Page 29 of Drift

“That one only.” Essex pointed at it. “It’s too fucking cold for a turf war with Jackson even though you’re mine as much as his.”

Drift snorted as he finished the spliff, his body relaxing into how the reflection off the water danced more brightly, stealinghis look at it. But it didn’t hold his head and heart long enough, and he swore Essex had put him on a pint-sized ration of cannabis deliberately. “Bastard will only blame me anyway,” Drift mumbled.

Essex snorted a chuckle. “So stop giving him fucking reasons to, then. Say no to drugs.” He took the butt off him, made sure it was out with a crush of fingertips, then pocketed it. “You hiding out on my turf since you got back from Wales ain’t gonna help. What did you do down there to piss him off?”

Drift kept to his silence. He hadn’t gone back to Jackson’s to find out, not when it came to facing the heat. He needed to make sure it had cooled when he walked back in. But avoiding Jackson meant avoiding—

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” mumbled Essex, and he got a smack to his shoulder. “She’ll be the death of you, y’know. West… she got a twin? ’Cause Christ knows I need to keep your ass as still as Jackson manages to with her in his crew.”

“Shut up,” Drift said quickly. Too quickly for his own liking, and Essex’s shove came hard at his shoulder, almost sending him arse over tit in the pool.

“Look, no-nads… I mean traitor… I mean asshole…Drift.” Essex winked at him. “Nowt wrong with boy-crushes.Boybeing the main, well, term here.”

Drift got a look up and down his body, and he was suddenly very conscious of how much the cold turned many a man to a boy when it came to… no-nad nomads, especially as Essex measured his piss-take up between thumb and finger.

“Fucker,” muttered Drift.

Essex pushed him away and clipped him up the ear, no doubt for the mouth. “You should have based at mine permanently. I’d have taught you how to have fun, but Grant and Jackson… they had to go spoil you with wanting payment and no fun in between.”

Drift let a frown creep up hearing Grant’s name, and his smile falling, Essex rubbed at his arm. Drift loved him for it. Despite all his toughness, Essex was here at the pool on a welfare check.

A sharp whistle off Stokesy came from the darkness back by the changing rooms. “Heads up,” he shouted. “More assholes. I mean traitors. I mean Jackson twats, erm… crew.”

Drift jerked his head back as two sets of footsteps made their way over to them.

“Fuck you, Stokesy.” The soft tones chased a repeat offer of a touch of hand to heart, a kiss at slender fingertips. “I only let you see us because I’m pissed off with him.” A finger levelled Drift’s way.

“West…” Drift breathed, maybe, and Essex cocked him a brow at how it had been a breath she’d never hear. Drift didn’t care. Her reaction on his body was different to… Ava’s. Cleaner, more… pure, and he hadn’t felt that in a long time. West’s long and stunning straight red hair, slender neck, and bright blue eyes all set off by a Witches’ Heart black gem necklace stole Drift’s thought process as she came over. So too did her short Devil and Daughter Goth dress: half red, half black. And those DemoniaCult lace-up Boots on legs that never seemed to stop…. The getup acted to warn onlookers of attitude, which West didn’t have. She was a survivor, like the rest of them, and unfortunately most said that was an attitude. She also came with real kick-ass talent that earned her a place with Jackson’s crew. But yeah, life. It came hard to breathe it around her.

As West stopped by him, a slender hand drawing back such long red hair, he desperately shook off his shiver and rested an arm on Essex’s shoulder before turning side on and hiding just how cold he really was. Then he ran a very casual hand through his hair and tried to make it look really, well… casual. He could do sexy cool, right? “Erm. Hey.”

Essex snorted, then folded his arms, trying to bury a smile and failing in the process. “Practically dithering like a new-born deer he was a minute ago,” he said to West. “Balls all shrivelled and everything.” He shoulder-shoved him off. “See?”

“Cunt,” Drift muttered under a cough before cupping his goods and smiling at West. “What’s up?”

“You.” West looked him over. “Buy a phone for once in your goddamn life, Sid. You not read the writing on the fucking wall? We’ve been after you for a while now. And when I say we, I mean Jackson—then fucking me.” Her eyes were so hard.

She’d been told about Ava. How he’d gone after her.

He wanted to say sorry, just let her know it hadn’t been because of… bad habits, only needing to see what new ways she twisted life, and it hurt more how West’s anger eased a little as if translating it.

But writing on the wall…? He mostly stuck to old traditional Korean patterns: that he could at least handle, visual art dealing with symbolism, value, and emotion, ones he shared with crews he stayed with. He’d spray paint them discreetly where needed, but all crews had their ways of covert communication beyond the standard, and that included Jackson, who used Celtic symbols.

“Sid?” Essex cocked him a brow. “That’s a new one your way.” He was trying to stop a fight before it started. Drift saw that, maybe West did too.

“He wouldn’t earn so many if he kept his butt in one place.” Brighty offered a fist-pump Drift’s way, and Drift frowned. Since when had Brighty come in with West? In his own defence, Brightywasonly knee-high to a nutsac. Or that was his excuse. Drift just didn’t see much around West. But nicknames… Like the cold, names… names he didn’t want to get used to, so places where’d they first met, they became the standard: Stokesy: Stoke-on-Trent, Brighty being Brighton, with Essex being, well, Essex, and West… Drift barely remembered the where and when it came to her, just her eyes, her hair, that they’d met somewhere out… West.

So what did that make Ava, because he’d damn well known her longer than most.

Caught out staring at West, Drift returned Brighty’s fist-bump.

“And Sid?” added Essex, his look saying he wasn’t letting this drop.

“As in Sixty Dinner Sid.” West didn’t let Drift’s look fall either. “Wednesday is pizza with you. He’s mine and Jackson’s for a long weekend, then he’s off either with Chelsey’s lot for a curry, Sheffield’s for Chinese, or at the chippy with Bilston’s crew to fill in the blank spaces. Like I said: Sixty Dinner Sid.”

Essex swiped a hand over his mouth. “Sheffield and Bilston too, huh?” Drift got pushed to arm’s length. “That’s not just sleeping with the enemy, it’s going full-on orgy with at least three of them, you fucking whore.” West got a wink. “Jackson’s okay from a distance.”

“Hey.” He put a lot of hurt in his look. “What can I say?” He patted his own abs. “Get good with feeding me properly after a job, mate.”

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