Fuck.
The intensity of the pain in his chest caused him to take his hand off the steering wheel and absently rub at his heart. Fucking failing organ. Maybe this would be the moment his heart stopped working properly.
“Why do you say it like that?” Cash asked. The only sign that Cash was anything but passive came by a tightening grip around his cell phone. That could also be to help make sure it didn’t slip free and fall to the floorboard.
“Just lettin’ you know,” Dev answered vaguely, redirecting his gaze to the road in front of him. “You’re bein’ awful quiet over there.”
“I’m always quiet. You’re the talker between us.”
Dev ran the next red light, allowing him to take the turn onto a county road where he could go for miles without having to stop again. Cash’s distracted attention turned to his phone, dismissing Dev as he moved his fingers over the screen.
No matter the changes inside him or the upheaval to his life, a fundamental inner truth remained intact. Dev did not like being ignored. By Buddha, Cash was going to acknowledge him whether he wanted to or not. He scouted the street as the back-to-back neighborhoods came to an end, and they entered a long stretch of pastures.
Without any sort of well-developed plan, he spotted the entry to a dirt road maybe fifteen seconds before they passed by. He executed a quick turn, squealing the tires as he took the left at almost full speed.
Cash slammed a shoulder against the door. The sudden force had the cell phone flying from Cash’s hand. “What the—”
“Stop ignorin’ me,” Dev said, pretty impressed with his skills. The cage didn’t stay on all four tires, but it righted itself quickly and started bouncing down the barely there dirt road. Dev pressed on the brakes, coming to a stop maybe four hundred feet away from the main road.
“What’re you doing?” Cash barked out. Dev’s sanity was definitely questioned in those words.
“We need to talk,” he said, yanking the gear shift into park. “I’m tired of whatever this is between us. You’re hot and cold and I don’t know what the fuck that means.” The front seat of his Mach 1 had two bucket seats with a console in the middle. He lifted the steering wheel to help accommodate the angle of his body and shifted to face Cash.
They were having this conversation whether the agent liked it or not.
Even better if Cash didn’t want to.
“Have we cooled off? Because you need to tell me if we have. I can’t read your signs. You’re this super quiet, roll with the punches guy that sure as fuck doesn’t let too much out.”
Cash reached for the cell phone on the floorboard. His face completely devoid of emotion, giving Dev no clue to the context as Cash popped off, “Yeah, right. I’m the one who doesn’t let much out.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Dev barked, instantly insulted, but not sure why. Fucking TikTok taught him that his complete inability to read people was a sign of his ADHD, and Abi had shown him that video. He wished the application also came with a decoder instruction manual to help figure out how to read people better.
Cash glanced at his phone before tossing it carelessly onto the dashboard. His hands, the ones that gave Dev so much pleasure, scrubbed over his face before they fell away too. He unlatched the seatbelt and let his shoulders slump forward. Seconds felt like hours as Dev tried to figure out what all that meant.
Finally, without looking at him, Cash muttered, “You know I’m the only one that has made my feelings clear.”
Dev bristled, refusing to allow all the grief sitting between them to come back on him. “You’ve known who you’re fuckin’ since you first arrived. I’m the one who keeps gettin’ all these reveal bombs on the daily.”
Cash shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Rolled his eyes. What the fuck?
“We need to get on the road before they suspect something’s wrong and come looking for us,” Cash instructed and turned his face to look out his side window. Ignoring him a-fucking-gain.
“Riddle me this one, mister. What’s gonna fuckin’ happen when this case is done? How soon will you be reassigned? A fuckin’ day? A week?” Dev asked, letting Cash know he was in fact thinking long term and didn’t like what he saw. Just because he had a hard time confessing his love didn’t mean it wasn’t fucking there. Even as dire as his outlook was, he considered the idea of planting daisies in a house where Cash and he lived. He had secret dreams.
“Don’t use imagined excuses to hide behind. It’s beneath you,” Cash muttered, his peepers still turned away.
Hide behind?
Dev’s brain exploded behind his eyelids.
He had never hidden from anything a single day in his life, and there was no plan to start now. “Okay, Mr. Over-communicator, wanna tell me about the dreams you keep havin’?” He graciously gave Cash about six seconds to answer. When he didn’t, Dev shot back a very disgruntled and disgusted, “Yeah, didn’t think so.”
“You keep dying. Is that what you want to hear?” Cash asked, angrily whipping his head toward Dev. “I’m there every single time. Your girls are there. We’re all together in many different scenarios and you die by gunfire every single dream. A blow to your chest, your heart. It plays like a premonition in my head. I can’t ever save you.”
Cash shook his head. Anguish flitted across his brow. The pain of the dream was real for Cash. Dev could see it. As genuine as if it had happened in real time.
