The horde moved out. I rode wide next to Orla, Cam just in front, Decoy a hog behind me. Couldn’t say a club ride out had been on my bucket list for today, but I couldn’t deny the ritual of it felt fucking good.
Nostalgia.
Tradition.
Whatever.
We hit the open road, burning all the way to our chapter in Lizard with the spirits of the men who’d come before us as warm on our shoulders as the spring sun.
My sister was the first club queen to ride in the lead pack. Fate willing, she wouldn’t be the last.
We descended on the club compound in Lizard, the Rebel Kings’ most southerly chapter. Their old ladies were famous for their hog roasts. I felt sick from scarfing Tangfastics on the way here, but I ate the giant bap Rubi brought me and leaned against him when I was done.
Pretty sure he fucking purred, and even though everyone seemed to want a piece of him as much as they did Cam, I had his undivided attention.
He gazed down at me, the sun making his eyes shine as gold as his helmet-wrecked hair. “You’re so pretty, Riv.”
I snorted, tipping my head enough to kiss his neck.
He held me a bit tighter. “I mean it. Honestly, I look at you some days and I can’t believe you’re fucking real.”
“That’s how I feel about you.”
He beamed again. “Really?”
“Course it is. How’d you not know that?”
“I do know it. But I like hearing it on days like this. Makes perfection even more perfect, don’t it?”
Nothing about me would ever be perfect. I was messy and spiky. Broken and put back together all wrong. But none of it mattered, not anymore, and I was beginning to realise it never had.
Ask him. Ask him. Ask him.
“Boo—”
His phone rang, blaring with a boring tone he reserved for strangers. He dug it out of his pocket and squinted at the screen. “That’s a hospital number. Fuck, where is everyone?”
We scrambled to our feet, scanning a yard smaller than the one back home. I counted ten brothers and our queen. Orla was chilling by a firepit, already on FaceTime with Juana, no stress in her face. She was fine, the others were fine. Only Alexei was MIA, but a hospital would never call Rubi about him.
I turned back to Rubi. He’d already taken the call, frowning as he took in whatever information the caller fed him, eyes wide, then reddening with emotion, even as his sharp posture relaxed.
“Yeah. I understand. I can be there by six.”
He hung up and blew out a breath.
“What the fuck was that about?
“Mrs. Valentino died. I have to go and get her cat before her kids have it put down.”
My brain had this unique way of emptying all thoughts into the ether and replacing them with brand new ones. It was how I’d made it this far without having the most important conversation I’d ever have.
Mrs. Valentino was our neighbour. Her house had exploded a while back with her and the cat inside it. Locke had saved her, the cat too, but the old girl had never come home. And now she was dead, and the snotty twats she called kids wanted to kill her cat. “All right. Let’s go.”
“I can’t just piss off. I’ve got a horde to guide home first.”
“Fuck them. Someone else can read the map.”
“Now you say that.” Rubi almost smiled. “But Cam’s got form for navigating us into the wrong county, and there’s a lot of young ones on the road today—your sister’son the road, so I need to finish this first.”