10. Decoy
10
DECOY
I was less shocked than Rubi to see Mateo unravel. He hadn’t been right since we’d left home. A bug or whatever, but without proper food and rest, as the days had turned into weeks, it had messed him up to the point where he hadn’t kept a meal down since yesterday.
He crouched by the wheel of a rig that wasn’t ours, a shaky hand pressed to his mouth, the other keeping him from tipping forward onto the tarmac. I took another step towards him, but Rubi got there first.
“Fucking-A, Mats. You look like warmed-up shite.”
Honestly, he looked worse than that, and it pissed me off that I couldn’t take the load from his plate. That none of us could without breaking driving regulations that existed for good reason.
Rubi helped him up and they disappeared for a while, leaving me with Ranger, a brother I had a lot of love for but right now could’ve throttled. “What the fuck was all that about?”
The fight. Not Mateo puking his guts up.
Ranger shrugged, nonchalant enough that my temper spiked again. “I didn’t start it.”
“You didn’t stop it either.”
“With what? A fucking tank?”
I gave up. Ranger possessed the kind of grit that could halt the tides. He hadn’t stopped Rubi because he hadn’t wanted to, and there was nothing I could do with that. How could there be when I didn’t altogether disagree with it?
Rubi, though. I’d forgotten how feral he could be without River, Nash, or even Cam to check him. On his best days, he was my organised brother-in-arms. Rational. Reasonable. But the mood he’d brought to the road this time around was unmanageable, and I was so unsurprised he’d popped off at someone in the car park it was almost funny. And it would’ve been if we’d been at home. Or a biker event where fighting was lore. But we fucking weren’t. We were in public and Rubi had caused the kind of scene that ended with handcuffs, DNA swabs, and prison sentences that lasted Ivy’s entire childhood.
The urge to smoke again swept over me. Only thinking about Ivy, and the damage chemotherapy had ravaged on Folk’s body kept my hands in my pockets, and like he’d heard my straying thoughts, my phone rang with a video call.
Folk . Or maybe Ivy, and it made a difference. Ivy was rarely satisfied with just me. She’d want to see the others, and Ranger and Rubi had blood on them, Mateo was sick as a dog, and my stress levels were high enough that a vein probably twitched in my forehead.
Daddy, why do you look like you swallowed a bad dream?
Dying inside, I let the call ring out, ignoring Ranger’s bored curiosity. A conventional call lit up the screen a split second later and I let out a harassed breath.
“Best off answering.” Ranger nudged my foot with his boot, not quite a kick, but nearly. “Might calm you down.”
It was the most sense Ranger had made over the past few days. I took the call, steeling my eardrums for Ivy to screech at me. But instead of my excitable kid, I got the masculine warmth of Folk’s voice saturating my brain, my heart, and everything in between, and Ranger’s gruff prophecy came true. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Folk murmured. “Everything going all right?”
I turned away from Ranger, measuring my words. “It’s going.”
“Something happen?”
“You sound like you already know it did.”
“I don’t know anything. I just got a vibe off Teddy.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not here, so whatever vibe he gave you is second-hand.”
“Teddy’s not there?”
“Not for a while now.”
A pause stretched out, one that had me frowning. Teddy. Alexei. He and Folk had a complex relationship, one I’d never tried to understand, but they always seemed to know each other’s business better than anyone else. Folk not knowing Alexei had left us made as much sense as Cam sleeping on Ivy’s bedroom floor. “Are you okay?”
It was the first time I’d flat out asked him. Probably because I was scared of the answer. Folk loved me—I knew that. And he and Ivy loved each other more than I’d ever dared dream. But he wasn’t happy, and I had no fucking clue how to fix it.
You can’t fix it .
But, god, I wanted to.
“Not really,” Folk said so quietly I barely heard him. “But I’m trying.”
“Where are you?”
“At the Unholy Mansion. Locke’s still trying to figure out how a piano ended up in his kitchen. Ivy’s getting her nails done at the flat.”
“You’re not alone?”
“Not for days and days now. I think I’m wearing how much I miss you all over my face.”
Visceral pain clenched my heart. I’d been away before, but leaving him this time had just about killed me, because as much as Folk would never have let me, I’d known how badly he’d needed me to stay. “I miss you too. This is the shittest run I’ve ever been on.”
“Something really did happen?”
“Rubi and Ranger got in a punch-up.”
“With each other?”
“No, someone else, thank fuck.”
Folk laughed, mellow and wonderful. “Who won?”
“Our lot on points, but I broke it up before it got too lairy.” The shoulder my ex-wife had hit with her car throbbed as a reminder. “Where are you sleeping tonight?”
“At the flat. Orla said she’d sit on me if I tried to leave.”
“You already left.”
“Seth, trust me. I’m not spending a night away from Mother Locke until you come home.”
Seth . The band around my heart eased a little. I swept my gaze around the truck park. Ranger had shadowed me to the dark corner I’d subconsciously retreated to but had left enough distance between us to give me privacy. Rubi was by the Bone Rattler, phone jammed to his ear. Mateo, I presumed, had gone back to the bed Rubi’s hooligan antics had tipped him out of. “I love you.”
Folk sighed. “I love you too. I’m sorry I’m making you worry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it? I like to talk, Seth. I’m good at it. But every time I try and articulate whatever this is, nothing comes out.”
“Maybe you’re not ready to talk about Rocco yet.”
“I should be. He’s been gone a long time.”
He hadn’t, not really. But sometimes Folk seemed so detached from Rocco’s death it felt like he’d died twenty years ago.
Like Lark Matherson.
The faded photos on the bar wall flickered through my mind as Rubi ended his call and searched his immediate surroundings, looking for me.
Fuck.
I had to go.
We said goodbye with fear squeezing my heart again, the need to be home so profound it hurt. Tense, I retraced my steps to face the version of Rubi who’d been MIA all week.
“This ain’t on. Mats has got to go home. There’s an Enterprise over the bridge. Let’s go bag a motor and make this shit happen.”
“You want Ranger to drive him?”
“Nah, you do it. Ranger can woo the Bone Rattler, and I’ll take Bertha.”
Couldn’t lie, it was a nice idea. Mateo needed his own bed as much as I needed to be with Folk right now . But Ranger wasn’t an experienced lorry driver. As desperate as I was to get home as fast as humanly possible, I didn’t like the idea of leaving him to endure the miles we had left on our run without Rubi to guide him. “I should stay with Bertha.”
“What the fuck for?”
“She’s bigger than anything you’ve driven before.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“What about?—”
“ Deeky .” Rubi clamped a big hand on my shoulder. “None of it matters. Just go home, okay? I’ll sort the rest.”
Home.
To Ivy.
To Folk .
I nodded. “Okay.”
As if anything was ever that simple.