Kiss Me Again, page 1
Praise for Garrett Leigh
“Emotional and brilliant…”
All About Romance
“Tastefully erotic … more smart than smutty…”
Publishers Weekly
“Powerful and compelling…”
Foreword Reviews
Kiss Me Again
Garrett Leigh
Copyright © 2019 by Garrett Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editing: Posy Roberts @ bohopress.com
Proofing: Jacque Smith, Anna Martin, Annabelle Jacobs
Cover Art: Garrett Leigh @ blackjazzdesign.com
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Curious About Angelo?
NEWSLETTER
PATREON
About GARRETT LEIGH
Also by Garrett Leigh
Author’s Note
Many thanks to M for the insight into your life with bipolar and the double round of sensitivity reads. I will use many of your words in the following note: Ludo’s experience of bipolar disorder, though heavily influenced by painstaking research, is fictional. It is not, and was never intended to be, the experience of bipolar. No opinions expressed in this book should be taken as medical advice. If you are experiencing difficulties with your mental health, please reach out to a healthcare professional.
“Kiss me again, Aidan . . . please?”
One
Aidan
“It’s two hours, Aidan. Do you have to be a wanker about everything?”
I spare Bernard, my boss, a bored glance. “It’s not two hours. That bozo you hired is an epic fuck-up. Whoever takes over has to start all over again. At best, it’s a half day.”
“So? It’s one o’clock.”
“I finish at three, mate.”
Bernard’s glare turns murderous. “I’m asking you to work overtime—two hours, like I said in the first place, at time and a half. Don’t mug me off here. Remember you were late on Monday and hanging out of your arse yesterday. You owe me a solid.”
I owe kind-hearted Bernard far more than that, but I’m not in the mood to spend any longer out in the cold than I absolutely have to, even if I need the money.
Being a prick is easier than giving a shit.
I light a cigarette and ignore Bernard’s increasing frustration. Awkward silence never bothers me. Why would it when I’ve spent most of my life alone?
Bernard sighs. “All right. Double time, and that’s my final offer. If that ain’t enough for you, I’ll do it my damned self.”
As if. Bernard is pushing seventy and hasn’t been fit enough to scale a tree in years. He’s also loaded, so I don’t feel all that bad for rinsing an extra fifty quid out of him. “Whatevs. I’ll do it. But if I’m not finished by five, I’m leaving anyway.”
“Of course you are.” Bernard drops a set of keys on the dry-stone wall I’m lounging against. “Just don’t dump the van at the pub again, or I’ll have yer balls.”
He stomps away, leaving me to finish my smoke in peace.
I don’t bother to watch him go. Instead, I stub my fag out and flick it into a nearby bin. I can’t be arsed with this shite. But I’m already three days late paying rent, and I’ve spent half my impending wages on tick at the shop. Without this last minute job, I’m pretty much fucked.
The tree that needs felling is in the front garden of one of the nicest houses in Buckbourne. Rich twats that get on my last nerve with their manicured gardens and huge cars they don’t know how to drive live there. Still. I like trees. Something about their silence calms me. And I have a respect for them I don’t have for much else.
I set up my gear, secure myself to my safety harness, and scale the trunk while the lady of the house hovers on a front porch that’s bigger than the single room I call home.
“Are you sure you should be up there? The other chap was just going to cut it down.”
I roll my eyes, tempted to pretend I haven’t heard her, but I’ve learnt the hard way that ignoring certain conversations only extends them. I scan the area of the tree concerning me and then skin down, returning to earth. “I’m going to cut it down too, but not until I’ve trimmed the diseased sections. Otherwise I’ll be sawing through the base with the risk of those weak branches landing on my head. Or yours.”
The woman blinks. “Oh. Okay. Your colleague didn’t mention any of that.”
Because he’s an absolute melt. But I don’t say it. I don’t say anything. Just dead-eye the woman until she retreats into her palatial home without offering me so much as a cuppa. Bernard’s most affluent customers are the worst hosts.
I turn my back on the house and gather what I need to trim the tree before I bring it down, then I climb again. At the top of the tree, I don’t resist the urge to look out over the town. Never can. Being so separate from the world is the sole reason I never piss Bernard off enough to sack me. I live alone, work alone, and when I’m sitting with the birds, it’s as though no other fucker exists.
Solitude.
Tranquillity.
It’s a crying shame to shatter the vibe with a chainsaw, but that’s life—my life, at least—and the white noise of the saw brings a detachment of its own.
I work through the diseased branches. Some are so fragile I break them with my hands. When I’m done with the south side of the tree, I shut the saw off and lean back to assess my progress. There isn’t much to do on the other side, and it’s already wobbly from the botched attempt to fell it that morning. Half an hour and I’m gone. I don’t keep many promises, but the pub is calling my name.
Out of habit I glance over the horizon to the village green. The Red Lion turned their Christmas lights on last week, so it’s easy to spot. I can almost taste the cold Guinness sliding down my throat, smell the wood fire, and hear the beeps and dings of my favourite fruit machine. Just a few more cuts—
The roar of a diesel engine blasts through my thoughts. Irritated, I spin around, searching for the source.
Headlights break through the fading daylight. A gritting lorry appears at the top of the slope, sliding on the icy tarmac. Too fast. It’s going too fast. But the rest of the world seems to move in slow motion. I scramble to descend the tree trunk as the truck careens towards me and obliterates the fence in front of the big house. It hits the tree a split second later.
Falling lasts a lifetime.
Two
Ludo
I bang my head against the bed rail just to hear something other than my own tripping brain. It’s late, close to midnight, and the strangling silence of the sleeping hospital ward makes me want to throw things around and scream. Anything to disrupt the oppressive quiet.
Restless, I sit up. Lie down. Sit up again. Unwelcome energy buzzes in my veins, and a tremor shakes the hand that isn’t encased in plaster. The effects of the general anaesthetic have long faded, and even the discomfort of having fresh metal pins inserted into my forever-damaged wrist isn’t enough to quell the anxiety flaring in my gut.
I need to get out of here.
But escape isn’t an option. The nursing team have been forewarned that I pose a flight risk and check my every move. I can barely use the bathroom without an escort, and the unwanted attention is almost as bad as the phantom ants crawling over my skin.
I lie down again, chest rising and falling too fast, and focus on the throbbing beneath the cast, the tugging sting of the stitches holding my skin together. It works for a while. Then I picture ants for real, imagine creepy bugs invading the space between my flesh and the plaster, and new agitation surges. Fresh sweat sticks my thin T-shirt to my back and the reverb in my brain hurts my ears. I need . . . something.
There’s a handful of mobile screens on the ward. At home, my predilection for paranoia means I rarely watch TV, but trapped in hell, I’m desperate for distraction. Maybe I can watch the weather on mute.
I find a free trolley and wheel it closer to my bed, straining the only limb I possess that isn’t a victim to the noise in my head. A nurse catches me, but it’s the one who likes me—as much as she likes anyone. She helps position the TV and retrieves the remote.
“Quiet now,” she says. “They’re bringing someone down from intensive care, so you need to stay put, okay? No more wanderings tonight.”
I’ve spent my entire adult life being spoken to like a child. I nod and lie down, curling up under the thin, grey blanket and scratchy sheet, fixing my gaze on the TV screen. The Weather Channel comes up trumps, and I lose myself in the moving screen of sleet and s
I close my eyes, willing sleep to carry me through until my morning lithium dose. The hospital fucked it up yesterday and today, feeding me half the dosage of my usual pill. “Don’t worry. You won’t feel any different.” But they were wrong. Obviously. I feel different every day.
By the nurse station, the double doors swing open. Metal wheels scrape the rubber floor, and a bed carrying an unconscious man is pushed onto the ward.
I squint in the dim light. I drowsed through the handful of new faces that arrived immediately after my surgery, too out of it to take much notice, but as the bed passes, I’ve never felt more awake in my life. Jesus. Even bruised and bloodied, the man is gorgeous. And clearly under seventy; a rarity on this random overspill ward.
Orderlies push the bed to the high-dependency bays opposite mine. A flurry of nurses work to hook the man up to machines while the ward sister and another man talk gravely at the foot of the bed. I’m enthralled but, as ever, so unsubtle it’s painful. My friendly nurse meets my gaze, shakes her head, and draws the curtain around my bed, corralling the TV and me into our quiet corner.
But she leaves a gap, and as hard as I try, I can’t look away.
The man has ink-dark hair, and what skin isn’t hidden by wound dressings, blankets, and equipment is alabaster pale. The kind of skin that’s so smooth to the touch you can never stop. I wonder—
Oh God. I swallow and shrink against my bed. You absolute sicko. Look at the state of him.
It’s hard not to. With his leg plastered from foot to thigh and a crude tube contraption protruding from his ribcage, the man is a mess. A beautiful mess, but a mess nonetheless.
Word repetition, even unspoken, grates my nerves. I focus on the unconscious man and instantly regret it. The tube in his chest looks excruciating, and whatever misfortune has befallen him has happened recently enough for dried blood to still be smeared over his glorious skin.
I want to wipe it off.
But then, I also want the ground to swallow me whole, and I can’t gauge which voice is loudest.
The second man to enter the ward is still deep in conversation with the ward sister. He’s slimmer and older, but shares enough of the unconscious dude’s dark good looks to be a relative. He scrubs a hand down his weary face. “Will he be okay?”
The sister nods and turns to leave. “We hope so.”
What sort of answer is that? I frown and wonder why it matters to me, but the reedy man doesn’t seem convinced either. He stops my nurse and repeats the question. I brace myself. I’ve only been on the ward a few days, but I know this nurse well enough to anticipate her brutal candour.
“Your cousin fell twenty feet, hitting a van, and then landed on concrete,” she says. “He had a chest tube inserted in the field while he was trapped, and his leg is broken in three places. I imagine he won’t be okay for quite some time.”
She speaks with compassion, but her words hit the man as though she’s slapped him. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and sinks onto a nearby chair while I bite my lip, abruptly and acutely aware that perhaps listening in is the ultimate disrespect to these strangers in the night. I glance around for something else to occupy my racing mind, but the TV no longer holds up.
A frantic desire to be somewhere else hits me, fast becoming all-consuming. My mind jumps, my heart pounds, and I’m crawling out of my own skin. If I could peel myself like an old satsuma and throw it away, I would. There aren’t many parts of myself I wouldn’t give up for the peace of mind I so often lack.
I press the call button. A new face appears. I grab my notes from the side of the bed and hold them out.
“Can I have a sleeping pill, please?”
Aidan
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I’m going to kill someone if it doesn’t stop. Careful to keep my body still, I cast an irritated glare at the monitor taking up space at my bedside. It has the added attraction of letting me know I’m still alive, but that’s about it. At this point, I’d happily die rather than hear another sound from it.
Drama queen.
Maybe, but combined with the insane amount of pain coursing through me, checking out seems a viable option.
Or chucking up.
Fuck. I swallow hard, trying to dispel the violent nausea swelling in my scratchy throat. Panic takes hold as I realise vomiting will involve movement, and a desperate, inhuman groan escapes me.
Pain.
“I know, mate. Use your morphine pump.”
The voice is far away and nothing like any of the voices that have followed me into hell, but the mention of a morphine pump rings a distant bell. You fell, remember? You broke your leg and had a tube shoved between your ribs.
More nausea. I have zero clue where the mythical morphine pump has gone, but I know one thing for certain: I’m going to be sick, and it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker.
That’s two things, arsehole—
The devil on my shoulder is no match for my years-old reaction to extreme pain. Bile surges in my throat and my stomach contracts, triggering fiercer waves of agony. I lurched sideways and throw up into the darkness as another ragged sound tears from me. I can’t breathe. I—
A cool hand touches my face, turning it gently. “There’s an emesis basin right there, and I’ve put your pump by your left hand. It was on the floor.”
“Ludo, back to bed, please.”
The second voice is stern and one I recognise from the last time I upchucked on myself, but it’s little comfort to me as the soothing palm slips from my cheek. For the brief moment it touched my skin, it grounded me. Without it, I’m swimming again, with nothing to cling onto but pain.
Sometime later, I open my eyes. A stark hospital ceiling, itchy sheets, and cold draughts greet me, but the burning in my chest has faded, and my leg is so numb it seems no longer attached to my body.
I shift cautiously to ease the stiffness from my shoulders and brave a glance around, but there’s not much to see. The bed beside me is empty, and across the aisle, everyone seems to be asleep, if the hunched shape in the bed directly opposite is even a person.
Giving a shit is exhausting. I drop my head and consider passing out again, but before the thought completes, a tall figure darkens the end of my bed. A doctor who looks like he belongs on the set of an American hospital drama.
“Hello,” he says. “I’m Dr Ramsey. Are you feeling awake enough to talk?”
I contemplate holding an actual conversation, something I avoid even when I’m not skewered on a hospital bed. Despite Dr Hotness, it doesn’t hold much appeal. On the other hand, the desire to escape is strong, and the doctor likely knows more about when that might happen than the nurses I’ve cursed at and puked on. “I’m okay.”
Dr Ramsey draws the curtain around the bed, pulls up a stool, and sits down. “Good. I know you’ve been quite sick overnight, so I’ve left you alone, but I want to get that chest tube out of you before I go home. It must be uncomfortable.”
“It’s not fun.”
“I’ll bet. You were a trooper when it went in, if it’s any consolation. Didn’t make a sound.”
“Huh?”
“I was on the HELIMED team that extracted you from the accident site.” Dr Ramsey makes a note on the clipboard he’s holding. “I don’t expect you to remember much of that though.”
