33. Viktor
33
VIKTOR
It happened in slow motion. The girl—a teenager not much younger than Locke’s daughter—fell from the rocks, hitting her head. She disappeared into the pool and she did not come back up.
Then the world began to turn faster again. Obscure motion, Ranger a sharp smudge of denim and limbs as he kicked his boots off, hurled his jacket, and followed her into the water at such speed I hardly knew it had happened.
I had never seen a man swim so fast. He cut through the water with the velocity of a bullet, tearing up the distance between where he had been standing and the spot where the girl had vanished. Then he disappeared too, beneath the surface of the pool, and my heart followed him.
All these things, they happened in a split second, or perhaps I was frozen in time, Decoy too. For we did not move until Ranger was gone. And then we moved so fast my bike toppled to the ground behind me.
We ran, down steps and over rocks. I surged ahead of Decoy, vaulting the fence as if my hip had not kept me awake last night, as if I had not endured the ride here with a violent corkscrew in the nerves there. My boots did not slip— I did not slip. I reached the pool as Ranger broke the surface and propelled the girl to where Folk waited at the edge.
She was bleeding and blue.
I should have cared, but while Ranger remained in the water, I did not.
He pushed the girl into Folk’s arms.
I grabbed his hands and pulled him out as a vicious wave swept in from the sea, soaking us all to the skin, icy foam lingering as it washed away.
Ranger rolled to his feet, his gaze laser-focused on the girl.
Folk had her on her side, coaxing water from her lungs.
A good sign—her lips were blue from the cold. But that meant Ranger was cold too, a reality that hadn’t dawned on him yet as Decoy reached Folk’s side to help him aid the girl.
“She needs an ambulance.” Folk’s voice carried over the chaos between my ears. “Vik, take Ranger and get out of here.”
Vik . No one but Ranger had ever called me that. But the surprise of Folk doing so underlined his words. Ambulances meant police, and as innocent as this moment was, Ranger’s heroics were attention we did not need.
I grasped Ranger’s sodden arm. “We must go.”
He did not move, gaze still locked on the girl.
“Asher.” I tugged him harder. “She is breathing, she is okay. Folk will stay with her now.”
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the wail of a siren pierced the air, and the girl’s friends finally descended the rocks, bringing hysteria loud enough to reanimate Ranger. He backed up, water dripping from his clothes. I grabbed the boots and jacket he’d discarded and towed him back to our bikes.
Mine remained on its side. Ranger did not seem to notice, his focus on jamming his boots back on his feet and what we had left behind.
I righted the Ducati as the first police car came into view, concealing my face with my helmet. The car would not stop where we had—the conventional parking spots were further on. But the need to be anywhere but here burned inside me, and it did not feel good.
“ Asher .”
Slowly, Ranger turned his head. A broader awareness seeped back into his midnight gaze and he finally seemed to see me.
He threw a leg over his bike and shoved his helmet on his head. I pointed north, towards home , and he nodded.
We shot away, headlong into the biting wind, leaving the commotion behind us and making for the nearest Rebel King base, which happened to be where we had been destined for anyway. The big old house. The unholy mansion, according to Rubi, where Locke, Nash, and Orla had brought their newborn children home the day before.
Mindful of a future that kept those children safe, Nash had built a fenced-off area for bikes. Half an hour later, we pulled up inside it to find Locke forewarned and waiting for us with dry clothes for Ranger.
“You fuckin’ nutter. Miss that whistle, eh?”
Ranger called him something unspeakable and stomped inside without taking the clothes.
Locke followed him, leaving me with Nash, who seemed a little dazed, as if he had just woken from the kind of nap unique to new parents.
“Why’s everyone been swimming in their clothes?”
“Not everyone. Just Ranger.”
“You’re all wet too.” Nash gestured to my damp jeans. “And you look frozen to fuck. Come indoors.”
He didn’t wait for me to agree. Just ambled inside, leaving the door open. Had it not been winter, I might not have followed him, but I did not want his home—his children —to be cold.
I hung my helmet and stepped inside the house, noting the changes since I had last been here, the night Cam and I had shoved Willow’s rogue piano inside and slipped away.
The kitchen now had walls, plastered by Ranger and painted by Mateo, a large stove at the centre of the room, kicking out heat that drew me in. The piano was tucked in the corner, repainted and cleared of dust.
I ran a finger along the mahogany lid, a phantom melody in my head, distant but as much a part of me as every other memory. Laughter. The smell of scorched flesh?—
“Here.” Nash came up behind me. “These should fit you.”
I retracted my hand in time for Nash to press a pile of folded clothes into my grasp. Soft and worn. Comforting, like the earthy warmth from the stove. “This house is very nice now.”
Nash eyed me. “It’s getting there. Are you okay?”
“Yes.” He did not believe me, I could tell. But I had no way of fixing that. The events of the last hour had done something to my mind I could not seem to move past, and being so wet and cold while I could hear the low rumble of Locke’s voice in the next room…I did not feel entirely present, and only the resurgent pain in my hip kept my vision clear. “Thank you for the clothes.”
Nash said something else.
I did not hear him, and I was unsurprised when Locke took his place what felt like seconds later.
And Locke…he did not speak. Just took the dry clothes from me and gestured for me to remove my jacket and boots. He took them away and returned to do the same with the rest of my clothes.
I obeyed his silent request and stripped, dressing in the dry clothes fast enough that he did not have much time to endure the scars on my torso. Locke, though. He did not flinch away from them anyway. Why would he? His were far worse. Instead he straightened the shirt that smelled of the chaplain—of Embry, who I had grown to like very much—and drew me into a hug far warmer than any stove.
This man, he had been a friend to Ranger far longer than he had been such a comfort to me, but his embrace was as familiar to me as Jake’s. I sank into it, grounding myself in all the words Locke did not say. Because he did not need to.
He knew.
I knew.
We just were.
The brick wall blocking my brain crumbled, the dust fading. A breath left my body, and I was back in the room. In this house, where Ranger was. How had I lost track of him?
Locke pulled back, rubbing my arms with his big hands. “Come inside, brother. I want you to meet our kids.”
* * *
The babies were perfect. And I would never get over the sight of Ranger with one on each arm, a sight Locke had seen before, but no one else had. It did not stop him scowling up a storm, but not many things did, and despite the maddening pain in my hip, I left the big old house some hours later with a smile on my face.
We rode for home, fetching Lida on the way from where I had left her with Saint at the compound. Somehow, we found Folk and Decoy again, already with Saint, who seemed bemused by having so much company he had not sought out. Though, perhaps he didn’t mind it.
At least, he did not leave.
Instead he gave Ranger and his borrowed clothes the same tilted frown as Lida and even came closer, as if he might legitimately sniff him. “Are you hurt?”
Ranger was already halfway into one of the Lion bars Rubi kept for him in the chapel kitchen. “Nah, just fucked up my hair do.”
Saint didn’t laugh. He turned his attention to me, but I evaded his penetrating stare and looked at Folk instead.
“How is the girl?”
We knew she was alive, but details had been sparse since.
“Conscious and talking.” Folk wrapped his hands around a tea mug. “She’d have drowned if Ranger hadn’t pulled her out when he did, though.”
Ranger snorted. “You’d have got her.”
“I was looking at Seth. I didn’t even see her fall.”
Ranger just grunted, finishing his chocolate and moving on to his tobacco pouch, rolling himself a smoke with deft fingers—a simple feat that shouldn’t have been attractive to me, and yet everything about him was attractive to me. Even the sheer pigheadedness that stopped him seeing the gravity of what he’d done today.
Especially that.
He went outside to smoke.
My heart followed him, but I stayed in the seat I’d fallen into, gritting my teeth against the sharp nerve pain throttling my side. I would have to move soon. Pace around. Bang my head against a wall. Drink vodka until I slept, but I was not sure there was enough liquor in the world for this pain.
I felt eyes on me.
Alas, Decoy was busy writing notes in the leather-bound notebook he seemed to carry everywhere, which left me at the mercy of Folk and Saint, an adventure in perception I didn’t need right now. “Locke said something about a whistle to Ranger earlier. What does this mean?”
Folk grinned. “Ranger was a lifeguard when he was a teenager. Until he got sacked for tipping the pool manager into the deep end and throwing bricks at his head.”
Nothing about that surprised me. “He swam so fast today, I did not know he could—I did not know anyone could.”
“Swims like he fights.”
That was Saint. I spared his rare words a glance. “You have seen this before?”
“Stray dog in the river.”
Folk raised a brow. “That was a year before we came here.”
Saint shrugged.
Folk shook his head, drinking his tea, still holding the mug as if his life depended on it, and I understood that more than I wanted to.
Pain spiked through my hip, flaring across my abdomen. They saw it, Folk and Saint, I knew they did. But I did not stay—I could not. I took Lida and left them, tracking down Ranger outside.
He leaned against the chapel wall as if he’d been smoking only to kill time while he’d waited for me. His hair was still damp. I tucked some behind his ears. “Can we leave?”
Ranger cocked his head. “You’re asking me?”
“Yes.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
“Your friends are here.”
“They’re your friends too.”
“I—”
“ No .” He closed the narrow distance between us. “Stop acting like what you think I need is more important than you. Cos it’s fucking not.”
He was talking about something else, surely. But I was too fractured to comprehend what. Lida whined, sensing what Ranger couldn’t see, and it was all I could do to keep my face neutral.
Ranger made an impatient sound, one that usually meant he might throw something. But with nothing to hand, there was only me, and he gripped my face with gentle hands. “Wait here. I’m gonna nick a car.”
He ducked back inside without waiting for me to answer.
Lida nudged my leg and I realised I’d forgotten to ask Saint if she had exercised while I’d been gone. When she had last had a drink, though I knew Saint would have cared for her well. As ever, I was the problem, a state of mind that had not plagued me in some time, but today was as heavy as it had ever been.
It feels like Christmas . At least until Jake had come and stayed with us for twenty-four hours before he’d gone home to Katya and Ivan. To Yuri and Polina. To the sunshine I was beginning to crave more than air.
The chapel door opened. Ranger emerged with a set of keys and something in his pocket that had not been there when he’d gone inside. He jerked his head at Decoy’s car. “Let’s go.”
“Why are we taking Decoy’s car?”
“Why not?”
“Lida likes to walk.”
“She’s been walked. By Saint. She’s probably going to sleep for a week when we get home.”
He brushed past me and strode across the yard to the waiting car.
Lida followed him and hopped in the back.
Being without either of them was hard. Without both, impossible. It left me little option but to slide into the passenger seat of Decoy’s sensible SUV and let Ranger drive us home.
It had grown dark while we had wrestled with whatever hung over us. Ranger entered the house first, but he left the lights off, drifting instead to the sound system and queuing up the mellow beats that had become the soundtrack to the life we shared.
Then he moved to the kitchen and opened a fridge that contained nothing but bacon, milk, and butter. “We still have Rubi’s bread, right?”
“Why?”
“Cos we’re having breakfast for dinner.”
He did not cook much. And there was good reason for that. But as entertaining as it was to watch him navigate the stove without breaking it, I could not stand still.
Our bed remained a mattress in the middle of the floor. I bypassed it and stepped into the bathroom—a space that functioned much better since Nash had done something to the pipes. The shower was hot, and it stayed hot, pummelling my skin until my head swam.
I found clean sweatpants and tugged them on as Ranger appeared in the doorway.
“Come and eat.”
“I am not hungry.”
“Not what I asked.”
He held out his hand.
Despite my mood, I was powerless to resist, and I let him tow me back to the kitchen and coax me into eating some of the bacon and buttered bread he’d slapped on a plate while he hovered over me, the same man who’d come to the island to save me from myself.
This was not that.
I did not want drugs.
The nerve pain in my hip, though. It was a spiked blade that had got worse and worse over the past few months. Time had done nothing to dull it, and frustration rattled me. I leaned over the counter, resting my head on my folded arms, trying to calm my breathing.
Ranger rubbed my back. “You should take something for it.”
I did not answer him. What was the point? I could not take anything—nothing that would work. It was my penance to suffer and I had to live with it.
“No, you don’t.”
Startled, I raised my head.
Ranger glared, belligerence flaring in his black gaze. “You don’t have to live with it. Opiates aren’t the only drugs in the fucking world.”
“Fine. Give me some aspirin, Asher. All will be fixed.”
Sarcasm, deep and true. He already knew over the counter pain medication would not touch the nerve pain that had such a stranglehold over me right now. Jake had told him. Probably Folk and Locke too. And he knew I could never again take anything stronger—that the reason the pills he’d needed for his head were locked away in someone else’s house still held true.
I straightened up, needing out of a conversation with no destination.
Ranger blocked me. “It’s the same for Folk. He gave me something you can take.”
“No.”
“Why do you want to suffer for the sake of it?”
“You think I want this?”
Ranger curved his long body around me, caging me in place unless I shoved him away. “I think you’ve spent so long taking care of me and my bashed in head, you’ve forgotten how to live without your own fucking pain.”
“Who told you that? Folk? Or Saint?”
Ranger growled , ripping his body from mine, and strode away.
I missed him instantly, regretting the words that spilled out of me instead of the truth. It was foolish to deny I’d been worried about him since he’d sustained such a serious head injury. That watching him lay Rocco to rest with his Crow brothers had shamed me for not giving more thought to how he’d grieved for his fallen friend. It did not matter that he’d told me he had not given it much thought either until Saint had retrieved Rocco’s ashes. Ranger deserved better from me.
He deserves better than this .
I wrenched my body into motion and followed the tug in my heart to our bed, where he lay with an arm over his eyes, his foot tapping a rhythm that matched the one filtering from the speakers.
He’d left space for me.
I filled it, pressing my face into his ribcage. “I am sorry.”
“Shh, Vik. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t. I could not live with this pain knowing it was hurting more than just me. I could not live with this pain regardless and I forced myself to look at him. “I don’t know if I can swallow a pill.”
Ranger let his arm drop, wariness threatening the tenacity that never quit. “It’s not a pill.”
My brain did not compute an alternative.
Ranger reached into his pocket and withdrew a small bottle and pack of syringes.
I reared back.
He caught me. Not speaking. Knowing what I saw, what I smelled, as our dark living space became somewhere else—somewhere thick with the scent of mud and bleach, with despair, and a pain far worse than I would ever feel in my bones now.
The sheets on the bed rustled. It was so loud. My heart thumped an erratic rhythm, even though I had received intravenous medicine since those black days and nights. Probably injections too, though I did not remember.
I did not want to remember.
I did not want to recall the itch in my veins. The flood of relief. The fleeting euphoria before self-loathing and more pain had overcome me.
“Vik.” Ranger reached me and dropped his hands onto my shoulders. “It’s just a jab in your leg. Folk showed me how, but I can get Locke to come and do it if you don’t want it to be me. Fuck, you can do it yourself?—”
“No.”
Ranger waited for me to elaborate.
I didn’t.
I couldn’t, any more than I could drive a needle into my own flesh. “You can do it—I want you to do it.”
“You sure?”
Was I?
I did not know, but the clawing agony in my hip, my back, my groin—today, tonight, it was too much. “I want you to do it.”
Ranger nodded and got to work with whatever instructions he’d been given by better men than me. Antiseptic filtered into my senses. I closed my eyes, blocking it out, blocking everything out—the sound of the needle cap, the scent of burned foil, frigid concrete at my back…
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Breathe, Vik. Everything’s okay.”
“I am?—”
The needle pierced my skin, sharp and slight. A cold flash hit my veins, my blood, and then…nothing.
It was over.
I opened my eyes.
Ranger had already gone, disposing of the needle, hiding the drugs maybe. But he returned before I could think much about it.
He lay me on my back, his hand on my chest as my breath sawed in and out of my lungs too fast and too hard. “There’s no high from this, not even a little one. Folk said you’ll feel sick for a bit then sleep.”
I had been nauseous before the shot. Now my head span with alarming force and only Ranger’s hand on my chest kept me on the bed and not lurching for the bathroom.
Like junk .
But…no. Ranger was right. There was no high with this. No barbed euphoria. Just a shockwave of yuck until the dismantling pain in my nerves began to fade and I felt myself slipping away, as if I was dying.
Ranger .
My eyes flew open.
He stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “I’m here, Vik. You can sleep.”
I did not want to sleep. I already missed him—I had missed him all day while I had been so caught up in myself.
But it happened anyway.
I slept, and I could not tell how much time had passed when I opened my eyes again. Just that Ranger was still with me, and the pain in my hip…it was gone. The muscles around it loose and content. I was groggy from the shot, but Ranger’s smile made everything better.
“Better?”
“I think so.” I tested my equilibrium with a slow nod. “Where is Lida?”
His hand remained on my chest, music still surrounding us. Love. “Fed, watered, and in her bed. Told you she was knackered.”
He had. I should have listened, to that and everything else he’d ever said.
I laced our fingers together. “I am sorry I have been difficult.”
“Fuck off.”
“You do not accept my apology?”
“I don’t need it. Life being hard doesn’t make you fucking difficult.” Ranger smoothed his palm over my chest and lower, skating over my ribs, skimming my abdomen. “You think I expected all the shit you’ve been through to go away cos we left the tangerines behind and got distracted by other things?”
“Tangerines?”
He grinned for a moment. But it faded. “I know you miss home.”
I started to shake my head. Changed my mind as the room shifted too much. “We need to be here.”
“Vik—“
“Shh.” I tapped a finger to his lips. “Can you come closer?”
Ranger obliged. I leaned into his touch and our lips met in a sweet kiss, a slow kiss, his hands still alive on my bare skin, skipping over the marks and scars that did not like to be touched, caressing the ones that did, grounding me and setting me fit to fly all at the same time.
My body responded to him in ways I never had anyone else. I pulled him over me, his long legs straddling my waist, his jeans shoved down, my hand around his cock and mine.
Ranger leaned back against my thighs, his hands on my knees, watching me work us with hooded eyes, biting his lip as we both grew harder, sliding together in my fist.
He found lube and squeezed it into my grip. The change in friction rolled my eyes—with him, the simplest things always felt so good.
“This will be fast for me,” I warned him.
A groan was Ranger’s only answer. He thrust into my fist, his long body arched and beautiful, the shiver in his limbs matching the tremor in mine. He came and it was all I needed to propel me over the edge.
Apparently, we were both feeling fast tonight.
My body settled, sweat cooling on my skin. I moved to sit up, but Ranger made me stay.
“I have it.”
The mess. He cleaned us up, then wrapped me in his arms, still breathing hard, still trembling. My arms were around his waist, my face buried in his chest.
I tipped my head to look at him. “You are okay?”
“Apart from my shooting my brains out of my dick?”
“Yes. Apart from that.”
Ranger grinned and kissed me. “I’m okay, cos you’re okay. That’s how this fucking works.”
His lips distracted me from agreeing. And then the weariness in his onyx gaze that told me he hadn’t slept while I had. “I love you. You will sleep now?”
Ranger hummed.
I pressed closer to him and shut my eyes, halfway gone before his voice reached me again.
“It didn’t work, by the way.”
“What didn’t?”
“Your deflection technique.” Ranger pressed his lips to my temple, curling a leg around me, anchoring us together. “You can’t wank me out of tricky conversations.”
In the dark, I laughed. “We will see.”