Page 144 of Love Thy Brother
His brows shot up, as surprised as I was by my best attempts at being a reasonable human.
It encouraged him to venture closer and sit on the landing beside me, peering at the paperwork I’d spread out. “There’s ways to get the insurance to pay out, you know.”
“Alexei said.”
“You don’t want to take him up on it?”
“On hacking the system and committing insurance fraud?”
“If you want to call it that.”
“It’s what it is. And no, I don’t. What about all the people who don’t have an Alexei to call on? Me getting money I shouldn’t costs everyone in the end.”
“That’s very fucking noble, but what makes you believe you shouldn’t have it? You didn’t ask for some dipshit yuppies to screw up your life.”
Nope. But I already had fifty Gs of Timmerson money squirrelled in an offshore account. I’d let Alexei do that for me, so I could replace the chopper, and anything and everything that had belonged to Axel and Bear. I didn’t need anything else. “If they pay, they pay. Let it be, Cam. I don’t want to fight you anymore.”
Cam sighed and lay back on the landing carpet, closing his eyes. He always had a scruffy jaw, but there was a week’s worth of growth there now, and even with his eyes shut I could tell he was knackered.
It almost made me forgive him for sending Rubi away.
Yearning squeezed my soul. While Cam zoned out, I picked up my phone, opening the meandering message thread I shared with Rubi. Honestly, I’d spent more time texting in the last two days than I had in the past year. It was seven shades of ridiculous, but that skip in my heart every time my phone buzzed was keeping the strangled organ in my chest alive.
It had been quiet for the last hour or so, though. Rubi was driving. He’d asked me for a playlist to irritate Nash with. I’d sent him a compromise. Winding up Nash was his favourite pastime, but I wanted them to talk. So I was making a playlist to annoy Rubi too. At least, I was trying to. There wasn’t much he didn’t like. I’d learned that in bed with him.
“What are you doing?”
“Hmm?”
Cam rolled closer and peered at my phone screen. “Since when are you into Serbian rap?”
“It’s to piss Rubi off.”
“Find something without words then, or he’ll learn it and sing it back to you every day for the rest of your life.”
Valid. I kept scrolling Spotify. I figured Cam would get bored and piss off, but he sat and watched me for long enough that my resolve to be nicer to him began to crack. “Don’t you have anywhere else to be?”
“I live here, bro.”
Also valid. “Where’s Saint?”
“Resting downstairs.” Cam’s gaze flickered. At my frown, he elaborated. “He had a hospital appointment today. That’s why I didn’t take the haulage run myself, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. Everything okay with Saint?”
Cam nodded. “All good. He’s been discharged from the outpatient clinic.”
“What’s the face for then?”
“I hate that he had to go through that. It fucks with my head.”
I thought about giving Cam a hug, but my phone buzzed and instantly distracted me.Rubi. But no. It was Orla. I showed the message to Cam. “She’s coming over.”
“Fuck.” Cam scrambled to his feet. “Tell her to be quiet and come in the back.”
I relayed the message and gathered my shit together. Cam disappeared. I followed him a minute later and crept through the living room where Saint was knocked out on the couch, his real-lifecatwatching over him. It was a weird sight for me. Him sleeping—not the cat. In all the years I’d known him, I couldn’t remember a time before he got hurt that I’d ever seen it.
Fucking hell, this life.
