I thought he was dead.”
“Thought. You didn’t fucking know.”
He lunged.
I side-stepped him, my feet heavy, and cracked him in the face hard enough to split his lip.
Ranger sneered, spitting blood, humour a world away from what we were doing here. And I got it. He was angry—with me, with himself. With the whole fucking world.
So was I, and I craved the simpler pain I’d gifted him.
Ranger swung again, and this time I let him hit me, taking the blow to my ribs with the same hollow gratification as he had.