“Okay,” he mutters, lurching to his feet, palms slick. He picks up the crumpled piece of paper with his charges on it—the citation, Tim called it. It’s been sitting on the bench beside him because it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he should shove in his pocket, and it’s been his only reading material.

“So, you’re letting me out?” He takes a half-step toward the door, daring to hope, even though if he lets himself imagine the door opening and himself stepping out, he’ll be doubly crushed if it doesn’t happen. Tim has explained that if no one answers his calls, he’ll be out no earlier than Monday, when the judge will be in and can consider waiving his bail.

“Yeah, man. Come on.” Tim unlocks the door, and Lance feels a rush of relief so powerful that he almost sobs.

Instead, he takes hurried, shuffling steps to mask how unsteady he feels, and slips through the door the moment Tim opens it and steps back. He hadn’t realized his ears were ringing until now, when the sensation abates.

“Come on,” Tim says quietly, guiding him by the arm out of the jail vestibule and into the adjoining office. “Just need to sign you out.”

Tim’s office is basically a carbon copy of the room with the cell, except without the bars. The desk is heaped with stacks of files and reams upon reams worth of paperwork. Floor-to-ceiling shelves take up most of the wall-space, stuffed with more files, some of them in binders, and banker’s boxes with their lids askew, revealing yet more files and loose paper.

“You wouldn’t want to light a match in here,” Lance murmurs.

Tim laughs. “Hadn’t thought of that.” He hands Lance a pen.

Tim explains each form in the monotone of someone who’s repeated his lines so many times that he knows them by heart. Lance barely catches a word, but scrawls his signature on each one nonetheless. Tim feeds each signed page into a noisy desktop copier, then stacks the copies in Lance’s hands on top of his crumpled citation.

And then they go out into the hallway, and just like that, Lance is looking at Robbie Chase.

Robbie’s hands are tucked in the pockets of a pair of battered, dark-wash Wranglers. He’s wearing a coat that’s a little too puffy to be fashionable, or to flatter anyone else, but Robbie always looks good, no matter what ridiculous crap he wears. His hair got long at some point. He always used to keep it carefully trimmed above his collar, but now the strands are long enough to cling to his throat at the ends—vividly black, like they’re wet. The black cowboy hat on his head is damp, too. It must be snowing outside. The window was too small and the glass too opaque for Lance to have realized it.

The sight of him is a slap to Lance’s already abused senses.

It’s a slap he isn’t braced for, either. Lance’s world takes a hard lurch, his vision narrowing to a pinpoint, and his knees fail.