Page 2 of Love Thy Brother
“Took it out for the brain zap.” Skylar dropped an envelope into my spare hand. “No metal in the scanner. Put it back in if you want.”
I sent him awhat-the-fucklook.
Skylar rolled his eyes and stepped out of the room, leaving me with the padded envelope and a sedated giant.
Rubi’s eyes were still closed, hiding the hazel orbs that haunted my dreams and filled any careless waking moment when he wasn’t around.
Which was often. My choice, not his, until he’d come to me that night.
Masochist.
If only. Missing Rubi hurt like a bitch, but having him in my life, knowing I could lose him any moment to a stray bullet, a knife. Thepipe to the skullthat had done this to him. Fuck, man. It destroyed me.
The envelope Skylar had left was heavy in my hand. I kept the other on Rubi’s forearm, stroking the underside of his wrist with little conscious thought, and tipped the contents onto the bed.
Rubi’s tiny silver nose ring tumbled out among the bulkier jewellery. The leather bracelet he’d worn for the last ten years. The rings for even longer. I picked up the club signet, identical to the one Cam wore. To the oneIstill wore on a chain around my neck, like a dog tag of fucking shame. The Rebel Kings emblem was a gothic skull framed by vintage roses, four decades old. Like that meant anything except the heartache and pain every new year seemed to bring.
Take it off then.
Some days I tried, but I felt dismantled without it, and the irony that I felt thatmorenow that I lived away from the club was goddamn biblical.
I slid Rubi’s ring back onto his finger, trying not to linger there. To entwine our hands as if we were lovers. His bracelet was easier, but he stirred as I slipped the piercing back into his nose, flinching from my touch before he took a sharp breath. “Riv?”
Lord, he was the only fucker who didn’t irritate the hell out of me by calling me that. I pushed his hair back from his face, holding him, waiting for his smart-aleck gaze to hook me.
But when his eyes opened, it wasn’t there. He was fucking blitzed. “Riv?”
“I’m here.”
Rubi blinked, cringing from the overhead light. It took him a second, but I saw the moment he returned to earth, and I let him go.
I inched back from the bed, edging to the door on instinct. I’d promised Cam I wouldn’t leave, but the thought of Rubi’s conscious attention on me for however long it took him to be whole again, I couldn’t fucking take it.
“Riv.”
He still sounded a million miles away, but his deep voice snared me. I froze, watching his inked hands flail as he reached for me, his clumsiness so alien it tossed my guts. Self-preservation pulled me to the door, but the wicked, primal hold he had on my heart drew my body in the opposite direction.
I stepped back to the bed and took his big hands, bracing the lurch he’d fallen into, rooting my mismatched boots to the floor. “Hey, hey, I’m here.”
Rubi groaned, reclaiming one of his hands to shield his eyes. “Why’s it so fucking bright in here?”
“Because you have the migraine from hell.” I blocked the light with my body. “Better?”
He made another pained sound that tore me up. I reached for the switch above us, fiddling with it until I found a dimmer setting.
It wasn’t much, but he relaxed a fraction. Enough for me to ease him back on the bed, but not for the tension in his body to fade.
He curled in on himself again. I rubbed his back and tight shoulders. His neck. Brushed the pad of my thumb over his cheekbone, my fingers tangled in his silky hair.
Rubi moaned. “Make it fucking stop.”
Raw emotion burned me.Fuck it. I reached up and clicked the light off entirely, swamping us in murky darkness.
Rubi shivered. He sucked in a breath and shifted onto his back, gaze heavy with a slow blink, face drawn and pale. “I can’t see.”
“Because it’s dark?”
“Nah. I can’t focus.”
