Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom, #2)(34)

From the opposite couch, Marcus’s eyes snagged on Kurt’s hand and his big chest heaved once. Twice. He plowed his fingers through his dirty-blond hair and stood abruptly, his shins hitting the coffee table and rattling the drinks.

The waitress arrived with their next round, blocking Marcus from view. With his labored breathing echoing in his ear, Jamie waited, waited for her to move, so he could see Marcus again. But when she moved after what felt like an hour, he was gone. Marcus was gone.

“Hey,” Jamie shouted above the music, lunging to his feet and dislodging Kurt’s hand in the process. He pointed at the empty spot beside Adam. “Where did he go?”

Adam’s laugh was uncomfortable, probably because Jamie was yelling like a lunatic. “He asked me to give you this.” Adam held out a fist full of crumpled money that somehow Jamie knew belonged to Marcus. Even before Adam said, “He wants you to get a cab home. No train, please, he said.”

Jamie was hollowed out in one scoop.

Marcus had left.

“Fuck. I have to go. Sorry,” Jamie said, already jogging toward the bar area. If he hurried, he would catch Marcus. He had to catch him. His abrupt departure couldn’t really be over Kurt putting a hand on Jamie’s knee?

Oh yes, it could. It absolutely could. This whole night had felt wrong because he’d brought Marcus out in the company of a man who was interested in Jamie. Adam had potentially shown the same kind of interest in Marcus.

They’d sat there and watched each other attempt connections with other people—and it had been…wow. So shitty. If Jamie thought being kept a secret made him feel slimy, nothing compared to tonight. Sitting across from the man he’d fallen for and letting another man touch him, even in the smallest capacity. All while watching Marcus try. For him.

“Idiot,” Jamie gritted out, hating himself. “You fucking idiot.”

Jamie let out a sound as he burst out onto the street, frantically scanning the sidewalk in both directions for a giant in gray, but Marcus was nowhere. He was gone. Panic beginning to set in, Jamie shoved the money he was still holding into his pocket and took out his phone to call Marcus. It went straight to voicemail.

“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?”