8. Rubi
8
RUBI
I wasn’t built for the road anymore. At least, not this fucked-up version of it.
Grease. Diesel. Whingeing.
A summary of my life from the era I was currently living through and I couldn’t even blame Ranger for it.
Not entirely, anyway.
“Processed food is the bane of civilisation.” I scrunched a sweaty burger wrapper and tossed it in his general direction. “Food deserts are going to kill us all.”
Ranger grunted, rearranging his feet on the dashboard, not giving a single shite about the increasing pile of debris around him. “That’s your third Chicken Mayo. Does that mean you’ll die first?”
“Doesn’t count if it’s off the Saver’s menu. That’s the rules.”
“I want a new rule where you shut the fuck up for longer than five seconds.”
How very dare he? But I let it go. We’d been on the road nearly three weeks. It made sense that Roo was as sick of me as I was of him. Also, despite the junk-food chemicals playing havoc with my disposition, I was aware enough to get that Ranger didn’t have the royal hump with me. He was tired , scared of a headache that hadn’t happened yet, and missing Viktor so much he’d probably have cried if I’d given him the space to have a tangible thought or feeling.
What he didn’t realise was giving him space meant giving myself space, and I was festering in all the same shit he was.
Fatigue-induced migraines.
Missing River.
Missing home .
I thought about calling Nash, but it wasn’t his turn. He’d put in a shift listening to me complain thirty-six minutes ago, which meant, technically, Cammie OB was up, but I needed Riv’s voice in my life. It had been too long. Two hours .
Fucking torture.
I placed the call.
River answered with a growl so similar to Ranger I had to check the screen. “You’re on speaker,” I warned. “Don’t say anything naughty.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. How are you? What are you doing?”
“I’m doing the same fucking shit I was an hour ago?—”
“Two hours?—”
“—when you last called to fucking annoy me.”
“I’m not trying to annoy you. I miss you.”
“Fuck’s sake.” A crash sounded at River’s end, letting me know the curse wasn’t for me. “Why do people keep moving things?”
“Sure you didn’t move it?”
River hung up. On purpose or by way of whatever calamity was befalling him, I couldn’t tell, but the silence he left behind got to me. I needed music, but I had no CDs left. Ranger had chucked them all out of the window when I’d hidden his Beats headphones to stop him blocking me out for hours on end. Fucking outrageous behaviour, and with a dirty Maccies firing my blood, I was feeling belligerent enough to do something about it.
I spotted a service station and signalled to leave the motorway, grabbing the mic for the ancient radio system I’d made doubly sure to install in every truck, including Mats and Deeky’s posh new cab, before we’d left Devon a million years ago. “Pitstop. Over.”
The radio crackled. Decoy came on the line, the sigh strong in his voice. “For what?”
“Enrichment.”
I left it at that and steered the Bone Rattler off the motorway and into the winding loop that led to the service hub.
“Where the fuck are we going?”
I shot Ranger a dry look. “Where do you think?”
“I think you’re a pain in the arse.”
“I see that gift in you too, brother.”
“You’ve got shit in your fucking eye then.”
Ranger landed that beauty and slid out of the cab the second we hit the lorry bay. Didn’t even hang around long enough to take the piss out of my parking, though his was far worse.
He stomped away, ignoring the rule that none of us were supposed to wander around alone.
I killed the deafening engine and let my body acclimate to the lack of turbulence before I opened the driver door and stretched my legs into the outside world as Mateo pulled Bertha, the shiny new rig, into the next bay.
Decoy wound down the passenger window. “Why are we really stopping?”
“Roo ate all the Pringles.” A few days ago, weeks, even, Deeky might’ve laughed. Now he just stared with the weary energy of a brother who had to drive to Aberdeen and back before he could go home and get laid. Just for him, I elaborated. “I need music. Or I’m gonna fucking kill the little prick, I swear.”
Again, past Decoy might’ve offered to switch or trade Mateo. But he was over trying to accommodate the shenanigans me and Ranger needed to survive this bullshit. “Don’t be long. I don’t want to run out of hours before we reach Carlisle.”
“Roger that.”
I slithered out of the cab and took myself away from Decoy’s parental disappointment, grateful Mateo had been too distracted by parking to give me an earful. Daddy Decoy was too nice to bollock me, and Ranger was harmless. Angry Mats, though?
No thanks.
The service station was a shithole. Just toilets, a Burger King, and the shadiest WH Smith I’d seen in my life. It had what I needed, though. I stocked up on Skittles, Doritos, and enough terrible pop albums to keep Ranger in frisbees for a year, and made my way back.
Mats already had his engine running, scarred face a horror show of stop fucking about, you daft cunt .
Ranger was smoking.
In. The. Cab.
“Oi.” I climbed into my seat and made a grab for his half-smoked rollie. “No hotboxing the workplace.”
Ranger evaded, his spider limbs too long for me to navigate without actually sitting on him. “Fuck off and give me the Skittles.”
“No.”
“Then I’m smoking all the way to Dundee and back.”
“Aberdeen.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
He really didn’t, and... neither did I. I tossed him some Skittles and cadged a cig, and we smoked in companionable silence for a while.
Until I remembered the CDs. “Pass me that Smiths bag.”
“Fuck, no.”
“You want me to sing instead?”
“I wish you were dead.”
“ Roo .” I clutched my heart with the hand I didn’t need to keep on the wheel. “Wash your mouth out.”
Ranger sighed and relinquished the bag, scrubbing a hand down his face, knackered but too diligent to sleep on me now Alexei wasn’t with us. Where the mad accountant had fucked off to, I had no clue. But we were flying solo out here, unless I’d missed him coming back and Ranger was a hell of a lot nicer than I gave him credit for.
I slipped the least offensive album I’d bought into the cracked CD player.
Phil Collins, The Singles .
Ranger lit another smoke and glared murder at the road.
Oh well.
I drove on, smoking, mainlining sugar, my personality disintegrating with every mile we chugged in the opposite direction of where I wanted to be.
Some twat cut me up.
Should’ve left it.
Didn’t.
Called him a cunt at the top of my lungs, delighted with myself until I saw blue lights flashing up ahead. “Hang about. What’s happening up there?”
Ranger unfolded his long frame from its slouch, taking advantage of the situation to eject my newly purchased Phil Collins and sling it out the window. He leaned forward, peering at the road ahead. “Accident. Coppers everywhere, look.”
I was looking, but I’d learned over the past few weeks that Ranger had unnatural senses. He saw things I didn’t and could hear me even thinking about chucking a wine gum at him from the bunks we had to sleep in on the road. How he wasn’t blood related to Saint, I’d never fucking know, but it made sense that he’d mated for life with the other trickster Russian we’d adopted.
The flow of the motorway petered out. We came to a stop and the scene Ranger described finally became visible to me. Feds and firemen as far as the eye could see, but none of them as hot as Locke and Logan Halliwell so I didn’t give a toss, beyond it adding a million years to my day. “Fuck me running. We’re gonna be stuck here ages. You should call Vicky. Trust me, all this texting ain’t the one.”
Ranger crushed his Skittles bag and flicked it at me.
That was it.
Then he was gone again, out of the rig and into the depths of the hard shoulder, leaving me alone in the oppressive cab.
I killed the engine and stretched my back, seriously considering a nap. I wasn’t due one, and the sleep schedule I’d worked out before we’d left was the only thing I hadn’t chewed up and spat out. But Mother of Dragons, I was tired of being awake. Tired of tarmac and diesel fumes. Of missing River and the palpable pain of Ranger mooning over Viktor.
My eyes fell shut and I slipped into the restless doze of the sugar monster I’d become. I felt grimy, inside and out. Frayed. Untethered. People thought River was the rowdy one, but in this mood, I knew I was one ill-advised stank eye away from a full-on punch-up. The only mystery that remained in my life was who with.
Fucking hoped it was a stranger. Ranger was annoying, but I didn’t really want to fight him. I loved that lanky fucker, and I’d grown to love Viktor too, a state of affairs that had me sitting up and reaching for my phone. Checking in, like I’d promised before we left.
Rubi: He’s all crabby again. You should call him
Vicky: He does not want to talk on the phone
Rubi: Call him anyway. I’ll sit on him till he picks up
Vicky: That is not necessary. Let him be
Rubi: You’re too nice for him
Vicky: That will never be true
Rubi: Is Riv okay?
Vicky: No one will be okay until you are all home
And there it was: proof that Viktor was a little sweetie pie, and honestly, it annoyed me. I didn’t have room in my heart to love more dragons. And then this pretty knobhead came along making me laugh, rolling me perfect zoots, and loving Ranger the way that feral spaniel had always needed.
Fucking-A.
The passenger door ripped open.
Ranger rolled into his seat, as moody as when he’d left. I made an executive decision and called Viktor on my phone, tossing it at Ranger’s face as his one true love picked up. “You’re welcome.”
It was my turn to exit the cab and stomp off, but stuck on the motorway, I had nowhere to go but the hard shoulder in search of Decoy and Mateo.
I found them eight trucks back, flanked by the other brothers on the road with us, our last few miles together before they peeled off and left Bertha and the Bone Rattler in a clique of two.
Decoy was out and about, pacing while he talked on the phone. I expected Mats to be smoking somewhere, but he’d taken a pew on the cold ground, leaning against the giant wheels of the biggest HGV we owned, drinking water instead of smoking like it was going out of fashion. “Out of cigs?”
Mateo took the hand I held out and hauled himself to his feet. “Nah, just saving them.”
“You want some of Ranger’s baccy? I took three pouches off him yesterday.”
“Don’t get me involved in that carnage.”
“It’s not carnage. It’s keeping him busy.”
“Keeping you busy more like.” Mateo blew on his hands. “You’d be fucked if you only had me to pick on.”
“Nah, I’d just hide your sandwiches.”
Mateo blanched.
I cocked my head. “What’s up? Road belly?”
“Fucking right. If I eat another burger, I’ll die.”
He rubbed his stomach and leaned against the rig again while I snuck a closer look at him. Mateo always had sex hair and scruff, whether he’d just rolled out of Embry’s bed or not. But he never looked as tired as he did now. As battered, as if maybe being on the road this long with a marathon still to go was getting to him too.
I gave him a one-armed hug. “We’ll find some real food tonight. Get a cab somewhere or some shit.”
“Okay.”
Decoy came up on us as Mateo’s underwhelming enthusiasm fizzled out. He always had a serious mug, but his deep frown diverted my attention from whatever had Mateo so fucking miserable. “What happened?”
“Doherty came through the compound.”
Instant fury flooded my veins. “Which Doherty?”
“The old man.” Decoy stole a cigarette from Mateo and lit it, something he only did when he was stressed as fuck or drunk enough that he forgot he’d quit years ago. “He asked to see Nash. Got Cam and Folk instead.”
I let out a low whistle. “Where’d they bury him?”
“Nash said they let him go.”
“What did Folk say?”
Decoy shrugged. “I spoke to him three times today and he never mentioned it.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to spill the tea on the phone.”
“Nash did.”
“And that’s bothering you enough to wreck your lungs all over again?”
“Maybe.”
Decoy huffed out a sigh full of smoke and melancholy. And he didn’t elaborate, which was fucking inconvenient. I had to get back; I’d learned the hard way that leaving Ranger unattended was a terrible idea. Unless Viktor had distracted him, which honestly I deserved for my first good deed of the day.
I used my second good deed to snatch Decoy’s cig and toss it away, and I felt like shit that I couldn’t do more for him. That I couldn’t get him home any quicker. I knew Folk was having a hard time with him gone. Nash had told me. Embry. And then late last night, while Ranger had driven the graveyard shift and I’d been on watch, Cam had told me too.
“Decoy needs to stay home for a while. Any overnights, I’ll do them. And pull more agency drivers in. I don’t care what it fucking costs.”
Course he didn’t. He wasn’t the one who had to balance books with Alexei lurking over his shoulder, but I got it. The Folkster had been off recently, and if it was getting to Deeky half as much as it was getting to the rest of us?
Fuck.
Right.
We needed to get back on the road and guilt slithered down my spine. If we hadn’t pissed around at the service station, we might’ve avoided this pile up, but thanks to me we were gonna be hours behind schedule by the time we got moving again and factored in mandatory tachograph fuckery.
I opened my mouth to apologise, but the sound of a thousand engines restarting stole my thunder.
Time to go.
I left Decoy and Mateo and dashed back to the Bone Rattler.
Ranger greeted me with a slow scowl.
Suspiciously slow.
“Did you raid the edibles?”
“What if I did?”
“Then I’ll be fucking annoyed. Save some for me.”
“You’re driving.”
“Only for another two hours. Then we have to spend the night in Carlisle.”
I waited for Ranger to hurl something at me. He didn’t, thanks to the edibles I’d brought along to help me fucking sleep. He shifted just enough to let me take my seat, then flopped onto his back and used my thigh as a footrest for the next eighty miles, and it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened between us.
Hell, it was almost relaxing, save that he wasn’t my River.