He shrugged. “Not tangibly. I just remember watching you storm the horse charge last week and wondering how you did it—how you went from your day job to being a fucking warrior in the blink of an eye.”
“Did you ever find the answer?”
“Not beyond the belief that fixing cars is what you do, and sabbing is who you are, but you don’t need me to tell you that.”
“Thanks for the wisdom, granddad.”
Rae laughed, and it held none of the bitterness of my own forced chuckle. He let go of my arm, sat back in his seat, and threw his booted feet up on the dashboard. “You’re welcome.”
I didn’t have a witty comeback, or even an unwitty one, but ending the conversation when we’d been so long without one felt like sacrilege. The van rumbled to life as I turned the key in the ignition, but I didn’t put it in gear, because for reasons I couldn’t comprehend, this moment seemed sacred.
My left hand twitched, and it took only a split second for me to give in and reach for Rae.
Never one to make things easy, I stretched across him and took the hand farthest from me, tugging on it, until he turned in his seat to face me. “I miss you.”
It wasn’t what I’d planned to say, but fuck, I meant it. Returning to sabbing had been a call I couldn’t ignore, and I’d fought hard to convince myself the intensity of how I felt had been nothing new—that it had nothing to do with Rae, but perhaps I’d been wrong. Fuck that. Iwaswrong. Sabbing was a part of me, but not the whole of me. There was room for more, there had to be, or none of it meant anything. “I mean it, Rae. I really have.”
Rae stared. For a moment he was very still—too still. Then a smile broke through, slow and sweet, and his fingers tightened around mine. “You fucker.”
“Am I?”
“Damn right. I’ve been a mess since you binned me off, but it was easier because I thought you didn’t give a shit. Knowing you miss me too makes it so much worse.”
Guilt charged through me. Just a few short weeks ago I’d been so certain of my actions, but the madness of it now hit me like a ton of bricks. Yeah, I’d been burned before, andfuckyeah being in love with someone who put their life at risk every weekend scared the shit out of me, but pushing my feelings for Rae aside hurt so much I couldn’t see how I’d ever thought it was the only way. “I’m sorry.”
Rae’s gaze flicked out of the window and back again. “You shouldn’t be. I got it then, and I get it now, I just wish things could be different.”
“What if they could be? Different, I mean?”
“How is that possible with everything you said? I don’t want to make things harder for you, Cash. I—” Rae stopped and inhaled a shaky breath. “Fuck, I don’t know what I want. I just know that trying to unravel it while we’re sabbing is a bad idea. You consume me, man. I can’t fucking think straight around you.”
I was still clutching his hand like a drowning man. His words made sense, but something inside me wouldn’t accept them, even though I knew when perspective returned, there’d be no other way. “I—”
“What?” Rae demanded. “Cash, we can’t keep turning this circle of half sentences and contradictions. We—”
Fuck half sentences. I cut him off with a kiss—a rough, dirty clash of lips that stole his breath and mine.
He didn’t resist, just melted against the glass behind him and let me ravage his sweet mouth, until it awoke the same desperate beast in him.
We fought for dominance, shoving and pulling at each other. I was heavier than Rae, but he was fierce, and something in me cried out to have him push me back across the seat and straddle me. We ground together, still kissing, and for the first time in weeks—inmonths—everything felt right.
I slid one hand under his clothes, gliding my palm over the smooth skin on his flank, as the other found its way to the nape of his neck, fingers seeking soft hair like a moth to a flame. The smell of him, his taste, fuck I’d missed him.
Breathless, I pulled back to tell him so, but was instantly lost in his liquid stare. There was so much I needed to say to him, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
And I couldn’t work out if he was amused, or pissed off. Rae was like that—addictively inscrutable. Dangerous. I kind of wanted him to hit me, as though I craved a connection to him so primal only pain could ever be the bridge.You fucking loon. But I didn’t care. I wanted him. I needed him. And I’d take him anyway he’d let me.
Rae leaned forward and sucked in a shaky breath. His gaze darted to my lips and back again, and then something seemed to shift in him, to give way. He cupped my face in his rough hands, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones. “I wish I’d never met you.”
How many times had I thought the same about him? Too many to be hurt, but it hurt all the same. In another life, perhaps being together would’ve been easy. Fun. Like it had been the night we met. Foxes had died since then, and foxes had been saved. But without this…without him, it wasn’t enough.
I held his wrists, counting his pulse against my fingers. “But we did meet.”
Rae opened his mouth to reply, but an obnoxious chime from his phone shattered the charged air between us. Conflict raged in his beautiful eyes, but in a thump of my heavy heart, he was gone, scrambling off me to get to his phone.
He swiped at it, oblivious to me crumbling beside him. “Fuck.”
“What?”
