I left Ranger to sulk in the spring sunshine and ducked into the garage. With Nash so busy these days, Axel worked with me whenever Cam didn’t poach him for other things. Like renovating Crow Land. Or guarding Juana.
Fuck. I’d been so caught up in my own shit, I hadn’t even asked him how that was going. Or if he’d patched things up with the fella giving him the run around.
You’re a terrible friend.
As I thought it, my phone lit up with another unanswered message from Rubi, proving that I was a terrible boyfriend too. But I couldn’t text him back. Couldn’t talk to him at all. Not until I’d got all my shit done.
I buried my phone under some boxes and sought out Axel.
Unlike me, he’d been to the Decoy school of timekeeping, and he was already cleaned up and waiting. But true to my sister’s word, I really was covered in oil, and lucky for me, Axel knew me well enough that he hadn’t expected to leave anytime soon.
I retreated to the sink to wash my hands. My arms. My fucking face. I came up for air to my phone blaring a high-pitched intruder alarm, a sure sign I’d pissed off Rubi, probably because I hadn’t picked up the phone since he’d driven off on a haulage run that wouldn’t see him home until the early hours of tomorrow morning.
I miss him.
He’d been gone barely a day, and it felt the same as when I’d banished him from my life for five fucking years. And that was what today was about, right? Taking another step towards making sure I never fucked up like that again?
“Your phone’s getting on my tits.”
Startled, I tossed a glare to meet the vibe Ranger was giving off behind me. “So?”
“So turn it off if you don’t want to speak to him.”
“Who says I don’t want to speak to him?”
“That fucking noise.”
Everything about Ranger and everything about me said we shouldn’t get on. But we did. He was funny as fuck and I liked his honesty. Could’ve done without his growly perception right now, though. “If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.”
“Where? You can hear that shagging thing from Mars.”
“Why are you in a mood?”
“Who says I’m in a mood?”
Wow. This conversation was going nowhere. I noted his empty arms. “Where’d you put Donovan?”
Ranger shifted his glower from the pit I’d buried my phone in, about to burn me alive with sarcasm any O’Brian would’ve been proud of, but bikes in the yard saved me.
Locke.
Viktor,who’d become so smiley in the last few months it was now criminally obvious how much he’d been struggling before.
No clue where they’d been, but the near instant evaporation of Ranger’s bad mood was fucking hysterical.
He abandoned me and straddled his V-Rod, revving the engine before he and Viktor peeled out of the yard without stopping for pleasantries.
Locke waved them off. I expected him to go straight indoors to find Orla, but he came for me instead, wincing at the racket my phone was still making, a victim of Rubi’s tenacity. “Fuckin’ hell, that thing’s loud.”
“So Ranger keeps telling me.”
“Everything’s loud to him. He has hyper-hearing.”
“Say what now?”
Locke moved to the red Sportster in the corner of the garage. It was still in bits from where Nash had taken it apart to keep Orla off the road after she’d de-dicked a Crow, but I’d separated the fuel tank for Liliana to paint, and I was fairly fucking sure Locke was using it as an excuse to check I hadn’t blocked the fire exit again. “Finch calls it something else, but he’s always been like that. Can hear a mouse pissing on the other side of the world. You didn’t know?”
“Why would I know? I don’t spend much time thinking about Ranger’s fucking ears.”