1
Saint
The window in Cam’s clubhouse bedroom looked out over the whole compound. Some nights when he was somewhere else, I let myself in and stood by the glass, watching and waiting. For what, I’d never figured out, but I couldn’t count the hours I’d lost to watching him.
Cam.
My brother.
My president.
His cottage by the sea was different. I’d never been inside before now, and my observations had been limited to coastal traffic and wildlife. Never him.
Never Alexei.
I sensed their presence before I opened my eyes, but a guttural sensation woke me with a jump all the same, a gasp that ripped from my scratchy throat.
Habitual panic squeezed my chest. It was rare that I didn’t wake up and think I was somewhere else, another time, another place, and my senses came to life too fast. I fought the bedsheets, shoving them away before a cold hand hit my chest.
“It’s okay, wingman. You are with Cam.”
That voice. Alexei. My eyes flew open. He was beside me, crouching on the floor next to the bed, and I couldn’t decide what surprised me more: that he was still there, or that I was there at all.
In Cam’s bed.
He’s hurt.
Heart slowing, I sat up. Alexei’s hand fell from my chest and he rose, stepping back. His retreat felt wrong, but I couldn’t rectify it until I knew Cam was okay. Until I knew for sure that the bullet he’d taken for the club hadn’t killed him.
Cam.
My gaze found him. He was next to me, asleep, like he had been the first and the last time I’d woken up in bed with him. Only difference was I wasn’t naked like I had been on those occasions, and Alexei had stayed.
Cam was naked, though, a fact I got no joy from as I leaned over to look at him properly. Nothing had happened when we’d crawled into bed together. He’d passed out in two seconds flat, and eventually, so had I.
Had Alexei slept?
Cam would want to know. I’d find out for him, just as soon as I knew he was still fucking breathing.
I inched closer, taking in the dressed gunshot wound on his shoulder and the sling supporting his arm. The slash mark on his cheek, and the raised contusion on his neck where he’d been stabbed with a needle. He won’t like that. A stupid fucking thought, but it was true. Cam could handle a bullet. In our world, it made sense. The rest of it was a violation that would haunt him forever. The lost hours, the confusion. He probably didn’t remember how sick he’d been after, but I did, and it haunted me too. I watched his chest rise and fall with steady breaths, but all I saw was it heaving as I’d held him up over the bar sink. His pained groan as the drugs had torn him up inside.
His peaceful face now didn’t seem real.
I touched his uninjured shoulder. His skin was cool, and it was so unlike him that my chest fucking burned.
A blanket was bunched around my waist. It hadn’t been there when I’d gone to sleep. I kicked it off, snagged it, and laid it over Cam. I wanted to cup his jaw and run my fingers through his messy hair, but despite everything we’d lived through, I still didn’t know how to touch him for no other reason than I wanted to.
Alexei returned to the bed. He came up behind me, his quiet footsteps louder than usual, so I heard him coming.
He reached around me and grasped my wrist, pushing my hand back to Cam’s skin. “It is good that he is cold. If he was warm, we would worry about infection.”
I knew that. It was me who’d broken into a clinic to steal the precautionary antibiotics we’d dosed Cam with while he’d been unconscious in the bar. But I felt Cam’s warmth in my dreams, and its absence scared me.
“Come.”
Alexei backed off and beckoned me from the bed. He was dressed in Cam’s sweatpants and a T-shirt that must’ve been River’s, as it was too small to be Cam’s. Me? I was rocking the same grimy jeans I’d rolled in with. Only my shirt was missing.
I need a shower.
Perhaps that was where Alexei was taking me. He liked things clean and tidy.
Except blowjobs.
And sex.
Don’t think about sex.
Alexei led me downstairs and to the kitchen I’d never been in.
It was very Cam.
It was warm.
Alexei opened the fridge and pointed at the contents. “He will need to eat, and I am a terrible cook.”
I couldn’t imagine Alexei being terrible at anything, except maybe being nice to people he didn’t like. I wasn’t good at that either.
Cam is. It was why Cracker had survived so long.
Why Alexei had killed him instead.
“Saint. Come on now. You do not have to talk, but at least look in this food dungeon and tell me you know what to do.”
Food dungeon? I joined Alexei at the fridge and peered not inside, but at him. “You’re not hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Clearly.”
He sounded annoyed, but it was hard to tell if it was with me and my fat tongue, or with himself for not knowing what to do with the farmers market Cam kept in his fridge.
It was hard to tell anything about Alexei, and as twisted as it was, I liked that about him. He made me think. Made me look deeper at just about everything.
Whether he knew it or not, he made me stronger.
Was it wrong that I thought he was cute?
Maybe. This dude was a stone-cold killer. A hitman for the Russian mob. Wanting to pinch his cheeks and make him smile was fucking weird.
“I can make omelettes.” I pointed at the eggs. “With green shit. He always wants the green shit.”
“For himself or for you?”
“You really do know him, don’t you?”
Alexei fished spinach and mushrooms from the fridge, leaving me to grab the eggs. “I am trying, and it is not so hard. He is open to those he wants to be. It is you that puzzles me.”
I opened my mouth to ask him why, but nothing came out. An imaginary brick blocked my throat and the words scrambled in my head.
Alexei’s stare turned owlish. “Do you have your phone?”
The question seemed off topic. I frowned and patted my pockets. Somehow, it was still stuffed in my jeans.
I held it up.
He jabbed a finger at the blank screen. “If you want to talk and you can’t.”
I wasn’t used to anyone being so direct. Most people got bored and wandered off, or assumed I had nothing to say.
Cam was patient when he had the time.
Ragey as hell when he didn’t.
Alexei’s easy acceptance unnerved me. I waited for cold-hot embarrassment to flood me, but nothing happened. Alexei waited as if it was the most normal thing in the world to text him when he was right in front of me.
I opened my phone, tapped the screen, then held it up to show him.
Saint: why?
“Why do you puzzle me?”
I nodded.
Alexei pointed at the stove. I followed his direction and joined him there. “You are hard to read. Not about Cam, but with everything else.”
Saint: the club?
“No.”
Everything else. He meant him. And Cam. And me.
The three of us.
Saint: I can’t read me either, but you can’t talk about being cryptic AF
Alexei smiled and opened a cabinet. He found a frying pan and held it up to me.