Tears spilled down Noah’s cheeks, and he asked, “What the fuck are you talking about? Y-you’re… are you leaving me? Everett. You just met him! You’re throwing away everything we have for a bit of ass?”

Larkin pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “I hope he’ll be my friend. I could really use one right now.”

“Are you drunk? Or high?”

“No.”

“Did you hit your goddamn head? You’re out of your mind.” Noah wasn’t crying anymore. He was incensed. “No, you’re fucking insane, is what you are. The years of shit I’ve had to put up with, and this is the thanks I get?”

Ah. There it was.

People don’t want to know.

But I do.

Of course Doyle did. He’d been there. Been to the bottom and kept digging deeper into that darkness. He knew profound loneliness, because what the fuck had people said to a parent mourning a child? They’d said nothing, Larkin was sure. They’d pulled away. Left Doyle devastated and alone. People hadn’t wanted to know about Abigail, just like they didn’t want to know about Patrick.

Doyle wasn’t okay. Larkin understood that now, because he used those same coping tricks. But Doyle had also seen the light. He wasn’t afraid of the extremes, of feeling happiness, of being alive. He’d been standing in that deep dark hole and thought to look up.

And that was the kind of man Larkin wanted in his life—in whatever capacity Doyle was willing to share himself.

“He was here when I got in.” That voice belonged to Porter. “I figure he was working late. Let him sleep a few more minutes—before Connor shows up.”

Larkin smelled Doyle before he heard him. Neroli and sandalwood and cardamon.

“Evie?” Fingers touched the back of his head, combing his ash-blond hair into place.

Larkin rolled his chair backward with the momentum of raising his head from the desk. He winced as everything in his back, shoulders, and neck audibly cracked. He looked up, muttering, “Ouch.”

Doyle stood in front of his desk, balancing a blue-and-white We Are Happy To Serve You coffee cup and foil-wrapped breakfast sandwich in his other hand. His brows rose, but he set the drink and food where Larkin’s head had been just a second before and said, “Good morning.”