Page 46 of Love Thy Brother
My motherfucking phone rang.
I reached in my pocket to silence the goddamn thing, but it was too late. The moment was shattered, and who knew if we’d ever get it back.
River jerked back. He put some distance between us, his arm sliding away from my waist, cold air filling the gap. “I’m going to tell you the truth.”
I frowned. “About what?”
“About the picture of my execution that’s got you so worked up.”
Criminally, having him in my arms—or maybe I’d been in his—had wiped my brain of that particular horror show. As I came back to earth, tension returned to my body, reigniting the headache that was fast spreading from my temple to the back of my neck, and radiating into my shoulder. “We don’t have to talk about that now.”
We did. Wereallydid. I just didn’t fucking want to. I wanted to haul him back into my bubble and never let him go. Fuck the outside world. Fuck all of it and everyone in it.
You don’t mean that.
Nope. But perhaps this was the first real point in my life that I wished I did.
“We do have to talk about it,” River said flatly. “Before you turn it into something it’s not and call the cavalry.”
“How is this anything other than exactly what it is?”
“Oh my god.” River rolled his eyes to the moon and back. “You think it’smurderous intentbecause you’re conditioned to see the worst in every-fucking-thing. Don’t you see how abnormal that is? Do you think anyone else these idiots have gone after are taking this shit literally?”
“They must’ve done, or theseidiotswouldn’t believe these methods work.”
“Doesn’t mean they have any intention of following through. They’re just trying to scare me, man. And I’m not fucking scared, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
Of course he wasn’t scared. River was a King. But he was a lone wolf too, away from the pack. Exposed. Isolated. If Alexei was wrong...
My phone rang again.
Again, I silenced it, but River was done.
“It’s never just us, is it?” He gave me a sad smile and walked away.
10
RIVER
Rubi was in a foul mood for the next four days. Face folded into a permanent frown. His spirit so quiet and subdued I barely knew he was there. If it wasn’t for the secretary’s wet dream he’d made of my office, he may as well have sent a cardboard cut-out in his place.
Then he spent a week making nice with every soul within a mile radius except me, a reality I told myself I could live with until I suddenly couldn’t.
He’d been up in my shit forthreeweeksby the time me and Cam finally found a moment to talk about everything and nothing, seeing as he didn’t seem to know about the blood on the garage walls.
I studied Rubi as I loitered by the kettle, phone pressed to my cheek, Cam’s voice low in my ear. He was by Axel, digging through the parts and equipment stock sheets that should’ve been in the office with one hand while he rubbed the back of his neck with the other. To anyone else, he probably seemed focused as fuck.
To me, he just looked lost.
“Did he get another migraine?”
I switched my attention back to my brother. “Another one?”
“Nash thinks he had one the day you came here.”
“And he still punched him in the face?”
“Easy,” Cam counselled. “No one can make him feel worse about that than he already does.”
