“Trust me, mate.” Marc allowed himself to touch Jamie’s arm one more time. “You’re safer now than you’ve ever been in a car.”
He left it at that and closed his eyes for landing, bracing himself for the impact that would rattle what was left of his battered leg. Somehow, once again, the perpetual discomfort had eased while he’d been engrossed in Jamie—like his eyes took Marc to another world.Weird.
But Marc had run out of energy to contemplate it much. Postsurgery fatigue had caught up with him, even though he’d slept for most of the flight, and it was all he could do to haul himself out of his seat when the plane taxied to a stop.
He waited for most of the other passengers to disembark, distantly noting that Jamie was still staring out of the plane window, and then—after clipping his prosthesis tight again—manoeuvred his aching body to the overhead locker. Retrieving his crutches proved harder than chucking them in had been, and with no friendly flight attendant in sight, Marc braced himself on a seat and fumbled for them, hoping his balance would hold out a little while longer.
It didn’t. But as his renegade legs gave way, a lean body, buoyed by a surprising strength, steadied him. Again, his subconscious seemed to know it was Jamie before his brain computed Jamie reaching around him to pull the crutches from the locker.
Marc regained his equilibrium as Jamie held the crutches out for him to slip his arms into. “All right, mate? Got everything?”
“Er... yeah.” Marc looked over his shoulder. “Just need my bag.”
Jamie grabbed the last remaining bag in the locker and steadied Marc again while he shifted his weight from crutch to crutch and strapped it onto his back.
“Thanks,” Marc said when it was done. “I’m normally pretty good at staying upright, but it’s been a long day.”
“And it’s barely dawn.” Jamie’s smile was thin, his face as wan as Marc felt after eight hours on a plane. It was on the tip of Marc’s tongue to ask if he could buy Jamie breakfast, but Jamie spoke before he could. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you. Thanks for helping me not asphyxiate myself.”
And then he was gone, darting down the aisle and off the aircraft before Marc found the words to respond in kind. Marc hobbled after him, his balance still off after sitting for so long, but by the time he reached the jet bridge, there was no sign of Jamie.
Marc manoeuvred himself to the terminal, trying not to overtly scan every face in baggage claim—a tough ask, as the need to know exactly who was around him was an ingrained habit.
But as hard as he tried, he looked anyway, and Jamie was nowhere to be seen.And why would he be, numbnuts? Got two scotch eggs, ain’t he?
Great. Nat was back, and he’d brought Wedge with him. And just like that, a reality that didn’t involve ethereal strangers on trans-Atlantic flights came crashing down. Wedge had offered to pick Marc up from the airport, but life had got in the way since. Wedge was on the other side of the world right now, and who knew when Marc would hear from him again.I can’t lose another friend.
With heavy legs and a heavier heart, Marc dragged himself to the taxi rank to get a cab to Euston Station. He found one fast and threw himself into the back, preparing himself to doze off or at least make a mental list of all the things he needed to do when he got home. But as he pulled his trusty hat down and closed his eyes, real life eluded him, and in its place, Jamie returned, his ghost of a smile wider than it had been on the plane, more real, for all it was a figment of Marc’s imagination. And for once, he let his mind run free and take him to a place where warm slender hands didn’t disappear into the horizon.
A place where those hands stayed put and chased away every ounce of pain in Marc’s battered body.
Three
A new place to live always smelled the same. Jamie turned a slow circle in the small space he now called home and wondered if the clean carpets were the correlating factor. He closed his eyes and recalled Zac on his hands and knees of the King’s Lynn flat, scrubbing whatever muck Jamie had traipsed in from outside. At the time, he’d thought Zac a fastidious lunatic, but he got it now. That flat had been the first thing Zac had ever had for himself, and keeping stuff clean wasimportant.
Guilt burned Jamie’s abused veins, and he snapped his eyes open before his brain took him to the dark-red stain that had ruined those carpets forever. The image was never far, and nor was the urge to soften its impact, but he didn’t have time for that today. He had to find a job, or the tiny bay-windowed bedsit wouldn’t be his home for long.
He dropped his bag and kicked the door shut behind him, but the pressing need to find work didn’t stop his mind from drifting to the surreal twenty-four hours he’d spent on the road.
And in the air.
An odd heat flooded Jamie’s cheeks. His first-ever flight had passed in a haze of fevered sweats and stomach cramps—cold turkey at thirty-five thousand feet—and his second flight, LA to Chicago, had been unremarkable enough for him to even enjoy it. But somewhere over the Atlantic last night it had all gone wrong. Turbulence: fuck that noise. Without the rugged white knight in the seat next door, Jamie was fairly certain he’d have died from the terror alone.
And what a white knight Marc had been. Only the desperate need to escape London as fast as possible had driven Jamie to abandon him on the plane. Dark hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin, the bloke had looked like a brooding stuntman.His hands—
Stop it.
Jamie ventured farther into his new home in an effort to distract himself from revisiting the fear that had brought him Marc’s magic hands in the first place. A breeze filtered through the open kitchen window, and a piece of paper fluttered from the counter to the floor. Jamie picked it up, unsurprised to see a letter from Marvin, and a note in Liam’s hand. In the week it had taken Jamie to quit his job in Cali and book his flights home, Liam had moved mountains to ensure that he had somewhere to go, even when Jamie had refused his offer of a bed in Holkham.
And so Liam had helped him rent the bedsit instead—a plain, neutral space for Jamie to lay some roots—and left him a list of SOS numbers with a scribbled note at the bottom:Call me anytime. We willalwaystake care of you.
The sentiment did funny things to Jamie’s heart. He’d encountered Liam Mallaney enough times to believe that the words were heartfelt and true, but his motivation remained a mystery to Jamie. Liam wasZac’sboyfriend... partner, lover—what-the-fuck-ever—and he knew all too well that Jamie’s screwups had almost got Zac killed several times over. What was Jamie to him except a fucking liability?
The guilt-ridden loser in Jamie wanted to ball the note up and toss it out of the nearby open window, but the realistic idiot won out and carefully folded the note and tucked it into a drawer. He had an appointment at an addiction centre already set up for Monday morning, but if a year of abstinence-based recovery had taught him anything, it was that the monsters within had no consideration for scheduled resistance.
With his emergency numbers stashed away, Jamie set about unpacking the case of belongings he’d accrued while he’d been in America—clothes, books, and a Bluetooth speaker that connected to his iPhone. He plugged the speaker in now and queued up a DJ Shadow playlist, even though it made him want to score some smack and build himself a snake pit on the spotless cream carpet.
The craving and resulting desperation for immaculate order hit him hard, and he spent the morning cleaning the already spotless flat and organising his treasured possessions with military precision. Size or colour coded, sometimes both. Neat stacks of six, counted six times to be sure. It wasn’t much, but the regimented order soothed his itchy brain.