Page 58 of In Too Deep

“I’m sorry.” Harrison brushed his lips across Jake’s forehead.

Jake tightened his arm around him. The adrenaline was finally bleeding away, taking the anger with it and leaving him exhausted in its wake. Cold, too, now his body had stopped running on fury and fear. He pressed closer to Harrison’s warmth and swallowed around the lingering tightness in his throat.

“I know you are.” He swallowed. “You lot always are.”

Harrison stilled. “Us lot?”

“Coppers. Detectives. Anyone who told us there were no more leads. Nowt else they could do. Sorry it weren’t Robyn every time some poor lass turned up somewhere.” Jake snuggled closer despite the bitterness crawling up his throat. “Heard a lot of fucking sorry over thirteen years.”

Harrison said nothing. He didn’t defend them. Nor tell Jake it was different now or ask him to understand. He just resumed the slow stroke of his hand over Jake’s back.

Somehow, that made it easier.

Jake sighed. “Don’t mean I don’t believe you, though.”

Harrison’s hand paused for the briefest moment.

Then continued.

And Jake did believe him.

Didn’t make any of this fair. Didn’t make the waiting easier or stop the questions circling at the back of his head. But nothing about Robyn had been fair for thirteen fucking years. And Harrison had still come back to him after fourteen hours of rain and death and pressure. Told Jake what he could when he probably shouldn’t have told him anything. And now he was holding him as though there was nowhere else he needed to be.

Maybe that had to be enough.

So Jake closed his eyes and sank heavily onto Harrison’s chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath his ear and the rain drumming softly against the unfinished roof above them.

Thirteen years of coppers asking him to trust them.

Jake never had.

But tonight, he trusted this one enough to let him hold him.

chapter eight

Grounds for Suspicion

This was far too easy a thing for Harrison to wake up to.

Jake sprawled across him in sleep, all warm weight and tangled limbs, face burrowed into the space between Harrison’s arm and his chest, one arm flung possessively around Harrison’s waist as if even unconscious he refused to let him go. And those long, thick curls tickled Harrison’s skin every time Jake breathed.

Harrison threaded his fingers through them, rain-clean hair winding softly around his knuckles.

Christ.

He could get used to this far too easily.

“You never could do casual, could you, baby?”

Harrison closed his eyes.

Not now.

He didn’t want Chris in the room. Not while the morning still held that fragile peace found in the few precious minutes before real life remembered where to find them.

Jake then stirred against him, a low sleepy sound vibrating the back of his throat. “You staring at me?”

“No.”