“Me either.” Marc gave in and wrapped his arms around Jamie, to warm him up as much as to comfort him. “But I’ve always found this spot a good place to start looking again.”
“How many times have you lost it?”
“More times than I’ve had it, but I’m no different to any other man in that respect.”
Jamie sighed and tilted his face to sky, his eyes closed. Marc absorbed the turmoil seeping out of him and thought of the faded scars on his arms. Their placement suggested heroin, meth, or crack, but Marc’s money was on heroin. Jamie didn’t seem the type to crave stimulation—only the peace he was evidently still searching for.
Is he clean?Marc’s gut said yes, but addiction wasn’t a field he had much experience in, save treating the walking zombies who walked into A & E searching for methadone. Their desperation was obvious, but the wretchedness he sensed in Jamie seemed to run deeper, like he’d been waging a war for a long time.He’s tired.And that was an affliction Marc related to, even in the quarry grounds with the bracing wind gusting around them, dislodging the melancholy that came from a solitary weekend indoors.
He loosened his grip on Jamie and turned him, searching out his troubled eyes. “Don’t torture yourself. There’s no need when life can do it for you.”
“That right?”
Jamie’s sneer was soft enough for Marc to ignore. He shook Jamie gently and then pointed back the way they’d come. “Might not be right, but it’ll keep you going until you find your own answers. Now help an old man down the hill so he can get some hot chow in him.”
* * *
Three days back in England and you wind up hugging a stranger in a muddy quarry. Life just happens to you, eh?
Jamie scowled for the benefit of the gossipy old woman who seemed to live in his brain when he wasn’t using junk.Sod off. It’s not like I blew him for a ten bag, is it?Though both parts of that argument had their attractions.
Jamie considered Marc across the table of the weird café they’d walked to when they’d finally made it down from the quarry hill. He seemed different from when they’d first met in the plane. Jamie’s memories of that gut-churning journey were a little hazy, and he couldn’t even picture Marc’s expression, but hefeltdifferent. His touch was warmer, and less composed, like he hadn’t thought about where his hands would land on Jamie’s body.
And how they would make Jamie feel.
Heat in his cheeks, Jamie took a reckless sip of scalding-hot tea. It burned his throat, but he welcomed the pain, and used it to ground himself as he sat across from the fittest bloke he’d seen in years.He doesn’t look like a doctor.With his dark stubble and close-cropped hair, Marc reminded Jamie of Eric Bana, but better. Jamie’s fingers itched to touch the scruff on Marc’s face. It looked soft and wiry, and he wondered what it smelled like.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Many things, but in this instance, Jamie had no idea. Marc was gorgeous, but his motivation for being tactile and kind was as much a mystery now as it had been thousands of feet above the Atlantic. In another life, Jamie would’ve suspected him as one of those weirdo johns who liked to pretend that street hookers meant something to them. Fetishizing an imaginary romance that made them feel better about paying twenty quid for a blowie in a bus stop. But Marc wasn’t like those men. His eyes were gentle and warm, and even as Jamie’s own imagination tried to embarrass him, he couldn’t break away.
“How oldareyou?” he asked when the comfortable silence eventually became too much.
“Thought you didn’t care?”
“I said it wasn’t important to me. That’s not the same thing.”
Marc smiled slightly. “Fair enough. I’m thirty-nine. Does that surprise you? Or do I look ancient enough to be your dad?”
“My dad is sixty-four, and you don’t seem much past thirty sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“You’re older when you’re in pain.”
“I must be fucking prehistoric today, then.”
“Bad day?”
Marc grimaced, and a pang of concern twisted Jamie’s gut. It was obvious that there was something wrong with Marc’s legs, but he couldn’t tell if it was an injury or a disability.
“I’m not always this decrepit,” Marc said. “I had some surgery in Chicago, and it’s thrown me off a bit.”
“You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”
“We’re having a conversation, mate. No one’s making demands here.” Marc winked and tapped his finger on the menu that Jamie had barely glanced at. “Do you know what you want?”
Jamie thought of the modest savings he’d transferred from his dollar accounts in California. In theory they’d be enough to keep him going a month or two, three if he really did subsist on tea, toast, and chips, but after leaving rehab and living with Marvin, it hadn’t taken long for him to develop Zac’s habit of hoarding money as obsessively as he did everything else. As hungry as he’d become since he’d climbed into Marc’s ridiculous yellow car, he couldn’t bring himself to spend eight quid on a fry-up.