“I haven’t been anywhere.”
“Yeah, yeah. See you later for the lights.”
The big switch-on. Right. I’d forgotten about that—on purpose, maybe. I still found it hard to believe I no longer had to endure one of the club’s most wholesome family events beneath the weight of everything I didn’t have. That this year, like last year, Embry and my girls would be right there with me.
I wondered if Decoy felt the same. If he had the same scars from every year he’d had to haul that tree around not knowing if Ivy would ever see it.
Contemplating it tightened my arms around him. “I fucking love you. We all do.”
Decoy grunted in surprise, but I didn’t stick around for whatever he might’ve said in return. I continued to my car to find Rubi already behind the wheel, still smirking as much as this morning.
“Did they take that appendix from up your?—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Rubi shut up and watched me ease into the passenger seat without further comment. He cued hisMats and Roo Want To Kill Meplaylist and steered my car out of the compound.
Cam followed behind, rumbling on his hog at a steady pace. I figured that was it. Then two miles along the A-road, two sport bikes cut in front of us. Alexei. Viktor. A combination that had me frowning. “What’s that all about?”
Rubi shrugged. “Nothing I’m important enough to know about. Sure it ain’t shady, though. You see how chill Cammie is these days?”
“Joe don’t like strangers.”
I was thinking of Viktor. Joe had come across Alexei enough to mostly ignore him. But Rubi had news for me.
“Joe already met Dodger. They get on just fine.”
“Dodger?”
“Road name, innit?”
“ForViktor?”
Rubi laughed, leaving me wallowing in the ignorance I likely deserved after being off radar so long, and I didn’t mind it. Rubi made me feel good, and despite what he thought, I didn’t mind his music that much. Every track he played came with a memory attached—memories I’d learned to cherish.
Family.
Friends.
Brothers.
We picked Lili up from school. Engrossed in her sketchbook, she didn’t have much to say, and the drive passed in a muddle of Rubi’s batshit tunes and random chatter until we reached Whisper Farm, a sacred place only Orla had ever been until my kid came along and turned everyone’s lives, even Joe’s, upside down.
My car was allowed up the lane. The bikes weren’t. Cam and the others rode on to park elsewhere while Rubi steered us into a space near Harry Carter’s wellness clinic.
I spied the big man through a window, working on someone. Up ahead, Joe emerged from the main house, grinning as he saw Liliana, like he always did, however he felt about who’d made the journey to bring her here.
She skipped ahead to meet him, but I found my gaze straying in the opposite direction, following the trail and sound of a working building site, searching out Embry as if I’d die if I didn’t lay eyes on him in the next ten seconds. Relaxing as his dark mop of hair came into view, his cute face creased in a frown as he mixed cement for the breeze-block wall behind him.
Fuck, I love him.
I caught up with Liliana, Rubi at my heels.
Joe spared him an up-nod. “Your weirdo mate’s already here.”
Rubi swung his gaze to where Joe pointed. To where Saint lounged against a tree by the strongest fence on the farm, sharing a deep stare with Shadow, a stallion—a fucking unit of a horse—I had on good authority had almost killed Joe at least twice.
“Fucking hell.” I sucked a breath through my teeth. “He have a death wish?”