Ranger studied me some more. “Where does he sleep these days?”
“When he is here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Maybe I’m fucking jealous.”
“Are you?”
Ranger looked away, setting his jaw the way he did when he had plenty to say but had decided he should keep his mouth shut.
I could not have that.
Not about this.
I let my hands return to his skin, tracing a pattern around the healing gash on his ribs. “Can I tell you something you have not asked?”
“If you like.”
I pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in. He smelled of fresh sweat and smoke. Of music and dancing, and I raised my head to meet his inky gaze. “I do not know how to navigate this mess between us. But I do know that nothing I have ever done with Jake or anyone else has ever felt like this. Nothing has ever felt like you.”
Ranger’s stare turned to liquid fire. He dropped his unsmoked cigarette and crushed it under the heel of his boot. “Is that what scares you? That you like it?”
“Is more that it will lead us somewhere I cannot go.”
“Cos I’m not Jake?”
“No.”
“It is, though. You let him fuck you cos you trust him. How do you know you’ll never trust me like that?”
His bluntness rattled me. I had not had a conversation this candid about sex with anyone, not even Jake, in my entire life. “Are you playing devil’s advocate?”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“Are you still being nosy, or does my answer mean something to you?”
Ranger laughed, shaking his head. “Vik, if you meant nothing to me, I wouldn’t fucking be here.”
“Jake paid you.”
“In crisps that I don’t even have yet.” Heflickedmy ear. “He offered me five-hundred grand.”
“That is nothing to him.”
“Yeah?” Ranger fully faced me. “Well, he knew it would be everything to me. But I didn’t want it. You know why?”
“Tell me.”
He almost smiled, but it twisted into something else. Something that hurt him as much as it hurt me. “Cos I’d have swum to New Zealand to see you again. Cos Imissedyou.”
Ranger drew back, as if that was it. That was the end. But it was not. Despite everything I had told him, I could not let him go.
“I missed you too.”
Ranger did not believe me. It was in his eyes as he took another step back.
