Viktor nodded, understanding. Memories flowed between us, good and bad. Mostly bad, but we’d lived to grow beyond them, and I loved this brother enough that a piece of my heart went with him as he moved on to say goodbye to Locke.
That shit I really couldn’t watch, but I fucked myself over by retuning my attention to where Ranger and Folk had moved a little way from the rest of us.
Fucking hell.
My eyes burned.
I stared at the ground. I stared at the sky. But it didn’t matter where I looked, time caught up with me, and suddenly, it was me and Ranger, a blade, and the patch sewn into the leather cut that had earned a place in the tatty bag he still lived out of like a regular fucking vagabond.
The knife was warm in my hand, and even through the wrongness of grief, it felt right as I peeled the patch from the cut with no dangling threads.
It lay in my hand.
I exhaled sharply, seeing it for what it was, a clean break that rendered me unable to explain to this wild, kind, and loyal brother the void he was leaving behind.
Ranger gripped the back of my neck, pressing our foreheads together. “Don’t think I’ve ever said it but thank you. Losing Rocco killed me, but I needed to live, for Jean, and for Vik when we found each other again. You showed me how.”
I fucking hadn’t. Not on my own, anyway, but the sentiment hit home, and I held him for as long as I could before I completely lost my shit. “Patch or no patch, we’ll always be your fucking brothers. Don’t ever doubt what that means to us.”
“I—”
“Don’t ever doubt it.”
Ranger swallowed, his head dipping in a slow nod, but as Alexei and Viktor shared an embrace I’d never dreamed I’d live to see, the inevitable I’d been fighting caught up with us.
The tears incinerating my eyeballs escaped, snaking out to match the ones already staining Rubi’s face.
Folk’s.
Locke’s.
Even Mateo’s gaze burned too bright, and he sank into a crouch as Ranger backed off to where Viktor waited with Lida, his gaze on his boots, his steps slow, as if an invisible rope dragged him back. As if he was leaving a piece of himself to replace the chunks of us he took with him and he couldn’t watch it happen.
“Kochevnik,” Alexei murmured. “Do not fear, we know where to find you.”
Ranger raised his head. “Youdo.”
“And so will they. I will make sure of it.”
Respect simmered in Ranger’s onyx gaze. Then, with one last look at Folk, he turned and he and Viktor walked away, Saint trailing after them a few steps, as though he could stop it happening.
Theyleft.
And this time, they weren’t coming back.
* * *
An hour later, I still wasn’t over it, but as with every damn day of my life, I had other things to worry about. Mainly how to sneak Nash’s cousin onto the festival site when Nash, like the rest of us, had been too strung out to even contemplate going to bed. And Nash liked to keep busy when he was emotional. Which meant he was fuckingeverywhere.
“Jesusfuck,” I growled at Locke. “Can’t you just chuck him over your shoulder and take him off somewhere?”
Locke had been watching our collective attempts to get shit done for a while now, amusement growing every time Nash popped up somewhere else. Mirth that turned a shade darker as he cocked a brow and shrugged. “Don’t ever say I’m not a fuckin’ team player.”
He hauled himself from the hay bale he’d been sharing with Folk and ambled away. He didn’t exactly chuck Nash over his shoulder, but let me tell you, they disappeared pretty quick, leaving their radios behind.
Finally.
River darted away to guide Nash’s cousin and his fella, afed—fuck my life—into the festival.