Rae

Cash stepped around me and went into his house. I debated letting him go, but I was done with us leaving each other in the lurch when shit got real.

I followed him inside, ditched my coat and shoes, and took him by the hand. Leading him to the bedroom was a fucking cliché, and unhelpful at the moment, so I tugged him into the living room.

He had the kind of couch that looked like crap, but was the most comfortable thing in the world. Lucky’s cat appeared from nowhere, settled onto a cushion, and observed us owlishly as I gestured for Cash to sit.

I sat behind him and ran my hands over his back, warming his cold skin as much as I could, hoping he felt everything I did with each pass over his lean muscles. I didn’t speak, because there wasn’t much I could say. He was right. I had feelings for him I couldn’t describe, but we were connected to a higher cause, and I couldn’t, hand on heart, swear I wouldn’t have put him through that hunt, even if I’d known where his reluctance had come from.

Selfish prick? Maybe. But the old Cash would’ve done the same, and I knew this Cash understood.

Seeing him so hurt still cut deep, though, and I was angry too. The police had never been on our side—public-funded security for cold-blooded killers—but I’d never suspected they lay among us. Never considered one of us was sharing a bed with them. Loved them. Believed them to be someone they weren’t.

I dug my thumbs too hard into Cash’s shoulders.

He flinched.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and slid my hands down to his waist instead, and under his clothes.

His smooth skin grounded me a little, but still my mind whirred, until he turned to face me, his expression profoundly tired. “I’m sorry too, if it’s any consolation. I wish I’d explained myself from the start, but…I didn’t trust you, Rae. I couldn’t see it until now, but I saw him every time you looked at me and asked me to do the things I used to do. It scared me.”

It still does.

I knew it like I knew water was wet, and despite a bone-deep commitment to sab life, I couldn’t stand it. I wrapped my arms around Cash and pulled him close. A long hug turned into me coaxing him to lean against me. Eventually, his head found its way to my lap and he fell asleep while I rubbed his neck and gazed in wonder at Netflix on his big TV. I kept the volume barely audible and dozed in front of Sense8. The night faded to dawn, and there was frost on the ground when Lucky roused me the next morning.

Cash was still asleep. Lucky glanced down at him and set a mug of tea beside me. “I’m glad you’re here.”

And then he was gone. The front door opened and closed, and we were alone again…presumably, at least. I had no idea where Dom was.

I switched the TV to a news channel and made a half-hearted effort to catch up on current affairs, but my mind was elsewhere. Cash’s story had horrified me, and the hurt in his beautiful eyes would haunt me forever, but the flicker of trust he’d gifted me had solidified something I’d known from the very first night we’d spent together: I cared deeply about this man, and I couldn’t handle him being in pain. What that meant going forward, I had no idea, but it meant something.

It had to.

Cash woke with a jump around eight. His eyes widened as awareness hit him, then a flutter of conflicting emotions seemed to pass through him. And for once, I was fairly certain I could read him: he was pleased to see me, but the trip down memory lane he’d embarked upon last night still hurt like a bitch.

I pulled him close and kissed him before he could speak, no heat, just comfort and friendship. I’m here.

Cash melted against me, briefly and wonderfully liquid, then he pulled back with a sheepish shrug. “Sorry I passed out on you.”

“Don’t be.” I stretched my arms above my head. “It was definitely your turn.”

“Truth. What time is it?”

“Eight-ish. Lucky’s gone. I don’t know where Dom is.”

Cash cast me a questioning glance. “Why are you telling me where my housemates are? Do you think they’re the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning?”

“What do you think of when you wake up in the morning?”

Cash smirked a little. “Recently, that would have to be you.”

Warmth flushed my cheeks. “Sorry about that. There must be nicer ways to start your day.”

“Like thinking about Dom and Lucky fucking downstairs? You’re a funny dude.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” I replied, though I could think of worse things to imagine than Lucky and Dom fucking. There was something enchanting about the pair of them.

Cash nudged me. “I’m not taking the piss, mate. I think about you all the time. I’m in a weird place right now, but I’m glad I met you…even when I wish I hadn’t.”

There was a compliment in there somewhere, I was sure of it, but Cash was still sleepy enough to deserve a pass on interrogation. I let it go and rolled off the couch, tugging him upright once I was on my feet. “I have to be somewhere in a little while, but I could go for some breakfast somewhere if you have time?”

“I’m off today,” Cash said. “But I don’t feel like going out. I can cook?”

“Nah.” I shook my head. “I can.”

Cash’s kitchen was nothing like a campfire, but his big ring burners were similar enough to my tiny gas stove that I could bodge scrambled eggs.

He laughed at me. “Have you forgotten how to live in a house?”

“Must’ve done.”

“How often do you visit your parents?”

I poked at the eggs with a wooden spoon. “Often enough so they don’t come looking for me.”

“Are you close?”

Now there was a question. The easy answer was no, that we had nothing in common, and they weren’t interested enough to make any attempt to understand me, but that shit worked both ways. And as long as they were alive, I had a safe place to sleep anytime I wanted it. “Close enough.”

Cash eyed me over the rim of his coffee mug, and his next question was predictable. “Do they know what you do?”

I turned the heat off under the eggs and stuck four slices of toast in Cash’s swish toaster. “Yes. My parents don’t always understand me, but we don’t lie in our family. My dad is big on the truth being the path of the least pain.”

“Do you agree?”

I wasn’t sure how me fudging breakfast had led us here, but I gave the question the consideration it deserved. “Mostly. My mum was mortified when I got arrested on an old criminal damage charge outside my cousin’s wedding last year, but I think it would’ve been worse if it had happened down the road and she was the last to know.”

“What does she think?”

“That I’m a lunatic who needs to get a real job.”

“And your dad?”

A faint chuckle escaped me. “I don’t actually know. He’s not as vocal about his disapproval as my mother.”

“My mum was like that…vocal, I mean. Loud and Irish, if I pissed her off, the whole world knew.”

“She’s dead?”

Cash nodded. “For a long time now.”

“Were you close?”

“We’re Irish, man. Didn’t have much choice.”

I retrieved the toast, buttered it, and brought the food to the counter where Cash sat, still dressed in last night’s clothes. “What about your dad?”

Cash’s open expression faded, and he was suddenly fascinated by my clumsy arrangement of eggs and Hovis. “He’s a wasteman, as in loser, not a legit bin man. Haven’t seen him in years.”

“He doesn’t know you were a sab then?”

“Mate, he wouldn’t be able to tell you my eyes were fucking green.”

The thought of anyone living their life not absolutely bewitched by Cash’s hypnotic forest-green gaze was incomprehensible to me. I opened my mouth to say so, but his expression silenced me. I was pushing my luck.

We ate in silence for a little while, the weight of unspoken words heavy in the air. I searched the tangle of aborted sentences for one I could finish, but nothing came together. My time with Cash was precious, and finite. Did I want to sully it by dredging up the past?

“You said it wrong, you know, same as Dom did about you the other day.”

“Hmm?” I glanced up from pushing the last of my breakfast around my plate. “Said what wrong?”

“You asked if my dad knew I was a sab, past tense…just like Dom thought it was something you could do without involving me if we—”

“If we what?”

Cash shrugged. “If we stayed in each other’s lives.”

That was one way of putting it, but I hated that he’d chosen his words so carefully. My heart cried out for more from him. Something, anything, to help me decipher how he felt about me. And then shame hit me like a truck. This was the most open he’d ever been with me, and it still wasn’t enough. Could I be any more fucking selfish?

“What I’m trying to say,” Cash said, when I didn’t speak, “is that there’s no past tense when it comes to sabbing. I was a sab the last time I saw him, and I’m a sab now. Some shit you just can’t escape.”

“Do you want to escape it?”

Cash unleashed the full force of his intense stare on me. “I thought I did, even after we met, but…”

My heart turned over and struck up a painful tattoo in my chest. “But what?”

Cash shook his head, a gesture that somehow managed to be helpless and resolute at the same time. “I can’t change who I am, how I feel, and I don’t want to die trying. I’m a sab, Rae.”

I knew that, had always known it. In that, him and I were the same, but there was more to the torture in Cash’s eyes than I truly understood, even now. “What are you trying to say? That you want in on my crew? That you’re going to join us?”

Cash nodded. “Yes, but that’s all it can be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean us, Rae…this.” He gestured wildly…and vaguely between us. “I can’t do both. It’s not in me anymore.”

For a long, drawn-out moment, I had zero clue what he was talking about. Then it clicked, and my stomach dropped to my feet. I sat heavily on a nearby stool. “You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“I won’t have much choice if I join your gang, mate.”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about then.”

He spoke gently, nothing like the way we’d torn strips off each other in the past, but it hurt just as much…perhaps more so because I understood. Sabbing was an insane lifestyle, even for people who only did it on weekends. The emotional commitment was huge, and left little room for anything—or anyone—else.

Especially if you’d been burned before.

I sighed and stood, stepping briefly into Cash’s personal space to drag a final, sweet kiss along his jaw. “I get it. I’ll call Meg, tell her you’re in, then I’ll get out of your hair.”