I make him come again and it gets impossibly hotter every time.
Then he pushes me onto my mattress on the floor and showsmethe first time he obliterated me with his mouth was no fecking fluke.
I’m in bits after. And it really is late. Sab’s going to leave soon, I can feel it—I hate it. But for a little while, we lie together, legs entangled, sharing sweat and the kind of lazy, sated kisses I never knew existed until now.
Untilhim.
I’m so hooked on his big brown eyes.
On his gentle hands as he does something to my shoulder that has me groaning with the sweetest pleasure-pain.
“Can I ask you something?”
My eyes have rolled shut. I force them open. “As long as it’s not my name. I forgot it the first time you blew my brains out.”
“How do you really know Bhodi? He gets this look on his face when he talks about you, and…I don’t know, it feels like something about you meant something to him.”
He’s not asking if I’ve fucked his brother-in-law. He’s asking what happened to put me in his path, and it shouldn’t be this hard to tell him. Then I realise, I’ve never really told anyone. Everyone I’ve ever talked to about it was there, or someone else told them for me. I’ve never had to explain the nightmare that nearly killed me two Christmases ago. “I, um…you know what a flashover is?”
Sab shakes his head, shifting a little closer, scratching blunt nails down my forearm, grounding me as if he feels every spiked and hazy memory tumbling through my mind.
“A flashover is like, the perfect storm in fire terms. When every combustible surface ignites at the same time and the whole shebang goes up at once. It’s fast and feckinghot.Your gear can’t protect you from that kind of heat, from that kind of smoke, and my mask…I’d knocked it on the way in. Just a fraction, but that’s all it needs to be to burn your lungs.”
“That’s what happened to you?”
I nod, slowly, tasting smoke on my tongue. “Industrial fire. A big one. We were the first crew in and it absolutely battered us.”
“Are you okay now?”
“Mostly.” I rub my chest, an absent gesture that became a tic for a while. “I didn’t work for a year and a half, though. And I get more knackered by it all now.”
Sab doesn’t say anything for a minute. Just keeps grazing my arm with his nails. “Did Bhodi look after you? In the hospital?”
“Fecking saved me more like. Lung injuries get worse before they get better. A&E nearly sent me home. Next thing I knew I was in ICU and he was the only thing between me and the grim reaper.”
I try for a smile, but I know it’s weak.
Sab doesn’t smile either. Despite the lingering heat on his skin, he shivers. “It’s not the same, but there was a night, a long time ago, when I was using—I just couldn’t stop. I got so high I nearly jumped off a bridge, but a stranger talked me out of it. Some bloke with a van full of weird furniture and a dormant booze habit. Took me a while to get my shit together after that, but I never forgot him. Still hear his voice sometimes.”
“That’s heavy,” I say, as if it comes anywhere close to describing the wrench in my gut at thinking of him so sad and unwell. “Bet he never forgot you either.”
Sab hums. “I never told Tam about that night. Bhodi either. I’ve never told anyone.”
“Well.” I lean in and kiss his cheek, something I’ve done before, but for some reason feels more intimate tonight. “Thank you for telling me.”
Sab stays quiet.
I rub my fingers through his short hair, addicted to the bashful grin I get in return, praying I’m not about to obliterate it. “Can I askyousomething?”
Wariness creeps into Sab’s gaze, but there’s openness too. “Of course.”
“Where’s Esme’s ma?”
Sab expels a slow breath. “I was wondering when you’d ask me that.”
“You don’t have to tell me. It’s just…she’s not around, and I don’t get the feeling she’s dead.”
“She’s not. She’s, uh, in prison.”
