Yes, You Do
Jackson was in an excruciating amount of pain.
Nausea waded through him. His head pounded, jaw ached, and every bone in his body felt cracked and broken. His ears rang, as though an alarm had gone off in his brain and it rattled around in his skull like a charity collection tin. Blood poured from his nose into his mouth and the swelling over his eye distorted his vision.
But he’d have recognised that voice anywhere.
He peered up through his bloodied lashes, making out the figure through the shadow crouching over him with a concern so unfamiliar, it was alien.
“Jesus feck. Why is it always you?” Fletcher asked, reaching for Jackson’s hand to help him up.
“Could ask you the same.” Agony tore through him as he was pulled to a standing position.
He stumbled, his bruised ribs about to burst through his skin. Fletcher hauled an arm around his waist to keep him steady and Jackson swallowed at the intimacy of the touch, the kindness of the gesture, the safety of the man’s embrace. None he recalled ever having experienced before. Lifting his head, Jackson peered at Fletcher through stinging eyes.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“Was passing. I’d been in Heaven.”
“And found yourself in Hell.” Jackson spat on the ground, a globule of scarlet-red blood staining the puddle in the gutter before being washed away by the pounding rain.
“Something like that, aye.” Digging fingertips into Jackson’s hip, Fletcher glanced away.
Jackson didn’t press for more. It hurt to talk. It hurt to move. It hurt to think.
It hurt to be alive.
“What was all that?” Fletcher’s clipped tone snapped him back to the reality of those pesky vital signs still operating. “Shall I call the police? Report the attack?”
Jackson grabbed the man’s hand from making its way into his pocket. “No,” he growled. Or more whimpered.
“Don’t be a fecking eejit, Jackson. They pounded you to the ground. You need to report this.”
Gripping the man’s hand harder, Jackson pleaded with him through no-doubt puffy eyes. “No. Please. Just leave it.”
After a resigned sigh, Fletcher nodded and Jackson let his hand go to clutch around his waist. He’d taken those kicks hard. He couldn’t be sure he wasn’t internally bleeding, or if his ribs were broken. The bouncers had started on him inside the club, hauling him out to the back rooms, through the darkened corridors, before throwing him to the curb. All at Kris’s request. The only saving grace was that at least Jackson had landed one punch to Kris’s jaw that would need Polly’s expertise in make-up to cover for the cameras tomorrow.
A smidgen of a smile ghosted his lips.
“I’ll take you to the hospital.” Fletcher tightened his arm around Jackson’s waist and attempted to shuffle him back down the alleyway toward the main precinct.
“No.” Jackson coughed, his temple pounding to make the prospect of vomiting inevitable. “No. I’m okay.”
“Like feck you are.” Fletcher paused. “You look like shite. What the fuck happened? Why were you even here? Why did they throw you out?”
“Stupid mistake.”
“Yours or theirs?”
“Mine. I thought I could reason with him.”
“Who?”
“Kris.”
Fletcher worried on his bottom lip. “About what?”
“About what happened. That night. He must know more than he’s letting on. He had to have been there. He was always the one who took me home when I’d had a skinful.”
“Have you told the police that?”
“What would that matter? He gave his statement. Said he wasn’t there. Has an alibi. Which would be the first time in I don’t know how fucking long that he didn’t take me home. You want suspicious, Fletcher. That’s fucking suspicious.”
The rain slapped onto their heads, Fletcher’s dark hair curling at the ends and dripping into those magnetic green eyes. He stared, thinking, wondering. Then he asked the inevitable through a whispered breath, “You think Kris—?”
“I don’t want to think it. But there’s so much you don’t know.” Jackson hung his head, his eyes too painful to keep open. “Too many lies. Too many secrets.”
“Then tell me.”
“I will. But not now. Not here.”
“And not when you’ve compromised your sobriety.” Fletcher grimaced, the scent of stale whisky wafting through the stagnant air. “How much did you have?”
“Too much.” Jackson winced. “Not enough.” Meeting Fletcher’s gaze, he couldn’t mask the vulnerability when he asked, “Can you take me home?”
Astonishingly, Fletcher nodded then steered him toward the end of the cut through toward the bustle of the Strand and back toward Charing Cross. The cackling of nightclubbers and tapping of heels on pavement scratched Jackson’s insides and the lights from the bars and waiting line of taxis pierced into his retina. He needed to lay his head down. He needed to switch this all off. He needed sleep.
He needed to just not be.
After hailing a cab, Fletcher manhandled Jackson into the back seat then poked his head through to the driver’s side. “Wait one sec.”
Resting his head on the window, Jackson watched Fletcher scurry off, his focus on the curvature of the man’s backside as he hurried down the slope and through the crowd toward the entrance to Heaven. He shouldn’t have been looking. He shouldn’t have even been contemplating the indulgence. He needed all that to shut off. Damn quick. That would only add to the case against him. It would only bring him into disrepute and provide the police with the motive they were searching for.
So he closed his eyes, the burning sting slicing through his brain.
Fletcher returned a while later; two bags shoved between them on the taxi seat. Jackson straightened, watching him clunk-click his way in and gaze out of the passenger side window. He was tense. Unnervingly so. Which was to be expected after what he’d just witnessed. But there was something more to it. Something else that made the man’s teeth grind, made his back ramrod straight and made his eyes stare out of the window at the London sky littered with iridescent lights.
“You okay?” Jackson asked after the silence was all too much.
Fletcher didn’t take his eyes off the outside world passing them by, nor did he loosen any part of his wound up body when he replied with a typical, “Grand.”
Jackson didn’t press him any further. His head throbbed anyway, and the nausea crept up on him again. Letting his eyes drift to a close, he put his trust in someone else to get him home.
Like old times.
The next thing he knew, he was lowered into a single bed, the mattress and pillow around his head comforting against the overriding headiness. He opened his eyes, laying his gaze on Fletcher.
There was no denying it. Fletcher Doherty was stunning.
Those eyes, those perfect pink lips between rough, dark stubble.
And he was always there.
“Why is it you?” he asked, glittering stars around his vision.
“Why is what me?” Fletcher sat on the edge of the bed, ripping off Jackson’s shoes and discarding them to the floor.