Page 89 of Love Thy Brother
Saint:u need to tell Oscar to b somewhere else
“He doesn’t have anywhere else. That’s why he lives with me in the first place. I’m cheap and easy.”
Rubi snorted.
Saint frowned and typed again.
Saint:baby mama? girlfriend?
“Nope. If it was just him, he’d sleep on the boat or stay with Sol at the Joker, but he won’t take his kid there.”
“Not even if you tell him it ain’t safe at the house?” Rubi said.
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I’m not telling him that. He’ll move out, and that’s the last thing I want.”
“You’d miss him?” Edgy humour laced Rubi’s question.
Mostly. But my answer was honest regardless. “I’m a mess when I live on my own. Whoever we are when this is all over, that’s not going to change.”
“Everything’s already changed.”
Has it?The chapel disappeared, taking Saint with it. It was just me and Rubi blazing across the table at each other. But the rising heat held no answers, and I blinked first. “Oscar can’t afford to live anywhere else that has room for his kid. It’d kill me to take that away from him.”
Saint nodded slowly. Then took a breath. “Compromise. He can stay and I’ll protect him. But you can’t, either of you, so you need to find a way to make that work.”
16
RUBI
“You cooked real food without me.”
River’s housemate’s deep Lithuanian voice was muffled by the fridge, shoulders hunched as he investigated the contents, wavy hair spilling into his face.
He wasn’t talking to me, but I answered him anyway. “I was hungry.”
Oscar stopped rummaging and came upright so fast he nearly brained himself on a shelf.
He shut the fridge and rotated. “Youcooked real food without me?”
“It happens, bro.” I leaned against the counter.
Oscar regarded me through thick, dark lashes, nothing but easy curiosity behind them. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
He turned back to the fridge. Opened it and retrieved the dish of leftovers. “You are wearing my clothes.”
Damn. I’d forgotten about that. “We got wet. River said it was okay.”
“It is fine. Where is he?”
“Upstairs.” Packing a bag while Saint, Decoy, and Folk lurked somewhere outside. Decoy was going to follow us back to Whitness. To my house. No consensus on which bed River was gonna sleep in, but I was hanging onto hope that it would be mine. “We’re gonna stay at my place a few days.”
“Everything is all right?”
“Yep.”
Oscar accepted my answer and pulled open a drawer, fishing out a fork. “Aras will miss him. Sometimes I think he likes River more than his dad.”
