13. Viktor

[ 13 ]

VIKTOR

Ranger was a contradiction. Adaptable. Adventurous. But impossible to persuade of just about anything when he cemented his boots to the ground.

“Car.” He pointed at Jake’s SUV. The one parked next to the bike I assumed Jake had arranged to be delivered here. “You’re a fucking menace on that Ducati.”

“You have never seen me ride that Ducati.”

“I’ve seen you ride the other one. From eighty miles behind. That’s not happening here.”

“Scared you will get lost?”

“Scared I’ll lose something.”

Truthfully, it did not matter to me how we travelled, but the masochist in me craved to know every thought that passed through Ranger’s head. I wanted him to say it. That he was scared to lose me. So I could bathe in how much it hurt to know he cared. “I would not leave you behind.”

Ranger grunted and opened his hand, revealing a set of keys I had not given him. “I’m driving.”

“You know the way?”

He pointed down the mountain. “That way, innit.”

Gruff by nature, it was hard to tell if he was annoyed or making fun of me. And I was okay with either scenario. Ranger was never hotter to me than when fire raged in his dark gaze, unless he was laughing. And he laughed at me a lot too.

I got in the car—in the passenger seat, not all that upset that I did not have to drive. Or ride. In recent days, with Ranger to occupy my thoughts, the pain in my hip had been less, but I was agitated right now, despite Ranger’s presence, and I felt the warning in every nerve from my ribs to my foot.

Relax.

Stretch.

I extended my sore leg.

Ranger noticed, but for once in his life said nothing. Just draped his arm around my seat and casually reversed down the mountain to the turning point, before spinning the car in the right direction.

“You could have turned around by Katya’s house. By the window Lida watched us from.”

Ranger’s boyish grin returned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Fun was not something I had contemplated in a long time. But with Ranger, even the most awful things were bearable.

He drove, complaining about everything from the car’s quiet engine to the air conditioning smelling funny, while I watched him. Studied him, as if his tattooed neck was the only thing on earth that could calm the gnawing in my gut, my blood, and my bones.

Worry.

Cravings.

Pain.

Sometimes, it all felt like one and the same.

“Cam made Jake promise he wouldn’t kill me if I couldn’t protect you.”

I dragged my gaze from the tinted windows—it was the first time Ranger had called my brother Jake, and it meant something to me that I could not quantify. “He wouldn’t kill you.”

“That’s what he said. Cam made him swear anyway. It was cute.”

“Did you believe him?”

“That he wouldn’t kill me?” Ranger eased his boot from the accelerator. “Didn’t give it much thought. Was too busy trying to remember if my nanna still had my passport.”

“Did she?”

“Here, ain’t I?”

He was, but I had to touch him to believe it. A slow trail of my finger along his jaw, skating close enough to his mouth that he bared his teeth.

“How likely is it that some cunt will try and off you in daylight?”

I blinked, withdrawing my hand. “Honestly, I do not know. It has been many months since I last left our property before dark.”

“How many months?”

“A few—I think. I was not . . .”

“Well?”

“Priest was injecting me every day. And I was weak from everything else. Once Jake had me, it took a while for me to see beyond surviving that.”

Ranger shifted his grip on the steering wheel. “Locke said you were hurt worse than him.”

“Not by much.”

“Don’t lie to me, Vik. Nash told me all about it.”

“I am not lying. I was with Locke every moment Priest had him. I know what he endured.”

“They didn’t drug him.”

“They did not. So he felt every blow. Have you ever thought about that?”

I had. Often. I didn’t have nightmares, but if I did, I would dream of the pain Locke Halliwell had borne far more than my own.

We reached the town and I directed Ranger to a public car park, the air between us thick with grief and heartache.

His.

Mine.

It all hurt, but I could not bear the tight set of his shoulders. This man . . . he did not deserve it.

I caught Ranger’s wrist before he could exit the SUV. “I am sorry I speak without thought. I used to be better.”

Ranger stared at where I held him. Then slowly raised his gaze to mine. “That’s not what you’ve lost.”

He got out of the car, wrenching free of my grip. Panic squeezed my chest that he might leave, but he opened my door a moment later, relaxed again, as if we had spent the last five minutes talking about the weather.

The sun had already stained his skin a healthy light brown. It looked good on him. Jake’s clothes looked good on him. I slid from the car, wanting to say so, but the reality of being out in the open took over.

Sometimes, I believed myself dead inside. Others, I knew the lifetime of war I had survived wouldn’t perish until I was ashes in the ground.

My boots hit the tarmac and my senses came alive. Ranger still held my fragile heart hostage, but the need to protect him overcame the desire to bury my face in his neck and never come up for air.

You should not have brought him here.

A cold fact that chilled my blood. But Jake was my life. My brother. For my heart to keep beating, I had to know he was alive.

“Lead the way,” Ranger murmured. “I’ve got your six.”

It felt wrong, to walk with him guarding my back, but to argue about it on the street was a risk I could not take.

I led him to the beach where I had bought the ten-bag that had led him to me. Juan was already lurking on the sand, but he did not make eye contact, and I didn’t make him.

In my boots, the sand was too soft for my angry hip. I moved closer to the water and wished my life were different. That I could spin around and see Ranger walking barefoot as the waves lapped his toes.

He caught me up, keeping pace just a beat behind. “This already feels dodgy.”

“You can feel eyes on you?”

“On us. I’m thinking it might be cos you’re fit as fuck, though.”

Fit. It took me a moment to translate that he didn’t mean my aerobic capacity. That he meant I was hot.

Then I laughed. “You make strange assumptions.”

Ranger nudged me. “What’s strange about it?”

“Jake said I looked homeless last time I saw him.”

“Jake’s an idiot.”

He wasn’t. Because Ranger was here, and for the first time in months, I could breathe without wishing I hadn’t bothered. I could laugh without my throat feeling like I’d swallowed cut glass. How had he known?

I never told you.

Jake did not answer my weak attempt at telepathy.

“Do they have boats?”

Ranger had moved close enough that his breath feathered my cheek, his bare arm brushing mine.

Boats.

Assassins.

Focus.

“Probably. But they would not get this close to the shore on this side of the island.”

“Why not?”

“We own the waters.”

“Then how do they get here at all?”

“In plain sight. It is not a guerrilla on a runaway jet-ski who will reach me. It is the tourist with a blade in his pocket. The damsel in distress with a Glock in her bag.”

Ranger growled, like he often did when my answers did not please him. He scanned the horizon and then the beach. “This is the cuntiest thing you’ve made me do so far.”

“I have not made you do anything.”

“I can still taste that fucking orange.”

“You did not like it?”

“No.”

Despite the unseen threat tingling my skin, I allowed myself to look at him, catching the same mistruth in his face that I heard in his voice. “You would eat it again?”

He glared at me, emotion that didn’t fit our current situation bleeding from his obsidian eyes. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Am I laughing?”

“You’re off your head.”

Whatever Ranger was feeling gave way to annoyance. To frustration. He wanted to walk away from me, I felt it, but he couldn’t. He would not, and I did not like that he was trapped in a place that made him feel bad.

I stopped walking.

He gripped my elbow, trying to draw me on. “Keep moving. It’s too quiet here.”

We had reached the part of the beach that young families occupied during the day, and the sun had started to set. Twilight. Dusk. By the sea, it was always beautiful, but I didn’t notice such things anymore. As the sky turned from fiery orange to ghostly blue, I saw only Ranger and the fact that something I’d said or done had upset him.

Keep moving.

He didn’t repeat himself, but I obeyed, for his sake. And I walked at his side as if we were lovers strolling in the sand, waiting for his hyper-vigilant gaze to return to me. “What am I crazy about? That is what this off my head phrase means, no? Or . . . drunk, maybe?”

Ranger slid me another shadowed glower, but it lacked the bite of the first and he expelled a heavy breath. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Why?”

“Cos I’m more worried about someone whacking you right now than⁠—”

“Than what?”

“Fuck’s sake.” Ranger jammed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “You’re really going to make me say it?”

I stole the cigarette. Filled my lungs and passed it back. “I think so.”

Ranger kept smoking, lengthening his stride as he pivoted and headed up the beach.

Caught between fascination and concern, I followed, disregarding everything on earth except the consuming desire to remain as close to him as possible.

We reached the beach wall.

Ranger vaulted it. I lacked such spring in my legs, but I didn’t resent the view.

“Need help?”

“No.” I climbed over the wall and did not die. “I need to know what it is about the orange that makes you want to punch things. Unless it is me you want to punch.”

Ranger finished his cigarette and crushed it beneath his boot. “I don’t want to punch you. Believe me, it would be easier if I did.”

“What would?”

He sighed again. Like the world had ended. “Vik, you were on top of me. I’d have put anything in my fucking mouth.”