Then Cash sighed again, and something in him seemed to give. “I was like you,” he said, voice so low I had to lean closer to hear him. “For a long time, everything I did was what you are doing now, but it was different in one way.”
“What was it?”
“I wasn’t alone. Everything I did, every cold, wet night I slept outside, I had someone with me…at my side, at my back. Wherever I needed them to be.”
I swallowed hard. The thought of Cash with someone else turned my stomach, but it had no right to. He was so fucking special. Of course there’d been others before me. And what even was I to him? The couple of nights we’d tumbled into his bed were outnumbered by the angst that seemed to haunt us. There was no contest. I was nothing. “You had a partner?”
He nodded. “Zander. He was my boyfriend…more than that, I suppose. We were together for three years, totally immersed in sabbing. We did everything together, the good and the bad.”
“So what changed?”
Cash flicked the end of his smoke into the fire pit with perfect, detached accuracy. “He was a rat.”
My heart punched my ribcage. “A rat? An informant?”
Cash shook his head. “Worse. He was a fucking copper.”
***
Cash
It was the first time I’d said it out loud without puking. Time really did heal all wounds. Or maybe it didn’t, because keeping my dinner down meant nothing while Rae was staring at me like I was an unpinned grenade.
Fuck this.
I started to stand, but movement at the bottom of the garden stilled me.Shula. And she wasn’t alone.
My fiery vixen visitor brought me to life in ways I couldn’t describe, but her mate’s presence in my dilapidated garden had always soothed me. He was a nervous boy, but solid and wise. And he only came on my worst days.
Beside me, Rae snatched a breath and nudged me in the ribs. I turned to him and pressed a finger to his lips. “Just watch.”
Rae’s hand closed around my elbow, then he stilled, and it seemed as though his heart beat in sync with mine as we watched Shula and her mate go about their business. Dom and I hadn’t got home till late, but Lucky had brought some sunshine to my day when he’d greeted us with the Google-researched fox picnic he’d prepared in my absence. Peanuts, leftover cooked potatoes, and the tiniest scraps of raw chicken. I usually let the foxes find their own meat to save me having it in my fridge, but I’d let Lucky have this one.
Shula ate like a queen while her mate nibbled and scurried to and from the bushes, stashing food for later. He was so resourceful he made me feel lazy watching him, and I was almost relieved when they’d had their fill and crept away.
When they were gone, Rae turned to me, his eyes so bright I forgot why he was here. “That was amazing. I haven’t seen a safe fox up close in years.”
Of course he hadn’t. Sab life had often meant the only time I saw wildlife was when it was being hunted. My memories of these wonderful creatures confined to photographs someone else had taken. I smiled and gestured for him to sit down again. “Shula and Po have been coming to the garden for a while now. I don’t feed them every day, but Shula comes pretty close sometimes when I’m not outside. One night she came right up to the patio door.”
“Shula…that means fire, right?”
“It does. How do you know that?”
“I grew up with a nanny obsessed withTheArchers.”
“You had a nanny?”
Rae rolled his eyes and reached for the tobacco pouch. “I lived in Hampstead. Of course I did. What does the male’s name mean?”
“River.” I brought my mind back to the present, fighting a thousand questions about Rae’s childhood. “He’s a complex character, though. I thought he was nervous at first, but he’s logical, you know? A thinker.”
Rae lit up his smoke. “You reckon he’d get more to eat if he didn’t think so much?”
“Maybe, but perhaps that would just get them both killed.”
We weren’t talking about foxes anymore. Or maybe we were and I was the terminal overthinker.
I claimed the tobacco pouch and lost myself the ritual of rolling the smooth paper between my fingers, of burning my lungs with carcinogenic tar. I’d smoked more in the last few months than I had in years. Rae was bad for my health. It all was.
