None of us were with our kids.
I rubbed my chest. Folk glanced at me from behind the wheel. “Take a breath. This is one of those rare moments where we need each other more than she does.”
“I know.”
“You okay?”
He’d asked me that before we’d got in the car. Couldn’t remember what I’d said in response. Just that I’d meant it. “Did you hear anything from Cam or Embry?”
“Only that Mateo has to stay until tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Tomorrow would be better, but if he springs himself, at least the roads will be quiet on the drive home.”
They weren’t quiet now. We hit morning rush hour, and I was so fucking sick of snarled up traffic that I couldn’t fucking look at it.
I looked at Folk instead. His hair was long, curling behind his ears in tousled waves, and his jaw was as scruffy as mine, not quite a beard, but close. The tanned skin of his exposed neck called to me, but I got distracted by the shirt he wore.
Mine.
I liked that.
“Seth.”
“Hmm?”
Folk’s easy grin softened, mellowing the stress he’d carried for the last few months, the fatigue from night after night of bad dreams. “I like it when you stare at me like that.”
“Am I staring?”
“I think so.”
“Think so, eh?” Right. No. Folk was a man whoknew.Which meant I really was staring, and I was okay with that. “How’ve you been sleeping?”
Folk took the motorway exit before he answered. “To answer that I have to make a confession.”
“About Cam kipping on Ivy’s bedroom floor?”
“No, before that. I jumped off the cliff at the sea pool. Viktor saw and ratted me out to Cam—that’s how he knew I needed a babysitter.”
It was a lot to take in. But loving Folk always was. He told me everything he could, perhaps to make up for the things he couldn’t. It didn’t make picturing him hurling himself off a cliff any easier, but I was thankful hewantedto tell me, today and every day. “Did it help?”
“Jumping?” Folk took a slow and even breath, one that told me I wouldn’t like what he said next. “Of course it did. But not for as long as I’d counted on. Cam caught me in a pretty bad place. That’s why he stayed.”
“Did you know Viktor would see you?”
“I don’t know, maybe. I guess there’s a reason I didn’t shake him off when I felt him behind me again.”
“Again?”
“I had a false start, at the cliff by his house. He intervened and I wasn’t that nice about it.”
“By whose standards?”
“Mine. Viktor’s a good man.”
I knew that. I’d watched him with Ivy, Liliana, and Hope. With Locke, Nash, and Orla. WithRanger. You couldn’t fake a love like that. “He’ll get over it.”