9. Rubi
9
RUBI
Ranger reanimated about twenty minutes out from our rest stop. Sat up, rubbing his face all cute and shit. “Those gummies bang.”
“Course they do. They’re mine . Don’t go filching Saint’s.”
“Why not?”
“They’re too thinky.” Which was fucking odd, considering I had it on good authority Shoutypants used them to keep his head quiet , but whatever. I watched Ranger put himself back together, pondering what he’d done with my phone. “How was Vicky?”
Ranger opened the glovebox and snatched our last bag of sugar and additives. Tipped a mother-load of Jelly Tots into his hand and picked out all the green ones before he deigned to answer me. “His voice is fucking life. How did I not know that before?”
“Because you’re always together.”
“No, we’re not.”
“All right, but you’re never that far apart either.” I spied a fed car whizzing up the hard shoulder and held my breath for no reason whatsoever, letting it out as it sped past and not a fucking millisecond before. “And he was only gone two days when he went to get Lida, so this is new territory for you, Mr. Nomad.”
Ranger chewed on his gobful of non-green Jelly Tots. “He went dark then. I thought nothing would be harder than that.”
“Yeah, but it’s worse when you know you can go home any time you like and no one can really stop you. Harder to remember what the fuck it’s all for, you know?”
“Sounds legit.” Ranger kicked his boots up on the dash. Changed his mind and set them down again, already restless from the edible wearing off and the sugar kicking in. “That’s why I came, though. Cos I don’t like it when I can’t see him, or fucking smell him , and I need to know I can be apart from him without fucking dying.”
“If it helps, I panicked every time Nash wasn’t near me when my melon was in peak bastard mode. Kept crawling into bed with him so I wouldn’t die alone.” No lies detected, and if there was anyone who understood the death hammer of post-concussion pain, it was Ranger. “But it got better.”
He slid me an edgy glance. “You didn’t just swap Nash for River?”
“No, sir. My unhealthy dependence on Riv is a whole other thing. Also, I’m conditioned to need people. Grew up in a fecking rabble. Two sets of parents who didn’t know if they wanted to be a cartel or a commune. Barely had a wank on my own till everyone started dying—” Damn. Emotion got the better of me, like it always did when I thought of Lark and my folks. Of the O’Brians and everyone else we’d lost along the way.
I pursed my lips and focused on the looming motorway exit, ignoring an ominous clang from the wheel arch as we slowed and veered left. “Basically, I’m saying it’s not your fault being so attached to Vicky has you foxed. But you know the thing about foxes, Roo?”
“What?”
“They mate for life. Like pigeons. So however you’re feeling, get used to it— embrace it—cos it ain’t going anywhere.”
Ranger accepted my sager-than-sage advice with a grunt and passed me the Jelly Tots. I polished off the bag, tipping sugar crystals all over the fucking shop. Then it was time to concentrate, cos I wasn’t Locke or Decoy, or even Lord Nashie, and I still found manoeuvring HGVs a shit show, which made me wonder why Saint had been so insistent that rookie Ranger ride with me. Unless no one else had wanted to, which given my descent into sugar terrorism, I could hardly fucking blame them.
I steered the Bone Rattler into the truck park and claimed a bay with an empty space beside it for Mats and Decoy, our other trucks long gone.
Killing the engine eradicated the vibration plaguing my entire body and the respite pitched me forward, leaning me hard against the wheel. “Fuck a duck, I’m knackered.”
“You wanna eat?”
“Eat what?”
Ranger glanced around the truck stop, taking in the wealth of junk-food options that he’d still only eat nuggets and chips from. “KFC?”
“Kill me. Just kill me fucking now.”
“They do coleslaw.”
“They do death in cardboard boxes. Fuck my life, I’m gonna walk to that ASDA down the road.”
Ranger opened his mouth to argue, but a passing trucker caught his attention. “State of that cunt.”
“Oi. Don’t be rude—” My gaze fell on the heavyset fella mooching past, St. George’s tats for days, and the outline of a legitimate swastika lurking beneath his sweat-stained tee. “Yeah. Okay. He’s a cunt.”
Ranger was already reaching for something to throw.
Should’ve stopped him.
Didn’t.
A split second later, a two-pence coin bounced off the geezer’s bald head and Ranger let out the first genuine laugh I’d heard from him in days. “Fucking bullseye.”
Couldn’t deny it. I rummaged for a missile of my own, but Decoy and Mats pulled in beside us, curtailing the fun with Deeky’s best dad glare.
He hopped out of the flashy beast he and Mats currently called home. Mateo had parked Bertha at a weird angle—looked like I’d parked her my-damn-self. But I was willing to bet a nut she was orderly as shit on the inside.
“We’re gonna sleep.” Decoy gave me a look I was too wired to interpret. “You going for dinner?”
“Not here. I need something green in my belly. We’re gonna walk to that ASDA down the road.”
Ranger sighed.
Decoy nodded. “Text me when you’re back.”
“You’ll be asleep.”
“I’ll be trying.”
That gave me pause. Decoy slept like a soldier. Out on command, wide awake in the blink of an eye. “Something keeping you up?”
“Ivy’s been up late this week. She keeps FaceTiming in the middle of the night from Cam’s phone.”
“Cam’s phone?”
“He’s stayed at the house a lot—” Decoy smothered a yawn. “Fuck, I’m too tired to string a sentence together.”
We all were, which made the temptation to hit the road the second our mandatory stop period was over all the more frustrating. I needed to get home as much as Decoy did, but I wouldn’t know until morning if all of us were fit to drive without more rest. “Where’d Mats go?”
“Lying down already.”
Dragon fuck . “All right. I’m going shopping. Holler if you need anything.”
We parted ways. Decoy went to bed and me and Roo set off on the adventure of a lifetime across the motorway bridge and through an IKEA car park.
“Here.” Ranger tossed me my phone. “It keeps buzzing.”
“Now you’re telling me?”
He lit a rollie. I gave him my very best glare, then studied my phone screen, squinting at the bright light with a scratchy gaze, swiping through texts, scrabbling for the energy to reply while keeping a sharp eye on Ranger and ticking people off my list.
Cam, Locke, Nash, Embry, Juana.
Willow.
Viktor.
Lilana and Ivy.
Nothing from Orla or Riv since this morning. Radio silence from Folk, Saint, and Alexei.
I placed a call, waving away Ranger’s offer of a toxic cancer stick, missing the zoots I relied on as much as the family we’d left behind. Yearning for the voice that eventually picked up.
“Hey there, handsome.”
A smile lightened my heart. “Khaleesi. How goes it?”
“I’m bored.” I heard movement at Orla’s end. “Unless you count Nash trying to roast a chicken as entertainment.”
“It counts. Make sure he takes the wrapper off this time.”
Orla’s throaty chuckle warmed me up a little more. “Way ahead of you. Are you looking for River?”
“Not yet. He’s next.”
“Don’t bother. He left his phone here when he went to Axel’s place and he hasn’t come back for it yet.”
My rejuvenated little heart returned to my boots. “Where’s here ?”
“The flat. I’m having girl time with Ivy.”
“Where’s Folk?”
“At the house with Locke. Something to do with a piano; I wasn’t really listening.”
I’d heard whispers about this mythical piano. Still didn’t know where the fuck it had come from. Didn’t care. Not yet, anyway. “How’s our little dragon doing?”
“Kicking the crap out of my ribs.”
“Definitely an O’Brian then.”
“Honey, that was never in doubt.”
“McGovern by name, O’Brian by nature. The world doesn’t know what’s coming.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t hmm me.” Orla’s tone was softer than it ever used to be. Some days, pregnancy gentled her, and I was here for it. “I can see your morose face from this couch.”
“I’m not morose.”
Ranger snorted.
I kicked an empty Stella can at his back. “You can fucking talk.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ranger, not you.” All right. Maybe Orla’s sharp edges hadn’t entirely disappeared. “He’s a wind-up merchant.”
“Karma, sweetheart. Now tell me what’s up.”
“Nothing’s up. I’m just tired and homesick, and everyone around here’s either gone home or too stuck in their own misery to distract me. Tell Locke I miss him.”
“You don’t miss Saint?”
“No. I’ve got the hump with him for talking me into this mammoth trip.”
“He didn’t talk you into it. I did. It was the only way to make enough profit to pay for the giant empty fields you and my moronic brother wanted to buy with magic beans.”
I blew a raspberry. “Yeah, well. Saint didn’t stop you. And he got to go home early, and he’s airing my texts, so he can get in the bin. Or at least have some banging cuddle time with Cam.”
“That’s not going to happen. He already left again.”
“Who?”
“Saint. He rode out the same night he came home.”
“With Cam?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Nash doesn’t either.”
“What about Alexei?”
“Haven’t seen him—” Orla broke off to say something to Ivy, leaving me hanging and stewing all rolled into a big ball of what the actual fuck . “River’s okay, though.” She came back, fielding my next question without me having to say it. “He likes having Axel around again.”
“That’s cos he likes all his friends to look like me.”
“Axel doesn’t look like you.”
“Coulda done. Eleventy years ago, but it’s still valid.”
“If you say so. Listen, I need to go and finish Ivy’s nails, but call me again if you need to, okay? I’m here for you. We all are, and we hate you being gone as much as you do.”
I hadn’t realised how badly my angsty heart needed to hear that. I sniffed, glancing up as a fox crossed the car park in front of us, heading for the bottle banks. “Love you.”
“Love you more.”
Orla cut the call. I blew out a breath, missing River so much it hurt. Folk and Saint swirled in my fatigued thoughts under a neon-bright sign, telling me something was truly fucking wonky in their world right now, but I was too far from home to do anything about it.
I was way too tired for a trek around ASDA too, but I’d committed and here we were, a fact I regretted as I discovered shopping with Ranger was a theme park I hadn’t bought a ticket for. “Stop nicking stuff.”
“I’m not nicking it. I’m moving it around.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
I had no fucking clue. I foraged myself a dinner of bananas and a packet of grapes.
Ranger bought three bags of Wotsits and a kilo of chicken breasts, and I ran out of energy to wonder why until we crossed into IKEA territory again and he tossed the meat to the waiting fox.
“You lanky old softie.”
Ranger crouched to watch the fox. “Get fucked.”
I wish . I leaned against a lamppost, texting Riv and waiting on him to ride back to Orla to fetch his fucking phone, a reality that could’ve stretched out for days, but this time the dragon gods heard my prayer and he popped up on our thread ten minutes later.
Ranger was still watching the fox eat the cute little chicken picnic he’d laid out.
I ate a banana and texted one-thumbed.
Rubi: We can video call if you miss my face that much. You don’t have to collect doppelg?ngers
River: Fuck off
Rubi: Rude
River: What are you even talking about?
Rubi: Khaleesi said you were with Axel
River: So?
Rubi: He’s my twin, innit?
River: Go away
Rubi: No
Rubi: What are you doing?
River: Playing darts with a picture of your head
Rubi: Double rude
River: What do you want from me?
At this point, anything. Watching Ranger tame a fox as if he’d been raised by the Folkster was as cute as it was unexpected, but it wasn’t enough to soothe my tired soul. I needed more—I needed River , in any capacity, even if it meant pissing him off enough to call me a cunt.
Rubi: I miss you
River started typing. Stopped and started again, and I knew him well enough to figure he wasn’t lost for words. That he was distracted, by Axel , who was almost as hella hot as Oscar The Fisherman.
You love Oscar.
True story, but I’d spent years hating him when he’d been nicer and younger than me, and spent more time with River than I could even dream of.
That’s not what this is. Rational thoughts for a rational person. But I wasn’t feeling particularly rational. If Mats had road belly, then I had road brain , and it made me regret telling Nash to bring Axel back to Devon to work on the Crow Land project.
You’re a twat.
Yup. I didn’t need Riv to tell me that, but my phone buzzed in my hand all the same.
River: I miss you too. And if you must fucking know, I’m smoking some banging green and eating wedding cake at Axel’s sister’s house
Rubi: Wedding cake?
River: She’s getting married
Rubi: Lucky her
River: Don’t be a dick. You love weddings
Rubi: I love cake. The rest of it is unnecessary
River: Says who?
Rubi: All Mathersons. It’s why my ma died a Lowe, remember?
As if River could forget my dead mother’s name. Or that she’d never married my dad. I hadn’t been motherfucking jesting when I’d told Ranger we’d all grown up with two sets of parents, and Riv had loved my mum as much as I had.
Maybe that’s why he did the text equivalent of hanging up again and left me on read . Whatever. I was cold, hungry, and bored of watching Ranger be adorable.
I kicked his boot, agitation rolling through me as River’s silence got under my skin, melding with the creeping sensation that I’d fucked up somehow. “Come the fuck on. I need my bed before I burn the world down by accident.”
Ranger obliged without argument, which should’ve been my first clue that everything was about to go to shit, but in the tizzy I’d worked myself into, I missed it, and we trudged back to the truck park with him scoffing Wotsits and me drifting in a fists-clenched sulk for no reason whatsoever.
Later, I’d realise I’d been so caught up worrying about Ranger’s noggin I’d forgotten about my own. In the moment, I ploughed on, sinking further into the kind of hell I hadn’t contemplated since Nash had punched me in the face way back when. Lost in thoughts that went nowhere. Lost in?—
Fuck . I collided with a gammony wall of man. Stale sweat and beer. Cheap cigs and shattitude. Goddammit, it was the tattooed barrel of bigotry Ranger had bounced a copper off earlier.
I reared back. “Sorry, mate .”
Couldn’t say it with a straight face or a tone an alien from outer space wouldn’t have recognised as belligerent.
The man curled his lip in response, brushing his grimy shirt like I was the walking shit stain. “Watch where you’re going.”
“Die in your sleep.”
“You fucking what?”
It was dark. I stepped to this motherfucker so he could get a better look at me, sensing Ranger sliding into my slipstream. “I said die in your sleep . Fire would do, though. I ain’t picky.”
“ Pikey though, aren’t ya?” Baldy poked a stubby finger at my chest. “With your fucking gypo accent.”
Pikey. Mother of Dragons, it wasn’t a new insult, or even a good one. Being Irish didn’t make me Romani or Traveller. But Embry and his kin were a beautiful mix of both, and it was his face I saw as the coiled spring I’d nursed for the last few days came loose, and I let my fists fly with not a single fuck given for the consequences.
Smack.
Knuckles crunched bone.
Yes .
Blood splattered, and as Mr. Bigot’s gaggle of mates appeared from who the fuck knew where and Ranger jumped in, the energy of an old-fashioned brawl swept me away.
Fucking idiots. It was five on two, but they had no idea what they’d started.
Chaos.
I fucking loved it. All these years of fighting for peace, but this was who I’d been raised to be, and I didn’t care that I was showing it fifty yards from the entrance to a craptastic Premier Inn.
Baldy hit the tarmac. I wasn’t far gone enough to put the boot in— witnesses —but far from done, I wrenched his last pal standing from Ranger’s path and pulled my fist back to deck him into oblivion, craving the impact of the hit, even if he thumped me right back. Cos I didn’t fucking care ? —
Holy Mary.
My feet left the floor. The dark corner of the truck stop blurred and Decoy grunted with the effort of hauling me twenty feet and slamming me into the side of a rig.
“ Stop ,” he growled, very unDeeky-like. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Possibly. I took a breath, adrenaline still coursing through my veins, feeling no pain from the scrappy hits Baldy had got in before I’d put his arse down.
He was up again now, shouting more slurs that loosened Decoy’s hold on me, as if my most sensible brother was seriously considering letting me go.
Easily fixed. “Nonce!”
My bellow rang out across the truck stop, and I kept shouting and shouting and shouting until Baldy changed his mind about carrying this fuckery on.
His friends dragged him away, blood dripping from his nose, one of his beady eyes already swollen shut.
Decoy finally released me. Parental disappointment seeped from every pore and his heavy sigh scraped the ground. “Why are you being like this?”
Cos this brother knew it was about more than some cunt showing me his racist arse.
I nailed a glare at my boots. “I’m tired.”
“We’re all fucking tired.”
“I miss River.”
“I know.” Decoy rubbed his shoulder, grimacing. “But you’ve been away from him before and not been this unhinged.”
Ouch. My conscience wrenched with an internal wince. I’d really pissed off Daddy Decoy, but I didn’t have any answers that didn’t involve all the shit he already knew, so I kept scowling at my scuffed toecaps until he sighed and let it go in time for Mats and Ranger to come up on us.
Ranger had blood on his face.
Not his.
Regardless, it was still my fault he’d had to jump into the scrap behind me. “All right?”
He lit a smoke and leaned against the cab. “Can’t complain.”
Mateo snorted, popping the cap on a Lucozade Sport with a hand that didn’t seem steady to my fight-hazed eyes. “You two are fucking mental. Someone could’ve filmed that shit.”
I dismissed the notion. “It was over too fast.”
“And it’s too dark.” Ranger blew smoke in Mateo’s general direction.
Mateo glared. “Don’t be a cunt.”
Decoy sighed some more. “You’re lucky no one called the police.”
“Fucking right.” Mateo again . “Even if you didn’t get nicked, it’s still hassle we don’t need.”
I flexed my throbbing knuckles, then jabbed a finger at him. “Valid points, but I’m not taking a lecture on rowdy behaviour from your hooligan self.”
Mats almost grinned, but his face did something complicated instead. He took a drink from his lurid blue bottle and swallowed.
Hard.
Decoy frowned, already stepping forward.
I moved too, but we were both too slow to catch our brother as he lurched sideways and puked into the gutter.