Page 34 of Love Thy Brother
“I need you, Riv. I love you.”
The world caught up with me. That dragging thud in my chest. The sweltering sensation that somehow left me cold.
I kept pushing through the crowd until I came to the side door and slipped outside.
Fresh air hit me. The spiky wind. I turned my face to it and snatched a breath, fighting the destructive panic Rubi had already seen overwhelm me in the last twenty-four hours. Before that, it had been a couple of years. Goddamn, this week was the gift that kept giving.
The Joker was the most southerly point in Porth Luck. It sat on the harbour front, its garden stretching all the way to the wall where smaller fishing boats docked and sold their catch. Some nights you could hear the Bosanko boat rolling in, Sol and Oscar singing their hearts out, already two beers deep before they hit the shore.
But it was all quiet tonight. Too quiet, and silence bred bad decisions.
“All right, mate. You want anything?”
I spun around. Jonsey leered at me, gold tooth glinting in the starlight. Other people were scared of him. To me, he was nothing but a dickhead with a pharmacy in his pockets.
Don’t do it.
Fuck it. “What have you got?”
“Ket. Mandy. Bit of bubble, but it ain’t the best.”
Like I was a connoisseur of shit drugs. Was that all my life had amounted to? Sometimes I justified it by the sober weeks I spent with Oscar and his kid. Then he’d go away again, and I’d be right back here, not giving a fuck if the next pill I took was my last. “Give me the ket.”
Jonsey nodded and reached into his coat, but before he could pull anything out, a thick, tattooed hand wrapped around his throat andlaunchedhim over the harbour wall.
I blinked.
Twice.
On my second go, Rubi appeared like Odin’s angry twin, more furious than I’d ever seen him. “Are you fucking serious? One tough conversation and you go running to that cunt? Do you know who brings that crap in? What they cut it with? Because I don’t, and I’ll slit my own balls before I let you near it.”
“Letme?” I chanced a glance over the harbour wall. Jonsey was swimming for the steps. “Even if that was a legitimate thing, I’ve been near it every week for months now. If it was gonna kill me, I’d be dead already.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? Truth hurt? Like it does when you fuck someone and they say they don’t remember?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Isn’t it? Actually, I don’t fucking care.”
I pushed past him, half an eye on Jonsey as he heaved himself out of the water.
He didn’t look at Rubi.
No one did. Only Skylar would dare, and he was already walking away, letting the pub door bang shut behind him.
I took the hint and walked on by, leaving the harbour behind, heading home for no other reason than I lacked any better ideas.
Rubi followed me to my front door, and this time I did feel him, in my tingling skin and skipping pulse. In the warmth that was so different from the cold heat of unfounded panic.
Despite everything, it calmed me.
Put me in a coma, actually, cos somehow he beat me to my front door.
I sighed and sank onto the low drystone wall. “Is this how it’s gonna be? I can’t take a piss without you standing on my dick?”
Rubi wove his arms across his chest, shoulders banded tight. In the dark, it was hard to see his face, but the heat that flashed in his gaze was hotter than Venus for the split second it was there. “Pretty much. I came here to stop someone else raising hell, but I’ll fightyouif I have to, every step of the way.”
