But my phone rings, shutting me down, and by the time I’ve rejected Sab’s call, Bhodi is already backing away.
“I have to go.”
“To work?”
“Yeah.” He opens the car door. “I’m covering the late shift before I have a few rest days.”
Odd relief sweeps through me that he’s not working all night again, though I can’t deny I’ve grown used to breaking up my own work day with the sight of him passed out on the sofa bed. “How late is late?”
“Midnight, probably. I don’t know. I’m still getting used to a new place.”
I nod. Somehow I’ve drifted close enough to rest my good hand on his car door.
Shut it. Let him go. Preferably before he has more to say about my fucked-up wrist. But Bhodi’s eyes…I have a festive ink shade upstairs that’s been making me think of him all week. It’s calledspruce, and I like it, but it has nothing on the glittery stare that pins me in place now.
We’ve run out of things to say. I get the message and step back, letting Bhodi close his own door. He starts the car, or tries. The ignition sputters and rattles, protesting—struggling—before it begrudgingly sparks to life and Bhodi drives away, leaving me with the diesel fog of an unhappy engine.
Idon’tlike that. Any of it. Broken cars are dangerous, and it bothers me more than it should that I won’t know until Bhodi comes home that he made it to work okay. That he has to drive that car again, at night and through the ice before I can fall asleep.
It bothers me so much I don’t go to bed early like I’d planned. I wait up on the couch and let Sab bully me into agreeing to get my wrist seen the next day, on pain of him marching down from Manchester and sitting on me until I stop being so fucking extra. He’s so wound up he doesn’t even ask what happened to the fence, who Bhodi was, and why he was rolling out of the annex with bed hair at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Which has its good and bad points. I’m not sad about delaying Sab’s smugness over being right about the rental income, but Bhodi’s hot, and I can’t stop thinking about him, and Sab’s my person for talking about this shit.
He’s my person for everything.
It’s late when Bhodi’s car finally pulls up outside. I’mdozing with my phone on my chest. I sit up and it clatters to the floor as Bhodi exits his car and disappears around the house, using the side gate I had stipulated in his contract, only the battered fence gifting me a snatched glimpse of him again before he vanishes into the annex.
He doesn’t turn any lights on, but I don’t need to see him to know he’s kicking his shoes off and ditching the clothes from his upper body before he fills a glass of water he won’t drink and knocks out face-down on his unmade bed.
It’s my cue to climb the stairs to my own bed, but I can’t make myself move. I lie back on the couch and fold my good arm behind my head, watching the flames in the burner smoulder and die. Something deep inside me is wide awake, and I feel like this is me for the night. That I’ll still be at one with the fire when morning comes. But I do fall asleep in the end and wake to Rudy terrorising me for his breakfast, and a note on the doormat.
Rudy waits for no man.
I feed him, then shuffle to the front door and snag the plain card that’s definitely one of mine.
It’s covered in illegible scrawl, letters squished together and overlapping, words slanting forward and back in wavy lines. It’s so early that deciphering it hurts my brain, but the one word I can read—the scribbled name—spurs me on, and eventually, I figure it out.
Fracture clinic, 10 am. I’ll drive.
Bhodi xx
Damn. Aside from the what-the-fuck notion that the lodger I didn’t even want is already ordering me around, I should befixated on theI’ll drivepart of the cute little note I can’t seem to put down. His car’s fucked. He’s not driving anywhere until I’ve stuck my head under the bonnet. But that’s a given, non-negotiable, and maybe that’s why the two little kisses after his name sink their hooks into me instead.
Four
BHODI
He’s not going to come.
I tell myself over and over.
As I roll out of bed three hours earlier than I want to. As I shower in the tiny cubicle with the rainfall head, then contemplate the empty fridge and the unused log burner on repeat until it’s time to leave—for the appointment I made, unasked, for my landlord.
Theinsanelyattractive bloke with the star tattooed on his face who’s rejected my concern for his fractured wrist ten times already.
If anything, I approach my car expecting a note tacked to the windscreen telling me to fuck the fuck off, but I’m wrong. I glance up from picking my way along the icy path to find Tam waiting for me, perched on the low wall surrounding his house, and the sight of him slows my steps.
He’s got those boots on. But instead of the sweats I’ve seen him in recently, jeans wrap around his long legs, a dark jacketthrown over a faded, gunmetal grey T-shirt, andLord, I’m not ready for it.
I force myself into motion again. “Wasn’t sure you’d show.”
