Page 61 of Love Thy Brother
I winced and faced Mateo alone. “Sorry.”
He finally cracked a faint smile. “Ain’t no worse than shit I’ve done to you.”
Couldn’t argue with that. “Why are you really here? Cam send you?”
Mateo sent another fleeting glance over my shoulder. “No one sent me. Only Em and Lili know I’m here.”
“For real?”
“Wouldn’t lie to you, mate. Do me a favour, though. Answer your phone, yeah? I was bricking it all the way here that some shit had gone down and I’d fucked up by not calling it in.”
My phone. It was still upstairs in River’s bathroom. My pants were on his kitchen floor.He kissed me.
What a time to be alive.
However I felt about that drew Mateo forward. His macabre half grin faded, replaced by a frown. “You need help with anything?”
It was because of his help that I was here. Him and Alexei. That I was standing in this doorway in borrowed clothes with the ghost of River’s lips on my neck. But the weight of Mateo’s concern weighed me down. I wasn’t used to this brother getting up in my business. “I’m all good. Got some shit to share, but not tonight, eh?”
Mateo nodded, empathy warming a face our enemies saw in their worst nightmares. “I need to get back. Get my dinner down me before I ride out with Saint. Are you coming to church in the morning?”
Church. Fuck. It had slipped my mind. And I hadn’t exactly okayed it with Cam that I was excused. “Honestly, I got no idea. Anything going on I need to know about?”
“Can’t think of anything. Be good if you cleared the air with Nash, though. He ain’t been right since you left.”
My ribs throbbed in time with the churn of my gut. A sigh escaped me and I rubbed a hand over my face. I missed Nash more than I could explain, but there was too much in my brain to think about him tonight. “Buzz me in the morning?”
Mateo hugged me, then socked my arm. “I have you, brother.”
12
RIVER
Rubi came back as I was sliding his pasta dish into the oven. I wasn’t as proficient in the kitchen as him or Cam, but I could blag it enough to not kill us.
There was a bottle of Dead Man’s Fingers on top of the fridge. I grabbed it and a couple of mugs and nodded at the breakfast bar. “Know you’re off the juice, but we’ve had a night of it.”
Rubi didn’t argue. He sank onto one stool, kicking the other closer to me.
I sat beside him.
He tipped two fingers under my chin and angled my face to the light. “You feel okay?”
“Good as new now I’m warm.”
He didn’t believe me, I could tell. But it was the truth. I felt fine. I was more worried about him. “What did Mateo want?”
Rubi reached for the rum and poured a healthy measure into each mug. “Liliana saw the blood on your face. He came to check we weren’t dead.”
“That was nice of him.”
“He’s a nice bloke.”
Nicewasn’t my experience of Mateo Romano. He was my brother’s enforcer. I’dseenhim do shit that would haunt my conscience if I wasn’t jaded as fuck, and the scepticism rolling through me begged the question Rubi had yet to answer. “You gonna tell me how that pretty little girl came to be his?”
Rubi brought his rum to his lips and took a sip. “You really want to know?”
The way his eyes sobered told me there was more to this story than a long-lost one-night stand. Of course there was. Nothing about my family—the MC—was ever simple. But as hard as I tried to stick my head in the sand, however that girl had come to be FaceTiming Rubi from the Rebel Kings’ compound, there was good in it somewhere, I felt it. “I want to know.”
