I left it at that and went back to work, noting the lone AirPod in one of Nash’s ears, a tell that he needed some space to sift through his thoughts. Thoughts he likely judged unimportant, but anyone lucky enough to know him knew better.
Eventually, though, even I grew tired of crunching numbers. I shut my laptop and moved to the window, surveying the yard through the safety of the privacy glass, scanning the dwindling crowds for the few people I cared about.
Saint was nowhere to be seen, naturally. He had been impossible to keep track of for days now. A breath in the wind. Raindrops in the sky. A wave lapping over my feet, gone by the time I crouched to meet it. Cam, though, I was so drawn to him I did not consciously seek him out. My gaze found him unbidden, and there he was, a beacon among the crowd, charming and beautiful, at ease in the kingdom he’d been born to rule.
It was an effort to look away from him. To observe Decoy and Folk preparing to leave. To spy Ranger perched on the clubhouse roof, flicking who knew what in Rubi’s general direction while River laughed, complicit andhappy, a state of mind the youngest O’Brian truly deserved.
And where was Viktor? It was a new phenomenon to care beyond logistics, but I could live with how I felt as I sought him out for a second time today. I could live with most things these days. For reasons I did not quite understand, since Folk, Ranger, and Locke had laid Rocco St John to rest, everything—even me—seemed to come easier.
I did not find Viktor. Or his faithful dog. My search discovered Mateo and Embry in the shadows, a sight I skipped over, and ended on Locke and Orla as they crossed the yard, Locke’s gaze darting around enough that I knew he felt the same absence in his heart I did while I could not see Saint.
“Mishka looks for you.”
Nash’s chair scraped the floor. I sensed him rise and waited for him to leave, but if anything, he seemed to drift closer. “What you said earlier, about how my life might be when every thread of our lives finally comes together, you were wrong.”
I rotated to face Nash. He was a few feet away, jaw set, his usually placid gaze flashing with something I couldn’t quite decipher. “Wrong about what?”
“About a little McGovern under my feet. It’s not going to happen.”
“Zolotoy—”
“No, I mean I’m not giving any kid of mine that name. I’ll die before that fucking happens.”
He backed off without waiting for a response and left the chapel, a storm in his wake that belied every thought I’d had about the club being a calmer place of late. But as I turned back to the window and watched Nash find his lovers and place his hands on Orla’s swollen belly, both of them cocooned in the sanctuary of Locke’s big arms, peace returned to him, and I stole some of it for myself.
Ten days.
A countdown to a different world, a better one, if our queen and her men got the life they deserved.
Imagining a reality where they didn’t was a horror beyond even me. I forced my mind to skirt around it and returned to the past instead—to a place in time where I had not existed for Cam and Saint. When they had needed someone else to meld them together. It was a lot easier to picture, and I did not mind it.
I did not mind it at all.
The chapel door opened again. Closed with a quiet click. The scent of musk and smoke reached me.
Cam.
He had big arms too, muscles jacked from the workout he’d squeezed in when we’d returned from Whisper Farm. He wore a soft cotton T-shirt and smelled of shampoo, his hair damp from a recent shower, his skin still flushed with exertion, still warm with everything this man was to me.
Cam took advantage of his height and set his chin on my head. “I thought you liked Christmas trees?”
“I do.”
“Why are you hiding from ours then?”
“You think it is the yolka that keeps me inside?”
He chuckled. “Not a chance, but it’s over, if it’s any consolation. Everyone’s going home.”
“Are you?”
“Soon.”
“How soon? And where is Saint?”
BecauseIwanted to go home. With both my lovers. I did not want to think about other people anymore.
“I don’t know where Saint went,” Cam admitted. “I thought you might.”