“Goddammit.” Jamie pulled up the Uber app and ordered a car, inputting Marcus’s building as the destination, instead of his own house. The ride seemed to take a million years and the entire way, Jamie couldn’t stop his brain from replaying the scene at the bar over and over. Marcus visibly shaken at the sight of Kurt’s hand on his knee, ripping at his hair. Leaving. God, Jamie couldn’t even imagine how upset Marcus would have to be to leave him in Brooklyn. He didn’t even like him being on the opposite end of the beach.
When Jamie reached Marcus’s building, he asked the Uber to wait. Rain had begun to fall in big, warm glops from the sky and Jamie ducked inside the humid building vestibule to escape it, pushing the wet hair out of his eyes. He rang the bell marked Deez Nuts twenty times and called Marcus again on the phone, but no one answered. Nothing. Where the hell was he?
Jamie’s entire body was an exposed nerve as the Uber navigated the streets of Long Beach toward his house. How the hell was he just supposed to go inside and pretend like everything wasn’t fucked up? Moving and thinking and breathing required a concerted effort, because all he could do was exist in the horror of that same fifteen seconds, on a loop.
The Uber pulled up in front of the Prince house and Jamie swallowed heavily, managing a gruff thank you to the driver before climbing out into the now heavy rain.
Marcus was sitting on his steps.
Hoisting a bottle of Jack Daniels to his lips.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He’d ruined everything.
Marcus swallowed a gulp of whiskey and it burned the edges of the pit in his stomach. The one that had been steadily yawning wider for over an hour.
Jamie was home safe. He’d made sure of it. He needed to get up and go home now.
There was zero chance that Jamie wanted him here. Not after he’d given Marcus the perfect opportunity to prove he was trying. Trying to grow into the man Jamie needed. Jamie had handed him the golden, one-time chance to learn and he’d done nothing but die a slow death on that couch the whole time. He’d squandered the help Jamie so selflessly offered.
And Marcus couldn’t even say for certain he wouldn’t walk out of that bar all over again.
No, he could say for certain.
He would.
Not sitting beside Jamie, letting another man have that honor, had been borderline impossible, but the hand on his leg?
Marcus made a miserable sound and took another pull of whiskey, ignoring the rain that dripped into his eyes when he tipped his head back.
“I’m going, I promise,” Marcus announced, coming to his feet, pleased when the ground didn’t sway. He’d only purchased the bottle of Jack after getting off the train in Long Beach, so he was nowhere near drunk. Give it half an hour, though. He’d do whatever it took to pass out and stop thinking about another man’s hand on Jamie.
He descended the stairs and gave Jamie a wide berth where he stood at the end of the path, going around him. Don’t ask. Don’t ask.
“Marcus…”
“Did he kiss you?” His grip tightened around the glass neck of the bottle, because if Jamie said yes, Marcus was going to escape consciousness by slamming it down over his own head. “Did he?”
Jamie seemed to be struggling with his answer.
“That means yes, doesn’t it? Jesus Christ.”
“It’s not a yes, Diesel,” Jamie snapped, taking a step in his direction, his dark hair being plastered to his forehead by the falling condensation. “I’m just trying to figure out what control I’m giving up of this whole fucking mess if I start answering questions like that. And explaining myself to you. Where does that lead?”
A beat passed. Two. “Is that a yes?”
Jamie exhaled on an unsteady laugh. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
“Anything you want,” Marcus whispered back.
The look Jamie gave him back said that’s not true and you know it.
“Was tonight really so easy for you?” Marcus asked, his voice rising, a hand swiping across his forehead to brush away the rain. “Pawning me off on another guy? Was it really that easy, Jamie?”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Marcus barely heard Jamie’s reply because of the sudden roar in his ears, carried forth by the memories. Jamie sitting too close to Kurt. Letting Marcus sit too close to Adam. “Do you think I’m going to be attracted to just anyone? Is that what you think?” He used his bottle to gesture at the house. “Your brothers are both hot and I’ve never once thought of fucking either of them. Not once.”
Jamie’s face screwed up. “For chrissake, Marcus.”
“Sorry, I was just trying to support my point.” The bottle sloshed at his side. “It’s just you, Jamie. It’s only you, since as far back as I can remember. So did Father Time kiss you or not? Put me out of my fucking misery.”