Cash

Recovering from hypothermia was a bitch, made worse by the rotten chest infection the doctor had predicted. Two weeks passed in a blur of coughing and Dom’s icky sports drinks. Headaches and exhaustion. The only positive I enjoyed was Rae. He stayed with me the whole time, taking unobtrusive care of me when I was awake, and typing furiously on a borrowed laptop when I wasn’t.

He didn’t say much, but neither did I. I didn’t dare. Having him by my side was incredible, as though he’d always been there, but as I became more present, a nagging sensation consumed me. I couldn’t hide from the fact that sooner or later, the hunt would call him home.

I didn’t want him to go. I wanted him to stay in London, with me, until we could figure out what to do next.

Three weeks after the worst weekend in the world, two Bedfordshire coppers came to see us. Rae seemed to recognise one of them, but I’d never seen them before.

Fortuitously, they turned up on a day when Dom was home, too. Or maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. I’d lost track of him and Isha’s involvement, and I was past caring. I just wanted the whole thing over with.

“Okay.” The first officer—PC Harding—opened his notebook. “There’s a lot to get through, so I’m going to sum it up for you first, so you’re not left wondering about any of the big stuff while we go into the details.”

Dom’s expression was fierce, but Rae looked as apprehensive as I felt. Despite being on my knees the last few weeks, the bubble we’d built around ourselves had made it easy—too easy—to shut the world out. There were a lot of things I hadn’t thought about, and I wasn’t ready for that to change.

But I didn’t have much choice. The world kept turning, whether I wanted it to or not.

“It’s Cash, right?” PC Harding fixed his gaze on me. “I have your name down as Ciaran, but I haven’t heard anyone call you that except your uncle when he called to give me a bollocking last week.”

I winced. My family didn’t know much about my life these days, but my uncle was the kind of bloke who’d, rightly or wrongly, been raised to believe all coppers needed a good thrashing. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. He didn’t seem to know much about the circumstances we were dealing with, so I don’t blame him for being frustrated. Anyway, with that in mind, we’ll start with where we’re at with what happened to you, so perhaps you can update him.”

“Okay.” I brought my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

Rae draped a blanket over my shoulders and sat next to me. He didn’t touch me, but the policeman’s gaze flickered between us, gauging us the way only coppers could.

Fuck that. I grabbed Rae’s hand and lifted my chin. Come at me, I dare you.

Of course, he didn’t. Why would he? What Rae and I were to each other was irrelevant to anyone but us, and I sure as shit didn’t even know.

“Cash?”

“Hmm?”

Rae nudged me and jerked his head. Fuck. I’d missed something. “Sorry. What?”

PC Harding shifted in his seat. “I was saying that I’ll need to take a full statement from you, but based on the CCTV evidence we have, and the witness statements we’ve already gathered, we’re going for a charge of grievous bodily harm against you. The CPS might drop it down to wounding with intent, but we’re going to try for the higher charge.”

Dom grunted. “It should be attempted murder.”

“I agree,” PC Harding said. “But given that Cash’s injuries were relatively minor, we’d have a hard time proving an intent to kill, and if we overreach, there’s a chance he’ll walk.”

“So? I thought you lot were in his pocket?”

I snapped my head at Dom too fast, but I ignored the dizziness. “The fuck are you talking about?”

Dom shot the policemen a meaningful glare. “We’ll get to that, right?”

PC Harding cleared his throat. “Anyway. I’ll take a statement from you when we’re done here, and then I’ll show you some photographs so you can ID the men we’ve picked up on camera. Turns out, the security on that estate did you a favour.”

Rae snorted. I wished he’d speak. It seemed like a lifetime since I’d last heard his voice.

The police droned on about charges and evidence, but I tuned them out. They had Goon on camera. Add in the damning statement percolating in my brain, and he was toast. I didn’t much care about the technicalities. I cared about the future—mine, and Rae’s. Together. Apart. Goon was the heart and soul of the hunt on his lands, but even if he went to prison, he had dozens of pals ready to take his place. We’d dodged it for weeks, but reality was looming. And foxes were still dying.

Hopelessness gripped my heart. Head spinning, I excused myself and left the room. No one followed me.

Habit took me out into the garden, but I managed to resist Lucky’s tobacco. I’d coughed enough the last few weeks to last me a lifetime. It was too cold for me to linger long, so I shuffled back inside and hid in the kitchen.

A quiet tap at the side door roused me a few minutes into a stare down with the empty fridge.

I found Isha on the other side, dressed to impress as usual. “If you’re looking for dinner, you’re out of luck. Coppers are here.”

Isha stepped around me into the house and shut the door with his long arms. “About time they showed up here. I passed them a file from our own investigations a week ago.”

“You what?”

He shrugged. “Did you think Dom was going to let someone leave you for dead and do nothing about it?”

He said it as though it made perfect sense, but rich people were like that, however nice they were. They didn’t see how improbable their privilege and reach really was.

“Whatever.” I pointed to the kitchen. “Come supervise me making the tea, will you? I’ve been waited on so much recently I’ve forgotten how.”

Isha followed me into the kitchen, but unlike everyone else around me, had no issue taking a seat and watching me make six cups of tea. I felt his eyes on me, though, and it got under my skin.

I thrust a mug at him. “Stop staring at me.”

Isha turned a dark gaze on me that might’ve been sexy if I hadn’t been so bewitched by Rae. “I’m not.”

“Yes you are, and it’s creepy. Stop it.”

“Okay, you got me. I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“About you. I thought you’d be all over this investigation, considering what it’s cost you, but you seem detached from it. Don’t you want to know what my PI found out?”

I tipped a bag of sugar into the empty sugar pot. “I know what your PI found out.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. It’s fucking obvious.”

Isha spun his mug around so the handle was in his left hand. His expression betrayed nothing but idle amusement, but I knew him well enough to sense his shrewd gaze drilling holes in my indifference. “Tell me then,” he said. “I’ll admit the whole thing has twisted me up, so I can’t imagine how you feel.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you once loved the man who encouraged Goon to hurt you.”

“Is that what he did?”

“Yes, Cash. I’m afraid it is.”

A bar stool was mercifully close. I abandoned my tea-making and sank onto it. It had taken me a long time to accept that everything about my relationship with Zander had been fake, and when I finally had, I’d convinced myself I’d been a mere pawn in a game I didn’t truly understand. “Why would Zander want to hurt me more than he already has?”

Isha got up and came around the breakfast bar. “I don’t think it was about you. From what I understand, the chief constable riding in the hunt had your ex over a barrel. Pulled him onto this operation specifically to shut Rae’s gang down, which meant targeting anyone Rae was close to. He might not have even known it was you until right at the end. I mean, did you see him while Goon had you?”

“No.” But as I said it, uncertainty set in. There were so many blank spots in my brain from that weekend, I couldn’t be sure what I’d seen, and what had been a figment of my hypothermia-fuelled imagination.

“Look.” Isha put his hand on my arm. “Whatever went on, it’s over now. Shutting the hunt down is what matters to you, right? And you’ve done that. The rest of it is someone else’s problem.”

“Whose problem?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter? This corruption is deep, and it stretches far wider than fox hunting. Take the win and move on.”

“How can we when Goon’s hunt will ride out every weekend regardless of what happens to him over what he did to me?”

This time Isha grinned. “Trust me, they won’t be riding out, at least not in anywhere near the capacity they were before.”

I snorted. “That’s wishful fucking thinking.”

“Not really. The landowner…what do you call him, Goon? Yeah. Him. He was making a fortune from his stud farm, but the RSPCA did a spot inspection, and what you told Lucky about the horses was right on the money. And the dogs. They’ve all been seized.”

A half-formed picture in my patchy memory solidified. The dogs. The horses. The suffering I’d heard but not seen. Fuck. Yeah, I remembered that, though I had no recollection whatsoever of telling Lucky.

“Anyway,” Isha went on when I didn’t speak. “Turns out Goon was gambling in London five days a week, and he’s got massive debts on that estate. With no income, he’ll have to sell it. That hunt is over, Cash, for the foreseeable future, at least.”

The back door opened. Lucky slipped into the kitchen and came up behind me. His arms were cold as he wrapped them around me, but I didn’t mind. Before Rae had come along, a Lucky hug had been the highlight of many days.

I leaned back into him. “All right?”

“Always.” Lucky pressed his forehead between my shoulder blades. “Are you?”

I didn’t know how to answer, so I didn’t, and Lucky let it go. He was my best friend, and he knew me well enough to guess my head was exploding, even if he didn’t know the precise reasons why.

Lucky held me quietly for a long time. Isha said more, but I wasn’t really listening, my ears trained instead to the living room. It felt weird to be apart from Rae, even though we’d lived a whole lifetime without even knowing each other. Somehow, over the last few weeks, I’d grown more addicted to him than ever, and when the living room door finally opened, Isha and Lucky were instantly forgotten.

I rose to meet Rae. His lovely face was a heady mixture of elation, confusion, and shock, and I knew he’d learned as much as I had in the last ten minutes.

Eager to be alone again, I grabbed his hand and hustled him upstairs. We hadn’t slept in my attic room since I’d come home from hospital, but heaving myself through the hatch seemed a small price to pay for the privilege of locking ourselves away for the rest of the day. Downstairs, I heard the front door open and close, the police get in the car, and their departure. Though I knew they’d return, it felt like freedom.

“They’re coming back to take your statement tomorrow.” Rae echoed my thoughts. “We told them you were too tired today.”

“I’m okay.”

Rae closed the hatch and closed the distance between us. “I know.” He slid his hands over my hips and pulled me tighter against him. “But they’ve waited this long. Another day won’t hurt.”

“How much did they tell you?”

“Enough.”

“They told you Goon’s hunt is kaput?”

Rae nodded and rubbed his cheek over mine, threatening my coherent thoughts for all the right reasons. “They did. Most riders will join other hunts, but the terrier men got done for drug possession, and most of the quad bike squad are on the CCTV at Goon’s place, so the main players are all off the scene.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.” I sat on the bed, tugging him down to straddle me. “I heard Fletch and Meg are taking some time out, Sprig and Drey have joined with Bucks. What about you?”

Rae chuckled. “Wow. And here was me thinking you’d spent the last few weeks in your own little world.”

“I have, but Lucky talks at me whether I want him to or not, and sometimes I listen.”

“Did you listen when I told you I’d been offered a freelance gig at the Observer?”

“Um…yeah?”

“Liar.” Rae pushed me back on the bed, planting a palm either side of my head. “You were asleep, and I woke up next to you, half convinced you were in some kind of coma, so I prattled on at you until Dom came in thinking we had visitors.”

A laugh so genuine it made my stomach hurt bubbled out of me. Rae smiled too, and Isha’s words echoed in my head. “Take the win and move on.” Could we really do that? Did Rae want to? Sabbing was in his blood perhaps even more than it was mine. Could he leave it behind?

“Hey.” Rae tapped the side of my head. “Where did you go?”

“I’m right here.”

“Come on, man. Let’s do this.”

“Do what?”

Rae took my chin in his hand and leaned down so his lips were millimetres from mine. “Tell me you love me.”

I stared at him, paralysed by irrational fear, and at the same time horrified that he didn’t already know. “I do love you. Do you love me?”

“I do, Cash. Probably too much, but I’m okay with that.”

He loves me. For a moment, the world stopped, then it hit me like a bullet that I’d known it for ages. Rae’s life was as complex as his conscience, and I’d messed him around enough to wreck just about everything, but aside from my very darkest hours, some part of me had always known this moment would come. “Maybe I love you too much too. I don’t want you to go home.”

Rae kissed me, slow and sweet, and full of promise. “Then maybe it’s a stroke of luck that I don’t have a home anymore. Didn’t Lucky tell you Dom’s building company has officially put an offer in for Fletch’s land? I’m pretty sure Fletch will take it.”

It was news to me, but it made sense, and another piece of the puzzle I craved so badly slipped into place. With the hunt shut down, and Fletch’s land sold, Rae was as free as he wanted to be. “Does that mean you have an answer to my question?”

“About what I’m going to do with my life now?”

I nodded, pecking a nervous kiss to Rae’s scratchy cheek, mourning the loss of his weight against me when he rolled onto his back.

He blew out a breath. “I’m going to take the job at the Observer. They already know about my blog, and I’m going to carry on with that too, and perhaps find a way to incorporate it into my paid work at some point. I also offered my blog up to Petra from Bucks, and guy from the Hertfordshire sab team. That way I can keep my hand in even when I’m not actively sabbing anymore.”

My heart struck up a slow, hopeful tattoo. “You’re giving it up?”

“I don’t know,” Rae said. “But whatever happens, I’m tired, man. I need a break.”

For weeks, I’d been fixated on my own exhaustion, drifting in a fog of self-absorbed fatigue, but as I gazed at Rae now, the shadows beneath his molten eyes seemed to jump out at me. I reached out to trace them. Had they always been there? “It was really hard for me the first time I stepped away, especially because the hunt was still active. It haunts me even now.”

Rae winced. “I know, but the way I see it I’m no good to any fox if I’m too tired to fight their corner. Besides, I’m not stepping away from the cause entirely, just adapting my role to survive. Even without needing to be with you, I-I can’t do it anymore, Cash. It hurts too much.”

His anguish was like a knife to my heart. I moved like a snake to lie over him, crushing him against me. “If it didn’t hurt, it was never real.”

Rae wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “I know, and I’ll get over it one day, probably, maybe.”

He wouldn’t, and neither would I, but we had each other. We loved each other.

Perhaps it would be enough.

I kissed him again to be sure.