Go to bed.
Without Decoy.
I’d done it for thirty-five years before I’d found him. And I’d done it since—this wasn’t the first time one of us had been away. But as I contemplated our empty bed, I realised it was the first time I’d had to do ithere.Alone. Without a brother or Ivy for company.
You don’t have to do this.
I could’ve stayed at Embry’s. At Orla’s flat with Nash and River. With Viktor on the clifftop.
You left him.
My phone weighed heavy in my hand. Remorse threatened my bleak mood and I let it happen, sitting on the edge of the bed. Then sinking back to stare between the blank screen and the ceiling. I had a benign number for Viktor and a gut instinct that he’d watched me leave, then carried on home to his Fort Knox house, Lida guarding his every step. But Viktor wasn’t a faceless mobster anymore. He hadn’t been even before he’d become everything to Ranger, and I’d missed that too.
Folk:Did you get home?
Viktor:of course
Viktor:you are all right?
Folk:Nothing some sleep won’t cure
Viktor:I am glad you did not jump
Folk:I wish I had, but not for the reasons you think
Viktor:you do not know what I think
Probably not. Viktor wasn’t as terminally enigmatic as Alexei, but though we’d fought the same wars for longer, I didn’t know him so well. Something I needed to fix now he was a permanent fixture in Ranger’s life. In Locke’s. They loved him, and neither one of them gave their hearts away for nothing.
Folk:Find me sometime and tell me
I dropped my phone on the bed, flexing my sore hands, breathing through the pain that spread through the rest of my body. Winter was hard on my chemo-ravaged joints, especially when I spent my evenings damp and cold without the prospect of Decoy’s solid warmth to rectify it any time soon.
Ten days.
Sleeping without him felt impossible.
I sat up, a fatigue-induced headache pounding between my eyes, the bedroom closing in on me. If Locke had been home, I might’ve gone to him. But he wasn’t, and the roadblock in my head extended to more than just Viktor.
Eventually, I wound up on the couch, staring at a different ceiling with my phone on my chest. Did I sleep? I wasn’t sure. But as the living room morphed into somewhere else entirely, I wasn’t awake either. I was eighteen years old and about to get on a bus that would change my life forever.
THEN...
“Why does it have to be the Marines?” Rocco’s voice came from above. I looked up in time to see him spring from the bus stop roof and land in front of me. “You should be a teacher instead.”
My gaze caught on his tatty jacket. “What would I teach?”
“Whatever you want. You’re good at everything.”
“Am I?”
“Nah, your lad game is shit. Maybe you really should try girls for once.”
“What girls? They all likeyoutoo much.”
Bemused, Rocco grinned, shoving his dark curls out of his face with no real idea how attractive he was. “Finch doesn’t like me.”
“You want her to?”