Page 94 of Drift

Drift tugged it away and let his sleeve slip down. “Limits,” he said flatly. “Just his way of knocking my ass on the floor before anyone else does.”

West went to say something, but anger burning in her look, she kept her quiet as Drift got to his feet, then he frowned as he patted himself down. Yeah, she’d been back there with Ava too. She knew why Jackson got so damn extreme to burn it out of his system.

“Rucksack”

“Hm?” he whispered back to her.

She turned her back on him and pulled the cover up under her chin. “What you dropped last night as you tried to unroll the sleeping bag… I put it in your rucksack.”

Heart caught in his mouth, Drift tugged the bag from under the bed and started searching through it.

The phone sat in a zipped side pocket, and he took it out only to stare down.

“You need me to take a look, get access for you?”

Almost not hearing West, Drift looked her way. “No,” he said quietly. “Best not try and activate it.” It was switched off, so he must have done it sometime last night before he got back here to Jackson’s. Good job with how cell tower triangulation or GPS tracking worked. It needed to be on for it to be traced. “It’s just a warning.”

West looked over her shoulder. “You think that type back at the manor would see it as a warning?”

Drift shrugged, not really sure why his knee-jerk reaction had been to steal the phone. Most thought they were untouchable until something was taken from them. And with being touched, it made most close ranks, lock the doors more securely, but also keep them grounded behind those walls and keep to that safety. Sometimes the threat of having more taken was enough. He didn’t need to access the phone to push withdrawal levels any deeper.

He kept his frown down at the sleek black phone in his hand.

“Hey.” West sat up and crossed an arm over her knees as she rubbed at his leg. Her frown matched his. “Just… just go burn some stress off in the cellar’s parkour space, okay? Keep your head down, look after your arm. We’ll talk silver-grey copies of eyes when you’re ready, okay?”

Drift crouched down and took half a cut of the money he had left and handed it to her.

“I’m not taking that,” she said quietly.

“He’s taking a four-week due; you’re also not earning over the next few days. So take and hide it. It’s not much, but it’ll help with the basics.”

West winced, then reached under the bed, and a brief look back, she lifted a plank and pulled a shoebox free. From the stack of notes she had in there, she put some in her wallet, roughly four weeks of what she’d earned, then she put some in Drift’s hand as he stared at the money left in the box.

“What?” She grinned his way. “My basics are somewhat… more expensive than yours.” she said softly.

Drift finally choked a laugh, then split what she’d given him in half and slipped it back in her box. “I owe you.”

“Continuously,” said West. “Now go practice your run in the cellar and let me get some goddamn sleep.”

He nodded, then wiped a long strand of hair away from her lips before he knew what he was doing. “Erm, you… come train with me later, yeah?” The other kids had the break room with a baseball bat; he had the cellar, how the flooring had been dug twenty foot deep, concreted, then kitted out with a lad’s wet dream when it came to parkour: large and small brick tubular bars, handrails, a variety of: brick modules, trapeze walls… basically enough to break bones daily with the unskilled, but keep him swinging and… away from West.

“Fuck no and fuck you.” She slumped back down. “I’m grounded, and you chose violence with going after Ava, remember?” She got very comfortable under the covers. “Shame that, right? How you could have been here, maybe with me, when you chose bitch face.”

There was no anger, no jealousy, only quiet worry and the balls to pull him up for it. Drift loved her so much for it. But then she knew the games Ava played. How the worst got dragged in… how they were made tokeepgoing back in. Because damn his soul, Drift hadn’t seen it….

He smiled gently at her, then patted her hip and went to move.

“And if they do come looking for the phone somehow?”

Drift eased down back by West, but didn’t say anything for a moment. “Their interest didn’t seem ill, so I’m kind of hoping they’re smart enough to take the warning and give me some space,” he whispered quietly. “I have a few names now as well as an address, I can work out the rest. I just don’t want them around as I do it. My terms, no one else’s, not yet.”

West nodded. “And then?”

Drift shrugged. He didn’t know, but he trusted gut instinct.

And that gut instinct…?

Like with Ava and her games, it wanted him to keep running fast and bloody far from that reflection of his own eyes.

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