Johnny had always been able to keep a lid on it—first with restraint, then words, and eventually just a look. The nail painting and bracelet making had come later; a distraction technique suggested by Taylor’s therapist, because getting the other alpha to hyperfocus on something other than anger was better than him losing his head completely.
Butfuckif his own heart wasn’t still going like the clappers.
Taylor was still prattling away as he flung the boot open and threw all their kit into the back of the car. “Do you think Maman’s making candied nuts again?” he said, taking thecardboard box from Johnny’s hands and dropping it onto the grubby carpet.
And just like that, Taylor was back, with talk turning to food as his eyes relaxed into their usual pools of amber.
Johnny let out a breathy laugh, one that encompassed the days, weeks,monthsof unrelenting stress. “Dunno. But she’ll candyyournuts if she finds out what happened today.”
Taylor scowled. “I don’t need a fucking lecture, John-Paul.”
“Oof, well,Taylor Charles Terrence Campbell,you’ll have to see when we get there.” Johnny licked the sweat from his top lip and shut the boot. “She’s invited us for dinner. She’ll probably make pepper soup if you ask.”
“Yeah?” Taylor’s eyebrows rose as he went to open the driver’s side door. When it remained locked he shot Johnny a look across the roof of the car. “Come on, dude.”
Johnny pressed his lips together, pulling the keys from his pocket and looping them around his index finger. “I’ll drive, princess. You just put your feet up.”
Taylor scoffed and flicked the aerial, making the small Tasmanian devil taped to the top spring back and forth. “I’m fine now. It was just the boss. He?—”
“It wasn’t justthe boss,” Johnny said, giving him a hard look as they got into the car. “And you know it.”
As they drove out of the car park, Taylor slowly reclined his chair, flipping the middle finger to the big blue West Newton Constabulary sign. Then he promptly fell asleep, making the drive back to Maman’s house blissfully serene.
The sound of Taylor’s rhythmic breaths filled the car as they drove through the sunny countryside, and Johnny decided to take the long way back to the pack house, between the bright yellow rapeseed fields and past the lonely windmill. He hummed quietly, patting the steering wheel to his own tune.
It hadn’t all been bad at West Newton. In fact, there had been some fucking brilliant moments, especially in the beginning. Fresh out of training school with nothing but a uniform, baton, PAVA, handcuffs and a warrant card. Fuck, they hadn’t known it then, but for that brief slice of time their lives had been so easy. No rent because they were still living at the pack house, no arsehole landlords and no dead friends.
Johnny shook his head, casting his eyes over the bales of hay dotted across the fields. He and Taylor used to play on them as overgrown pups, leaping and crashing onto one another, pretending they were castles and the other was a dragon.
Nothing better than rolling around in the open air, catching rabbits and biting each other’s scruffs until they were raw. Even picking straw out of their fur at the end of the day made him smile, although Maman made a habit of hovering menacingly with a rolling pin on the doorstep every time they did.
He missed Cameroon, obviously. It was a different way of life over there. The packs were massive, and the food… Well, he was lucky Maman was a chef, otherwise the bland British food might have driven him back to Yaoundé already.
Taylor grunted in his sleep and threw an arm across his face, his black tactical shirt riding up a little to reveal the smattering of blond hairs covering his belly. The sun caught them, making the downy fur light up under the late afternoon rays.
Johnny swallowed, licking his top lip.
Fuck, he loved that part of Taylor, soft but firm, the strawberry blonde hairs growing thicker the closer they got to his groin. He swallowed again, and was about to turn his eyes back to the road when he had a fleeting thought that maybe Jesuscouldtake the wheel just this once, and let Johnny stare at those hairs some more.
But then the car jolted, something went under the tyre, and of course Jesus couldn’t take the fucking wheel because Jesusdidn’t have a fucking driving licence. His attention snapped back to the road and he realised it had just been a hunk of bark from an overhanging tree.
Near miss aside, he thought about taking a wrong turn just to prolong the journey, to savour the moment of peace before getting sucked into the chaos of the pack house.
Taylor quietly cleared his throat, his voice soft and heavy with sleep. “I’m sorry.”
Johnny flicked his gaze back to Taylor. “Don’t be,” he replied, patting the top of his thigh.
There was a pause, then: “I’ve fucked it up for you. Like I always do.”
Johnny let his hand linger over the bend of Taylor’s knee, thumb brushing across the rough combat material. “No, you haven’t,” he said, lowering it back to the gear stick. “We’re both to blame.”
“But I?—”
“We’ve been stuck in a rut for ages, Tay. It was only a matter of time before the higher-ups noticed.”
The chair groaned as Taylor pulled the lever, rising smoothly back into sitting. He pushed his hair back, revealing the messy scar over his right eyebrow where a piercing used to be.
“Yeah, but, Dingly Heath? Falkington City would have been fine, but Dingly’s a town of coffin dodgers, JP. Did you know that the average age is sixty-seven? I looked it up earlier.”
