Chapter 21

Twenty-One

BHODI

Luck can change.

It’s a singular thought as Tam runs through the rain and sweeps into my current universe, isolated by the disbelief still holding firm.

“ Bhodi .” He goes to touch me, then thinks better of it at the last second. “What the fuck happened?”

I lack the words to explain it, but I’m not so far gone that I don’t realise what Tam’s staring at. Me, soaking wet and covered in blood at the side of the road, the fading chaos of a major accident unfolding behind me. Blood makes him sick. “Pile-up.”

“Can fucking see that.” His hands hover again, like he’s fighting the urge to check every inch of me for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

I stand to reassure him before he gets blood on him too. “I’m not hurt. I wasn’t in the accident—I didn’t even see it. Just got roped into the aftermath. ”

Tam’s as wet as me and his dark eyes are a little wild. It takes him a second to process what I’m saying. His gaze bounces between me and the HEMS chopper preparing to take off and he shakes his head a little. “I thought you were dead.”

“What?”

“You didn’t come home—you didn’t answer your phone. Then I drove up on this—” He shudders. “Fuck it. Doesn’t matter. Are you okay?”

It does matter— he matters. But as I go to tell him so, I sway on my feet and his strong arms are an instant cage around me, taking my weight and hauling me to his chest.

I sink into his embrace without a second thought. Forgetting about my wet clothes and the blood. I bury my face and breathe him in, the horrors of the last few hours tightening their grip, and for however long he holds me in the rain, his warm cinnamon scent is the only thing tethering me to the world.

Tam rubs my back, saying nothing and everything with his potent touch. With his stoicism as the blood of a stranger soaks his clothes too.

I take a deep breath and ease back. “Did you smoke?”

He screws his face up. “Little bit. I was really fucking worried.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “Not being dead is enough.”

I nod, slowly, everything we need to say to each other swirling between us in a depthless cloud. “I need to go home.”

“You can leave?”

“Yeah. ”

“Where’s your car?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. Let’s find it and get your stuff.”

How I put one foot in front of the other, I have no idea, but the next thing I know I’ve abandoned my car in a lay-by, and I’m in the passenger seat of Tam’s van, clutching my phone as Fairytale of New York blares from the cantankerous stereo.

“Fucking thing.” Tam thumps it, and the impact sends a cigarette box sliding from the dashboard into my lap.

“These yours?”

“No.”

“Are you lying?”

“Oui-oui, but I only smoked one.”

“I’m not judging you.” I shake a cigarette free and wedge it between my lips.

Tam eyes me as he manoeuvres the van out of the ditch where he dumped it and presses the in-vehicle lighter. “You don’t smoke.”

“Neither do you.” I light the cigarette and take the deepest inhale I can find, closing my eyes for a beat. Then I ash it and toss it out the window.

Tam makes no comment. He just drives and I’m grateful. That he showed up, that he’s with me. No one’s ever done that before, and as storm clouds open above us, I realise that even if he’s not on the same page my heart has flipped to when I wasn’t paying attention, I still need him to know what he means to me.

I take a breath.

He speaks first. “I love you.”

“What?”

Tam steers the van down a dark road—I have no idea what route he’s taking home. “I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the other night. I should have.”

“I—what?”

Tam turns his head, slowing the van. “I don’t want to freak you out, but this just sex bullshit isn’t working for me anymore. I fucking love you and I need you to know it. Life’s too short to keep that shit in.”

I have nothing.

The road reclaims Tam’s attention and we drive in silence until I realise we’re home.

He exits the van.

I sit, feeling slightly unhinged. He loves me? Even in the best-case scenarios I’d imagined at work tonight, those words never left his mouth.

He loves me ?

Nope.

Can’t see it.

Because I love him too, and that would mean everything’s perfect, and that never happens. Not to me.

The passenger door rips open. Tam offers me his good hand. He links our fingers together and tugs me out of the van. I come upright to his beautiful face and he’s not laughing at me. This isn’t a joke. “Come inside,” he whispers. “I need you clean and warm—I need you safe —before I can think straight.”

By inside, he means his house. I leave my ruined shoes in the rain, and he shuts the door behind us, flicking a switch as Rudy yawns from his cosy bed, not bothering to navigate the dark to come to us.

Nothing happens.

“Power’s still out.” Tam opens a kitchen drawer and dumps tea-lights onto the counter while I stare like a stoned hamster. In another cupboard, he reveals a stash of Mr Kipling pie trays and sets the little candles in them, lighting them with a single match from a battered book.

It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

And his face in the flickering light?

I can’t.

Overcome, I back away, colliding with the doorframe.

Tam flashes to my side. “There’s hot water left in the tank. You okay if we shower together?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure? I can chuck a bucket of water over my head in the garden?—”

I kiss him. Just once, and just enough to remind myself he’s real. That he’s the solid flesh and bone who cared that I didn’t come home and came looking for me. That he says he loves me, and I think he might mean it. “Don’t leave.”

“I won’t. Come on.”

He leads me upstairs and helps me out of my wet clothes.

I return the favour and we stare at each other in the glow of the candles he brought with us. “You love me?”

Tam frowns. “It kills me that you find it so hard to believe.”

“I—”

“Bhodi, it’s okay. Let’s get warm, all right? Everything else can wait.”

He twists the shower dial and steam fills the room as delayed shock works its way through my system. I’m a critical care nurse. I’ve seen my fair share of horrific things. But I’m human too, and I’m not as jaded as I used be. What I saw tonight, it hurts, and I know it’s not going anywhere for a while.

Tam knows it too. I feel it in the quiet way he eases me under the hot spray and washes blood and grime from my skin while somehow keeping his cast dry. In the intensity of his stare as he watches me shiver. “We don’t have long.” The water is already cooling as he nuzzles my cheek. “Tell me what you need.”

I think about it for less than a second. “I just need you.”