“That time you didn’t notice an internal organ exploding inside you?”
“No, that time you were so nice to me I thought I’d died, and it scared the shit out of me.”
I almost smiled. Then I remembered something Willow had said in her messages. “Logan told Willow he’s coming down here soon.” Silence greeted that statement, but the road racket remained. “Do you think he knows?” I said when Nash failed to respond.
“That something’s wrong?” Nash laughed without humour. “Course he does, Orls. They talk every day, and Locke’s been MIA for a month.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean then?”
My gaze drifted to the gates for no reason whatsoever. “I’m talking about Locke giving up his whole life to protect him. Logancan’tknow, can he? He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who could live with that.”
“The fuck are you on about?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell mewhat?”
“Why the Crows claimed Locke in the first place.” I swallowed hard. Really? This again? There weren’t enough hours in the day to rehash every exchange the three of us had as separate twos, but my men were so tight, it hadn’t occurred to me that Locke hadn’t had this conversation with Nash either. That it wasn’t just Folk he’d left in the dark. “Something happened and they were going to hurt Logan. Locke convinced them to take him instead. You really didn’t know?”
Nash made a low sound that was all pain. And it was too easy for me to picture him on the road, white knuckling the handlebars of his hog, losing what little colour he had left to digesting this new level of hell. “Fuck—I have to go.”
Anxiety gripped me. “Why? What’s happening?”
Nash hung up.
If I’d been holding my phone, I’d have flung it at the nearest wall. The secrets. The silence. The waiting. I’d spent so long conditioning myself not to resent it, even when I was screaming on the inside, but my resilience was at an all-time low.
My hand twitched.
River jerked away from me, holding my phone out of reach again. “Take a breath, Khaleesi. For both of their sakes.”
His use of Rubi’s nickname for me got through. I sat on my hands, gritting my teeth as a sob built in my chest, forcing it down. Nash wore his broken heart on his sleeve. I’d buried mine in a pit, and every night spent like this, every night without Locke, was another layer of dirt shovelled on top.
At my feet, Lida whined, pawing at the ground. At me and at the table leg when she found me wanting.
River frowned, relinquishing my phone. “What’s wrong with that dog? She’s usually chill as fuck.”
I stuffed the phone in my bra. “I don’t know. She’s been like this all night.”
As I spoke, Lida whipped her head to the gates. She whined again, and it turned into a howl, tipping her face wolfishly to the invisible moon.
“What the?—”
Lida sprang, leaping over the table and bolting towards the gate, darting across the yard like a furry bullet train.
I rose to follow.
River grabbed me. I shoved him off, tossing the blanket in his face, and in the pouring rain, I took off after her.
“Fuck’s sake.” River’s curse was brutal, and I heard him behind me, his mismatched boots heavy on the wet ground. Faster than me. Taller, with longer legs.
He should’ve caught me, but as my phone erupted against my chest, unnatural speed spurred me on, and I chased Lida down, a few feet behind her as she skidded to a stop in front of the gate.
Her bark was fearsome.
Loud.