SAINT
SAINT
This scene was never meant to be written. But Saint had other ideas.
Locke: my brother found Cam’s wallet down the back of the couch
I squinted at the message in the early morning sun. Locke had sent it last night, but I hadn’t noticed, and that should have bothered me. But my brain was weird when I was this tired, and it defaulted to wondering why Locke always said my brother instead of Logan . Like he thought I didn’t know his twin’s name.
It was a minute before I dialled back to the point—that Cam’s wallet was in Hereford instead of Devon and someone needed to rectify that before Alexei realised Cam’s ID and bank cards were out in the wild and found something else to worry about.
I read the follow-up message Locke had sent.
Locke: he’ll keep it safe, but he said it’s ok if someone wants to fetch it before I see him at the weekend
The weekend was four days away. I curled my toes in the frosty grass of Cam’s back garden as I considered what that meant. I believed Logan Halliwell would keep Cam’s wallet tucked away in the house that was too compact for a man that tall, but Cam wasn’t a firefighter. He was a fucking gangster already on the feds radar for being part of that accident in the first place. What if the police went to Logan and asked him about his brother’s friends? What if they searched his house, found the wallet, and it gave them something we hadn’t thought of?
With Alexei in our arsenal, it sounded farfetched, but my entire life ran on outlandish plot points. Unthinkable shit kept happening, and I knew that wallet would be in my hand before the day was done.
Saint: ill get it. i can be there by ten
I fired off the text, figuring Locke would be asleep—I already knew from Orla that he’d been up all night with Nash, helping him deal with the post-op pain in his mangled leg, but my phone buzzed with his reply a second later.
Locke: thought u would. remy’s expecting you. go to the workshop at the top of the hill. call me if u can’t find him
Locke: don’t break into the house
Saint: i wouldn’t do that
He was confusing me with Alexei, or maybe Ranger, but Locke didn’t reply, which gave away that he didn’t believe me. But I wouldn’t lie to him. If I couldn’t find Logan’s lover, I’d wait. Even though the thought of being anywhere but right here made my skin itch.
My cold skin.
Standing on icy grass got the better of me and I went inside, shutting the back door behind me, the silence of the empty kitchen swamping my senses but so fucking loud I couldn’t stand it.
I tramped upstairs, leaving wet footprints on the carpet that would make Alexei twitch if he woke up before they dried. I hoped he wouldn’t—for his sake, not mine. He didn’t sleep enough, and it was starting to show.
Not just him .
No. But now Rubi was doing better and Nash was home, I only had energy for Alexei and Cam. Everyone else…they had to take care of each other.
They will.
I held onto that as I reached the landing and the open bedroom door. Cam was still sleeping. I knew it before I saw him stretched out where I’d left him, on his back, one arm over his head, the other reaching out—for me, for Alexei, for us both.
Perhaps it was the only reason a very awake Alexei was still there, in bed, holding Cam’s hand as he slept.
“You are going somewhere.”
Voice flat, a statement, not a question. But I knew him better than that. I scanned Cam, then ventured closer to Alexei, crouching at his side, plucking his phone from his free hand and twining our fingers together.
How do you know?
Alexei kissed my knuckles. “You have a life force around you, wingman. It is annoying, because I know you are tired too.”
“I’m okay.”
“I did not say that you weren’t.”
His eyes said different, though. Alexei wasn’t as good at hiding how he felt as he thought. Or maybe I was better at reading him than I’d ever been. Either way, he didn’t want me to go. So I had to tell him why , and of course, speech chose that moment to desert me.
I fished my phone from my pocket and tapped out the details.
Alexei glowered, ice and fire. “Send someone else.”
“Who?”
“Anyone.”
I shook my head. Cam’s wallet couldn’t be in the possession of just anyone , and he knew it. “It has to be me.”
“Or me.”
“No.”
“You think I will scare Locke’s brother?”
“Logan.”
“Okay. Logan .”
“He’s not there.”
“So who has the wallet?”
I went back to the phone.
remy. he’s expecting me
“The fire dancer?”
I nodded, and Alexei’s gaze warmed with speculation.
“Nash talked about him when he was rambling after his surgery. The prettiest man he has ever seen. From someone who knows the chaplain, this intrigues me.”
“You like pretty men?”
“I like pretty things ,” Alexei corrected. “No one is more beautiful to me than you.”
“Not even Cam?”
Alexei finally smiled. “Cam is unquantifiable, don’t you think?”
I did, but I’d run out of words. To speak, to type, I was done.
Alexei eased away from Cam and out of the bed, as light-footed as me but with a hell of a lot more grace. He kept hold of my hand and tugged me through the open door and to the bathroom.
He switched on the shower, setting the temperature low enough that I understood his intention: that he didn’t expect to shower alone.
My skin itched again. Being apart from Cam and Alexei sometimes made me feel like I was dying, but I wasn’t good at ignoring shit that needed doing. It bothered me, like a festering wound.
“Come now.” Alexei read me and kissed my cheek. “Take a moment to reset, no? You will feel better on the road than if you walk out on me now.”
I said nothing.
He took it as my capitulation and stole my clothes.
Alexei was already naked. Because he and Cam had spent hours fucking last night, while I’d dozed next to them, watching them, loving them, but not feeling like I wanted to join in.
Sex was still weird for me. Or maybe it wasn’t, and we were just different people. I never gave it much thought beyond that when I did want it, I really wanted it, and I was lucky enough to have two people who wanted me back.
Alexei steered me into the shower and washed me like I was his most precious thing, his touch lingering over the mess of scars on my torso, though I had brothers with far worse now.
Locke.
Embry.
Nash .
A shudder passed through me.
Alexei’s eyes blazed with understanding. Empathy. His kissed the burn on my chest, then he kissed me, and I forgot about almost everything.
Kissing Alexei was like that, perhaps because I knew he’d never given himself to anyone like he did me and Cam. That he kissed me like he loved me, and every part of me knew how special that was.
I let him press me against the tiled wall, well-versed in how this went. In how powerless I was when he knew my mood better than I did, and how much I liked it when my body got the memo before my brain.
Alexei wrapped his hand around my length. I was already hard and I hadn’t noticed, too many thoughts warring for dominance in my crowded brain. “Shh.” He skated a palm over my hip. “Let it go.”
Whatever it was. Alexei had taught me that sometimes the specifics didn’t matter. That I could heal without ever knowing what had hurt me. And that almost always, love was enough.
“You know we are even now.”
His voice brought me back to the present.
I tilted my head. How so?
“What Cam did with Nash—the risk, the recklessness with his own life. He has done to us what you did in the warehouse fire. What I did to you in return.”
When he and Folk had waged their own guerrilla war against the Sambinis without telling anyone and almost died in the process. “It’s not the same.” I traced a drop of water as it rolled down his face. “Cam made a split-second decision. You planned what you did.”
And he’d never pretended to be sorry about it.
Neither had Folk.
Alexei kissed my collarbone. “You are still angry?”
“No.”
“Hurt then.”
Maybe.
Alexei gave me a rueful smile that softened his face and made me want to crawl inside him and never come out. “My point is still valid.”
I didn’t care about his point. I cared about the smudges beneath his eyes and the worry lines etched into his face. Alexei would look twenty-five until he reached seventy, but the accident had hit him as hard as anyone. “Do something for me?”
He glanced up from the stare-down he seemed to be having with my ribcage. “I would die for you, wingman.”
I knew it. “It’s not that deep.”
“Then tell me?”
“Stay in bed while I’m gone. I need to ride knowing you’re safe and warm together.”
“That is a lot of words. You must mean them.”
My gaze didn’t waver.
Alexei sighed. “All right. I will do that. I cannot see Cam wishing to get up anyway. His body hurts more than he wants to talk about.”
I knew that too, but the parts of Cam’s body he cared most about were working just fine, so I wasn’t that worried about his physical health. His mental state concerned me more, but he seemed better than he had in the hospital when we’d waited for news on Nash. As if something had happened on Firefly Hill to ease the trauma he’d carried his entire fucking life.
And maybe that’s why I wanted to return there so much. To feel it for myself.
Alexei tightened his grip. On my dick. I’d forgotten he was holding it.
“Just a little longer,” he whispered. “I am not ready to let you go.”
My scattered thoughts narrowed to him. I’m coming back.
But still. The last time one of us had ridden out with that promise, a nightmare had chased us home. A phone call that played on repeat whenever I closed my eyes. Mateo’s panicked voice. Willow screaming?—
Silky heat enveloped my dick.
Alexei’s mouth.
His throat.
It cut off coherent thought—all thought, actually, and I tipped my head back, a guttered sound escaping me. You don’t have to do this.
But as Alexei stared up at me, that thought died too. Sucking my dick…it was Alexei’s love letter to me. Something he gave no one else, not even Cam, and he’d done it enough by now that I knew how much he got off on taking me apart like this. Annihilating me with the slow slide of his tongue. He had me shook on the first pass and he knew it.
I leaned into it, taking the respite he offered. Falling into sensation. Drowning in it, jaw clenched, legs trembling, sweet tension invading every facet of me until I was nothing but the panting mess he wanted me to be.
His jaw felt like cut glass in my palm. I held him with the reverence he deserved, my dick sliding through the velvet heat of his throat.
I love you.
Alexei smiled. I know .
After, he was hard, but he held my wrists, kissing me with salty lips. “Later. I will wait for you.”
“You’ll try .”
With a day in bed with Cam on the horizon, I wasn’t holding out for a miracle, but I was okay with that. How they loved each other kept me breathing, and I held onto that as I kissed Cam’s sleeping face and left them.
I fed the cat so he wouldn’t terrorise them, then I hit the road, heading north. Ten minutes in, a brother caught my tail, zooming in front of me, before dropping off to buzz my back wheel.
River .
Curiosity invaded the sex haze I’d left home with, but not enough for me to stop and ask what had driven him from Rubi’s bed to follow me to Hereford. I didn’t want to lose the time. So I ignored him for three hours and he didn’t seem offended when I eventually pulled into a lay-by two miles from Firefly Hill.
River answered my head tilt with a shrug. “I was awake.”
“So?”
“So…here I am. No brother rides alone. You know that.”
“Didn’t think you gave a fuck.”
“About rules?” River inhaled a handful of cola bottles. “Nah. About you? All the way.”
I don’t need babysitting. “Why are you really here?”
River offered me his bag of sugar.
I shook my head, waiting.
River swallowed and jerked his head back the way we’d come. “Cam woke up. He wanted to follow you, but Alexei said you’d made him promise to stay put, so here I am.”
I waited some more. River was more committed to the club than he’d ever let anyone know, but I knew him. There was more, and I wasn’t shifting a boot until he either gave it up or I figured it out on my own. “Tam still lives here.”
River narrowed his gaze. “How do you do that?”
“Do what? Figure out you followed me up here to visit your old hook up?”
He laughed. “Don’t say it like that, it sounds shady as fuck.”
“Does Rubi know?”
“That I’m with you? Course he does.”
“Does he know where?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he know you’re about to ditch me?”
River balled up his sweet bag. “Not exactly. But you’re making it sound way worse than it is.”
I let my silence do the talking.
River cursed me out again. Then heaved a spiky sigh. “I need something from Tam, for Rubi, that I don’t want him to know about yet. That’s all. He knows I still talk to Tam and he’s fine with it.”
“Fine?”
“ Stop . You really think I’d cheat on Rubi?”
Fuck no. Aside from true love, River’s brutal honesty got him in trouble all the time, and he was too impulsive and chaotic to tell lies.
But the secrets didn’t add up, and my heart was apparently too battered to think anything but the worst. He’s an addict. “Do we need Folk?”
River’s O’Brian brows twitched. “For what?”
I waited for him to catch up and his scowl fired up a storm.
“Wow. You really think I followed you up here to score ket when I can get that shit in the Joker any time I fucking want?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” He reached for his helmet.
I stepped in front of his bike, willing him to give me a second to find my words.
He did for no other reason than he loved me, and I was grateful we’d reached a place where I was confident that he would.
“I’m tired,” I eventually said. “I can’t keep up—” I tapped my head. “Too much noise.”
River’s features softened, the barely contained rage evaporating. “I know, brother, I know. But you have to believe that if I wanted to drown my brain in K and I couldn’t tell Rubi, I’d tell Folk, I’d tell Embry—I’d tell someone , I promise.”
I believed him. And I was glad he was here. The call to Firefly Hill was still strong, but River was my family. It felt right to put a hand to his arm and feel his pulse thrumming beneath my palm. “You won’t tell me why?”
River shook his head. “Not yet. But it’s a good thing—if I can pull it off. And you’ll probably work it out yourself before that happens.”
I had less confidence in that than he did. But it was time to go if I wanted to be home before dark.
River sped off with a promise to meet me in an hour. I watched him disappear over the brow of a hill before I set off for an ascent of my own.
Firefly Hill wasn’t that high, but it was steep and pretty, and I appreciated that more than I had when I’d ridden up it last week. Back then, Cam’s wellbeing had filled my thoughts so entirely that I’d barely noticed the frosty grass and ethereal trees. The cute house with kids bikes and scattered toys, and the workshop beyond it, smoke pluming from the chimney.
I eased my hog to a stop, less cautious with my surroundings when I rode alone with no one to protect, taking my cues from the land. This place…now I wasn’t scared to hell that Nash was dead, and that Cam wouldn’t survive it, I liked it—I liked it a lot.
Leaving my bike behind, I followed the scent of woodsmoke up the hill, to a workshop that looked warm even from the outside. The door was shut, but the windows were open and the kind of genre-bending festival ska that Nash and Rubi liked to get mega-drunk to and dance filtered out. I smelt coffee too, but that didn’t appeal to me much.
I reached the door.
It opened before I could knock and I found myself face to face with a blond dude that was…yeah, okay, he was fucking pretty. But then, so was Nash. So was Embry. This bloke had something else. Like…he was almost too pretty to be real.
Remy was also expecting me. “I heard your bike. Saint, right? Hang on. I have Cam’s wallet.” He ducked back into the workshop, calling over his shoulder, “Come in out of the cold.”
I didn’t mind the cold, and I was shit at small talk for reasons beyond the obvious. But I liked workshops. So I went inside and let my gaze drift around as Remy opened a safe built into the wall and dug out Cam’s wallet.
The aged wooden benches. The mandrels. The log burner, and a blowtorch that would usually fuck with my head enough that I couldn’t look at it without feeling the heat of a phantom fire.
“You make jewellery.” I remembered now. It was a fucked up thing, to forget things. I didn’t like it.
“I try.” Remy came back and handed me the wallet. “You want coffee?”
I’d rather die.
Remy smiled, letting me know that someone—Locke, Orla, Nash—had warned him that I couldn’t string a sentence together on a good day. “There’s water in the fridge. Help yourself if you want.”
I shook my head, and it was a moment where I could’ve left. But as much as I wanted to get home, Remy’s work intrigued me.
He’d made Embry and Mateo’s wedding rings. Too tired to keep it a secret anymore, Locke had let it slip a few days ago, and I wondered if Remy knew, but a copper coin clamped in a vice distracted me.
I drifted closer, peering at the work Remy had already done, shaping it into a ring, but preserving the integrity of the coin. The identity. “Irish?”
“Yup.” Remy rounded the bench and flicked on an overhead lamp. “A penny. I do a lot of those, and American silver dollars.”
“How do you do it?”
“It’s easier to show you than tell you, if you have time to stick around for a bit.”
I didn’t. I had to meet River and get home to the people who made my heart whole. But curiosity had always been my weakness and the words to refuse Remy didn’t come, verbally or otherwise.
Nodding, I pulled out my phone.
A message already waited for me.
Cam: Take your time. We love you