My lips parted, words filled with guilt and nonsense, ready to spill out when he laughed and carried on speaking.
“I’m only kidding, Mish. I know that’s not what you’re doing, and even if you were, I don’t fucking care.” He inhaled. One. two. Three puffs. “I don’t care if you want to treat me like your personal whore, so long as it stops you staying in the grief on your own. You do what you need to do to feel better and I will be here for the very fun ride.”
“I’m sorry.” I mumbled anyway, cheeks flush.
“What for? Because I feel good, all things considered. This is how we should always wake up, minus your nightmares, and add in our girl.” He blew out some smoke. “Just so you’re aware, I keep dreaming about fucking you whilst you fuck her, then swapping and doing the same thing again. So the second she’s home and up for it, you might wanna prepare yourself for a very long night of me playing God and making the most of life.”
I burst out laughing, just like he had wanted. Even if I was intrigued by his idea, I had no choice but to keep my tone calm and pretend that it totally wasn’t a huge deal and that I was only amused, and not mildly intrigued.
“Sounds good to me.” My lips parted to say more, but then the door knocked twice.
Considering it was the early hours of the morning, I hurried to my feet and opened it, finding my brother on the other side. He looked just as rough as I did – he hadn’t shaved in weeks,his eyes were dark and his knuckles had been busted open far too many times from how often he had spent hitting the punching bag in the gym. He’d been doing nothing but speeding Sapphire’s dune buggy around the sand dunes nearby, hitting the bag, or staring out the window in silence. God, he was barely doing any better than me, and I was worried.
His fingers were barely healing - his shoulder too. The bullet John O’Malley had put into him hadn’t been too bad, but it was still enough that Linc ought to have been doing nothing but resting. He should have been taking care of himself, not stressed about me, Kody, and everything else in the world.
“Beau just called a meeting.” Linc said, eyes on the ground, voice lifeless. “He’s got some fresh places he thinks we can check out, so he’s summoned us all outside, even though I know it’s early.”
Nobody said no to Beau Montana. Not that we wanted to say no when it was about Sapphire. But still – he wasn’t a man who waited for things he wanted, and we all knew to hurry our asses up. There was no time to waste, and Price and I scrambled to get ready, pretending that we weren’t watching my silent brother with his messed up fists clenched by his side and that hollow stare I knew I had in my own eyes whenever Price left me alone.
“You heard from mom?” I tried even though it was pointless. Even though it made the shattered pieces of my heart chip away just a touch more.
Linc froze for a moment before he shook his head and continued to stare at nothing in particular.
“Not a word beyond a text to say she needed space and time to heal. But Raya has guys watching her at all times since I asked for it last week, so I know she’s not dead or whatever.”
“Okay.” Price answered for me, knowing I wouldn’t be able to say a damn thing. “I reckon she’ll be home soon. But right now, I think we could bring Mish’s big whiteboard outside?Might help with whatever lead Beau has and give you guys something fun to argue over. So if you wanna do that, Linc, I can drag your brother’s sorry ass downstairs in a moment.”
Linc nodded and headed away from us, doing the task he had been assigned – yet another of the many distractions Price kept offering out to him when he thought nobody noticed. My brother had constantly been gifted a to-do list of some kind almost every morning, thanks to Price. He’d even roped Rika into helping ensure Lincoln behaved himself and did as he was told. Not that she needed much convincing. She was far too similar to Kody for her own good and seemed to like the darkness that came with gang life. It had taken no time at all for her to offer her talents and step into Kody’s shoes whilst he was out of service. Or step into his sniper role, I should have said. The shooting talents ran in the Kadar family, and she was just as lethal as her cousin. She hadn’t missed anything she’d aimed at yet and Lincoln had been more than happy to drive her places to play her wicked games with a long list of people Beau had marked for death.
I pulled a hoody over my head, hurrying to place a kiss against Price’s lips. “Thank you.”
“Don’t.” He kissed me again before he yanked on a pair of sweatpants. “I know you love me and I love you. I keep telling you that you don’t need to thank me for anything.”
“But I do.” My voice cracked. “I love you, Price. I have for years, even if I didn’t know just how much I meant it and I want to keep saying it because I have no idea when it could be the last time and I couldn’t live with myself if you didn’t know how much I cared about you if anything happened to one of us.”
He came to my side and trailed his knuckles over my cheekbone, smiling through the tears burning in his eyes. The ones that had been there for weeks, just on the verge of falling.
The ones he refused to shed when I was crying because he thought he needed to stay strong for me…
“And I love you more. So let’s get our asses down stairs and make both of us happier by finding our girl, okay? I have a good feeling about this lead.” He said the same thing with each lead we had – he said the exact same words each time we left the house to find Sapphire, no matter how many times we failed.
Price was seriously one of the best people I knew, and I couldn’t wait to do exactly as he said – find our girl and spend the rest of our lives being happy.
“Okay.” I smiled. “Let’s go rescue our girl.”
He offered me his hand, and I took it. I took it and let him lead me downstairs to the next of far too many sessions where we planned on how to rescue Sapphire and no doubt failed because she wasn’t going to be rescued.
Not by us, anyway.
We weren’t good enough for that, despite how hard we were trying.
We needed a miracle.
Chapter Ten
Smoke burned out the front of the car I had stolen in a whirlwind of gray. Or borrowed, I guess, seeing as I had the keys and permission to drive from the previous owner. Not that legal things bothered me so much, but I didn’t want to lie in the last few minutes of my life.
The front of the car was crushed, the bumper ruined. Bits of glass and metal crunched on the drive of my home as I groaned and did my best not to pass out.Again.I’d gone unconscious at least twice on my drive home. The first time had been for a second at best, and I’d only clipped a streetlight. It was fine and Yumi had even laughed in the passenger seat beside me as she stared around at her new freedom with an excitement that I wished I could muster up.
