16. Locke
16
LOCKE
Nash was a fuckin’ wreck. Like Folk, he had been for a while, but I didn’t hold Folk like this—didn’t love him like this, so it hadn’t hurt me as much as it did to see Nash cry.
Still inside him, I shifted onto my side, taking him with me and holding him to my chest, tucking a blanket around him in a place that had definitely become a fuck den for the Whitlock siblings as they’d come of age.
The thought almost made me smile, but with Nash still shaking in my arms, the feeling was fleeting, and I held him tighter, riding out the storm and sparing us both the bullshit of telling him everything was going to be okay.
I didn’t know that. None of us did.
All I knew was everything was okay now , in this moment, as we lay naked together in a cabin in the fuckin’ woods.
Nash calmed down, kissing my chest before he left the bed to clean up.
He came back limping and sheepish. “Sorry.”
I waited until he was settled, then wrapped him in my arms again and coaxed his gaze to mine. “You’re okay.”
He sniffed, still shivering. “Rubes told me epic sex could make you cry. I didn’t believe him.”
“Fucking can be cathartic. Not sure it fixes anything, but it’s not the worst reset in the world if it’s with someone you love.”
Nash shifted, wincing. “You’re so fucking wise.”
I ignored that. “Your leg hurt?”
“It’s just a bit tight.”
A lie, but I didn’t call him on it. Just hassled him into a position he might eventually sleep in and set to work massaging his damaged leg, loosening the muscles the way me and Rubi had learned from the unfortunate physiotherapist who now had most of us on his books.
I hit a tender spot.
Nash set his jaw, in more pain than he was ever going to admit.
I got up and found my jacket. Popped a couple of pills into my palm and persuaded him to swallow them. Just ibuprofen, nothing heavy, but Nash so rarely bothered with meds that they did their fuckin’ job when he did.
He fell asleep, finally. I did too, for a while, at least, but a dull ache in my lower back woke me up long before him.
It was afternoon, the cold, crisp day already fading. I reached for my phone on autopilot, careful not to jostle Nash as he slept with his face smushed against my ribcage.
The screen was alive with messages.
Willow.
Nicky.
Logan.
Kara.
Orla .
I loved my kids more than life itself, and my fuckin’ twin was the reason I’d kept swimming long enough to be in this bed with Nash. But I clicked on my woman’s name first, relief washing over me at the smiley—and hot as fuck—selfie she’d sent us an hour ago. The dirty enquiry she’d followed it up with.
Smirking, I typed out a reply. She didn’t always ask for details of what went down between me and Nash when we were alone, but if she did, sharing was the easiest thing in the world. So was grinning at the flame emojis I got in return. Sex was complicated for Orla right now. As her body had adapted to growing two tiny humans, she’d had to settle for Nash’s magic mouth most of the time, but she took it like a trooper, forever grateful for the blessing that kept her a spectator, and fuck me, I loved her.
I loved Willow too, but Christ, my kid was still hard work. Her messages dizzied me. I navigated them with a growing frown and switched to Kara’s with one eye already cinching closed with the fuckin’ stress of it.
Kara: You need to tell Willow that Orla’s baby isn’t her sibling
Nice. But not unexpected. Kara was still having trouble with the poly element of my love life. She liked Nash—who didn’t—and had warmed to Orla in recent months, but the idea of the three of us together was one she couldn’t quite believe, and Orla falling pregnant had only made it worse.
I reached hard for some diplomacy and messaged her back.
Locke: we don’t get to decide what they are to her
Kara: Oh, come on, Locke. Be reasonable. It’s not your baby
Locke: we’re a family
Kara: For how long?
Locke: what does that mean?
Kara: It means I’m not happy about Willow and Nicky getting attached to someone else’s children
Locke: then you’ll just have to live with being unhappy. i’m not policing their relationships
Oof. I was going to get it for that one, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Lie, and tell her that any baby Nash and Orla had meant fuckin’ nothing to me?
Nash stirred, pressing his lips to the bare skin he’d been using as a pillow. “What are you stressed about?”
“I’m not stressed.” I dropped a hand on his head, waiting for him to look at me.
When he did, it was with sleep-heavy eyes and sheet lines on his face. Nash was good at unending sleepless nights, cutely terrible at waking up. “You feel stressed.”
“I’m talking to Kara.”
Understanding crept into Nash’s bleary gaze. I passed him the phone. He read the messages with a grimace.
“That’s really where she is on this?”
I shrugged. “It’s where she’s choosing to be. If she ever wants something else, that’s up to her. I don’t give much of a fuck anymore.”
A hard truth. I owed Kara a lot for not shutting me out when life had made me a terrible father and an even worse husband, but things had been different a long fuckin’ time now, and I was over explaining my relationships to her.
Nash went back to dozing. I sloped off to the tiny bathroom and squeezed myself into a shower the size of an air vent shaft. Washed the road, a marathon sex session, and every emotion under the sun off my skin.
Then I crawled back into bed, clicked into the rest of my messages, and found myself grinning at a photo Liliana had sent of Mateo sleeping with his mouth open.
She’d sent it from his phone. Given that meant there was zero chance he wouldn’t see it, I kept my reply to a laughing emoji, glad she was seeing the funny side of another parent getting sliced open, trying not to revisit her reaction to a phone call that had left Embry drained of colour and crouching in the dark. The raw fear in her young fuckin’ eyes. No kid deserved the shit she’d been through.
“You’re stressing again.” Nash pushed himself onto his elbows, his sky-blue eyes more alert than they’d been the first time he’d woken up. “Willow get a boyfriend or something?”
“Don’t even joke about that. You’ve seen the mopes she calls friends.”
“Are they mopes or normal fucking teenagers? I don’t have much to compare it to.”
“They’re mopes.” I kissed Nash’s scarred knuckles, enjoying the peace of a few hours in bed with him. “How’s the leg?”
“It’s all right. How’s your back?”
“Shite.”
“Hmm.” Nash stretched, then gave me a gentle push. “Roll over.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He grinned, too fuckin’ handsome for me to cope with. “Just do it.”
All right then. I rolled over, showing Nash my ruined back without even thinking about it—a state of mind that had got me in trouble with Logan over the summer. New scars that should’ve meant new lies, except I hadn’t had it in me, so I’d given him some semblance of the truth.
“I used to be in trouble, but it’s over now, cos Nash and Orla saved me.”
As if he hadn’t known that already. Sometimes it was so hard to look in my twin’s eyes and see how deeply he knew how close he’d come to fuckin’ losing me.
Nash slid his life-hardened palms down my back, following the map he likely knew better than me, by sight, anyway. I didn’t look at myself much—never had, even before I’d become a mess of scars and pain.
He found a tender spot, grumpy muscle that didn’t appreciate the twisted flesh sitting above it. His magic thumbs released the tension, and my answering groan reverberated through the bed.
Nash chuckled. “I like that sound.”
“Then do that shit again.”
He obliged and worked a minor miracle on my aching body, tapping into parts of me I hadn’t even known were hurting. I became one with the mattress, slipping into a trance that only petered out as the sensation of Nash’s weight on me eclipsed all pain, his thighs gripping my waist, battered leg the strongest it had been since the accident.
Nash didn’t top much, it wasn’t what he needed from me, and I was versatile enough that I had nothing to complain about.
The rare times we did switch it up, though... I was hard just thinking about it, picturing it, and my next groan was something else. Something deeper, and Nash didn’t miss his cue.
He rolled me over again, cos he knew how much I loved watching him fuck. The way his body moved, that earnest stare as he studied every nuance of me, of Orla, always learning. Always striving to be better when he was already fuckin’ perfect.
His cock breached me. My eyes fluttered closed. “ Fuck .”
Nash snatched a breathless laugh and gripped the rustic headboard behind us. He ground his hips, sinking a little deeper into me, and together we rode a high I’d only ever found with him and our woman. Another level of pleasure. Of love. Of pure fuckin’ ecstasy as he hit that spot on repeat.
He had me. I wasn’t going to last long.
I flexed my hips, urging him on, revelling in the tightness that seized his shoulders, the flutter of his baby blues as he drove into me. The rut of the headboard against the cabin wall.
The animalistic growl that tore from my fuckin’ soul as I erupted with Nash buried inside me.
Nash wasn’t done.
And of course, neither was I.
I took the weight from his trembling leg and rearranged us, rolling him onto his back before taking him inside me again, my dick still hard enough to poke his eyes out.
Riding him was my fuckin’ favourite. Best of both worlds, for him and for me. I held him down and took what we both needed, rocking that bed with an untamed rhythm, sweat coating my inked and ruined skin.
Nash lost it, eyes slamming shut, coming inside me. It took me a little longer the second time round, but he was still flying as I groaned a curse and painted his chest with how much I fuckin’ loved him.
We fell into a sex daze. I eased off Nash and sprawled out beside him, breathing hard.
He hugged me against him, no fuckin’ words, and we lay together in hazy winter sunshine that was already fading.
I almost went back to sleep, but thoughts of home kept me awake, a message buzzing through on cue as my faculties returned to me enough to work on Nash’s leg again.
He grabbed my phone, swiping the screen so I could see the message notification and the text preview that brought me down with an unearthly fuckin’ bump. An ironic bump, given Nash’s earlier joke.
Kara: There’s no need to be so rude. By the way, I think Willow has a boyfriend
For fuck’s sake.
* * *
Despite a primal and parental need to get home, none of us, except maybe Decoy, were fit for a long ride until the next morning.
We rolled out at dawn, Nash leading this time, me flanking with Folk and Decoy behind me, while Ranger and Viktor lurked at the back. The roads were slick with icy slush, but we made good time, rolling into Devon six hours later, following Nash onto the compound as he zipped up the driveway faster than he usually would, weaving through the trucks and vans queuing to get into the sales hub, gunning for the gates.
He swept into the yard. We burned after him as the clubhouse doors opened and Rubi and Cam strode down the steps, big, scene-stealing men. But I barely saw them, transfixed instead by the vision that followed—her curvy frame wrapped in soft leggings, a white vest stretched over her glorious bump, and a huge flannel shirt she’d definitely stolen from my twin, though I had no idea when, since he’d been wearing it himself the last time I’d seen him.
Orla reached the steps. Still bewitched, I didn’t take much notice of whoever popped up to take her arm and guide her down. Just rolled off my bike, oblivious to the faded jeans and Timberland boots until he was right on top of me.
Logan .
My breath caught in my chest. I reached for him with one hand, the other flailing for Orla—for Nash as he came up on us, his arms sliding around our woman. “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”
“Easy.” Logan pulled me into a one-armed hug. “I was passing. Thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
I drew back to chuck my frown in his face. “You’ve never done that in your life.”
Cos my life had been such a clusterfuck, he’d moved away to escape it?—
That’s not why he left.
“I’ve never done it to you ,” Logan countered. “Maybe I came to see Orla.”
Or maybe he was a lying fuckin’ liar, but I was too pleased to see him to care. “You come alone?”
“No, Rem’s here.”
“Where?”
“Looking at something in the garage.”
More bemusement washed over me. Remy had as much interest in engines as I had in jewellery, but... did I give a fuck right now?
Not a single one.
I let Logan go and finally gave Orla my full attention. She beamed at me, her smile as big as her giant belly and tits. “Hey, queenie.”
Orla kissed my cheek, her devilish tongue flicking out to swipe my jaw. “Hey, sweetheart. We missed you.”
“Missed you too. I took good care of him though.”
“Honey, I bet you did.”
Logan snorted and stepped away to look beyond me to the garage doors as Remy stepped out with River, his golden hair shining in the winter sun, every move of his dancer’s body one that made even Alexei look clumsy.
I hadn’t seen my brother-in-law in a couple of months. Somehow, we’d kept missing each other, and the last place I’d expected to rectify that was here. Leaving Orla with Nash, I moved across the yard to greet Remy, tugging him into the kind of embrace he could withstand cos he lived with my brother’s undying affection.
“Tell me the truth,” I murmured. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“We came to see you.”
“Why?”
Remy shrugged. “Why not?”
“Cos you never have. Why now?”
“Think about it,” Remy hedged. “All the good things you say about this place, you don’t think he’d want to see it for himself?”
“While I wasn’t fuckin’ here?”
“Maybe.”
It made an annoying kind of sense, and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t lied to Lo about my living arrangements in the past. Still wanted to flick his ear though. Would’ve if the sight of him dropping a big, overprotective hand on Nash’s sweet head hadn’t set my heart to fuckin’ burst.
“Is Saint around?” Remy broke into my thoughts. “I brought him some tools.”
I’d forgotten about the unlikely friendship Remy had struck up with Saint. Pretty sure all they talked about was wood and copper, but it seemed to work for them. And I liked the faint smile on Saint’s face as he spotted Remy across the yard. It looked good on him, and he fuckin’ deserved a friend like Remy.
Not sure what Rocco had done to deserve him though. I caught Folk’s eye across the yard as he shut Finch’s car door and waved her off.
He nodded, confirming his intentions for the quiet conversation that needed to happen. The one where Folk fuckin’ told that brother he had nothing to feel guilty about for not getting Rocco’s ashes home sooner. Scattering him on the beach, seeing Folk and Ranger cry for him, I’d never get over it. But it had happened at the right time. And now, however much it hurt, we had to move on.
Remy wandered off to find Logan, as drawn to my socially awkward big brother as everyone else was to their lovers. And Logan hadn’t strayed from Nash and Orla, which should’ve reeled me in.
But I liked watching all of them together when they didn’t know I was looking. The warmth that had grown between Lo and Nash. The easy affection Orla shared with Remy. Family, man. You couldn’t buy this shit.
“Mishka.” Alexei sidled up to me. “You look well...”
I side-eyed him, getting a lungful of his posh cologne as I narrowed my gaze at his dangling sentence. “Well, what ?”
Alexei leered and handed me a folded slip of paper. “You have Decoy in this secret Santa madness.”
“And?”
Cos there was no way he’d ventured out into the yard just for that.
“And...” Alexei tilted his head. “I feel the need to tell you I do not care for your daughter’s new boyfriend. When your brother is gone, we should find some time to discuss it.”