The last text he’d sent to Cloister sat at the bottom of the chain.Read, but unanswered.
It had been nearly two hours.Javi had put a “hold” on losing hisfuckingmind about this, but it was starting to fray.The distraction of work, always a gold standard solution before, only worked for short bursts before the knot of “what the fuck was going on” yanked a little tighter at the back of his mind.
The fact that Lara wouldn’t answer his calls was probably just bad timing, but between that and the silent rebuke of being left on read… Javi didn’t need any reminders about how bad he was with relationships, but they kept on coming.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and scrubbed his hand roughly over his face.The worst part was that heknewwhat had him twisting in the wind wasn’t the possibility that Cloister, despite his earlier confidence, might have realized the smart call was to call it a day on this.It was that right now none of it was in Javi’s control.
Not that he wanted to break up—for more reasons than just the still-sharp memory of broad freckled shoulders and Cloister’s warm, wet mouth…but that was up there—but at least he could take an active role in it.
Javi snorted to himself as he slid his hands back until he could lace them together over the nape of his neck.And to think people called him a control freak.
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and then let it out.
Right now, there was nothing more he could do to help Cloister, so he needed to focus on Joel.That meant, until he could get hold of Lara, pulling the dangling thread of that unretired UC line, he needed to—
Before he could line up a concrete plan of action, his phone buzzed.Javi’s eyes snapped open, and he grabbed it off the seat and swiped to answer.
He expected to hear Cloister’s voice; instead, he got Tancredi’s light contralto.“Agent Merlo?”The dull weight of disappointment made his voice more sour than he’d meant.
“What do you want?”he asked.
There was a pause.He could feel her squirm at the other end, caught between feeling bad she’d fucked over Cloister and justified because she had done her job.Or, Javi thought with an internal snort, maybehewas the one projecting.
He grimaced.“Sorry—”
At the same time, Tancredi blurted out, “I didn’t want to—”
There was a pause as they unraveled who was where in the hierarchy of the apology.Javi got in first.
“It wasn’t your fault, it’s just—”
“It’s OK,” Tancredi said quickly.“I should have—”
“Better you than someone stupider,” Javi interrupted.His patience with other people’s feelings was already gone, and before he made it worse, he nudged her back on track.“What was it?”
There was a long pause.Long enough that Javi rubbed the bridge of his nose.It felt like a “Cloister’s done something” pause.
“Did he hit Kincaid?”
“No,” Tancredi said quickly.Then a little slower, “I mean, not quite.But he’s maybe done something worse?”
Javi knew that wasn’t a good thing, but the idea of needing to manage whatever the fallout was going to be did take the edge off his nerves.
He hit the button to start the car and glanced in the rearview.As the hands-free picked up the call, he tossed his phone back onto the passenger seat.
“Tell me on the way,” he said.“Where is he?”
“Youwereright,”Cloistersaid as he looked up at Javi, one hand raised to shade his eyes against the sun.He was sat on the curb outside a neat heather-gray ranch house, worn denim stretched over his bent knees.“He got under my skin.”
Javi stopped on the sidewalk.He took his sunglasses off and hooked them into the neckline of his shirt.Bon was curled up on the sidewalk behind Cloister, feet and nose tucked up into a deceptively small ball of black fur.She acknowledged Javi with a glance from one amber eye and a flick of an ear.
“I spent the whole drive over looking forward to that ‘I told you so,’” Javi said.
Cloister squinted one eye shut.The web of creases that fanned out from the corner made Javi feel oddly possessive.He knew the odds were against him making this relationship last—at this point, even hitting an anniversary felt like wishful thinking—but the idea of it had its appeal.
“You can still say it if you want,” Cloister offered.
“No,” Javi said.“You’ve taken the joy out of it.”
