Larkin considered the invitation. He didn’t want to go home. Wasn’t ready to handle whatever inevitable fallout was waiting for him there. But a look around the bullpen told him, if not home with Noah, he’d be sitting in the precinct alone. And for the first time in… he honestly couldn’t remember how long, the prospect of alone held little appeal. It was disconcerting how quickly Doyle’s presence had become routine to Larkin’s professional life. He seemed to complement Larkin’s job, despite how drastically different their careers were, and he was smart and quick and… just sort of a pleasure to be in the general vicinity of.

“I don’t want to impose,” Larkin answered.

“It’s not imposing if I offered, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

Doyle tilted his head in the direction of the stairs.

Larkin quickly collected his casework, returned it all to its accordion folder, put on his suit coat, and followed Doyle to the first floor.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Doyle lived on the edge of the Village—West Thirteenth between Seventh and Eighth—in a walk-up painted fire-engine red. Warm tungsten orange glowed in the windows of residents still awake at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday, and the lamps outlined the shape of the fire escape zigzagging all the way up to the fifth floor.

Larkin had asked if he should follow, but Doyle suggested they take his Audi and he’d hop the subway uptown the next morning. While Larkin drove down Lexington, Doyle had called in a takeout order to the restaurant, from a menu he knew by heart, apparently. Sweet-and-sour chicken, lo mein, dumplings, and both egg rolls and vegetable spring rolls. And when they’d reached Doyle’s neighborhood, he instructed Larkin on where to park, got out of the car, and said he’d run to the end of the block to pick up dinner and would be right back.

Larkin sat behind the wheel, watching Doyle disappear and reappear in the pools of light cast off by the overhead streetlamps. He checked his phone. No more texts or calls from Noah since he’d hung up on his husband midsentence. Larkin considered phoning, telling Noah he was done with work for the night but was grabbing a quick bite with a colleague before heading home.

A bite at Doyle’s apartment, not a restaurant.

But why should it matter where they ate? Larkin had admitted to Doyle just that morning that he sometimes struggled with sensory overload, that it kicked compulsive tendencies into overdrive. And it’d been a long day of exactly that. The fact that Doyle suggested somewhere private, quiet, and low-key was really the selling point to eating dinner at all. No competing conversations, bright overheads, or clangs and bangs from a working kitchen.

Not that Noah would see it that way.