“I’m not saying that we steal. But—”

“You shouldn’t work this case, Shaw. If I still had my license, if I could handle it solo, maybe. But not you.”

“Why?”

“Don’t. Don’t make me say this.”

“Because Matty is attracted to me?”

North’s eyes narrowed; the blue puffiness around one almost pinched it shut. “That’s interesting.”

“You know what I mean. You think I can’t be professional—”

“Because of Carl.”

The alley. The blood. The pain that hooked from low on Shaw’s waist down, between his legs.

“This isn’t anything like that.”

“It was your first date, Shaw. The first date you ever went on.”

“Not the—”

“The first date with a guy you cared about. And some maniac cornered you in an alley, damn near killed you, and killed your first crush.”

Shaw was amazed at how stable his voice was. “He wasn’t my first crush.”

“You know what I mean.”

“This isn’t the same. No, North. It isn’t. And even if it were, I’m fine. That was years ago. I’m better. I’m healthy. I’ve processed it, and I’ve moved on.”

North mouthed processed it like he was licking a battery terminal.

“I know the laws as well as you do. I know what we can do to help Matty. And I know what we can’t do.”

“If you’d just—”

“This is why we started this place. This, North. Right here. To help people that nobody else would help. I don’t like the fact that this kid is so afraid of coming out that he can’t go to the police, but I can’t change that. I can’t convince him his life would be a hundred times better if he’d drop the act and just be himself. But I can help him with this problem, right here, right now.”

“Shaw, I’m telling you—”

“And we need clients. We need work. We’ve been dark for months, North. Nothing on the radar. And now we’ve got work, we’ve got a client who’s begging us to help, and you’re going to, what? Send him packing and turn off the lights again? We might as well just close the business and go home for good.”

One of those typical North smiles flared and died like a struck match. “You do realize you live here?”

“I know that.”

“And you can’t really go home because you’re already home.”

“Well. Yeah. But it would have ruined the point. And I was making a really good speech.”

“You were.” North got up, stretched, and then settled the Carhartt jacket in place again. “This is you picking up a stray again. You know that, right?”

“He’s not a stray.”

“Sure he is. You’ll tell me if this is too much?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve made some really good gains with my therapist, North. I mean, I’ve done a lot of processing. I’m moving forward with my life.”

“And you’re doing yoga now.”

“Yeah, right. Exactly. Yoga is really going to help me live in the moment.”

“And it’s important to live in the moment.”