Oh.That made sense, and the fact that Marc had him pegged for a scummy bedsit dweller was oddly comforting. Maybe. Jamie opened the car door and started to get out, even though a good portion of his shredded instincts screamed at him to stay—to say something, do something—anything to prolong this moment with Marc a little while longer.
But the words didn’t come, and his feet were on the gritty road before Marc’s hand closed around his wrist.
“Jamie.”
Jamie’s heart skipped a beat. Marc’s touch was warming as always, but the way he gripped Jamie’s wrist now was like a shackle of dreams. Jamie turned to face him and was instantly lost in a dark gaze.
“What are you so afraid of?” Marc asked, and for once it was apparent that he didn’t know the answer before Jamie did.
Jamie closed his eyes and leaned closer, every fuckup he’d ever made on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t let them go. Instead he brushed his lips against Marc’s in the barest whisper of a kiss and shook his head. “I’m afraid of myself, and you should be too.”
Marc caught Jamie’s face in his hands before Jamie could pull away. “I’m not afraid of anyone who looks at me the way you do.” He brought their lips together again and kissed Jamie so sweetly that Jamie’s entire body was fleetingly and blissfully devoid of anything but Marc’s mouth on his.
But it was over too soon, and then Marc gave Jamie a light shove. “You’d better go inside.”
Jamie wanted to kiss Marc, touch his face, his strong chest... wantedmore. He wanted to sink to his knees for Marc, and hold his deep-brown eyes as he loved him with his mouth. But with the mark of a hundred johns still staining his soul, he’d forgotten how, and he tore himself from Marc and scrambled out of the car.
He didn’t dare glance back as he walked away, his body and mind burning for the man he’d left behind, even as perspective began to return to him.Idiot. You just met him. He probably thinks you’re an easy fuck.But the bitterness wouldn’t stick. Marc was good to the bone, however little he believed it himself, and Jamiewantedhim so much it hurt.
With shaking hands, he let himself into the old house, and then the bedsit, slammed the door behind him and dropped to the floor, burying his face in his hands. He needed to be alone—craved it, goddamn it—so why did the sound of Marc driving away feel like the end of the world?
Five
“Dr. Ramsey?”
Marc blinked. “Sorry, what?”
Amber, the sister on duty in the emergency department, grinned. “What’s up with you tonight? That’s the third time you’ve zoned out on me. You’re usually the one I can rely on to stay awake when it’s quiet.”
“I am awake.” Marc pushed himself upright in the desk chair he’d been lounging in. His scrub trousers had ridden up his legs, exposing his metal ankle. He yanked them down, though he wasn’t truly bothered about anyone noticing. He’d worked here long enough for everyone to know that he wouldn’t make it through airport security without losing a leg all over again. “I’d imagine everyone else is too, with that racket going on.”
He inclined his head towards the bed that held a particularly vocal drunk. Not a homeless dude, or a pickled old lady—a rich kid who’d had too much Prosecco and was threatening to call his lawyer if he didn’t get the two-inch gash on his chin stitched up in the next five minutes. It was no coincidence that no one had been near him for the last hour. Marc was half-tempted to stick his head around the curtain and shut him up himself, but what was the point? It was 9 p.m. on a Friday night. Where there was one piss-up fuckwit, there’d be a dozen more, and they’d all need treating before the night was over.
Amber sighed and drifted away to pester someone else. Marc watched her go and then immediately returned to the Jamie-themed daydreams that had occupied him for most of the shift. It had been three weeks since their chance encounter outside the hospital and subsequent brunch date, and he’d been on Marc’s mind ever since. Not that Marc had seen hide or hair of him in town, and he couldn’t deny that he’d looked, though he’d resisted the urge to bang on his door. Jamie had run away from him for a reason, and Marc had been around the block enough to know that whatever it was simmered far deeper than anything Marc had done.
But still.
Bit old for smooching in the car, ain’t ya?
Fuck off, Wedge.
With a heavy sigh of his own, Marc hauled himself to his feet just as the red phone rang by the nurse’s station. The shift in the air was instant, like it always was when a blue call came in. After hours of drunk twats, lonely old ladies, and cut fingers, every available medic suddenly appeared from the department’s woodwork. Gloves and aprons were donned, and half-eaten suppers hastily stashed away.
A nurse took the call, noting the details on the emergency pad. The ever-growing cluster of staff waited with bated breath as she hung up—a buzz of collective excitement that seemed to be unique to first-world hospitals where drama was relatively light, at least compared to the resources at their disposal,andthe amount of whinging that went on when there was shit to be done.
Not that Marc could knock the well-oiled machine that swung into motion as the nurse announced the call over the department tannoy.
“Adult trauma. Eight minutes out. Adult trauma. Eight minutes out.” Then she turned to the gathered medics behind her. “Adult RTC. Motorbike in collision with a lorry. Head injury, multiple fractures, and part amputation of the right foot.”
The department consultant had appeared to catch the end of the limited briefing. He nodded at Marc. “I’m going to need you.”
Great.Hard-core trauma was Marc’s specialty, due to his experience with gunshot wounds and bomb blasts, but seeing limbs hanging off people didn’t get any easier, especially without his brothers and comrades around to distract him.
Marc suited up for the incoming ambulance and moved to meet the paramedics and HELIMED doctor as they wheeled the patient in—a young man in his twenties, his battered body not much bigger than Jamie’s slender frame.
The HELIMED doctor briefed the consultant, who immediately moved to the patient’s head to focus on his vulnerable airway. Marc let him and the nurses do their work, and pulled up a stool by the young man’s injured foot. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The man would need surgery—if he was fit for it—to save the foot, but before that could happen, Marc had some urgent patchwork to do.
He caught the consultant’s eye. “You all right up there while I clamp these nerves?”