“You understand why he didn’t volunteer it, though, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gavin met Jackson’sgaze. “You knew he’s gay. Before yesterday, I mean.”
“I did, yes.” Jackson tried not to let his reaction show on his face, but Gavin was stupidly good at reading people.
“You and Park knew each other before, you said. In college, right?” Gavin’s brow furrowed, but then his eyebrows shot up. “Oh my god. You told me when we dated that you’d been in a long relationship with a guy from college.It was Park, wasn’t it?”
Jackson’s heart sank. But he said, “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you used to sleep with your client?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant to the investigation.”
“Not relevant! How could it not be relevant?”
“It doesn’t change the facts of the case. It doesn’t affect how innocent or guilty Park is.”
“Oh, fuck you, Jack. You knew this whole fucking timethat he’s gay and you let me go off on the wild goose chase, assuming Haufman was his girlfriend.”
“I told you she wasn’t, you’ll recall. I was quite insistent on that point. He really didn’t know her.”
Gavin scrubbed his face with his hands. He sat quietly for a long moment. Jackson wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he waited for Gavin to collect whatever thoughts he had. He braced himselffor Gavin to yell at him and prepared to fight back. Instead, Gavin looked at Jackson again and said, “Wait, so let me recap this situation. Your closeted ex-boyfriend, whom I’m guessing you hadn’t seen in a while, showed up and hired you to defend him against potential criminal charges in a murder investigation? And you just said yes?”
“Not quite like that. I spent almost a day agonizingover whether to take the case. And you advised me against it even without knowing Park and I used to be together romantically.”
Gavin frowned. “Right, of course. But you still said yes.”
“I will never be able to explain it in a way that will make you stop making that face.”
Gavin schooled his features, his face going neutral. “That’s kind of ethically murky, isn’t it?”
Veryethicallymurky. Jackson was still torn up about that point. Concern over ethics had gone out the window the moment they’d gotten naked together a few nights before, but Jackson had spent all last night in his own bed fretting about the situation. This was not information he planned to share with Gavin, though. “It’s not like we’re still together. We split five years ago, so plenty of time has passed.If I were holding on to any hostility that would have made it hard to defend him, I would have said no.” The stakes had changed now, though. The cracked-open window comment had been hanging over him since Park had mentioned it last night. Did Park mean it? Would he come out?
“Still, it must have been weird to see him again.”
“To understate it, yes.”
Gavin stared at Jackson for a moment.“I’ve known you a lot of years, Jack, and I know how you operate, how you think, and this case clearly has you rattled. So let me take a step back. You and Parker Livingston were together once.”
It felt kind of nice to talk about this with Gavin, because Gavin was his friend and deserved the whole truth, though Jackson also felt like he’d been discussing this a lot lately. “Yeah, we were togetherfor a very long time. I thought we’d spend the rest of our lives together. He left me to go into politics.”
“I’m surprised you don’t resent him.”
“I did, for a long time. I’m...well, I’m not quite over it, but enough time has passed that I felt okay about helping him out with the case.”
“I won’t arrest him, if that makes any of this better.”
“It does a little.” Particularly sinceJackson planned to sever his attorney-client relationship with Park as soon as possible. “Thanks for being so forthright with me on this case. You didn’t have to be.”
“We are friends, right?”
Jackson smiled. “Somehow we are. A strange, unholy alliance between a homicide detective and a criminal defense attorney.”
“I know. I can’t believe we used to date.”
Jackson laughed. “Canyou imagine if we still did?”
Just then, the main office door clanged. Jackson and Gavin both froze—the office wasn’t usually open on Saturdays, so it was odd for anyone to be in the office—but Reed appeared in the doorway to Jackson’s office a moment later. “Hey, folks.”
