“Dr. Ramsey?”

Marc blinked. “Sorry, what?”

Amber, the sister on duty in the emergency department, grinned. “What’s up with you tonight? That’s the third time you’ve zoned out on me. You’re usually the one I can rely on to stay awake when it’s quiet.”

“I am awake.” Marc pushed himself upright in the desk chair he’d been lounging in. His scrub trousers had ridden up his legs, exposing his metal ankle. He yanked them down, though he wasn’t truly bothered about anyone noticing. He’d worked here long enough for everyone to know that he wouldn’t make it through airport security without losing a leg all over again. “I’d imagine everyone else is too, with that racket going on.”

He inclined his head towards the bed that held a particularly vocal drunk. Not a homeless dude, or a pickled old lady—a rich kid who’d had too much Prosecco and was threatening to call his lawyer if he didn’t get the two-inch gash on his chin stitched up in the next five minutes. It was no coincidence that no one had been near him for the last hour. Marc was half-tempted to stick his head around the curtain and shut him up himself, but what was the point? It was 9 p.m. on a Friday night. Where there was one piss-up fuckwit, there’d be a dozen more, and they’d all need treating before the night was over.

Amber sighed and drifted away to pester someone else. Marc watched her go and then immediately returned to the Jamie-themed daydreams that had occupied him for most of the shift. It had been three weeks since their chance encounter outside the hospital and subsequent brunch date, and he’d been on Marc’s mind ever since. Not that Marc had seen hide or hair of him in town, and he couldn’t deny that he’d looked, though he’d resisted the urge to bang on his door. Jamie had run away from him for a reason, and Marc had been around the block enough to know that whatever it was simmered far deeper than anything Marc had done.

But still.

Bit old for smooching in the car, ain’t ya?

Fuck off, Wedge.

With a heavy sigh of his own, Marc hauled himself to his feet just as the red phone rang by the nurse’s station. The shift in the air was instant, like it always was when a blue call came in. After hours of drunk twats, lonely old ladies, and cut fingers, every available medic suddenly appeared from the department’s woodwork. Gloves and aprons were donned, and half-eaten suppers hastily stashed away.

A nurse took the call, noting the details on the emergency pad. The ever-growing cluster of staff waited with bated breath as she hung up—a buzz of collective excitement that seemed to be unique to first-world hospitals where drama was relatively light, at least compared to the resources at their disposal, and the amount of whinging that went on when there was shit to be done.

Not that Marc could knock the well-oiled machine that swung into motion as the nurse announced the call over the department tannoy.

“Adult trauma. Eight minutes out. Adult trauma. Eight minutes out.” Then she turned to the gathered medics behind her. “Adult RTC. Motorbike in collision with a lorry. Head injury, multiple fractures, and part amputation of the right foot.”

The department consultant had appeared to catch the end of the limited briefing. He nodded at Marc. “I’m going to need you.”

Great. Hard-core trauma was Marc’s specialty, due to his experience with gunshot wounds and bomb blasts, but seeing limbs hanging off people didn’t get any easier, especially without his brothers and comrades around to distract him.

Marc suited up for the incoming ambulance and moved to meet the paramedics and HELIMED doctor as they wheeled the patient in—a young man in his twenties, his battered body not much bigger than Jamie’s slender frame.

The HELIMED doctor briefed the consultant, who immediately moved to the patient’s head to focus on his vulnerable airway. Marc let him and the nurses do their work, and pulled up a stool by the young man’s injured foot. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The man would need surgery—if he was fit for it—to save the foot, but before that could happen, Marc had some urgent patchwork to do.

He caught the consultant’s eye. “You all right up there while I clamp these nerves?”

“Do it. I’ll shout if I need you.”

It was all the reassurance Marc required, and he set to work repairing a mangled ankle and calf that looked not unlike the pictures he’d seen of his own while he’d been in Chicago. Three years he’d managed to avoid them, but a dropped file had spoiled the party, and Marc hadn’t forgotten the images of his chewed-up leg.

Never would.

The foot repair kept him busy for a couple of hours, and by then, the phone had rung again, and it kept ringing in an unprecedented wave of blue calls until Marc had long forgotten about being bored.

It was well past dawn by the time he limped to his car. His surgical wounds had healed well, but with the extended shift, he’d been standing far longer than his surgeon would’ve liked. Still, the biker’s foot had been saved. Marc had got word from upstairs as he’d clocked out, and he carried the faint buzz all the way home, clinging to it to keep the smell of the young man’s torn flesh at bay.

A bucket load of exhaustion helped too. Marc was bone-deep tired by the time he parked the Punto in front of the old manor house. He nearly didn’t notice the scrawny, denim-clad figure leaning against the drystone wall. Maybe the image of a slightly damp and dishevelled Jamie was a figment of his overtired imagination.

* * *

Marc scrubbed a hand down his face and blinked a few times as Jamie pushed himself off the wall and loped towards him. He had to be seeing things. I didn’t tell him where I lived, did I? But Marc had no idea. His recollection of the time they’d spent together seemed to include every word that Jamie had uttered, but few of his own.

Jamie stopped in front of him, chewing on his lip. “You’ve been gone all night.”

“How do you know that?”

“Couldn’t sleep, so I walked around a lot.”

“What kept you awake?”

“Does it matter?”

It mattered to Marc, but given the faint scowl lurking in Jamie’s gaze, it clearly wasn’t something he was prepared to share. He looks cold. And well Jamie should clad only in his skinny jeans and denim jacket.

Marc fished his house keys from his pocket. “Come in. You’ll catch your death in that coat.”

Without waiting for an answer, he unlocked the front door and went inside, trusting that Jamie would follow, and prepared to chalk him up as an apparition after all if he didn’t.

But Jamie did come inside. He trailed Marc to the AGA-warmed kitchen before he let out an oddly childlike sigh. “I hate being cold, but sometimes I don’t mind it if I’m outside. It stops me feeling numb, you know?”

Marc nodded. “I hear you. Wanna brew?”

“Um . . . okay, if you don’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t have offered if I did, mate.”

Jamie smiled slightly. “Fair enough. Have you got coffee?”

“Buckets of it. Keeps my old arse going.”

“You’re not that old.”

“Feel it this morning. It was a long night.”

“At the hospital?”

Marc filled the stove-top kettle and chucked it on the AGA. “Yeah. I’m on nights until Wednesday.”

“It’s Saturday morning now. That’s a lot of nights.”

“Keeps me out of trouble.”

“Does it?”

Marc hooked a couple of mugs from the cupboard. “Mostly. What have you been up to apart from roaming the streets? Do you work around here?”

Jamie’s teeth returned to his bottom lip as he shook his head. “I haven’t got a job yet. I’ve been looking, but . . .”

He shrugged. Marc dumped heaping spoons of instant espresso powder into the mugs and opened the empty fridge in search of milk. Thankfully Mrs. Valentino from next door had popped in overnight to feed Natalie and saved the day with a pint of semi-skimmed.

Marc retrieved it and searched for sugar, but was unlucky this time. “No sugar, mate. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. And don’t worry about the milk. I drink it black anyway.”

Brilliant. Marc chucked the milk back in the fridge and poured water into the mugs, stirring up until he had coffee that was barely looser than sludge. “Hope you like it strong.”

Jamie accepted the coffee with a half smile that melted into a wince he clearly tried to hide. “At least it will stop me sleeping all day.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing since you got back? Still stuck on American time?”

“Maybe. I don’t think it’s that, though. I guess I just . . . I don’t know. I don’t sleep well.”

Marc understood that. It was only pain, fatigue, and working himself to his knees that ever earned him a full night’s kip, but that was the military way. Injuries aside, he hadn’t slept more than four hours at a time in years, and couldn’t see it changing anytime soon. Which was fine for him, he was used to it, but the exhaustion in Jamie was obvious. “Is something bothering you?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know—like being unemployed or unsettled in a new town? Are you missing your friends back in America?”

“I didn’t really have many friends over there.” Jamie took another cautious sip. “Apart from my roommate, who was actually my boss. I do miss him, but not enough to want to go back.”

“Maybe it’s the job thing, then. Are you bored?”

“God, yeah. And that’s a dangerous place for me to be. I don’t, uh, cope well when I’m unoccupied. Bad habits, you know?”

Marc nodded, hoping that Jamie would elaborate, but Natalie’s noisy arrival cut the conversation short, which was far less annoying than it might’ve been if Jamie’s face hadn’t lit up like the sun.

Natalie, apparently, was equally enamoured, and bypassed Marc to jump onto the counter by Jamie and rub herself all over him like white on rice.

“Traitor,” Marc muttered. “She took a piss in my shoe the other day.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t say,” Marc said dryly. “Should I have asked?”

“You should’ve known,” Jamie retorted. “Cats are clean. They only do stuff like that if they’re cross. What did you do to upset her?”

“Are you serious? You think it was a revenge piss?”

“I’d imagine so. Maybe she was miffed that you went to America. How long were you gone?”

“Ten days, but the neighbour looked after her.”

“Not the point, is it?”

Marc opened his mouth to respond, but quickly shut it as he realised that Jamie was talking to the cat. Revenge pissing? Sounds about right. “You mentioned the other day that you worked in a kitchen in America. Is that something you could do here?”

Jamie’s eyes flashed, and Marc wondered if he was thinking of the kisses they’d shared in the car before Jamie had run off. But the heat in his tired stare was brief, his shrug defeated, and Marc’s heart ached for him. “I looked around for some kitchen work, but it’s only the pubs hiring, and I can’t work in a bar.”

He didn’t say why, but Marc knew, and found comfort in the fact that Jamie was apparently educated enough about addiction to keep himself safe. “None of the cafés or chippies got anything?”

“Not at this time of year. It’s summer all year round in Cali, so I didn’t think of the tourist season when I decided to come here.”

“You must have other skills.”

“Not unless you count giving fuck-hot blowjobs, but I’m retired from that.”

Jamie said it almost absently before the weight of his words seemed to catch up with him. He stared at Marc, his face an odd mix of horror and apathy, and Marc fought the urge to blink and look away. The implication that Jamie had sold himself did turn his stomach, but not for the reasons Jamie was likely imagining, and suddenly all Marc wanted to do was take Jamie in his arms and hold him until the cloud of self-loathing faded from Jamie’s beautiful face.

But Marc didn’t move from his spot leaning against the counter, and it was Jamie who broke the silence. “Where are your crutches?”

“I don’t need them all the time. Only when I’ve had surgery, or some mad physio.”

“Physio?”

“Yeah. My body sometimes forgets it’s not whole anymore and needs a bit of help remembering how to handle the prosthesis.”

“The what?”

Ah. Not for the first time, Marc had forgotten that his disability wasn’t as obvious as it often felt. But it was the first time he’d ever felt nervous about revealing it. For an unknown and nonsensical reason, he couldn’t find the words.

So he bent down and pulled up the left leg of the sweatpants he’d worn home from the hospital and exposed his metal ankle, and then his shin, with the curve of plastic behind it that masqueraded as his missing calf muscle, all the way until he came to the bandaged stump.

For a long moment he didn’t dare look up, and Jamie’s gasp hit him in waves, each ripple bringing a new emotion as baffling as the last. Marc had shown hundreds of people his leg—he’d used himself as an example in the lectures on amputation he’d given at UCL last year. So why did the sympathy he saw in Jamie’s face when he finally looked up hurt so much? Nothing about this kid makes sense. But Marc couldn’t pin the ache in his chest on Jamie. This was all him, and he knew why, even as the three-week-old tingle returned to his lips.

He let his trouser leg drop and straightened up. “I lost most of it in a blast in Basra. They cut the rest off later.”

“What sort of bomb?”

“What?”

Jamie ghosted forward. “What kind of explosion was it? I read about the coalition dropping cluster bombs on their own men. Was it one of them?”

Of all the things Jamie could’ve said, it was a million miles from what Marc had expected. “It was an IED, actually.”

“A roadside bomb?”

“Yes. Did you read about those too?”

“A bit. I like newspapers. I used to pinch them from the bins in the city centre. They pass the time when you’ve got no life, and I read them now instead of watching TV. I don’t like TV; it gets in my head too much.”

“You don’t like films either?”

“I’d rather read a book.” Jamie’s gaze drifted to Marc’s leg and back again, his curiosity clear.

Fuck that. Marc pushed himself off the counter. “Come with me.”

Jamie followed him to the steep staircase in the hall and glanced up at the dark landing. “Is this where you reveal yourself as an axe murderer? Lure me upstairs and kill me with a hosepipe? ’Cause, no offense, mate, but I can get that shit on Grindr.”

Marc chuckled. “Really? I didn’t see anything that interesting last time I was on Grindr. Just a bunch of weirdos who sent me ball-bag photos in place of a hello.”

Jamie sniggered too. “I haven’t been on it over here. I only used it in Cali to kid myself that I could get a shag if I wanted one. Never met anyone, though.”

“Probably for the best if you were trying to live a different life. I don’t use it anymore. Random hookups are a lot harder to live with when you go home to the same bed every night. When I was working away, I could meet someone, then get on a plane a few hours later, forget it ever happened. It stays with me these days, everything does.” Marc rubbed his face tiredly. “Sorry, I’m waffling.”

“Nah, it’s all right. I like listening.”

“And reading,” Marc said. “Which is why I want you to go upstairs. Down the hall, third door on the left. Light switch is on the landing. Right there, see?”

Jamie nodded. “You’re not coming?”

“I’ll be behind you . . . just a bit slower. These stairs do my hip in.”

“What’s wrong with your hip?”

“Bullet chipped a bone. Nothing major.”

Jamie shook his head slightly, then zipped up the stairs, leaving Marc limping in his wake. The light illuminated the landing a moment later, and then the creak of the library door reached Marc.

And then silence. Marc heaved himself onto the landing and joined Jamie in the doorway. “You said you liked books.”

Jamie turned his wide eyes on Marc, his face as wonderfully young as Marc had ever seen it. “I thought you’d have Andy McNab and a few sneaky Mills & Boon stashed away. Not the entire British Library. What is all this?”

“My mother’s hoarding habit. There’s four rooms up here, and they’re all stuffed with a different type of junk.”

“This isn’t junk.”

“It is when the staircase is as steep as mine, and you haven’t got the time or the legs to deal with it.”

“Your mum’s dead.”

It wasn’t a question, but Marc nodded anyway. “A few years back, but I only came back here permanently eighteen months ago. I was all over the show before then. Couldn’t settle, but you know all about that, right?”

Jamie hummed, but Marc could tell his attention was on the books. He gave Jamie a gentle shove. “Help yourself. No one else is using them.”

“What are you going to do with it all?”

“The books, or the whole lot?”

“Either. Both.” Jamie drifted to the nearest shelf and pulled out a book by an author Marc had never heard of. “There’s loads of contemporary stuff here too. Your mum must’ve been collecting till the day she died.”

“She was. She had a stroke in the garden after she’d been to her bridge club. No one expected it, least of all me.”

“Were you close?”

“Not especially. My dad’s been dead twenty years, so it was just her and me, but we didn’t talk much. I hadn’t seen her in two years when she died, and I don’t think she cared. We weren’t that kind of family.”

“Who is? I don’t know anyone who has a family like you read about in these books.” Jamie held up a different title. It was old, and American, and looked like Little House on the Prairie. “I’m sorry she died, though. She sounds kinda cool.”

“She had her moments, but I only ever really came home for her homemade jam. Another thing she used to hoard. I’ve got jars and jars of it downstairs. You hungry?”

“For jam?”

“I can probably swing to some toast too.”

“What flavour jam is it?” Humour danced in Jamie’s eyes. “’Cause if it’s strawberry, I’m going to have to pass. That shit is disgusting.”

“It’s greengage, actually.”

“Green what?”

“Fucked if I know. But it ain’t strawberry, so it won’t do you any harm.”

Marc turned away to hobble back downstairs, but Jamie appeared beside him so fast Marc was fairly sure he’d dreamed it.

“Do you need help getting down?”

“Nah, you’re all right.” Jamie’s close proximity was making Marc’s head spin. “I’m not usually so slow. It’s just a bad movement for me, and I can’t compensate with my bum leg because of the surgery wound.”

“The surgery you had in Chicago?”

“Yeah. It was a nerve graft. A minor one. But it’s still a bit sore.”

“Okay.”

Jamie didn’t move. Marc sucked in a shaky breath, his hands twitching as he fought the urge to touch Jamie, to trail his fingers down Jamie’s smooth cheeks, to smooth his thumbs beneath Jamie’s shadowed eyes. The desire to kiss him again was there too, but it was a slow simmer, and one that could wait. For now, Jamie needed sanctuary, whether he knew it or not.

And that was the one thing Marc could give.