* * *
Jude didn’t wake up.I sat with him until the early hours, and he didn’t stir at all.
“Go,” Rae said. “I’ll stay until you get back.”
“I don’t know when that will be. I need to sort the kids.”
“Take as long as you need, Isha. I won’t leave him.”
“Why?”
Rae grinned faintly. “Because he’s my friend.”
“Since when?”
“Since way before any of you London bozos came on the scene.” Rae stood and stretched, then he came up behind me and leaned over my shoulder, glancing between where I still clutched Jude’s hand, and the screen monitoring Jude’s steady pulse. “Jude used to run citronella trails through the woods the night before scheduled hunts, and he gave me a warm place to dry out whenever the camp flooded.”
“He was a hunt sab?”
“No, for obvious reasons, but he was an ally, and he’s been my friend ever since. He’s a good bloke, Isha. The best.”
“I know that.”
“Uh-huh, but I wonder if you know that other people say that about you.”
I snorted. “What people?”
“Dom, Lucky…me. I know we’ve never talked about it, but the only reason the police went looking for Cash that day was because of you. I can never repay you for that.”
I thought back to the frosty morning Dom had woken me to tell me Cash was missing. I hadn’t thought. Had just got in my car and driven to Thorston. The next few hours had passed in a blur, until Cash had been found injured, and so cold he’d have been dead if he’d been discovered an hour later. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “You don’t need to repay me.”
Rae sighed. “I know, but you need to believe that I’d do the same for Jude. So go home, take care of your kids, and trust that I won’t leave his side until you get back.”
I’d run out of time to argue. I kissed Jude’s cheek, gave up my chair to Rae, and hurried out of the hospital, all the while trying to remember where I’d dumped my car.
I found it in the electric bay, a juicy parking ticket slapped on the windshield. Like I gave a fuck. I ripped it off and tossed it onto the passenger seat. With the heat cranked up, I burned out of the car park and sped back to Tottenham, wide-eyed and wired. The journey passed in a flash, and in no time at all, I pulled up in front of Cash’s house.
The side door was unlocked. I ducked inside and followed the unmistakable sounds of a Disney film to the living room. Tam was on the couch, curled up in Cash’s lap. They were both fast asleep, and Lucky was snoring in the armchair.
Only Dom was awake, standing by the window, rocking Delilah who slept in his arms.
I leaned in the doorway, taking in the visual of my best friend and my youngest child. It stirred something in me that only Mina and Jude ever had before, and I wanted to weep. I settled for clearing my throat.
Dom turned. Our eyes met, and I knew in that moment, that whatever difficult conversations were to come, everything, between us, at least, was going to be okay. “Get in the shower,” he said. “I left some clothes for you in the downstairs bathroom.”
“What?”
He glanced pointedly at my clothes and I realised belatedly that I was still covered in Jude’s blood.
I sloped off to the bathroom and took the world’s quickest and quietest shower. Dom had left me jeans and a hoodie that hadsave the badgersemblazoned across it. Funny man.
Back in the living room, he’d wrapped Delilah in a blanket and laid her with Tam. “I called Mina,” he said. “She said if you didn’t get back in the morning, she’d come and get them, so you don’t need to rush off.”
“Did you tell her what happened?”
“As much as I knew, which wasn’t much when I spoke to her.”
“Sorry about that.”