For Ivy.

  The panda car eased off the hard shoulder and merged into motorway traffic. I watched it disappear, then I stood, debating my options as I reached for the second phone in my pocket.

  If it was still blank, I had no choice. I’d stow a ride on a lorry heading southeast and find my way to the big white house in Surrey. Pick my way in until I found them. Kill any fucker that got in my way until they were safe.

  Until it was the fucking end of me.

  Cos that’s how long I’d love Embry. Until the end. And maybe when I was dead, he’d know the truth—that there were two people on this earth who’d always come before him, but it didn’t mean I loved him any less.

  I couldn’t love him more.

  It was a lot to contemplate in the seconds it took to tap the passcode into the silent phone. A head-rush of emotion that still came to rest in the primal desperation I’d lived with for ten long years.

  Then I saw the message, and air expelled from me so fast I sank to my knees again.

  Unknown number: We’re fine. I thought for a moment . . . but I was wrong.

  It was the message I’d been waiting for, but I had no time to appreciate the deadweight on my chest lifting before a new one settled in its place.

  I miss him. A bruising sensation that wasn’t going to change for two reasons.

  One: with the feds on our backs, I needed to lie low. A couple of days away from the compound “fucking some girl” or whatever.

  Two: The message. It said all the right things.

  But I didn’t believe her. Never could until I saw them for myself, which meant a long ride in the opposite direction to where the other half of my soul needed to be.

  Fuck. I rubbed my chest, wincing at the sharp pain lancing my heart. I was used to being torn in two. To being obliterated by the kind of pain I couldn’t explain to anyone. But as the years rolled by, it never got easier.

  I stood and considered the dicey walk to the service station. I’d have to wait until dark or I’d get nicked for jaywalking. But I didn’t have the patience for that shit. Without Saint or Alexei beside me, schooling me in the art of watching and waiting, I needed to move before I fucked something up.

  Decoy was long gone. I took a chance and powered on my regular phone while I tapped out a message on the other.

  Mateo: go to the field in the morning. need to see it for myself

  How I was gonna get there, I had no feasible clue.

  Then a text buzzed in from a burner number, coded and with a location pin, and I closed my fucking eyes again.

  Embry.

  He’d recruited the nearest Rebel Kings chapter to bring me a bike and leave it some place where I could reach it undetected. Where I could saddle up and fly home.

  Except I wasn’t going home. My heart was calling me in the opposite direction and I couldn’t tell him why.

  My brother.

  My family.

  The man I lied to every damn day of the week.

  I’d asked God to forgive me a thousand times, but I’d never forgive myself.

  10

  MATEO

  “There you are. Dirty stop out.”

  I yanked off my helmet and turned my head in the direction of the hollered greeting. Over the rumble of my borrowed Fat Boy, the faint Irish lilt could’ve belonged to any number of my brothers.

  This time it was Cam, my president, his handsome face creased in the easy smile I didn’t see from him much these days. He stepped back from the outdoor kitchen counters he was oiling and came to my side, clapping me on the back, then pulling me in for a one-armed bro hug. “Thought we’d lost you. Sorry I was a grumpy cunt before you left. Lot on my mind, you know?”

  His affection had always been hard to take. His natural warmth bittersweet. I forced myself not to duck out of his hold and shrugged. “Mate, I’m the last person who deserves a cunt-themed apology.”

  Cam grinned, no argument forthcoming. “Regardless, I’m giving it to you like I have everyone else. I’m not . . . fuck, you know I’m a grouchy fucker at the best of times, but I’m not myself at the moment.”

  “I know, pres. We got you.”

  “Works both ways.” Cam eyed me. “You seemed jumpy before you left. Something bothering you?”

  “You asked me that already.”

  “I’m asking you again. Talking to me doesn’t have an expiration date.”

  I knew that too. But there was nothing I needed to talk about that Cam could hear, so I swallowed the words and let him draw his own conclusions, taking an educated stab in the dark where his thoughts would go.

  “Em’s okay,” he said, right on cue. “In case you were worried while you were under whatever brass you picked up.”

  “Brass? You an Essex boy now?”

  Cam’s smile widened. “My Kilkenny born ma used to say that shit about club girls all the time.”

  “Either way, I ain’t been under anyone.”

  “Wouldn’t be a bad thing if you had. You and Em . . . the fuck is that going?”

  “Where’d you want it to go?”

  “Me?” Cam stepped back as I swung my leg over the bike, emptied my saddle bag, and straightened up, easing the kinks from my sore spine. “I want you both to be happy and neither of you are any closer to that then when he first came here.”

  I failed to see how me banging other people fixed that. My face flattened to the dead-eyed stare our enemies saw in their nightmares, but Cam was unaffected. Dude only had to roll his head on his motherfucking pillow to find scarier freaks than me.

  He took my arm. “Come with me, brother.”

  Awesome. I was about to get lessons in love from a bloke who’d only figured his own shit out six months ago.

  Cam led me back to the outdoor kitchen. It had been a work in progress for a couple of years, but this summer, Embry had finished the bricklaying and Rubi had paved the ground. At some point, Nash had plumbed in the sink and Saint had built worktops and furniture—the only physical work Cam had allowed him to do all year until a few weeks back.

  My job was to make it all pretty. Painting, staining, fixing up the odd bits my brothers left behind. Most people figured my favourite job in construction would be fucking shit up, but I liked the finer things. Focusing on tiny details kept me calm, and Cam knew it.

  He pointed at a cupboard door. “Hinges are bent. Swap ’em out for me this week?”

  I nodded. “Still want white bricks?”

  “I don’t care what colour the bricks are. It was you and Embry who dreamed up a fucking tapas bar out here.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yeah, when you drank the rum stash dry last summer.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Doing what you do when shit gets on top of you—fucking my way around Devon.”

  I let the inaccurate bullshit wash over me. Had to, even though the thought of it reaching Embry’s ears made me want to murder the first man to ever offer me a home. Also, the sensation that my esteemed president was testing me was too sharp to ignore. Act normal. Be the shallow piece of shit he expects you to be.

  Cam went back to oiling the worktops. He had stained hands and sweat on his inked skin, like he’d been at it a while.

  I glanced around. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  Cracks appeared in my forced patience. I swallowed them down. Embry was home—I’d seen his Tiger parked alongside everyone else’s bikes. If I looked hard enough, I’d find every brother around here somewhere, which begged the question: why was Cam out here alone instead of cosying up with his lovers, or giving Nash and Rubi a hard time instead of me?

  Cam wasn’t freakishly psychic, but perhaps the question in my gaze was obvious. “Saint’s asleep. I didn’t want to disturb him. Pretty sure Nash is doing something I don’t want to think about with my sister, and Rubi ain’t speaking to me. All good reasons to make myself useful, eh?”

  “Where’s Alexei?”

  “No idea.”

  Tired, I leaned against the low wall built by Embry’s bare hands. “That don’t bother you?”

  “Ain’t his mother.”

  “You keep tabs on the rest of us.”

  “If I did, I’d know where you’d been the last two days.”

  “Stayed away for a reason, boss.”

  Cam hoisted the worktop, biceps popping, and set it on the wall behind him before looking at me again, his dark eyes half shadowed by the night sky above us. “I know. And I appreciate it. Last thing we need is you growing space on a white board somewhere. My point was I got no clue where you’ve been. That makes for some pretty shitty micromanagement, wouldn’t you say?”

  My president was an honest dude. Straightforward in his motivations. His vernacular, a word Embry had taught me a long time ago. But it still felt like he was playing with me, like Alexei did sometimes, and I was not here for that fuckery. Man wanted two fellas in his bed, who gave a shit? Not me. But if Cam was gonna morph into the worst combination of both his lovers, he could fuck all the way off.

  In my head, at least. Dumb old me just nodded. “Decoy okay?”

  After a beat, Cam tipped me a nod of his own. “Lauren reported him for swiping her bank cards. Said he was on the road and wasn’t coming back till he’d cleaned her out. Took the feds all night to figure it was bollocks, but the damage was done by then. We got fined for leaving the lorry on the road and lost man hours retrieving the fucking thing.”

  “Bitch.”

  “She’s something, all right. Though I s’pose we’re lucky only one of us has a crazy ex giving us grief. You want something to eat? You missed dinner, but there’s chicken in the pot.”

  The typical Cam question reminded me of something I’d brought home, both to put a smile on my brothers’ faces and to explain away some of the time I’d been gone.

  I held up a paper bag. “I’m good. Saw my old dear and she gave me a shed load of bocadillos to bring back. You want one?”

  Cam grinned and slapped his abs. “Probably shouldn’t, but I’m weak for your ma’s butties, man. She put the spicy meat in? And the egg?”

  “Of course.” I handed Cam a giant sandwich. “Want one for Saint?”

  “Nah, he ain’t waking up unless there’s drama.”

  I could believe that. Saint was a deep sleeper these days, by his standards, at least. And he needed more of it. “I’ll hide one for him.”

  Cam snorted. “Unless you’re hiding it on the moon, there ain’t gonna be none of those left by morning. Only soul I know makes better cobs than your ma is you, my friend.”

  It was probably the nicest thing any brother who wasn’t Embry had ever said to me. And I couldn’t deny I made a cracking sandwich, but only for people I gave a shit about, and my list was short. That Cam was on it was a sign of my affection I hope he saw.

  He went back to his work. Another night, I might’ve stayed a while longer and caught up with club business, but I didn’t give a shit about timber runs and protection rackets right now. I wanted Embry in any way he’d have me, and the craving for him only grew every second I spent with Cam.

  I backed up. He let me go with a wry grin.

  Ten feet away from him, he called my name and I turned with rising agitation.

  His grin expanded and he pointed at the inky summer sky. “He’s on the roof.”

  Twat.

  I jogged away from my smirking president and slipped into the empty chapel. The kitchen at the back was reserved for council officers only. I dug in my magic bag for the best bocadillo and stowed the rest away, bar one I hid behind the vegetables for Saint.

  With Embry’s late-night snack tucked safely in my jacket pocket, I sent a message to the council group chat.

  Mateo: bocadillos in chapel. don’t chock on them

  Mateo: *choke

  My work was done. I’d adulted in every capacity I was capable of, and I was fucking done.

  Nearly.

  Keeping a sharp eye on the door, I pulled my second phone from my pocket and fired out one last text.

  Mateo: home

  A reply came a second later.

  Unknown number: Stay safe x

  There was no answer I could give to that without lying. So I didn’t bother. I turned the phone off and slid back across the yard to my bike under the pretence of checking it over. Making sure no one had fucked with it in my absence.

  It was a biker thing to do, but the fact that I didn’t give a fuck about my scrappy Dyna was another secret I kept buried in my dark fucking soul.

  I stashed the phone, then stretched my back again. Damn, it hurt. Two solid days on the borrowed Fat Boy had done me in. My legs were heavy. But the weight on my chest had eased. I could breathe.

  For now.

  But it was enough. It had to be, or I’d fucking drown.

  I held onto the anticipation heating my blood as I crossed the yard again, slipped around the back, and hauled myself up the drainpipe without glancing at the spot where Embry had nearly bled out. After so many months, I’d grown better at that. Shut the urge away. Locked it up with every other need and want I couldn’t acknowledge. Shit that was easier to ignore when Embry was up here on the roof somewhere, doing whatever he was doing in a rare moment he chose to spend alone.

  At first, I didn’t see him, then I spotted his boots abandoned by the vent pipe and found him stretched out on the flat bitumen, face to the stars, smoking a joint that smelt like heaven.

  Beside him was a book. I crouched by his feet and picked it up. “Catch-22. That’s irony, right?”

  Embry turned his head, smoke seeping from his mouth, stormy blues all hazy from the blunt. “The cruellest kind. You’ve never read it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “That you’d like it.”

  “I hate fucking reading. Tell me about it instead?”

  Embry stared at me a moment. Then shrugged. “It’s about the insanity of war. Ridiculous chaos.”

  “Autobiography then?”

  “Maybe.” Embry sat up and his messy black hair fell into his face.

  God, I wanted to tuck it back so bad my fingers spasmed. I settled for digging the bocadillo from my jacket pocket. “Present from my ma. She put manchego in yours. Reckon she prefers you to me.”

  “I’m nicer to her.” Embry reached for the sandwich, swapping it for the blunt in his fingers. “And I answer her texts. Last time I spoke to Irina, she told me you hadn’t answered her calls for three weeks.”

  It was simple truth, not an accusation. “If she’s calling, she ain’t dead.”

  Embry unwrapped the bocadillo and took a bite. Then he levelled me with the kind of look he’d been flooring me with from the start. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Your mum loves you.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t love her?”

  This was not what I’d come up here for. I sank back on my heels, then let my body roll out flat, enjoying the sun-baked roof against my sore spine, the burn of sweet weed smoke in my lungs. “We have a fucked-up relationship. You know this already.”

  “The bare facts of a situation don’t make it understandable. Feels like you’re punishing her for something.”

  “Maybe I am.” The words slipped out unbidden.

  Embry lowered the sandwich, aware before I was that I’d let something go I never had before. “Okay. But if what she did was so bad, why maintain a relationship with her at all?”

  I took another deeper pull on the joint. The urge to close my eyes and shut him out was there, like it always was when we danced this line, but I was knackered. Depleted. I just wanted to be with him and soak him up. I didn’t have the willpower to do anything else. “It wasn’t her fault. She did it for the right reasons, but it fucked my whole life up, and every time I think I’m over it, the pain comes back and I wish she was dead.”

  This time, my eyes closed of their own accord. But I didn’t lose Embry. I heard him wrap the sandwich up and set it aside. Then I felt him next to me, stretched out on the roof, his shoulder touching mine, and a glowing ember of heat that spread through my entire body.

  My lips tingled, remembering the last time we’d been alone together. If we were different people, whole and unscarred by this fucked up world, I might’ve rolled over. Faced him. Leaned forward and pressed my lips to his again. I might’ve eased myself on top of him, pinned him down with my heavier weight and felt every part of him moulded to me.

  But that world was a fantasy. We were what we were.

  We were us.

  Embry sighed. He shifted again and the fantasy in my head reversed and became reality.

  He rolled over and cupped my jaw, thumb stroking my scar. He buried his face in my neck for a fleeting, beautiful moment. “You smell of my favourite things.”

  “Sweat and weed?”

  He snorted a quiet laugh. “My other favourite things.”

  I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. Embry was on his side, head pillowed on one hand while the other remained on my face. He was funny about scents and smells, a quirk that had been more pronounced since he’d got hurt. No one else took much notice, but I did, and his favourites had become mine.

  Under his watchful gaze, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a tube of Polo mints, peeling back the foil and sliding one into my mouth. In my head, I kept it on my tongue and offered it to him, so his tongue was on mine instead of licking his bottom lip as if he had no fucking idea what that did to me.

  In reality, I popped another sweet free of the foil and held the packet out to him.

  Embry took the mint and slipped it between his lips. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” But I wasn’t done. In my other pocket, I found the only reason I’d stopped on my way home. I closed my fingers around the small brown bottle and fished it from my pocket. “Lemon oil. You ran out, right?”

  Embry’s sharp gaze softened. “How do you notice these things before I do?”

  “You’re a scatty motherfucker, chaplain.”

  “You think that’s it?” Embry claimed the bottle. Opened it and took a deep inhale. “I always figured it was more I’m still not used to having stuff so I forget to keep track of it.”