Park acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. “It’s never going to bother me that you had a sex life before me,” he said, which still somehow felt like avoiding the question, though Cooper wasn’t sure why. “How long were you together?”

“Four years, more or less,” Cooper said. “Plus a handful of times after I left undercover, but that was, you know, nothing.”

Well, not nothing. What it had been was a series of mistakes once or twice a year when they ran into each other in the office. Relapses, more than anything else. Then Cooper had been attacked and moved to the BSI. Without any reason to run into Neil again—and a whole hell of a lot else on his mind—Cooper had just...stopped thinking of him. That was the unexpected and strange thing about traumas that changed the course of your life. They eclipsed the good and the bad parts alike.

After a quiet moment, Cooper realized Park was staring at him, clearly surprised. “What’s wrong?”

“Four years while you were working undercover?” Park repeated. “You must have gotten together very quickly.”

Cooper laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. He blew me on my first day. Quite a welcome,” he added in a mutter, remembering how shocked he’d been by the whole thing. Hours into the official start of his career, still agonizing over whether he wanted to be out at work or not, and practically the next thing he knew Neil’s hand was in his pants.

Cooper shook off the memory and realized Park looked upset. He kicked himself. “Sorry. Too much information, obviously.”

“That’s not why I’m—” Park bit his lip, cutting himself off, and worried thoughtfully at the scar there. “You must have been young,” he said, sounding cautious for some reason.

“God, it feels that way now,” Cooper said with a laugh. “But I was halfway through my twenties already. Definitely an adult, by any definition.”

“And he was your senior partner. On your first assignment,” Park said, still in that strange, careful tone.

Cooper caught on. “It wasn’t like that,” he protested quickly. “I wasn’t pressured into anything.”

Park’s expression didn’t change.

“Seriously, I wasn’t that new. And he wasn’t my boss or anything.” Distantly, Cooper recognized that if someone else were the one saying this to him, he would definitely still look as concerned as Park did. But it wasn’t someone else saying it. It was his life and he knew it wasn’t like that. How could it have been when Cooper was, well, the way he was?