“What did the other guy look like?” Shaw moaned and tried to say something. Without looking back at him, North snapped, “Head between your fucking knees. What about the guy?”

“Brown hair. I don’t know. Cute, but not hot like the blond guy. He tipped shit, by the way.”

“The dark-haired guy?”

“Both of them. I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Security cameras. How often do they change the tapes?”

Jack snorted. “Umm, there aren’t any tapes. It goes to the cloud.”

“How long is the data stored?”

“Maybe like a week.”

“You’re the assistant manager?”

“Yeah. I mean, if you want something, maybe some apps, I could—”

“Video from that night. I’ll pay cash.”

The hurt on Jack’s face was comical. He was just too pretty. And like most Chouteau boys, he wasn’t used to not getting his way. “I don’t think—”

North let his thumb slide along the swell of the boy’s bicep. He smiled, the fuck-all smile that he’d figured out how to use a long time before he’d realized he was gay. Sometimes, talking only got you so far. Sometimes, it was better just to smile.

“Yeah, I mean, like.” Jack ran his tongue against the back of his teeth. “How much? Like a thousand dollars?”

“Two hundred.”

“I can’t—”

“Jack.”

The boy actually quivered. “Two fifty,” he squeaked.

“Because I like your eyes.”

When North released him, Jack shot through the fire door, and then the metal door swung shut and cut off the music from inside the bar. North set a hand on Shaw’s neck, reached into his back pocket, and extracted Shaw’s wallet. He could count on Shaw always having an obscene amount of cash—some things never changed—and he extracted the promised two fifty. And then another fifty because Matty was going to foot the bill, and because sometimes—North thought about the sofa, with Tuck closed up in their bedroom, that whole California king to himself, and the nights when Tuck came home wasted, and the nights when Tuck didn’t come home at all, and he thought about a twenty-two-year-old so desperate to impress that he bragged about his internship—it was nice to be appreciated.

“I think I should—” Shaw began.

“Stop. Right there.”

Shaw stopped.

When Jack returned, he held a flash drive, and he counted the money before he passed it to North.

“This is more than we agreed.”

“The extra fifty is for you to use on a date. Because I think you’re cute.”

Red raced along Jack’s cheekbones, and he actually scuffed the toe of his sneaker on the brick pavement. It was so fucking endearing that North thought things might have been different if more Chouteau boys had been like Jack when North had been in school.

“I should get back inside.”

“How much dairy do you eat?”

“What?”

“A lot?”

“I don’t know. A normal amount.”

“Do you do yoga?”

“I used to go to this Bikram place—”

“How do you feel about the patriarchy?”

Jack grinned. “Fuck ’em. What are you on about?”