Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom, #2)(25)

Already Marcus was being hit with regret for asking to hear the story. He didn’t want to think about Jamie in Bed Bath and Beyond with anyone unless it was Marcus. All those sheets and pillows and home fragrances. The scene was too intimate. He’d push through, but Jesus, he already hated Chris’s guts simply for getting to be around Jamie in that setting.

“I’m not sure why I asked him out. I shouldn’t have. He was staring at me, accidentally ending up in the same aisle as me at least five times—”

“That’s pretty aggressive,” Marcus muttered, crossing his arms.

“Says the guy who requests the chair beside mine every day.”

Marcus grunted.

Jamie eyeballed him for a second and kept going. “I was younger and not as exceptionally wise as I am now. So I asked him out in the candles section, just to throw him off. To let him know he was being obvious. I thought he’d say no and scurry off.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “But he said yes. So we went out and…one thing led to another.”

Misery was raining down on Marcus’s head. “Like it did for us last night?”

“No. It was nothing like last night.” Jamie coughed. “I could have taken or left him, to tell you the truth. Even though he was honest in telling me he’d never been with a man, I know now that he wasn’t being authentic. He was being someone else.” He glanced briefly at Marcus. “You’re never anything but authentic. Never anyone but you. At least to me.”

Marcus knew in that moment he was in love with Jamie Prince.

His heartbeat was being conducted like an orchestra and Jamie was holding the stick thing. Christ, he’d probably been in love with him since last summer. Or the one before. It was impossible to remember a time when he wasn’t trying to find a way to get into Jamie’s orbit. Jamie made him feel superhuman. Made him want to be responsible. To make the world a better place.

Jamie made him feel safe.

With his stomach in his mouth, Marcus made a choppy gesture for him to keep going.

“I didn’t hear from Chris for a while. Maybe a week?” Jamie continued. “I wasn’t anxious to go out with him again, either. It didn’t feel right. And maybe he was trying to come to terms with himself, you know? I wanted to respect that. But he showed up drunk at my chair at the end of a shift and…” Marcus held his breath, watching Jamie’s chest start to rise and fall, faster and faster. “A bunch of his friends were with him. He’d told them some story. That I’d come on to him and wouldn’t leave him alone…”

Everything clicked into place. Why Jamie was uncomfortable having any kind of relationship with Marcus, a man who was battling his sexuality. Why he’d told Marcus more than once he couldn’t be the one who introduced him to intimacy with a man. Jamie had done that and gotten burned.

“I’m sorry, Jamie.” He swallowed. “Why would you offer to help me when this happened to you? Before, you said you couldn’t. Why did you change your mind?”

“Because Chris and his friends gave me a concussion. They held me under the water and almost drowned me,” Jamie said succinctly. “You would rather saw off your arms than do that to anyone. Especially me, I think.”

The truth of what happened that day was so offensive that they took a moment to crystalize in Marcus’s brain. When they did, he went through several stages of grief in the matter of ten seconds—denial, pain, anger, depression, acceptance—and then he added his own. Rage.

Marcus turned away from Jamie and let out a roar, sending the ferocious sound down the dark, empty boardwalk, his hands clenched into fists at his side. He turned in a circle, looking for an outlet for the white-hot wrath and before he knew it, he’d kicked out one of the wooden rungs that made up the railing.

“Tell me his last name, Jamie,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Hey.” Jamie shoved him from the side. “My brother went to prison for my fucking mistake. You think I could stand it if you went, too? Enough.”

“Your mistake? You didn’t do anything. You…” Marcus stopped to catch his breath. “Oh God, Jamie, I’m like him all over again, aren’t I?”

“No,” Jamie said firmly, cutting a precise hand through the air. “Weren’t you listening earlier? The two of you couldn’t be more different.”

“Except we’re both closet cases who want you too much to stay away.”

“Fine. Except that.” Jamie closed his eyes for a second. “Marcus, you’re a good man. You would never hurt me or lash out like that. Ever. The only thing you have in common with Chris is you’ll only be with me behind closed doors. And that makes me feel like I did when I was thirteen. Like I’m wrong. I respect myself enough to not let that happen again.”

The wind went out of Marcus’s sails. One minute, he was ruled by anger and the next, he was deflated and numb. “I hate myself for doing that to you.”

“I don’t even hate you for doing that to me,” Jamie said. He pushed off the railing and held out his hand to Marcus. “Friends, okay? We’re in the wrong time and place, but we’ve got being friends and I want to keep that.”

Marcus put his hand in Jamie’s and felt the dance of electricity climb his arm. “If I kissed you right here, out in the open, would it make up for anything? Pushing you away last night or not being ready for the real thing?”