I followed him because I’d reached the point in my day where I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Got on my hog and trailed him all the way to fucking Cornwall before I thought to object to this shit.
By then, we were already where he wanted to be, in the shadows of a towering row of dodgy HMOs, ramshackle buildings converted to house as many people as possible with no fucking regard for their safety.
“Please tell me we don’t own any of these shitholes?”
Saint tugged his hood up, gesturing for me to do the same, and ghosted ahead, laser focused on a beat-up Corsa parked halfway up the kerb, wheels sticking out enough to be a hazard for passing traffic.
I sighed and followed him there too.
He pointed at the bonnet with one hand and made a cutting motion to his neck with the other.Crock it.
Fine, but only because I didn’t want to see him slit his own throat, literally or otherwise. I didn’t know the whole story behind the scar he bore, but I’d heard enough to have that bonnet cracked in the blink of an eye, and I was quite the fucking expert at disabling cars in a way that flummoxed anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for to put it right. “Permanent or temporary?”
Saint shrugged, so I chose a route somewhere in between.
It took less than two minutes, then we were on our way again, stealing back to our hogs. Saint roared away. I tore after him and we sped through some country roads, whipping round bends and burning up the straights like we’d been born to do.
Saint’s bike was fast.
Mine was faster, but he kept me behind him, weaving around, playing with me so I didn’t crave the extra edge that always got me in trouble, dosing me with adrenaline, knowing it would perversely calm me the fuck down.
Hours had passed by the time we slowed and found a tree to chill beneath.
“You don’t want to go home and bang my brother?”
Saint studied the sky, tracing a map I couldn’t see. “Not yet.”
“Where’s Alexei?”
“Banging your brother.”
I’d walked into that, but I pulled a face anyway and stooped to check out Saint’s bike, making sure his brand of therapy hadn’t messed with it.
He let me fuss and lay on the ground.
Eventually, I lay next to him, not touching, but close enough to feel his fraternal warmth seeping into me. Affection I was so fucking blessed to still have when I’d spent so long hurling it back in his face.
Like I’d done to Rubi. “Whose car was that?”
“Willow’s boyfriend.”
I sat up on my elbows. “I thought we weren’t interfering with that now we know he’s not twenty-five?”
“I never said that.”
“But—” Fuck. No. Of course he hadn’t. Locke. Nash. Cam. Alexei, even. But Saint had conveniently been somewhere else for every conversation I’d witnessed about Willow’s love life, and I supposed this was why. “Amazing. Now Orla’s gonna come formewhen she can’t catchyou.”
Saint smirked.
I sighed and lay back down. “What’s the plan, anyway? Break every car he ever owns?”
“Until he learns to drive properly.”
“Who’s gonna teach him?”
“Locke. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
But Saint did, and I wondered how. Was it a prophecy from his weird brain or Alexei’s?