Cash

I paced the living room, phone in hand, my back to the window, as I tried to block out the fact that it was getting dark and I still hadn’t heard from Rae. Damn it, it had been hours since I’d left him to face the police. Scooping the stingers and removing my name from the raid had been the right thing to do for his gang, but the sense that I’d abandoned him cut deep. Everything cut deep—every glance and touch, every moment we’d spent together. And now his absence from my side.

My absence from his back when shit was going off.

Heart thumping, I searched hard for the detachment I’d latched onto when I’d convinced myself that I wished I’d never met him. But it wasn’t there. Nothing was, except a searing anxiety that wouldn’t fade until I knew for sure that he was okay.

The front door opened and closed. Lucky came into the living room, raised an eyebrow, and disappeared.

He came back with a first aid kit. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh. If you let me clean it, I won’t ask you why.”

It seemed a fair deal. Lucky hustled me to the couch and sat me down. He touched the bruise on my face with gentle fingers, but they lacked the current of Rae’s—the magic—and I winced. “It’s just a bruise.”

“Not really, mate. It’s dripping down your face. Did you get clouted with something?”

“Thought you weren’t going to interrogate me?”

“I’m not. I’m ascertaining if you’re likely to fall into a coma over dinner.”

The boy was obsessed with food. I tried for a scowl, but failed because being a dick to Lucky was hard work. I loved him, and making him worry was at the bottom of my wanker list. “I didn’t get walloped. He missed.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Yeah, well. Think about what he actually wanted to do to me.” Unbidden, the face of the man who’d hit me flashed through my mind, and I shuddered. I’d known Rae’s crew was up against it, but these clowns weren’t playing around. They’d come at me with a crowbar and no fear, confident in the fact that nothing would happen to them if they left me bleeding in the ditch. That shit was scary. My only comfort was they’d caught me and not Rae.

Lucky sat back on his heels. “I’m worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not yourself.”

I laughed, bitter and mirthless. “Not myself? Fuckin-A, Luck. This shit is me. You think that bland motherfucker you eat fish fingers and drink tea with is a real person? You think that’s who I want to be?” I stood up and pushed past him. “You don’t know me. I wish you did, but you don’t.”

Retreating to my bedroom seemed like the end of the world, but Lucky followed me, brandishing my phone, which made me feel even worse.

He tossed it onto the bed and flopped down beside it, a clear indication that my Rae-induced tantrums weren’t enough to get rid of him. “I do know you,” he said. “I might not have your life story committed to memory, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know who you are.”

“You—”

“No. You don’t know everything about me either, and neither of us knows everything about Dom. That doesn’t make us strangers. And it doesn’t mean we’re not friends. Come on, mate. Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”

Defeat sank through me like a stone in a rushing river. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand up. I took my ruined coat off, dropped it on the floor, and lay down beside Lucky. “I forgot how consuming it is.”

Lucky propped himself up on one elbow. “The fox thing…what’s it called, sabbing?”

“Yeah.”

“I looked it up the other day.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry, Cash. I had no clue stuff like that still went down.”

My worry for Rae warred briefly with the fear that the hunt had gone ahead despite our stinger hit. That foxes, and anything else that had got in the way of the hunt, had been chased down and killed. “It’s not your fault.”

“Isn’t it? Perhaps if more people knew about it, it wouldn’t happen.”

“Of course it would. No one cares, Lucky. Hunting is a sport for the rich, and they rule the world. We can vote Corbyn or Green as much as we like, but it’s not gonna change.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Because I have to.” I closed my eyes.

Lucky rubbed my arm. “Can we do anything to help?”

“You can’t have this shit anywhere near Dom.”

“He won’t care about that,” Lucky said softly. “You’re not out there murdering people, are you?”

Not yet. I didn’t doubt for a second what I’d do if I saw someone come at Rae with a fucking crow bar, but I couldn’t think about that. Picturing him getting hurt would tip me over the edge. “Thanks, but I’m okay. The crew I’m working with could do with a serious dosh injection—facilities, equipment, somewhere to live instead of camping in a swamp—but I’d never take a penny from Dom, any more than you would.”

I had Lucky there. Dom was rich as fuck, but rarely managed to convince Lucky to let him buy him so much as a sandwich. It was no different for me.

As if on cue, Dom called from downstairs. “There’s food on the table if you two haven’t fallen asleep up there.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d knocked out with Lucky, but sleep was the last thing on my mind, and despite it all, I was famished.

We trooped downstairs. Dom had cooked pasta with all the cheese, but even that wasn’t enough to perk me up. I was slumped at the kitchen counter, scarfing it robotically, when my phone rang.

An unknown number flashed up on the screen. I stared at it, frozen in my seat, caught between the desperate need to know Rae was okay, and fear that it wasn’t him calling me at all.

Lucky reached around me and answered the call, setting it on speakerphone. “Yeah?” he said in a voice that wasn’t his at all, or anywhere close to mine.

Silence.

Then a slow chuckle I heard in my dreams. “Cash, it’s me.”

Dinner forgotten, I scrambled for my phone. “Just a sec.”

I turned the speakerphone off, and left the room, not daring to speak again until I was back in the relative sanctuary of my room. “Are you okay?”

Rae blew out a breath. “Fuck, yeah. We were caught up with the police all day, but they had nothing on us, and the hunt was called off. No one rode out, not even the terrier men for cubbing.”

“For real?”

“For real. I’d have let you know sooner, but they took our phones away. Don’t worry. We use burners and we’d just ditched the one you’d been contacting me on. I’m picking up a new handset for myself tomorrow. I’ll message you as soon as I get a SIM.”

I sank down on the edge of my bed. “That’s awesome that they cancelled the hunt. It doesn’t always work out that way.”

“Oh, I know,” Rae said. “And I know the stingers were a one-time thing. We won’t catch them out like that again.”

I touched my throbbing cheek. He was more right than I cared to admit, but it had been worth it to save just one fox.

“Anyway,” Rae went on when I failed to speak. “There’s more good news. The next hunt has been called off too, something to do with public order and risk to life. It won’t last, and I reckon they’ll try and sneak something in before then, but with all the attention we got today, we’ve probably got a few days grace before they come after us again.”

I wasn’t so sure. Even without evidence, the hunting community would know exactly who’d ruined their fun, and the police didn’t care enough to keep the peace for long. I needed Rae away from there and safe, even if it was just until the next action. “Come to London.”

“What?”

“London,” I repeated. “Come stay with me a couple of days.”

“We tried that before, remember? I was so fucked-up I thought your housemate was Dominic Ramos.”

I winced, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. Maybe Dom would go out. “Come on,” I said. “I have to work, but you can chill in my house, work on your blog, get some sleep in a real bed…”

“Always with the bed, aren’t you?”

It was my turn to chuckle. “It matters. I remember what it’s like to live so rough.”

Rae said nothing for a long moment.

Then he muttered something so softly I thought I’d imagined it.

“What was that?”

“I said,” he repeated. “If I come to London, I’m sleeping in your bed, with you. Think on it, and let me know.”