Page 4 of Trust my Heart

“No. You’re mine. Different thing. Way better.” I kissed the mark once more, light, an apology that wasn’t remotely sorry, and felt the laugh move through his chest even though it never reached his face.

For a while we stayed like that, me in his lap and his hands settled on me and the streetlights coming up orange through the cold glass, and the day went quiet around us the way a day does when it’s finally run all the way out. I’d have asked for nothing else. I could have stayed there till morning.

Then his hands changed on me.

They didn’t leave. They went still. Not the still of resting, the other kind, the kind that comes when a person sets one thing down to pick up something heavier. I’d felt it in Murphy’s office, the second Wright turned his face to him.

I leaned back far enough to see him. The ease was going out of his face, and something older was coming up underneath it.

I got off his lap and sat down close beside him, my knee against his thigh, and took his hand, and didn’t reach for anything clever, because there wasn’t anything clever to reach for.

“I’m here,” I said.

He nodded, small, to himself. Looked down at our hands for a second. Then he brought his eyes up to mine.

“I’ll tell you about Adam.”

Chapter 2: What I Never Told You

Luke

I’d said I would tell him, and now that the room had gone quiet and he was waiting, I couldn’t find the front of it.

Ryan had come off my lap and onto the cushion beside me. He had my hand in both of his, not gripping, just holding, his thumb moving slow over my knuckles. He wasn’t looking at me like he needed something. He was looking at me like he had all night.

That was the hard part, right at the start. He’d had the worst episode of his life, and he’d gotten his badge back just this morning, and here I was, about to turn this day on its head into a darker topic.

It felt like days. Not three months. Days, since I finally said the thing I’d held onto for so much longer. I’d waited all that time to let myself have it. Now, I was about to hand him a part of me I wasn’t proud of. It was the kind of move that makes a sensible man reconsider the whole deal.

“You don’t have to do this tonight,” he said. Quiet. He’d already given me the out twice. This was the third time, which was Ryan all over.

“I do.” It came out rougher than I wanted. “If I don’t do it tonight I’ll find a reason not to do it tomorrow. I know how I am.”

He nodded and waited.

“Adam,” I said. “Sergeant now, apparently. He used to be a detective. My partner, before you.”

“I know that part.” Quiet. Not pushing.

“You don’t, though. Not the whole thing.” I looked down at our hands instead of his face. It was easier to talk to his hands. “I want you to have all of it. Not the version that gets passed around the bullpen.”

“Okay.” He shifted, just enough that his shoulder pressed into mine, solid, there. “Take your time.”

I didn’t deserve the patience. I took it anyway. I needed it too much to turn it down.

“He came up from a division downtown. Transferred into 51 when I’d been there about four years. I trained him on half the streets in this division.” I felt my mouth try for something like a smile and fail. “He was terrible with paperwork and good with people, which is the opposite of me, so we should have hated working together. We didn’t.”

“What was he like?” Ryan asked it carefully, like he was handling something that might still be hot.

“Easy. Everywhere I’m not. He could walk up to a woman who’d just found her husband on the kitchen floor and have her sitting down with a glass of water in under a minute, telling him things she hadn’t told anybody. People liked being looked at by him. I never had that. I learned early that if I wanted anything out of a witness I had to be quiet and let them fill the silence themselves.” I stopped. “He filled it for both of us. For a long time, I thought that was the whole reason it worked. Now I think it was just the reason I let myself fall.”

“Charming. Good with people. Bad with paperwork.” Ryan said it back slowly, and something in his face changed, a grin starting before he could stop it. “Luke. That’s me. You just described me.”

I hadn’t seen it until he said it. Then it was all I could see. My chest went tight. For a second all I could think was that I’d done it again, gone looking for the same man twice without ever knowing I was looking.

Whatever was on my face, he caught it fast. The grin dropped. He got both hands around mine before I could pull away. “Hey. No. That’s not what I meant. I was just joking.” His thumb pressed once, firm, against my knuckles. “Everybody’s got a type, Luke. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m not comparing myself to a man I met today, and you don’t get to sit there deciding you’ve made the same mistake twice because we both happen to be bad at expense reports. I’m not him. I need you to hear that.”

I made myself breathe. “I know.”