“How do you know then?”
“She told Rubi when I was nearby.” Alexei came closer and reopened the drawer. He selected a pair of socks and pressed them into my hand. “If it’s any consolation, she was laughing so hard in the next moment, she fell over her own feet.”
It was a consolation. A fucking massive one that made me contemplate how I’d ever found it easy to be a shitbag to Rubi. Or to distrust the brother who didn’t like the way me and Em shoved socks and trollies in our drawers. “Thank you.” I waited for Alexei to stop death-glaring my underwear. “For everything.”
“You will be okay today?”
“I think so.”
It wasn’t exactly admitting I maybe hadn’t been when he’d ninja-ed into my house, cleaned my bathroom, and given me a fucking glow up, but understanding warmed Alexei’s gaze anyway.
“Mateo, you have been strong for many people. It will not kill you to let them be strong for you in return.”
He turned away and left me with that. Gone before I had one foot on the landing to follow him downstairs.
I found myself alone in the house again, feeling like I could go for another nap. But the empty house got under my skin, and... I didn’t like sleeping without Em by my side. It felt upside down—it felt wrong, and I couldn’t stay in this fucking house a minute longer.
Or, at least, longer than the ten minutes it took me to find the car keys someone had hidden in the fridge. Thefullfridge that had Rubi written all over it, and he should’ve been my first stop when I finally hit the road, but there was another brother I needed to see first. A brother I’d owed a life debt to since the night he’d let my kid run free onto the compound when we all knew he could’ve stopped her.
The big old house was a mile away from mine. Nash and Saint had replaced the windows a while ago, and Cam had rebuilt the roof. I’d fixed the eroding render on the outside, but it still needed painting, which couldn’t happen until the spring, when Embry turned his hand to the crumbling drywall.
He’d be the last brother to leave his mark on the house Locke and Nash had bought at the start of the year. I realised that as I slipped inside, followed the sound of Gold FM upstairs, and saw the fresh plaster coating the walls.
Ranger.
He’d been busy in the week that had passed since I’d last been here, though how the fuck he’d blown through the entire first floor on top of a never-ending haulage run and scattering Rocco in Norfolk, I had no idea.
I found Locke in one of the back bedrooms, fixing floorboards, dust in his hair, an ease to his grin that hadn’t been there the first few years I’d known him.
He blinked at my tidy face. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“The accountant wasn’t vibing with my troll era.” I leaned in the doorway, fighting the fatigue dragging me down. “Mad cunt broke into my house to give me a fresh trim.”
Locke laughed and heaved himself from the floor, mindful of the back I knew to be covered in the same vicious scars as Viktor’s. “It looks good on you. Can’t lie, I was expecting the troll version of you.”
Because he knew I was coming. Just like I knew he’d be here. Because that’s how our lives had to be—all of us, not just Juana.
It’s different for her.
The thought jarred me. So did Locke’s next words as he came closer and assessed everything about me, from my tired lean on the doorframe to the symmetrical scruff on my face.
“They let you out, eh?”
“Who?”
“The people who love you, brother.” Locke inclined his head to the room next door. “Come sit.”
I didn’t need to sit. I had things I needed to say to him before I faced the music with Juana and whatever was going on with her. But Locke was a parental force of nature, to all of us, not just my kids, and I found myself on a couch in the next room anyway. “This is Willow’s room?”
“Whenever she wants it to be.” There was a workman’s kettle in the corner. Locke flicked it on, Motown still filtering out of the battered radio. “That might be never, now she’s all fuckin’ grown up, but I wanted to do it for her anyway. Nicky too.”
Locke wasn’t a soul who wasted much time hiding his emotions. But even if he had been, I’d have seen the sadness flicker in his gaze. I knew what it was like to have the basic beats of fatherhood ripped away. It was the affinity I shared with this brother and why I’d sought him out.
He passed me a mug of black coffee, the only sustenance I’d reliably wanted over the past few days. “Something on your mind?”
“I wanted to say thank you for helping Lili when she got upset last week. Em told me what you did for her.”
“It was nothing.”