Except walking away from the broad-shouldered Irishman would hurt. Even if they’d not done anything more than share cups of coffee and talk at times—one fucking hot kiss did not count—he’d come to depend on having Sionn near him. Solid as granite, the man became someone he’d clung to, even as he kept his distance. Damien liked knowing Sionn was there.
He’d woken up that very morning determined to hunt Sionn down at the pub. His empty pockets and a knocking on his door from a pissed-off building manager drove him to the sidewalks so he could make some cash. But when he saw the Irishman standing in the crowd, Damien took it as a sign he’d made the right choice in talking to Sionn.
Lying on the man’s couch, exhausted from playing for hours and damp from yet another soaking, Damien was no longer so sure. There was too much to lose. Sionn was too much to lose.
It had been a hell of a fucking hot kiss.
Somewhere around one of the opaque glass walls, a coffeemaker gurgled, and the smell of beans giving up their juice floated through the loft. He shed the fleece and tossed it to the ground, worried it was too wet to lay on the suede sofa. Lulled by the sound of the rain outside and the soft couch cushions, Damien forced himself to sit up, scrubbing his face violently to slap some sense into himself.
“I’m just so damned tired,” he mumbled through his fingers.
“Here.” Sionn nudged his shoulder and passed over a wide, thick towel. The man had changed out of his wet shirt, throwing on a tank top instead. “Coffee’ll be done soon. I’ll go dig up some clothes for you.”
“Thanks. Let me sit here a bit first. I’m kind of shaky. It’s fucking cold.” Damien used the towel to get as much of the water out of his hair as he could. His hat was somewhere in Sionn’s Jeep, probably lost beneath a pile of Finnegan’s T-shirts and some water bottles.
Looking up at Sionn was probably something his nerves could have done without. It was bad enough to see the man bend over tables. Up close and personal was a breathtaking torture. No, Damien moaned into the edge of the towel, he didn’t need to see Sionn’s muscled chest under the too-thin gray fabric or his powerful arms bunch up as he grabbed a laptop from a nearby black-lacquer side table. The man’s body radiated heat, and Damien shuffled farther back into the couch, needing some distance.
“I want you to tell me what happened,” Sionn said softly. He opened the laptop, powered it on, and waited for it to cycle up. “Everything, okay? I’ll take down some notes, and we’ll go to the cops together—”
“Oh hell to the no,” Damien shot back, shaking his head. “No cops. Are you insane? Suppose that guy knows a cop—”
“Were you always this paranoid?” Sionn’s eyes flickered with amusement at Damien’s scowl. “My uncle is a cop. A captain. The guy that showed up to take your statement… you know, the one you skipped out on… he’s kind of an uncle too. I know the cops. They’re going to protect you. I’ll protect you. Now start talking to me, Dee. Why do you think someone shot at you?”
Sionn meant what he said. Damien could see that. Even as worn out as he was, he could hear the sincerity in the man’s rough, accented voice. They knew nothing about each other, but here he was, promising shit he probably couldn’t deliver, because Sionn was probably the type of guy who rescued dragons from maidens and helped trolls with their goat infestation.
After what seemed like an eternity of running, Damien was just too fucking tired to take another step. Taking a deep breath, he plunged forward, falling into the scary nothingness of the unknown and hoping beyond hope that Sionn would catch him before he hit bottom.
“First off, my name’s not Dee.” He took the laptop out of Sionn’s hands, ignoring the scrape of the man’s fingernails against his palms. “Here. Hand me that. I’ll show you something.”
A quick search brought up the Skywood fire, and he turned the screen around for Sionn to see, tapping at the ruins of the institute in the picture. The man read through the article, his eyes flicking down the screen, and when he finished, he gave Damien an odd look.
“This place… it’s a mental institution?” Confusion trampled deep lines into Sionn’s handsome face. “Why?”
“Because my real name is Damien Mitchell and I supposedly died in a car accident… along with some other guys in my band.” Damien took a deep breath, pushing himself past the rusty grief that welled up every time he thought of Dave and Johnny. “That place is where somebody—I don’t know who—stuck me. Then a guy showed up to take me out. Problem is, I don’t remember a lot from what happened before I woke up there. And I sure as fuck don’t know why that guy is trying to kill me.”