“Because it’s part of you. Does it hurt?”
“Not right now. I haven’t had my prosthesis on for twenty-four hours, so it’s feeling pretty chill.”
“That’s good, right? To give it a break?”
Marc grimaced slightly. “Yes and no. Without the pressure of the prosthesis, I sometimes forget that the leg is gone. Then I get phantom limb pain, and that’s worse than any other shit I’ve ever been through, because it fucks with my head.”
Finally, something Jamie understood. “I went cold turkey in rehab and I went so bananas with it I thought my teeth were itching. I still get that when I get antsy.”
“Is that why you count when you clean, and tap your fingers? To distract yourself?”
“Maybe, but it’s reassurance too. When I was little, I kissed the boy next door seven days in a row, and my mum told me that she’d whip me seven times if I did it again. For years I believed that six was my lucky number... I’ll always be hooked on something, I guess.”
Marc pushed Jamie’s hand onto his stump. “Yeah, but if you can quit heroin, you can quit anything. Why not the counting? Do you think bad stuff will happen if you don’t do it?”
“Stop doctoring me.” Jamie’s hand touched the folded skin below Marc’s knee, and he sucked in a breath. “Oh wow... it doesn’t feel like I thought it would.”
“I’m going to take that as a good thing and leave it at that.”
“I’m serious. It’s like a snake.”
“Scaly?” Marc’s eyebrows shot up.
“No! I mean that I expected it to feel, I don’t know, cold maybe? Like a foot does sometimes. Like I thought snakes did until I held Marvin’s python.”
Marc’s eyebrows shifted impossibly higher, but Jamie ignored the innuendo and pressed his lips to Marc’s stump. Marc’s answering shiver seeped into him, and the temptation to linger on Marc’s skin was strong, but what was left of Jamie’s battered soul told him that it was time to go.
He took a final breath of all that was Marc and then slid from the bed in search of his clothes.
“Kitchen,” Marc supplied helpfully. “I washed them.”
“Aren’t you a regular mother hen? I do wash my shit at home, you know.”
“I know, but I was doing my own and figured that you might not want to put clothes back on that had been on the bathroom floor all night.”
He wasn’t wrong, but Jamie wasn’t in the mood to confess to more ridiculous ticks. Still naked, he left the room and padded to the kitchen. His jeans, T-shirt, socks, and boxers were draped on a rail set up in front of the stove. He snagged his underwear. It was deliciously warm, his socks too, and there wasn’t much in the world that made him happier, except—
No. He had togo, or he never would, and being with Marc would become something else that he couldn’t live without.
Eleven
There was no harm in saying goodbye, though. Jamie dressed, and then hurried back to the bedroom. Marc was up, prosthesis strapped on, and wearing a weathered pair of jeans—faded denim that hugged him in all the right places. His muscular chest rippled as he pulled a T-shirt over his head, and Jamie’s resolve wavered. “Um... so, I’m gonna go.”
“Okay. Got much planned today?”
“Just a meeting and tidying the flat up. It gets dusty when— Never mind.” Jamie shook his head. “You’re working tonight, aren’t you?”
“Yup. Seven till seven. Are you going to be okay?”
“Course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Marc sighed and kicked a drawer shut with his metal foot. “Because I’m judging you by how I feel, and I’m not looking forward to spending the night without you.”
“Oh.” Jamie dialled back his irritation and stepped into Marc’s personal space, winding his arms around Marc’s neck. “I’m sorry. I turn into a spiky bitch when I have to do something I don’t want to.”
“What don’t you want to do?”
“I don’t want to leave you.”