Page 41 of Rust of Control

"That was." He paused. His voice was still rough, the edges of him not fully reassembled yet. "That was very good."

"Yeah?"

"I've been thinking about it since Tuesday."

"You said." Jude lay down beside him, head on his shoulder, Nate's arm coming around him without having to think about it. "I'll make a note."

"A note."

"Thursday," Jude said. "Two days. That's the number. I'll pencil it in."

Nate's chest moved with the laugh. "You're going to be insufferable about this."

"Absolutely," Jude said. "You set the bar very high. Literally."

The laugh again, louder this time, and Jude felt it move through both of them and let himself have it, the warmth, the ease, the sound of Nate laughing in the room they'd chosen together. In the speaker his voice had moved on to a new song, the first one he'd written after the trial, the one about the river and the city and what it meant to stay. He'd written it in this house. On the living room floor at two in the morning with the lamp on and Nate asleep upstairs and the city doing its thing outside.

He'd never been this okay.

He hadn't known it was possible. He'd spent so long not knowing it was possible that finding out felt like something he'd have to keep learning over and over before it stuck.

"Hey," Nate said.

"Hm."

"Thank you." His arm tightened a fraction. "For-all of it. The whole thing."

Jude tilted his head up to look at him. "I thought you were thanking me for the cuffs."

"I am," Nate said. "And the other thing."

Jude looked at him. Nate, who was steady, warm, who'd been answering phones for fifteen years and had finally, in this house, let someone answer back. Who looked at Jude with his whole face open and didn't look away.

"Same," Jude said. He put his head back on Nate's shoulder. "Same."

The candles burned low. The music played. Outside, the city kept watch, and the river went by, and in a townhouse in Detroit that smelled like good candles and warm leather and two people who'd chosen each other past the point of turning back, Jude listened to his own voice from the speaker and felt, down in the place that had been cold a long time, entirely warm.

Epilogue

The phone vibrated against the desk. Elijah saw the name, familiar but not at this time of night. His Ranger brothers weren’t in the habit of late night calls, all of them knowing what that kind of call usually meant, even state side.

He answered on the second ring. "Aaron."

Aaron's voice came back wrong. Too small. Too clipped. Elijah had heard breath like that more than once, before a man told him a friend was down.

"My girls. Kiley and Kelly. Gone since Thursday and the police are… They aren't. Elijah, I need you. I need what you do."

He was on his feet before he ever remembered standing. It was as engrained into him to respond to a brother in need as it was to breathe.

"Where were they last seen?"

"School. They left school and they didn't come home and now it's been-"

"Aaron."

"-seventy-two hours, more, more than that-"

"Aaron. Breathe. I'm coming. I'm coming right now."