Page 80 of Animal Instincts
He’d forgotten all about it, had thought there was no reason to give it a second thought. Joss scrolled down.
“They’ve restructured and have a training vacancy… They want to see me… Very interested in pursuing my application. They’ve got a connection with the university vet school, and they can offer subsidised accommodation in a student house. They’re asking if I can meet them next week. On Monday. Shit. Oh, sorry.”
Gran shook her head. “Shit, indeed. Looks like things are starting to take a turn for you, maybe not in the way you were hoping—”
“But maybe for the best, eh, Gran?”
Gran smiled but didn’t answer.
Joss tapped in a reply, and tried not to think aboutmaybe.
FORTY-TWO
“Ouch!”
Oliver doused the scratch in antiseptic liquid. He’d been hissed and spat at, clawed and bitten, crapped and pissed and spewed on. And the day wasn’t even nearly over. He’d been on his own when Joss should have been here — but that was nobody’s fault but his own.
Patched-up, Oliver turned the sign on the door toClosed,and he made his way through to the kitchen with vague thoughts of lunch.
Oliver opened the fridge door and closed it again. He’d been doing that for almost a week. Nothing tempted him and his appetite had disappeared to nothing.
Oliver hadn’t seen or heard anything of Joss, but he’d not been anywhere, holed up either in the practice or the house. He couldn’t stay living like a hermit forever, but going out and about in the village and risk seeing the man he’d pushed away…
He was a coward, he knew it. He couldn’t bare to see the hurt he’d caused, dulling Joss’ green-gold eyes. But more than that, he couldn’t face the contempt Joss had every right to feel towards him.
“I did it for him.” In the empty, silent kitchen, his words went unanswered.
Unable to face food, Oliver made himself another coffee, his fifth cup and only sustenance of the day. He’d eat later. Maybe. A microwave dinner for one, dragged from the back of the freezer. He was back where he was when he first came to the Harbour. He slumped down at the table, clutching the mug, hardly aware of the scalding heat.
Everything he’d said and done, he’d done it for Joss. It was for the best, and he had to keep telling himself that.
Joss was upset… Joss would get over it… Joss was young… Joss would find his way back to the path he had been determined to walk… Joss would realise Oliver had been right to step aside, and would thank him for it… Joss would come back to Love’s Harbour from time to time, just to see his gran, with a lover on his arm, before he returned to the new life Oliver had pushed him to make somewhere else. Somewhere with better opportunities, somewhere Joss could taste and live life to the full…
Oliver hissed with pain and the searing, sudden jealousy of Joss in another man’s arms, in another man’s bed.
In another man’s heart.
And it would all be because of him.
Dragging himself upright, he looked around him.
Joss was everywhere. In the new tea towels, lurid with colour and printed with a Find Your Puppy Name quiz; in a wonky jug emblazoned with suns, the faces painted on them just as wonky, Joss’ best and only achievement from an introductory pottery class he’d taken in the village; in the planter filled with early summer flowers on the window sill; in a couple of tall novelty Sundae glasses Joss had bought for ice cream desserts they’d forgotten to buy ice cream for; in a box of Joss’ favourite chocolate flavoured cereals he’d produced one day, explaining that muesli was kind of, sort of, occasionally, okay. Or okayish.
It was the same in the living room, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, flashes of warmth and colour, Joss’ sunny, bright self was in every corner of Oliver’s house that in a few days had ceased being a home.
Joss was everywhere.
Everywhere, except here where he needed to be.
Oliver squeezed his eyes so hard he saw stars burst in the blackness. He grabbed at fistfuls of hair, sending sharp shooting spasms of pain racing across his scalp.
He wanted to hurt, needed to hurt, because all this pain was because of him.
But he’d done the right thing… He’d done it for Joss…
* * *
Oliver jumped, disorientated and blinking hard. His head snapped from side to side as his mobile’s ring tone cut through the silence. He fumbled the phone from his pocket, his heart hammering hard.Maybe Joss…
