Page 104 of Too Close To Home

“Right.”

“Goodnight, Jake.”

Jake managed a smile. “Night, Detective.”

Harrison turned first and headed towards the road.

Jake didn’t.

He stood there like a fucking idiot and watched the beam of Harrison’s torch move through the mist, catching on hedges and branches until it finally disappeared from view.

Only then did Jake blow out the breath jammed in his chest and turn towards the pub.

Fuck.

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked.

He wouldn’t think about it.

Wouldn’t think about Harrison Black grabbing the back of his neck and kissing him. Nor how soft his mouth had been. How careful the first kiss had felt. How fucking good the next ones had been once they’d both stopped pretending they didn’t want it.

And he definitely wouldn’t think about how different it had been.

Jake had kissed plenty of men. Kisses were usually just the bit before everything else. What got him from I fancy you to where are we doing this?

This hadn’t felt like that.

He hadn’t been trying to get Harrison’s clothes off. His van or flat hadn’t entered his head, or whether they could find somewhere more private.

He’d just wanted to keep kissing him.

Soft and slow and so fucking nice, Jake almost didn’t know what to do with it.

Christ.

He wanted to do it again.

That was the problem.

He wanted to do it again far too fucking much.

Chapter fifteen

Lines of Enquiry

Sunday morning arrived grey and damp. A typical Yorkshire morning where the sky was undecided between rain and fog.

Harrison had been at the station since half-past six. He’d told himself it was because of the case. Which wasn’t entirely untrue. A high-risk missing person didn’t wait politely for office hours, and neither did the knot sitting in the middle of his chest. So he’d driven in before the town had properly woken, the roads still empty except for the odd delivery van and a milk float rattling through the square.

The CID office hummed with the low background noise of an investigation in motion. Phones. Keyboards. The soft scrape of chairs. The incident board dominated the far wall, Emily’s photo pinned in the centre. Seventeen. Blonde hair. A smile that hadn’t yet learned caution. And Harrison stood at his desk, staring at the CCTV stills spread across the surface.

Except he wasn’t really seeing them.

Because every time his mind tried to fix on the investigation, it slipped sideways and landed somewhere else entirely. Yes, back to the woodland path. To the mist drifting between the trees. To the dark, uneven ground thousands of people had walked across and from which Emily Fisher had disappeared. But it wasn’t the crime scene his mind circled back to.

It was the moment his mouth had found Jake Whitton’s.

Harrison sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face.