Rae:Stay there.
Thirty minutes later, Cash opened his side door to me with a bemusement that might’ve been funny if my brain hadn’t been spinning so fast.
I slipped past him, heading for the kitchen without invitation. It was as empty and dark as my mother’s, but somehow felt like the arms of an old friend. “Start from the beginning,” I demanded. “Tell me how Dom ended up on my camp.”
Cash leaned on the kitchen counter, his hair a riotous mess. “Are you pissed off? You seem a little wired.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like my best mate when we need to talk business.”
Cash flinched. It was infinitesimal, but I saw it all the same. “Dom’s looking for land to develop rural social housing. We were close by yesterday when I thought of your site, so I took him there to have a look and talk to Fletch. I figured you’d be there.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Clearly, as you’re on my doorstep at midnight. How aboutyoutell me how that works?”
“Why? You don’t want to beinvolved, remember?”
“I don’t have much choice when you’re in my house, do I?”
“But it’s okay for you to show up at mine without warning?”
Conflict marred Cash’s lovely face. He slid farther forward on the counter so he was almost bent double and groaned. “Fuck’s sake. Why are we so bad at this?”
“At what?”
“At making everything fit together,” he said as though it were that simple.
Frustration burned bright in my veins, but there was a helplessness to him that broke through any desire to fight him.
I ran a hand through my own disastrous hair and joined him at the counter. “My parents live in Hampstead. I was kipping there while I tried to raise some money to pay for a housing lawyer. That’s why I’m in your yard. I can’t explain the rest of it.”
Cash sighed. “I can, and it’s probably time I did, but I need a smoke. Come outside?”
We decamped to the back garden. It was cold, and the air was damp, but I was used to that, and there was something about Cash wearing the hat he’d worn to come sabbing with me that really got me going. I wanted to push him up against his garden wall and fumble with his belt, kissing him until the hat slipped sideways on his head, so I could tug on his glorious blond hair.
I settled for sitting on a crate and rolling a fag from a tobacco pouch that apparently belonged to Lucky. “So I take it Dom knows about the sabbing now?”
Cash nodded. “Lucky told him because he was worried about me.”
“Worried? Why?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been an introspective weirdo these last few months, grumpy too. It’s not the boring mechanic he signed up to living with.”
“If he’s worried about you, it probably isn’t because you’re grumpy, mate.”
“Uh-huh.” Cash lit his smoke and drew deeply on it, like an ex-smoker who’d never truly wanted to quit. “Dom’s interested in the land, by the way, in case you were wondering. I don’t know how it all works, but I told him about the hunt. He’s a tough bastard, man. Goon won’t get on his land if this all plays out.”
Knowing what little I did about Dom as a defensive football player, I could believe it, but right now, the land deal was about as far from my mind as it was ever going to get. I stuck my rollie in my mouth and took a chance on squeezing Cash’s tense arm. “Tell me why I upset you so much.”
“It’s not you.”
You self-absorbed brat.He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to. My conscience did the scolding for him. I squeezed harder and tried again. “Okay, tell me what it is…what sabbing does to you.”
A long silence stretched out. As the minutes ticked by, I began to fear that Cash would shut me out again. That I’d have to leave him here, like this, and go back to my soulless family home, and then back to a life—to my real family, in many ways—that had somehow come to feel empty when Cash wasn’t there.
