“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”
Jared laid a finger on Kyrone’s lips. “Go to work. I’ll be fine.”
“Will you at least stay at mine tonight?” Kyrone asked. He glanced around the room. “No offence, but my place is nicer.”
“Only by about a hundred times.” Jared squeezed Kyrone’s hand, still not quite believing how lucky he was to have such a gorgeous, enigmatic man want him despite everything. “I’d like to stay at yours tonight.”
He got up and got some clothes together, shoving them into a rucksack.
“How do you feel about pub quizzes?” Kyrone asked.
Jared stared at him like he’d just said the craziest thing imaginable. “I’m awful at them, for obvious reasons. I only have general knowledge for the last eighteen months. I couldn’t even name most of the last few prime ministers.”
Kyrone snorted. “Nor could I. It doesn’t matter whether you can answer the questions or not. A group of us from Heaven and Hell go to one most Sundays. I want to show you off to my friends.”
“Show me off?”
“Yes. You’re too insanely pretty to keep all to myself, however much I might want to.” He got off the bed and put his hands on Jared’s hips, pulling him close. “They’re a good bunch. You met Hunter and Dylan at the club.”
“I remember. I can make new memories,” he added in case Kyrone was wondering.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry. I just realised how crap that sounded,” Kyrone said.
Jared laughed. “It’s fine. Hunter and Dylan?” he prompted.
“They’ll be at the pub plus a few others. It’ll be a laugh.” He pushed his thumbs beneath Jared’s top and stroked his skin. “Come?”
Jared arched an eyebrow. “Are we still talking about going to a pub quiz, or…?”
Kyrone let out a low, sexy chuckle. “I thought you had a headache.”
Jared’s shoulders slumped. “I do, but hopefully it’ll be gone tomorrow.”
Kyrone brought his lips to Jared’s but didn’t kiss him. “If it has, I’ll definitely make you come tomorrow.”
“Is that a promise?” Jared asked, shivering with anticipation.
“Definitely.”
Jared whimpered. “I’d like to go to the pub quiz with you. Just don’t blame me if we lose.” The thought of meeting new people and potentially making new friends was appealing.
“I won’t,” Kyrone assured him. “We’ll have a great time. I promise.”
13Kyrone
Kyrone was freaking out a little, but not for the reasons Jared had assumed. He couldn’t get the image of the beautiful man lying unconscious in a hospital bed out of his head. It made his chest squeeze tight and tears gather in his eyes, but he hadn’t wanted to get upset in front of Jared. Once he was in the taxi, on the way to the Heaven and Hell Club, he no longer had to hold it together. He blubbered like a baby for most of the journey, earning him concerned looks from the driver via the rear-view mirror.
The whole thing seemed so unfair—a freak accident taking one life and debilitating another. Not that things like that didn’t happen every day—he saw reports of similar incidents on the news all the time—but they had never hit so close to home before. Hearing about bad things happening to people he didn’t know made him feel sad but in a detached way. It was awful, but he didn’t know them. It wasn’t personal. It had to be a similar feeling to the one Jared had had about the man he’d been in the car with. Except that man hadn’t been a stranger. They’d been friends and housemates. Briefly Kyrone wondered if they had been more than friends but dismissed it as irrelevant. The man was dead, and Jared had no memory of him.
He couldn’t imagine waking up one day to remembernothing. The thought of it terrified him. Jared must have felt so scared and alone, even with family gathered around him. The fact that he was happy and smiling the majority of the time was simply amazing. He was so full of life it was difficult to fathom how the accident could have only occurred eighteen months earlier.
Before he’d left for the night, they’d cuddled in bed, talking and trading sweet kisses. Jared had fallen asleep in his arms. It was perfect. Kyrone had almost called in sick, but he resisted because Jared had been so firm that he shouldn’t. What he had done was run his fingers gently over Jared’s scalp. He wasn’t even sure why he’d been doing it until he felt the jagged raised scar beneath Jared’s hair. That was when the tears had really threatened him.
When he got to the club, he made straight for the bathroom so he could wash the sorrow from his face. His eyes were puffy and red from crying, which wasn’t a pretty sight at all.
“Are you all right?”
Kyrone practically jumped out of his skin at the sound of Mac’s voice. He glanced up at the mirror and saw that the assistant manager was leaning against the doorframe, arms loosely folded.
