Page 28 of Love Thy Brother
Fuck me. I shut the door and leaned on it, searching for my shattered composure. “Mornin’.”
River glanced up, his pissed-off frown deepening. “So it wasn’t a fucked-up trip?”
“If that’s the kind of trips you’re having, you need better drugs.” Or, you know. None. But I knew better than to kick that hornets’ nest. “What are you doing here so early?”
“I work here. You’re the one trespassing.”
“Gonna call the feds on me?”
“Way my luck goes, they’d nick my sorry arse instead.” River dragged his gaze over me, scorching me from head to toe and back again. “Besides, you’d only come back. You always do when it’s the last thing I fucking want.”
Ouch. If I wasn’t used to River’s lethal tongue, he’d have killed me stone dead with that one.
I pushed off the door and approached him, sucked in by his hot gaze. River wore anger well, but I wasn’t getting rage from him right now. Frustration, maybe. But he didn’t have the air of a dude about to hurl a nut splitter in my face. “Did you sleep okay? You seemed pretty jacked yesterday.”
River eyed me a moment, then shook his head. “Nah. You don’t get to do that. Be all up in my face like you give a shit. You want to play bodyguard? Fine. But don’t pretend this is something it isn’t.”
“It’s a conversation, mate.”
“We’re not mates. And I don’t want to talk to you. If you can’t keep your mouth shut, stay outside.”
I took a chance and kept walking till I reached the desk. “If you wanted me outside, you’d have locked the damn door.”
“That right?”
“Yup.” I leaned closer than I usually would when he was this hostile. “Though I won’t object if you wanna try and manhandle me out. I love that shit.”
For a moment, like yesterday, I had him. Then all the hurt and complications came flooding back, and his forced indifference was worse than his glorious fury. “You’re right. I don’t care where you are. Just stay out of my way, yeah?”
He shoved off the desk and walked away. In the confined space of the garage, there weren’t many places to go, but even his back turned to me felt like a gaping chasm I shouldn’t cross.
Shouldn’t.
Not couldn’t.
And we all knew how I felt about that. I had a hand-poked tattoo on my dick to prove it.
River switched the radio on. Death metal filled the space between us. It was a little early to get my eardrums blasted by Slayer, but I could dig it. I watched his deft hands work with a dissected Road King for a while, engrossed. We were all good with engines, it was in our blood, but River and Nashie had the magic touch that made grease and grime poetic.
Nash. I hadn’t thought about him much, too caught up in my great escape, but with River safe and sound where I could see him, my thoughts turned to home.
I flexed my scraped knuckles and ran my tongue over my bruised bottom lip. It stung a little, but I knew I was lucky. A punch from Nash could take a man’s jaw off. That it hadn’t told me he hadn’t really meant it, and I found no comfort in that. Worse, I knew however angry he’d been then, by now he’d be tearing himself apart that he’d hurt me.
Call him.
Eh. Not yet.
But as fate would have it, my phone rang a heartbeat later.
Orla.
I hadn’t answered her messages.
Hell, I hadn’t even read them, and I was about to lose a testicle for my trouble.
With one eye on River, I moved away from the desk and found the quietest corner in the mosh pit he’d turned the garage into at dick o’clock in the morning.
I took the call. “Khaleesi.”
