The silence between them had texture. Nero could feel Amani working through it, running calculations in real time the same way he had with the bear's fist bump a few weeks back. But this calculation was bigger, messier, and had more variables, because the ferret who'd been a safe place at four in the morning was standing in the club wearing a keycard, and safe places weren't supposed to move.
"She hired a ferret to run security at a shifter kink club." Amani's voice was carefully flat. "A ferret."
"A ferret who came through a window and carried you out of a ranch house. But sure, focus on the species."
The flatness cracked. Not much. A fissure, a shift in the jaw, the almost-flinch of someone who'd been hit with something true and was trying to decide whether to be angry about it or grateful. He picked the glass back up and resumed polishing, but the rhythm was different. Faster. Tighter. The hands doing something so the rest of the body could process.
Nero didn't push. He stood at the bar and waited the way he always waited, in the space between what Amani said and what he meant, and the gap was wide that night and full of thingsneither of them were going to say in a room with eighty people and a sound system.
"Your screwdriver's at the end of the bar," Amani said finally. He turned back to his customers.
Nero looked at the end of the bar. The screwdriver was there. Ice, vodka, orange juice, a pink cocktail umbrella tucked into the rim that hadn't been there the last time Amani had made him one. He didn't know where the umbrella had come from or when Amani had decided to add it or what it meant, but it was there. Amani was already serving someone else and not looking at him, which meant the umbrella was supposed to do the talking.
He took the screwdriver to his usual stool and sat, drank it, and didn't remove the umbrella.
They didn't talk for the rest of the night. Nero did his rounds. Amani poured his drinks. The club moved around them. The distance between the security office and the bar was exactly sixty-two steps, Nero counted. He made a point of not walking past the bar more than was professionally necessary, which turned out to be about four times an hour, which was probably twice more than necessary but he was new and still learning the layout and anyone who suggested otherwise could take it up with his supervisor.
He was in trouble. He'd known he was in trouble since the pillow. But trouble, for a ferret, was just another word for something worth paying attention to. Nero had never once in his life stopped paying attention to something because it was trouble.
At close, Bethany found him in the security office reviewing the night's footage. She leaned against the doorframe. "How'd it go?"
"Fine. Your brother's mad at your mother."
"My brother's always mad at my mother. That's not news. I meant—" She gestured between the office and the direction of the bar. "The two of you."
"Professional."
Bethany's smile was knowing in a way that made her look exactly like Lady Leo. "Sure," she said, in the exact same tone Harold had used. "Welcome to the family, Nero."
She walked away. Nero sat in his small office with the broken armrest he'd fixed and the monitors showing an empty club. The smell of the last security guy's cologne finally fading. He thought about sixty-two steps and a screwdriver that had been waiting for him with a pink umbrella that a kid who was angry about having something he needed had put in his drink without being asked.
It was a good first day.
Chapter Eighteen
Nero was walking the perimeter. He did it twice a night, once at ten, once at close, checking the exits, the lot, the sidewalk, the new cameras he'd had installed along the four blocks between the club and the cross street. The cameras had gone in his second week. Lady Leo had signed off on the invoice without comment, though the number had been significant enough that Nero had expected at least a raised eyebrow. She'd just initiated the purchase order and slid it back across the desk and said, "I should have done this years ago," and the weight in those words had been enough that Nero hadn't pushed.
The back door opened and Amani came out.
He didn't see Nero at first. He was moving the way he moved when he thought he was alone, slower, less controlled, the bartender performance stripped away and the kid underneath showed through. He sat down on the concrete step and pulled off his sneakers one at a time, wincing as each one came off, and stretched his socked feet out in front of him and tipped his head back against the door frame and closed his eyes.
Miriam had cleared him for full shifts two days ago. He'd immediately worked a double, because Amani's relationship with his own limits was adversarial at best. His feet were paying for it. Nero could see the way he'd been favoring his left heel all night, the deeper cuts had closed but the scar tissue was new and tender and standing for ten hours on it was the kind of decision that made sense to a twenty-year-old who equated rest with weakness.
Nero could have gone back inside through the side entrance. Completed his perimeter check without Amani knowing he'd been there. The professional thing. The safe thing.
He walked over instead.
"Your feet," he said.
Amani opened one eye. "Are fine."
"Are off."
"Temporarily off. I'm going back in."
"You've been favoring your left since eight o'clock."
Both eyes opened. The amber was sharp in the security light, catching the overhead fluorescent the way a cat's eyes caught headlights. "You've been watching my feet since eight o'clock?"
