Page 82 of Love Thy Brother
Mateo stood behind Embry, chest to his back, arms around his waist.Sweet, remember?“It’s not like that,” he said. “We want your opinion before we do anything. Can’t promise where Cam’s head’s at—he loves you, and that makes him crazy—but Rubi’s there. He won’t let any badman shit happen.”
“That road-man talk for the apocalypse?”
“Wouldn’t know, mate. Just saying Rubi’s got you, like fucking always.”
Like always. The itchy buzz in my veins grew stronger, fuelled by the sinking realisation that Mateo was right. Rubi had always had my back, even as kids when he’d snuck me out to an indie gig no one else had wanted to go to. Fourteen years old, riding bitch on his fucked-up bobber, it was the most free I’d ever felt. Sometimes I thought it was the first and last time I’d ever been happy, but there’d been other moments too.
All of them with him.
Embry and Mateo were still all up in my business, waiting for an answer. The stubborn piece of shit that occupied most of my personality wanted to tell them to fuck all the way off, but the words stuck in my throat, impounded by something deeper.
Something that mattered more.
They tried to kill Rubi.
Didn’t know who. Didn’t care. All I knew for certain was no one was getting to them before I did.
I tossed the rag aside and stepped away from Embry’s bike. I felt his gaze follow me.
Mateo was less subtle.
He caught my arm, his grip unforgiving. “This isn’t my place to say, but I’m gonna say it anyway. If you don’t step up, Rubi and Cam are gonna go to war with each other to protect you, and neither of them are going to fucking win.”
The urge to headbutt him was overwhelming. But his doom-filled—and accurate—prophecy about Cam and Rubi wasn’t exclusive. Mateo Romano was a dangerous motherfucker, but so was I. If I nutted him and he fought back, it would be a bloodbath, and we didn’t have time for that, so I shook him off instead. “I know all that. Just don’t expect me to wear a goddamn cut and behave myself.”
Mateo’s gaze narrowed. Then he nodded and pointed at the door. “Works for me.”
We moved out, Mateo and Embry somewhere behind me as I strode across the yard. My brain was a weird thing. Sometimes it screamed so loud it couldn’t focus on anything. The only way I could shut it up was to dumb it down with shitty benders. But there was another side to it too—the stubborn, single focus that had driven me off this compound in the first place. Tunnel vision. I saw nothing but Rubi and Cam tearing apart a thirty-year friendship, killing themselves to save me, and it couldn’t fucking happen.
I’d almost forgotten Embry when he called my name.
I turned as the heavens opened above us, sudden, heavy rain driving from the clouds and soaking the ground.
Embry was a step ahead of Mateo, and he held out a hand, beckoning me back. “Before you go in, can we tell you a secret?”
* * *
Embry was a legit sorcerer. Both for the spell he’d cast on Mateo and the fact that he was pretty much a stranger to me, and yet I’d spent the better part of an hour shooting the shit with him like he was an old friend.
Witchcraft. It had to be.
Cleansed of the cutest secret ever, Mateo marched ahead of us and disappeared inside.
I followed him, Embry a heartbeat behind me.
The air was thick with smoke and tension. Rubi’s placid face was downturned into a pissed-off glare I’d have happily owned for myself, and my brother was bleeding stress from his fucking eyeballs.
Also, he was in the wrong seat. They all were.
I tipped my head at Saint. “You’re the boss now?”
“If you like.” He pulled out the chair beside him. Nash’s in the old days. “Sit down.”
Refusal bubbled up my throat, but Saint was hard to ignore.
I made my way to the chair, passing Rubi andburningwith the desperate need to touch him. To press my lips to the nape of his neck—to the left, where I caught him rubbing it every other day.
Resisting only to save us the scrutiny of every eye in the room.
