Page 137 of Love Thy Brother
I waved.
He waved back.
Rubi ignored him.
“Seriously?”
Rubi grumbled as Nash walked away. “What?”
“Why won’t you talk to him?”
“He’s not talking to me either.”
“Don’t be a cunt.”
Rubi closed his eyes and heaved another deep breath before he faced me again. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ll talk to him tomorrow. I just—fuck, I don’t know. I don’t have it in me right now.”
“Why not? Nash is your best friend. No one understands you better than he does.”
“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it?”
I frowned, too wrecked to keep up. “You’re gonna have to explain that one.”
“Right now?”
It could’ve waited. Maybe it should have. But I loved Nash. I loved Rubi. It killed me to see them so messy.
Rubi muttered something I didn’t catch.
I tucked my helmet under my arm and waited for him to repeat himself.
He didn’t. He fished a zoot from his inside pocket and lit up, taking a deep inhale before he offered it to me.
I waved it away. Weed helped with deeper cravings, but getting lit was the last thing on my mind right now. Whether Rubi wanted it or not, he had my unadulterated attention. Though, if he sighed again instead of using actual words, I was probably gonna boot him from his hog.
“We’re codependant,” he said eventually. “Have been for years. Every time you slammed the door in my face, if I wasn’t in the mood to go fuck my woes away—don’t look at me like that, you did it too—I’d go to him. Didn’t matter what he was doing, I’d crawl into his bed, into his fucking lap, and lean on him until I could breathe again.”
I knew this about them. About Rubi. That he craved physical comfort when shit got rough. That Nash was his safe place. More than Cam. More than Embry.
More than me.
I rubbed a palm over the sore spot in my heart. “We’re all fucked up. Doesn’t mean you have to punish him for it.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay. Yourself then. What are you scared of?”
“Lots of things.” Rubi power-smoked the joint until it burned his fingers. Then flicked it away. “None of them his fault. I love him. I’m just... tired. Like, I can’t fix everything at once, you know?”
I slid from my bike and went to him. I couldn’t cocoon him with my whole body the way he could me, but I tried all the same, coaxing him to rest his head on my shoulder so I could rub the back of his neck. “We’re not broken anymore, boo. You fix this last thing and you’ll feel whole again, I promise.”
It was a rash promise to make. Rubi had been through too much for anyone to heal those fucking scars. But the heaviness in his embrace tore me in two. He didn’t deserve it. His heart was too big and pure to hurt like it did.
Another mumble reached my ears. I rubbed his neck one more time, then tugged on his hair until he met my gaze. “What was that?”
Rubi scrunched up his face in a loopy scowl. “I said, tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. I won’t have much choice then anyway, cos I have to go—”
“River!”
