Page 171 of Love Thy Brother
Or maybe I was already broken.
I showed him where it hurt the most.
He got up and stood behind me, pressing his thumbs hard into a tender spot at the base of my neck. For a drawn-out minute, I felt nothing but rage. Then something changed, a seismic shift, and an alien feeling flooded my body.
Relief.
I pitched forward, hands on my knees. “Fuck a duck. Did you just cast a spell on me?”
“Not quite.” Harry eased me upright again. “I just released some of the tension in your subclavius. Sometimes nerves get wrapped around the wrong thing, or exposed by injury, and they need some persuasion to go back where they belong.”
Story of my life, mate.But I was too stunned by the sudden bloom of pain-free existence to worry about deathly irony. Harry did more blessed things to my neck and shoulders. Simple things that blew my mind almost as much as River’s wicked mouth on my dick. He stood me up and manipulated the base of my spine. Even my wrists.
Then he clapped me on the back. “I can’t promise a total recovery, but there’s always something we can do.”
“That’s a million miles away from what the quacks at the hospital told me.”
Harry grimaced. “They’re underfunded and overworked. Being alive trumps living. But you don’t need to worry about that anymore. I’m here for you as long as you need me.”
“How do I pay?”
“That’s not necessary. Your haulage firm just made a huge donation to the rescue farm, but in any case, I meant what I said about family. Embry means a lot to us, and if we can help in any way that doesn’t risk what we have here, we always will.”
I didn’t know much about Embry’s kin, save that his hot cousin had driven onto the compound once and called Cam a cunt. Years had passed since then, though, and this dude in front of me was as earnest as you got.
We shook hands and he gave me a card with an email address and a phone number on.
“Hit me up when you’re ready for an appointment. It can be after hours. I’m usually around if you don’t mind a nosy toddler at your feet.”
“You have a kid?”
“A daughter. Clementina.”
I wondered how the fuck that had happened, given that Harry and Joe had been a thing for more than a decade, but I didn’t have to speculate long.
“We used a surrogate,” Harry explained. “Two dads and a mum who drops by whenever Lena’s band plays the South West. Works for us.”
Lena.My gossip sensors threw out a red alert. I followed Harry out of the treatment room, sifting through memories old enough to turn my hair grey. Then more recent ones that Saint would brain me alive for thinking about.
Lena.
Lena.
Oh.
I almost laughed out loud, but as we crossed the threshold into the late afternoon sunshine, the lone figure sitting on the fence obliterated all other thoughts.
River had his face tilted to the spring sky, eyes closed, neck arched, gold earrings glinting in the sun. He was wearing dark jeans and a clean Rebel Kings crew neck rolled at his biceps, lean muscles and sinister ink on full show.
Goddess, he was beautiful.
I forgot about Harry and swooped on him, seizing him from the fence and spinning him around, only setting him down when he was safe in my arms.
He laughed, throaty and rich. “Someone’s feeling better.”
“I feel amazing.”
“Yeah?”
