Rae finally shoved his damn-fucking phone into his pocket. He scanned the road ahead, and stuck his head out of the window to check behind us.
He was windswept when he turned back to me, the tip of his nose pink with cold. “All clear.”
“So?”
“So…” He fished his phone out again. “I guess we’ll see if that means the real fight is going to be here.”
***
An hour later, we were still rumbling up and down the lanes surrounding the prime hunting ground unimpeded. Goon’s place was quiet, the woods were clear, and there was nothing going on in Hertfordshire either. The Bucks hunt had ridden out and was in full swing. If nothing happened in Beds in the next half hour, I was considering hitting the A5 to give Petra and her crew some back up.
Rae was reluctant to leave. “It’s too obvious. We can’t believe what we see anymore.”
“But what if nothing happens around here, and shit goes down on an actual hunt?”
He shrugged. “Then it’ll be like the hundred hunts that’ve happened here without Bucks support. We can’t be everywhere.”
In practical terms, I knew he was right, but driving around aimlessly pissed me off. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and mauled my bottom lip with my teeth. My nerves were live wires. Doing nothing was impossible.
Rae’s fingers closed around my forearm. “You’re vibrating,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
Snapping at people wasn’t my jam, and a few years out of sabbing, caught up in my own head, had mellowed me to the point of being apathetically horizontal. But that had all changed when I’d met Rae. I’d been on edge for months, and he was right. I was fucking vibrating.
I jerked my arm away, and instantly regretted it, my body crying out for his electric touch. “I’m fine.”
“Cash.”
“What?”
Rae reclaimed my arm, his grip this time so absolute I couldn’t escape it without swerving the van. “Pull over.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it.”
“For fuck’s sake.” A layby was up ahead. I drove into it too fast and braked to a stop with a screech that should’ve made me wince.
It didn’t.
Rae scowled at me. “What the hell is going on with you? If you haven’t got the right head on for sabbing today, do me a favour, and go home.”
I wondered what constituted the right head for sabbing. What made his level glare more suitable than the fire I knew I was chucking right back at him? Then I realised it didn’t matter…because he was right. As riled-up as I was, challenging Goon to a duel, him armed with a pitchfork, and me with nothing but my temper, sounded like an ideal day out.
What the hellwaswrong with me?
I sighed and banged my head on the steering wheel. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, man. Just talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
A bark of humourless laughter escaped me. I gestured at the bleak winter countryside around us. “Unless you’ve got the answer to making this shit end already, I very much doubt it.”
“Definethis,” Rae said. “You mean today in general, or the reason we’re here?”
“Both. Neither.” A heavy sigh escaped me. “I guess I’m used to either hiding away from all this, or doing something about it, you know? I’d forgotten what it’s like to wait around for the worst thing in the world.”
Rae’s hand was still vice-like around my arm, but his grip loosened a bit. Suddenly it was friendly and not restraining. “I figured you’d have trouble adjusting.”
“Oh you did, did you?”
