“If you sneak out in the night, toss the sheets in the wash,” he said. “Then it’ll be like you were never here.”
He left Cloister to make up a bed in the living room and went to have a shower. The hot water rinsed off his sour temper and swirled it round his feet and down the drain. Once it was gone, he was left with was a bone-deep frustration with himself.
What had he wanted Cloister to say? To appreciate that Javi had pushed the limits of what he was comfortable with when he made the offer to let Cloister stay? To explain why Cloister didn’t seem to believe he mattered at all to anyone?
Or did Javi actually want it be about him after all? Despite everything he’d said.
Javi stepped out of the shower and roughly toweled himself off as he padded back into the bedroom. His skin smelled like vanilla and pomegranate, but he’d rather smell like salt and sweat. He left his hair damp, the water chill as it trickled down his spine, and stared at the slick black wood of the closed door.
Someone nicer would apologize to Cloister. If Javi went out, he’d just say the wrong thing again, even knowing it was the wrong thing. Cloister just… scared him sometimes. No one should care that little about themselves, especially not someone who deserved… well… at least someone nicer.
Javi swallowed the “sorry” and went to bed instead.
THE MATTRESSshifted under him. Javi woke abruptly and reached for the gun in his bedside table. It was too late, his brain informed him with laser clarity. The potential consequences flashed up vividly on the inside of his skull and then belatedly identified the broad-shouldered shape silhouetted by the moonlight as Cloister.
“Shit,” he muttered as he lowered himself back into the bed. “I could have shot you.”
“Maybe,” Cloister said, his voice low and sleep rough. It felt like a cat’s tongue against Javi’s skin, and the reaction was a tickle along his nerves that cut through his weariness. “Your couch is uncomfortable.”
That was a lie, or at least an excuse. Cloister might never sleep for long, but he could do it anywhere. Javi had seen him nap slouched in a car seat or propped against a door. Even on the maligned couch, for all he’d been gone by morning.
Javi actually had his mouth open to point that out, but his brain caught up with him and shut him up. He’d slept off enough of his temper to admit it was poor form to make an injured man sleep on your couch. Javi cleared his throat and shifted onto his back, his arm folded behind his head.
“Stay,” he said. “If the mattress is up to your standards.”
Cloister snorted and slid into the bed. The long sprawl of his body, naked except for a pair of white briefs, looked like honey against the dark sheets. His weight pinned down the sheets, and Javi could feel the heat of his body start to settle into the mattress.
It made Javi wonder if the couch was that uncomfortable—even back when he’d dated, he liked cold sheets and his own space—but he stayed where he was. Though the closeness irritated him, at the same time, it felt like an olive branch. The silence dragged out between them, and Javi felt the weight of the night’s sleep pull at him.
“My mom never gave up on my brother,” Cloister said suddenly. His voice was soft—so low that Javi nearly missed it—and cracked at the edges. Javi held his breath, as though that would help. It wasn’t often that Cloister talked about his brother, about anything from his life before Plenty in any real detail. Javi gathered the few bits of information he did share and filed them away as though he had to make a case against someone. “There were always appeals or leads, interviews with journalists and posters to put up. She felt bad about not making me a birthday or putting Band-Aids on my knees, but it was important.”
“So were you.”
Cloister paused for a second. “Mom used to get case files from the police. I guess the sheriff felt sorry for her. I used to read them when she was done—so many children that were taken and never found, and what had been done to the ones who were. That made Liam more important than me. It had to, and it was okay. I was always an independent kid. Mom didn’t need to worry about me.”
When Javi was six, his mother took him to New York instead of to his best friend’s party, and he still felt cheated by that sometimes. Cloister just sounded sad, and not even for himself.
“Anyhow,” Cloister said as he roughly cleared his throat. “It’s years ago, but I guess… I’m used to telling people I don’t need them. It’s what they usually need to hear.”
Javi reached over and wove his fingers into Cloister’s hair. It was gritty under his fingers, with sand down at the roots and unrinsed shampoo left matted into it.
“This—us—has an expiration date,” he admitted. His throat was still dry from sleep, and the words were rough as he got them out. It had always been true, but now that Joel was going to be his supervisor, Javi was confident he’d be transferred out soon enough, probably to Alaska. “But if you need me, I want to know.”
“I know,” Cloister said.
It was a lie. For some reason Javi thought about Janet Morrow—not just her broken body, but the fact that she’d been so alone that the only person she had to call when she was in trouble was a tow truck driver.
“I lost someone once,” Javi said before he could think better of it. It made him feel stripped, laid bare in a way that went beyond naked skin and the drape of sheets. It was the first time he’d talked about it since the disciplinary hearing in Phoenix. It hadn’t gotten any easier, but the words spilled out anyhow. “I didn’t love him—maybe it would have been different if I had—but he loved me. Then he died, and it was my fault.”
Stained grout. Bloody clothes in a plastic bag. Kincaid’s voice as he asked, “What were you thinking, Merlo?”
Javi swallowed the memories, and the words went with them. He was left with silence stuck in his throat like a stone and a point he hadn’t been able to finish. Cloister turned his head and brushed a kiss over the inside of Javi’s wrist.
“You aren’t going to get me killed, Javi,” he said. His lips twisted into a wry smile against Javi’s skin. “Trust me. If anyone is going to get me killed, it’s going to be me.”
Javi grimaced, twisted his hand in Cloister’s hair, and pulled him in for a hard kiss. He wanted to see ifidiothad a taste. It didn’t.
“That’s not reassuring,” Javi said as he pushed Cloister back onto his side of the bed. The frustration ached in his thighs as Cloister sprawled out across from him, but Javi ignored it. His cock didn’t always know what was good for it. There was too much clutter in his brain tonight, and unlike Cloister, he couldn’t get by on two hours of sleep and a cup of coffee. “Just don’t get hit by any more cars, Witte. I’ve got enough on my conscience.”