“A little.”
His damaged hip. I remembered. We had talked about it before, and I had extracted more details from Locke. “We have a supply of safe medication. You are not the only brother who cannot take opiates.”
“Is fine. Vodka will do.”
We were not close enough for me to press him. I poured vodka for both of us and we drank and endured—at least I did. Until now, Viktor had proved more adept at this part of club life, slotting into the big Rebel Kings family as if he had always been there.
Sometimes even I forgot he had not.
Others, our gazes clashed and all I saw was the past. It made being around him difficult if my mood was already all wrong for this place. I had not thought hard enough about how it felt for him.
He misses his own family.
Of that, I was certain. It was why I had brought him to Whisper Farm, believing that perhaps a place that reminded him of his island home, albeit colder, would be good for him. Perhaps I had been wrong.
Rubi came out of the kitchen and banged a ladle against a pot. “All right, you esteemed collection of queens, princesses, and scoundrels, dinner’s nearly up. Where’s the secret Santa list?”
“I have it.” Liliana sprang from where she’d been quiet in the corner of the room, drawing with Mateo, their dark heads both bent over the same sketch pad. “Alexei has to go first.”
I sighed. “Why?”
“We’re doing it in alphabetical order this year.” Rubi jabbed a thumb at Saint. “He said so.”
“Did he now?”
Saint’s expression gave nothing away, and I was not sure I believed Rubi’s claim. But I supposed it did not matter. Nash passed me a poorly disguised present. A vinyl record, of course.
Neil Young.
“Harvest Moon, zolotoy mal’chik? I am surprised you remembered, with all the sandwiches you had on your mind.”
“It’s about all I remember,” Nash confessed. “I was off my nut.”
“You wore it well.”
Nash grinned. “Thank you.”
I set the record aside, knowing Cam would want to play it for me later. If he was naked, I’d allow it, a thought that carried me through as Cam, Decoy, and Embry received their gifts next.
Folk gave Cam a book on the art of surviving happiness. Decoy and Ivy gave Embry the ugliest cactus I’d ever seen to go with the one that had lived in his office long before he’d called the club home.
Orla passed an envelope across the room to Decoy. It contained two things: a document that explained his ex-wife’s sentence had been extended for bad behaviour inside the prison Orla controlled—our queen had kept her promise. And a faded and framed photograph of a young, shirtless Royal Marine, the marks of jungle training on his tanned skin, a baby orangutan on each slim shoulder.
Decoy’s face lit up with unrestrained delight.
Folk rolled his eyes. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“You left me with your sister for three days.” Orla wagged her finger. “Did you really think we wouldn’t be besties by the time she left?”
“I was afraid of it,” Folk admitted.
Everyone laughed, even me, and Rubi banged his dinner gong again.
We decamped to the huge table Saint had built for this very purpose in the kitchen Cam had extended last summer. It was still a tight fit, but I stuck with Viktor and drank more vodka, and we survived.
I had never seen so much food—at least since last Christmas—but Cam and Rubi had outdone themselves. And more than that, they were happy. Everyone was. The music was loud, and there was so much singing, and not enough vodka in the world for Nash and Rubi’s version of charades.
We did not play, Viktor and I, and it was perhaps for his sake that Rubi let it slide.