Page 3 of Trust my Heart

“You don’t have to tell me about him tonight,” I said. “Or at all, if you’d rather not. I’ve worked most of it out on my own. I can live without the rest.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Luke.”

“I’m telling you.” He said it flat and certain, the way he says a thing he’s already decided. “Not because Saunders got to it first, or because you put it together in Murphy’s office. Because I love you. I’m not going to keep something like this from you, and I don’t want anything sitting between us that I haven’t said out loud.”

“Everybody’s got a past, Luke. You. Me. Mine’s not all pretty either, and you’ve never once made me lay it out.” I knocked my shoulder onto his. “You don’t owe me the whole file.”

“This one you get anyway.” His jaw tightened. “Tonight. Let me get my feet under me first. But tonight.”

“Okay.” Then, because the whole thing needed somewhere lighter to sit for a second, “For the record, I already hate him.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know enough. He held the handshake too long, he aimed every word in that office at you and not one at me, and he’s the kind of good-looking that’s never once had to be anything else.” I shrugged. “And anyway, I’m the jealous boyfriend. We’re allowed to hate anyone we like, on sight, no evidence required. It’s the one real perk of the position.”

He didn’t answer. But his hand found the small of my back for half a step, there and gone, out on a public street, which from Luke on a day like that one was as good as a speech.

He’d gone quiet again, the heavy kind, sinking into it as he walked, and I decided I wasn’t going to let him haul it all the way home and shut a door on it.

When we reached our building, I didn’t turn in.

“Where are we going?” he said. The first whole thing out of him in a block.

“Lunch. The pho place, the one you pretend you’re not in love with.” I kept moving, because Luke would follow before he’d stand on a sidewalk and argue about it. “You’ve had a bad morning. You’re not going to spend the rest of the day wallowing inside our apartment. You’re getting the big bowl with everything in it, and I’m going to sit across from you and watch you turn back into a person.”

“It’s the middle of a workday.”

“We’re playing hooky. Report me to Murphy.” I steered him toward the corner. “Your options are soup, or my company at home while I reorganize the cutlery drawer out of nervous energy. Choose wisely.”

He didn’t smile. But something on his shoulders came down, half an inch, no more, and he let me walk him toward the warm, which was the whole point.

By the time we got home the light was coming, and the pho had done its work. Luke had warmed up a couple of degrees over a bowl the size of his head and a plate of the crisp rolls he won’t admit he orders for, and he was better. He was also still grumpy, which with Luke is its own kind of better, the kind where the worst of a thing has loosened enough to leave room for small complaints.

“You watched me eat like it was surveillance,” he said, shouldering the door open.

“It was surveillance. You’re a person of interest. I’m building a file.”

He grunted and dropped onto the couch, long legs out, the line of him finally let down out of the shape he’d held all day. He let his head fall back against the cushions and shut his eyes, and for a second the tiredness showed, all of it, the morning settling onto him again now that there was nobody left to hold his face together for.

I wasn’t going to let it have him.

I crossed the room, put a knee on the couch either side of his hips, and sat down in his lap before he’d worked out what I was doing, and kissed him.

His hands came up and pushed at my chest, not hard, the reflex of a man who hadn’t seen it coming. He turned his head an inch. “Ryan. What’s gotten into you?”

“Marking my territory.” I winked, close enough to feel him breathe. “Jealous boyfriend’s privileges when the ex is back in town. We established this earlier. Try to keep up.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. I took his jaw in my hand and kissed him again, and this time I meant it, slow and deep and with everything the day had wound into me poured down into it. Somewhere in the middle the pushing hands stopped pushing. They got fists in my shirt instead and pulled. Whatever I’d lit caught in both of us at once. He made a low sound into my mouth, the kind he keeps for behind a locked door, and I felt the exact moment his grip turned from holding me off to holding me there.

I broke the kiss before he could and went for his jaw, his ear, dragged my mouth down the side of his neck where the skin’s thinnest and his pulse was going hard. He tipped his head and gave me the room, which from a man that careful is as good as begging. I found the place just above his collar and bit, soft and then less soft, and stayed there long enough to leave something behind. Luke groaned in pain and I reveled in it.

Then I sat back to admire my work.

It was already coming up, a small dark mark right where his collar wouldn’t quite cover it. I smirked. “There. Now the whole of 51 can spend Monday wondering who got to you first.”

He snorted, eyes half open, his hand spread warm and heavy on my thigh. “I’m not eighteen, Carlson.”