Page 38 of Rust of Control

"Rand?" Jude said, into his neck.

"Custody. DPD's on the way. It goes to trial."

A long exhale, warm against his throat.

"The kids?" Jude asked, breathless.

"Ghost is running the Windsor lead now. Canadian authorities by morning." He tightened his arm. "They're going to be found, Jude. That's where this ends."

Jude's hand came up and fisted in the front of Nate's jacket. Not collapsing. Just holding on. Nate held back.

The cold air smelled like the river and diesel and the concrete that held Detroit's cold in after the rest of the city let it go, and somewhere above them the Majestic's marquee was lit, and the crowd was filing out the front door talking about a song that had come from someone's broken ribs and a body that was still there and still his.

Nate stood in the dark with the man he loved and didn't move until Jude was ready to.

Later. Much later, back at the safehouse, the house loud with crew and Kit and Sy and Mara and Jaz telling some story that had Dray's mouth doing the suppressed thing while Ghost watched with the expression he got when he was trying not to find something funny. Jude sat on the kitchen counter with his coffee and looked at the room.

This room. These people. The city outside being just as much a part of his family as the people in it.

Nate came and stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and didn't say anything. One of Nate's best qualities. The ability to be present without filling all the air.

"Dray called the DPD," Jude said.

"He did."

"Not the crew's usual approach."

"No." Nate's shoulder was warm against his. "But you said you didn't want Rand's death on your conscience. So." He picked up his own coffee. "Dray made a call."

Jude looked at him. At this man. Steady, warm, who'd spent fifteen years being the one who answered and had finally, in this house, in this year, let someone answer back. Who'd held the truth about Rand for days because the operation required it and told Jude the second he was allowed to. Who'd stood at the sound board instead of backstage because the work needed it, even though every part of him wanted to be in that corridor.

"Nate," Jude said.

"Yeah."

"Thank you. For-" He stopped. There wasn't a version small enough to fit in a sentence. "For all of it."

Nate reached out and tucked the almost-white hair behind Jude's ear, the same gesture from the kitchen table the night Easton's verdict came back, and from every morning since, a thing Nate did without thinking, a habit that had become its own kind of language.

"You did the hard part," Nate said.

"We did it."

Nate's mouth did the thing. "We did it," he agreed.

Across the kitchen Jaz was laughing at something, genuine and surprised, bright enough that Dray's suppressed expression gave up the fight. Kit caught Jude's eye from across the room and raised his coffee mug an inch.

Jude raised his back.

Outside, the river went by. The city kept its watch. In a safehouse near the waterfront that smelled like coffee and too many people and two men who had chosen each other at the ragged end of a very bad year, Jude held his mug in both hands and felt like the room he was in was his to stand in.

He wasn't going anywhere.

Chapter 19

The key stuck for a second in the new lock, it still did that sometimes, which Jude was going to get fixed when he remembered to care about it.

He shouldered the door open and the smell hit him first: candles. Not cheap ones, the good kind, something warm and woody, three of them on the kitchen counter in a row like Nate had thought about the arrangement. The overhead was off. The corner lamp was on, turned low.