“About an hour ago.”
“Anhour? Jesus. You couldn’t have come to find me before then?”
“I was working,” Dom retorted mildly, though his eyes flashed with warning. “And I called you a million times. What the fuck did you want me to do? Lock him up?”
I had no idea, but the thought of Rae dragging his banged-up self home in that van scared the shit out of me. What if—?
Dom’s hand on my arm startled me. “What am I missing here? He a good mate of yours?”
“Not exactly.”
“Relative?”
I snorted. “Does he look like a Walsh?”
Dom had only met my rowdy family a handful of times, but we all looked the same—blond, green eyes, daft grins that hid who we were from the rest of the world. He shook his head. “Not in the slightest, but he reminded me of Lucky, in a weird way, and you seemed freaked enough right now for me to wish I had locked the bloke up.”
I wished he had too, but there was nothing I could say to Dom to explain the inexplicable panic he clearly saw in me. I waved my phone at him and forced a grin. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call him in a bit.”
Dom had a thing about minding his own business. He gave me a man hug and left me alone, pulling his cap low, and slipping out of the back door.
Heart pounding, I staggered backwards and sank onto the lumpy couch, staring at the number on my phone screen. It would be the easiest thing in the world to send a message, enquiring if my van had arrived Bedfordshire safely, but the words stuck in my brain, jumbling incoherently until I didn’t know which way was up. Anxiety clawed at my chest and IhatedRae for putting it there. Whatever state he made it home in, he wouldn’t be fit to sab a hunt at the weekend, and I was as worried about that as I was about him.
Fuck you, Rae.
***
I lasted all of an hour before I caved and called the number in my phone. It rang and rang, and I was about to hang up when the line crackled to life.
“Yeah?”
Fuck. My scratchy heart skipped its millionth painful beat. “Rae? That you?”
More crackling, then a heavy sigh that rattled the speaker on my phone. “Yeah. You want your van back already?”
“Nah. I was just calling your crew to make sure you got back okay. I didn’t realise this was your number.”
“It’s not. My phone got smashed at the weekend. Meg gave me hers for the journey.”
“You still driving?”
“Kind of. I stopped at Watford for a kip.”
I crossed the road in front of my house, bypassed the front door, and let myself in the side gate. “Did it help? The sleep, I mean. My mate thought you were half-dead.”
Rae chuckled darkly. “I felt it, but I threw up on the hard shoulder and I’m over it now. Maybe it was Sprig’s casserole. There’s a reason we don’t let him cook.”
My soul missed the easy companionship of communal living. Lucky and Dom were awesome, but they had their own lives, mostly spent fucking upstairs. I wanted Sprig’s casserole, even if it would kill me.
“Cash?”
“Hmm?”
Rae cleared his throat. “You went silent on me.”
“Sorry. I’m just trying to picture it.”
“Picture what? Me puking or Sprig’s slop?”
