His frayed sleeves are already rolled back. I take his hand and turn his arm, assessing both sides, palpating the swollen flesh, testing the movement in his fingers.
“Any numbness?”
Tam grunts. “No.”
“How’s the pain?”
“Fine.”
“And when I do this?” I press my thumb harder into the worst of the swelling.
Tam hisses, wrenching his arm away. “All right. You made your point. I know it’s fucked.”
“Fractured,” I correct. “Easily fixed with a cast.”
Ifhe’s lucky, and doesn’t leave it so long it needs re-breaking and setting.
I open my mouth to say so, but he’s already snatched Rudy and made it halfway to the open door.
He’s done, I realise, and I have to respect it. But not without telling him the truth. “You can’t ignore an injury like that. If it heals wrong, you’ll need surgery to correct it.”
“Nice to meet you.” Tam steps into his boots and leaves, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click.
His departure is so abrupt I go back to believing I fell asleep on the way home and I’ve yet to wake up. But his scent lingers, the warmth of his bare skin against my palms. The fluff from his crazy dog.
I’m in his house.
I mean, not literally. I’m in an annex he owns, that he’s renting to me on a short-term lease under the condition he never has to deal with me, and I’ve pushed myself all up in his face twice in the past twelve hours.
But still. My tiny mind is blown and it makes it hard to take in the lush space I’ve somehow landed in.
The sofa.
It’s a bed—I remember that much from the emails. It folds out, creating a bedroom in the living area that holds a tiny kitchen, and a separate bathroom tucked into the back.
The rest of the space is all wood and huge windows, natural light pooling as the sun grows stronger. The log burner I’m too tired to investigate, and a rug big enough to?—
Nope.
I get horny when I’m tired. Like my body knows a good fuck would gift me the best sleep ever. It makes going to bed alone depressing, but I’m too far gone to care right now. I’m not even hungry anymore. I’m just going through the motions, booting my shoes and losing my coat, dumping it on the floor as I wrestle with the sofa-bed.
It springs out on the third try. There’s bedding in my car, but I don’t care enough to fetch it. Everything is tomorrow’s problem.Tonight’s, when I wake up and go back to work.
Exhaling, I flop onto the bed and let my gaze sweep the annex one last time. It’s clean, but not too clean, the dust that remains homely, not grotty, and there’s tinsel hanging from thebeam above me, as if someone forgot to put it away last year. In the winter sun, it’s so gold it’s almost bronze, and it makes me think of Tam’s russet gaze, and the kaleidoscope of emotion I’ve seen in him since we set eyes on each other last night.
Still doesn’t feel real. Any of it. But this bed, it smells of him, and as I crash into a deep sleep, it feels like he’s still here.
Three
TAM
I was right about his eyes. They’re blue and jewel-bright. Full of life and laughter, even though every time I see him, he’s trudging to his front door as if he’s been awake for a week and a half.
He’s on nights.
Bhodi Jones.
AKA the hot bloke who lives in my annex.
