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  He drained his glass and went to the gents’, relieving himself clumsily in a definitely nasty bathroom with the telltale streaks of sticky white powder on the counter that said that at least one part of sex, drugs and rock and roll was going down in here on the average evening. Rinsing his hands off, he wondered if another round was called for, or another bar. Obviously, they’d keep going a bit longer. He could still think, for one. And thinking was counterproductive for later, when he’d get Ezra’s long legs wrapped around his waist and try to suck all the alcohol back out through his mouth. Or his neck. Or other places.

  Then he left the bathroom and saw him.

  Ezra had escaped the tiny lesbians and was leaning very precariously against the bar, a fresh drink in hand, and smiling—beaming—at a man who was just offensively good-looking. He looked like one of those underwear models or something. Tall, too-tight T-shirt, spiky dark hair in a style that could have been achieved with an electric razor but which he’d probably paid fifty quid for at a salon aimed at women. A waxed chest, judging by the naked V of skin visible below his neck. And smiling a chiselled, perfect, cologne-ad smile at Ezra. People could model cologne and underwear, right? Because this guy definitely did.

  Jesse hesitated at the bathroom door and a shaky warmth bubbled up in his stomach as the underwear model reached into his back pocket and passed Ezra a thin bit of card. His number, maybe? Why the hell was some underwear-cologne model giving Ezra his number?

  Why the hell was Ezra putting it in his pocket?

  Ezra turned from the bar, eyes scanning the room and that placid, drink-smudged smile widened when he locked eyes with Jesse. He leaned back against the sticky wood, weight on his elbows, and beckoned with one long finger. It was as though an invisible rope reeled Jesse in. As the underwear model glanced Jesse’s way and melted back onto the dance floor, Jesse’s anger went with him. Mollified, he planted his hands either side of Ezra’s waist, bracing himself against the bar, and crowded Ezra against it to kiss him and taste the drunken want on his tongue.

  “You ran away,” Ezra accused, tugging on Jesse’s hair lightly.

  “You started talking to other guys,” Jesse murmured, and yet with Ezra’s hand playing with his ear and the wide, blissfully peaceful expression he wore when he was drunk, it somehow didn’t matter.

  “Only because you ran away,” Ezra teased, and bumped his nose clumsily against Jesse’s.

  “Can we go?” Jesse whispered, dropping a hand to slide it around Ezra’s hip and down to the top of his leg, rubbing lightly against the denim of his jeans. “Back to the hotel? I have designs.”

  “On what?”

  “On you and the bed and being bendy.”

  Ezra grinned, and downed the rest of his glass in one expert motion, his back and neck flexing like liquid in suspension.

  “I knew you got me drunk,” he accused, and Jesse laughed, putting a hand into Ezra’s back pocket to hook him in and guide him out. The night air was cold after the heat of the bar, and the underwear model had vanished like an ugly, sexy mirage.

  “You shouldn’t talk to underwear models,” he blurted out, and Ezra laughed too loudly in the street.

  “I only talk to your underwear,” he retorted, then all the sense of it was slipping away, and Jesse simply forgot in favour of other things.

  For the moment.

  Chapter Three

  For the second morning in a row, Jesse woke up feeling vaguely like he’d died.

  Or was very ill, at least. Dead people were out of their misery, but the steel drum solo going off between his ears was proof he hadn’t actually shuffled off the mortal coil during the night.

  Pity.

  Waking up in the hotel room was weird. The light was all wrong, the ceiling the wrong colour, he couldn’t hear any sirens either from the main road—his flat—or the fire station—Ezra’s house—and Ezra himself was right there. Jesse didn’t often get to spend the night at Ezra’s, and Ezra didn’t like his flat, so waking up to an unusual warmth in the bed was good enough compensation for the headache and the nausea.

  He reached out. Ezra grumbled but let Jesse wind himself around him in a hug, pulling that long back into his chest. Ezra clung to his pillow, dragging it with him, and buried his face in it until only his hair, wild with the mousse he hadn’t washed out the night before, was left sticking up out of the mess.

  “Don’t I get a hug?” Jesse mumbled, and kissed the back of his neck.

  “Go die.”

  Jesse grinned and squeezed. Ezra’s grumble turned into a growl. “Suffering?”

  “Jesse Kevin Dawkins, if you so much as—”

  “But, Eeeeez—”

  “Shut up.”

  Jesse kissed his neck again, then his shoulder, then rose up on his elbow to lean over and push the pillow down far enough to find a cheek. Ezra swatted at him, but Jesse caught the hand and kissed that, too.

  “Breakfast?” he coaxed. “A big greasy fry-up and enough coffee to give you the shakes?”

  “Try enough coffee to kick-start a minor South American economy,” Ezra mumbled, but finally gave in to Jesse’s persuasion and unburied himself, twisting over enough to kiss his cheek and scowl at the window. “Oh, Jesus, and it’s sunny. Whoop-de-fucking-do.”

  “I’ll buy,” Jesse offered, nosing at the surprisingly spiky hair.

  Ezra grumbled and pushed him off, staggering out of the bed with a complete lack of his usual grace. He was entirely naked, and Jesse knew he needed breakfast and a decent hangover cure when his dick didn’t so much as twitch at the sight.

  It was a slow start. Ezra attempted to drown himself in the shower, and Jesse didn’t blame him. The sun refused to abate, and it took two rounds of teeth-brushing, a heavy-duty pair of sunglasses and a lot of promises of extra bacon to get Ezra to even think about going outside. In the end, Jesse threatened to carry him.

  “I have carried heavier people than you through burning buildings, so stop your whining and move,” he commanded.

  Ezra’s reply was to give him a look that could have started those fires that burned down the buildings.

  His mood did improve—marginally—once they got outside. The humidity had eased, and there was a quiet café not far from the hotel that smelled of Ezra’s much-needed coffee and advertised a full English breakfast for not too much money. The man was prickly enough in the mornings without caffeine—without caffeine and hungover was a lethal combination that Jesse was wary of dealing with too often. So he forked out for the coffee, and stayed very quiet until the edge of danger had passed.

  “Are we going back to your mother’s today?” he dared, once the first obscenely large mug of coffee had been downed and replaced with a tall, cold glass of juice.

  “Not until this evening,” Ezra mumbled, rubbing at his eyes behind the sunglasses. “Grace is arriving this morning and she likes her time with Nana and Mum without me hanging about.”

  Jesse winced.

  “Don’t give me that face. It’s a wonderful agreement,” Ezra muttered. “The less I have to see of the spiteful little cow, the better.”

  Jesse mentally decided that another coffee was definitely in order, and signalled the waitress.

  “She can’t be that bad,” he tried.

  Ezra put the glass of juice down abruptly. “One of my favourite students in 9A,” he said coldly, “is a simply lovely little girl by the name of Miranda. If she’s not throwing anything that’s not bolted down at the other students, she’s trying to set fire to Melissa Dunlop’s hair with a Bunsen burner. On my first day teaching at that school, she told me she was going to get her daddy to complain about the faggot teaching chemistry. She was eleven years old. Only last month, she hit another girl so hard her braces had to be removed by a doctor at the hospital, and the best part? She’s never dealt with, because the other kids are too scared to tell tales on her. Know what I call her? Grace. She’s just like Grace.”

  “Uh—”

  “Grace is my yo
unger sister, Jess. She’s four years younger than me. Know what she does? Nothing. She’s sitting pretty on a bribe that’ll keep her from needing to work for the next two years because she got a secretarial job, had an affair with the boss, videoed it, then got him to pay her off to keep quiet so his wife and kids wouldn’t find out. And when the money runs out, she’ll do it all over again.”

  “How can you be sure that—”

  “Because she told me.”

  “Jesus,” Jesse muttered.

  “She’s a sick, twisted, bitchy little girl who spent most of my teenage years calling me everything she could think of for being gay and threatening to out me to the rest of the family. Frankly,” he snapped, “I wish she’d been in the front seat of that car.”

  Jesse blinked. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Ez—”

  Ezra pulled his hand away when Jesse reached across the table. “I don’t want to talk about it, Jesse.”

  “Hey,” Jesse bit his lip. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Ezra sighed heavily, massaging his temple with one hand.

  “No,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone off on one. I just hate her and Mum insisted she come for Nana’s birthday too, the minute I said we were coming, and I’m pissed off about it.”

  Jesse opened his mouth, wanting to ask about what Ezra had meant by a car, and thought better of it. Instead he finally caught his hand and squeezed it lightly.

  “I’m still sorry,” he said. “I mean, I know you were always a bit meh about your parents being all religious and stuff, but I didn’t figure that your childhood sucked at all.”

  Ezra shrugged. “I was the middle child. I got bullied by both of them.”

  “Both of them?”

  “I had a brother. Josh.”

  “Had?” Jesse asked delicately.

  Ezra shook his head.

  “Another time,” he said eventually, and slid his hand out from under Jesse’s. “Not—not right now.”

  Jesse bit his lip. Ezra could be moody when he was hungover, but it tended to be little things. The sun, noisy kids, crappy eggs. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do with this emotional ranting, and warily kept his thoughts to himself as Ezra viciously stabbed at his breakfast. Maybe they shouldn’t go and see Grace, if she upset Ezra so much? But it wasn’t like she could bully him now, right? They were both adults, and Jesse would be there. It wasn’t like—

  “Ezra!”

  The call of Ezra’s name halted Jesse’s hesitancy in its tracks. Ezra twisted, scowling, then the scowl just melted off his face, and Jesse’s tipsy irritation from the night before surged right back up as a man crossed the café to their table, grinning widely.

  Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome. The underwear model. The underwear-cologne model with the waxed chest. Coffee in hand, and God, that smile was like the rest of him. Disgustingly perfect.

  What the hell? Was Norfolk just crawling with weird, good-looking stalker types?

  “Liam!”

  Jesse’s brain screeched to a halt.

  Liam.

  Liam, the first boyfriend.

  Liam, the ex.

  Liam, the university graduate that Ezra had dated before.

  What the hell?

  Ezra didn’t scowl, didn’t recoil, didn’t ask exactly who Drop-Dead Gorgeous was or what he thought he was doing here. Instead, he stood-the-fuck-up and hugged him, beaming from ear to ear.

  Jesse’s world flexed like he’d shoved a fish-eye lens into each eye.

  “Jesse, this is Liam,” Ezra said, and tugged the newcomer into the spare chair by the sleeve. Like they were still familiar or something. Perfect Liam extended a hand. Jesse shook it like a dead rat and dropped it as soon as was polite. What business did Ezra have with stunning ex-boyfriends and taking their phone numbers? “Liam, this is Jesse, my boyfriend.”

  Any warm feeling Jesse usually took from hearing Ezra introduce him that way was distinctly absent, and a cold wash flooded through his system when Liam raised a perfect eyebrow—seriously, did he pluck them or something because nobody had eyebrows that fine—and said, “Really?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said shortly, and took Ezra’s hand over the table.

  “Well,” Liam said, and laughed. That sort of short, affected laugh posh people did. “You don’t really have a type, do you, Ezzy?” Then he turned back to Jesse and said, “I was his first, you know.”

  Jesse’s stomach clenched.

  “In university,” Ezra explained, and rolled his eyes. “I got so much stick for that, dating a law student. God, the way the other chemists went on, you’d think I was selling state secrets to the enemy.”

  “Selling them to a lawyer is just as bad,” Liam smirked, and even his smirk was sexy. Jesse clenched his toes inside his boots. A lawyer. A well-educated, well-spoken lawyer. He was probably rich, too.

  “So, uh, how long were you together?” he asked.

  Liam raised his eyebrows. “Ezzy hasn’t told you everything?”

  “Never heard your name in my life,” Jesse said shortly. He wanted to add ‘and stop fucking calling him Ezzy,’ but didn’t. Ezra would probably smack him for being rude to his ex. Who he was apparently still friends with. And could make him smile and laugh. And whose number he took in bars.

  “I’m surprised,” Liam said, smiling over the lip of his coffee cup. “I taught him everything he knows.”

  Ezra pulled a face. “Oh, come on.”

  “You were so virginal it was painful!”

  “You’re right, it was bloody painful,” Ezra muttered darkly, and Jesse squeezed his hand, not liking the course of the conversation. “Liam was the first guy I was ever with,” he clarified. “And I was terrified. I was barely atheist. It took me a lot longer to shake off the feeling I was doing something wrong.”

  “Very wrong,” Liam said, and winked.

  “Well, he doesn’t think I’m doing anything wrong,” Jesse said sharply, and Ezra raised his eyebrows in silent admonishment. Jesse ignored him. He didn’t like this stupidly good-looking guy just waltzing in here and making cracks about their sex life together, even if that sex life was well out of date. And was going to stay that way.

  “So what do you do, Jesse?” Liam asked smoothly. “Another teacher? A waste—no offence, if you are—but a waste of a profession for Ezra. He was a brilliant chemist. He should be working for one of the American pharmaceutical companies.”

  “I like Brighton,” Ezra said mildly.

  “I don’t teach,” Jesse said tightly. He knew the type. He was going to have to show his hand, reveal his lack of an education, and Liam would be polite about it, would say what a great job he was doing, and how fulfilling it had to be, but there’d be that look in his eye. The one that asked why the brilliant chemist was dating a dumb fireman without so much as an A-Level to his name.

  “Jesse works for the fire service,” Ezra said.

  “Oh, I see,” Liam said, and there it was. The condescending smile. “That’s—wow. That must be a really fulfilling sort of job.”

  Bang on the money. Jesse congratulated himself bitterly for the prediction, and smiled tightly.

  “I’ve had to get used to waking up to someone who wasn’t there when I went to sleep,” Ezra teased, rubbing a thumb over Jesse’s knuckles. Jesse tried to smile, but failed, the unease niggling at him.

  “Do you live together?”

  “No,” Ezra said, and laughed. “We’ve only been together eight months. I brought him to meet my family.”

  “How’s it going?”

  How indeed. Jesse almost—almost—wanted to be back in that Christ-ified living room with the Virgin Mary’s reproachful stare from over the mantelpiece. At least she was quiet. At least he didn’t have a whole childhood of Mass and the Bible telling him he was a sick pervert. And Nana Lindquist was kind of funny, anyway, but this Liam creature was just—just—

  “Oh shit,” Liam said suddenly, a
nd something was chiming. He dug a phone out of his pocket—designer jeans, Jesse noted irritably—and unlocked it. “Argh, Christ. The office is calling. Again.” He rolled his eyes, and Ezra laughed. “I gotta run. Hey, you in town for the next week or so?”

  “Probably another ten days,” Ezra said, and pulled a face. “Assuming Grace doesn’t try and drown me in holy water or something before then.”

  Uncertainty flickered across Liam’s face, and Jesse seized on it with far too much glee.

  “His sister,” he said flatly. “He didn’t tell you about Grace?” he added snidely, and maybe he was a horrible person to go with the general lack of living up to this model-standard ex, but he couldn’t help the flush of vindictive pleasure at Liam’s genuine surprise in that moment.

  “Call me,” Liam said, turning away from Jesse altogether. “We should get together. Have a drink, catch up. Talk.”

  “We’ll see,” Ezra said cryptically.

  “Nice meeting you, Jesse,” Liam said. He didn’t mean it.

  “You too,” Jesse replied. He didn’t mean it either, and he watched with no small amount of relief as those designer jeans swept out of the café, very expensive phone already held to his ear.

  “Can I have my hand back?” Ezra interrupted the musing.

  Jesse tightened his grip. “In a minute.”

  “Mm,” Ezra hummed. “I do believe you’re jealous.”

  Jesse winced.

  “Oh, come on, Jesse, you practically went green when he introduced himself.”

  “I just—he was so familiar with you—”

  “He’s held my cock in his hand,” Ezra said, the unusual vulgarity startling Jesse for a brief moment. Ezra had his unreadable face on. The blank one. Jesse sometimes called it his teaching face, when he was hiding whether someone had said something monumentally stupid. But right now, it could be his gearing-up-for-a-row face.