Page 47 of The Tiger in the Sack

I got on. Started it up.

The city on the way home was the same city it had been two hours ago. Same bridges, same lights off the river, same turn onto Vine. With her behind me and the weight of her hands at my sides and every single mile of it had apparently become a place something had happened that was burned into my mind forever.

Great.

The Broasis was lit up when I came off the elevator, which meant Jules had found every light switch in the place. Fox was in the kitchen. The blender was going. I smelled coconut.

I dropped my helmet on a hook by the door.

Fox turned around. Took one look at my face and turned the blender off.

He didn’t say anything. That was how I knew how bad it showed.

Jules came around the corner from the hallway with Vito in her arms. She had the expression of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment since she’d sent me out that door four hours ago.

Vito saw me and launched himself from Jules’s grip with total disregard for her structural integrity, hit the floor, and crossed the room to wind around my ankles with the focused intensity of a cat who had been patient long enough. I crouched down and let him headbutt my jaw twice. His version of okay, let’s talk about your evening.

“Hey, buddy.”

He headbutted me again. Less diplomatic this time.

Jules settled on the arm of the couch. She had found the popcorn again. She had also, apparently, found a second bowl, because she was offering one to Fox, who came over from the kitchen and took a handful with the energy of a man fully prepared to watch this unfold.

“Did you tell her,” Jules said, “or did she find out?”

That wasn’t really a question. It never was with Jules. Just the exact shape of the thing, handed to you, with the expectation that you’d stand in it.

Fox found something interesting to study on the middle distance.

“She found out,” I said. “In fact, she already knew.”

Jules closed her eyes.

One second. Exactly one second. Then she opened them again and looked at me like a Kingman woman who loved her person completely and was not going to pretend this was fine.

“Come here, sit down, Isak.”

I sat on the couch. Vito jumped up immediately, walked across my lap, and arranged himself on my chest like he had been planning this position all evening. Heavy. Warm. His purr kicked in at a volume that was honestly a little aggressive. He stared at my chin with the green eyes that had never once in his life communicated anything but complete honesty.

He was absolutely judging me. He was also not going anywhere.

Fox came around and sat on the other end of the couch, deposited a smoothie on the coffee table in my general direction, and said nothing. Nobody said anything for a minute. The kind of minute where the people who loved you were deciding whether to say the true thing now or let you sit in it first.

Jules went first. Of course she did. “How did she find out?”

“I’m not totally sure. But it started with me calling her cheerleader.” I rubbed a hand over my face. Vito objected to the movement by pushing his forehead against my chin more firmly. “She never told me what she did.”

Fox made a sound.

“She called me out at the overlook,” I said. “She had been sitting with it the whole ride. Waiting to see if I’d do it myself.” I looked at the ceiling. “I didn’t.”

Jules absorbed this. “And she told you to take the helmet off.”

“Called me Kingman.” I said it flat. “Like we were at work.”

Fox winced. He was the only person in the world who would understand exactly how much that cost, because Fox was the only one who had watched me for years being very specifically Kingman to every single person in my life except the one I’d met in a tree.

“You took it off,” Jules said.