“Why should they bury it?” Matty asked, his head shooting up. “They’re not ashamed. And they shouldn’t be ashamed. They can believe—”

“Matty,” Shaw said.

Matty glared at North for another minute, then turned his attention to Shaw. His face crumpled. “I tried everything. I prayed. I fasted. I . . . I went into the wilderness just like Jesus did. I couldn’t do forty days, but I went for three, and I begged God to make me normal.”

Sympathy softened the strong lines of North’s face. “Kid, you are normal. You’re just not the same kind of normal as a lot of people.”

Matty shook his head; tears spilled, but he didn’t break his gaze toward Shaw.

“Matty, we can’t make you straight.” Shaw rolled his chair around the desk; Matty tracked him with his eyes. As Shaw’s chair bumped up against Matty’s, Shaw slipped an arm around the boy, pulling him against his shoulder. “We wouldn’t even want to make you straight, not even if we could. You’re too hot to be wasted on a woman.”

Matty gave a wet, sob-chuckle into Shaw’s shirt, and Shaw was suddenly aware of the boy’s wave of blond hair, the heat of his face through the thin yoga shirt, and—inexplicably—the way North’s eyes cut up toward the ceiling and his hands gripped his chair.

“If you’re here to ask us about conversion therapy—”

“No.” Matty peeled himself off Shaw’s chest and scrubbed at his eyes. “No, nothing like that. I know—I know that stuff doesn’t work. I read a lot. I mean, I guess I accepted it. You know?”

His hand ran down Shaw’s arm. His hand wrapped around Shaw’s. Amethyst eyes slid across Shaw’s face and to the floor.

“Yeah,” Shaw said, gently disentangling his hand, letting his own fingers curl around the boy’s arm—a show of support, but he didn’t want Matty getting the wrong idea. “But I still don’t know why you’re here, Matty.”

For the first time since Shaw had led Matty into the office, the boy’s tears dried up, and the delicate features hardened, and his voice lost some of its broken, waifish appeal. “I read about you guys. A gay detective agency.”

“We’re not a gay detective agency,” Shaw said automatically. “We’re a detective agency that specializes in helping the LGBTQ community.”

Matty nodded, but on his face, his confusion showed. He spoke slowly. “I . . . met him in a bar.” Matty squirmed in his seat. “Not a gay bar. But I kind of—I kind of knew a lot of gay guys went there. It’s in the Central West End. Allure. Heard of it?”

“Expensive,” North said. “Not that you care. You weren’t buying your own drinks. Not looking like you just wandered out of Shaw’s schoolboy fantasy.”

Something caught in Shaw’s throat, and he coughed, lurching forward in his seat. “I don’t have a—”

Matty shrugged, but a genuine smile blossomed on his face. “It was fun. I mean, it was scary too, but it was fun. Guys wanted to talk to me. Guys laughed at my jokes. They did buy me drinks,” there was a slightly defensive note as he glanced at North, “but that’s all right, isn’t it? I didn’t ask them to do it.”