Page 115 of Too Close To Home

“I’m sorry.” Jake tightened his fingers around his.

Harrison swallowed and forced himself steady. “I know. I get it. You want answers.”

“No.” Jake shook his head, dropping his gaze between them as he moved his thumb almost absently across the inside of Harrison’s wrist, tracing a slow circle over the pulse there as though he’d found it without meaning to. “Not that.”

Harrison’s heart kicked harder beneath the touch.

Jake looked up. “The other night. Kissing you.”

Those eyes.

Christ.

Jake Whitton was too much. Too open when Harrison least expected it. Too capable of making him feel as though every carefully constructed defence he had left was being dismantled one piece at a time.

Harrison tightened his fingers around Jake’s before he could think better of it. “I believe I kissed you first.”

For a second Jake simply stared at him.

Then the smile came. Bright and sudden, transforming his face, his lower lip catching between his teeth as though he couldn’t quite contain it. And Harrison understood, with another uncomfortable twist beneath his ribs, that Jake had needed to hear that.

Needed to know Harrison didn’t regret it.

That he hadn’t imagined what had passed between them.

“Aye.” Jake nodded. “That ya did.”

Harrison smiled back.

Only a little. But enough.

Enough to tell Jake that whatever this was, he wasn’t standing in it alone. Harrison might not know what to do with it. Might wish rather desperately that he didn’t feel it at all. But he did.

And, apparently, he trusted Jake enough to let him know.

Then Harrison gently eased his hand from Jake’s and forced himself to walk away.

Chapter seventeen

Cold Ground

Harrison pushed back through the station doors and into the reception area, the warm, stale air of the building closing around him.

He kept his head down as he walked.

Instinct more than anything else. Years of police stations had taught him the rhythm of a room the moment he entered it. The shift in conversation, the sideways glances, the subtle way people went quiet when something interesting had happened outside.

And something interesting had definitely happened.

The officers said nothing as he passed, but Harrison could feel their attention all the same. A couple of them had clearly been watching through the glass moments earlier. One of them twisted back to his computer screen as Harrison crossed the floor.

The best way to deal with it was simple: lean into the job.

So Harrison didn’t pause. Didn’t acknowledge the looks or the curiosity simmering beneath them. He walked straight through reception and into the CID office, the low hum of printers and half-finished conversations filling the space.

Calder was waiting beside Harrison’s desk. Arms folded. Watching him.

He said nothing.