“If you’re asking me to scientifically defend my big mouth, you’re out of luck.”
“Babe, you’re in my bed. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
Swoon. If a balm existed for a fractured heart, the love of this man was truly it. “I’m just worried about him.”
Nash tugged me upright and tucked my hair behind my ears. “I know. I am too. And I want to be the one that makes this right, but sometimes we can’t be everything we want to be. Remember when Saint was hurt, when he was sick, and he wouldn’t swallow a pill? Do you think Cam wanted you and Skylar to be the ones who could persuade him? Do you think Alexei wanted that?”
I chewed my lip, remembering my brother’s devastation every time Saint silently pushed him away. How he’d owned it to give Saint the space he needed to get better in his own way. “He was with Folk? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure, Orls. And if he can’t be with us right now, there’s no one I’d trust more to take care of him.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Or with the need to be as close to Nash as possible. I coaxed him into ditching the engine parts. He played Alabaster Deplume through his old Bluetooth speaker, took all his clothes off, and crawled into bed. He wrapped his arms around me, and for a while we talked about anything and nothing. Then he fell asleep, and I was alone with the haunting spiritual jazz and my thoughts again.
By Nash’s standards, he was quiet. And I shifted onto my side, smothering him with my boobs to be sure. Without Locke’s magic touch, they were all I had, and I dozed, drifting to the music until it played out and I was left with the fading sounds of the winding down compound.
The bar doors slamming.
Bikes leaving.
Bikesarrivingas Saint and Mateo came home from who the hell knew where.
I didn’t hear Locke’s bike. It hadn’t moved from its parking spot since Nash and River had finished fixing it up, and he’d been borrowing Decoy’s car instead of mine, a state of affairs that disturbed me more than I could explain.
Eventually, maybe I did fall asleep. When I woke to Nash’s muttering sometime later, it was the early hours of the morning.
He was behind me, arm tight around my waist, face buried between my shoulder blades.
I reached back and rubbed his bare hip, scratching my nails down his thigh.
Nash sighed, his cock thickening and pressing between my legs, but it was an unconscious response. He didn’t mean it, and I didn’t want him to. The heat that flooded my body, the goosebumps pricking my skin, without Locke, they meant nothing.
It made me contemplate how we’d ever lived before him. Then hate myself because nothing about how I felt about Locke diminished what Nash and I shared. It couldn’t, or I wouldn’t survive this.
I shut my eyes.
Opened them again as quiet tread sounded on the stairs.
Locke. It had to be. Mateo had already gone out again, and I wouldn’t have heard Saint ride a horse through a glass museum. Besides, no one, save the man sleeping behind me, caused my nerves to short-circuit the way Locke did, pulse pounding, breath caught, every sense hyper-fixated on his footfalls on the landing. On theexcruciatingwait to see if he’d come to us on the first night he’d come home since he’d walked out on us a week ago.
He didn’t. He went into his own room and shut the door, a soft click that may as well have been a sonic boom, and I’d never felt pain like that either.
* * *
My period was imminent. I felt it, and so did anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in my company.
Scared of nothing, Alexei returned home from a shift hunting Priest and brought me treats. Russian doughnuts that he calledpyshka, and an ice-cold miniature of his favourite vodka. “You are thinking too much, koroleva.”
I shot him a venomous glare, taking in his tight eyes, the only sign of fatigue he showed from the days and nights spent scouring the earth for a monster. “Prove it.”
“The man with bad trousers called yousweet cheeksand he is still breathing.”
“Very funny.”
“Was not a joke.” Alexei dropped into the chair Decoy had vacated to cut timber. “Your bad mood is affecting the weather.”
“It’s not raining.”
“So?”