“Joe’s coming.”
I straightened from where I had leaned against the horse.
Cam offered me his last cigarette. I waved it away, my phone heavy in my pocket, the renewed longing for Ranger’s gruff voice and tough love hitting a new peak now the distraction of rescuing the horse was over.
It had hurt, letting him go. That he would return in a matter of weeks was hard to grasp with any clarity. He had gone with the others to test his own strength. I had not realised how much it would test mine. “This is different.”
Cam eyed me over the mare’s back. “What is?”
“This. To when I left Ranger to fetch Lida. It was hard then, but this is so much worse.”
I was not in the habit of confiding my feelings to anyone who wasn’t Ranger or Jake. Or sometimes Locke. But the family I had found myself with in recent months had changed me even more than Alexei had warned me it would, and it didn’t feel strange to speak such honesty to Cam.
It didn’t feel strange that he did not flinch before conveying his understanding either. “I’d always rather fucking leave than be the one who’s left.”
“Why?”
“Cos I know I’m coming back.”
Ranger not returning was a hellish possibility I hadn’t considered. Why would he not come back? He loved me, and even if this time away from me convinced him he didn’t, his life was here. With his friends—his brothers. With his Nanna Jean. For Ranger not to come home, that meant?—
“Fuck. Sorry.” Cam reached over the horse and prodded my bicep with his fist. “Don’t make my nightmares yours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing you need on your mind—you hear that?”
A vehicle approached, a large one with a grumpy diesel engine. “Your friend with the horse truck?”
Cam finished his cigarette. “Horsebox. And I fucking hope so; I need my dinner.”
I slid him a sideways glance. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might’ve been hungry. I still didn’t think much about food unless someone reminded me. Ranger. Locke. Sometimes Nash.AlwaysRubi Matherson.
The vehicle slowed and a door opened. My blade was tucked in my waistband. I left it there, but I felt the smooth metal against my skin every long second it took for the driver of the vehicle to shout Cam’s name and appear through the gap in the fence.
“Brace yourself,” Cam muttered. “This moody cunt don’t like anyone.”
“Fucking heard that.” A tall man—Joe—descended the slope that led to the ditch, sending Cam a malevolent glare that softened as his attention shifted to the mare. “What have you got here, then?”
The man’s accent was as Cornish as Embry Carter’s, and a jolt hit my brain, as if I should have known who he was. But I had never seen him before... had I?
A different version of myself would have been sure. But I was not, and I was learning to be okay with that.
Joe eyed the horse.
I stood back and let him, staying quiet as he exchanged snipes with Cam. It was hard to tell if they truly did not like each other, and I didn’t care much. Joe, whoever he was, was as fierce as the day was long but too kind to pose a threat to a man who had rescued a horse. Even if that man was Cam O’Brian.
I banged his missus...
A long time ago, surely?
“How were her legs when you pulled her out? And who the fuck are you, anyway?”
Cam didn’t answer Joe’s question. I blinked and realised he was talking to me.
Don’t be Russian.“Dodger,” I supplied in my very best English accent, which... was not great. Or consistent. “Her legs were fine when she came out—we did not pull her.”
Cam’s face did something less than ideal. He ducked behind the mare while Joe glared at me, but like the O’Brian siblings, this man seemed to wear irritation as a second skin and I did not take offence.