Ranger smirked and I didn’t want to know where his mind went when his thoughts turned to my sister. His commitment to Viktor was absolute, but his affection for Finch ran deep. If she hadn’t been so resolutely aromantic, who knew?—
No. It felt wrong to even think about. Viktor and Ranger, their love was a rare thing. I knew it, because it had taken me thirty-five years to find that kind of love for myself. To find my home in a place I’d never intended to stay. And now I was getting married, I had a child, and more friends I called brother than one man deserved.
On cue, bike engines rumbled.
I turned my face to the wind, sensing the shift in Ranger’s mood. In my own as I realised Viktor hadn’t ridden here alone.
Seth.
I watched his bike roll to a stop beside Viktor and raised my hand in greeting, a smile halfway to my face as he tugged his helmet from his face and scanned the horizon, looking forme.
It was a good feeling. The best. But my smile faltered as the expression on his face registered. The frown. The downrightalarmas he rolled from his bike and shouted, pointing beyond me.
His words were lost on the wind. I spun around, searching for whatever had spooked him, the world a blur as a long, lean body leapt over my head and fired like an arrow into the freezing water.
33
VIKTOR
It happened in slow motion. The girl—a teenager not much younger than Locke’s daughter—fell from the rocks, hitting her head. She disappeared into the pool and she did not come back up.
Then the world began to turn faster again. Obscure motion, Ranger a sharp smudge of denim and limbs as he kicked his boots off, hurled his jacket, and followed her into the water at such speed I hardly knew it had happened.
I had never seen a man swim so fast. He cut through the water with the velocity of a bullet, tearing up the distance between where he had been standing and the spot where the girl had vanished. Then he disappeared too, beneath the surface of the pool, and my heart followed him.
All these things, they happened in a split second, or perhaps I was frozen in time, Decoy too. For we did not move until Ranger was gone. And then we moved so fast my bike toppled to the ground behind me.
We ran, down steps and over rocks. I surged ahead of Decoy, vaulting the fence as if my hip had not kept me awake last night, as if I had not endured the ride here with a violent corkscrew in the nerves there. My boots did not slip—Idid not slip. I reached the pool as Ranger broke the surface and propelled the girl to where Folk waited at the edge.
She was bleeding and blue.
I should have cared, but while Ranger remained in the water, I did not.
He pushed the girl into Folk’s arms.
I grabbed his hands and pulled him out as a vicious wave swept in from the sea, soaking us all to the skin, icy foam lingering as it washed away.
Ranger rolled to his feet, his gaze laser-focused on the girl.
Folk had her on her side, coaxing water from her lungs.
A good sign—her lips were blue from the cold. But that meant Ranger was cold too, a reality that hadn’t dawned on him yet as Decoy reached Folk’s side to help him aid the girl.
“She needs an ambulance.” Folk’s voice carried over the chaos between my ears. “Vik, take Ranger and get out of here.”
Vik. No one but Ranger had ever called me that. But the surprise of Folk doing so underlined his words. Ambulances meant police, and as innocent as this moment was, Ranger’s heroics were attention we did not need.
I grasped Ranger’s sodden arm. “We must go.”
He did not move, gaze still locked on the girl.
“Asher.” I tugged him harder. “She is breathing, she is okay. Folk will stay with her now.”
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the wail of a siren pierced the air, and the girl’s friends finally descended the rocks, bringing hysteria loud enough to reanimate Ranger. He backed up, water dripping from his clothes. I grabbed the boots and jacket he’d discarded and towed him back to our bikes.
Mine remained on its side. Ranger did not seem to notice, his focus on jamming his boots back on his feet and what we had left behind.
I righted the Ducati as the first police car came into view, concealing my face with my helmet. The car would not stop where we had—the conventional parking spots were further on. But the need to be anywhere but here burned inside me, and it did not feel good.