“It’s a little scary.” Robin’s voice was low, but it carried clearly from the hall into the primary bedroom, where Jules was burrowed listlessly beneath the covers of their bed. “I just flew back from Atlanta, I’ve only been home about an hour myself, but I’ve got another job out in LA next week and, well, I’m gonna cancel, because... Well. I’m not leaving him like this.”
At first Jules thought his husband was talking to Lulu, the next door neighbor’s miniature Schnauzer that they sometimes took care of as part of Robin’s ridiculous prep for their at-that-time-impending baby—as if an elderly dog was anything close to a newborn infant. But Jules had gone alongwith it because Robin was Robin and why the hell not? Lulu was a very sweet if anxious little dog, but he’d imprinted almost instantly onto Jules and was content to visit them on the condition that he glue himself to Jules’s side.
But sloppy kisses, adorable puppy eyes, and way less adorable dog farts beneath these already too-ripe sheets and blankets were one hundred percentnotwhat Jules needed right now.
What he needed was a time machine.
“Please just let me sleep,” he said, but he didn’t have the energy to do more than whisper.
The door to the bedroom opened anyway—which it would’ve regardless of Robin’s hearing him or not.
He pulled the blanket over his head—not that Robin would heedthatmessage, either. And sure enough the mattress sagged as Robin climbed in behind him—except, no, wait, that was definitely not Robin.
It was...
“Hey, Squidward.” Yup, it was one of Jules’s best friends, Sam Starrett—here in Massachusetts, what the hell...?—who was now spooning him, big arms wrapped around Jules’s chest, likethatwasn’t at all freaking weird.
Nor was it Robin who was climbing under the covers facing Jules. It was Sam’s wife Alyssa, Jules’s OG best friend from the shining, golden, halcyon days of the past, back when they were partners in his beloved FBI. She snuggled in close to him, intertwining her legs with his. She’d kicked off her shoes and her feet were cold.
She took his no-doubt-extremely-surprised face in her hands and kissed him on the very shocked nose.
“You did the right thing,” she told him, resting her head on Robin’s pillow. She was clearly in travel mode—her gorgeous brown skin devoid of make-up but smooth andclear, her expressive eyes filled with both love and empathy. “Absolutely. One hundred percent.”
Jules’s stomach twisted. It sure didn’t feel like the right thing. “I should’ve stayed. I should fight,” he whispered. “But, God, that loyalty oath... I just... I couldn’t. I can’t and... I feel like such a coward.”
From behind him, Big Spoon Sam hugged him even more tightly. “Yeah, well, you’re not, Jules.”
It was, perhaps, one of a single-digit number of times Sam had ever called Jules by his first name instead ofCassidyor some random and amusing-but-mostly-amusing-to-Sam nickname likeSquidward.It was made even more odd because as Sam spoke, the heat of his breath moved Jules’s unwashed hair against his ear, which was a brand new experience for them both.
“What are you doing here?” Jules asked. “Please tell me you didn’t come all this way...?”
“For you?” Alyssa said, and Sam unisoned her, “Absolutely.” He added, “SAN to BOS, nonstop, baby.”
Jules sighed as he closed his eyes. “Robin, you shouldn’t’ve.”
“Hey, well, I didn’t, babe.” The mattress jostled again as Robin climbed into their bed just behind Alyssa. He lifted his head to look at Jules over her array of dark curls. “Alyssa and Sam called me because Max called them.”
Max Bhagat.
Jules’s former boss at the FBI.
To whom Jules had CCed his emailed letter of resignation, written on his iPhone from this very bed, on the nausea-filled, heart-sinking, gut-wrenching morning he’d found out that yes. Yes, this new administration was going to be awful not just for the entire country, but for the Bureau, and for FBI agents like him, personally, as well. He’d been drasticallydemoted and assigned to some lower-level desk in some backwoods, deep-red-state office in which he couldn’t possibly thrive—or even expect Robin to go with him. A place where the freaking Pride flag had actually beenbanned. A place where they would live in constant fear and danger...?
The cruelty was the point.
And frankly, he was done with it.
Max had responded to the news of his resignation with a brief but sincere, “I understand completely, my friend,” and signed “With my utmost disbelief and deepest regrets.”
“My whole life is gone,” Jules said.
“Hey!” Robin lifted his head again, even as Sam growled in Jules’s ear. “Boy Wonder and I bothforcefullydisagree withthatbullshit thinking.”
“Career,” Jules said. “I meant career. God, I thought the work I was doing mattered—or... maybe I was just fooling myself.”
As a gay man, Jules had been the first in the Bureau so many times, he’d lost count. He knew he’d never head the entire, vast organization—being so publicly married to a movie star with a somewhat messy past had made attaining that position highly unlikely. But he’d been a whisper away from stepping into Max’s high-level job when Max was next promoted. But even that was likely not going to happen now. Max Bhagat himself was unlikely to advance inthisFBI underthisadministration. Assuming there was even going to be an FBI after the dust settled.
“I just don’t know anymore,” Jules continued. “I was trying to change the world, but... the world refuses to be changed.”
