What was worse was the way yoga had left a smudge of dirt on Shaw’s nose, and North had to wrap his hands around the chair’s seat to keep from wiping it away. For a moment, North could only think about what he’d seen ten minutes before in the kitchen: Shaw with his ass in the air, the yoga shirt sliding down to expose the wiry muscles of his back. North could see, in his mind’s eye, the serpentine white J of the scar on Shaw’s hip glinting in the light. North wasn’t a praying man, but he still said a prayer of thanks that the bastard who had done that was in prison now.

North tried to focus. What was worse, way worse, was the sweaty strand of chestnut hair that that had worked free of the bun and curled along the side of Shaw’s face. Somehow the universe had conspired to make Shaw oblivious to how every ridiculous, soy-boy idea that went through his head only made him more eminently fuckable. North’s gaze flitted to Matty long enough to see the amethyst eyes openly appraising Shaw. The universe might have made Shaw oblivious to his own fuckableness, but the universe had done no such thing to Matty Fennmore. North soothed himself by imagining garbage trucks. There was one bound for their street this morning.

“I need your help,” Matty said, chin dipping, the tears rolling harder. “I can’t—I’m not even supposed to—” He took a choked breath. “Sorry. I just, I’ve never even said it out loud.”

Shaw produced a box of Kleenex and slid it across the desk, but Matty ignored it.

“What?” North said. “What haven’t you said out loud?”

Matty dropped his face into his hands, his shoulders jerked once, twice, and then he managed to spit out, “I’m gay.”

Shaw nodded, those hazel eyes wide and brimming.

“Well, duh,” North said.

Chapter 3

Matty sobbed once into his hands, and then he looked up, red eyed and a little snotty under the nose, wiping at his face, the whole show still managing to be surprisingly pretty. “What do you mean, duh?”

Shaw was fighting to keep from glaring at North. This was typical North, Shaw thought: this distant, bitingly ironic engagement with everyone. But it seemed worse than usual. Sure, the coffee thing had probably stung because North was still processing the fact that he’d lost his license—if I’d taken the shot, Shaw thought in the black tide of memory, and gotten Hanson before he could knock me down the stairs, we wouldn’t be here—but it couldn’t have gotten North this upset. Could it?

“I think my partner meant—”

“I meant you’re obviously gay.” North sat in his chair with his knees wide, his hands flat on his thighs, his shoulders back, those ice-rim eyes fixed on Matty. “Not the mannerisms, if you’re worried about that. You come off as pretty vanilla white suburban boy, if that helps. But you’re here. We’re the only detective agency for LGBTQ people in the city, even if we’re not in the Central West End or Lafayette Square, and you’re obviously in distress, and you’re not a father or a mother who wants us to track down their kid and maybe shake the gay out of him.”