Rae touched my face, his thumb smoothing the skin beneath my eye, palm brushing the healed cut on my cheekbone. “How did you find out?”
Fuck. We were back to that. I closed my eyes to Rae’s touch. “In court. I got done for aggravated trespass, vandalism, grievous bodily harm, all kinds of crap they trumped up with his help. He testified against me…against the whole gang, and I had no idea until he stepped into the witness box.”
Rae made a noise low in his throat. “That’s insane.”
“Yeah.”
“Was he the only one?”
“Only what…mole? Fuck, I don’t know. We had close ties to an anti-fracking crew in the same town, Greenpeace and all that. I swear, if you’d been in court you’d have thought I was Pablo Escobar or some shit, not some bloke who’d rather sit in an icy river all day than let the toff cunts kill foxes.”
“And now you fix cars for rich people?”
I winced. “Don’t do me with irony…not today. I needed a job—criminal records don’t do well for jobs in environmental science—and I’ve been elbow deep in cars since I was a kid. It made sense, and when my uncle offered me a lifeline on this place, it seemed like fate—a reason, like I needed another one, to get out of sabbing for good.”
“What happened in court? I mean, apart from your life imploding. Were you convicted?”
“On some counts.” I swallowed the sour taste in my mouth. “They couldn’t swing the GBH, but they had me on camera squaring up to a red coat, so they did me for assault instead, as well as the trespassing bullshit.”
Rae nodded, his dark gaze thoughtful. “I have a few of those on my record, but I’m sorry about your boyfriend. It’s the worst betrayal, and I can’t imagine how it felt to find out like that. I’m assuming you never saw him again?”
I snorted. “Not for lack of trying on his part. He pretty much stalked me for a while—phone calls, emails, texts, all anonymous, of course, but I knew it was him. And I thought I loved that fucker…before I knew, but after I realised what a sneaky bastard he was. Like, he’d have a separate phone he said was for his mum to get hold of him without worrying he’d ditched the number, but it was always off. And he disappeared sometimes. Say he was running the citronella trails, but then I’d find out someone else had already done it. I didn’t think—” I stopped, breathless, and taken aback at how much had spewed out of my mouth when I’d kept it buried deep for so long. “Fuck.”
Rae leaned closer. “What?”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. Gazed at him, but didn’t really see him. My eyes hurt, and my throat stung, but there was something else. Something about Rae I couldn’t quite decipher. I’d been talking and talking and talking, as though a dam had broken somewhere in my soul, and Rae had simply…listened. I had that privilege with Lucky—and Dom—if I’d ever chosen to use it, but Rae was different. He’d lived the life, was still living it. He got me like no one else ever could. “Away from all that, when it was just me and him, it felt like he’d…raped me, you know? Because he wasn’t real. It took me a while to get over that.”
“I’m sorry,” Rae whispered.
I blinked. “What for?”
“For trying to force you back in. If I’d known—”
“What? You’d have left me the fuck alone? Or sent me packing when I offered you the stingers? Piss off. I know you, Rae…as a sab, at least. You’ll give it all until you’ve got nothing left, just like I did, and collateral damage is part of the game.”
“Cash—”
“No.” I stood up. “We’re having this conversation, and I hate you for putting me here, but no foxes died that day. And that’s all we need, right?”
Chapter Seventeen
Rae
Cash stepped around me and went into his house. I debated letting him go, but I was done with us leaving each other in the lurch when shit got real.
I followed him inside, ditched my coat and shoes, and took him by the hand. Leading him to the bedroom was a fucking cliché, and unhelpful at the moment, so I tugged him into the living room.
He had the kind of couch that looked like crap, but was the most comfortable thing in the world. Lucky’s cat appeared from nowhere, settled onto a cushion, and observed us owlishly as I gestured for Cash to sit.
I sat behind him and ran my hands over his back, warming his cold skin as much as I could, hoping he felt everything I did with each pass over his lean muscles. I didn’t speak, because there wasn’t much I could say. He was right. I had feelings for him I couldn’t describe, but we were connected to a higher cause, and I couldn’t, hand on heart, swear I wouldn’t have put him through that hunt, even if I’d known where his reluctance had come from.
Selfish prick? Maybe. But the old Cash would’ve done the same, and I knew this Cash understood.
Seeing him so hurt still cut deep, though, and I was angry too. The police had never been on our side—public-funded security for cold-blooded killers—but I’d never suspected they lay among us. Never considered one of us was sharing a bed with them. Loved them. Believed them to be someone they weren’t.
I dug my thumbs too hard into Cash’s shoulders.
He flinched.
