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“Let’s not let another five years pass before we all hang out again,” I said, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder and giving a friendly squeeze. Harry nudged his body into mine and gave me a side hug while Jason started walking toward his car parked out front. Part of me wanted to grab his hand, swing him around, and tell him to stop being a fucking dick and just kiss me already.
Instead, I waved and walked in the opposite direction, surprised the ground wasn’t rattling underneath me from how intensely my world had been shaken today. I got in my car and sat in the silence for a moment, wondering how this would all play out. Jason made it clear that he wouldn’t ever be with me—he’d said those exact words to me after I bared my soul for him, serving it on a silver platter and having it thrown straight into the dumpster. But that was five years ago, and minds change as surely as the seasons. Of course, there was the small issue of Jason being Harry’s little brother, an issue that I had zero resolution for. Dating your best friend’s sibling was a boundary everyone knew not to cross, especially with how close Harry and I were. We’d known each other for about half our lives now. I was over Harry’s house when Jason was just learning to ride a bike, I went on their family vacations to Disney, I spent more than a handful of holidays with them. I was one of Harry’s biggest supporters through his transition—never forgetting the night he came out to me in a Wendy’s parking lot. We’d both shared a blunt the size of an elephant’s trunk and spent the rest of that night crying with each other. The next day, I had come out to Harry as gay. Our bond was sealed in solid diamond, unbreakable and unreplaceable.
Until Jason was added into the mix. Once we joined the academy together and became roommates, it was game over. The sexual tension between us exploded, in way more ways than one. It wasn’t just the sex either. I caught feelings, big ones, and had tiptoed around Harry about them until one day he told me how happy he was that Jason and I were keeping things simple, friendly, platonic.
Quite literally the three horsemen of relationship apocalypse.
I pulled back after that conversation, but I couldn’t quit Jason completely. I never wanted to. I figured we could explain things to Harry; we could make it work. We would work. There’d be no worries about lifelong friendships shattering or relationships crumbling. It would be fine, and we’d all be happy.
And it never happened.
I dropped my head against the headrest and sighed. I just had to let go of the ghost. Jason and I would work together on this Pegasus case, and when it was over, I’d fly out to my next case and leave all of this behind, same way I had done before.
I pulled out of my spot and drove down the road, lost in thought and feeding my fantasies. In fact, I was so consumed with my own thoughts, so lost in imagining Jason back in my arms, lips on my lips, body against mine—I was so consumed in it all that I didn’t spot the car pulling out behind me, a broken headlight flicking off into the distance as it turned down an empty road.
7
JASON QUILL
Yesterday was messy, and that was likely the understatement of a lifetime. I woke up determined to make today different and to not think about Matthew and the way he made my heart skip a couple of beats every time he looks in my direction. Yes, we would need to work together, but that didn’t mean we had to be in constant contact either. He didn’t have to consume my thoughts, the same way he had when we were younger.
Which made it all the more annoying when I showed up at Stonewall to find Darrien setting up a small desk in my already tiny office.
“Hey, Jason, did you get Zane’s email?”
I checked my phone, Zane’s message popping up at the top of my emails. I try not to read them until I’m sat down at my desk, which was currently being pushed to the side to make space. “Matt is going to be sharing offices with you. We were going to put him in the spare office, but there was a leak we’ve got to get fixed.”
“Right, of course.” I couldn’t keep the frustration from edging into my tone. Darrien threw me a glance.
“Sorry, Jason. If you want, we can set him up in Austin’s office? I know it’s a little cramped in here.”
“No, no. It’s fine. We should be close to each other anyway, at least until this case is done.” I got to work helping Darrien rearrange my office. We pushed the small bookshelf and minifridge to one corner of the pale yellow room, almost knocking over a vase of hydrangeas already beginning to shed some of their sky-blue petals. I’d come to really love my little office in Stonewall, having made it my own after only being at the agency for a month. I turned one wall into a gallery wall, where a cluster of eclectic frames showed off various prints and photos, all done by queer artists. My favorite had to be the pop-art version of the Mona Lisa drinking a mimosa, her tight-lipped grin angled upward as she sipped on her bright pink straw.
