More wind blustered through the yard. I tugged the blanket tighter around me and dug a cigarette out of the box I’d pinched from Cam, slipping it between my lips. I wasn’t much of a smoker, but I craved the smell. Like the petrol aroma that never left the air around the compound and the sweaty leather scent of the bar, it was home as much as it could be without Nash and Locke by my side. Without Cam irritating me just by breathing. Mateo. Embry.Saint. Christ, at this point, I even missed Bear the Creep.
Liar. Bear had vanished from my awareness sometime over the past month, and I hadn’t cared enough to find out where he’d gone.
I still didn’t care.
Glued to my side, Lida rumbled again. I scratched her ears, then fished my buzzing phone from my pocket.
Willow.
I winced. A busy few days at college had given me some breathing space, but I was running out of rope with this kid. She loved her dad. She missed him. It was only a matter of time before she came looking for him in the only place she could. Or for Nash. Willow had been messaging him as much as me, but there was no way she could see him right now. That girl was her father—empathetic and kind. One look at Nash’s shadowed eyes and gaunt complexion and she’dknow.
I got her talking about something else, grateful for the distraction.Gratefulthat it was her and not Logan Halliwell blowing up my phone; I was running out of rope with him too. Tomorrow, his three-day grace period was up, and I didn’t know how I was going to look him in the eye and tell him anything other than the truth.
Tiny drops of rain landed on my phone screen. I wiped them away and flicked a lighter beneath my cigarette.
It didn’t work.
River appeared from nowhere and saved the day with the pewter Zippo Alexei had given Rubi for his birthday. “Smoking doesn’t suit you.”
“Get off my dick.”
He shrugged and stepped away.
I caught him. “Stay.”
River sat down and stole my cigarette. “You need to sleep.”
“So do you.”
He cast me a stare I chose to ignore and passed the cigarette back.
I took a drag, indifferent to the taste, revelling in the burn. “Is Rubi still on the couch?”
“Hanging off it with his feet in the air.”
“Sleep yoga?”
“Probably. He’s pretty fucking bendy.”
“Must make for some prettyfucking.”
River snorted. “Cam would die if you made that joke about Saint.”
“I could never.” True to his name, Saint was a holy thing to me. “Alexei, maybe.”
River almost smiled, but his humour was short-lived. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I finished the cigarette and stubbed it out.
River took it off me and tucked it into a tin he fished from his pocket. A tin I recognised.
I gave him a hard look. “What have you gotthat?”
“For my crack,” he deadpanned. Then he flashed me the fresh label on the tin. “Rubi repurposed it. Drawing pins for the office in the garage.”
“You don’t have an office in the garage.”
“Not yet. Boo has big plans for the future of my organisation.”