“The ladder?” Marc’s exhaustion-addled brain took a moment to compute what on earth Jamie could have been doing up a ladder before he remembered the rickety wooden ladder attached to the shelves that held his mother’s collection of ghoulish pewter animals. “Jesus. I told you not to go up that rotten thing. How high were you?”
Jamie’s silence said it all, and Marc’s vague concern morphed instantly into worry so tangible he could almost taste it. “Show me where it hurts. Did you hit your head?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Jamie started to shrug but then seemed to think better of it. “One of the rungs collapsed. I can’t really remember hitting the deck, but my shoulder and ribs are killing me. Happy now?”
“Let me see.”
Marc advanced on Jamie without waiting for an answer and examined him quickly and methodically, as best he could with Jamie clothed. There was a red mark on his temple, but that wasn’t unusual—Jamie had a habit of banging his knuckles on his head when he was frazzled. Marc wondered if that had happened overnight, and then a terrifying thought occurred to him. “When did you fall?”
“Um... I don’t know. Last night, maybe? What day is it?”
“Sunday. Did you fall yesterday or on Friday?”
“Yesterday. It must’ve been. I went home on Friday, remember?”
The fact that Jamie remembered and Marc didn’t was perversely reassuring, but Marc was still horrified by the fact that Jamie had injured himselfhoursago and been alone ever since. “I need to check your ribs and shoulder out. Can you take your T-shirt off?”
“Hmm?”
“Your T-shirt,” Marc repeated. “Don’t worry. I won’t jump you.”
Jamie’s lips turned up in the faintest hint of a pained smile, but it was laced with an emotion Marc couldn’t quite decipher as Jamie fingered the hem of his punky T-shirt. For a moment, Marc thought he’d leave it on and push Marc away with the special brand of silence that was so disturbing—like he’d forgotten how to scream. But then he gingerly pulled his T-shirt up, revealing his taut, lean abdomen, and gestured for Marc to help him ease it over his head.
Damn.Marc bit his lip, his breath caught in his chest. He’d always sensed that Jamie was hiding something beneath his artfully grungy clothes, but the sight of him so exposed and vulnerable, his pale skin, painted dark with tattoos and marred by a mottling of burn scars, still stunned him. Beyond beautiful, Jamie was like no man Marc had ever seen. He longed to trace the sinister lines of ink, but with Jamie trembling in pain, the past would have to wait.
Marc put his hands on Jamie’s bare torso, feeling cautiously for any abnormalities that could indicate breaks or fractures. Years of field medicine had taught him to work without the aid of the technology he now enjoyed at the Chesterfield Royal, and he was soon reasonably satisfied that Jamie had just badly bruised his shoulder and ribs. He placed a hand on Jamie’s chest. “Breathe in for me.”
Jamie obeyed. His lungs moved freely, his winces and gasps coming only when Marc moved him this way and that. “Am I broken?”
“I don’t think so. You’re going to be mighty sore for a few days, though, and I’d imagine you’re not interested in taking any pain relief?”
“I can’t.”
“There are plenty of non-narcotic and opioid drugs that you can take.”
“So why assume that I won’t?”
“Because you like punishing yourself.”
Jamie wrenched himself from Marc’s grasp. “That’s not fair.”
“I know, but that doesn’t make it less valid. I’ve got boxes of naproxen, ibuprofen, and paracetamol upstairs, but you’re not going to let me give you any of it, are you?”
“For someone who claims not to know much about addiction, you’ve got a pretty accurate take on what goes on in my fucked-up brain.”
“You’re not fucked up. You’re recovering, and that’s a journey I’ve been on, even if my path to the bottom was different. It took me a long time to accept that I didn’t deserve to be in the pain I was in, which is why I can see that you’re not there yet.”
Jamie shook his head, his hand flying to his injured shoulder. “Youdidn’tdeserve it, but I do. Don’t you get it?” He turned away, blanching in pain. “I blew myself up—I am the fucking bomb.”
He started for the kitchen door, his T-shirt still draped over a nearby kitchen chair. There was no doubt in Marc’s mind that Jamie would walk home without it if he let him, but as he reached out and grabbed Jamie’s hand, he realised that he had no intention of letting Jamie go home at all. “Jamie.”
Jamie stopped and didn’t resist as Marc tugged him backwards into a careful embrace. He knocked his head on Marc’s chest. “What?”
Marc chuckled. “You know what. Do you really think I’m going to let you out of my sight while you’re banged up and hurt? I know you don’t want drugs, but there are other ways of dealing with pain. Let me help you... please?”