39. Cam
My ma once told me, if I wanted to thrive in chaos, I had to learn to create moments of peace for myself. Twelve-year-old me had no fucking clue what she’d meant. Adult me had slowly figured it out, then I’d forgotten it again. But over the past year, it was a skill—a goddamn necessity—I’d begun to regain.
The August sun began to set. Hard rock rumbled to my left, EDM pulsed to my right, and at my back, indie music balanced it all out. And yet still, I chose to move forward, to the buskers and bonfires of the chill zone Rubi’d had the time of his life creating.
So much fucking pink.
The music from the other tents and stages faded and I found myself drawn to the dark, hypnotic beats the local capoeira club tapped out with their wooden sticks and drums. I moved alone through the mellow crowd, stepping around clusters of bodies tangled on the grass, the families sitting in the low light of the fires, kids sleeping while their parents danced or watched the animated acrobatics through the hazy smoke.
Me, though, I kept going, searching out more fire and flame, a brighter spark of magic I’d been hooked on since I’d seen glimpses of it last night.
Remy .
He held the dampened circle Locke had dug into the tinder-dry grass for him, his lithe body stretched long and fluid as he spun around, his feet barely touching the earth, fire swirling around him in a heady mix of grace and danger. Sparks flew, each one tracked and checked by the shadowed figure following his every move.
Logan .
I found a spot on the grass and lit the blunt I’d saved for a moment like this, turning down the radio in my ear, leaving the festival in Folk’s capable hands for the ten minutes I needed to catch my breath.
Sweet herbal smoke hit my lungs. I sank back onto my elbows, the sweat I’d carried on my skin all day finally cooling, despite the heat of the flames, and let my gaze become lazy, watching Remy, watching Logan, finding beauty in each dance, wildfire, and the earth reborn in its wake.
A stoned laugh rumbled out of me.
I smoked some more and set my mind free, and of course it meandered to the greatest shift my life had ever taken.
I married them.
I fucking married them. A fuckton of unreal shit had happened in my life, but none more than that. The days kept passing, weeks, soon to be months, but that night... a part of me would always be there.
I married them.
A broad figure claimed the space beside me.
Locke .
Of course.
If he and Logan were in the same place, they were never far from each other, two faces of the same moon.
I sat up, another buzzed laugh escaping me.
Locke looped an inked arm around my shoulders. “Laughing at your own jokes again?”
“And they ain’t even funny.”
Locke chuckled, gaze flitting between Remy and his twin. I figured it might stay that way, given how rigidly he stalked me around the pizza oven on the compound, but he stole my beer and drank most of it, relaxing into the grass. Happy , I realised. Subtle, but somehow more so than he’d ever been, even since Fin and Donovan had been born.
“Something happen?”
Locke drained the compostable beer cup. “Everything happened. I didn’t think there was anything else I needed, but that’s the trouble with thinking, isn’t it? We’re always fuckin’ wrong.”
My brain bent itself in half trying to understand. Failed, naturally. “You’re gonna have to give me half an hour for that cryptic shit. I’m too baked to figure it out.”
“Nah, I’ll just tell you. Logan’s coming home. Him and Remy. The boys. They’re packing their shit next weekend and moving back to Devon.”
Emotion hit me like a bullet to the heart. I dipped the joint butt in one of the many nearby water buckets and flicked it in the empty cup. Then I pulled Locke into my arms and hugged the goddamn shit out of him. “I’m so fucking happy for you, brother.”
Locke sniffed, his brawny frame as familiar to me now as Rubi’s. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
“Me?”
Locke squeezed me a little harder. Then pulled back to grin at me with so much peace in his gaze. So much fucking love. “I know it was Nash who brought us in from no-man’s land, but it was you who gave him the freedom to do that. And if you hadn’t...” Ghosts threatened the light in Locke’s eyes. “Can’t speak for the others, but I know I’d be dead, and even if I wasn’t, I sure as fuck wouldn’t be living a life my brother wants to be part of.”
“He’s always loved you.”
I knew that—I’d seen it.
Locke knocked his forehead to mine. “Yeah, but loving someone sometimes means leaving them to their fucked-up fate, and you gave me a fuckin’ future instead.”
Not just me. Barely fucking me. And Locke had saved us as much as we’d saved him. But all that had been said, so I let his words be the last until my break time ran out.
I left Locke with his brother and strolled through the festival that had Rubi and Nash stamped on every corner, just as I’d dreamed it would be when the idea had first come to me the night Saint had come home from the haulage run. Out of my depth with men as clever as Folk and Viktor, my brain had wandered, and this, right here, was where it had landed, from the wild mishmash Nash and River called a line-up to Rubi strolling around in his wedding hat and pink pyjamas like the ring master of his own fucking circus. At least when he wasn’t peeling his jaw from the ground at how goddamn bendy Ranger had turned out to be at his midday yoga class.
The dream didn’t have Nash resorting to emergency plumbing, though.
I found him crouched over one of the drinking taps we’d installed across the fields. “What’s up with it?”
Nash spared me a glance. “Just a leak. That’s what I get for fitting them all in one day.”
“Needs must.” I bent to help him, getting a shower of cold water for my trouble, which I wasn’t that sad about. “Locke’s at the Remy show.”
Nash smirked. “I know.”
“Where’s Orla?”
“Putting the kids down. Then she’s coming out .”
“Lord, have mercy.”
“Eh, she deserves a good time.”
Couldn’t deny that. With a baby on each hip, my sister was the same formidable matriarch she’d always been, but she was human, and I knew she missed the freedom only getting drunk and dancing in a field all night could bring.
We fixed the tap in time for a brother to report a brawl on the other side of the festival.
Outsiders.
Had to be.
No patched Rebel King would dare. They’d been fucking warned.
I hopped a fence, Nash on my heels, and jogged to the rear of the bar tents.
Decoy had it handled, Mateo lurking in the shadows to be sure, but I wasn’t shy about showing my face. This was our festival, our future. If some drunk cunt wanted to fuck it up, they had to go through me first.
That was the theory anyway.
River, of all people, eased me back. “There’s a reason you asked Folk and Decoy to handle security, and it wasn’t so you could punch everyone yourself.”
Too true. I’d asked them because they were the least likely to punch anyone at all. But having my kid brother stand me down was a new one. “Married life has mellowed you.”
River laughed and pushed his hair back, wedding ring glinting beneath the festoon lights Ranger had spent the last of his patience untangling over the past few days. “Feels good, big bro. You should try it.”
I just fucking smiled as he wandered off. Cos we’d told no one what we’d done. Not on purpose. We just hadn’t, about that, or the house in the woods Saint loved so much he rarely came inside. Just wandered around barefoot in the forest, until one of us fetched him in. Fucking heaven , even with the fugly cat painting Saint had brought from Angel Cottage to nail to the goddamn wall. Without a family to love and a festival to run, we’d have bolted the gate and never come out.
Decoy booted the brawlers, joining us at the sidelines as he radioed Viktor to trail them with Lida. “Everyone okay?”
“Yup.” Sober as a judge after my blast in the face from the tap, I was fucking fine. “Where’s everyone at?”
Decoy would know. He always knew. “Orla’s with Rubi and River at the metal stage.”
Of course .
Nash snorted, echoing my thoughts.
“Folk, Viktor, and Ranger are on the boundary fence,” Decoy continued. “Embry and Axel are with Juana and the kids. Can’t say I’ve seen Saint and Alexei since yesterday.”
When the festival had started and hordes of outsiders had flooded our space. To be honest, I hadn’t seen much of them either, save a power nap I’d grabbed with Saint overnight. And the three of us hadn’t been together since we’d left our woodland bolthole on Thursday morning.
I wasn’t too worried about it. It was getting late, all the stages and tents approaching their headline slots, and I knew which act would draw all three of us to the same place.
First, though. I made eye contact with Decoy. “You need us for anything?”
Decoy shook his head, already halfway back to the bar. “You’ll be the first to know.”
Doubted it, but I’d learned to live with being way down the list. I’d learned to live well , because my brothers loved me as much as I loved them.
I grabbed Nash and hustled him away, ignoring the to-do list he rattled off, grabbing fresh beers as we went.
He didn’t protest all that much, and though death rock wasn’t his favourite jam, he grinned like a motherfucker when he figured out where I was towing him. “I told Orls I wouldn’t make this set.”
“We’ve missed half of it, so you ain’t lied.”
The increasing noise swallowed his shouted reply. I just dragged him faster through a crowd who didn’t immediately recognise us in a sea of tattooed metal heads, searching for Rubi’s flash of pink, like I had been since we were fifteen and jumped the fence at Download.
Back then, I’d found him pilling off his box in a Billy Idol mosh pit. These days, it was just beer and weed, but the dancing was the same, even in a crowd this thick, while he made a valiant attempt to keep an eye on my siblings.
We reached them. I caught River mid-jump and propelled him higher. He laughed—my kid brother fucking laughed , shaking his long hair out as he landed, bouncing straight into Rubi’s arms, sending Orla staggering into Nash in the shoulder-to-shoulder throng.
Nash looked kinda scared, but for us OGs, it was like coming home. The crush of bodies, air thick with beer and smoke, adrenaline thrumming as the band thundered from one banger to the next.
I dragged Rubi into the pit, hurling him into the savage dance of sweat and chaos. Violent catharsis without the fucking death. We’d loved it back then. These days we were probably too old for it, but we made it work, howling with laughter with every wild riff, the bass shaking our bones.
We lost time in that pit.
River jumped on my back.
I tossed him again.
Someone crashed into me, and the impact was better than any fucking therapy.
Sometime later, we stumbled away, Rubi still hooting with laughter, struggling to put one foot in front of the other, his crushed wedding hat somehow still on his head.
I’d lost my shirt, eighty pints of sweat, and half my hearing. Enough remained for me to catch the amusement in Alexei’s voice as he muttered something Russian down the radio I’d jammed back in my ear on the way out.
“You gonna translate that?”
Alexei didn’t answer, but I knew he was close. Felt it in my fuzzy head and vibrating bones as my sister slipped her arm through mine. “I feel ten years younger.”
“Lucky you.”
“I love you, big brother. You know that, don’t you?”
I stopped walking, aware of Nash fading to stand a few steps back, while Rubi and River kept going.
My sister had cut her hair shorter since she’d had the twins, but it was still long enough to tumble over her bare shoulders, hiding most of her tattooed neck.
I brushed the thick locks back, exposing the skulls and fractured roses that mirrored the ink on my own skin. The daggers on her collarbones. “I know it. I love you too. And I’m prouder of you every fucking day.”
Orla held my gaze for a long moment. Then she let go of me to spread her arms wide. “I can’t believe a bunch of boys built this festival. It’s fucking amazing.”
“It’s ours.” I moved to keep walking. “So we always have somewhere to go.”
I left her with Nash and drifted through the festival, alone again, but not for long. Alexei was a breath of wind on the humid night air. Then he was beside me, as casual as I’d ever seen him in boots, jeans, and the T-shirt Saint had worn when we’d last been at the house.
His cool hand brushed the small of my back, as if he were guiding me.
“Did you call me a hooligan over the radio?”
Alexei smirked. “I suppose you will have to learn Russian to find out.”
“Or I could ask Viktor.”
“He will not tell you.”
Probably not. Viktor and Alexei didn’t seem close to anyone who didn’t know Alexei as well as I did, but I knew the truth. They were friends, even if Alexei was as likely to dance with me as he was to admit it.
The crowd began to thicken again, raucous noise spilling from the indie tent Nash had put his heart and soul into, the headline act just minutes away.
I made for the entrance, for the front. I’d been on a fucking roof last time I’d seen this band.
Alexei steered me off-piste. “Saint is around the back.”
“He’s not coming in?”
“I do not know.”
Disappointment lanced my heart. It had taken all Nash’s charm to convince Saint to hand over the personal contact information for this act. Saint loved this band, and I wanted him to see them as everyone else did. And I wanted to be with him as he did, guarding him for a fucking change. But... as we neared the backstage area and the Rebel King ring of steel around it parted to let us through, I saw something better.
Saint stood beneath a portable downlight, the glare dimmed by a black hood. The dark fabric was marked with a pirate etched in chalk paint. A stupid detail to notice when Saint was right fucking there, chill as fuck and leaning back against one of the many power rigs we’d hauled onto the field, sharing a joke with a fella who made Ranger look stacked.
Tall, slim, chestnut hair. Eyes I knew to be hazel like Rubi’s— like Sacha’s —not green, and yet...
Fuck.
Any shitty feelings threatening the best night I’d had in the longest fucking time faded away. Alexei chose that moment to evaporate, but I kept moving forward.
Sensing me coming, Saint shifted his gaze to me, those forest-greens a beacon even in the dark, his smile reeling me in, words he didn’t speak loud and clear. There you are.
I gave him a head tilt of my own. “You been looking for me?”
“Maybe.” Saint’s smile turned almost shy. “This is Shay...” He fought the devil in his throat and won. “My brother.”
Brother . A simple word we tossed around a thousand times on any given day, but I saw what it meant to Shay as he stepped forward and drew me into an easy hug, his slim frame shuddering with his rough exhale. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Saint’s been talking about you for years.”
Lucky Shay. I hadn’t known he’d existed until after the warehouse fire. If Saint had died that night, I’d never have fucking known, a thought that had me succumbing to a shiver of my own.
I drew back, taking in Shay with his pirate hat and penny whistle, knowing I didn’t have him for long. “Can I see you again sometime? Come to the house and eat with us?”
Shay grinned as Rubi invaded the stage behind to announce the band. “Mate, I’ll go anywhere for food and anywhere for my brother. Get my number off Saint and call me anytime.”
I’d definitely call him more than Saint did. Saint, who for all he so often drifted away when I spoke to people, whoever they were, for once had remained at my side.
Shay grinned at him.
Saint grinned back and tossed him a roll of Fruit Pastilles. Then Shay was gone, bounding onto the stage, and the place went fucking wild, the earth at my feet already pulsing with an energy that matched the metal stage.
I wanted in.
But I wanted Saint with me—I needed him with me. “Come inside?”
He just stared, not refusing, but cementing his boots to the ground all the same.
I stepped into his personal space, wrapping my hands around his face, that scruffy jaw, thumbs skimming his scarred neck. “Stand at the back with me. I won’t let anyone near you.” I held his gaze, his love. “Please?”
Saint gnawed the inside of his cheek, his entire body braced for escape.
Then he shrugged. “Okay.”
Okay. That simple word held so much power, and I knew I was about to have one of the best experiences of my life. My soul swelled with happiness, like I could float away on it.
The only shadow tying me down to the world was knowing what would come after.
* * *