So close that Joey could hear the beat of Gideon’s heart.
Of his lover’s heart.
Oh God.Gideon was right.It made him better.Loving Gideon, it made him better.Caring for his team, it made him better.
It made him stronger.
Maybe even strong enough to face the fear of what his father could do when he realized that he held the keys to his son’s life in the beating of Gideon Chadwick’s heart.
Dancing, Dancing, Dance the Night Away
THE SATURDAYnight before Crosby was supposed to come back to the SCTF in person after fixing up the precinct brutalized by the Sons of the Blood, the team took a night off together.
Harding called it “team building,” and first there was anexcellentsteak dinner, and then in a club in Queens, owned by a drag queen named Chartreuse who sort of adored Crosby and Garcia, there was dancing.
Gideon wasn’t usually a dancer.He was quite aware his angular, ropy body wasn’t graceful on the dance floor no matterhowmuch he adored music, so he’d planned to be the group’s drink-bearer, schmooze at the bar, and flirt with Chartreuse, who was arch and funny (a requirement for drag queens), and who had decided to embrace all of Crosby’s unit, since they’d gone out of their way to help a few of her kids—employees and young people she took under her wing in a harsh world—land someplace safe.
Joey wasn’t about to let him do that.
They hadn’t come out formally to the team, and they certainly weren’t going to start holding hands or kissing in publicnow.God no, not even Natalia and her wife did that, because the public conservatism of law enforcement went bone deep.But something, some spine of worry, had relaxed between him and Joey since that terrible night with the Sons of the Blood.
It was as though just admitting he cared for somebody had melted that last sturdy barrier that wouldkeepJoey Carlyle from caring.Admitting he was afraid for his person allowed him to be glad his person was there in the first place.
Gideon hadn’t wanted to tell him, but he’d been very afraid, from their first meeting, that Joey Carlyle would have a hard time making the sort of attachment that the two of them had formed.
Every other morning or so he got to wake up with Joey in his bed, in his arms, or touching him casually as they passed each other in the kitchen, wrapping his arms around Gideon’s waist as he cooked or folded laundry, or rubbing their feet together as they read at night on opposite sides of the couch.Every moment of them together was a miracle.
And they still worked like clockwork in the field.
The day before, they’d been interviewing a woman they thought was a witness until Gideon had caught her in a fairly significant lie.
He knew his eyebrows had raised fractionally—an unguarded microexpression—but he wasn’t aware he’d tipped her off until she’d gone for the knife in the waistband of her jeans.
And Joey had tackled her before she’d gotten it clear of her belt.
“Good tip-off, Gid,” he’d said, after wrestling her into cuffs and yanking her to a standing position.
“Anything for you, Carlyle,” he’d said dryly, but inside he’d been thinking that it was a damned good thing that kid could read his mind, and that he’d been born to track prey.
Either way, two years of partnership outside the bedroom was really paying off.
And eight months of partnershipinsidethe bedroom felt as necessary as breathing.
So when, as Gideon was doing a drink roundup with the fresh-faced Henderson and older, battle-hardened Doba, and he heard Joey’s whistle above the music—a remix of an acoustic rock song about stolen dances—he turned just in time to watch Carlyle pop above everybody’s head in a graceful leap and signal him over with a jerk of his chin.
He had to swallow, hard, because in that moment Joey Carlyle was fierce and happy and carefree, and he turned in dismay to the tray of drinks he’d been going to ferry over to the team’s table.
“I’ll get them,” Chartreuse said, waving him off.“You people… I don’t mind po-po in my place as long as youdance.”
And Gideon found himself in the center of the dance floor with the rest of the unit, having tiny Gail Pearson whirled into his arms in a sleek river of blond hair that went all the way to the waist of her Little Black Dress.
He laughed and gallantly pulled her in so they were both facing the same direction and then whirled her out again, into Manny Swan’s waiting arms.
Henderson and Doba—both as straight as rulers, Gideon knew, although they apparently were working nicely as roommates since the night they’d saved Toby, their DJ for the night, from getting beaten to death by cops—were both executing swing moves side by side, and Chadwick blessed them.Not a word from either of them about how Harding had needed to come out about being married to Harman Blodgett in the course of themanytrials and press conferences he’d attended in the last two months, and they’d been as happy as the rest of the team to hear that Crosby was being returned to SCTF after his long-term loan to the 43rd Precinct to clean up the corruption mess.
For a moment, Gideon found himself doing a quick two-step with Natalia’s lovely wife, Emily, and after five years with the unit and a lot of holidays with Emily and Tal, he treasured her happy laughter and her exquisite dancing on amazingly tall heels.
And then the beat changed, grew slower, sultrier.
