It spun me out too. I rifled through what little Saint had ever told me about his childhood, added it to the rare nuggets Cam had shared with me over the years. “I asked him what her name was once—he said he didn’t know.”
“Told me that too.”
“Are you going to ask him about it?”
“I think so.” Cam eyed a fed car as it sped past us, after someone else. “I want Alexei to be there, though. In case I fuck it up.”
He wouldn’t fuck it up. Saint was a tough crowd, but Cam was his home. There was nowhere he felt safer, whether Alexei was there or not. Nash, though... “Nash told me his parents were religious. I don’t know anything else about them.”
“Neither do I,” Cam admitted. “We were young and dumb when he came here, then Fergus was killed before I was aware enough to get to know him properly. And now we’re fucking here and I’m realising I’ve dropped a bollock.”
Fergus McGovern. Nash’s uncle. Never met him. Just knew his face from the RIP hall of fame on the bar wall. Blue-eyed and blond, I’d almost forgotten he wasn’t Nash’s father. “Maybe he told Orla and Rubi. It doesn’t always have to be you.”
Cam’s nose flared as he took a breath. “There’s no way Rubi knows something as fucked up as this and I haven’t caught him crying about it in the last seventeen years. My sister, though, she’s a vault and I can live with that.”
“You’re not going to say anything?”
Slowly, Cam shook his head, real grief shining in his eyes. “I love that brother. I wouldn’t be here without him. But you’re right—I’ve never been that person for him, and I owe it to him to accept it.”
“Or you could give him more time.” Folk spoke quietly from the back seat, reminding me he was very much awake now. “Having children changes you, brings things to the surface you never thought you’d think about again. He hasn’t talked about it yet. Doesn’t mean he never will.”
Cam sighed. “Why are you always so fucking right?”
“Because I’ve been wrong a lot.”
I almost smiled, but the fraternal silence that fell over us left room for the anxiety tearing my gut to creep back in, the reason we were speeding north wrapping around my heart with barbed fucking fingers.
Folk’s warm hands landed on my shoulders. “Take a breath.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Breathebetter. You’ll be with him soon enough and you’ll get through whatever this is together.”
“Nash didn’t even feel it when they took his appendix out,” Cam reminded me. “He was home the same day. Back on his hog two days after that.”
“You think I’m worrying about nothing?”
Cam jammed a smoke in his mouth but left it unlit, more mindful of Folk now he was awake. “The way things go for us? Not a fucking chance.”
He winced as the words tumbled out of him, aware that he’d likely voiced my worst fears. But hearing them from someone else gave me a blink of perspective. We were conditioned by trauma to expect the worst. But how many times had the best happened instead? Juana’s father had nearly killed Mateo, but in the end, his actions had given us Liliana and Hope. Ivy’s mum had run Decoy down with her car, but she was gone now. Christ, even the never-ending war with the Crows had brought us Folk, Locke, and Ranger.
I took Folk’s advice and found a deeper breath, letting it out slowly as I checked the dashboard map for how much farther we had to go.
Two hours, at the speed Cam was driving. An eternity if I let my pulse run riot again. But with my head screwed on straight it was nothing. A few more junctions on a faceless motorway and I’d be with Mateo. I’d be with him if he needed surgery. When he went down. When he came back. Just like he’d been there for me every second I’d needed him.
Sensing I’d got a hold of myself, Folk let go and stretched in the back seat. I passed him water and the packet of Polos Mateo tucked into my pocket every couple of days.
Folk drank and rubbed his eyes, glancing at the dash map, and it dawned on me maybe he hadn’t come to help Cam manage me. He’d come because he’d reached his limit on how long he could manage himself without Decoy.
Me and Folk. We were close—we spent a lot of time together—but he was still a brother I struggled to reach when he needed it most. Over the past few months, I’d tried so many fucking times and always hit a gentle brick wall.
I took a breath to try again, I’d never stop trying, but my phone exploded with light and sound before I could speak, and I whipped my head to where it lay on the console between Cam’s seat and mine.
Decoy’s name flashed on the screen.
A call, not a text.
Fuck.