The real question is how long I can hold out.
Twelve
BHODI
I’ve made a vow not to waste another second of my life waiting on a call that never comes. Metaphorically, obviously. Tam still doesn’t have my number. And he hasn’t asked for it. So I don’t let myself wait up for him. Or glance away from the TV any time I sense movement outside.
I do what I always do when I’m home for the night—homealone. I eat noodles, take a shower, and crawl into bed to doze in front of the telly.Don’t think about Tam. And I don’t for the most part. I shut my mind off with the iron will I need to learn from the past, and I’m pretty much asleep when a light tap on the annex door rouses me somewhere between Eastenders ending and some hospital documentary taking over.
I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than watch a show about work in my downtime.
I fumble the remote as I drift, bare-chested, to the door, and switch the channel to who knows what.
Then I open the door and forget all about it. About everything except the man hiding behind his hood.
Tam.
Which means he’s hiding from the snow, not me. Skylar used his hood to shut the whole world out. Tam’s different. He tips it back and smiles like I’m the best thing he’s ever seen, and something inside me settles.
“Come in.” I step aside, yawning. “It’s freezing out there.”
Tam hesitates. “Did I wake you up?”
“No.”
“There are pillow lines on your face.”
“I was resting my eyes, and I’m off tomorrow. Comein.”
Tam steps over the threshold and toes off his boots. He unzips his hoodie too and shrugs it off, revealing the old grey T-shirt he wears a lot when he’s working at home.
It bears the name of the same motorcycle club that populates Devon and Cornwall, where I used to work. “You were a Rebel King?”
Tam blinks and glances at the faded insignia on his chest. “A long time ago. Until I ate dirt and never rode again.”
“They kicked you out?”
“Fuck, no.” Tam ventures further inside, taking in my rumpled, unmade bed, and the lack of anywhere else to sit. “They gave me money for the deposit on the house and patched me out when I was ready. I could’ve stayed if I wanted to. It’s a brotherhood—they take care of their own.”
It fits with what little I know about the Rebel Kings MC. But to tell Tam that breaks patient confidentiality, so I move to the kitchen and grab a couple of beers.
Tam hovers by my bed.
I pass him a bottle and flop down, waiting, letting him figure it out himself.
A few loaded beats pass before he claims the other side and reclines against the pillows.
He’s my landlord and he’s in bed with me. But it doesn’t feel weird. I lounge beside him and drink my beer while he frowns at the TV.
“You’re watching Porridge?”
Apparently so. “I have a prison kink.”
Tam chuckles. “You’d like some of my old mates then.”
“From the club?”
“Yeah. I was pretty tame by their standards, but I rode with some characters.”
