His only indication Atticus had heard him was the stiffening of his posture. Jericho shook his head, making his way out of the building. He didn’t know why he’d done it. Why he’d sought him out, toyed with him. He was just prolonging the inevitable, but it was so hard not to poke at him when he reacted so easily.
His phone rang. He frowned when he saw the name. Detective Vélez. The name was like a punch to the gut. It had to be about Mercy. Her face flashed in his vision, and part of him was relieved he still remembered what she looked like from memory. It had been eight years since she went missing.
Jericho mentally geared himself up for whatever was coming next before he swiped to answer. “Detective.”
The man on the other end of the line cleared his throat. “Hey, Jericho. I know it’s been a while but I was hoping you could swing by the station? We have some news on your sister.”
Jericho didn’t really care for police stations. “What news? What’s up?”
“Um, I tried getting in touch with your parents first, but I was told your father had passed away. My condolences. They say your mother is not doing well either, so I thought maybe it would be better to speak with you instead of upsetting her—”
“Just spit it out, Gabe,” Jericho finally snapped.
“We think we found Mercy’s body, but we’re going to need you to give a positive ID.”
Jericho’s head swam, and for a split second, he thought he was going to pass out. He ducked into the stoop of a vintage clothing store, letting the weight of the other man’s statement carry him down until he sat on the pavement, his elbows braced on raised knees.
A positive ID on bones? That made no sense. She’d been gone for years. She would have been dust. “Where?” he asked, practically choking on the bitter bile rising in his throat.
“If you could just—”
The sound Jericho made was somewhere between a shout and a snarl. “Where the fuck did you find my sister, Gabe?”
“We pulled her out of the bay five hours ago.”
Jericho shook his head, his brain rejecting the information. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“Please, we don’t know any more than that. She didn’t have prints in the system and DNA is going to take weeks. Could you just help us out here?”
Help them out. Help them out… As if they were the ones whose whole world had just imploded.
He made a disgusted sound. “Yeah, Gabe. I can help you out.”
Atticus wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, staring at the door, wondering if that had actually happened or if he’d slipped into some kind of fugue state and hallucinated the entire thing. It had to be the latter. It had to be.
Atticus didn’t hook up with strangers, he didn’t allow men to order him around, didn’t slam them up against walls so he could drop to his knees for them…no matter how sexy that man was, or how dark his eyes were, or how soft his lips, or how low and raspy his voice was when he spoke.
His lids fluttered shut.Open up for me. Give me your tongue.He couldn’t stop the shiver that rolled over him.As much as Atticus wanted to pretend he’d imagined the whole thing, he could still taste Jericho on his tongue, his lips were still red, and his throat still sore. He’d practically begged to suck him off. Atticus shook his head. He’d been so close to getting out of the interaction without embarrassing himself.
Jericho had been leaving. He could have just let him go and gone about his day, but a tightness in his chest he’d never experienced before had overwhelmed him. Not knowing if he’d see him again had stolen his breath and forced him to act on instinct. And his natural instinct had been to kneel. For him. Christ.
And now, he didn’t know what to do with that. Was that fear? Had Atticus—somebody who’d never truly experienced terror—in that moment been afraid of not seeing Jericho again? Maybe he was just bored. He’d been in a dating slump since his brothers had decided to start mating for life like psychotic penguins. He’d never had much luck with the opposite sex. Any sex, really. He just found people…tedious. And he would rather focus on work, on doing things he was good at.
He pulled his phone free, pulling up Kendra’s Instagram, scrolling through tone deaf posts about annoying baristas and breaking a strap on her Balenciaga handbag. One he’d bought her when they’d first started dating.
Dating Kendra had been easy. It was like dating an inflatable doll. She was all surface, just like him. He never had to worry about hurting her feelings. She didn’t have any. She was vapid and shallow. Any perceived slight had been easily forgiven as soon as Atticus opened his wallet.
If he was being honest, he’d never felt anything for Kendra, but that wasn’t uncommon for people with his diagnosis. He’d chalked it up to his bad genes. He was just wired wrong. She’d never asked for flowery confessions of love. She didn’t care if he’d rather work until midnight. She’d only asked for material possessions. That should have been enough for him. Why couldn’t she have just been enough for him?
Now there was this fucking man, this total stranger, and Atticus had felt…bereft when he’d left him, a sensation he hadn’t even thought possible. It just made no fucking sense. Was this how Adam had felt? Or August? Was this why they were so violently protective of Noah and Lucas? Why had they been so eager to embrace this feeling? It was…awful. It made him feel like he couldn’t take full breaths. It made him feel like he couldn’t concentrate, and he didn’t have the kind of job where one could be distracted by brown-eyed men with zero boundaries.
He jumped at the knock on the door. “Come in,” he barked.
Noah stuck his head around the door, pulling a face. “Is that how you talk to your employees? You sound like a dick.”
“Why are you here?” Atticus asked, his sour mood worsening. He couldn’t seem to wipe the scowl off his face.
“Wow, who pissed in your bran flakes this morning?” Noah asked, slipping in and closing the door behind him.
