Chapter 9

Nine

TAM

Dragging Bhodi around the city doesn’t feel good. But the deliveries I make there don’t take long, and then I drive back into town and park behind a church so vast and grand it’s more like a cathedral.

He’s quiet, taking it all in, not even commenting on the clumsy way I’m gripping the gearstick with my casted hand. If we’d spent the short time we’d known each other exchanging pleasantries on the driveway, I probably wouldn’t notice. But we’ve shared more than that, and I hate the distant haze in his eyes enough to poke him. “Still with me?”

Bhodi tears his gaze from the church to meet mine. “Hmm?”

“Just checking you’re awake.”

“I’m awake.”

He smiles to prove it and it drowns me in all the best things, but I’m not done working yet, and we’re friends . I can’t pinch his cheeks and claim his mouth. So I get out of the van instead and grab the last box I need to deliver tonight.

It’s small, but Bhodi pops up at my side anyway. “Need a hand?”

“Got two, thanks.”

“Sure about that?” He eyeballs my good hand—the one that aches like a motherfucker from overuse. “You’ll be down to none if you’re not careful.”

I give him the same look he gave me when I knew without him having to tell me that his ex had ruined his day. “How did you pick up on that when you’ve had your eyes closed since we left Hereford?”

“One, my eyes weren’t closed. Two, you’ve been flexing it since you knocked on my door.”

I tuck the box under my arm and make a fist, gritting my teeth against the strain in the weary tendons. “I don’t usually write so much with this one. It’s better at painting.”

His eyes widen. “You really are ambidextrous?”

“Yup.”

“Wow.” Bhodi reaches for my hand. Second guesses himself. Then does it anyway. “That’s super rare. Where does it hurt?”

I show him. He switches to nurse mode so fast I barely catch it, but damn if it isn’t sexy as hell.

“Can I try something?”

I lick my dry lips. “Sure.”

Bhodi presses my palm. Hard. Then he smooths it over my thumb joint and the relief that rocks me is so damn good I have to lean on the van to stay upright. “Fucking hell.”

He smiles, but for once it’s faint, his lovely face a study in concentration as he repeats the motion over and over, chasing every ounce of pain from my hand with his magic thumb. “Better?”

“Are you taking the piss?”

“No. It’s a real question.”

I struggle for words, at least ones that aren’t me begging him to touch every part of me with his healing fucking hands. “It’s better.”

“What about the other one?”

“It’s fine. Enjoying the holiday.”

Bhodi gifts me one last pass of his thumb. Then he releases my hand and a cold breeze washes over me. As if the weather objects to him not touching me anymore. “What do you need to do in the church? Is this the greetings card drop?”

I find my voice. “Not quite. I’m not done with those yet. This is something else.”

He’s interested enough that I take him inside to show him the stacks of Christmas-wrapped shoeboxes piled all over the church. Every corner, every pew, every wall.

“They get sent overseas,” I explain. “I write the little cards for the French speaking communities.”

Bhodi spins around, grasping the enormity of the operation I have nothing to do with other than this. “How many is that?”

“How many cards? Or how many boxes are in the church right now?”

“Both.”

“I wrote eight hundred cards, but to put it in perspective, around seven thousand boxes pass through here every year.”

Bhodi whistles and crouches to look at a few. I leave him to it and find the drop-off point for the cards.

I’m gone less than five minutes.

I come back to find him eating cake, another clutched in his hand.

“Take it.” He thrusts it at me. “This is my second one already.”

“Hungry?”

“Always.”

I can fix that. I hustle him out of the church and down the road to the Christmas fair I’d planned on avoiding since I got in a punch-up there last year. For Rudy . It’s no wonder my dog hates all things Christmas except the chipolatas. I don’t mind punching someone twice, but I don’t want Bhodi to see that side of me. “You like turkey?”

It’s noisy at the fair, light and laughter everywhere we turn. Bhodi leans closer to hear me. “What’s that?”

I decide it’s easier to show him and steer him to the food truck doling out roast dinners in Yorkshire pudding wraps.

His face lights up and I think I love him.

Avoir le coup de foudre.

Fucking hell.

I buy Bhodi dinner.

He buys me a big fat cookie for after, and we sit and eat with pints of shit lager from the other pub—not the one I had a fight outside last year.

I like watching Bhodi eat, and I’m starting to lose count of how many times I’ve thought that over the past few weeks. Of how often I zone out and picture his smile, even when he’s right in front of me like he is right now.

“Does it still hurt?”

“What?”

Bhodi balls up the cookie box and fires it into his empty pint glass, Christmas lights twinkling in his blue eyes. “Your hand.”

I glance down and find I’m pressing my own thumb into the spot Bhodi unlocked as my new kryptonite. “It’s fine. It just feels nice.”

“Nice is good, right?”

“Better than good. Is that a nurse thing? Rubbing people’s hands?”

Bhodi nods. “Some of the patients I see have been incapacitated a long time. Acupressure can help with the discomfort that causes.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Neither did any medical professional I’ve ever come across, but I keep that to myself and focus on how close we’re sitting—how close we always sit. We’re at a picnic bench in the town square, but I could be comfortable anywhere with Bhodi. He makes my heart beat like an incoming storm, but I like the wildness I feel around him. The recklessness, when I’ve spent so long drowning in caution, too scared to face any more pain.

He’ll never hurt me.

Course he won’t. He’s my friend.

“Something funny?”

I dust crumbs from my hands, absorbing Bhodi’s nearness. The warmth seeping from his body, and the piney-cotton scent that makes me think of clean sheets beneath a fir tree. A big bed in the woods. Him and me. Me and him. “Nothing’s funny, except my silly brain.”

Bhodi leans back—he’s facing away from the table, facing me —and stretches his legs out, his strong thigh so very nearly pressed to mine. “What are you thinking about? ”

“How I’ve never thought about a friend as much as I think about you.”

The smile of my dreams comes back, but it’s tinged with something that makes my body scream with the urge to reach for him. “That word’s been spinning around my head too,” he admits. “I like it—I need it—but I still want to fuck you.”

It’s the first time either of us has said it out loud, and it should feel out of context. Too sudden, too soon, but it doesn’t. Because I want to fuck him too…almost as much as I want to be his friend. His person. His fucking rock. And that keeps me in my seat when my baser instincts want to lean in and kiss the shit out of him.

“But we can’t bang.” Bhodi keeps talking when I don’t. “You’re my landlord. It’d be like a bad porno.”

Despite the echo of Sab’s thoughts on the matter, I remain convinced that nothing about banging Bhodi could ever be bad, but the scenario he’s describing is still seven shades of awful. I really am his fucking landlord. I’m in a position of power. If this went south, Bhodi’s the vulnerable one.

I knock his knee with mine. “I know all that. Doesn’t stop me thinking about it.”

“Oh yeah?” Mischief dances in Bhodi’s gaze. “What are we doing? And how are we doing it?”

I press my finger to my lips. “Shh. There’s kids around.”

There aren’t. Not really. But I’m not sure I can put words to the daydreams that blow through my brain when I’m least prepared for them. Bhodi’s a dirty bastard, I can tell, but would he want me like that? On my fucking?—

“You’re a tease.”

Bhodi rises, breaking me out of wherever the fuck that thought was going. He towers over me, which doesn’t help, but I’m here for it. I’m here for anything except annoying him.

Have I done that? With his face cast in shadow from a nearby streetlight, it’s hard to tell, and I don’t like not knowing.

I swing my legs from under the bench and stand, swallowing the distance Bhodi’s put between us. He’s fractionally shorter than me, but a little wider, a cast-iron fact that does nothing to help me rein this shit in. “Sorry if I’m making this weird.”

“You’re not.” Bhodi hooks the cord of my hoodie around his finger before he seems to catch himself and let it go. “I’m just not used to…I don’t know. Holding back, I suppose. I usually plough on whether it’s a good idea or not, and that’s what I’m trying to stop doing. And with you , it matters even more that I don’t fuck it up.”

“Why’s that?”

Discord sullies his gaze again, fighting with what might be shyness, but I can’t be sure. “I like you, Tam. Being around you makes me feel good, and I haven’t felt that with someone in…actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt it.”

I take a breath to tell him I feel the same. That I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone, but that I’m scared too. Of losing the easy companionship that comes so naturally to us. Of losing his gentle touch, and beautiful fucking smile.

But Bhodi’s phone blares, shattering the moment, and I step back to let him reach for it.

It’s work. I can tell by the seriousness that descends on him. I give him even more space and contemplate the crêpe stall. I can make better at home, but my sweet tooth is the vice I can indulge right now, and the longer Bhodi is away from me, the more the scent of sugar, butter, and spiced citrus gets to me .

Fuck it.

I buy one and Bhodi catches me as I’m shoving the first bite in my mouth.

“Cute.”

“What is?”

“The sugar on your lips.” Bhodi thumbs it off. “You should bottle that image and sell it to cheer people up.”

“You need cheering up?”

“Not now.”

I study him, trying to gauge what could’ve happened in the last three minutes to kill his mood. “Everything okay at work?”

Bhodi shrugs. “Yeah, just the day team trying to decipher my writing. It’s a problem everywhere I go.”

We’ve talked about this before, but without the subtle dejection weighing Bhodi down now. “If it’s any consolation, I can read it just fine.”

“You’re the only one.” Bhodi takes the bite of crêpe I offer him, and I see his point as sugar coats his lips too. “I don’t know what it is— I can read just fine too, but for writing, it’s like my brain and my hand aren’t connected. I had to take all my nursing exams in a special room with a laptop.”

“But you passed them.”

He nods. “I knew my shit—I still know my shit. That’s why it pisses me off so much when people talk to me like I’m thick as mince.”

His frustration shouldn’t be this attractive. But then everything about Bhodi riles me up, and maybe this is the one thing I can act on without giving oxygen to the smouldering burn between us.

I drive us home. Bhodi shakes off his bad mood and gives me a playful kiss on the cheek before he heads for the side gate .

Don’t ask him in. Don’t ask him in. Don’t ask him in.

I resist. Just. But I call after him anyway. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“Day shift.”

Which means he’ll be home around four. I won’t be done by then, but for what I have in mind, it won’t matter. “Find me after, okay? I’ve got something to show you.”