Chapter 5

Five

TAM

To no one’s surprise, not even mine, my wrist is fractured in two places. I get a cast and a bollocking from a doctor for leaving it so long. But I don’t need surgery, and Bhodi is with me, so I don’t have much to complain about.

Bhodi . He was in the room when the doctor pulled my medical records and mentioned the shit-ton of broken bones I’ve suffered before, standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders as if we’re old friends, not strangers who met for the first time a few nights ago.

He hasn’t asked what happened. Or how it’s connected to the intense conversation we fell into in the waiting room. The one that made me forget the weird buzz in those old scars and the razed sensation in my gut. It’s crazy how he does that—with everything, not just the clusterfuck I dragged into the hospital with me. Five minutes with him and I forget my fucking name.

“We can go now. ”

I’m not asleep, but I come back into the room like I’m waking from hibernation. “What?”

Bhodi grins and moves closer, rubbing my arm—the one not encased in fibreglass. “You’re all done. We can go home, unless you want to extend your nap here.”

My desire to hang out at the hospital is less than zero.

I sit up, testing the weight of my casted arm and the flexibility in my fingers.

My arm weighs nothing. My fingers remain utterly fucked, but I can live with that.

Bhodi sets my boots where I can step into them and passes me a paper bag.

A bag that rattles. “What’s this?”

“Your prescription. I got it while you were snoozing.”

I don’t believe him. I hate this place. Everything about it sets my teeth on edge. But Bhodi , man. He’s a fucking sorcerer. If anyone can chill me to sleep on a hospital bed, it’s him, and it’s an odd feeling to know it.

We leave the fracture clinic. Bhodi steers his fucked-up car onto the main road. I have every intention of directing him to the garage on Bell Street, but I’m so fucking tired I can’t formulate the words, and we’re home in no time.

“You should take it easy for a couple of days.” He guides me through the gate, hovering on the other side, as if he remembers that his tenancy agreement forbids him from approaching my house. “Do you have someone you can call?”

“For what?”

It’s another cold day. Bhodi rests his hands on the frosty gate and gives me a patient look. “To help you out.”

I flex my fingers, ignoring the bolt of pain that rockets up my arm. “I don’ t need help, and I don’t have time to kick it. November is my busiest month.”

Bhodi sizes me up, probably trying to figure out what I do for a living that makes Christmas so stacked. But he won’t get there—no one ever does, and he surrenders after a beat, backing away. “I’m home all day. Shout if you need anything.”

He disappears. I hear the side gate open and close, then I catch another flash of him as he passes the gap left by the missing panel, and I feel like I’m seeing that messy blond hair for the first time all over again.

Avoir le coup de foudre.

No.

No .

I don’t believe in shit like that, and if I’ve learned anything today beyond the depths of my own stupid stubbornness, it’s that Bhodi doesn’t either.

“What’s your thing?”

“Running away every time things don’t work out.”

Still. I find myself staring after him anyway, lost in the memory of every gentle touch he’s sent my way, until Rudy splats himself against the living room window, killing the moment—or at least, the moment I’ve cooked up in my addled brain.

Shaking my head, I take myself inside and swallow some of the pills from the bag. I need to eat so they don’t burn a hole in my stomach. The junk food cupboard calls my name, and I have the worst sweet tooth. I stuff a couple of Mr Kipling pies in my face before I pass out on the couch.

It’s dark when I wake up, but at this time of year, that means nothing. Could be teatime or midnight, and I don’t much care as the urge to peek at the annex sweeps over me .

Don’t . And I’m saved from testing my willpower by the angry chirp of my phone.

It’s on the floor by the couch and a cold mug of tea. Sab’s face fills the screen and for the first time in days, I don’t feel the compulsion to hide from him.

I answer the video call and wait for it to connect while I swipe the pie box and the un-drunk tea from the floor with my one working hand. It means I have to leave Sab behind and he’s waiting when I come back, scowling up a storm.

“Where did you go?”

“The kitchen.” I rescue him from the arm of the couch and take him upstairs, to the makeshift studio I’m still getting used to, forgetting that Sab doesn’t know I’ve set up shop in the spare room. That he doesn’t know why .

“And where the fuck are you now?”

“Upstairs. What’s wrong with you?”

Sab squints at his phone, his frown deepening. “Are you in the house still?”

“Did you see me go outside?”

“Don’t be a dick.”

It’s tempting to string this out, but I know he’s worried about me, so I put him out of his misery. “I took your advice and got a lodger. Which meant I had to move the studio inside—like you said. And I hate it, just so you know, like I said I would.”

Sab blinks, absorbing the influx of information. Then he laughs, loud and obnoxious. “That’s why you’ve been acting shady for weeks? Because you didn’t want to admit my idea was genius?”

“It’s not genius, it’s common sense.”

“Why didn’t you think of it first, then? ”

“I did think of it, I just didn’t want to fucking do it. I still don’t.”

“Why? Is the lodger a creep?”

“No.”

That’s it—that’s all I say. But my brother knows my face as well as his own, and he’s all over whatever he sees so fast I do the only thing I can think of to reroute the incoming train.

I hold up my arm, the casted one that despite the nuclear painkillers coursing through my system, still aches like a bitch. “You were right about this . It’s broken.”

Sab takes the bait and I settle in for a lecture that weaves between French and English so chaotically I’m the sole human on the planet with any hope of understanding him. “You’re an idiot.” He rounds up in English, his Birmingham accent creeping back in. “Next time just cut it off and be done with it.”

“Or,” I counter. “You could shift all that oak from my garage. Then there won’t be a next time.”

“Until you find a new way to nearly die. Now tell me about this fucking lodger.”

Damn it. Unbidden, my gaze shifts to the window, and to the annex. There’s a low light on in the living space, but I can’t see Bhodi, and it’s just as well. I don’t want Sab to see my face if I catch a glimpse of him. I don’t have time for that shit in my life, I have a full day’s work to catch up on.

“He’s a nurse,” I answer Sab’s question before he reaches through the screen and shakes me. “Works a lot. Hardly home.”

“Is he the hot dude from yesterday?”

“What hot dude?” I frown at the last line of script I completed last night. It’s a fucking mess. “I don’t know any hot dudes.”

Sab sees through my bullshit, but he runs out of time to interrogate me. It’s bedtime for his kid and my brother’s a good dad. It’s why he’s in Manchester, living in a town he hates with a missus who only cares about herself, but that’s a story for another day.

He ends the call. I let out a slow breath. Relief, but it’s laced with something else—probably the loneliness I admitted to Bhodi earlier when I’ve spent the last six years denying it to Sab. I have friends and I love my job, but this house…it echoes at night, and it gets to me when I spend too much time alone.

Eventually, I figure out I slept most of the day, and I spend the rest of the evening working, standing at my desk, pouring tea and sugar down my throat to stave off the drowsiness from the cute little pills the hospital gave me.

It’s a pattern that continues for the rest of the week. I become nocturnal until I get sick of the dark, and the stomach ache the pills leave in their wake.

Monday morning, I chuck them away and take Rudy for an early walk. He chases a cow. I chase him. Then I carry the little bastard the rest of the way home, because my life is ruled by my tyrannical dog, and if nothing else, his hooliganism distracts me from wondering where Bhodi is. Where he’s been all week for his car to be gone every time I’ve glanced out of the window.

It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A lodger you never see?

Heh. That was before—when the lodgers I’d imagined were a world away from the blond bombshell Bhodi Jones has turned out to be.

Bhodi Jones.

Merde.

Even his name is hot.

That amazing thought completes as I come up on my house. It’s still early, winter sun hazing through the trees, frost glittering on the pavements. The street I live on is pretty as fuck, save the godawful noise rattling from the ancient Golf I’ve been looking out for all week.

He’s home .

My heart has no right to skip a beat. But for whatever reason I don’t want to contemplate too hard, it does anyway. And maybe, tucked to my chest, Rudy feels it, and that’s why he squirms like a motherfucker, barking loud enough to pop my eardrums.

How Bhodi hears over the racket of his fucked engine, I have no idea. And I’m even less certain if the smile he sends my way as he exits the car is for me. I mean, no one has ever smiled at me like this. Or maybe they have. Maybe it’s an ordinary smile and the warmth in my belly is from the Naproxen I’ve been slamming all week.

Either way, it affects me— he affects me, and I’m grateful to my bandit dog for providing an unholy distraction.

I lean over the gate and deposit Rudy in the enclosed front garden. He throws himself at the low wall, desperate to get to the busted fence, but he’s shit out of luck. For once I’m one step ahead of him and he’s stuck where he is for however long I get to be in Bhodi’s company. To lose myself in the low laugh he sends my way, and the smile still lighting his face.

He’s so hot.

My first thought’s a given. My next, not so much.

He’s tired.

I can see it in his eyes. They’re still dazzling as fuck, but I can’t pretend he doesn’t look like someone who’s just worked all night. “Long shift?”

Bhodi ventures close enough to peer over the gate at Rudy. “Aren’t they all? ”

“You don’t like your job?”

“I love my job. My new boss, not so much.”

“Why’s that?”

Bhodi reaches down to scratch Rudy’s ears. I take a breath to warn him he might lose a finger, but Rudy chooses that moment to show me that Bhodi’s one of the rare people he likes, and I feel that. Pretty sure my dog isn’t hooked on the arch of Bhodi’s pale neck, though. Or the flex in his shoulders as he straightens without answering my question. “You look better.”

“Better than what?”

“Better than a dude walking around with untreated fractures. Is it easier to sleep now?”

Course it is. With my arm in a cast I’m not worried about rolling on it in the night and hurting it worse. But I don’t feel like telling him I’ve swapped my pain-fuelled insomnia for cosy daytime naps when he’s been up all night doing God’s work. So I nod, agreeing, and change the subject. “Your car is still fucked.”

Bhodi cringes, lifting a hand to rub the back of his head. “I got as far as ordering glow plugs online, but I haven’t had time to YouTube how to fit them.”

“YouTube?”

He shrugs. “Can’t be that hard.”

“It isn’t if you have the tools and know your way around a diesel engine. Does that sound like you?”

It’s so easy to grin at him.

What I get back is pure magic.

Bhodi laughs , louder than he did at Rudy, but with the same mellow resonance, and the sound wraps around me like a fucking hug. “What gave me away? My girly hands? ”

I love women, and I love all kinds of men. But despite how pretty Bhodi is, there’s nothing feminine about him. He’s as tall as I am, with broader shoulders and a bit more muscle packed onto his lean biceps, and this morning, the barest hint of golden scruff shadows his jaw. “The fact that your car has been making that noise for…let me guess, months , gave you away, son.”

“It hasn’t been months…” Bhodi frowns. “Oh fuck. Maybe it has. I don’t know. My life’s been a bit…“

He gives an absent wave, but I get the picture. My life has been like that too. Some days it still is. “Well, if it helps, I can switch the glow plugs for you.” Bhodi opens his mouth, to protest, maybe, I don’t fucking know. I speak again before he gets the chance. “Call it a thank you for carting me to the fracture clinic. I lied to you when I said I had grand plans to go. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

I want to tell him. He’s so easy to talk to that I know unloading on him would be better than therapy. But he’s tired. He’s worked all night and driven a fucked-up car on icy roads to get home to his bed. My tale of woe can wait. “I’m not going to make you stand out here and listen to that shit. Go to bed. But knock me up when those plugs arrive. I’ll be annoyed if you don’t.”

“Annoyed, eh? What does that look like?”

“Uglier than this.” I point an ink-stained finger at my mug and make myself turn away from him to slip through the gate. By the time I glance back, he’s halfway to the annex, and I want to call after him. But I can’t think of a reasonable reason to keep him from his bed any longer.

So I let him go, and I spend the rest of my day working and fixing the fence. My casted hand is a cumbersome piece of shit, but my fingers have regained enough movement to be useful, and I make the most of it while the frost holds the rain at bay.

It’s mid-afternoon when the Evri man knocks with a package for Bhodi. The annex doesn’t have its own address. The driver leaves the parcel with me, and it’s not hard to deduce it contains the glow plugs he ordered.

Fuck it . I take the box to Bhodi’s car and prepare to wrangle open the bonnet to check he’s bought the right ones, but as it happens, the Golf is unlocked, and too old and fucked to have rectified that when Bhodi went to bed.

He’s still in bed—or, at least, on it. On his belly, that flawless back on display, his hands shoved under the pillow. He doesn’t move much when he sleeps. I know this because I’ve caught myself gazing at him a hundred fucking times today, and that back . His skin calls to me, the curve of his spine, his broad shoulders. I want to?—

Nope.

Not finishing that sentence. He’s my tenant . Watching him sleep and thinking dirty things about him is probably illegal, and it’s definitely fucking immoral.

So I rip open the parcel addressed to him—to Bhodi fucking Jones—and do what has to be done.

It doesn’t take long. It’s getting dark by the time I’m finished, but I don’t let myself glance at the annex to see if Bhodi’s still sleeping.

I go inside and gather Rudy and a giant box of local deliveries, enough to keep me busy till well into the evening. It’s late when I get home and Bhodi is gone. But I wake the next morning to another illegible note on the doorstep, and it feels better than any no-strings sex ever has.