Chapter 17

Seventeen

BHODI

We fuck every night I don’t work for ten days straight. It’s not planned or even co-ordinated, it just happens. We cross paths on the driveway and barely make it inside before we’re naked and tumbling onto my bed.

I try not to think about why it’s always my bed, and when Tam’s naked beneath me, his gritted moans all I can hear, not thinking is easy. Whatever it is between us, in bed, on the rug—on the hardwood floor when we don’t make it that far—it works, and it’s so close to perfect I almost forget it’s temporary.

“…I don’t do relationships anymore. Or even hookups unless it’s with someone I know for sure doesn’t want anything else.”

Heh. On my rest day, I tag along with him to buy his Christmas tree from the farm in the next village. We go in the afternoon when it’s already getting dark, and on the way home, I notice a spinning glow at the summit of Firefly Hill. “What’s that?”

Tam has a mini roll half stuffed in his mouth. He takes a giant bite and eats it before he’s fit to answer me. “That’s the hot jewellery maker who lives up there. He’s a fire dancer too.”

“A fire dancer who lives on Fire fly Hill?”

Tam grins. “Yup.”

“For real?”

“It gets worse. He’s shacked up with a real life fire fighter too.”

“That’s almost as bad as having a star tattooed on your face and living on on Star dust Lane.”

Tam scowls. Kinda.

I laugh and steal the remaining half of his cake from where it’s dropped into his lap. It’s delicious and it shouldn’t be, but I don’t care. I eat it anyway and drowse to the tinny Wham! filtering out of the van’s radio, an unpredictable contraption that’s as knackered as I am after staying up all day after a night shift. The sickly-sweet sugar and Tam’s company are a good distraction, but a frayed feeling loiters, ready to strike if I don’t go to bed— to sleep —soon.

We pull up outside Tam’s house. He goes for the tree in the back of his van, ready to hoist it inside by himself, but I’m there before he gets his hands to it, sharing the load. Tam might think I haven’t noticed that the wild sex we’ve been having has aggravated his back injury. But I have. Because I spend way too much time gazing at him, and I’m not even remotely sorry about it.

I know where the tree goes—by the motorcycle photograph I find myself transfixed by every time my gaze lands on it. “Do you miss it?”

Tam slides up behind me, not touching, just there, warm and solid. “The bike or the life?”

“All of it. ”

“That’s a tough question.”

I turn to face him. “Why?”

Tam gives me the same frown he’s been giving me for days now. Like there’s something he wants to say, but he doesn’t quite know what. “It was a great life while I was living it, but it’s killed and hurt people I care about. And it took me away from Sab too much. I might’ve caught him before he fell so far if I’d been around more.”

“Bet he doesn’t see it like that.”

“He doesn’t.”

Tam’s hands twitch, as if he’s thinking about reaching for mine. At least that’s what my brain imagines, and then lights on fire. Tam’s super tactile with everyone. The more time I spend with him, the more I see it. He gave the postman a hug yesterday.

You’re not special.

It’s just sex.

Friends, remember?

I step away and move to the boxes Tam’s stacked on the coffee table while Rudy tries to attack them from the floor. Decorations I persuaded him to let me retrieve from the attic for him after we fucked in the annex before first light this morning. “La Rochelle.” I read the heart-shaped ornament. “Is that where your family’s from?”

“No, it’s where we used to go on holiday. My dad’s family are Parisian.”

It takes me a second to compute what that means. “Paris?”

Tam nods and reaches over my shoulder to take the ornament. “My mum’s lot are Scottish, but she speaks better French than any of us.”

He kisses the back of my neck, grabs another bauble, and drifts back to the tree as if a full-body shiver didn’t just wipe my brain clean of all thought. But I know he knows. Because I told him a few nights ago, when I was buried deep inside him, that his touch casts a spell on me. What can I say? Bomb sex makes me chatty. But I regret it. Opening my big mouth, not the sex. Spilling my feelings means acknowledging them, and I’m not ready to admit that fucking Tam was a wonderful and terrible mistake.

It’s just sex .

Right.

“Bhodi.”

“Hmm?”

“Come here.” Tam holds out his hand—the casted one, the fibreglass dented and dinged. He doesn’t look at me, because he knows I’ll come. That I can’t resist his addictive affection. He doesn’t know how scared I’m becoming of the day when it’s gone.

It’s just sex.

I go to him and wrap my arms around him from behind, as if that gives me more control. And maybe that’s how I’ve settled in to fucking him so easily. Because it’s easier to believe he wants me for more when he hooks his legs around my waist and begs me to stay inside him. As he slides a casual hand over my hip now and shows me a handwritten decoration made of cardboard and clay.

It’s cute. “Did you make this when you were little?”

“I was eighteen and drunk. See how bad my writing used to be?”

“When you were drunk .”

“It was like that when I was sober too.”

I bite my lip as he leans against me, his back to my chest, every contact point sparking a heat in my blood that should be sated already, but isn’t, and it’s starting to feel like it won’t ever be. That I could fuck Tam ten times a day and it will never be enough. “How did you get into art therapy?”

Tam takes a breath and slowly lets it out. Not quite a sigh, but close. “I had a lot of anxiety after the crash. I kept hearing all the alarms going off when my heart wasn’t beating right, feeling those hands on my chest, people shouting at me to live. And I didn’t have the road to escape to anymore when I could barely fucking walk.”

“How long did it take to work?”

“It was a few months before I woke up without being catapulted into my day by a panic attack. Then a year went by and I was still doing it, and now it’s as much a part of me as riding my hog ever was.”

“And at least it’s something you enjoy. I hate running.”

Tam straightens. “You run when you’re anxious?”

I nod and his stare intensifies, like he’s trying to peel back layers I don’t even know are there. For the first time ever, his attention makes me squirm, and I back away from it, returning to his boxes of baubles.

He lets me go and we decorate his tree in relative silence, save Rudy’s snoring now he’s grown bored with trying to maul everything.

We’ve been quiet before, mainly after sex until I pass out first, and it’s never been awkward, but it feels heavy now, and I know it’s me. That for once, my instincts are doing the right thing and warning me that this easy companionship is dangerous for my soft heart, and I need to step back before it blows up in my face again .

“Do you want to put Sab’s plastic monstrosity in the annex?”

I’m crouched at the foot of the gorgeous fir Tam chose at the farm. From a few feet up where Rudy can’t reach, he’s decorated it in shades of gold and red, and a few pink things he says are for Esme. Even with the drunken baubles and the angry dog trying to savage every branch, it’s classy and cool, leaving me to assume the tat left in the boxes belongs to someone else.

To Sab, maybe. “You don’t think he’ll want it?”

“Not this year.” Tam eyes me as I rise, bringing us face to face again. “He’s coming back here on Christmas Day, but he has to leave Esme behind.”

My heart sinks, another warning that I’m way too invested in my landlord-slash-hook-up’s family. In his brother , who’s been nothing but nice to me. “Do you think they’ll work out a fair custody split?”

“No.”

“No?”

Tam’s expression darkens. With the lights from the tree making his brown eyes gleam, he looks more like the biker he used to be. “It’s going to be all or nothing. I just don’t know which way it’s going to go yet.”

“Sab can’t lose Esme. He’s an amazing dad.”

“I know, but Charmaine’s petty. She’d take her just to win. Just like she’d give her up if she got a better offer than growing the fuck up, and it’s fucking twisted that I have to pray for that for Esme, but it’s all I can do.”

It’s a horrible thing to contemplate when we’ve spent all afternoon turning Tam’s beautiful house into a Christmas grotto his niece might not get to see. There’s Christmas songs on the radio again, but they grate on me now, like they’re mocking us. “I’m sorry you have to go through that.”

Tam starts to smile and reach for me. But something stops him. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Yeah. I know you’re tired, but this feels like something else.”

“What does?”

“This.” Tam gestures between us. “Have I pissed you off since this morning?”

A frown creases my forehead as my scratchy, sleep-deprived brain struggles to keep up. We banged this morning. Then he worked, and I caught up on the errands I’ve let slide while I’ve spent every spare moment fucking him on every available surface of the annex.

The annex he owns.

Because he’s my landlord.

“You haven’t pissed me off.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know.” I rough a hand through my hair. “It’s just?—”

Just what? You’re friends that fuck. He never promised you anything else. Just like Skylar, and everyone before him.

“Fuck.” I want to punch something, and it’s a feeling I’m not familiar with, like my words snarling up in my throat. I’m good at talking if people give me the chance. I’m good at breathing , but apparently, in this moment, I’ve forgotten how.

“Bhodi.” Tam utters my name like it’s the last word he’ll ever say, and it’s too much.

I reel away from him.

Hurt flashes in his gaze, instant and raw. “Hey.” He holds his hands up. “Whatever it is, you can tell me, okay? We’re friends.”

I laugh, I can’t help it.

Tam’s confusion deepens and the discord that springs up between us is so visceral Rudy lifts his head, disturbed by a soundless struggle neither of us truly understands.

“All right.” Tam’s voice pitches lower as he tries again to reach me. “Merde, let’s fucking rewind.”

“To where?”

“To wherever you need to be to calm the fuck down.”

Calm the fuck down. I’ve had those words thrown at me before. Not Skylar, someone else. Someone insignificant, but maybe not as Tam’s well-meant words trigger my frustration so hard I really do want to thump something. Probably myself, because if we’re rewinding, perhaps it needs to be to the moment I found out the dude I’d accosted in the hospital car park was my landlord. When I had every chance to back off and find somewhere else to live.

Or find a new job.

A new town.

A do-over before my fresh start had even begun.

But no. I hooked up with the hot dude from the car park. I caught feelings for him, and now here we are, blazing heartache at each other under the light of a tree as beautiful as he is.

At least, my heart aches. Tam still looks confused, and that’s my fault too. I’m giving him nothing. “I’ve really fucked this up.”

Tam lowers his hands. “Fucked what up?”

“This.” I snatch a breath that goes nowhere. “I thought I could do it, but I just fucking can’t.”

Tam solidifies, for the most fleeting moment. But it’s the escape I need and I back up again, needing out before I say something I can’t take back.

Like fucking him being a mistake.

Because it wasn’t.

Not the way he’s going to take it if I can’t find a better way to explain myself, and that’s not happening today. I know it like I know Tam’s going to chase after me if I don’t move faster.

“Bhodi, wait.”

I’m too slow.

Tam weaves around me, blocking my path. “ Wait .”

It’s not in me to physically push him away. I stop and he grips my shoulders, his touch heavy and grounding, but he doesn’t speak, and his bewildered silence is worse than if he shouted in my face, because I deserve it as much as I deserve to love someone without feeling like I’m begging for scraps in return.

Tam doesn’t make you feel like that. And Skylar didn’t either. You made that mess all by yourself.

I shrug away from Tam. “Sorry, I’m just tired and in my feelings. I need a nap and a reality check.”

“A reality check?” Tam’s still in my way. I’m wider than him, but somehow, he seems like a giant blocking a causeway. “Is this about us fucking?”

Is it?

My brain flashes back to this morning. It was still dark out as I pushed Tam onto my bed and nudged his legs apart. I’ve come to learn that Tam doesn’t need—or want—much prep. That I can be inside him in as long as it takes me to shove our clothes aside and find some lube.

Too fast .

That’s what I thought. But maybe my brain had been trying to tell me something else.

“It’s not about that.” I try to rub the tightness out of my chest. “And it’s not you—it’s me. I knew this was a bad idea before I even met you.”

Tam frowns. “I?—”

His phone rings.

Loudly, with the tone he has assigned to family.

Sab.

Or his parents.

Either way, whoever it is trumps the clusterfuck I’ve set in motion, and it’s how it should be.

I take advantage of his distraction and slip past him.

Tam curses, torn between me and his phone. “Don’t go. Please?”

I could scream. I bring both hands to my head, ploughing my fingers into my hair, battling the urge to rip it all out.

But I don’t go.

I step into my shoes, then I stand, rigid, while Tam darts for his phone and hate myself even more as the call rings out before he reaches it.

He comes back, phone clutched in his tattooed fist. Maman lights up the screen, and I feel even worse. His parents don’t call much.

“Bhodi.” Tam drops his phone on a nearby shelf and grasps my wrists, tugging my hands from my hair. “Just take a breath, okay? Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

I almost believe him. But he doesn’t release my wrists. He strokes my pulse points with his thumbs, his cast brushing my skin, reminding me how we first met. How I knew even then that the skip in my heart I felt for him was dangerous. “I can’t fuck you anymore.”

“Okay.” Tam’s grip tightens. “But that’s just sex. What’s really bothering you?”

“Just sex…” He’s right. Of course. But hearing him say it tears me up all over again. Because fucking him has nothing to do with the warmth blooming where he holds my wrists, or the way his cinnamon scent spins my head. Or the concern in his gaze my soft and stupid heart takes for something else.

Just sex.

Just. Sex.

But it’s not just sex for me, and it never was. I liked him. I cared about him. And now I’m drowning in a potent mix of the two that feels a lot like love, and I’m the biggest fucking idiot that ever lived.

I wrench free of Tam’s grasp.

He recoils as if I’ve slapped him and holds up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. If you need space from me, take it.”

“That’s the point, though, isn’t it?”

Frustration darkens Tam’s features, his brows knitting together. “ What is?”

I don’t want space from you .

But I can’t say it. I have nothing but a big fat knot of wordless anguish and his phone rings again before I can even begin to unpick it.

It’s his dad this time.

Tam’s gaze bounces between me and the screen and I give him the out he needs.

I leave, and dash outside into the sleety snow that’s begun to fall while I’ve been holed up in Tam’s fairytale house with him. The crispness in the air is gone and everything feels damp and sad, even me.

Especially me, and the empty annex does nothing to lift my mood.

I sit on the edge of the bed where I fucked Tam this morning. In the gloom, listening to the sleet turn to rain, washing the sparkle off the ground and the trees.

My phone buzzes.

I ignore it.

A little while later, comes a quiet knock at my door, and I know it’s Tam. It can’t be anyone else, and I ache for him something rotten.

But I ignore that too and sit alone in the dark until the sky turns from black to pearl grey with one question on my mind. How the hell did I let this happen to me again?