Tam stands off the wall, his injured arm still held at an awkward angle. “You grassed me up to my brother. It’s him or you.”
“I was your first choice?”
His russet eyes do something complex. “I can go on my own. You don’t have to come.”
I know that. He knows that. But somehow, we’re both here.
“Also,” he elaborates when I don’t speak, “I googled the fracture clinic, and it’s in a different building, so…”
So…?But I don’t ask. If he wants to share, he will. Or he won’t, and that’s okay. I point at my car, the windows already cleared of frost and ice. “Let’s go.”
A beat stretches before he shrugs and heads to the passenger door of my beat-up Golf. He slides into the seat. I do the same and start her up—kinda. It takes a minute and I shoot him an apologetic glance. “Needs an oil change.”
He snorts. “It needs glow plugs. And probably new cylinders if you keep driving it like a crazy person without getting it looked at.”
“How are you saying that with a straight face?”
Tam gives me a long look, one I can’t drown in while I’m reversing around the cul-de-sac to spin the car in the right direction. “Yeah yeah, I get the irony. But I looked at the engine while I was waiting for you, and you really do need glow plugs.”
I face forward and spy the oil smears on his hands, even the bad one. There’s other marks too—blue, maybe?—that make less sense, and a red that’s too vibrant to be blood staining the skin around his nails. “It’s cute that you looked at my car.”
“Cute?”
“Yeah. But you didn’t need to. I was going to take it to Halfords tomorrow.”
“Fucking Halfords?” That earns me a growly grunt, and a flurry of muttered French that somehow fits with the subtle Brummie accent Tam has when he sticks to English.
“You don’t like Halfords,” I surmise, easing my cursed car down Stardust Lane and onto the A-road that leads to the city. “They do something to offend you?”
“They’re shite.”
“All of them?”
“Unless you’re in the market for a bubblegum air freshener.”
Tam shifts his attention to nail a glare at an SUV undertaking us. I roll my lips, suppressing a grin as a bump in the road jostles the Jelly Belly air freshener dangling between us. Blueberry, once upon a time, but it probably smells of old scrubs by now. Or whatever junk is lurking in the back of my car with the bags and boxes I’ve yet to unpack.
“Why are you going this way?”
I chance a glance at Tam. He’s scowling at the junction leading to the motorway, and to the best of my knowledge, the city where we’ll find the hospital. “Um. Because we’re going to the hospital?”
“Yeah, I know that. But why this way? It takes six times as long.”
“ThenGoogle Mapslied to me.”
“Fucking right. Take the scenic route next time.”
I wait for him to elaborate.
He doesn’t, and I drive on, trying not to sneak glances at his profile, or breathe too much of his woodsmoke and cinnamon scent.He looks like a biker, but he smells like cake, and facing that without breakfast in my belly is a Herculean task. Add in that he’s satanically hot, and I’m a lost cause.
There’s no way around it. I want to eat him.
But I want him to feel better more than I want to think about fucking him, and I hold onto that as I navigate my way back to a place that already feels like my second home, park in the last staff space, and kill the engine.
Tam hasn’t spoken in a while. He doesn’t seem particularly tense, but what do I know? This is the fourth time we’ve met and the longest we’ve ever been in each other’s company. For all I know, he’s about to bolt, and despite his injury, I know I have little chance of stopping him.
I take a chance and press my fist to his shoulder. “Ready?”
