He handed me a scrunched-up scrap of paper. I flattened it out, reading a name from the past and then my own, the only connection between the two of us something I’d fought so hard to leave behind. Something I’d never in a million years matched with Rae.
I closed my eyes as too many emotions hit me at once. Fear, sadness, pride. How had this ever been my life? And how was it my life now? A one-night stand showing up on my doorstep with my past in the palm of his hand?
A heavy sigh escaped me and I opened my eyes to face Rae. “You’d better come in.”
***
I bypassed the kitchen and took him out back to the garden. If the source of his information came from where I thought it did, he probably wanted to be seen even less than Dom, but I wasn’t ready to have him in my house again. In my safe place…the sanctuary I’d rebuilt with my own damn hands.
It was cold out. I thought about lighting the fire pit, but I’d left scraps out for my nightly visitors. Fire scared them. Besides, I was hoping Rae wouldn’t linger. That whatever he had to say wouldn’t mean anything to me.
I sat on an upturned beer crate, trying not to ogle as Rae did the same. “Give it to me, then,” I said. “Who sent you?”
“No one you know.”
“That’s helpful.”
“I know, but it’s true. My association is short on numbers, so we were given your name. I don’t know where it came from.”
Association. In my day, we’d called ourselves a gang and had done with it, but I could believe that Rae didn’t know where his tip-off had come from. The nature of sab life was secrets and silence. It was how we—howthey—survived. “Where are you based?”
“Bedfordshire. We’ve got a campsite a couple of miles away from the main hunt in the area. Cleared out some badger culling last year too.”
“Hare coursing?”
He shook his head. “Not for a while.”
I didn’t even know why I was asking. The reason he was here was as obvious as my response. Hearing him out was a pointless exercise. But still. I’d forgotten how seductive his voice was. How it wrapped around every syllable and pretty much hypnotised me.
Are you fucking mad? He’s a sab. Who knows who sent him?
I didn’t want to know. But I had to. “Who gave you my name?”
“I told you. I got no clue.”
“I don’t mean where it originated from. Who in your gang passed it to you?”
Rae hesitated, the distrust in his liquid gaze mirroring my own. He pulled tobacco and Rizla from his back pocket and rolled a fag, lighting up slowly to buy more time. “There aren’t many of us.”
“I figured by your recruitment run. Did you find Ted?”
“No.”
“So you came to me.”
It wasn’t a question, but Rae nodded and tugged his hood up, shadow obscuring his face. “I didn’t know it was you, though. How would I when you never told me your real name?”
“You don’t think it’s a mad coincidence that you were in an Irish bar the same night as me, and then my name rocked up on your list?”
I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice. Failed.
Rae flinched. “It might be fucking mad, but it’s true. My folks live in Hampstead. I’d been to see them when I stopped for a pint on my way home. And you approached me. Do I look like a fucking honey trap?”
He was so gorgeous it was hard to think straight, but there was sense in what he was saying. Ihadapproached him, if a wink across a bar could be called that, and no one had forced me to fuck him. Once, twice, more than that. The only reason he’d slipped out of my bed unnoticed was that I’d pretty much fallen into a sex coma.
Rae’s tobacco pouch called to me. I snagged it and skinned up, daring him to stop me.
He didn’t. Just stared inscrutably enough to raise my hackles again.
