But Doyle grabbed Larkin’s face and kissed him again, harder than before, practically crushing their lips together, scraping and burning Larkin’s skin with his stubble, a raw anddesperateneediness to it. And when they managed to part a second time, Doyle whispered, still holding on to Larkin, “You don’t kiss me like this very often.”
And there it is, Larkin thought with sudden finality, his fire now choking and sputtering.He needs more than what I can physically give.
Doyle read whatever expression surfaced on Larkin’s face and said, “Evie, hang on—”
Larkin reached up and tugged Doyle’s hands free.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Larkin smiled a smile he knew didn’t reach his eyes, and said, “I know it’s not what you signed up for.”
Doyle shook his head and put a hand back on Larkin’s cheek—so gently, as if Larkin was a porcelain doll, spiderwebbed with cracks and held together by nothing but adhesive and prayers. “Sunshine—”
“I should go,” Larkin interrupted. “We’ve both got a lot of work to do.”
Doyle lowered his hand, sagged back in his seat, then eventually nodded. He pushed the door open, climbed out, collected his bag and the box with the skull from the backseat, and leaned down to say, “I’ll call you.”
“Okay.”
Doyle hesitated. He looked crestfallen. Heartbroken.
He shut the door.
Larkin had a comfortable high by the time he’d reached Precinct 9.
He was allocated two Xanax a day and had already taken one earlier, but he didn’t care.
He’d taken three more.
The rush had felt incredible—euphoria that’d skyrocketed him right past the clouds and through every atmospheric layer, leaving him to float in the vast blackness of space, where Larkin was safe among the stars. Safe from humanity and its pitfalls of life and death and even love.
Especiallylove.
Because love is what put Larkin into this hopeless and thankless career, into this drug-abused body, into this state of perpetual heartbreak.
If Larkin had never loved Patrick, or perhaps if Patrick had turned him down—I only like you as a friend—would that have been the moment Larkin could have lived a different life? Had that been the moment a butterfly took flight, and if it’d just fluttered left instead of right, Larkin would have never gone camping, never gone to the dock, never kissed Patrick, shaking and shivering and feeling absolutely invincible?
There’d have been no murder.
No traumatic brain injury.
No failed marriage.
No Doyle.
The thought had Larkin crashing back to Earth so hard, he physically jumped in the driver’s seat—a hypnagogic jerk—like waking from a falling dream. He didn’t deserve the nothingness of space. He deserved the agony and wretchedness and senselessness of his suffering. He deserved the guilt, like a dowry, that came with his decision to love Ira Doyle.
Larkin squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose, and counted to ten. Then he opened the door, climbed out of the Audi, and beeped the locks before heading toward the stationhouse. Precinct 9 was a few blocks southwest of Tompkins Square Park, on East Fifth between First and Second Avenue, wedged between hundred-year-old walk-ups with façades of red and white brick and fire escapes zigzagging four or five stories up. One fire escape was still strung with Christmas lights, while a pride flag hung from another, flapping lazily in the warm breeze.
Larkin moved around the front balusters, onto the sidewalk, and yanked the door open. The stationhouse was about the same size as his own, its lobby bustling with typical afternoon traffic. The phone at the front desk rang, and a handful of civilians spoke with uniformed officers and one plain-clothed detective about this and that, each being shuttled in different directions. It didn’t smell the same as Larkin’s own precinct—the custodian staff here used a floral-scented cleaner instead of citrus, and there wasn’t an aroma of afternoon coffee brewing or burning on the warming plate, which Larkin found suspicious, considering cops lived on caffeine, sugar, and consequences. The rest of the new environment stimuli rolled off his Xanax shield like raindrops on glass.
He flashed his badge at the front desk, asked after Detective Stolle, and was directed to the fourth floor. Larkin stepped into the elevator around the far right corner, and an older man shuffled in behind him. He was white, shorter and stockier than Larkin, with steel gray hair, watery blue eyes hidden behind wire-framed glasses with bifocals, and he wore a pair of khaki trousers and blue-checkered button-down shirt. Brown loafers, no tie, and he stank of Marlboros and Old Spice.
He glanced at the numbered panel, at Larkin, and said as the doors shut, “Fourth floor is Homicide, kid.”
Larkin stared at the stranger with narrowed eyes. “I’m aware of that.”
The man had a condescending laugh, thick in that way of a lifelong smoker. “I’m aware…,” he parroted, shaking his head. “And who’re you, coming in here with that big-dick energy?”
