“You found your key,” Zac said. “Where was it?”
“In my pocket?”
“Seriously? It was there all along?”
“What are you talking about?”
Zac pictured the countless early mornings he’d found Jamie slumped in the street outside the flat, or been woken by his erratic thumping on the door. Fuck it. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Can I come?”
“If you like.” As if Zac could stop him. Jamie was irrepressible when he wasn’t strung out on smack. Besides, Zac enjoyed his company on the rare nights he spent at the flat. A warm bed was a blessing, but no fun on his own.
They ditched their clothes—sometimes Zac felt like it was all he ever did—and crawled into bed, Zac on his back with Jamie curled against him. Jamie smelled good, now he was clean, almost as good as the fading scent on Zac’s bed sheets.
A scent that wasn’t lost on Jamie. He craned his neck and sniffed Zac’s pillow. “You’ve been fucking in here.”
“Have I?”
“I reckon so. What happened to your rule about bringing johns to the flat?”
“What makes you think it was a john?”
“So you have been fucking in here?”
Damn it. Jamie had always been quicker than Zac. “Piss off.”
Jamie laughed. “No chance. Tell me. Did you hook up for fun? Pull some hottie at that lame club you’ve been loitering at?”
“Kind of. He was bloody hot, but I didn’t pull him. I picked him up and brought him here because it was closest.”
“It’s always closest. Don’t bullshit me. Why did you bring him here?”
Zac didn’t have an answer for that, at least, not one he wanted to share with Jamie. How could he explain that he’d rushed Liam back to the flat—instead of talking his way into Liam’s home—out of fear that Liam would come to his senses and realise he didn’t want to fuck a skanky hooker after all? Sod that. “He was in a hurry.”
Jamie didn’t look convinced. “Well, he must’ve been pretty hot . . . and clean, if you haven’t washed your sheets. You’ve been a total cleanaholic since we came here. Reckon I could eat my dinner off the bathroom floor.”
“You probably would.”
“True. So if you’re not going to tell me why you brought him here, will you tell me what you did with him that’s got you so misty-eyed? I’ve had to suck three dodgy dicks tonight. I could do with a happy ending.”
“Misty-eyed? You sound like my nan.”
“Wouldn’t know.”
Zac touched Jamie’s face, tracing the dark circles under his petrol-blue eyes. They both had textbook tragic backstories—broken homes, evil foster parents, blah blah blah—but Jamie’s was worse than most. Zac pictured the marbled scars on his back and shuddered. Jamie was a shadow of the man he should’ve been, but Zac often found himself staring at him and marvelling that he’d made it this far at all.
Jamie scooted closer and kissed the tip of Zac’s nose. “Tell me about him? Please?”
“Okay, okay.” Zac let his hand drop from Jamie’s face. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Especially the bits that have got your dick hard just thinking about him.”
Liam sat back in his chair and turned his gaze to the window, watching the dogs chase each other around the garden as the business call droned on without him. They’d bought the house in this part of Norfolk because it was deserted. Despite the tourists that flocked to the nearby beach in the summer, there wasn’t another house for nearly a mile around, and in the winter, they really would have been alone. Or, at least, that had been the plan before life had played its cruellest trick and forced Liam to finish building their dream home on his own.
And, ironically, with the office next to the kitchen and the phone ringing off the hook all day, he’d never felt so smothered. Life’s a bitch, and then you—
“Liam? Are you there?”
