34. River
34
RIVER
THREE MONTHS LATER...
Rubi’s prophecy about the newest generation of Halliwell twins turned out to be the truest thing he’d ever said.
Finan had the O’Brian aesthetic for days but Nash’s tranquil heart. Donovan was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed she-devil.
She screeched at everyone, even Folk, even Logan . The only non-parent she vaguely tolerated was Ranger, which was fucking hilarious, as he made it his business to stay as far away from her as Viktor’s close friendship with Locke allowed.
Some days he even pulled it off.
Most days he didn’t.
“Nooo.” Ranger backed away from my sister, clutching Finan as a consolation prize he didn’t want either. “I like this one. Why do I have to hold that little shit?”
Orla advanced on him, hair tossed on top of her head, no make-up on her beautiful face. “Are you calling my daughter a little shit?”
“Yes. Banish me. Send me to the fucking moon.”
“Sweetheart, you’re no good to me on the moon. I need an extra pair of hands and you’re right here.”
“I can take her.” Honestly, I should’ve offered already, but this shit was way too funny.
“ You’ll wake her up.” Orla waved me off. “You’re vibrating with whatever bullshit you’ve been up to since crack o’clock, and you’re covered in oil. I need him , at least until Nash and Cam get back.”
By now, Ranger was halfway across the yard with a stolen baby. He seemed to realise it and retraced his steps. “Fine. But I’m not keeping her if she goes ultrasonic again.”
An empty threat. Donovan rarely cried when Ranger held her, and this time proved no different. They completed the swap. The baby didn’t make a sound and Orla pinched Ranger’s cheek. “See? I need you.”
His glare turned murderous.
Orla quit while she was ahead and darted inside.
Ranger turned to me. “Stop fucking laughing.”
“I’m not laughing. I tried to get you out of it.”
“Why am I stuck with the sleepless demon then?”
“She likes you.”
Ranger grunted, but as hard as he tried to be a salty arsehole, no one had made him hang around the club all morning while Nash and Locke were otherwise occupied.
I made him coffee that he refused to drink while holding the baby he didn’t like. Took Donavan for the six seconds he allowed himself to consume it before he snatched her back mid-screech.
“Don’t start, you mithering baggage. Where are your fucking dads, eh?”
He asked Donovan, but he’d have got less of an answer from me. I didn’t pay much attention to other people’s schedules—I had enough trouble with my own. I relied on Rubi to tell me what I was supposed to be doing and almost always did something else entirely.
Today , though, I had to keep an eye on the time. Orla had been right—I was vibrating, on the inside at least, and I couldn’t seem to stop.
I left Ranger to sulk in the spring sunshine and ducked into the garage. With Nash so busy these days, Axel worked with me whenever Cam didn’t poach him for other things. Like renovating Crow Land. Or guarding Juana.
Fuck. I’d been so caught up in my own shit, I hadn’t even asked him how that was going. Or if he’d patched things up with the fella giving him the run around.
You’re a terrible friend.
As I thought it, my phone lit up with another unanswered message from Rubi, proving that I was a terrible boyfriend too. But I couldn’t text him back. Couldn’t talk to him at all. Not until I’d got all my shit done.
I buried my phone under some boxes and sought out Axel.
Unlike me, he’d been to the Decoy school of timekeeping, and he was already cleaned up and waiting. But true to my sister’s word, I really was covered in oil, and lucky for me, Axel knew me well enough that he hadn’t expected to leave anytime soon.
I retreated to the sink to wash my hands. My arms. My fucking face. I came up for air to my phone blaring a high-pitched intruder alarm, a sure sign I’d pissed off Rubi, probably because I hadn’t picked up the phone since he’d driven off on a haulage run that wouldn’t see him home until the early hours of tomorrow morning.
I miss him.
He’d been gone barely a day, and it felt the same as when I’d banished him from my life for five fucking years. And that was what today was about, right? Taking another step towards making sure I never fucked up like that again?
“Your phone’s getting on my tits.”
Startled, I tossed a glare to meet the vibe Ranger was giving off behind me. “So?”
“So turn it off if you don’t want to speak to him.”
“Who says I don’t want to speak to him?”
“That fucking noise.”
Everything about Ranger and everything about me said we shouldn’t get on. But we did. He was funny as fuck and I liked his honesty. Could’ve done without his growly perception right now, though. “If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.”
“Where? You can hear that shagging thing from Mars.”
“Why are you in a mood?”
“Who says I’m in a mood?”
Wow. This conversation was going nowhere. I noted his empty arms. “Where’d you put Donovan?”
Ranger shifted his glower from the pit I’d buried my phone in, about to burn me alive with sarcasm any O’Brian would’ve been proud of, but bikes in the yard saved me.
Locke.
Viktor, who’d become so smiley in the last few months it was now criminally obvious how much he’d been struggling before.
No clue where they’d been, but the near instant evaporation of Ranger’s bad mood was fucking hysterical.
He abandoned me and straddled his V-Rod, revving the engine before he and Viktor peeled out of the yard without stopping for pleasantries.
Locke waved them off. I expected him to go straight indoors to find Orla, but he came for me instead, wincing at the racket my phone was still making, a victim of Rubi’s tenacity. “Fuckin’ hell, that thing’s loud.”
“So Ranger keeps telling me.”
“Everything’s loud to him. He has hyper-hearing.”
“Say what now?”
Locke moved to the red Sportster in the corner of the garage. It was still in bits from where Nash had taken it apart to keep Orla off the road after she’d de-dicked a Crow, but I’d separated the fuel tank for Liliana to paint, and I was fairly fucking sure Locke was using it as an excuse to check I hadn’t blocked the fire exit again. “Finch calls it something else, but he’s always been like that. Can hear a mouse pissing on the other side of the world. You didn’t know?”
“Why would I know? I don’t spend much time thinking about Ranger’s fucking ears.”
Though maybe his motivation for keeping Donovan quiet now made more sense.
Locke moved some boxes around. “These are going to fall on your head stacked like this.”
“There’s nothing in them.”
“Why are they in here then?”
Because throwing them out was on the list of things that had fallen out of my head, and I couldn’t go looking for it before I went out or I’d forget to fucking go.
No, you won’t. Axel’s here, remember? He’s going to body double you into town.
“I’ll chuck them later.”
Locke made a sound that might’ve been disbelief, but he finished up his health and safety inspection and handed me an envelope. “Remy asked me to give you this.”
“Thanks.”
Locke raised a brow I had to look up to see. He’d got taller since he’d become a dad of four, I was fucking sure of it. And nosier. “Why am I passing notes between you and my brother’s man?”
“Show me a note and I’ll tell you.”
That earned me the sight of him threading his arms across his brawny chest, but I had my own big motherfucker warming my bed. I didn’t need to ogle my sister’s. Or send dirty notes to a bloke I’d only met once.
I stuffed the envelope in my pocket. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Sure about that?”
“Do I look fuckin’ worried?”
“No, you look hungry. Go get a sandwich or some shit and stop staring into my soul.”
Locke laughed. “I think you and Ranger were separated at birth.”
“He’s older than me.”
“Doesn’t fuckin’ act it. Sure you don’t need help with anything?”
“I’m sure. Go away.”
Locke took me at my word and socked my arm before ambling out of the garage.
Axel had already disposed of the offending boxes and waited on his bike.
I wheeled mine over to him.
“Paperwork, brother.”
Fuck’s sake. I dashed back into the garage and dug through the mess of a space Rubi optimistically called an office. I’d hidden the folder I needed well enough to forget all about it, and by the time I snatched it up, I’d missed my window to escape unnoticed.
Outside, Saint had materialised from fuck knew where.
He blocked my path.
Moved out of the way at the last second.
Was he laughing?
Couldn’t tell.
And then he was gone, leaving me to scratch my head and run for my bike, time ticking away too fast for comfort.
We hit the road and burned into town. People stared, like they always did whether we wore club cuts or not, but I was used to it. Whitness folk had gawped at us in this town since I was a kid on the back of my dad’s FXR. The only difference today was I didn’t have Cam and Rubi flanking me, and my old man was dead in the ground. The air smelled the same, though. Sea salt and petrol.
Axel rode a Fat Boy. Louder than my Softail, I felt him rumble to a stop behind me outside the big white building, but he said nothing as he came to my side, and that’s why I liked him so much.
I dug through the folder I’d crushed beneath my arm on the journey here, checked I had everything Axel needed for his part in a batshit plan I’d dreamed up more than a year ago. Rubi’s high THC skunk had a lot to answer for, but here I was, still shoving on regardless. “You got all the dates and shit down?”
“And the signature.” Humour danced in Axel’s hazel eyes. “How’s my hair?”
“Perfectly fucking minimal. You ready?”
He nodded, and we went inside.
Half an hour later, I emerged alone, leaving Axel to commit a criminal offence for no reason other than I’d fallen down a rabbit hole of doing this in the most fucked-up way possible before I’d known Viktor’s brother well enough to ask him to fix all this shit for me remotely.
Actually, I still didn’t know him well enough, but whatever. That wasn’t even the least complicated option, and I’d never felt it more than I did as I waited for Axel.
I kicked around outside, wishing I smoked cigarettes, ruing the day I’d quit ket to piggyback Rubi’s spectacular weed habit. This was a hundred percent his fault, and I was going to fucking tell him if I ever found the nerve to finish this.
It’s the beginning, not the end.
Heh. Right now, it felt like it was going to be the end of me .
I shoved my hands in my pockets. My fingers hit the envelope Locke had passed me earlier, screwed up and squashed now, obviously. I was fucking lucky it was still there, a reality that had anxiety sweeping through me, the unnecessary chaos I’d created over the past few months squeezing my heart too tight.
Shit . I rubbed my chest. I’d stopped having panic attacks somewhere around the time me and Rubi had first banged in front of the fire, but the fear of them had never gone away, and it was the most fucked-up thing to be so scared of something that wasn’t happening.
I needed a distraction. I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and tipped out the contents. Two coins—an Irish copper penny and a silver sixpence—fell into my palm with a folded piece of paper.
The paper was a rough pencil sketch, but it was all I needed. I already knew what Remy Collins could do with old coins, though I was pretty sure he’d need two for Rubi’s giant?—
Movement in front of me had me jerking my head up. Axel emerged from the building’s main entrance and loped down the steps. Like we’d planned, he hugged me, his voice quiet at my ear. “Sorted, brother. Now you’ve just got to hope he doesn’t read the public notice board between now and then. Or no one he knows sees your names on there.”
For once in my life, I’d somehow thought of almost everything. “They’re not putting it up until tonight. I’ll break in and burn it before anyone sees it tomorrow.”
Axel pulled back and gave me a sceptical frown. “And get nicked before you get a chance to?—”
“Shh.” I slapped a hand over his mouth. “Enough with the logic. It’s too late for all that.”
It had been too late since the day I was born.
Axel had to go—his sister needed him at home. We parted ways and I zoomed back to the compound, hoping no one gave a shit where I’d been. And for once I got lucky. Cam was back, but he was holed up in the chapel with Nash, and I slipped back into the garage to face the work that had piled up while I’d been so distracted all morning.
With no one around to distract me, I fell into the single-minded focus I needed to vanquish the scratch in my chest. I missed dinner and probably a bunch of other shit I didn’t care about. It grew dark outside. People arrived. People went home. My playlist ran out and I didn’t notice the autoplay monstrosity that replaced it until someone turned it off.
I looked up so fast I hit my head on the car I was working on.
Saint didn’t blink. Just passed me a sheet of paper.
The same sheet of paper I’d planned to steal on my way home. “What the fuck is this?”
He tilted his head.
“Nah, you have to do better than that.”
Saint shrugged and pulled out his phone. He typed a message and held it up.
you were running out of time
“For what?”
Saint gave me a droll look that didn’t need transcribing, one that told me he probably knew more about the last year of my life than I did.
He typed again.
also, there’s a new security system in the court building. we didn’t want u to get caught
“We? Oh fuck, you mean the better half of your double act, don’t you?”
Saint grinned, and I liked it too much to be as annoyed as I wanted to be.
“I really messed this up, didn’t I?”
“How?”
“I wanted to surprise him. Then shit kept getting more complicated, and now I’m too far in to back out.”
“Then keep going.” Saint’s voice was rough, as if it truly hurt to speak. “You’ve done the hard parts.”
I snorted.
He frowned, sharp and questioning. But I didn’t feel like explaining that most of my anxiety was coming from the scenario my worst weed nightmares had concocted when I was too busy stuffing Haribo down my throat. The ones where Rubi laughed in my face and repeated the shit he’d shocked me with a few months back. The same shit he’d repeated multiple times since.
Mathersons don’t get married.
Man, I didn’t think about drugs much anymore, but I damn sure could’ve used a hit of something to calm me down right now. Ket. Benzos. Rubi , even if my spiralling thoughts had left me irrationally fucking annoyed with him.
I hadn’t seen my phone since this morning.
Dodging Saint’s stare, I returned to where I’d last seen it. Or where I last remembered seeing it, which was always going to be a shot in the dark.
The pile of boxes cluttered the workbench. I reached for them, but Saint grabbed my wrist.
“Bleeding.”
“Who is?”
“ You .” He tugged me away from the boxes and to the sink, dragging my hands into a sink of warm water.
They stung as blood and oil seeped from my skin. I found the cuts and gouges I hadn’t noticed. A thumbnail already turning blue.
Oops.
I washed up and dried my hands on the towel Saint brought me. Let him patch me up. Then he wandered off and came back with my phone. “It’s dead.”
Of course it was. I’d been using the computer in the corner to stream my music all day, and without Rubi around to charge my phone for me, I’d clean forgotten it existed. “Why do I always sabotage my only way of talking to him when he’s gone?”
Saint produced a power bank from his pocket, connected the phone, and handed it to me. “You’re wired for a different world.”
So was he. And I didn’t get why he’d handed me a portable charger when the garage had too many plug sockets to count.
Until he dropped my bike keys in my other hand. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
Saint walked away in lieu of answering.
I followed him because I’d reached the point in my day where I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Got on my hog and trailed him all the way to fucking Cornwall before I thought to object to this shit.
By then, we were already where he wanted to be, in the shadows of a towering row of dodgy HMOs, ramshackle buildings converted to house as many people as possible with no fucking regard for their safety.
“Please tell me we don’t own any of these shitholes?”
Saint tugged his hood up, gesturing for me to do the same, and ghosted ahead, laser focused on a beat-up Corsa parked halfway up the kerb, wheels sticking out enough to be a hazard for passing traffic.
I sighed and followed him there too.
He pointed at the bonnet with one hand and made a cutting motion to his neck with the other. Crock it .
Fine, but only because I didn’t want to see him slit his own throat, literally or otherwise. I didn’t know the whole story behind the scar he bore, but I’d heard enough to have that bonnet cracked in the blink of an eye, and I was quite the fucking expert at disabling cars in a way that flummoxed anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for to put it right. “Permanent or temporary?”
Saint shrugged, so I chose a route somewhere in between.
It took less than two minutes, then we were on our way again, stealing back to our hogs. Saint roared away. I tore after him and we sped through some country roads, whipping round bends and burning up the straights like we’d been born to do.
Saint’s bike was fast.
Mine was faster, but he kept me behind him, weaving around, playing with me so I didn’t crave the extra edge that always got me in trouble, dosing me with adrenaline, knowing it would perversely calm me the fuck down.
Hours had passed by the time we slowed and found a tree to chill beneath.
“You don’t want to go home and bang my brother?”
Saint studied the sky, tracing a map I couldn’t see. “Not yet.”
“Where’s Alexei?”
“Banging your brother.”
I’d walked into that, but I pulled a face anyway and stooped to check out Saint’s bike, making sure his brand of therapy hadn’t messed with it.
He let me fuss and lay on the ground.
Eventually, I lay next to him, not touching, but close enough to feel his fraternal warmth seeping into me. Affection I was so fucking blessed to still have when I’d spent so long hurling it back in his face.
Like I’d done to Rubi. “Whose car was that?”
“Willow’s boyfriend.”
I sat up on my elbows. “I thought we weren’t interfering with that now we know he’s not twenty-five?”
“I never said that.”
“But—” Fuck. No. Of course he hadn’t. Locke. Nash. Cam. Alexei, even. But Saint had conveniently been somewhere else for every conversation I’d witnessed about Willow’s love life, and I supposed this was why. “Amazing. Now Orla’s gonna come for me when she can’t catch you .”
Saint smirked.
I sighed and lay back down. “What’s the plan, anyway? Break every car he ever owns?”
“Until he learns to drive properly.”
“Who’s gonna teach him?”
“Locke. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
But Saint did, and I wondered how. Was it a prophecy from his weird brain or Alexei’s?
“Why that date?”
“Hmm?”
“The date.” Saint shifted to look at me. “On the notice you just gave to the council that you’re going to marry Rubi.”
Hearing him, of all people, lay it out caught me off guard. “It’s his ma’s birthday.”
Saint waited. And?
“And... it’s always the day that makes him so sad, so I had this idea we could do something she’d love and he’d feel better about it.”
“It’s a good idea.”
“He might not think so.”
“Ask him.”
“No.”
“So what are you going to do? Wait for the day to roll around and hope for the best?”
“Or I could not ask him at all and he’d never know.”
Saint stared, trying to figure me out, but as clever as he was, it wasn’t going to happen. He was right—I was wired different. Had been since I’d cracked my skull on the pavement twenty years ago and left myself with the shitastic ability to turn a fleeting thought into frazzled pandemonium. And now here I was with a licence to marry and no fucking groom.
“Why are you acting like this is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
A lot of words for Saint, and I didn’t like any of them.
I exhaled the whole world from my lungs. “Don’t be shocked, but I never thought any of this through. I thought I could arrange a little thing with Joe at the farm, blag a couple of forms, then ask Rubi on the day. Surprise him, you know? I didn’t know about all this extra stuff you have to do in advance and it freaked me out.”
Saint pieced it all together, even the bits I’d left out. “That’s why you went to Tam Dubois after Nash’s accident? To get him to forge Rubi’s signature?”
I nodded. “Nearly losing Nash the same way we almost lost Tam scared me into wanting this. But I didn’t tell Tam why I wanted him to forge Rubi’s signature for me. If I had, he might’ve told me all the other fuckery I’d have to deal with after that.”
Saint laughed—a laugh for him, at least. “You got Axel to pretend to be Rubi?”
“Yeah.”
“And it worked?”
“Yeah, but only because the photo on Rubi’s passport was so old, bald, and small .”
Saint laughed some more, and I liked it enough not to risk my life punching him. Or telling him to shut the fuck up.
It was spring. The bitter winds had faded and the light breeze left behind felt good as it kissed my skin. I closed my eyes to it, letting Saint make fun of me in peace.
Glaring when he nudged me back to awareness. “What?”
Saint sat up, rising to crouch beside me. “Just ask him.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is.”
“Fucking isn’t. He doesn’t believe in marriage.”
“You do.”
“So?”
“So...” Saint shivered, the demon in his throat snatching his words, but he seemed to be in the mood to fight it, and he won. “Rubi believes in you . But it’s probably never occurred to him that you want this. If he knew... he’d probably see his whole fucking existence in a different light.”
I needed more than that, but Saint was done talking. He closed his eyes, meditating or whatever the fuck he did with his brain when he got like this, until he decided we needed to go home.
And by home, he meant the house I shared with Rubi, not the compound where I’d planned on waiting for the lorries to come in.
Inside, I discovered why, and Rubi was on me in the hallway before I’d shut the damn door.
Shirtless, damp hair tied back in a man-bun messier than mine, he filled the small space, going straight for my pockets.
He retrieved my phone. “These suckers work better if you turn them on .”
“I forgot.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Chattypants. But don’t worry about any of that. You’re home, Riv. That’s all I fucking care about.”
Rubi tugged me into his arms and we fit together, our wildly different bodies pieces of a puzzle that wasn’t broken anymore. For a long time now, we’d been whole. But our story wasn’t over, and I sank into his embrace with Saint’s words echoing a loop in my brain.
Ask him. Ask him. Ask him.
Rubi kissed me, and I fell a little harder into the heady daze that always snared me when we were home alone. The happy trance that had fuck all to do with sex and everything to do with the peace in his hazel eyes as he released me and led me to the living room. To the sight of the map books and pencils spread out on the coffee table and the half-eaten bag of Doritos beside them.
I’d missed dinner.
And lunch.
Probably breakfast if I thought too hard about it.
My stomach growled. I swiped the Doritos before Rubi could get in my face about it and dropped onto the couch beside him. “What’s that?”
I pointed to a neat stack of files that seemed out of place among the road shit I’d grown up with.”
Rubi’s gaze glanced over it. “Admin bollocks. Boring bollocks.”
“What about the rest? Cos if you’re mapping out another haulage run, I might have to set fire to every rig in that fucking hub.”
“Or...” Rubi spread his hands. “You could use that noggin of yours for good instead of evil. What am I usually doing when I get these vintage beauties out?”
The map books and road atlases that had belonged to our parents long before satellite navigation existed. “You’re planning a ride?”
“ The ride,” Rubi corrected. “For the whole club, now the sun’s peeking out again. Tradition, innit?”
Not for the last few years. The council had been too caught up in war and death threats to risk it. But things were different now— everything was different.
Even me.
Even him.
Nerves rattled me. The Doritos sat heavy in my stomach, but I kept eating them. For him. For me. For us .
Everything for us, forever.
“It’s happening soon.” Rubi broke into my thoughts. “Cammie wants the future to start now, and he wants to do that by going back to our roots.”
“Drive-bys on a Sunday afternoon?”
“Oi. None of that. We’re doing it on a Saturday.”
“Which Saturday?”
Rubi made a note with his favourite pencil, his handwriting orderly as fuck when he knew he was the one who’d have to decipher it next. “I mean, I’ll tell you, but I’m not expecting you to remember.”
“Rude.”
“Truth. And I love it. I love everything about you.”
“Really?”
Even now, after all these years, I couldn’t keep the scepticism out of my voice. I was abrasive. Chaotic. Unpleasant as hell when my temper got the better of me every damn day. It made no sense for anyone to love me, let alone a soul like Rubi.
Rubi dropped his pencil—his dad’s pencil. Sharpened at both ends, it had been in his life longer than I had. Probably. Or maybe there’d just been a lot of pencils that looked the fucking same.
“Riv.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
Rubi made a grab for it—my hand, not my mouth, and the devil inside had me evading his touch. Evading him , when I knew whatever he was about to say and do would heal more than the cuts and scrapes on my abused fingers.
“ Riv .”
“What?” The snap barrelled out of me, O’Brian to the bone and then some.
But Rubi wasn’t scared of me. Never had been. Only of how I made him feel , and this day, and every fucking day, he regarded me with nothing but love and a whole lot of patience.
He waited for me to simmer down before he tried again to claim my hand, his palm warm and dry against the chilled skin I’d brought in from the road. “Riv, Riv, Riv.” He kissed my battered knuckles. “I don’t know how many times I can tell you I love that you’re not easy . I fucking thrive on it, I thrive on you , and you don’t need goddamn fixing to be worthy of it.”
“I’m a cunt to you.”
“ No . You’re a cunt to yourself.”
I couldn’t look at him.
He didn’t make me. Just squeezed my hand, helped himself to the other one, and squeezed that battered bastard too. “Right now, you’re not hurting me . You’re punishing yourself for whatever sin that demon in your brain has dreamed up while I’ve been gone, when all you need is to believe how much I fucking love you.”
I jerked my head to look at him. “I know you love me.”
“But today you woke up forgetting how I can, right?”
“Maybe.”
Rubi smiled, fondness I didn’t deserve shining in his kind eyes. “I’m not easy either, you know. How much of your life is spent apologising for my fat mouth? Actually, don’t answer that. Just hear me when I say I’ll never need you to be anyone other than who you are, okay? Just you , cos your flaws fucking complete me and that’s never going to change.”
This was it. My moment to give in to Saint’s earnest advice.
Ask him. Ask him. Ask him .
But the trouble with the restless energy that plagued me whenever Rubi worked away on the rigs was that it abandoned me with the same abruptness it often arrived with.
I was so tired, and he saw it in me before I felt it in myself.
“Come on.” His deep voice softened to a low rumble. “Let’s go to bed.”
Ask him. Ask him. Ask him .
But he had me upstairs and in bed before I found the words. Naked. Safe in his arms, the trembling I’d carried all day without really noticing finally fading out.
“There you go,” Rubi whispered into my hair. “I know something’s bothering you, Riv. I can feel it humming beneath your skin. But I can wait forever for you to tell me. So whatever it is, stop worrying about it on my behalf, okay? I got you, and I always will.”
I fell asleep to that promise. To Rubi’s inked fingers carding through my hair and stroking my bare back. To him humming some ridiculous tune that seemed to fit the loop of Saint’s mantra.
Ask him. Ask him. Ask him.
Soon.
A promise of my own.
Soon .