Chapter 7

Seven

TAM

I’m dead.

I thought it would wear off, the wild feeling in my chest every time I’m near Bhodi. Then I accidentally caught a glimpse of him lying half naked in bed with his cock in his fist and everything I’d put down to the temporary thrill of making a new friend, who just so happens to be hotter than sin, solidified. Put down roots. Cemented that shit in my brain.

He’s not something I think about anymore.

He’s all I think about, and it’s freaking me out.

“Merde, you have it bad.” Sab gets in my face, literally. For the first time in a while, we’re not bickering through a phone screen. He’s in my garden, inspecting my work on the fence under the pretence that he’s not trying to catch a glimpse of Bhodi. “How hot is this lodger, exactly?”

“Hot enough.” I speak from the back door. It’s raining and if there’s one thing I hate more than being cold, it’s being wet and cold. Also, Bhodi’s not even home. I just like watching Sab waste his time.

He eventually runs out of fence to pick fault with and sidles back to where I’m slouching, nursing the same tea I’ve been carrying around all morning, too distracted to fucking drink it. “Are you going to hook up with him?”

“What? No. Course I’m not. He’s my tenant.”

“So?”

“So, that’s fucked up.”

“Why? Sounds like porn to me.”

I feint an elbow to Sab’s ribs.

He laughs. “What’s wrong with that? It’s what you like, isn’t it? Kinky sex with no strings?”

“No complications .”

“And…”

“Fucking my tenant would be complicated.”

“Depends how you do it, mon frère. Surely your repertoire isn’t that basic?”

I jab him for real. He rolls with the blow and ambles inside to raid my fridge.

Scowling, I follow and try not to fixate on the front gate, where I last saw Bhodi as he jogged past with bed head and black running sweats, a feat that only leads me back in time, to the evening he spent in my kitchen, eating dinner and making me laugh more than I have in years.

To what happened next.

I saw him .

Back arched, skin flushed. Bottom lip caught between his teeth. His dick?—

“How’s work?”

“What?”

Sab smirks from the fridge door, letting me know I was an absolute fucking idiot to tell him even the briefest version of what happened a few nights ago. “I was right the first time.”

“About what?”

“About you having it bad for the lodger.”

“He has a name.”

Sab clutches his chest. “Stop. Mon c?ur!”

“You fucking stop.”

He does for as long as it takes him to hoover up every scrap of bread and ham in my kitchen. Then he’s on me again because he cares as much as he loves to watch me squirm.

“How much dick did you actually see?”

Sab’s even messier than me. I sweep crumbs from the counter and consider thumping him again, but it’s hard to think about violence when his question fills my head with…other things. Also, without the safety net of a phone screen, bullshitting my brother is impossible. It’s easier to tell him the truth and worry about what he’ll do with it later. “I saw enough.”

“It was a good one?”

“The whole package was good, but I knew that already.”

“How?”

A sigh breaches my lungs. “Putain de bordel de merde. I have to explain this to you again?”

“Fucking right, you do.” Sab hops onto the counter, still stuffing his face with stolen food. “You keep telling me you just want casual dick or whatever. Then you start seeing someone and it’s all about the bigger picture. Make it make sense.”

“I’m not seeing Bhodi.”

“That’s the shittest answer I’ve ever heard. ”

“Then go ask someone else how attraction works. I don’t know what to tell you.”

I have a shit-ton of work to do. I leave Sab and Rudy to entertain each other, and stomp upstairs to the studio with every intention of making the most of what’s left of the daylight. But of course my gaze drifts to the annex and Bhodi’s bed. It’s empty, but I see him there all the same, and this time I’m not thinking about his dick, or if he came as hard as I did in the shower two minutes after I ripped myself away from the window. I’m thinking about how he looks when he sleeps. When he laughs. When he leaned back in his seat that night and rubbed his stomach, smiling at me like I’d hung the moon when all I’d done was share my dinner with him.

That’s it.

That’s the fucking package. I didn’t need to see Bhodi’s dick to know he’s sexy as fuck.

Now, I just need to stop thinking about it.

Working eats up the rest of my day. I get ahead on the bigger projects, but fall behind on the billion greetings card orders that have come in thick and fast over the past week. Pretty sure Sab knocks out on the couch. Either way, it’s the evening by the time he shuffles upstairs to say goodbye.

“Stay,” I offer, even though I’m done with his nonsense for one day. “You’ve missed Esme’s bedtime already and you’re working in Worcester tomorrow.”

Sab stands from lacing his boots, lines from the couch cushions imprinted on his face. “Not worth the grief.”

“What isn’t? Spending the night with me or telling Charmaine you’re not coming home?”

“All of it.” He heads for the door. “Thanks, though.”

I follow him out, forgetting my shoes and cursing as my socks get wet from the rain-soaked path. “Did you really come all the way down here to take a nap?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re an idiot for driving three hours home, only to turn around and come back again in the morning.” At five a.m., when even if he leaves right now, he’s not going to reach his front door till gone eleven.

But despite Sab being the reigning king of unsolicited advice, he doesn’t care for being on the receiving end. He leaves in a huff of irritation, only to call me before I get a wet foot inside.

“Sorry. You know I love you.”

I do. And I know why he’s telling me. We’ve learned the hard way not to say goodbye on an argument and I know it haunts Sab more than it haunts me. I put him on speaker while I stop Rudy streaking down the garden for no reason that doesn’t mean more wet mud in my house. “I love you too. That’s why I wanted you to stay. So you’re not driving that van through exhaustion in the morning.”

“Bro, I have a baby. I haven’t slept since she was born.”

“Exactly. You’re already fucking knackered.”

“Tam, I’m fine. I promise.”

My brother rarely says my name. Or keeps his decorum long enough to have a real conversation. Humour is his armour against the world. And perhaps it’s mine too. The world feels fucked up if Sab’s not laughing at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

He grunts. “Says you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? ”

“It means you’re being weird about the hot lodger. I thought you were getting over what happened with Grey.”

“I haven’t been with Grey for six fucking years.”

“Exactly!” I hear Sab’s fist connect with the steering wheel. Of the two of us, he’s the most dramatic when he’s pissed off . He shouts and thumps things.

Me? I fester. Stubborn, remember? Why fix something with a five-second tantrum when you can stew on it for a lifetime? “I’m not hung up on Grey.”

Sab says nothing, which is as dangerous as it is uncharacteristic.

“Or the hot lodger.”

Sab snorts, the barest hint of a laugh. Then he sighs, still serious enough for me to forget I’m standing on my wet doorstep with no shoes on. “Je m'inquiète pour toi. I know you’ve been through a lot, but don’t you think it’s time you made room for something more than empty fucks that never go anywhere?”

He’s had all day to say this shit. Now he’s doing it as he drives away from me. It’s very us—very me , and guilt pinches my heart, even though I know Sab well enough to suspect being concerned for my love life isn’t the only thing winding him up. “If it’s any consolation, I had dinner with Bhodi before I saw his dick through the window.”

“You did what?”

“I had food. He was hungry. I shared it.”

I leave out the part about dragging Bhodi into my house without asking him if he wanted to come in. Or how right it felt that he didn’t protest and stayed all evening, and that I woke at the crack of dawn to sneak a bag of groceries onto his doorstep. But what I do share is enough to bemuse Sab enough that he’s lost for words again.

Mostly, anyway. “You had date night and sent him home to have a wank by himself. That’s a zero-star rating on your personality.”

“It wasn’t date night, you fuckwit. How many times do I have to tell you I’m never hooking up with my tenant?”

“You can tell me as much as you like, doesn’t mean you won’t hook up with him.”

I grab the phone and detonate in a flurry of French curses that have Sab laughing and hanging up on me before I’m done. The fucker. I mean, I’ll take it if it means he’s driving home with a smile on his face, but I could still reach through the phone and throttle him.

“That sounded lairy.”

I spin around. Bhodi’s by the gate, resting his elbows on it as if he’s been there all night. Or for the entirety of a conversation that should’ve happened in my house with the door shut.

Fuck. I scrutinise him for signs of offence, but I find nothing but his easy smile, and the fact he’s not wearing gym gear anymore. He’s in jeans that hang from his trim hips and a faded Vans tee hiding his chest from me.

He came home and I didn’t notice.

It should feel like progress.

It doesn’t.

“My brother.” I test the waters. “He likes winding me up to deflect from his own shit.”

A beat passes. Then Bhodi grins. “You could tell me you were proposing marriage to Father Christmas and I’d believe you. I don’t speak French. ”

Relief washes over me. “You’re not missing much when it comes to conversing with my brother. He’s a pain in the arse.”

“But you love him.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re smiling.”

“Not on purpose.” Unbidden, my gaze sweeps him again. “Where’s your coat?”

“Where are your shoes?”

He has me there, but in the short space of time I’ve known Bhodi, he hasn’t ventured out of the annex for any reason other than to leave the property, and he doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere right now.

I feel drawn to him, and I let it happen, my wet socks squelching on the puddled steps as I join him at the gate. “What are you doing out here in the rain?”

Bhodi’s smile shifts to one that’s almost shy. “I was making dinner for the first time in a hundred years and I was going to ask if you wanted some.”

“You were going to ask?”

“I got distracted by you growling in French.”

“It put you off?”

Bhodi chuckles. “Not exactly. But I still have a giant pot of bolognese and you look hangry, so…”

I’m not anywhere close to being angry while he’s so close to me that I can smell the shampoo he used on his damp hair. But I am hungry, and Sab ate all my food. And …I like being around Bhodi. The ease. The laughter. It’s so natural to say yes. To change my socks, grab Rudy, and follow my tenant back to the annex he pays me to live in.

I step into the space that until a month ago, had been my studio for half a decade. It should smell of paper and ink. But instead, the rich scent of tomatoes and herbs greets me, along with the bed Bhodi sleeps on, a neat pile of clean clothes, and the mega-watt smile he turns on me from the tiny kitchen area.

It’s a two-ring hob I installed to make tea on—because I hate electric kettles. A sink, two cupboards, and a narrow length of worktop made out of the same oak that crushed my wrist. I’m impressed Bhodi’s found the space to cook something that smells this good.

I tell him so.

He laughs.

I die a little in the very best way.

“We eat spag bol at Christmas in my family. I’m working this year, but I said I’d bring some to the ward to make up for them having to translate my notes. This is a practise run.”

There’s a lot to unpick in that. I start with what disturbs me most. “You eat spaghetti at Christmas? Are you Italian?”

Bhodi peers into the simmering pot before he gifts me that laugh again. “Definitely not Italian. It’s more it’s the only thing my mum can cook that everyone likes, so…it’s what we have, for three days, until everyone goes back to work.”

“Sounds like your family are busy people.”

“Used to be. It’s only me who works shifts these days.”

“And your parents are in Australia now, right?”

“Right.” Bhodi finds plates and looks around for somewhere to put them.

There isn’t anywhere. I converted this place for work, not hot dinner dates.

Not a date.

I take the plates, balancing them on my good hand so Bhodi can dish up. “Do you miss them?”

“Who? My parents?” Bhodi adds pasta to the plates—it’s not even spaghetti, which perplexes me more—and spoons on the meat sauce. “Not really. I haven’t lived with them since I was sixteen, and we’ve never been close. They both worked a lot.”

“Is that why you left?”

“When I was sixteen? Nah, I just hated school, so I ran off to join the Navy.”

I know this part. That he served and he doesn’t smile so much when I push him on it. So I don’t. I hold the plates and try to figure out where we can sit to eat.

Rudy’s already made himself a nest in Bhodi’s clean clothes. “Sorry about that. His blanket used to be over there.”

Bhodi moves around me and collapses the sofa-bed, tucking the duvet away behind it. “You used to live in here?”

“It was my studio.”

“For real?” Bhodi glances around, clearly comparing the space to the smaller room I’m holed up in now. “Please tell me I didn’t push you out of here?”

“ I pushed me out of here—well, Sab did. There’s not a lot of money in calligraphy these days, outside of the occasional unicorn job.”

“What does a unicorn job look like?”

“I did the official invites for the royal carol concert last year.”

“Right here? In this room?”

I set the plates I’m still holding on the coffee table and tug Bhodi a little to the left where my desk used to be. “Right here .”

He’s not expecting my touch. It wavers his balance, toppling him into me, and of course we notice in the same moment. “Um…”

An awkward chuckle escapes me. “Um. Yeah. Anyway. I used to work in here, now I don’t. But it’s not your fault AI and digital art make it tough for me to earn a living. I like a challenge.”

“That right?” Bhodi skewers me with a hot glance before he reins it in and steps away. “Damn. Sorry.”

“What for?”

Bhodi gestures for me to take a seat on the folded sofa-bed. “For getting in your face all the time. I don’t mean to, it just falls out of me when I’m around you.”

I should be relieved that it’s happening to him too. That it isn’t just me who turns into an idiot when we’re together. But I don’t think about that. It barely crosses my mind. Instead I let myself ask the real question. The reckless one that’s going to make this a hundred times worse. “What makes you think I don’t like you flirting with me?”

“A few things.” Bhodi pokes at his dinner, not eating, his gaze distant for a loaded second. “Before today, I wasn’t sure you were even into dudes. Then…I kinda did hear some of what you and your brother said earlier, and I got the impression that my brand of fuck-awful flirting is the last thing you want right now.”

“That’s what you heard?”

Bhodi nods, his jewel-bright gaze free of bullshit, and this time, the relief makes land. I mean, this isn’t great, but it’s better than him overhearing me talk about his dick.

His gorgeous dick.

“Sab worries about me. He told me a while ago that I’m going to die alone.”

Bhodi flinches. “That’s not nice.”

“He didn’t mean it—he just worries about me.”

“Because you’ve been through a lot?”

“You heard that too? ”

“I think so. A lot of it really was in French and I backed up a bit when I realised you were fighting.”

“We weren’t fighting.”

Bhodi eats, disagreeing without words. But if he thinks what he saw tonight was the height of a Dubois throwdown, he’s in for a shock if he sticks around.

He’s not sticking around. It’s a six-month tenancy.

I kill that thought and dig into the dinner someone else has cooked for me. And it’s so fucking good for reasons beyond that it tastes amazing. “I can’t remember the last time someone cooked me dinner.”

“Sab doesn’t cook for you?”

“Not as much as he should. He’s like a fridge-raiding hamster these days.”

“It’s nice that you’re close.” Bhodi finishes up and sets his plate aside. “I miss having someone around who gives a shit what happens to me.”

I get the feeling he’s not talking about his family, and my curiosity must show on my face.

Bhodi sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. “I don’t want to bring up my ex every time I see you.”

I nudge him with my foot. “Doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“It should. He’s not even my ex.”

I swallow the last of my dinner, forcing it down. “No?”

It shouldn’t shock me that Bhodi has unfinished business with someone. He’s beautiful. Funny. Nice. I can’t imagine anyone walking away from him and not coming back to rectify their mistake.

“We were never really together,” Bhodi clarifies, which somehow feels worse. “It was a hookup that got under my skin. I started to care about him too much, while he really was just fucking me.”

“Did you love him?”

I don’t mean to say it, but the words spill out of my mouth and I can’t take them back any more than I can kid myself that I’m not hanging on his answer more than I have any right to be. That it doesn’t twist me up that thinking about this other dude tightens Bhodi’s jaw and reddens his eyes.

“I tried really hard not to,” he says eventually. “And he never did anything to lead me on. It was just really…difficult to be with someone who needed to be loved so much, and not give in to it. Probably doesn’t make much sense…”

“It does.”

“Really?”

I’m distracted for a moment by Rudy abandoning Bhodi’s clean clothes in favour of investigating the plates on the coffee table, but he’s shit out of luck. Little bastard’s too short.

I tell him so and shoo him away. Then I’m back in Bhodi’s vortex and it feels good, even though I hate the sadness in his eyes. “I was with a dude once who was hardcore in love with someone else. I thought that suited me—no attachments, complications, whatever. Just sex. But it still wound up hurting to know he was thinking of another bloke the whole time.”

“The whole time?”

I shrug. “Maybe not. We had some mad sex. But I always knew I was keeping him warm for someone better, and in the end, I wasn’t as okay with it as I thought I’d be.”

Bhodi’s fair brows are still raised to his hairline. “Someone better?”

“Better for him ,” I amend.

“Did you want something more? ”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“Caring about someone doesn’t mean you want to be with them. I liked his company, and I loved the kinky sex he was into. There were probably moments that tied all that together in a pretty Christmas bow, but when I see him now, I don’t wish that he found what he has now with me.”

Bhodi gets up and takes the plates to the sink. He comes back with a bottle of spiced rum and two glasses he must’ve brought with him when he moved in. “I’m getting there with Skylar, but I’m trying not to do what I usually do to get over something that’s hurt me.”

“And what’s that?”

“Fuck someone else.”

“It might help.”

“ Or …” Bhodi pours rum and passes me one. “It might be time I broke the cycle. I like kinky sex too, but it hasn’t got me anywhere.”

He likes kinky sex . It’s so far from the point he’s trying to make, but for a hot second, it’s all I hear, and my mind tumbles into the abyss.

How kinky? Exactly?

The word is a spectrum, a fucking wide one, and the craving to know where Bhodi falls on it hits a high and keeps climbing until I get a hold of myself.

I swig rum. The burn grounds me in Christmas-spiced fire. “Sounds like you need more than sex, even if you’ve got yourself believing you don’t want it.”

“Isn’t that what your brother was trying to say to you?”

“It was.” I can’t lie. “Doesn’t mean he was right, though. ”

Bhodi smiles and necks his own rum. Then pours another. “Doesn’t mean he was wrong.”

I don’t find a retort. Instead I sip rum and settle into the couch I bought off Etsy a month ago believing a nondescript human I’d never have to think about would sleep on it. It still blows my mind that in the short time Bhodi’s been my tenant, he’s become all I think about.

It should unnerve me, like it’s clearly unnerved Sab. But it’s hard to feel anything but chill as Bhodi mirrors my pose and we settle as close as we had in the fracture clinic’s waiting room.

We drink more rum. I get brave and ask Bhodi more about his job.

“Do you work in A&E?”

“No.” He swipes rum from his lips with his thumb. “I did HEMS calls for a while when I left the Navy, but I don’t enjoy all the blood and guts. I’m better at keeping patients alive once they’ve been put back together.”

“So you work on…?”

“HDU, mainly. It’s attached to the intensive care unit.”

I know that. I nearly died up there. More than once. But rum and Bhodi help me blast past that and focus on him. “You must still have tough days.”

“Lots. But I see some amazing things too. People who walk out smiling when they should’ve died before I met them. That’s the best part of it.”

“Do you wear scrubs or one of those fancy tops?”

“Scrubs. They’re green .”

His nose crinkles. Combined with his hair that’s dried sticking up, as though I’ve rolled him around on the rug, it’s cute. “You don’t like them? ”

“I don’t like anything green. Except that Christmas tree card you showed me the other day. I liked that.”

“Good to know.”

“Why?”

Like they have so many times, our gazes lock. I fall into his and he falls into mine. I want to lean closer. To be there waiting, when he does. But I hold back, so does he, and the moment almost passes.

And maybe it would’ve if he’d been someone else.

If I’d been less transparent to him.

“You know…” Bhodi sets his glass down. “It feels really good to talk about this stuff with someone who understands. Like, it’s starting to dawn on me that I need a friend more than I need some banging sex.”

“What about shit sex? That might be all I’m good for.”

A rum-fuelled laugh spills out of Bhodi. He’s not drunk. Neither am I. But the rum has softened the edges on both of us, and there’s nothing awkward about this. “I know you’re not shit at sex, Tam.”

“How?”

He gives me an unsubtle once-over. “It would be the cruellest trick if you were.”

That’s it. All I’m getting. But it’s okay, I know what he’s saying. Bhodi’s hotter than sin. It defies physics to even contemplate him being a bad fuck. So I contemplate him being a good one—the best—and it gets me in all kinds of trouble with my conscience.

He needs a friend, remember?

I can’t forget it. I want it. To be the person he stares at like this and gives up his darkest secrets to. His lightest secrets. All of it. So I give him one of mine. “I think I need a friend too. ”

Bhodi smiles, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight slowly cloaking the room as the rainclouds pass. “There’s an obvious solution here. Can’t promise I’ll never flirt with you, though.”

“It’s banter if we’re friends. Totally doesn’t count.”

It should. I want to be Bhodi’s friend, like my fucking soul knows how much I need it. But none of that dulls the current pinging between us. The impact of every charged comment. Every casual touch that leaves a smouldering burn in its wake.

The droll glance Bhodi sends my way tells me he knows this as well as I do, but he doesn’t argue. He yawns , and it’s catching.

Rudy’s already snoring up a storm in the washing he’s kicked up into a royal mess.

I rise, stretching, my head a little lighter than when I arrived and it’s not all rum.

Bhodi stands too and for a protracted moment we stare before he goes for the hug—a real hug, all warm arms and affection we haven’t earned, and yet somehow feels so fucking right it’s all I can do not to melt against him.

He smells so good. I take a deep inhale and hold him tighter, soaking up how his hard body feels against mine. How his slightly brawnier bulk fits the leanness that’s stayed with me over the past six years. If I let my mind wander, I’ll find myself picturing us pressed together in different ways. If I don’t let go soon, I’ll act on it. But beyond the blaze his embrace stokes in me, there’s peace too, as if Bhodi’s good heart can heal mine, and I don’t let go.

I don’t want to.

So I hold on until Bhodi leans back.

And that’s when I realise my mistake .

We’re wrapped up in each other, our faces inches apart. His hair tickles my cheek and I scent the rum on his lips.

This is bad.

So very bad.

But the trouble with bad things that aren’t really bad at all, is that walking away from them takes superhuman strength. Strength I’ve never had. And in this moment, I don’t want strength. I want Bhodi. A taste. A kiss. A soft brush of lips that’s rum and mischief, and his quiet laugh as he realises what we’re doing, and he doesn’t stop.

I don’t stop either. I sink into a kiss so fucking sweet I might die from the gentle force of it. And the irony. Because if I’ve learned anything tonight it’s that behind Bhodi’s bright eyes and smiley smile, he’s probably a filthy bastard.

A filthy lay .

Fuck. My hand slides over his hip, hooking him closer in the same moment his warm palm skims up my spine, finding the nape of my neck. The kiss deepens, stealing my breath and what’s left of my non-existent willpower. I feel him harden against me and that thrill, that rush of attraction, is so potent it dizzies me.

I want him ? —

“Damn.” Bhodi pulls back. “So this friends thing is going well.”

I’m so dazed, I have nothing but a startled laugh.

He laughs too and smooths my rumpled shirt. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I’m not.”

“You lied?”

Bhodi grins. “Yeah. ”

Man, he’s so fucking beautiful that I’m back to staring, transfixed by his wicked gaze and reddened lips. And I need to go . Before I forget everything he’s said tonight about needing more than whatever hot mess I’m about to lead him into. How I need more than that too.

Rudy .

Like he knows, and maybe he does, my little bastard dog chooses this moment to notice something ridiculous outside. He barks, shrill and loud , and it breaks the hot tension stringing me and Bhodi together.

I find my boots and stamp into them while Bhodi watches from a safe distance. He’s still smiling, which is good. Me? I’m a mess, but I’ve spent years pretending I’m not, so I’ve got this. I muster a grin and plaster it on, and somehow I find the will to leave him and walk out the door.