Cash

There was zero chance of me leaving this bed while Rae was pressed against my back, his cheek resting on my shoulder as he slept. It was truly something else, and I drifted along in a Rae-daze until my alarm and a message chose to sound off at the same time.

My arm shot out and I shut the alarm off. The message was from Lucky.

Lucky: stay put. i got your morning.

God, I loved that boy.

Cash: i love u

Lucky: tell someone else one day

Little shit.

I ditched the phone and closed my eyes, absorbing the comforting warmth of Rae wrapped around me, and the way his hand tangled loosely in my hair. Even with his cock digging into my back, it was more intimate than horny—a fact that made my heart jump for multiple reasons. Fear stood out, this was too much, too close, but the sensation of him touching me overrode it all. Rae turned my head upside down.

As though the chaos rattling around my brain had penetrated his consciousness, Rae stirred. He made a soft sound, brushed his lips to my neck, then he rolled away.

I mourned the loss and shifted to face him. He paused in the act of checking his phone and offered a tousled grin. “All right?”

“Yeah. You?”

His smile widened. “I am now you don’t seem to be regretting having me kip in your bed. I can’t figure out if you’re the type to get nervous about shit like that.”

I never used to be, but Rae didn’t need to know that had changed. Or why, how…who. “I’m good. And I don’t have to work till later now. Lucky’s covering me till lunchtime.”

Rae’s face brightened even more, but something on his phone screen distracted him before I could jump him. “Shit.”

“What is it?”

“Council. They’re trying to remove the camp from Fletch’s land. Saying it hasn’t got planning permission for a residential dwelling.”

I searched my brain for the brief conversations I’d had with Rae’s gang mates. “But I thought it was a registered campsite?”

“It is, but Fletch doesn’t charge the rest of us to live there. It hasn’t bothered the council for years, and Goon’s spent that time strategically inserting his pals into local government—pals who want Fletch off that land so they can stick a planning application on it.”

“Why doesn’t he sell it to them then? Buy somewhere better…with actual buildings?”

“Because, apart from a tiny dairy farm, Goon owns the rest of the land for miles around. Fletch’s patch means any hunt has to, for a mile, at least, run next to a public road. If they could go through our site while it was stuck in some decades long planning dispute, most of the public would never see them.”

“And the council won’t give you permission to build a home?”

Rae shook his head, still scanning his phone. “Course they won’t. They want us as uncomfortable as possible. That’s why our power supply was cut off and the energy company have taken eight months to fix it, and parts keep mysteriously disappearing from our water pump. Corruption, baby. Besides, even without all that, we don’t have the money to build a house.”

It made sickening sense, and the injustice of it burned me. My crew had been skint, but we’d had somewhere to live, and the council couldn’t touch us. Hadn’t even tried. We’d fought many battles, but never on as many fronts as Rae’s depleted gang. They were going to lose this war.

Rae touched my face. “Hey. Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Right.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ll let you off for being half asleep, but I’m gonna have to spoil the party regardless.”

My already yo-yoing heart sank. “Gotta get home?”

“Yeah. They reckon they can handle it, but Fletch is shit at dealing with official documents. He can’t read that well and people take advantage of that.”

“There’s no one else who can help him?” Rae took a breath, but I cut him off. “It’s okay, I get it. You can’t rest here knowing what’s going on there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. If I didn’t understand, we wouldn’t have got this far.”

I had zero idea what that meant, but Rae didn’t seem interested in finding out. He put his phone down and kicked the duvet away. “What time do you have to be at work?”

“Midday.”

“Good.” He took my hands and tugged until I was halfway lying on top of him. “Then I’ll get the five-past-twelve train.”

***

A couple of hours later, we left the house in search of food to make up for missing breakfast. The hipster diner a few streets away was in the opposite direction to where either of us needed to go, but it served decent vegetarian food—probably the last Rae would have for a while.

“Stop force-feeding me avocados,” he griped. “You’ll get me hooked, then I’ll have withdrawals back home.”

Back home. I touched the healing cut on my cheek and wondered if he was as torn about that as I was. If the conflict raging in me would even make sense to him when he was so deeply entrenched in the cause. Fuck, I want him to stay.

I poked at the eggs on my plate, perversely amused by the speed Rae inhaled his food. “You’re going to make yourself hurl.”

“I’m trying to hench up so my bones don’t get so cold.”

“The van’s not warm enough?”

“It’s fucking amazing compared to living in a tent, but I’ve just spent the night wrapped around you like a limpet, so I reckon sleeping alone tonight is going to be torture.”

He said it so casually; as though a night with me was something he could get used to. “You’ll be fine.”

Rae stopped shovelling food into his mouth and regarded me with his liquid brown gaze. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar. You’re doing that thing where you fall off the edge of a cliff.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Exactly what I said.” Rae pushed his plate away and wiped his mouth. “You’re shutting down about something and you think I won’t notice, or care…or both. And you’re not sure you even want me to.”

If he was trying to bemuse me with psychobabble, he was doing a good job. His motivation eluded me, though. “What makes you think you know what’s going on in my head?”

“I don’t,” Rae said. “I’m interpreting your behaviour, and you do this shit all the time.”

I had lots of bad habits. One of them was to get pissed off at someone to avoid talking about the bandage they’d ripped off a gaping wound. This wasn’t as dramatic as that, but insolence flowed out of me all the same. “You wouldn’t know what I do all the time. You’ve met me, like, six times.”

Rae didn’t blink, just stared at me a long moment before he sighed. “Whatever. I’m not going to force you to talk to me.”

I wondered if he’d walk out me like he had every time we’d come to blows about everything and nothing. But he didn’t move, and neither did I. Seconds turned into minutes, and my tongue welded itself to the roof of my mouth. The sense of killing something before it truly started was relieving and horrifying in equal measure, but I couldn’t seem to make myself get up and leave.

Rae broke our stare down and swiped at his phone. His expression changed, and in spite of myself, I leaned forward. “What is it?”

He held up his phone, showing me the text he’d received from Meg. “They’ve set a hunt for next Tuesday. The same day the council want to inspect our camp and interview everyone who lives there. Coincidence?”

Midweek hunts were infrequent, but some used them to get past sabs who had day jobs. Energy began to build in my gut. “What are you going to do?”

Rae shrugged. “Everything we can. The vehicles will be better protected this time, but there are other things we can try. I’ve gotta get back and brainstorm with Sprig. You wanna join us later in the week?”

“What?”

“Join us,” Rae repeated, as though he genuinely believed I hadn’t heard him. “Three heads are better than one. Maybe we can figure out—”

“I’m not coming with you, man.”

“Coming where?”

“On the hunt. Last time…it was a one-off. I told Meg and Fletch I’d support you, and I will, but I can’t go deep. I can’t—I can’t get so involved with you.”

“‘Involved’?”

It was his turn to be mystified. I leaned forward, shoving my own plate aside. “Involved with you, with sabbing. I told you before, I can’t do it.”

“Yeah…” he said slowly. “But then you skinned out to the Goon mansion with me and laid a trifecta of fucking stingers. Trespassed, committed vandalism, and don’t tell me you didn’t lamp anyone—I saw the bruises on your knuckles. Fuck getting involved. You already are.”

He spoke with a smile, like he thought a grin and a nudge would snap me out of it, but I was too far down this misguided path to come back. “I’m not, and I can’t be. Just leave it, okay?”

“Cash—”

“Jesus Christ, what do you want from me?” I stood, my chair screeching backwards loud enough for people near us to look up from their poached eggs and organic rye bread. “I told your people what I had when you dragged me back into this. There isn’t any more, Rae. This is all I’ve got.”

The disappointment in his face was worse than if he’d hit me. His gaze narrowed, and his pillowy lips pressed into a thin line. I swallowed hard, and walked out.

***

Rae

I didn’t follow Cash. He was right: I didn’t know him as much as I wanted to, but I knew enough to reckon he wouldn’t react well to being chased through Tottenham.

Tapping my fingers on the table, I waited a while to see if he’d come back. When he didn’t, I cut my losses and left.

A couple of hours later, I made it home to find a camp meeting in full swing.

Meg got up to greet me. “Oh sweetie, you didn’t have to come home.”

“I did, actually. There was nothing more I could do in London.”

“You went to relax and spend time with Cash.”

“Yeah well, I’m relaxed. Okay?”

I slipped past her and claimed my spot around the fire. Fletch was speaking, but he stopped and nodded at me.

“To recap,” he said. “I’ve spoken to a fella I know who works for a different council, and he reckons we can’t be forced off even though we never had planning permission for a campsite.”

“But you have a campsite licence,” I said. “Why do you need planning permission too?”

“Fucked if I know.” Fletch shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. We’ve been camping here for more than ten years, so the passage of time is enough to outweigh that. If they wanted us off on those grounds, they’d have to have done it last year. Timing, eh?”

He grinned as though the world had fallen at his feet, but I didn’t share his optimism. “When’s the camping licence up for renewal?”

“Now this is where it gets complicated,” Fletch said. “Technically, the licence is valid as long as we have planning permission, but we don’t, so it might not stand for next year, even though we don’t need planning permission. Basically, we’ve got a ton of paperwork to go through, and everything contradicts its ‘effin self.”

By “we’ve got a ton of paperwork to go through”, he meant me, and I was down with that, but I couldn’t see what good it would do. If the council wanted the camp gone, they’d find a way to do it.

The meeting broke up. Fletch sheepishly handed me a rain-damaged envelope and sloped off, but Meg stuck around.

“You didn’t have a nice time?”

“What?”

“With Cash,” she clarified. “You were so excited.”

“Was I?”

“Come on, sweetheart. I know you.”

Did she? Right now, I didn’t feel like I knew myself. I shrugged her off and retreated to Cash’s van. The breakfast he’d bought me seemed a lifetime ago, but the vegan cakes Meg had left on my bed turned my stomach. I buried them in the electrical cupboard and opened the envelope Fletch had given me. Old licences and forms littered my bed. Most were out of date, but this year’s license was at the top of the muddled pile. Renewal date was six weeks away—not much time if the council were going to play hardball. A couple of letters lost in the post, unanswered phone calls and missed messages, and those weeks would be gone. I needed a loophole, or a magic solution, and fast.

I was nowhere near finding one when the burner phone I’d picked up a few days ago buzzed. Distracted, I reached for it, expecting Meg to be hassling me to come out and eat, or maybe even Cash breaking the stalemate he’d left me with, but a message from an unknown number stared back at me.

Unknown: I can help

I frowned and searched through my pockets for the scrap of paper I’d scrawled Cash’s number on to keep up with the monthly burner cycle, just in case the sacred digits I’d committed to memory were somehow wrong, but they weren’t. The unknown number matched no one I knew, and besides: no one off camp besides Cash had this number. Had he given it up? Passed it on to someone who could help? Logic told me it was possible, but my gut said otherwise. Cash didn’t want my life, but he’d lived it. There was no way he’d have given out my number without speaking to me first…right?

There was only one way to find out for sure, but I didn’t feel like speaking to Cash just yet. I didn’t understand him. He wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, of the fight and the danger, so what the hell was it? Maybe fucking me had put him off something that had clearly once been his whole world. Or perhaps I was self-absorbed douche. Cos it wasn’t like a day went by when I didn’t picture my life as it might’ve been if I’d found my calling elsewhere. Somewhere bland and safe. Where not turning up to work meant overtime for a colleague who wanted it, not a slew of dead creatures littering my conscience.

I set Fletch’s paperwork aside and fired a reply to the unknown number.

Rae: how?