“I have a confession.”
I blinked a few times, rubbing my chest and coughing. “I know a joke about that, but it’s not politically correct.”
“If it ain’t killing animals, I don’t care, but I’m serious.”
I sat up, waving for him to go on.
“You’re right about the van,” he said. “I mean, everything I told you was true, but it’s not that big a deal. Someone could’ve picked it up tomorrow.”
“Okaaay. Why the hurry then?”
Cash turned his gaze back to the road. “I see something in you I saw in myself, and figured you could do with the break. Get a few hours kip in a real bed before you head back in the morning.”
The last real bed I’d slept in had been his, and I wondered if he was offering that now, but his face gave nothing away. “That’s sweet, but I had a break a little while ago. Came into the city and knocked on your door, as it happens, and it didn’t turn out too well.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Why? You’re not the one who ran off like a—fuck, I don’t know.” I coughed again, harder this time, and tasted blood in the back of my throat. Man, I was a mess.
“Maybe you don’t need to know.” Cash was still staring doggedly ahead. “But if it helps, it was thinking about you that brought me to your camp. Don’t reckon no one else could’ve dragged me back in.”
“Not back in, though, are you? Meg told us you’re not joining us.”
“Rae, Ican’t.”
He did look at me then, and the regret and pain I saw in his eyes cut me to the bone.
Chapter Eight
Cash
It was official: hooking up with Rae had sent me round the fucking bend.
I drove to the garage, unlocked it with the keys I’d had the foresight to attach to my house set, and showed him the souped-up Transit, complete with shiny alloy wheels, hardly inconspicuous. “I’ll leave the car here and we can drive the van back to my place.”
Rae flicked another of his patented dark glares my way. “I can drive it back tonight.”
“If you like, but you don’t look in much state to make the journey.”
He stopped limping around the garage like a caged animal. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He so fucking wasn’t. I’d known it even before I’d caught sight of him across the dilapidated camp his crew called home. Christ, he’d been run over by a fucking quad bike, had his ribs kicked in before his mate—Twig, maybe?—had pulled him clear. He probably shouldn’t have been walking, let alone contemplating driving a heavy van. “We should do something about those wheels before you go, though.”
“Like what?”
“Spray ‘em. Can’t have you camped out in the woods like a fucking Christmas tree, can we?”
A faint ghost of humour lightened Rae’s face. “I might well end up sleeping in it before long. My tent’s a disaster.”
“Then you’ll like what’s in the back of this.” I beckoned him closer and opened the van’s barn doors at the back. “It’s not much at the moment, just a raised shelf really, but chuck a mattress on it and you’ve got yourself a bed.”
A real smile replaced Rae’s faint smirk. He wrapped an arm around himself and came closer. “That could work. I’m getting tired of waking up with my face in the mud.”
“Yeah, it got old real quick for me too, but we had a house to go back to when we weren’t embedded, so it wasn’t so bad. Your gang have it rough.”
“We’re not refugees, mate. We chose this life.”
“I chose it too, once upon a time. Don’t make it easy.”
