Free Giving Up the Ghost by Jane Davitt, Alexa Snow Page B

Nick’s face. Better the anger or the hurt than that.
    Nick melted into the embrace as if nothing were wrong between them, clinging to John. “I don’t think I can do this alone.” He sounded numb, pressing closer to John for warmth and comfort that John was more than happy to give.
    “Don’t have to.” John tightened his arms around Nick, leaning into their embrace and feeling as if he didn’t want to let go for a long time. “I’ll be there.” He turned his head a little, brushing his lips against Nick’s cheek. “Just where are we going, anyway?”
    “
Florida
.” Nick’s breath was warm against John’s neck. “Can you imagine? What the hell was he doing there?” He pulled back and looked at John properly. “We have to be in
Glasgow
for tomorrow morning; it was the first flight I could get us on, and I figured anything sooner we might not have been able to get there in time for anyway. Are…are you sure you want to go?”
    Florida
wasn’t somewhere John had a very clear picture of. Alligators, key lime pie, and Mickey Mouse, maybe, with the odd palm tree and hurricane thrown in. It wasn’t somewhere he’d ever wanted to go, not really.
    “I’m sure. If you’ve packed, I’ll make a few calls; let people know we’re going so they can keep an eye on the place.” He turned to look out of the window, ignoring the blue sky, which could cloud over in minutes, and watching the branches of the closest tree instead. “Lucky the wind’s died down or we wouldn’t have even been able to get off the island, let alone leave the country.”
    He took Nick’s face in his hands and kissed him, for once feeling no flare of desire. “You’ll be fine, Nick. Just fine.”
    * * * * *
    John dragged his attention away from a fifteen-foot-long stuffed alligator decorating the foyer of the hotel they’d chosen and frowned. Nick had just asked for a single room with two beds, passing his credit card over without looking at John.
    The journey had been hard on both of them, and John wanted nothing more than sleep, hours and hours of it, deep and dreamless sleep while his body and mind caught up with what had happened to it over the past few days.
    Didn’t mean he wanted to do it in a narrow little single bed, though.
    Even discovering that two beds meant two queen-sized beds, each big enough for two, didn’t make him feel better. The last time they’d had a king-sized bed; wide and luxurious, and they’d used every inch of it, too, sprawled out across it, mouths on each other, hands roving, happy, the two of them.
    He dumped his case in a corner and collapsed onto one of the beds, deciding that his legs might as well be back in
Scotland
for all the good they were.
    “I feel like the time we had a run of salmon and we fished for two days and nights with hardly a break,” he said, the words emerging from his mouth but echoing distantly as if someone else had spoken them. “Can we sleep for a bit, do you think, or is there someone you want to call first?”
    “No, no, it’s okay. Go to sleep. I don’t think I could, but you go ahead.” Nick sounded awful and looked worse. “I think I’ll take a shower.”
    John undressed slowly to the accompaniment of the water running in the bathroom; Nick had shut the door, but he could still hear it, the rush of the water against the plastic hotel shower curtain enough to have his eyelids closing despite himself. He pulled down the covers and crawled between the sheets wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, the fabric crisp and clean against his skin.
    He was nearly asleep when the bathroom door opened, and roused enough to open his eyes. Nick’s hair was slicked back away from his face. The towel around his waist was pulled tight; normally it would have been half hanging off his hips, revealing the tempting line of his hip bone, but now he turned away from John as he put on a pair of cotton sleep pants and lay down on the other bed.
    The room was quiet -- it was late