RUBI - Part Two

RUBI - PART TWO

Saint had always been a brother who slept like a battle-ready hood rat. Then he'd got hurt and that part of him had never been the same. It was the oddest thing to pad around my house, make the fucking tea, and him not wake up.

Almost as odd as him kipping on the floor next to a perfectly good sofa, and it's what I went with when curiosity—and concern—got the better of me after six minutes of pondering it. "What's wrong with the couch?"

Saint blinked, eyes flashing open, his forest-green stare pinning me so fast it was hard to believe he'd been asleep?—

Oh.

Maybe he hadn't.

But as he sat up and rubbed his face, he didn't seem particularly awake either.

I tried again, crouching beside him now I was sure he wouldn't roll over and belt me. "I have beds upstairs, you know. Or you could've slept on the couch."

Saint shot me a dry look.

"Something wrong with my couch?"

In answer, he got up and moved around me, disappearing into the downstairs bathroom. The quiet click of the door should've been a cue to leave him be, but Saint had been gone for days, on the back of being MIA for a week of straight up madness. And he'd come here—to me, instead of Nash and Orla—for a reason.

In the bathroom, the shower turned on.

I took it as license to poke through Saint's things. The boots and riding jacket he'd tucked beneath the windowsill, complete with an empty bottle of Kraken Black and a weed tin I hadn't seen in forever.

Fuck me. Had Chattypants been on a bender?

Looked that way, but Mother of Dragons, I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen Saint drunk, and he hadn't smoked since the warehouse fire had burned his lungs out.

I refolded his jacket and plunked the bottle back in his boot. He'd know I'd seen it, but the ritual gave me time to think. To consider the keys tucked in Saint's other boot and the whereabouts of whatever bike he'd been riding while he'd been gone.

The bathroom door opened. I felt Saint step out, cos there was no hearing this silent dragon.

He came back to his stuff and stared at it.

Then he stared at me.

I held my hands up, noting he wasn't even remotely wet from his supposed shower. "I'm a nosy cunt and I don't care. Did you ride here?"

Slowly, Saint shook his head.

"How did you get here then?"

"I…don't know."

The pause wasn't a speech fumble. It was genuine confusion, and it dawned on me then that Saint hadn't been on a bender. He was still on one, and what Riv had seen this morning wasn't him fucking sleeping. It was him passed out on the floor.

Holy Khaleesi.

"All right." I rose and took my chances touching him, curved an arm around his waist and gave him a gentle push towards the stairs. "Come have a kip in the spare room and we can talk about it later."

"I don't need to sleep."

"Lie down, then. Rest. Snuggle a pillow. Whatever. Just humour me, okay?"

Couldn't say for sure that he did, but somehow I managed to tame him enough to get upstairs and into the room I kept made up for stray brothers. It was at the back of the house, cool and quiet. I hadn't put it together with Saint in mind, but I knew in my heart it was the kind of space he needed right now if he was going to stay indoors.

And it was a big fucking if .

I moved to stand by the window. "Don't even think about it."

Saint peered at some artwork on the wall, ignoring me. Then something seemed to creep up on him and he swayed on his feet, and for a tub of disgraceful bulk, I had some legs on me.

I caught him with a thousand words of comfort bubbling up my throat, but I knew better and swallowed them down, letting Saint lean on me until he didn't need to anymore. "How about that lay down, eh?"

Saint sat on the edge of the bed, eyes heavy. "No."

"You're knackered. And twatted off your nut. You need a kip and a hot dinner. Or I'm calling the cavalry."

Meaning Cam.

Meaning Alexei.

Meaning Orla .

One text and they'd all be here, with Nash and Locke in tow. And if there was one thing Saint would hate more than whatever had driven him to this state, it was being the centre of attention.

He relented. I fetched him some clean clothes from the stash I kept for moments like these—Cam's clothes, cos Saint didn't have enough of anything to have spares—and made him a cup of tea. He was out before he drank it, and it was my moment to creep away and let the world know he was safe. That he was home. But leaving Saint felt as impossible as it always was to leave Riv when he was sleeping, and so I stayed, plonking myself next to him and watching quiet shit on the telly until it occurred to me that River might've already told someone Saint was here.

But as the morning slipped away and no raging Russians or tetchy Irishmen roared up the road, it became obvious that he hadn't. And I had to wonder why. Cam hadn't said much about Saint's absence, but we all knew it was killing him, which in turn was killing everyone who cared about him, mainly the mad accountant who I knew for sure had not consumed a morsel of food since Saint had blown out of the safe-house and not come back.

Tell them he's home .

It was the right thing to do, but something stopped me, and it irritated me beyond belief that I didn't know what.

Saint made a sound that could've been a groan.

I turned my head on the pillow and he was staring right at me, gaze alert enough that I knew for sure that he'd been off his box earlier. "There you are. Hungry?"

Saint shook his head.

Nope. Not happening. "Then you'd better be in the mood to fake it."

I swear to God, he almost smiled. So I left him and went downstairs to raid my kitchen for a Saint-proof hangover cure.

Toast. More herbal tea.

I wasn't Cam. I didn't have all the answers in a bag of potatoes.

He ate it, though. So I took the win and got back into bed with him. "This is weird," I mused. "I do this with Nashie all the time, but never you. Are you hanging that much that you can't find the energy to escape me?"

"I don't want to escape you."

"No?"

"I came here."

It was my turn to stare until Saint got fed up with my scrutiny.

He'd sat up to eat the toast. Now, he lay down and shut his eyes again and with a flicker of sunlight filtering through the heavy blackout curtains, I took note of how pale he was. Of the faded bruising on his arms. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Sure about that? The others were all battered. Even the mad accountant."

Saint opened his eyes, those forest-green gangster magnets spearing me with lethal intensity.

I held up my hands. "Just bruises. He let Locke check. Cam's ribs are fucked, though. Any more hits and he's going to need an iron lung."

A bad joke, but it didn't matter. Saint rarely found me funny regardless, and he looked away now, but not before he let me see the emotions rise in his weary gaze.

Worry.

Grief.

Anger.

I opened my mouth, but he rolled from the bed and left the room before I could speak, disappearing into the bathroom to lose the toast he'd likely eaten to shut me up. And as the minutes ticked by, I realised it was more than that. Saint didn't drink anymore. He didn't smoke. But he'd done a lot of both before he'd Sainted into my house and knocked out on the floor and his body didn't like it at all .

He came back without Cam's favourite Slayer t-shirt and looking like death. He lay down with a fine sheen of cold sweat on his skin, and honestly, it scared me.

I put a hand to his forehead. "You're pretty warm there, brother. Is this more than a hangover?"

Nothing. But he didn't knock my hand away. If anything, he curled closer to me, and if I'd been scared before, I was fucking terrified now.

Saint had no spleen and Dr Google had told me the risk of that leading to a deadly infection was highest in the first?—

Shaky fingers wrapped around my wrist. "Stop."

"I will not." I held his hand instead and rubbed his shoulder. "If you didn't want to be mothered, you should've gone to Mateo or got into bed with Ranger."

"Shh."

Fecking outrageous. But I let it slide and stayed with him while he drifted between his weird brand of sleep and chucking his guts up. By the time he fell asleep for real, it was late and River should've been home.

My phone was downstairs.

I eased out of bed, leaving Saint to sleep with his back to the door and a pillow tugged over his head in the same position as Ranger when I'd last seen him, blocking the world out. The stairs creaked as I descended with bare feet, but despite Saint not being much of a sleeper, I couldn't see him waking up any time soon.

It took me a hot minute to find my phone abandoned down the side of the couch. Texts lit up the screen. Dozens of them. Work. Family. More work.

I scanned through them, trying to give a rat's fuck about haulage runs and a timber load that had rolled off a rig on the M40, and praising a god I didn't believe in that Deeky had dialled out of holiday mode to fix everything for me. That Mats and Em were spending the night on the compound so I didn't have to. Cursing up an internal storm as River's messages reached the top of the queue.

River: Staying with Orla tonight

Oh, hell no.

Rubi: WHY?

River: You know why

Rubi: Do I?

River: He needs you

Saint.

Of course.

Rubi: He's asleep

River: Exactly

Rubi: You're gonna have to be more specific

River: Think about it

Rubi: No. Come home. Maybe he needs you too

River: I'll be back in the morning

A sigh rattled me. In my heart, I knew Riv was right, and that I had the tiniest window left to give Saint whatever he'd sought me out for. And that if I couldn't, there was every chance he'd leg it again. But River was my soul. I needed him to feel whole and I hated the thought of him sleeping without me wrapped around him like a giant needy limpet.

My phone buzzed again.

Nash: did u have a barney?

Rubi: With who?

Nash: river

Rubi: No

Nash: why's he here then?

Rubi: Your cooking is better

I knew Nashie. If I closed my eyes, and I did, I could picture him on Orla's fancy couch, scrunching his cute face up in a frown as he saw through my bullshit, his thumb hovering over the call button.

Fuck it.

Rubi: Take your phone to the bog

Nash: hang on

Nash: i'm here

Rubi: Saint showed up. Don't tell anyone

Nash: he ok?

Rubi: Not really. He needs some time

Nash: what can I do?

Rubi: Keep people occupied. And take care of my River

Nash: i have him. love you xx

Rubi: Love you, Nashie xx

Nash went offline. I dropped my phone on the coffee table and stared into space until a tea mug appeared beside it.

Saint.

He was awake and dressed in his own clothes again.

Shit.

" No ." I surged to my feet. "Don't leave, unless you're going home. Is that what you're doing?"

Saint evaded my attempt to get in his face, gaze darting to the doors, and the windows, already half way to any exit he could think of.

I blocked his path. "Please?"

I'd never know if I got my way because I was biblically persuasive, or he was still too tired to fight me. Either way, he sank onto the couch with the sigh of a stroppy teenager, and I was here for it.

"Why the bender, brother? It wasn't your style even before you lost an organ to that fire."

Saint's gaze flickered. "It's what I used to do. Before…when Cam did shit that pissed me off."

"Before Alexei?"

He nodded.

I waited.

Saint treated me to several false starts before he elaborated. "It's why it works…three of us. There's always someone to fill in the gaps."

"Why can't that work for this? Alexei's angry too."

Saint shook his head.

"It's different?"

He drank some of my tea and pulled a face at the sweetness.

I risked a finger and poked him. "Get your own then."

"Get off me."

I relented. Waiting.

Saint leaned forward, gaze fixed on the unlit log burner. "Alexei would've done what Cam did if he'd thought of it first. I thought he had, and I was okay with it because he's never pretended he wouldn't do something like that to me."

"So…you're used to it from him and that makes it okay?"

"No, but… fuck ."

"It hurts less from Alexei? Because you expect it from him?"

Saint shrugged, frustration seeping from him.

I gave him a minute and tried to piece together what he was telling me, so I could spare him the effort of grinding the words out. But Saint…damn. In a life that a band of complex lairy Russians now bounced around in, he remained the hardest fucker to predict. "What Cam did was fucked up, but you have to believe it was for the right reasons."

Saint snagged my phone from the coffee table and tapped in the code I'd changed yesterday . He opened the notes app and typed out a message.

What are the right reasons?

"I don't know," I admitted. "He hasn't told me. But I'd bet my ballsack it was something to do with him being willing to die or go to prison forever so the rest of us didn't have to."

Anger flared in Saint's gaze again. Deep anger. And I understood it. He loved Cam enough that in his mind, if anyone should've made that sacrifice, it should've been Saint himself. But no one was going to win that argument. It was the never-ending conundrum of who loved who the most and there were no losers. In the love game, somehow we'd all come out winners.

Even Ranger.

I let Saint simmer down and got up to make him the tea he actually liked. Set it down in front of him with the real question. "What are you so afraid of?"

Saint stared, twitching for the exit again.

I crouched in front of him and dropped my elbows on his knees, as if I could ever weigh enough to pin him down. "Whatever it is, it's going to be okay."

"Is it?"

"Course it is. Everything passes, Sainty, I promise."

"You sound like Embry."

"That a good thing?"

No answer, not even from the phone, and I had to ask. "Why didn't you go to the good father? He's better at this than I am."

"Better for Cam."

"Not you? He might've helped you puzzle this out quicker."

He typed a message. I didn't come here for the answers.

Because he'd come here for comfort, I realised. For tea, toast, and a conversation that solved nothing. Fuck-a-duck, I was going to cry.

I rose, trusting him not to flee, and loaded myself a pipe to calm myself down.

Saint stayed put, watching.

"You want some?"

He blanched, shaking his head.

I grinned and took the hit before I returned to him with a clarity I'd lacked before. "It's because they're so different, isn't it? That's what scares you?"

Saint wrestled with the words and ground them out like broken glass. "They need different things and I can't keep up. And when I don't keep up, shit like this happens and one of them dies."

"No one's died."

"This time."

"And maybe it's the last time. We've run out of people to fight."

"Getting hit by a lorry had nothing to do with that."

I flinched, like I always did when I thought of that fuck-awful night. "All right, so there might be a thousand HGVs out there waiting to squash every one of us. But you can't fight that, brother. You can't protect them from everything, or even from how much they love you."

"He lied."

"Yeah. And he'll probably do it again one day. I guess you have to decide if you can live with that or not."

Saint laughed, dull and without humour. It deadened the air, and I needed a minute.

I went back to the kitchen and hacked up more bread. He needs to eat.

True story. But the few minutes it took me to butter some toast was time I didn't have. I returned to an empty couch and an open back window.

Chattypants was gone.