“Drive,” Meg repeated. “It’s late, but if you go down to London with Ciaran tonight, you can bring the van back by morning.”
Ciaran.It took me far too long place the name, and even longer to comprehend that she wanted me to get in a car with Cash and drive all the way back to London where the two encounters we’d shared were like a dream and a fucking nightmare.
I glanced over to where he still sat. “Is that okay with him?”
“Of course,” Meg said. “It was his idea.”
At this point in my life, very little shocked or surprised me, but that just about did it. I shook my head slightly and stood with a wince. “I hope this van’s a fucking automatic.”
Meg chuckled. “Can I take that as a yes?”
Of course she could. There wasn’t much I’d refused her since we’d made contact all those years ago, and not even the clusterfuck between me and Cash was going to change that.
I sloped off to get myself together, and crawled out of my tent a few minutes later to find Cash waiting for me, his expression unreadable.
“You came,” I said stupidly.
“I did.”
“How did you find us?”
“I followed the trail of fucking lunacy,” Cash replied dryly. “You lot really are in trouble.”
“You thought I was lying?”
Cash snorted and turned on his heel. “Hurry up. I gotta work tomorrow.”
Brilliant. As if our last meeting hadn’t been enough to show me, apparently sober Cash was nothing like the amiable drunk I’d gone home with the first time. And now I was stuck with him for the next few hours.
Limping, I followed him to the gate. He nodded goodbye to Meg and Fletch and left it open for me. “My car’s in the village. You okay with the walk?”
I’d walked four miles home from the hunt at the weekend, holding myself together while blood had dripped from my split lip, but I didn’t feel like rehashing that, so I nodded and pushed past Cash. “I’m fine. Let’s get this shit done.”
We walked to where he’d stashed his car at the local pub—smart move, given what had happened to Meg’s car. I had a crazy notion to hustle him inside the pub, buy him a beer and pretend the complications surrounding us didn’t exist. But they did exist—we both had to drive tonight…and I wasn’t welcome in the toff-owned boozer anyway.
Cash’s car turned out to be an old Golf that wouldn’t have looked out of place on camp.
“I’m restoring it,” he said. “I don’t normally drive in the city.”
“Uh-huh.” Like I cared. If Cash was going to treat me like we hadn’t fucked twelve bells of hell out of each other, then I wasn’t going to feign interest in his life.Feign. Right. As though I wasn’t gobbling up every teeny snippet of information he was willing to give.
Emotional whiplash had always made my head spin. Even when hunts went well—when the animals won—I often felt as traumatised as when they didn’t. I’d learned not to replay the scenes I’d witnessed, but though this mess with Cash was nothing like that, somehow he still brought out the masochist in me. “You know, Fletch could get the train down in the morning and fetch the van. Why do I have to come with you right now?”
Cash got in the car without answering. Rolling my eyes, I followed suit, but fixed him with a questioning glare he couldn’t quite ignore.
He shrugged. “The van is at my work. If I shift it out tonight, I won’t have to answer a bunch of questions about where it’s going.”
“We’re stealing it?” I’d done worse, but I wasn’t willing to bring that trouble onto Fletch’s land. The police raided us enough as it was.
Cash snorted and started the engine. “It’s mine. But I haven’t touched it in years, and my boss knows it. Rocking up with some crusty who’s got no dosh to buy it will make him ask questions.”
“How do you know I’ve got no money?”
“Dude, you live in a tent.”
He had me there, and even though his explanation was patchy, I was suddenly tired as fuck. I’d been laid up since the weekend, but I hadn’t slept well. Depriving Meg and Fletch of their bed had weighed heavily on me, and more than that,Cashhad been on my mind. That his presence now was enough to put me to sleep was pretty damn ironic.
We hit the road. Cash seemed familiar with the area and navigated to the motorway without a sat nav. Silence cloaked us, and when we hit the M1, I called time on worrying about it and tipped my head back, closing my eyes to him and the nagging pain in my chest that seemed to be getting worse. We were on the North Circular when he nudged me awake.
