RIVER - Part Two

RIVER - PART TWO

Skylar arrived ten minutes later, proving my point, his shrug as dry as Oscar's hug was warm. "You sounded worried. I figured it was easier to check on him now than get woken up later."

I was halfway to the kitchen door. Oscar had let Skylar in, as surprised as me to see him. I motioned for him to go ahead of me to the stairs, but he shook his head.

"Look in on him first. He might be fine."

If Rubi was fine, he'd find the bizarreness of waking up to Skylar in his bedroom hilarious. But Skylar…he didn't want to be here, and I cared about him too much to make him stay.

He joined Saint at the table. Oscar set a glass of water in front of him, mussing his hair, reminding me that they were close—they lived in the same town, shared the same friends. It's how Oscar knew Skylar had zero interest in whatever weird and wonderful breakfast he was about to cook up in Rubi's kitchen.

In the time it took me to think on that, I missed movement on the stairs. Rubi appeared behind me, hair all over the show, pillow marks on his face. He held my gaze for a sweet second, then his attention slid beyond me to the odd collective in the kitchen and last night's deep frown returned.

"That's a Mad Hatter's Tea Party I never fucking ordered."

Saint and Skylar stared.

Oscar didn't have an awkward bone in his body. He hooked a pan from the rail drilled into the ceiling and slid it on the stove. "I brought breakfast. Come here, my friend. Let me show you."

Rubi slow-blinked at Oscar and my outstretched hand. Then somehow it all came together. His bewilderment faded, and he padded the last few steps into my arms.

He smelled of Moov ointment. "Your neck hurt, boo?"

Rubi shrugged. "It'll do."

He slipped past me, too nosy about whatever Oscar was doing to give much of a fuck about himself, while Skylar watched him, Saint too.

I was so fucking grateful to know them. I let Oscar brother Rubi for a while and fell into a seat beside Saint.

He magicked some real tea out of nowhere and pushed it into my hand.

I took it. "Is Cam okay?"

Saint cleared his throat. "He's tired, but he'll be all right soon."

"Alexei's with him?"

"Of course."

"But not you?"

Saint sipped his own tea, trying a few times to get his words out.

I gave him a sec and focused on Skylar. He didn't look like a dude who'd just worked all night, but he had one of those faces that hid everything until it was too late. "I buried some Frosted Shreddies in the cellar if you want those instead of the mad fish for breakfast."

Skylar barely glanced at me, still analysing Rubi from afar. "I'm good," he said flatly. Easily, if you didn't know him. But I did know him, probably better than anyone else in this room, even Oscar. And there was nothing fucking easy about Skylar Buchanan.

I turned back to Saint.

He'd got his shit together. "Cam's gonna know something was up. I want to tell him everything's okay and mean it."

"How did you know something was up?"

Saint said nothing, on purpose this time, and as the back door opened and Mateo stuck his head in, I let it go, watching the kitchen fill up as Embry appeared too. Then Decoy and Folk. Aside from the battered throuples, we were all together, except Saint, but by the time I'd dragged my gaze back from the door, he'd gone, leaving his half-drunk tea behind.

Skylar stayed. With the kitchen full of brothers, he took his chance to pull me away.

We wound up in the living room. Mindful of Ivy's presence, I scooped up the weed tin and slung it in a drawer.

Skylar perched on the arm of the couch. "Sorry I was short with you last night. It was a busy shift."

"Figured. You okay?"

"Yeah."

There it was. That flat tone. That easy half grin that went nowhere near his eyes. But dissecting Skylar was way outside my skillset. Always had been, and as cold as it felt to disregard whatever was rattling him, I didn't have the headspace while Rubi's wellbeing occupied my every thought. "I thought he was having a fucking stroke last night."

Skylar nodded. "Tell me what happened."

I did. In graphic detail I didn't plan on sharing with anyone else, and Skylar took it all in with the same look on his face that Embry got when I was trying to explain ketamine cravings to him. How my blood sometimes burned for something I didn't even want.

"Silent migraines are a thing," Skylar said when I was done. "And stress is one of the biggest triggers for them, even if the original condition is caused by injury. Like your brain, there's a part of Rubi's that will never be the same, and it reacts differently now to whatever life throws at him."

"My head never hurts."

"Maybe not, but just because the cause and symptoms aren't the same, doesn't mean you can't decipher the pattern."

"What can I do to make it better for him?"

"Everything he does for you when you're acting like a feral cat."

"Fuck off."

Skylar grinned a bit and it looked good on him. He rose from his perch on the couch and came to me. "For what it's worth, I think he's okay. Oscar isn't bullshitting about the brain food. And the company will do the rest. Just try and keep him quiet for a few days, eh? Limit stress and activity. Screen time, stuff like that. When Jack's tired, we turn all the lights off, put some low music on, and we talk until he falls asleep. And we keep doing it, over and over, until he doesn't need it anymore."

Jack Gallagher. One of the dudes Skylar lived with at the Joker. Didn't know much about him except he ran the place, he was ex-forces, and he lived with a brain injury way worse than anything I'd ever been through. It got me thinking about Rubi's brain, though, in a way I didn't want to. He was the love of my life—my only fucking love. Accepting how badly he'd been hurt, and that I hadn't been there to help him, made me sick to my stomach.

Only Skylar's hard yawn kept my thoughts from spiralling. "I need my bed. I'll text you some links when I get home."

"Links?"

"On silent migraines. Get Rubi to read up on them when he's feeling better, so he can recognise them if you're not around."

I had no plans to be anywhere but glued to Rubi's side, but life wasn't that kind, and Skylar knew that as well as I did.

He socked my arm and left through the front door, avoiding the hum of conversation filtering out of the kitchen. A few years ago, I might've been tempted to do the same, but things were different now— I was different. Better. Healed. Whatever. And I needed the men who'd come to be with us as much as Rubi did.

I found a seat next to Embry, a dude I'd been fucking horrendous to for too many years to count.

He passed me a plate, brows knitted in a cute frown. "Fish for breakfast?"

"You're Cornish. It can't be that weird to you."

"Carters are land people, brother. We're more likely to eat fucking hay. And you're Irish, by blood, anyway, so what's that mean for you? Potatoes?"

Probably. But thinking about the eighty-seven ways I could eat potatoes right now put Cam on my mind and my heart ached for my brother. For Nash. For Orla and Locke. Alexei. Saint. They were going to be okay. Everyone was. But why the fuck did this shit keep happening to us? To Cam? Life was so fucking cruel sometimes.

A fish landed on my plate. I blinked as Rubi slid into the seat at my left, grinning like an idiot, a sight that calmed the festering panic attack that had lingered in my veins since Mateo called from the accident scene. "Did you just throw a fucking fish at me?"

"A cooked fish."

"What difference does that make?"

Rubi moved closer, settling in my personal space, because he knew he had every fucking right to be there. That I'd die if he was anywhere else. "All the difference. Hey, do you think our favourite fisherman knew he'd be feeding the five thousand?"

I glanced at Oscar who was still at Rubi's stove— our stove—happily doling out fried fish and green vegetables. Then at the packed kitchen table, Folk the only brother who didn't seem bemused by eating mackerel for breakfast. "I don't know. But I'm gonna leave mine a sec and take over so he can do his insulin and eat. You gonna be okay, boo?"

"Without you?" Rubi clutched his heart. "‘Suppose I better learn how to be one of these days."

"Why's that?"

"It'll keep."

The non answer was out of character for him, but as much as it hurt to leave his side, Oscar really did need to eat.

I bullied him into swapping places with me.

"I will eat yours," he said. "Don't forget these ones are cooking."

"How fucking dare you."

Oscar grinned and claimed my seat and my plate, dropping a giant dish of green vegetables on the table that only Folk seemed enthused about, but they'd all eat it. Skylar aside, Oscar could talk anyone into anything.

The chair at Rubi's other side was still empty. Folk noticed and closed the gap, leaving Ivy to her attempts to persuade Mateo to eat a fish eye.

She wasn't far off.

Mateo sent her a scarred grin. "I will if you will."

Decoy swiped Ivy's plate. "No fish puke in the car."

"Puke is a nasty word, daddy."

"That's my point, bug."

Ivy scowled.

Folk raised a brow. The barest fucking twitch.

But it was enough. She changed her mind, slipped out of her seat, and climbed into Decoy's lap to whisper something that made our gentle brother smile, and it made me wonder if moments like these were why I connected to Folk so well. The moments when he was more like my dad than even Cam ever was.

"River, my friend," Oscar warned. "Those fish are about to forget they have ever been wet."

Fuck. I rescued the fish and chucked them on a plate. Took them to the table, before I remembered the flame still lit beneath the pan.

By the time I came back, Folk had moved again, and someone had doctored my plate with enough vegetables to turn me into Popeye. On an ordinary day, I'd have known it was Rubi, but truth be told, this morning, it could've been anyone.

I ate while Oscar kept Rubi talking, fielding his curiosity about the numbers on his phone screen and what they meant. It left me plenty of time to glance around the table and notice how exhausted everyone else looked, even though Nash had been home since last night. Also, that every man at the table had the air of one who'd spent at least some of the past twenty-four hours fucking. I knew the signs: The faint hickie half-hidden by Decoy's collar and the languid chill in Folk's long limbs. The scorching stares Embry and Mateo slipped each other when they forgot they were in a room full of brothers.

Not Oscar, though. That dude had been off sex since he'd knocked up a barmaid four years ago.

As if he'd heard my thoughts, he rose to leave, doling out hugs to everyone like the regular ray of sunshine he'd always been in my life. The light I'd so desperately needed when I'd abandoned my family for the sake of the rage simmering in my blood. "Call me if you need me, my friend."

He left with my promise that I would.

Decoy and Mateo tag-teamed the washing up while Ivy climbed up Rubi's legs and into his arms.

Together, they were usually a whirlwind of trouble, but Ivy was a clever kid. Intuitive, like both of her dads. She talked Rubi into lying on the living room floor and trying to make shapes out of the shadows dancing on the ceiling.

Folk fell asleep watching them. It left me with Embry, but for once he didn't seem in the mood to dissect my brain. He helped me organise the engine parts I'd left scattered on the coffee table. Then he knocked out too, until Mateo woke him up to take him home.

Decoy let Folk be. "Your fridge is empty. I'll take Ives to do some shopping for you. I'll get him after."

"She can stay here if she wants."

Decoy grinned. "Nah, let him sleep."

I thought he meant Folk, but I'd apparently missed Rubi dozing off too. "Did those fish have benzos in them?"

"I think it's more it was the first real meal anyone's eaten in a week."

Decoy hugged me and drove away, taking Ivy with him. I considered the men still sleeping in the living room. Folk was on the couch, stretched out like a lion, peaceful enough for me to leave him.

Rubi looked like he'd died on the living room floor and it freaked me out enough to stand over him, considering my options. If we'd been alone, I might've woken him the best way, but Folk's presence wasn't the only reason I disregarded that. Yesterday, I'd goaded Rubi into sex before he'd gone out, and he'd come home in a worse state than when he'd left. He needed to rest, for real. I just had to figure out how to let that happen without him mauling his vertebrae on the fucking floorboards.

My brain was too busy to find a solution. And I'd worked on myself enough over the past year or so to know that wasn't going to change just because I wanted it to.

Folk was still out for the count, but his voice reached me all the same.

You barely slept last night. Acknowledge that.

Still didn't really know how, but I tried. I put a bottle of water next to Folk and covered him with a blanket.

Then I hustled Rubi from the floor with all the patience and grace I possessed and guided him upstairs. Not sure he even noticed, but he noticed me as we curled up in bed together. Wrapped his big body around me and buried his face my neck. "Love you, Riv."

I smiled as fatigue caught up with me. "I love you too, boo."