Page 3 of Love Thy Brother
He didn’t seem that worried about it. Or maybe he’d lost the will to care.
I rubbed his shoulder again. “You’re off your tits on painkillers. You’ll be all right when they wear off.”
“Hmm.”
“You want water?”
“I’ll fucking puke.”
“That a warning?”
“No.” Rubi drifted out, his hand in mine falling slack.
I wanted to shake him awake.
I still wanted toleave.
Instead, I sat in Skylar’s chair and watched Rubi sleep. Tracked the pain as it began to fade, a dull grimace replacing the sharp lines on his face. A dark cloud still hung over him, but when he opened his eyes againhourslater, he finally saw me.
“Fuck.” Rubi bolted upright. Like seeing me threw him from one nightmare into another. “What are you doing here? Is Cam okay?”
Always Cam. “What about you? Are you fucking okay?”
In the dim light of the room, Rubi stared, his gold-flecked eyes holding a mere shred of their usual potent power, but enough to arrest me. He took a breath and brought his shaky hands to rest on his head. “Don’t fuck with me, Riv. I feel like my skull did eight rounds with Lord Nashie and I can’t remember how I got here—fuck, just tell me. Please?”
The fear in his tired eyes did me in. The way he saidplease. The way he uttered that word had always been my undoing.
I forced my fisted hands to relax and gave him the truth. “You have concussion syndrome from that hit you took a couple of weeks back. The one you never saw a fucking doctor for. Skylar wouldn’t let Cam and Saint stay. Kicked them out. They were whole when they left, though.”
“They left together?”
“Yes.”
“No one else was with them?”
“Like who?”
Rubi closed his eyes, his standard deflection when I asked the worst questions. Questions I didn’t usually want answers to. But his reaction felt out of context. I’d meant Nash. Or my sister. Any other brother I didn’t give a shit enough about to name. There was no reason for him to fucking hide, and the sear of age-old frustration was brutal.
Violent.
I pushed the chair back with a rough scrape. “Fuck you.”
Rubi jumped, cracking one eye open, the other screwed so tightly shut I knew he was still in serious pain. “What’s the matter?”
“Are you serious?”
“I—shit.” Rubi covered his mouth, colour draining from his already pale face.
He’s gonna be sick.
I started forward, but Skylar got there first, appearing from nowhere and blocking Rubi from view as his body rebelled against whatever was happening to him.
It was messy and painful.
Traumatic. My stomach wrenched with every heave that wracked his strong body. Not because I wanted to puke along with him. Because it hurt so much to see him like this. To know that one way or another, it would never fucking end.
Defeat replaced the rage I so often struggled to contain. Skylar helped Rubi lie back on the bed and ghosted from the room.
