RIVER

RIVER

Tam, the sexy French dude, can be found in Christmas On Stardust Lane.

Saint: make it 2 hrs

I rolled my eyes at the message. After the interrogation Saint had given me about my intentions, now he was the one stretching a ten minute task over half a day.

Not that I was complaining. My destination was twenty minutes from Firefly Hill, and I didn't want to hit and run. I had a better relationship with my nearly ex than that, a friendship I respected more than a five minute chat in exchange for a favour.

Didn't stop me giving Saint shit, though.

Shit that he one-hundred percent ignored.

Git .

I put my phone away and revved my engine, eager to close the short distance between the kerb I'd pulled up on to read Saint's text, and the ramshackle house at the end of the cute street with the ridiculous name.

Stardust Lane.

Daft, right? But it suited Tam Dubois, even if he still rocked the biker look as well as any Rebel King.

Ex-Rebel King .

On paper, at least. I'd never been able to tell what it meant to Tam—him patching out had made zero difference to our friendship. I loved this bloke. He was my brother.

Your brother that you used to fuck.

A million years ago, but yeah.

Smirking, I rumbled to a stop outside the old house. It had grown since I'd last been here, the annex in the garden extended to be more than the shed it had been before. The ivy cut back, new grass laid around a path of fresh gravel.

I slipped through the front gate. Ferocious barking greeted me and a tiny tan-and-white meat missile belted from the open door of the main house, leaping up my legs, teeth bared.

Laughing, I scooped up the little dog and tucked it under my arm. "Tam? Your guinea pig escaped again."

I heard my old friend chuckle before I saw him. Heard his bare feet on the rustic floorboards of his house.

Then he appeared, all six-two of him, hair as dark as mine hanging messy round his rugged face, his russet brown eyes as warm as an open fire. "Salut, mon frère."

"Hey." I waved my free hand in greeting, keeping his rabid gerbil contained. "I wasn't sure you were home."

"I'm always home." Tam said something else in French. Then he stepped back, waving me in as I set the dog down and let it scamper away to terrorise the weevils.

His house was the chillest place on earth; he didn't give a fuck about grubby boots clomping on his rustic floors. But I kicked them off anyway, letting the weathered wood do its work, grounding me, like Rubi's house— our house —did when I came home from a long day or night, steering myself to the kitchen on instinct.

Tam was already there, fucking with the stove kettle, opening the cupboards for the sugary snacks he knew I couldn't resist.

He dropped a box of mini rolls on the counter. "It's like I knew you were coming."

"Liar." I swiped the box and shoved a whole cake in my mouth. "You love these."

Tam grunted, not arguing, and slid a mug of tea my way. Then he sobered. "Why are you here? Everything okay?"

He wasn't the kind of dude I could lie to and not die inside. And I was done with that feeling for a while. Waiting at the end of the phone while Nash had been in surgery for hours had ruined me. But in the same vein, Tam didn't need to hear all that. He had enough bad memories of his own.

I went with a sanitised version of the truth, leaving out the parts that would dull the spark in Tam's warm gaze. "Nash is home now," I finished up. "Me and Saint just rode up to get some shit we left at a friend's place."

Tam took it all in, eying me over the rim of his own mug. "They don't keep you in hospital for a week over a couple of bruises, Riv. Try again."

I ate more cake.

Tam shook his head, letting it go. "Give Nash my love."

"I will."

"Good. Now tell me why you're really here. Unless it's something shady, cos I'm not about that life anymore."

"You never were."

Tam's smile returned. "Not on purpose, eh?"

I balled up my cake wrappers, feeling that as much as I had everything else over the past few days—the past week , or however long it had been since our lives had been turned upside down all over again. Why were the worst things always the shit we hadn't prepared for?

A stack of thick card caught my eye. "What are you working on at the moment?"

"Don't do that."

"What?"

Tam reached for the stack and plucked a few sheets from the top to pass to me. "Don't deflect me. If you need something, ask. The worst I'll say is no. Unless I need to call you a cunt for whatever it is."

The sheets he'd passed me were watercolour designs for Christmas cards, swirling letters and delicate brush strokes, hypnotic and soft. "I need you to forge Rubi's signature for me."

Tam set his mug down. "Why?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

I chewed my lip.

Tam's stare hardened to a frown. "Brother, if you want me to do something shady enough to fuck up my whole life, you need to tell me why."

"It's not shady. I'd never bring that shit to your door—you know that."

"I don't believe you." Tam kept his tone mild, belying the iron will I knew he possessed. "Don't act like I don't know how the life works. Or how hard you'd bend for your family. River, this is me."

Nothing he said was wrong, and yet when it came to spitting this truth, the words stuck in my throat as much as they had about Nash and Cam's accident.

I felt like Saint, and that tossed my stomach. Sometimes I envied the brother no one expected a straight answer from. Then moments like this landed on my head and the reality of what he lived with kicked me in the dick. Love you, brother . "It's not shady." I repeated myself, spreading my hands, coming in peace. "On Rubi's life, I swear. I just want him to be ready for something I haven't asked him to do yet."

Tam's frown deepened, but with thought more than suspicion, and I knew he'd figure it out. This fucker was as clever as he was hot, and that's why he was the one notch on my bedpost that Rubi ever bitched about. Because he knew how sound this dude was. How nice. How sweet, beneath the sexy as hell exterior, and maybe it rattled him to think about how different my life could've been if I hadn't been born to love only him.

I had those thoughts too. Not about Tam, or even myself, but about Rubi. He was stop traffic gorgeous with the brains to match. My beautiful boo coulda ruled the world.

"All right. I'll do it."

I blinked.

Tam waved a hand in front of my face. "Wow. You're all in on this, aren't you?"

"On the thing we're not going to talk about?" A nervous grin split my face. "Yeah, I'm all in."

"Good for you." Faint sadness laced Tam's words, but his grin was pure. "Let me grab the right pen and sketch this shit out."

I left an hour later with a bellyful of tea and everything I needed, my heart bolstered by friendship and nostalgia. This place…we'd never fucked here. That shit had come years before Tam had quit club life. But somehow, his cosy white house still held an element of home that I knew Rubi would love whenever he got round to forgetting Tam was the first bloke I'd ever let fuck me.

"Should've been me, Riv. It'll kill me forever that it wasn't."

It wouldn't. There were better reasons to die. But I got his point. Neither of us had been anywhere close to celibate, and sometimes I wished I'd been the only soul to ever fuck him too.

I didn't wish away my time with Tam, though. He'd taught me a lot and I knew I loved Rubi better because of it.

It started to rain as the lay-by where Saint waited for me came into view. I expected to ride up on him tilting his face to the sky like the weirdo he was, but instead I found him head down, examining something in the palm of his hand. A ring, I realised as I cruised to a stop beside him, fashioned from a copper coin in the same style as the wedding rings Embry and Mateo wore. "Where did you get that?"

Saint just stared, not even pretending he had any intention of answering.

A sigh breached my lungs. "Whatever. You ready to go?"

He nodded, his gaze intensifying, feeling me out without using his words, but despite the affinity I'd felt for him earlier, I jammed my helmet on, cutting him off. If he wasn't going to share, neither was I.

We hit the road, taking it easy in the frosty drizzle, Saint setting a speed that let me know he was thinking about the last time we'd had brothers on these roads in the rain as much as I was. That keeping a promise to the people we loved outweighed the smothering need to get home to them as fast as our hogs would carry us.

It turned a three hour zoom into a four hour crawl and darkness had crept in by the time we crossed the Devon border, rush hour traffic adding to the bullshit that slowed us down.

Saint veered off piste, onto farmland dirt tracks, carving out his own path.

I followed without question, heart aching with every second I was away from Rubi—a dull, throbbing pain that wouldn't ease until I saw him again.

Saint jumped a hump on the path, his hog lighter than mine.

I steered around it, cursing as mud splattered my mismatched boots before I remembered I didn't give a shit.

It felt like a thousand years had passed by the time Whitness appeared in the distance.

The compound.

Cam's house.

Rubi's.

Ours.

The envelope from Tam burned a hole in my pocket, reminding me I had to think of somewhere to hide it before I forgot it existed and Rubi found it in the washing machine. I took a deep, petrol-scented breath and tried to cling onto the functioning adult that had picked up the phone to Alexei this morning.

For the most part, I succeeded and hatched a plan to hide the envelope with my Pop Tart stash in the cellar. The rest of me got distracted by the route Saint took through town until I realised he was leading me to Juana's house.

We pulled up outside and rolled off our hogs. The front door opened and Rubi barrelled out with Hope half asleep in his flour-dusted arms. "Oi. You've been fucking ages. Where've you been?"

"Shopping." Saint dropped the copper ring in Rubi's hand. "You're welcome.

He relieved Rubi of the baby and went inside.

Rubi stared after him, bemused, but compared to the last few days, so fucking alive that I didn't give a shit that he had flour all over him, I bulldozed my way into his orbit anyway.

He laughed, booming and loud, spinning me in a slow circle. "I dreamed about this."

"About what?"

" This ." He kissed me right there on the street, crowding me against a lamppost. "Tasting sugar on your lips while you grin like you're actually pleased to see me."

"I am pleased to see you."

"I know. That's why you're the most magical dragon that ever lived."

"Why don't you have any dragon tattoos?"

"Ran out of room, innit." Rubi dusted flour into my hair. "Where did you really go today?"

"You know where I went."

"I know where you were supposed to go, but you're way too chill for someone who supposedly spent their whole day dealing with Chattypants in mission mode."

People thought Saint was the perceptive one. Alexei. Even Folk. But Rubi saw things too, especially in me. "I stopped by Tam's place."

"French Tam?" Rubi's gaze narrowed. " Hot Tam? With the hair and the sparrow tats?"

"You know who he is."

"He all right?"

"Yeah."

"Is he still all cute and shit?"

"Probably. I didn't really notice."

Rubi folded his full lips into a pout that was too ridiculous for me to take seriously.

I kissed it away. "I missed you."

His face brightened, mischief twinkling in his hazel eyes. "Enough to duck out of this shindig before the washing up so we can go home and fuck?"

"If that's what you want. What shindig is this anyway?"

"Liliana's birthday."

I winced. "Damn. I forgot about that."

"Yeah, but that's why you have me. So the Victorian school matron that rules my brain can wrangle the chimp on a skateboard that lives in yours."

"Chimp?"

"Shh." Rubi spun me around again. "Don't get lairy. It's my turn to do the rage banging."

"Feeling ragey, boo?"

Rubi tipped his head back and laughed. "Never."