“I am not twenty-five.”
“Neither am I, luv.”
Because he was twenty-nine now. I’d seen his passport. The one that identified him asAsher Moore, a name indelibly etched on my heart, and reminded me of something I’d asked Katya to do for me.
“I have something for you.”
Ranger brought his gaze back from the horizon. “If it’s more bacon, it’ll have to wait till later. Your sister sorted me right out.”
“Is not bacon. And I will give it to you later. But first I need to ask something of you—something more than you have already given.”
Wariness crept into Ranger’s gaze. “You want to fly again?”
“I need to fly again. Every day. But no, is not that. I need to fight against someone who is not afraid to hurt me, and Jake is not here to oblige.”
“Ah.” Ranger relaxed and wedged a cigarette between his lips. “That I can do. Though, you’ll probably have me on my arse in six seconds flat. I was forged in cold rainy Leeds, not the Bahamas.”
“This is not the Bahamas.”
“Fucking Brighton’s the Bahamas when you’re from round my way.”
We were getting off topic.
We were wasting time.
But I had trouble believing any moment I spent with this man could ever be wasted. And I did not believe I could take him down, not yet.
An hour later, under the blazing heat of the summer sun, I proved myself right. I fought Ranger in a clearing among our tallest trees and he put me on my back.
“Again.” I rolled to a stance. “Harder.”
Ranger pushed his hair from his face and got low, fast on his feet, a knife in his hand. He feinted left and darted around me, sweeping my legs, and got the blade to my throat before I found the balance to dance away from him.
And so it went on.
Ranger was a good fighter. So good, he could’ve killed me several times over. But I did not resent it. I needed it—the uncensored dose of reality. To know where I was vulnerable so I could make it not so.
It was early afternoon before I got the better of him.
“It’s all there.” Ranger lay beneath me. Dirt on his face. Leaves in the dark mess his hair had become. “You’re just knackered. And you’re scared of that hip.”
I could not deny it. “It is my worst enemy. One of them, anyway.”
Wiping sweat from my brow, I made to shift my weight off him.
Ranger held me in place.
I let him, though I knew it was because he wanted me to elaborate more than he wanted me to sit on his chest. “The pain is terrible.” I leaned over him, dropping a hand either side of his head. “Not an ache, but this sharp and wicked thing in the nerves. Without it, I might have been strong enough to bear everything else.”
“There weren’t other painkillers you could take?”
I allowed him a humourless smile. “There were, but my tolerance for opiates was too strong for them to work. And my mind... it was too late. I had mapped out a plan to get more drugs before I left the hospital. I knew—” Nausea curdled my stomach. “I knew it was wrong and I did not care.”
Ranger rubbed both my hips. “You care now.”
“I want to.”
He gave me a long look. Then moved fast, rising and taking me with him, using his longer limbs to handle me.
