Chapter 2

Two

BHODI

I’m less okay with it, and pretty much everything else, by the time the morning rolls around. Night shifts suck, and navigating a new place made this one more intense than I’m used to after sticking it out in Truro longer than I ever have anywhere else.

New people.

New protocols.

New green scrubs that remind me of the slime a toddler once puked on me in A&E too many years ago to count.

I shouldn’t be thinking about puke. I’m hungry. But I climb into my car with a brain like sludge and it’s hard to contain.

Fighting with Maps distracts me. I punch in the postcode for my new digs, grateful I took the time for a drive-by the day before, just to check the road name was real.

Stardust Lane .

Sounds magical, but the way my luck has gone recently, I bet it’s a dump. Serves me right for signing a lease without viewing the studio flat attached to it first, but that’s my life. It’s how I roll, and I’ll roll with this until it’s over.

My phone finally plays ball. I point my car north, out of the city and into the sticks, and pray I’ll stay awake all the way to my new home.

A dangerous game. One I’ve seen the consequences of too many times to play fast and loose with the road. But it’s a short journey, and I make it to Stardust Lane before fatigue eats me whole, and ditch my car next to the road sign I spotted yesterday.

Like everything else, it’s covered in frost. And I stagger out of my car to the tiniest snowflakes falling from the dawn sky. If I wasn’t delirious with exhaustion, I’d hold my hands out and spin around. But as it goes, it takes all my energy to grab a bag from the boot of my car and shuffle for the lock box where the letting agent promised I’d find my keys.

“The landlord wants to keep things separate from his living space. Chances are, you’ll never see him .”

Suits me. I’m a people person when my mood’s right. But night shifts suck the life out of me. I need a bed to fall face-first into. I’ll worry about avoiding my reclusive landlord later.

I retrieve the keys and navigate to the side gate. It’s secured by another combination lock and it takes me a second to recall the code. Then it sticks, and I have to shake the gate to open it.

The commotion is louder than the frosty sunrise glittering over Stardust Lane deserves, and it wakes a dog somewhere.

Somewhere close . I shove the gate open as the deep bark reaches the fence and cringe. If this is me every morning for the next week, my landlord is going to love me.

The barking gets louder. I shut the gate and follow the path to a white building I assume is where I live now. I get my key in the lock, seconds from being blessedly inside, but as the lock clicks, all hell breaks loose.

Hell in the body of the smallest, cutest dog I’ve ever seen.

It bursts through the fence, taking a panel with it, and hurls itself at my legs, still barking up a storm. If it wasn’t so small, I’d be scared, but it’s no bigger than an angry squirrel and I laugh, letting it do its thing while I wince at the wrecked fence.

“Didn’t like that panel, eh?”

The dog jumps again. This time I crouch to meet it and realise it’s vibrating with excitement more than violence, though it still sounds like it wants to eat me.

“Rudy!” Hurried footsteps sound beyond the hole in the fence. “ Rudy —Putain de merde. What the fuck happened here?”

I raise my gaze from the dog, startled by the deep voice that rakes the air in English and French. By the biker boots that appear by the bag I’ve dropped, and the long, denim-clad legs they’re attached to.

Tattooed arms, one cradled to a strong chest. And a set of wide russet eyes that hold the same shock and awe I feel. “Fuck. It’s you.”

I rise, half convinced the night shift I’ve just worked is spilling over into a fatigue-laced hallucination. Mostly convinced, actually, as I can’t think of a rational explanation for the beautiful, injured man from last night to be standing in front of me in his pyjamas .

If you can call low-slung faded sweats, biker boots, and an open zip-up hoodie pyjamas.

I’m clutching the dog. I hand it over. He takes it with his uninjured arm and it’s the sight of his fractured wrist that drags words from my throat.

“You didn’t go back then?”

“Back where?”

“To A&E. For an X-Ray.”

The dog squirms. The man sets him down, watching him scamper through the fence before he looks at me again and profound confusion knits his brows. “Why are you here?”

A fair question. Doesn’t answer mine, but it’s a start. “I live here.” I incline my head to the keys dangling from a door I’ve yet to open. “Just moving in.”

Those pretty eyes widen again. “You’re Bhodi Jones?”

He knows my name . My heart skips a ridiculous beat, and I realise there’s a chance I might know his. “That’s me. Don’t suppose you’re Tam Dubois, are you? Because that would make you my landlord.”

I’m laughing as I say it. Not homeless then . But stunned silence answers me. Those eyes , and oh. Oh. No way. This stuff never happens to me. Closest I’ve ever come to a rom-com moment was that time Skylar asked me to be his fake boyfriend for a hot second, to stop a nurse in ICU sending him boob pics, and I didn’t see him for a month after that.

The dejection that brought me here smothers my amusement, and my companion— Tam , though he’s yet to confirm it—finally recovers. He shoves his hair out of his face with an inked hand and shakes his head, muttering in French before one phrase sneaks through. “Fucking hell.”

I agree. But I’m also hungry, tired, and so poleaxed by how gorgeous he is that I’m struggling to string a sentence together. I need to unlock this door and drag my corpse to bed before I’m capable of the conversation this wild moment deserves. “I thought you were lying about the dog.”

“Nope.” Tam Dubois reanimates for real and swipes my bag from the ground as the menace in question reappears. “Morphing into a battering ram is a new one, though.”

He holds out the bag. It’s my cue to take it and unlock the door, but as his faculties return, mine abandon me. I’m rooted in place as he lets the bag slip to his elbow and reaches around me to open the door.

The dog darts inside.

Tam curses and it brings me to my senses.

I rotate and catch my first glimpse of my new home. Blink and take another look, startled all over again by the rustic perfection that greets me. I mean, I read the letting agent’s description a month ago, but I’d been drinking, moping , and too caught up in what I was leaving behind to move forward with any tangible focus. Definitely do not remember shiny wooden floors. A log burner. Or a couch that takes up most of the living space in the open plan annex.

“Sorry it’s small,” Tam gruffs from somewhere behind me. “And that it’s already covered in dog hair.”

His dog zooms around the space, chasing a gold-flecked pipe cleaner. “Are you sure he’s not a cat? He’s acting like one.”

“He’s a little shit. Rudy. Come here.”

Rudy ignores him.

I venture further into my new house and whistle, but that does no good either and Tam sighs.

“Do you mind if I come in and get him?”

“Have at it. It’s your place.”

“Actually, it’s yours. I put no inspections in the contract so I have no right to come in while you’re living here. ”

News to me. Last place I lived the landlord poked his head in so often I probably needed a restraining order against him. But I can’t lie and say I’m relieved Tam won’t be around the whole time I’m here.

“The landlord wants to keep things separate from his living space. Chances are, you’ll never see him .”

“You can come in.” I shuffle out of the way. “Whenever you want. I don’t mind.”

Tam slips me an inscrutable glance as he steps over the threshold and toes his boots off. He has tattooed feet and perfect toes, and I can’t even…

How is this the world I’ve woken up to when I haven’t been to sleep yet?

“Rudy. Dégage . Come on.”

This dog. Despite the stern authority lacing a voice that could charm honey from bees, he doesn’t give a toss. It’s like he wants me to die right here watching his master manoeuvre his wet dream of a body around this gorgeous space, all the while cursing in French. Like he knows it’ll be a perfect death.

Trouble is, if I die, then I’ll never get to examine Tam’s injured wrist, and if I’m certain of nothing else right now, it’s that he has no intention of taking it to anyone else.

Instant expert, are you?

No. Not even close. But that wrist. It’s bothering me, and unless he’s made of stone, it has to be bothering him.

Rudy skids past me.

I lunge and snatch him up. Without his tiny claws scrabbling on the wood floor, the silence is deafening. The clarity—that it’s silly o’clock in the morning and I’m sharing oxygen with my landlord, a man who past-me had pegged for a vagrant, who also happens to be a bare-chested smoke show .

An injured smoke show .

I can’t let it go. I tuck Rudy under my arm, taking him hostage. “You can have him back if you let me take a look at your wrist.”

Tam stops mid-step, already reaching for his dog. “Excuse me?”

He has don’t-fuck-with-me vibes for days, but I stand my ground. He can’t punch me and grab his dog with one hand, so he has to make a choice, and I make an educated guess that he loves his dog more than he loves himself.

“My wrist is fine.”

“Then it won’t take long.”

“What are you? A doctor or something?”

“Nurse. If it’s broken, I can’t help you.”

“Then why look?”

“Could be a sprain.”

“Then what?”

I shrug, out of energy to blag him with. We both know it’s not a sprain. I can see the swelling and deformity from where I stand, and the drawn lines on his handsome face give away that he’s spent all night feeling it for himself, a notion that squeezes my heart all over again.

It’s what makes me a good nurse and a bad one. That I care when maybe I shouldn’t. That I can walk away from my own problems without looking back, but someone else’s force me to my knees.

Skylar…

No. I don’t want to think about him right now. I can’t , or I’ll drown in this fresh start before it gets the chance to save me, and I’m tired of feeling lost. I’m tired of everything.

“All right. ”

I blink to find Tam has edged close enough that I smell woodsmoke and cinnamon dancing on his olive skin. His eyes are fixed on his dog, vindicating my decision to swipe him, but I can tell by the set of his jaw that he wants to show me his wrist as much as he wants to stick his head in the log burner.

Shame for him, I don’t care. I mean, I do. Taking his agency from him is the last thing I want. But my job, wherever I land, is a parade of worst-case scenarios. An untreated fracture can kill a man, and I’ve seen it happen, so I put Tam’s dog down and reach for his wrist.

His frayed sleeves are already rolled back. I take his hand and turn his arm, assessing both sides, palpating the swollen flesh, testing the movement in his fingers.

“Any numbness?”

Tam grunts. “No.”

“How’s the pain?”

“Fine.”

“And when I do this?” I press my thumb harder into the worst of the swelling.

Tam hisses, wrenching his arm away. “All right. You made your point. I know it’s fucked.”

“Fractured,” I correct. “Easily fixed with a cast.”

If he’s lucky, and doesn’t leave it so long it needs re-breaking and setting.

I open my mouth to say so, but he’s already snatched Rudy and made it halfway to the open door.

He’s done, I realise, and I have to respect it. But not without telling him the truth. “You can’t ignore an injury like that. If it heals wrong, you’ll need surgery to correct it.”

“Nice to meet you.” Tam steps into his boots and leaves, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click .

His departure is so abrupt I go back to believing I fell asleep on the way home and I’ve yet to wake up. But his scent lingers, the warmth of his bare skin against my palms. The fluff from his crazy dog.

I’m in his house .

I mean, not literally. I’m in an annex he owns, that he’s renting to me on a short-term lease under the condition he never has to deal with me, and I’ve pushed myself all up in his face twice in the past twelve hours.

But still. My tiny mind is blown and it makes it hard to take in the lush space I’ve somehow landed in.

The sofa.

It’s a bed—I remember that much from the emails. It folds out, creating a bedroom in the living area that holds a tiny kitchen, and a separate bathroom tucked into the back.

The rest of the space is all wood and huge windows, natural light pooling as the sun grows stronger. The log burner I’m too tired to investigate, and a rug big enough to?—

Nope.

I get horny when I’m tired. Like my body knows a good fuck would gift me the best sleep ever. It makes going to bed alone depressing, but I’m too far gone to care right now. I’m not even hungry anymore. I’m just going through the motions, booting my shoes and losing my coat, dumping it on the floor as I wrestle with the sofa-bed.

It springs out on the third try. There’s bedding in my car, but I don’t care enough to fetch it. Everything is tomorrow’s problem. Tonight’s , when I wake up and go back to work.

Exhaling, I flop onto the bed and let my gaze sweep the annex one last time. It’s clean, but not too clean, the dust that remains homely, not grotty, and there’s tinsel hanging from the beam above me, as if someone forgot to put it away last year. In the winter sun, it’s so gold it’s almost bronze, and it makes me think of Tam’s russet gaze, and the kaleidoscope of emotion I’ve seen in him since we set eyes on each other last night.

Still doesn’t feel real. Any of it. But this bed, it smells of him, and as I crash into a deep sleep, it feels like he’s still here.