Time apparently passed slowly in Matlock Bath. Jamie spent the weekend hiding in the bedsit, remembering how much he hated the cold, and bemusedly accepting deliveries of soft furnishings he’d never dream of buying for himself. Cushions, duvet sets, and thick woollen throws for the angular IKEA couch the bedsit had come with. He assumed they were from Liam, but a note arrived with the last parcel that put him straight.

To keep you warm. Come and see me soon . . .

I miss you—Zac x

Jamie stared at the familiar scruffy handwriting, and his heart clenched. Zac had been his best friend—his only friend—for a time in his life too messed up and hazy to measure, and Jamie missed him more than he could ever say, but he deserved the ache in his chest. Zac was better off without him.

He kept all the stuff, though, because as much as he’d craved the bite of the British wind while he’d been gone, he’d forgotten how cold England could get in January. Even with his puny storage heaters cranked full blast, on his second day of living as a hermit, Jamie couldn’t get warm. After an uncomfortable night shivering on the couch, lost without the soothing sound of Marvin snoring in the next room, his Monday morning appointment at the local hospital came as a relief.

At least until he sat down in front of a surly junior doctor and realised that an NHS addiction clinic was nothing like the cushy therapy sessions that Sea Rave had bankrolled in Cali.

“You were referred by your GP?” the doctor said without looking up.

“Not exactly. I’ve just moved back from America. I paid privately for this appointment.” His parting gift from Sea Rave, as Marvin and Liam both had seemed to know that Jamie wouldn’t consent to them funding any more of his recovery than they already had. “The lady on the phone said you could refer me to the Frank Centre in Belper?”

“The list for Belper is full,” the doctor said dully. “I can refer you to Ripley, but you didn’t need to come here for that. They accept self-referrals. Can you travel to Ripley if I request an appointment there for you?”

Jamie frowned, his knowledge of the Derbyshire Peak District still limited to the bedsit and the short walk to the chippie in Matlock Bath. “Um . . . I s’pose so?”

“Good. Your appointment should come through in ten to twelve weeks, but it may be longer. When you go, take these forms with you, and they’ll add you to their waiting list.”

The doctor handed over a stack of paper and turned back to her computer screen, a clear dismissal if Jamie had ever seen one.

Dazed, he took the forms and stood, drifting to the door, until the numbers in the barrage of information sank in. He turned back with his hand on the door. “Ten to twelve weeks? But you don’t even know what I’m addicted to.”

The doctor glanced up briefly. “Is there something else you want to talk about?”

Was there? Jamie had no idea. He’d been clean for more than a year, but he’d had enough meltdowns in California to know that he wouldn’t last ten weeks without a halfway decent safety net, especially while he didn’t have a job. There was only so much wanking he could do before he counted himself into a nervous breakdown.

The doctor had already turned back to her work. “There’s some local support groups you can try, and an emergency hotline if you find yourself in crisis. The information is in reception.” Now fuck off.

She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. Jamie left her to it and meandered back to the reception desk, wondering if he’d ever have the nerve to tell Marvin that the three hundred quid he’d paid to get Jamie a fast-track appointment had been a complete fucking waste of time.

He made his way outside with wobbly legs and a fistful of leaflets, his veins twitchier than they’d been in months. Sometimes he could go days without thinking about junk, but others he could smell it, and the only remedy was a hit or a meeting. With neither of those an option, he settled for heading to the bus stop, waiting for a ride home so that he could lock himself indoors and blast some music until the monster simmered to a dull roar.

I need a job. But his choices were as limited as his skills, and were narrowed further by the extensive criminal record that Sea Rave had made a conscious decision to ignore. “We can find you some work,” Liam had said. But Jamie had refused. Leaving California meant leaving Sea Rave. It had to. Or he might as well have stayed put and taken up yoga.

The rumble of the bus caught his attention. He glanced up and his heart sank a little. Despite a growing urge to get home, the thought of being stranded with his own company again seemed almost as bad as loitering outside a building that was stuffed full of mouth-watering opiates. “You get kinda cranky when you’re on your own too long.”

Cranky. Right. If only. Jamie scratched his arms in rhythmic sets of four, like he had any hope of easing the disquieting itch in his veins. The one that no matter how far he ran, or how many bullshit meetings he showed up to, he could never entirely escape. Perhaps he was wasting his time. Delaying the inevitable that only Liam’s intervention had prevented last year. Matlock Bath was still a mystery to him, but there were junkies everywhere, and it wouldn’t take long to sniff them out.

And where there were junkies, there was junk. And fuck, if Jamie couldn’t use a fat hit of—

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Jamie jumped a mile and spun around so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. The gravelly voice was that of a stranger, and yet beautifully familiar all at the same time, but nothing on earth could’ve prepared him for the sight of the tall, rugged figure who stood behind him. An errant ray of sun made the man appear like a seraphic apparition, and Jamie could hardly believe his eyes. “Marc?”

* * *

“Um . . . I guess so?” Marc leaned heavily on his crutches, cursing that Jamie seemed doomed to cross his path in his worst possible moments. “I feel like crap today, so I’m not altogether sure. Wasn’t expecting to see you, though. What are the chances that you’d wind up at this shithole?”

Jamie laughed, though he seemed as stunned as Marc felt. “This isn’t the worst place I’ve ever been.”

“Me neither. Do you live around here?”

“I do now.”

Jesus. Marc had half convinced himself that Jamie had been a figment of his morphine-addled imagination, dreamed up by a subconscious that knew all too well that he could only function when his attention was fixed on someone else’s problems. But here Jamie was, leaning on a bus stop outside Chesterfield Royal, clutching a leaflet on community care for drug and alcohol misuse. Marc pictured the scars lettering Jamie’s slender forearms and joined the dots. He’s a junkie.

The realisation should’ve sent him running, but it didn’t. Who was Marc to judge when he’d spent all weekend fighting the urge to drink himself into oblivion? That he possessed the ability to resist was a gift, and he’d known plenty of men who didn’t have it.

He ventured a little closer to Jamie and took in pale skin and shadowed eyes that mirrored his own soul. “Where do you live?”

“Matlock Bath. Just about the high street.”

What are the fucking chances? “That’s not far from me. My car is over there.” Marc inclined his head towards the staff car park. “Wanna lift?”

“In the car that should’ve been mine?”

Marc snorted. “You’ll be glad it’s not when you see it. Seriously, though. It’s fucking freezing out here, and I don’t want to be pedantic, but you’ve missed the bus.”

Jamie looked around as the bus he’d obviously been waiting for pulled away, but he didn’t seem perturbed. “I wasn’t that keen on getting on it anyway. Empty house syndrome, you know?”

Don’t I just? Marc slid an arm free of his crutches and held it out. “Come on, then. I’ll take the scenic route and buy you breakfast.”

Jamie tentatively took Marc’s arm, and relieved him of the spare crutch, though he seemed more dubious about Marc’s balance than the fact that he was walking arm in arm with a man he’d met briefly on a plane three days ago. “I’m not really hungry,” he said. “But I wouldn’t mind a drive, if that’s okay. I haven’t seen much around here except the chippies and the hospital.”

“That was my life for a while.”

“Yeah? What did you do to fix it?”

“I got on a plane.”

Jamie chuckled, though it held no humour. “Tried that. I went all the way to California and still ended up here.”

“Doesn’t matter where you go, mate. And it isn’t so bad around these parts.”

“Thought you said it was a shithole?”

“I meant the hospital, and I only said it because I work here. Weekends in A & E will do that to any man.”

They reached the car park. Jamie let go of Marc’s arm while he fished his keys from his pocket, and then took it again with little apparent conscious thought. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

Jamie shrugged. “You’ve got that vibe about you. If you hadn’t said you worked in A & E, I’d have plumped for social worker.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Jamie’s dark-blue gaze flickered with something that set Marc’s teeth on edge. “Put it this way: I’m glad you’re a doctor.”

There were days when Marc was glad of it too. He unlocked his car, waiting for Jamie to see which one it was, and got his reward in the form of a grin that made Jamie’s face fleetingly boyish.

“You drive a yellow Fiat Punto?”

“Only because it was the first automatic I came across. I can’t drive a manual anymore.”

Jamie glanced at Marc’s crutches. “And you thought this was a decent alternative?”

“Lord no. I sent my mate Wedge out to get me a car, which is like sending a chimp to a tea party. I’m lucky it isn’t pink. Are you getting in or what?”

Jamie watched Marc hobble to the driver’s-side door and lower himself gingerly behind the wheel. For a long moment, it seemed that the bright-yellow car truly was giving Jamie pause for thought, but then he opened the passenger door and slid into the car with a grace that Marc could only dream of. The car’s blue interior apparently amused him as much as the yellow paint job, but he said nothing, only pursed his lips as Marc gunned the engine and backed out of the parking space.

“So . . .” Marc said when they’d left the hospital behind. “What brings you to this part of the world? You sound like a London boy.”

Jamie tore his gaze from the window. “I am a London boy. Least I used to be. I grew up in Holland Park.”

“Nice.”

“Not really. Where are you from? You don’t talk like they do around here either.”

Marc knew a deflection when he heard one. “Do I sound a bit Welsh? I lived in Swansea till I was sixteen, and I’ve never quite lost the accent.”

“How many years ago were you sixteen?”

“Too many.”

Jamie tilted his head and regarded Marc with a speculative gaze. “You’re one of those blokes who looks the same for twenty years.”

“That a compliment?”

“Depends how old you are.”

Marc chuckled and eased the yellow Punto around one of the long bends that made the area’s roads so attractive to bikers. “Well, I’m not going to tell you. You can work it out yourself if it’s that important to you.”

“It’s not.”

Ouch. Marc turned his attention to Jamie’s age instead. On the plane, he’d figured him to be barely out of his teens, but in the cold light of a dreary January morning, it was obvious that Jamie was older. “You’re twenty-five.”

Jamie’s eyebrows shot up. “Am I?”

“Yup, or thereabouts. I thought you might be younger for a while, but you don’t speak like the little shits that hang around the hospital, even without the accent.” Guessing the age of a man had always been Marc’s gift when it had come to weeding out men of fighting age on overseas operations, though he’d left the rest of the profiling to Nat. Not that it had ever seemed to matter. How many young boys had he seen with an AK-47 in their hands? It was clear that Jamie had lived hard, one way or another, but at least he’d been spared that.

Jamie said nothing to Marc’s guess, which said everything. Marc let him be and concentrated on keeping the ride as smooth as possible, though he had no real idea where he was going. They were on the road to Matlock Bath, but he’d promised Jamie an extended journey, so it seemed a shame to take him straight home.

He settled on a detour to Wirksworth, a nearby market town with a café that did a cracking all-day breakfast. Jamie might not be hungry, but after a weekend of pain and morbid moping, Marc was famished.

He parked up outside the town, near the local quarry. Jamie frowned. “Where are we?”

“Wirksworth. Come on. Get out.”

Jamie got out of the car and was by Marc’s door in a flash, holding out the crutches he’d snagged from the back seat. “One or two?”

“Two. It’s muddy, though, so you’ll need to watch your own equilibrium.”

“You want to go hiking?”

“Not hiking.” Marc slid his arms into his crutches and looked up to face Jamie’s obvious scepticism. “I want to show you something. It’s not far off the path.”

Jamie stared at Marc like he’d grown horns, and then shrugged, like the effort of resisting was too much. “Come on, then. Whatever it is has got to be better than staring at my own dick all day.”

Marc had no answer to that, and the implication that Jamie would like to stare at a dick that wasn’t his own was a scenario he couldn’t quite contemplate. He led the way to the wrought iron gate and let Jamie open it for him. The site he wanted Jamie to see was a hundred yards into the quarry grounds. He pointed at the tiny coloured flags fluttering in the wind. “In case I don’t make it that far, that’s where I want you to go.”

“You make it sound like you’re going to die before we get there.”

Marc had felt like death on his way to the hospital that morning, but Jamie’s spiky company was proving a welcome distraction. “I’m not going to cark it, but the mud might do me in. Just trust me, and go up there, okay? It’s a special place.”

He waved Jamie forward, signalling that he’d follow, though he was half-tempted to ditch his crutches and take his chances in the mud. The masochist in him could handle the pain of his healing wound, and he was used to the rest. Had to be, because it wasn’t going anywhere.

Jamie loped ahead and up the shallow hill. With Converse on his feet and his hands thrust into the pockets of his thin denim jacket, he was about as far from a hiker as Marc could imagine, but he moved with grace, his long limbs carrying him artfully over the rugged terrain, and even if Jamie missed the point of the sacred place ahead, Marc was glad he’d brought him.

He caught up with Jamie by the stone circle that local children had decorated with painted wooden birds. Dinner-plate-sized rocks had been arranged in a maze and a huge engraved stone urged anyone who passed to make their way to the centre and find their inner peace.

Jamie was already in the middle, staring at his feet. It would’ve been easy for Marc to hop across the stones and join him, but he couldn’t bring himself to break the ritual of slowly circling the maze. He left his crutches at the entrance and limped around until he came up behind Jamie.

The urge to slide his arms around Jamie’s waist was strong, but he settled for gently resting his hands on Jamie’s shoulders, and bracing himself when Jamie leaned back against him in return.

“I can’t find it,” Jamie said softly.

“Me either.” Marc gave in and wrapped his arms around Jamie, to warm him up as much as to comfort him. “But I’ve always found this spot a good place to start looking again.”

“How many times have you lost it?”

“More times than I’ve had it, but I’m no different to any other man in that respect.”

Jamie sighed and tilted his face to sky, his eyes closed. Marc absorbed the turmoil seeping out of him and thought of the faded scars on his arms. Their placement suggested heroin, meth, or crack, but Marc’s money was on heroin. Jamie didn’t seem the type to crave stimulation—only the peace he was evidently still searching for.

Is he clean? Marc’s gut said yes, but addiction wasn’t a field he had much experience in, save treating the walking zombies who walked into A & E searching for methadone. Their desperation was obvious, but the wretchedness he sensed in Jamie seemed to run deeper, like he’d been waging a war for a long time. He’s tired. And that was an affliction Marc related to, even in the quarry grounds with the bracing wind gusting around them, dislodging the melancholy that came from a solitary weekend indoors.

He loosened his grip on Jamie and turned him, searching out his troubled eyes. “Don’t torture yourself. There’s no need when life can do it for you.”

“That right?”

Jamie’s sneer was soft enough for Marc to ignore. He shook Jamie gently and then pointed back the way they’d come. “Might not be right, but it’ll keep you going until you find your own answers. Now help an old man down the hill so he can get some hot chow in him.”

* * *

Three days back in England and you wind up hugging a stranger in a muddy quarry. Life just happens to you, eh?

Jamie scowled for the benefit of the gossipy old woman who seemed to live in his brain when he wasn’t using junk. Sod off. It’s not like I blew him for a ten bag, is it? Though both parts of that argument had their attractions.

Jamie considered Marc across the table of the weird café they’d walked to when they’d finally made it down from the quarry hill. He seemed different from when they’d first met in the plane. Jamie’s memories of that gut-churning journey were a little hazy, and he couldn’t even picture Marc’s expression, but he felt different. His touch was warmer, and less composed, like he hadn’t thought about where his hands would land on Jamie’s body.

And how they would make Jamie feel.

Heat in his cheeks, Jamie took a reckless sip of scalding-hot tea. It burned his throat, but he welcomed the pain, and used it to ground himself as he sat across from the fittest bloke he’d seen in years. He doesn’t look like a doctor. With his dark stubble and close-cropped hair, Marc reminded Jamie of Eric Bana, but better. Jamie’s fingers itched to touch the scruff on Marc’s face. It looked soft and wiry, and he wondered what it smelled like.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Many things, but in this instance, Jamie had no idea. Marc was gorgeous, but his motivation for being tactile and kind was as much a mystery now as it had been thousands of feet above the Atlantic. In another life, Jamie would’ve suspected him as one of those weirdo johns who liked to pretend that street hookers meant something to them. Fetishizing an imaginary romance that made them feel better about paying twenty quid for a blowie in a bus stop. But Marc wasn’t like those men. His eyes were gentle and warm, and even as Jamie’s own imagination tried to embarrass him, he couldn’t break away.

“How old are you?” he asked when the comfortable silence eventually became too much.

“Thought you didn’t care?”

“I said it wasn’t important to me. That’s not the same thing.”

Marc smiled slightly. “Fair enough. I’m thirty-nine. Does that surprise you? Or do I look ancient enough to be your dad?”

“My dad is sixty-four, and you don’t seem much past thirty sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

“You’re older when you’re in pain.”

“I must be fucking prehistoric today, then.”

“Bad day?”

Marc grimaced, and a pang of concern twisted Jamie’s gut. It was obvious that there was something wrong with Marc’s legs, but he couldn’t tell if it was an injury or a disability.

“I’m not always this decrepit,” Marc said. “I had some surgery in Chicago, and it’s thrown me off a bit.”

“You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”

“We’re having a conversation, mate. No one’s making demands here.” Marc winked and tapped his finger on the menu that Jamie had barely glanced at. “Do you know what you want?”

Jamie thought of the modest savings he’d transferred from his dollar accounts in California. In theory they’d be enough to keep him going a month or two, three if he really did subsist on tea, toast, and chips, but after leaving rehab and living with Marvin, it hadn’t taken long for him to develop Zac’s habit of hoarding money as obsessively as he did everything else. As hungry as he’d become since he’d climbed into Marc’s ridiculous yellow car, he couldn’t bring himself to spend eight quid on a fry-up.

Perhaps sensing Jamie’s dilemma, Marc briefly covered Jamie’s hand with his own. “Don’t tell me you’re not hungry. I don’t like eating alone.”

He said it with a grin, but the idea of disappointing him did strange things to Jamie.

Jamie picked up his menu and scanned it, absorbing all the British dishes he’d craved while he’d been gone. “Oooh, they’ve got black pudding. I tried to describe it to some people I worked with in America. They thought I was a bloody cannibal.”

Marc chuckled. “It’s an acquired taste. I love it, but I’ll pretty much eat anything. You don’t get a lot of choice when you’re out in the field.”

“‘The field’?”

“Operations. I was a soldier, once upon a time.”

A piece of the Marc-themed puzzle in Jamie’s mind clicked into place. Soldier. Doctor. Marc’s unflappable calm on the plane now made sense, even if Jamie had googled turbulence enough over the weekend to know that it really wasn’t dangerous. “When did you stop being a soldier?”

“For good? Three years ago.”

“Were you a doctor at the same time?”

“As much as I could be. It was nothing like what I do now.”

A waitress came to their table. Marc ordered a full English. Jamie deliberated over a sudden craving for some greasy meat, and ordering a more sensible plate of toast and jam.

Marc nudged his leg under the table. “Don’t be shy, mate. I’ll put away anything you don’t finish.”

Fuck it. Jamie held his menu out to the waitress. “I’ll have the same.”

The waitress left. Marc poured another round of tea and regarded Jamie across the table. “So what did you do for work in California? Rock star? Model?”

Jamie snorted. “Do me a favour. I cooked noodles six days a week in a factory canteen.”

“What kind of factory?”

“Clothes and surfboards. I worked for Sea Rave.”

“Wow.” Marc’s eyes flickered with recognition. “That sounds like a good gig.”

Jamie couldn’t deny it. “It was. I cooked a hundred bowls of posh ramen a day in exchange for free food, health care, and more money than I’ve ever had. They did other stuff for me too—art courses and book clubs. I liked it.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Dunno.” Jamie shrugged, reached for a packet of sugar, ripped it open, and tipped the contents into his cup. “I was there for a year, but it never felt real, you know? I always knew I’d come back eventually.”

“Back to Matlock Bath?”

“No, to England. I hadn’t been farther north than Norwich before I rolled up here on Friday night.”

“It’s a nice place,” Marc said. “I avoided it for decades, but I’ve learned to love it over the last few years. It’s peaceful . . . if you let it be, though I reckon you can find a storm just about anywhere.”

Jamie slowly stirred his tea. “What makes you say that?”

“Am I wrong?”

“Are you ever?”

“Yes.”

Jamie blew out a breath and sat back in his seat. “I don’t find storms. I am the storm. I fuck everything up.”

“Did you fuck up in California?”

“No, but it was only a matter of time. Always is.”

Whatever reply Marc might have made was cut off by a mountain of food being delivered to their table. Self-pity party forgotten, Jamie gazed at the heaping plates of sausages, eggs, bacon, beans, black pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes, and toast. Jesus Christ. His mouth watered, but he knew his stomach would give up on him long before his greedy brain. Story of my life.

Marc pushed a napkin-wrapped bundle of cutlery across the table. “Come on. Dig in. You can brood about it after when you’ve got a full belly.”

“What are you? A fucking feeder or something?”

“Not in the least, but you look like you could use a big plate of saturated fat, so humour me.”

“Is that doctor’s orders?”

Marc shrugged. “If you like. Did you know that people live longer in the French countryside than where you’ve just come from? Red wine and cheese versus scooped-out bagels and kale smoothies. Eat the bacon, mate.”

Jamie didn’t need telling a third time, though he did wonder how Marc knew so much about what people ate.

“I wrote an essay on French diet and health once,” Marc supplied, like he’d read Jamie’s mind. “I don’t know what the fuck they eat over there these days, but the theory got me through my A levels.”

Jamie shoved a mouthful of fried mushrooms into his mouth and spread butter on his toast. “Did you go to uni after?”

“After school?”

“That’s when people usually go, isn’t it?”

“If you say so. I joined the Army and went through medical school that way. What about you? Did you go to uni?”

“Nope.” Jamie speared a fat Cumberland sausage. “I left school when I was fifteen.”

“I didn’t think you could do that anymore. Don’t they send truancy officers after you?”

“Probably, but they never found me. Which is a shame, ’cause I might have had more going for me now.”

Marc said nothing for a moment, apparently engrossed in clearing his plate as fast as humanly possible, but when he’d inhaled his last forkful, it was with a stare Jamie hadn’t seen since he’d last had a real conversation with Zac. “What makes you think that you have nothing going for you? You’re young and articulate, and you’ve just spent a year on the other side of the world. There won’t be many lads around here with life experience like that.”

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“What? That not many Matlock Bath boys have made it to California?”

The black pudding in Jamie’s mouth turned to dust. He forced it down and reached for his lukewarm tea. “Never mind. Did you always want to be a doctor? What sort of doctor are you at the hospital? It must be so different to being in the Army.”

Marc absorbed the flurry of questions with a wry half smile, like he knew that Jamie had choked on the question that he really wanted to ask: what’s up with your legs? “I always wanted to be a doctor because my dad told me I couldn’t. And then I took the Army route because I’m crap at sitting still, which is ironic because where it took me damn near left me on my arse forever.”

“I can’t imagine you with a gun in your hand. It would change everything about you.”

“Would it?”

“Yeah. You can’t help but heal people, right? Killing them would hurt your soul.”

Marc chuckled darkly. “Perhaps that explains why I’m living out my days as a crippled bachelor.”

“You’re not crippled. I’ve seen you walk.”

“You call that walking? Jesus. No wonder you can’t picture me with a Minimi.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.” It was Marc’s turn to shake his head and change the subject. “I’m a trauma specialist, in answer to your other question. I locum at the Chesterfield Royal at the moment, in A & E and for the air ambulance service, but they’ve offered me a permanent post.”

“A post you don’t want?” Jamie gave up on his still-half-full plate and pushed it Marc’s way.

Marc swapped it for his own in one smooth motion, as though they’d eaten together like this—hunched over a small table, their knees so nearly touching—a thousand times before. “You’re a perceptive motherfucker.”

“And I’ve never heard a doctor say ‘motherfucker’ before, so you’re gonna have to enlighten me about what makes you so different.”

“You know what makes me different. Gun in my hands, remember?”

“That’s not who you are, I see that now. That’s what you did.”

“Are we not the sum of our actions?”

“If we are, then you don’t want to be sitting here with me.” Jamie said it almost absently as his wayward brain returned him abruptly to the backstreets of Norwich, to his knees on the grimy pavements, the ever-present itch in his veins and a stranger’s cock in his mouth. It had taken months of clean living to truly realise how desperately depraved his life had become, and even then what he’d subjected himself to paled in comparison to what he’d done to Zac.

Marc touched Jamie’s hand. “I’m sorry. I get a bit dark when I’ve been stuck with my own company too long. And for the record, I don’t care what you’ve done, okay? There aren’t many things that can’t be forgiven.”

Somehow, coming from Marc it seemed believable, but it wasn’t enough for Jamie. He didn’t deserve Marc’s kindness any more than he had Zac’s, or Liam’s, or Marvin’s. I am the storm.

Marc’s fingers wrapped around Jamie’s. “Hey . . . look at me. Do you want to go home?”

Jamie could only nod. He’d fought this particular demon many times in California, but in the relentless sunshine, surrounded by the perpetually cheerful, it had been easier to convince himself that his past belonged to someone else . . . that he’d seen it on telly, or read it on one of those news sites that led you to article after article of soap-opera-style human tragedy. Here, in the dreary gloom that he’d craved almost as much as the junk, the reality of who he had been haunted him so entirely that he couldn’t breathe.

He found his wallet and ripped some notes free, tossing them on the table without counting them. With wobbly legs, he found himself outside before he knew it, leaning against the café window, sucking in great gulps of air. His heart hammering in his chest in much the same way it had on the plane when he’d been so certain that he was going to die. Then, it had been the first time that death had ever scared him. Now? I want to go home.

Like magic, Marc appeared. Jamie’s body cried out for his grounding hands, but for once Marc didn’t touch him. He merely pulled his keys from his pocket and nodded in the general direction of the car. “Ready?”

He took off without waiting for an answer, and Jamie followed, chewing his bottom lip. Marc was moving more gingerly now, wincing as he set his crutches on the damp pavement. A better man would’ve guided him to the nearby bench and fetched the car for him. But Jamie wasn’t a better man. Not today, or a thousand other days that had come before, and he remained mute and useless at Marc’s side until they reached the yellow Punto, and even then, his tongue stuck viciously to the roof of his mouth.

They were in spitting distance of Matlock Bath when Marc finally broke the odd silence that had settled over them. “You’re gonna have to tell me where you live.”

“Why?”

Marc slowed as the speed limit changed, in preparation for entering the town. “So I know when to stop driving.”

There was no impatience in Marc’s voice, only the kind equanimity that Jamie remembered from the plane. Jamie forced himself to look at him, swallowing the increasing bile in his throat. “I live up the hill, a few streets behind the aquarium.”

“Yeah? You can probably see me from your windows, then. My mum’s old house is across the river.” Marc returned his eyes to the road.

Home was a few minutes away, but as desperate as Jamie was to lock himself in his soulless bedsit, the thought of letting Marc go hurt his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know.”

Marc smiled slightly. “Story of my life. I always know I’m doing it wrong, but how to fix it eludes me.”

“I don’t believe that. You’re a doctor. You fix people every day.”

“I put them back together after a tangible force has torn them apart. It’s not the same as knowing you’re fucking things up and, at the same time, being unable to stop.”

That sounded like addiction and as hard as Jamie tried, he couldn’t imagine Marc to be as brutally indulgent as Jamie was with his own demons. “You’re a good person.”

Marc snorted and turned the car down the narrow street that Jamie now called home. “Most people are before life gets in the way. This okay for you?”

He’d pulled up outside the old converted terrace that housed Jamie’s bedsit. Jamie blinked. “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That I live in this building?”

Marc shrugged. “No offense, mate, but I didn’t figure you for a half-a-million-bungalow kind of bloke.”

Oh. That made sense, and the fact that Marc had him pegged for a scummy bedsit dweller was oddly comforting. Maybe. Jamie opened the car door and started to get out, even though a good portion of his shredded instincts screamed at him to stay—to say something, do something—anything to prolong this moment with Marc a little while longer.

But the words didn’t come, and his feet were on the gritty road before Marc’s hand closed around his wrist.

“Jamie.”

Jamie’s heart skipped a beat. Marc’s touch was warming as always, but the way he gripped Jamie’s wrist now was like a shackle of dreams. Jamie turned to face him and was instantly lost in a dark gaze.

“What are you so afraid of?” Marc asked, and for once it was apparent that he didn’t know the answer before Jamie did.

Jamie closed his eyes and leaned closer, every fuckup he’d ever made on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t let them go. Instead he brushed his lips against Marc’s in the barest whisper of a kiss and shook his head. “I’m afraid of myself, and you should be too.”

Marc caught Jamie’s face in his hands before Jamie could pull away. “I’m not afraid of anyone who looks at me the way you do.” He brought their lips together again and kissed Jamie so sweetly that Jamie’s entire body was fleetingly and blissfully devoid of anything but Marc’s mouth on his.

But it was over too soon, and then Marc gave Jamie a light shove. “You’d better go inside.”

Jamie wanted to kiss Marc, touch his face, his strong chest . . . wanted more. He wanted to sink to his knees for Marc, and hold his deep-brown eyes as he loved him with his mouth. But with the mark of a hundred johns still staining his soul, he’d forgotten how, and he tore himself from Marc and scrambled out of the car.

He didn’t dare glance back as he walked away, his body and mind burning for the man he’d left behind, even as perspective began to return to him. Idiot. You just met him. He probably thinks you’re an easy fuck. But the bitterness wouldn’t stick. Marc was good to the bone, however little he believed it himself, and Jamie wanted him so much it hurt.

With shaking hands, he let himself into the old house, and then the bedsit, slammed the door behind him and dropped to the floor, burying his face in his hands. He needed to be alone—craved it, goddamn it—so why did the sound of Marc driving away feel like the end of the world?