It took us under.
I cursed against Folk’s hot skin. Still clutching my hip, he groaned into the crook of his elbow, spilling into my palm, and for the hazy moments we held each other through it, everything was perfect.
Panting, I eased out of him, tipping him onto his back. He smiled up at me, watching me wipe my hands and ditch the condom before we were closer than close again.
“I needed that.”
I tucked a stray lock of tawny hair behind his ear, knowing he didn’t mean it as literally as getting fucked the second we’d got through the door. “Cam’s taken me off overnight runs for a while.”
Folk absorbed that with his patented thoughtful nod. “I thought he might. I struggled while you were gone, and I didn’t try all that hard to hide it.”
“You don’t need to hide shit like that.”
“I think Ivy saw it too.”
Folk was uncharacteristically late to the party if he thought the last few weeks were the first time Ivy had noticed he wasn’t himself. That naps on the couch sometimes ended abruptly enough to makeherjump too. “It’s not a bad thing for her to know life is hard for us sometimes.”
“I want her to feel safe with me.”
“She does.”
“Seth, I left her with Embry and jumped off a cliff.”
“No, you didn’t. She ditchedyouto hang out with Liliana. How you chose to spend that time is your own business.”
“That’s a magnanimous way of looking at it.”
“It’s how I feel.” It had to be, or the real fear that Folk’s desperate craving forreliefhad been something more sinister would drown me.
I pulled him tighter against me. He hid his face in my chest and I thought he might sleep, but he just breathed for a while before he looked up at me again, and it was the oddest thing to feel like something had changed. Not between us—no, it was bigger than that, and Folk felt it too.
He’d gone very still, rocked by a seismic shift that hadn’t been there before.
I put my hands on his face. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” His gaze flickered to the window. “Feels like change. Maybe Saint came home.”
“He’s still not here?”
Out of energy, Folk shook his head again. And then he did sleep, in my arms, silent and unmoving, until it was time to go get our little girl and be a family again.
Until it was time to face whatever was coming as we were always meant to be.
Together.
12
RANGER
This was, one hundred percent, the worst thing in my life I’d ever fucking done.
The road trip from hell.
And every time I thought it couldn’t get any worse, some other screwed up thing happened to prove me wrong.
I glared murder at the crocked tyre on the Bone Rattler. “Just set it on fire.”
Rubi kicked it, his frustration as palpable as mine. “Tempting, but we’re gonna have to nurse this twat to the nearest garage with a platform big enough to raise it.”