Page 20 of Subduing the Shark

"How long?" Nero asked.

"I don't know. A while. I've been telling myself it was professional concern, protective instinct. Cop stuff. But it's not. Or it started that way and turned into something else." Harold rubbed the back of his neck. "The night I pinned him and he went limp, I went home and couldn't sleep for two days. Not because of what happened. Because of how badly I wanted to be the person who taught him that it doesn't have to be like that."

"That's a Dom response."

"I know."

"Is it just a Dom response?"

Harold finally looked at him. "No. It's everything. I like the way he counts cleaning bottles. I like that he snaps at me when I'm getting too close to making him feel something. I like that he picks up Amani's bar towel when it falls and puts it exactly where Amani can reach it without getting too close. I drove past the dolphin pool on my way home tonight because I wanted to smell whether he'd been there today." He stopped himself. This was more than he'd planned to say and Nero's face was unreadable, which was Nero's face when he was processing fast and didn't want to show it. "I know who he is. I know what he did. I'm telling you because you're the person who gets to be angry about it. You and Amani, Bethany, and Lady Leo. I'm not going into this blindly. I know what possibly falling for him means."

Nero was quiet for a long time. On the monitor, camera two showed the elevator doors, closed and still.

"You understand what this means for Amani," Nero said.

"Yes."

"He’s in recovery. Every day he comes down those stairs and works behind that bar with one of his kidnappers in the room is a day he's choosing to face it. He's getting stronger. He's pushing his sleeves up. He laughed at one of Reza's jokes last week and it was real, not performance." Nero's voice was steady, controlled, precise. The voice he used in interrogation rooms when the stakes were highest and the margin for error was smallest. "If you get involved with Jack and it goes wrong, or if Amani sees it and it sets him back to where he's hiding again and afraid of everything again, I will end you. That's not a threat from your friend. That's a statement of fact from the man whose partner was kidnapped and brutalized by a man I'm not sure should still be breathing."

Harold held his gaze. "I know."

"I will choose Amani over you. Every time. Without hesitation."

"You should."

Nero held the stare for another beat, then the interrogation mode softened. Not all the way, but enough that Harold could see his friend underneath the protector. "I don't think that's what's happening here."

Harold let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Jack is not the same person who got in that van," Nero said. He turned back to the monitor, watching the empty rooms cycle past. "I've been watching him since he came here. I watch everyone. It's what I do. And what I see is someone whose entire framework for understanding contact is built on violence and coercion, and who is slowly, painfully realizing that the framework is wrong. He didn't come to that realization on his own. You pushed him there."

"I named what was happening to him. That's not the same as pushing."

"It is when no one's ever named it before." Nero looked at him. "He acts like someone who's been trained not to have boundaries. I said that his first night. You remember."

Harold remembered. The words had been sitting in his chest since then.

"A person like that doesn't develop boundaries by being left alone. They develop them because someone demonstrates what a boundary looks like. You've been doing that. Every night, every conversation, every time you ask before you touch and stop when he shuts down. You're modeling something he's never seen." Nero's mouth thinned. "Whether you meant to or not, you've become the most important person in his life. Act accordingly."

Harold looked at the floor. The industrial tile was scuffed, ground down by years of boots and heels and the occasional paw print from shifters who forgot to change back before walkingthrough the office. "I don't know how to do this without hurting someone."

"You might not be able to." Nero stood up and stretched, the ferret's lean body uncoiling from the chair. "Amani is going to have a reaction. I don't know what it will look like and I'm not going to pretend it will be simple. But I also know my partner, and Amani has more capacity for complexity than most people give him credit for. He chose to have Jack here. He chose the timeline. He's not fragile. He's recovering, and recovery doesn't mean he gets to control everything that happens around him."

"That sounds like you've thought about this."

"I've been thinking about it since your second week on the floor when you stopped circulating and started planting yourself next to the shark like a bloodhound who'd found a scent trail." Nero gave him a look that was equal parts affection and exasperation. "You were not subtle, Harold."

Harold almost smiled. Almost. "What do I do?"

"You do what you've been doing. You show up. You're honest. You don't push faster than Jack can handle. And you talk to Amani before anything becomes visible, because he deserves to hear it from you and not figure it out from watching the cameras."

"Lady Leo already knows."

"Lady Leo knew before you did. That woman misses nothing." Nero walked to the door of the closet, then stopped and turned back. "Harold."

"Yeah?"

"If you do this right, it could be good for both of them. Jack and Amani. If Jack finds something real, something healthy, it changes the shape of what Amani's forgiveness looks like. It gives Amani evidence that the person who hurt him is becoming someone different. That matters. If he can see Jack as more than what he was in that van, and he's trying so hard to get thereright now, then he can start to process beyond what happened to him."