“Where are your boots?”
“Why is everyone obsessed with my fucking feet today?”
“I don’t know, but if you give me the cola bottles, I won’t kick you in the dick for being so rude.”
My sister’s sweetest smiles were her most dangerous. I gave up my bounty and sloped on my merry way, still scanning the chaos for my hog and for Rubi—I’d lost him in the crowd, and despite the irritation sparking in my veins, I fucking missed him, and searching for him in a crowd of rowdy bikers was so nostalgic, I wasn’t sure how I felt when I finally spotted him across the yard.
He clutched a bundle of clothes I was almost positive was for me, though he spent a lot of time organising Embry too.
I shoved my way through, thankful most brothers stepped aside. I didn’t have a rank in the club beyond nepotism and whatever horrific reputation my entire life earned me, but in moments like these, I appreciated the fuck out of who I was to these people.
Rubi saw me coming. His whole face changed. An already broad smile became a beaming ray of sunshine that cracked his features wide open. “There you are. Where did you run off to?”
He knew full well it was him who’d fucked off, but I’d been paying closer attention to how we talked to each other since I’d come home to him after that night on the road with Saint. Somehow it was only just dawning on me that he riled me up on purpose—that the worst parts of me were the parts he loved the most.
I smiled at him.
Rubi blinked. “Did you eat all them sweets already?”
I kissed him, planting a smacker on his cheek. “No, boo. You’re all the sugar I need.”
He frowned, unconvinced I hadn’t had a lobotomy, and passed me the clothes he’d gathered for me. Socks, jeans, a T-shirt without holes in. The mismatched boots I’d been wearing since I’d walked away from him all those years ago with nothing but rage in my shattered heart.
How different the world seemed now, and yet he hadn’t changed.
I retreated to the bunkhouse to throw the clothes on. Ranger was in the back, fucking with a box of plastering gear.
“Got a job on?”
“Nope, getting rid of it all. Don’t need it where I’m going.”
“They don’t plaster walls in Spain?”
“Vik’s house is mint already.”
I tried to picture Ranger in a posh house.
Failed. “Do you know when you’re going yet?”
Ranger studied me with eyes darker than sin. “We were gonna go in a few weeks, but Alexei told meno.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t fucking say. Not in English, anyway, so you should probably ask Vik.”
I couldn’t tell if Ranger was taking the piss or annoyed. His face was like that, his humour as hidden as mine unless he was actually laughing. I was going to miss that. “Are you tail-gunning with Saint today?”
“Nah, I’m flanking the queen.”
So was I, as it turned out when I took my place ten minutes later in the diamond of eight brothers protecting my sister, while Mateo, Folk, and Saint guarded the rear, a formation that bore little resemblance to the last one I’d ridden in.
Rubi was at the front,Road Captainemblazoned on the cut my ma had made bigger every year until she died. Mine was still loose. Embry had lost his. No fucking clue where Alexei was, cut or otherwise.
I straddled my hog, gunning the engine, adding to the chorus of hundreds of others, stuffing Squashies in my gob until the packet was half gone and my blood sang with the deafening roar of bike engines and a sugar rush I’d pay for later.
Ranger liked eating shit.
I tossed him the rest of the bag. He caught it one-handed, texting on his phone, and then it was time to go.