A new place to live always smelled the same. Jamie turned a slow circle in the small space he now called home and wondered if the clean carpets were the correlating factor. He closed his eyes and recalled Zac on his hands and knees of the King’s Lynn flat, scrubbing whatever muck Jamie had traipsed in from outside. At the time, he’d thought Zac a fastidious lunatic, but he got it now. That flat had been the first thing Zac had ever had for himself, and keeping stuff clean was important.

Guilt burned Jamie’s abused veins, and he snapped his eyes open before his brain took him to the dark-red stain that had ruined those carpets forever. The image was never far, and nor was the urge to soften its impact, but he didn’t have time for that today. He had to find a job, or the tiny bay-windowed bedsit wouldn’t be his home for long.

He dropped his bag and kicked the door shut behind him, but the pressing need to find work didn’t stop his mind from drifting to the surreal twenty-four hours he’d spent on the road.

And in the air.

An odd heat flooded Jamie’s cheeks. His first-ever flight had passed in a haze of fevered sweats and stomach cramps—cold turkey at thirty-five thousand feet—and his second flight, LA to Chicago, had been unremarkable enough for him to even enjoy it. But somewhere over the Atlantic last night it had all gone wrong. Turbulence: fuck that noise. Without the rugged white knight in the seat next door, Jamie was fairly certain he’d have died from the terror alone.

And what a white knight Marc had been. Only the desperate need to escape London as fast as possible had driven Jamie to abandon him on the plane. Dark hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin, the bloke had looked like a brooding stuntman. His hands—

Stop it.

Jamie ventured farther into his new home in an effort to distract himself from revisiting the fear that had brought him Marc’s magic hands in the first place. A breeze filtered through the open kitchen window, and a piece of paper fluttered from the counter to the floor. Jamie picked it up, unsurprised to see a letter from Marvin, and a note in Liam’s hand. In the week it had taken Jamie to quit his job in Cali and book his flights home, Liam had moved mountains to ensure that he had somewhere to go, even when Jamie had refused his offer of a bed in Holkham.

And so Liam had helped him rent the bedsit instead—a plain, neutral space for Jamie to lay some roots—and left him a list of SOS numbers with a scribbled note at the bottom: Call me anytime. We will always take care of you.

The sentiment did funny things to Jamie’s heart. He’d encountered Liam Mallaney enough times to believe that the words were heartfelt and true, but his motivation remained a mystery to Jamie. Liam was Zac’s boyfriend . . . partner, lover—what-the-fuck-ever—and he knew all too well that Jamie’s screwups had almost got Zac killed several times over. What was Jamie to him except a fucking liability?

The guilt-ridden loser in Jamie wanted to ball the note up and toss it out of the nearby open window, but the realistic idiot won out and carefully folded the note and tucked it into a drawer. He had an appointment at an addiction centre already set up for Monday morning, but if a year of abstinence-based recovery had taught him anything, it was that the monsters within had no consideration for scheduled resistance.

With his emergency numbers stashed away, Jamie set about unpacking the case of belongings he’d accrued while he’d been in America—clothes, books, and a Bluetooth speaker that connected to his iPhone. He plugged the speaker in now and queued up a DJ Shadow playlist, even though it made him want to score some smack and build himself a snake pit on the spotless cream carpet.

The craving and resulting desperation for immaculate order hit him hard, and he spent the morning cleaning the already spotless flat and organising his treasured possessions with military precision. Size or colour coded, sometimes both. Neat stacks of six, counted six times to be sure. It wasn’t much, but the regimented order soothed his itchy brain.

By lunchtime, he was starving and ready to drop with exhaustion, but he didn’t eat or sleep. Instead, he wrapped up in a hoodie and his thin denim jacket, and left the flat in search of the one vice he’d held on to.

Life always seemed easier with a fag jammed in his mouth. He lit up and crossed the road from the small newsagents to walk by the water. The river ran parallel to Matlock Bath’s vibrant high street, and seemed to be the focal point of the pretty town. Fish and chips, ice cream, and weird hippie-trippy outlets made up most of the shops along the waterside, with a few stores selling biker gear, and the place was buzzing. Like a seaside town without the sea . . . or King’s Lynn without the ghosts and with a hell of a lot more colour.

Jamie made short work of his cigarette and resisted the urge to spark another. Beat the binge, eh? It sounded like a Weight Watchers’ slogan, and he couldn’t help a smile, or the lure of a bag of chips from one of the numerous chippies across the road. He ate them on a bench outside a shop that sold homemade incense and scented candles. The musky smell reminded him of Venice Beach, and for a moment he missed the California sun beating down on his back. But the feeling was fleeting. In Cali he’d have been eating a quinoa burrito and drinking something green and grassy. Fuck that. California had saved his soul, but he’d eaten enough birdseed to last him a lifetime.

Jamie finished his chips and gave in to the urge to smoke another cigarette while he considered his surroundings. The high street was carved out of a deep valley and most of the dwellings, Jamie’s flat included, rose up the sides like windowed caves nestling in the cliffs. It was gorgeous, and he was glad his pin had landed here. King’s Lynn had felt wrong from the start, and it hadn’t been long before the murky underworld of nearby Norwich had called Jamie’s name. But here Jamie heard nothing but silence, and for the first time in years, it didn’t frighten him much.

* * *

Home. Finally. Marc kicked open the door to the old manor house and let it slam behind him. He whistled lowly, and Natalie appeared before he’d even dumped his bag.

The slinky black cat jumped onto his shoulder, chirping her annoyance that he’d been gone so long, and nipped his ear for good measure. Not that her ill humour was uncommon whether he stayed at home or not. Her nature was as cantankerous as the man who’d sarcastically gifted her to him to keep him company.

“Do you good to spend more than a week at a time in that damn-fuckin’ house.”

Yeah, yeah, though Marc couldn’t ignore the voice in his head forever. He set Natalie down, followed her to the kitchen, and threw some Go-Cat in her bowl. Then he retrieved his phone from his pocket and sank into the nearest chair to fire off the text both Nat and Glenn would be waiting on: Home safe. Cat’s not dead.

Nat’s reply was instantaneous: Call you later.

Marc sighed and cast the phone aside. Since when had he become the one who needed to check in with every fucker he’d ever met? Before he’d come home for good, it had been everyone else who needed mothering, Nat included.

A heated lance of pain shot through Marc’s leg, cutting his rebellious thoughts dead. Nat forgotten, he set about removing one of his boots, and then the loose sweatpants he’d travelled home in, and then finally the prosthesis that was digging into the tender stump where his lower leg had once been. He massaged the mangled flesh, forcing himself to look at it. He wasn’t in the mood for an agonising bout of phantom limb pain, and facing his ruined body helped . . . sometimes.

When he’d soothed his sore stump, he turned his attention to the surgical dressing that was a few inches above. He peeled it back and peered at the three incisions underneath. He’d clean them properly later, but for now he was satisfied that the stitches had survived the journey home when he shouldn’t have been wearing his prosthesis. Cheers, Glenn. Showering was going to be fun—not—but he’d worry about that later. Before then, he had some Jamie-fuelled dreams to catch up on, and a phone call from Nat to avoid.

* * *

It was dark when Marc woke to the insistent shriek of the landline phone. There was no way he’d get there in time, so he didn’t bother trying, and instead settled for crutch-hobbling to the kitchen. His growling stomach told him that it was probably about time he ate something, but lingering nausea from the general anaesthetic, combined with the burning throb in his leg, left him with little appetite.

Coffee seemed like a fair compromise. The stove-top kettle had just come to the boil when the house phone rang again. Marc’s gaze flickered to the clock and saw that it was nearly one, which meant either that someone had died, or that a fellow grunt was pacing a dark house while the rest of the world slept.

“Took your time,” Nat growled when Marc finally reached the phone. “Thought I was gonna have to jump in the motor and check on your miserable arse.”

“No need. The cat’s fine.”

“Don’t be a cunt.”

Marc rolled his eyes and bit back a sharp retort. This could go on all night if one of them didn’t blink and let the words flow. He’d never met a military man that was good on the phone, and Nat was worse than most. “I’m okay, Natty. It was a minor procedure. Be right as rain in a few days. Back at work on Monday—you know how it goes.”

The last bit wasn’t entirely true. Healing dependent, he’d be off the prosthesis and on crutches for a week or so to protect the wound, and he wasn’t due back at work for the rest of the month.

And Nat knew it too, though he let the bullshit pass. “How was your flight?”

“No idea. I slept through it.” Marc wasn’t about to tell Nat about his encounter with Jamie. “Have you heard from Wedge?”

“Yeah, no drama so far, at least none that they didn’t expect.”

Nat didn’t elaborate, and Marc didn’t ask. He’d come to accept that he was better off not knowing much about what his old comrades were up to. The knowledge meant nothing but impotent worry when there was fuck all he could do to help. “What you doing up, anyway?”

“Same as you, I’d imagine.”

Marc unplugged the landline phone and hopped to the nearest chair. “I’ve been asleep all day. What’s your excuse?”

“I wish I knew sometimes,” Nat said tiredly.

He didn’t have to say much more. How many nights had Marc stared at the ceiling, drowning in silence? “Connor all right?”

“Yup. Sleeping like a baby.”

“Maybe you should go join him.”

Nat chuckled. “I will when you’ve stopped nonanswering me down the garden path.”

“What does that even mean?”

Silence.

Marc sighed. “What do you want to know? That I’m not bleeding to death in this big old house? Because you can rest easy on that front: everything went fine, and I’m home safe.”

“Yeah? And what next? You can’t live in your place indefinitely while it’s full of your ma’s junk.”

Marc had been intending on doing exactly that. He’d inherited his mother’s house while he’d still been in Iraq and had yet to find the time or inclination to clear it out entirely. “There’s plenty of space for me.”

“Only if you live in the kitchen.”

“Not true. I cleared the living room and the downstairs bathroom over the summer. I don’t need anything else.”

“Sell up, then. What good is that big house to you if you only use three rooms?”

“I can’t sell it with all this shit in— Jesus, Nat. What do you care about the state of my dead mother’s house?”

“I don’t. I just don’t want you to bounce around in a mansion full of junk because you won’t admit that you can’t fix it up all by yourself. Why won’t you let me and Connor help you?”

“Because you live a hundred miles away and have a life of your own.”

“So pay someone else to help you. Get a house-clearance company in.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Marc knocked his fist against his forehead. Damn it, Nat. They’d been through this a million times. Marc’s mother had been dead four and a half years, and he had little emotional connection to the huge house, or the rooms and rooms of clutter she’d hoarded over her lifetime, but something wouldn’t let him condemn it all to a soulless clearance firm. “I haven’t got time to deal with it right now.”

“You never have time for anything that’s good for you.”

“Says you.”

“Fucking right, not that it matters. You never listen to me anyway.” And that’s what got you into this mess.

Nat didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to. Marc recalled their conversation of nine years ago like it had occurred only yesterday. “Don’t go back. You’ll get yourself killed.”

The prophecy had proved only half-correct, but when Nat had come to Marc’s bedside six years later, his simmering anger had been clear to see. Was still clear to see whenever he caught sight of Marc’s gleaming prosthesis, along with the bucket load of guilt Nat wore like a second skin. The bloke was addicted to tragic responsibility, and in that he and Marc were the same.

“Listen,” Marc said wearily, “I’ll put an ad in the paper, okay? Get some old retired bird to come and help me.”

“You’re gonna get an old dorris to carry all that crap down those stairs?”

“Okay, maybe not an old dear, but someone local who wants to earn a few quid. I’ll get the place cleared and then get shot of it. Then I can fuck off somewhere else and get out of your hair.”

“You’re not in my hair. Never have been. I just want you to have a home, like the rest of us who are too decrepit to run with the big boys these days. You can’t hide from normality forever.”

“I know.”

“How’s the hip, by the way?”

“Fuck off.”