Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

THE PARAMEDIC STEPPED in front of Marlow. He held up both hands, still encased in bloody latex gloves, to stop him in his tracks.

“He’s not in any condition to answer questions right now,” he said.

“One minute,” Marlow said. “The people who did this to him got away.”

“That’s your job,” the paramedic said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the ambulance. “Mine is getting him to the hospital before he codes. If you want to talk to him once he’s stabilized, we’re going to Kaiser. You can ask his doctors when he’ll be fit to be questioned.”

Marlow bit the inside of his cheek in frustration. He debated whether to claim it was Night Shift business, but that didn’t have the same weight during the crescent moon. Besides, that was the sort of overstepping that might get back to O’Hara.

He shrugged his acceptance and stepped back. The paramedic looked relieved as he stripped his gloves off and balled the bloody latex up between his fingers.

“And get your friend to clean that cut on his cheek,” he said as he handed Marlow an alcohol wipe in its wrapper. The paramedic turned and loped back to the ambulance as he tossed over his shoulder, “Wolf or not, it can still get infected. Two weeks is a long time to live with a seeping face.”

Marlow snorted at the idea he could make Cade do anything and tucked his hands into his pockets. He waited until the doors to the ambulance slammed and it drove away, its red and blue lights splashed over the ousted customers of the strip club as they milled sheepishly around outside. Their IDs and excuses were being collected by the patrol cars who’d responded when Marlow called the incident in to Dispatch.

Only one of the two was needed, but people always wanted to justify themselves to the badge.

Marlow certainly had. The veteran beat cop who’d taken his statement had absorbed the awkward lie of an interrupted date and heroics with the impassive face of someone who’d heard it all before.

Night Shift’s mistakes were not Officer Dioli’s business. Marlow envied him that. It seemed like his whole career had been about mistakes they’d made.

He headed back toward the club. Cade stood in front of the window and idly rubbed his freshly uncuffed wrists as Dioli ran down the “don’t leave town” and “we may need to speak with you again” spiel.

“Of course, I’m always happy to help the SDPD,” Cade said smoothly, his voice like honey. “If you guys can’t protect your citizens, then I can step in whenever you need me.”

Dioli made the face. The “oh, one of these assholes” face. Marlow couldn’t blame him. He’d taken his turn behind the same look when he’d dealt with Cade in the past. He wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t have it on right now.

“Ignore him,” he told Dioli. “He’s a dick.”

Dioli looked nonplussed for a moment and then let a quick, controlled grin slide over his face. He scribbled something in his book and then flipped the cover over.

“Noted,” he said. “He can pick up his gun at the station once the lab is done with it. We’ll let him know.”

“That’s okay,” Cade said. “I have others.”

Dioli looked at him for a second and then turned to Marlow. “I see what you mean.”

“Right?”

“I’ve got your statement too, Officer Marlow,” Dioli said. “If we need anything else, I guess I know where to find you.”

He turned and headed back to the patrol car. His partner looked relieved as he disengaged himself from one of the flirtier dancers.

“I’m a dick?” Cade asked.

Marlow tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “You’re saying you’re not?”

“Maybe,” Cade admitted as he pushed himself off the wall. “But that’s between us. It’s not Officer Dioli’s business.”

“I just assumed you had better things to do than get arrested for pissing off a cop,” Marlow said. “Like all of this.”

Cade snorted, and the patina of humor faded from his face. “Did you see who spooked Lance in the bar?”

Marlow grimaced and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Whoever they were, they didn’t hang around. You? Did you see who was in the car?”

“Not well enough to identify them,” Cade said. “But that doesn’t matter. They told us what we needed to know.”

Marlow raised his eyebrows at that. When he’d gotten there, it hadn’t looked as if much talking had gone on.

“What?” he asked.

“That they aren’t working with Piper,” Cade said. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and headed for his car. “The people in the car wanted the same thing from Lance as we did—whatever secrets Piper kept. They just weren’t going to negotiate on price. Your ex-boss just went from a potential threat to an asset. We need to speak to him.”

“Run.”

The old command echoed in Marlow’s ears as he stood on the sidewalk and watched Cade cross the road. His throat was dry, sticky when he swallowed, and his chest ached as if he’d just finished a race. That night had been the last time he’d spoken to Piper. It had been the last time he’d seen him. Since Piper had cut a deal with the DA, Marlow hadn’t needed to face him in court.

It wasn’t something that Marlow wanted to change, but he supposed no one had asked what he wanted.

The headlights of Cade’s car flashed as he unlocked it, reflected back from the steel and glass in the security store window. He pulled the door open and then turned around to see where Marlow was.

“You in or not?” he asked.

Marlow rubbed his shoulder. It was an old habit. The scar tissue meant he couldn’t feel much but dull pressure as he dug his thumb into the flesh. “Not” was probably the smart answer; tap out now and leave the investigation to IA. Instead, he checked for cars and jogged over the road.

“Easier said than done, talking to Piper,” he said. “He’s refused to talk to anyone from the SDPD or the DA’s office since he was sentenced.”

Cade smirked and slid into the driver’s seat. “Lucky for us, I’m neither. We just have to wake someone up first.”

It turned out Maria wasn’t asleep. Her hair and makeup were perfect, even dressed in neat pink sweats and fluffy mules. In person, she couldn’t hide that under the soft edges, there was something hard.

“How dare you,” she said. “I’m a teacher. I have a reputation in this community, and your disgusting implications about my voluntary work are out of line. Get away from my house.”

She tried to close the door. Cade blocked it with his foot.

“I’m not a cop,” he said. “And Ned Piper isn’t much of a charity case, is he?”

Suspicion flickered over her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a flat, uninflected voice. It was an obvious lie. “Or who. I have a lot of penpals. Now get your foot out of my door before I call the police.”

She stamped on Cade’s foot. It would have been more effective if she wasn’t in her slippers.

“Go on,” Cade told her. He tilted his head toward Marlow. “It won’t take him long to get here.”

Maria glanced at him and then pinched her lips together. There had been something familiar about her when Marlow had seen her photo on Cade’s wall, but he’d not been able to put his finger on it. Not until she recognized him and pulled that sour, lemons on her tongue, expression.

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been a brunette with track-marks on her arms and thrift store jeans. Her eyes had been hard then too. She’d been Piper’s confidential informant—apparently, he’d pulled her out of an even worse situation—and always had the goods on trafficking schedules and bad blood between gangs that would spill over during the full moon. It had been profitable, since she’d also been paid by Piper’s less-than-savory clients to drop off that information about their rivals.

It looked like it still was profitable. As McMansions went, her house was on the low end of the scale, but it was a nice property for a Spanish teacher.

“Maria,” Marlow said. “Got the tattoos removed?”

She raised her hand to her face and then pulled it away as she thought better of it.

“That’s what the makeup is for,” she said. The careful polish on her vowels peeled off, and her old accent turned her voice hard. “You know this was a mistake, Marlow. Even if I knew anything, and for the record, I don’t, I’d not squeal. Not on Piper. I still owe him, and so do you.”

Marlow snorted. “He tried to kill me, Maria.”

Maria mugged surprise. “Did he?” she asked. “And how many times did he save your life? I figure you’re still the one in the red, Marlow. And I still know my rights. You probably aren’t even supposed to be here. So piss off.”

She shoved the door again. Cade grimaced as it crushed his foot and started to snarl something. He held his tongue when Marlow nudged him.

“Do you decide what Piper needs to know now?” he asked. “Because when I knew him, he liked to make his own calls.”

Maria looked sour and stepped back to let the door swing open. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

She waved her arm in an exaggerated invitation for them to step inside. Once they were over the threshold, she glanced out into the street, pulled a face at the houses opposite, and slammed the door behind her.

“This’ll give them something to talk about.” She pushed between them and walked down the whitewashed hall to the kitchen. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to offer refreshments.”

Cade snorted as they followed her into the large room. It was all glossy red cabinets and stainless steel appliances. Maria took a bottle out of the fridge and poured herself a glass of wine; red liquid nudged right up to the lip of the glass.

“So?” she asked as she climbed up onto a stool next to the island. “What do you want? So I can tell you that you can’t have it.”

“We want to talk to Piper,” Marlow said. The words felt weird in his mouth. It wasn’t something he’d expected to say.

“Well, he doesn’t want to talk to you,” Maria said. She held up a finger to shush Marlow when he went to speak. “And before you ask, that’s straight from Piper’s mouth. He said everything he was going to say to the San Diego Police Department when they arrested him.”

Cade leaned back against one of the counters and crossed his arms.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Marlow’s the cop, not me. I don’t give a fuck what Piper did or why. I care about who’s taken over from him.”

A sly smirk tucked the corner of Maria’s mouth. “Yeah, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Because it’s you?” Marlow asked.

“I’m not an ambitious woman,” Maria told him. She gestured to the books laid out in front of her. “You think if I was a kingpin, I’d be marking Spanish homework for suburban kids who don’t know how to conjugate irregular verbs?’

“Do you know Lance Rilkes?” Cade asked.

Suspicion flickered over Maria’s face for a second. She covered it with a gulp of wine, then wiped the corner of her mouth with her thumb. Once she’d gotten control of her reaction, she shook her head.

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Liar,” Marlow said off-handedly. She glared at him, and he mirrored the corner-of-the-mouth wipe for her. “Your tells haven’t changed.”

She made a sour face at him and turned back to Cade.

“So maybe I do,” she said with an annoyed shrug. “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” Cade said. “But Piper kept in touch with him, didn’t he? So he’ll probably want to know that someone from the Night Shift tried to grab him tonight. They wanted to know what he knew about Piper, about the business.”

Maria pinched the stem of the wineglass between her fingers and turned it in small, nervous circles on the counter.

“I can’t imagine he’d know anything.”

“Are you sure about that?” Cade asked. “Enough to make the call on your own?”

She licked her lips and then lifted the glass to drain it in one quick, abrupt toss of her head.

“He’ll want proof,” she said. “That it was Lance.”

“Check the news,” Cade said.

Marlow straightened up and took a step forward. He pulled a sheet of someone’s homework toward him and picked up a pen. It was green, not red. He supposed that was meant to make corrections friendlier. He flipped the page over and scrawled on the back of it.

“He told me who really did what needed to be done.”

At the end of the sentence, he hesitated. It felt like there should be something more to add, something he needed to say to the man who’d tried to kill him. He underlined it instead.

“Tell him that,” he said as he slid it back over the table. “Exactly.”

Maria glanced at the paper and pulled an unimpressed face. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “But he’s a busy man, lots of demands on his time. Anything else?”

No. Marlow supposed there wasn’t. Not here, anyhow.

“Coffee?” Marlow asked as Cade pulled up to the curb outside his house. It sounded awkward and out of place, too normal for the adrenaline that still itched under his skin and made his knee bounce.

Not to mention, he remembered, that Cade didn’t drink coffee.

The offer hung in the air as Marlow tried to think of a way to rescue it. Cade turned the engine off and unclicked his seat belt.

“Actually, I thought I could get even,” he said as he leaned over into Marlow’s side of the car. “I’ve still not seen you naked, and you’ve seen everything I’ve got.”

Marlow tilted the corner of his mouth in a smirk. He could feel the warmth of Cade’s body as it almost touched his. “At the time, I was trying not to stare,” he pointed out.

Cade plucked Marlow’s glasses off. “Tried and failed.”

The last few weeks of silence and unspoken grudges should have given Marlow pause, but whatever that had been about, this was still easy. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of Cade’s trousers and closed the distance between them for a quick kiss.

It was a hard brush of dry lips, and there shouldn’t have been anything sexy about it. The promise of what was next prickled in it, though, and made Marlow’s breath catch in his throat.

“Never let it be said I needed an unfair advantage,” he said as he leaned back. Cade handed him his glasses, and he tucked them into the pocket of his jacket. “Come in, and we can level the playing field. I only wear underwear in bed.”

Cade laughed, a careless snort of amusement without any of the usual caution Cade brought to any emotion.

“That’s not going to work for me,” he said. “In bed is when I want you naked.”

They got out of the car and got two steps up the drive before Cade pulled Marlow back in for another kiss. His mouth was hard, rough with impatience, and he ran his hand down Marlow’s back to squeeze the curve of his ass.

“At least this time no one is going to overhear us,” Cade muttered as they stumbled toward the house. He glanced up briefly at the other houses on the street and amended his statement. “No one I care about, anyhow.

Marlow shrugged and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt to pull it off.

“Me either,” he said as he stepped backward.

Cade swore, soft and ragged, under his breath and didn’t wait for Marlow to finish stripping. The two of them stumbled backward up the step onto the porch, tangled in the T-shirt and each other. Marlow managed to drag his T-shirt up over his head, the night air cool on his skin, and leaned into the kiss. Cade’s hand slid down his back and tucked into the waistband of his jeans; his callused fingers just grazed along the curve of Marlow’s ass. The T-shirt draped over Cade’s shoulder, still tangled in Marlow’s hand, as he cupped the back of Cade’s neck to pull him down.

The broken board—the one that Marlow had gotten so used to sidestepping it didn’t seem worth the hassle to fix it—gave under his foot. He muttered a curse into Cade’s mouth and yanked his sneaker out of the hole. His laces got caught on a nail on the way out, and he had to hop in place for a second to catch his balance.

Not quite the seasoned Night Shift officer aura of cool competence someone might expect.

“You should get that fixed,” Cade told him. The curve of his mouth was smug under Marlow’s as he edged them both around the gap and pushed Marlow up against the door.

“Good idea,” Marlow deadpanned. He tilted his head back against the wood and looked up at Cade. “Amazing, I never thought of that.”

“I know a man,” Cade offered.

Marlow laughed, hooked his fingers into the collar of Cade’s shirt, and pulled him down for a tease of a kiss—a brush of lips and a quick scrape of his teeth over Cade’s lower lip. “If you’re looking to set a record, I have been dumped after a first date before.”

His brain caught up with his mouth a second too late, and Marlow felt his ears sting with sudden, embarrassed uncertainty. That wasn’t what this was. Not that either of them had actually discussed what “this” was in any sort of detail, but nobody had mentioned “dates” before now.

“Is that what this is,” Cade said. He nudged his thigh between Marlow’s and used his hips to pin him in place. This kiss wasn’t a tease. It was insistent, possessive, and sharp enough that Marlow tasted the tang of blood on his tongue. His or Cade’s, he couldn’t tell. When Cade finally lifted his head, his eyes dark and hard to read in the dim light, Marlow was breathless and hard enough to make him squirm. “A date? Most boys want dinner, not a shootout.”

Marlow reached back and twisted the knob that dug into his hip. He had locked it when he left this morning, but that was mainly just to discourage opportunistic kids who snuck up the path to rattle the door. The mechanism was old and loose. All you had to do was hold the knob all the way around and give the door a nudge with your knee. Or hip, this time. But it still worked.

The door swung open and they stumbled inside, clumsy as they traded kisses and pulled at each other’s clothes on the way through the living room. Marlow toed his Converse off and left one on the mat by the door and the other kicked under the bookcase. His T-shirt was tossed over the TV. Cade’s jacket was dropped on the floor, and his shirt ended up over the back of the couch as they fell onto it.

“Not how I expected the night to end,” Cade said as he sprawled on top of Marlow. He nudged Marlow’s head to the side and kissed his throat. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Marlow stretched out under Cade, their legs twisted together, and cupped the other man’s head in his hand. The curls were soft and thick under his palm. He tilted his head back against the couch cushion to bare more throat to Cade’s mouth.

“How did you want it to end?” he asked.

Cade laughed, his breath cool against damp skin. “Like this,” he said. “But sooner. I just didn’t expect it.”

Marlow’s cock throbbed in dull counterpoint to the eager ache in his balls as Cade shifted on top of him. It nudged insistently against Cade’s hip as he settled his weight. He slid his hands down Cade’s back to explore the long, taut straps of muscle under tanned skin.

“Maybe next time you take me to dinner instead of a gunfight,” Marlow suggested, his voice ragged. “It won’t take up so much of the evening.”

Cade’s mouth slowed down against his throat, and after a moment, he lifted his head. The light from the crescent moon that filtered through the window picked out the gold flecks in his amber eyes.

“So,” he said in a voice that sounded carefully skeptical. “This really has been your idea of a date?”

Marlow cupped Cade’s face in his hand. He ran his thumb along the scabbed-over line that skimmed along Cade’s cheekbone and up into his hair.

“Not a typical date,” he admitted. “Date-adjacent. If you want it to be.”

He waited. Cade turned his head and pressed a kiss to the pulse point in Marlow’s wrist. Some atavistic instinct twitched as Marlow had a borderline tactile thought about how easily Cade’s wolf would have taken his hand off. He ignored it. Some things you just couldn’t dwell on.

“What would move it over into a real date?”

“Ask me to dinner.”

The challenge in that sentence hung in the space between their lips. It was Cade’s turn to ignore something he didn’t want to look at. He rolled them both over so he sprawled out along the couch, one leg dangled off the side to brace against the floor, and Marlow straddled him. Cade’s face looked softer from this angle, the hard lines blurred, but his expression was still carefully noncommital.

“Why don’t you ask me?” Cade asked, as if the answer didn’t matter.

And maybe it didn’t. It might feel like Marlow had seen a side of Cade that other people didn’t, but a couple of kisses and a conspiracy was no way to get to know someone. Even if Cade was the only person in Marlow’s life he could trust right now. Maybe especially because of that.

He pushed that itch of thought away and smiled crookedly down at Cade.

“I could, but you’re rich, and I can’t take overtime until I’m cleared to go back on active duty.”

Cade laughed, a startled and inelegant snort of a sound. It caught in his throat, and he choked it down. His hands stilled on Marlow’s hips, placed gingerly as if he thought he could snap something.

“Are you… Were you hurt?” he asked. “That night?”

Oh.

There was a reason that nulls with ambition on the force wanted onto the Night Shift. It was common knowledge they didn’t have the nose for a hunt a detective needed. Eventually though, Marlow supposed, as all the puzzle pieces clicked together, even the most oblivious had to see what was right under their nose.

“Shit,” Marlow said as it finally dawned on him. “That’s what I did. Why you didn’t want to see me.”

Cade scowled, his face all sharp lines and impassive beauty again, as he tilted his head back against the cushions. It let him look down his nose at Marlow with a dismissive sneer. “Don’t put words in my mouth. Not many people are smart enough.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

Cade took a breath, and Marlow was pretty sure he was going to do the opposite of what Marlow had just asked him. So he kissed him to shut him up. There were worse ways to do it, less enjoyable too.

The kiss started out deliberate and then turned into something desperate. Cade’s hands tightened on Marlow’s hips, hesitation forgotten as he pulled him down. Marlow leaned into it and chased the taste of Cade between his lips and over his tongue. It felt like something he needed, like a man needed a drink of water on a warm day.

Marlow wasn’t going to think about why. Or about how long it had been since someone, anyone, had cared if they’d hurt him.

He pulled away finally, his lips tender, and looked down as he tugged at the buttons on Cade’s trousers.

“Fuck,” Cade groaned, his voice caught, low and husky, in his throat. He got his elbows under him and hitched his hips off the couch to make Marlow’s job easier.

Marlow hesitated for a second as the taut play of muscle under tanned skin made him fumble as he forgot how buttons worked. His mouth went dry, and his breath caught in his throat as heat crawled up his neck.

It wasn’t fair. When you’d seen someone naked once, by rights, it should lose some impact.

Apparently not.

Marlow got his mind back to the task in front of him and finished undoing Cade’s trousers. He dipped his hand inside and curled his fingers around Cade’s cock. It was heavy and warm against his palm, the thick weight of it solid under a layer of thin, velvet-soft skin. Blood pulsed quick and eager against his palm. He dragged his thumb over the head, slick and wet with precome, and leaned in to swipe his tongue up Cade’s throat at the same time.

He tasted like salt, a film of sweat faintly bitter on his skin, and he groaned out another soft “Fuck” as Marlow tightened his grip on his cock. Fine skin creased under Marlow’s calloused fingers as he stroked the hard shaft.

“I should have called you,” he said. “Let you know I was okay. I just… I knew wolves didn’t remember what happened the day after. I guess I just didn’t think what that meant. It always—the Night Shift always talks about it like a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

Cade tilted his head back, the line of his throat taut and smooth, and stared at the ceiling.

“The last thing I remember was seeing you,” he said. “Night Shift or not, I knew you couldn’t have gotten away. Not with no gear. No weapons. No backup.”

“I did, though.”

“How?” Cade asked as he looked at Marlow. The genuine curiosity in his voice cut through the anger like a splash of lemon. “When I woke up, I knew—I knew—I had to have killed you.”

“I blew the car up and ran like fuck while you were on fire. Sorry.”

It took a second, but Cade started to laugh. It left him breathless and whooping as he tangled himself around Marlow, chuckled kisses warm and ticklish against Marlow’s throat and jaw.

“You’re a dangerous man,” he said. “But I guess I knew that.”

“I am sorry,” Marlow said.

“For setting me on fire or for not realizing I thought I’d eaten you?”

Marlow exhaled against Cade’s lips, a tickle of breath against kiss-damp flesh. He dragged his hand along Cade’s cock, a slow, lazy stroke, and felt Cade tense under him in response. “Both?”

“I told you before,” Cade said. “It’s okay.”

“Tell me that tomorrow,” Marlow said. “When you ask me to dinner.”

Cade laughed, low and rough and warm as honey, and Marlow’s cock ached under his jeans. He slid his hand down to the base of Cade’s cock and cupped his balls, tight and hot in Marlow’s palm as he squeezed them. He could feel the thrum of the string that sent a bolt of pleasure from them to the back of Cade’s skull, the wire-taut tension of it under his fingers.

Sweat slicked their skin, sharp with the salt and the stale adrenaline from the fight earlier. Cade bit kisses along Marlow’s neck and shoulder, wet and messy and careless. There was no real sensation in the white welt of scar tissue on Marlow’s shoulder, but he could still feel the pressure of Cade’s teeth as he bit down and the wet of his tongue.

His own balls were heavy and tight between his legs, a dull pressure that spread out into his gut, and he ground against Cade’s thigh. It was almost silent, all soft grunts and gasps and bitten-back whimpers. Cade came first, with a hot-breathed groan against Marlow’s ear. He clenched one hand on the edge of the couch, fingers dug into the worn fabric and the tendons in his wrist taut, as he spilled himself, wet and sticky, into Marlow’s hand. When he finished, he licked his lips and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Marlow was perched on his lap, his knees braced either side of Cade’s hips.

“Your turn,” Cade said, his voice rough in his throat from being quiet until now.

Marlow leaned back, one hand braced against Cade’s heavy thigh, and lazily wiped the other on his stomach—come smeared across pale skin.

“Go on, then,” he said.

Cade raised his eyebrows at the lazy goad but took the bait anyhow. He leaned in and… almost… kissed Marlow. He pulled back before their lips touched and shoved Marlow down onto the couch.

Marlow sprawled out on the cushions, so hard it hurt. A lazy, wicked smile curved Cade’s mouth as he looked down at him. After a moment, he leaned over and trailed kisses over Marlow’s shoulders and chest.

Then further down.

Wet, openmouthed kisses laid a trail down Marlow’s body, between and across the spray of old scars and down to the salty gloss on his abs. Heat puddled after them.

Lower.

Shit.

Marlow bit his lip and tilted his head back, his breath tight as it squeezed through his throat when Cade reached his stomach. Soft lips and a wet tongue teased his belly button as Cade tugged at his trousers.

Expectation hitched in Marlow’s chest and in his balls, a tug of pleasure that held him ready for—

His phone rang, a hard rattle against his hip bone as it vibrated. Marlow should have ignored it—he wanted to ignore it—but a decade of ingrained habits made him shove Cade back so he could grab it instead.

“Sorry,” he mouthed as he swiped over the screen to accept the call. His thumb, sticky with sweat and come, left a smear on the glass. When he lifted it to his ear, it smelled like sex. He ignored that. “Marlow.”

“Is that fucker with you?” Bennett demanded.

The question made Marlow glance at Cade, who’d slouched back against the cushions with an expression of sullen patience on his face. Marlow opened his mouth to say yes, but Bennett talked over him.

“Franklin crashed my car,” Bennett ranted, too furious to realize Marlow had misunderstood her at first. “Totaled it, complete write-off. Now the shithead has gone to get drunk and lie low. Like he can avoid me when we’re on the same shift.”

“You want me to call you an Uber?”

“Yeah,” Bennett said. “To your house. He’s still got my keys.”

Marlow scratched his head, his hair sweaty and matted as he dug his fingers into it. There was a good chance she’d tried to kill him, that she’d worked for Piper all these years.

“Look, if it’s a problem, I can go to a hotel,” Bennett said. “Whatever. Enjoy your Hungry Man microwave meal.”

“Okay.”

She snorted down the line at him. He heard a door slam behind her and what sounded like a bar in the background. “Come on. I need a shower and a good night’s sleep.”

“Text me the address,” Marlow sighed as he swung his legs off the couch and stood up. His balls ached in complaint as his jeans pulled tight over them. “I’ll come and get you.”

Bennett sighed in relief. “See?” she said. “This is why you deserve that promotion—and why you aren’t going to get it at the same time.”

She hung up.

“Seriously?” Cade asked as he slung one arm along the back of the couch. His jeans were still undone. “You’re going to pick her over me?”

Shit.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Marlow said as he padded over and bent down to pull his shoe out from under the shelf. “It’s just—”

Cade shoved himself up off the couch and tucked himself in. “I’m teasing. I get it. She’s your squad. You show up. I’d do the same for my people. Probably.”

The Converse sneaker dangled from Marlow’s fingers by a grubby lace as he looked at Cade. It felt like something in his chest had just unclenched for the first time in years. Since he woke up in the middle of the night to someone hammering on the door. He hesitated for a second, but one of them had to do it. “Do you want to go out with me?” he asked. “On a date.”

Cade zipped up and came over to pull Marlow into a slow, sweet kiss. His thumb stroked up Marlow’s neck to the tender spot under his ear. After a moment, he leaned back.

“I’ll think about it,” he said as he grabbed his shirt and headed out.

Marlow caught his breath and stepped back to pull his shoe on. “Asshole.”