Matty’s smile was small, but it was there. “It’s getting later and later. Pretty soon you’re going to say dinner.”

“Lunch. I promise. I’ll call you.”

“Night, Shaw.”

“Night. Straight home, Matty. You hear?”

He nodded, and his smile got a little brighter. With a wave, he ended the call.

Shaw slumped in his seat. This thing with Matty, the way it felt, the way it was moving, the speed of it—

Blowing out a breath, Shaw started the car and headed home. Alone in the Mercedes, with the leather seats heating comfortably beneath him, with the city made beautiful in grayscale, Shaw let Matty’s call fade into the background. He tried to process what had happened over the last hour. North liked to tease him about how much he used that word, but that was just North being North; North liked to tease him about just about everything. Shaw’s mind kept short-circuiting, jumping back. The suddenness of seeing the blade appear at North’s throat. The shock of Jeremy’s hand on Shaw’s shoulder, and then the immense force windmilling him across the room, and the weight of Jeremy’s combat boot on Shaw’s neck. The red panic in Shaw’s brain as oxygen dwindled, the slick leather under his nails as he clawed at Jeremy’s leg, trying to free himself. Worst of all, though, was the helplessness. It had been like the alley again, with Carl dead at his feet, and a black surf rolling in over Shaw. He hadn’t been able to do anything to help North; the darkness had swallowed him.

Suddenly, the only light in the world seemed to come from the Mercedes’ dash, and Shaw felt like he was sinking in that black surf again, going under. Drowning. He jerked the wheel, felt the tires rumble against the curb, and pumped the brakes. Head against the steering wheel, he forced himself to breathe. That shorted-out circuit kept looping him back in: the blade, the tilt-a-whirl room, the panic lights in his brain.

Shaw fumbled with the dash, dimming the glow, but he couldn’t turn off the beacon light inside his head. North. He’d been worried about himself, fuck yes, but he’d also been so goddamn afraid for North that it had opened a part of Shaw that he hadn’t faced in a long time. It was like he’d known, on the surface, how he felt when he saw North, how his heart sped up when he smelled him, how every accidental touch sent his body into overdrive. And then tonight, like a meteor, had slammed into Shaw and left a crater deep enough to bury the dinosaurs. Now he could see again—he had been forced to see—how very deep what he felt for North went. Not just deep. All the way down. When Brueckmann had held the knife to North’s throat—

Before Shaw had fully finished thinking about—processing—what he was going to do, he had spun the wheel and dropped his foot down on the gas; the Mercedes zipped a neat u-turn that sent Shaw speeding back toward the highway.