Chapter Twenty-Four
Amani came to Jack's apartment alone. No Nero. No relay. No wall between them. Just a knock at the door on a Sunday afternoon and when Jack opened it, Amani was standing in the hallway with his hoodie unzipped and his sleeves pushed up and his hands visible and empty.
"Can I come in?" Amani asked.
Jack stepped aside. Amani walked in and looked around the apartment the way he looked at a new bar setup, appraising, cataloging.
The bed against the wall. The dresser with three empty drawers and one that held everything Jack owned.
The window facing east. The counter where Jack had left the names.
He was planning to tell Harold about his list. But Amani had come to him first.
Amani stopped at the counter.
He stood there reading the names. Jack watched from across the room and didn't speak.
His finger moved down the surface, pausing on names he recognized.
He stopped on one near the center and was quiet for a long time.
Jack didn't ask which name. The names belonged to people Amani hadn't known before the kidnapping and would never meet, people whose lives had intersected with the shiver the way Amani's had, through violence and coercion and the machinery of a system that consumed bodies and called it culture.
"Who are they all?" Amani asked.
"Everyone I hurt. Everyone who hurt me. Everyone who was part of the system.
" Jack leaned against the wall. His arms were crossed, the healed cuts visible on his forearms, thin pink lines that would fade to white over time.
Injuries caused by another shifter didn't heal quickly. They still hurt and would take time.
Amani pulled out a stool and sat down. He put his elbows on the counter, on the names, and looked at Jack. "Harold told me about the pool. What happened with you and Rashe. The full story."
Jack snorted. "He talks too much."
"Harold talks exactly the right amount. He just talks to me about you and to you about me, which means both of us know more about each other than we'd probably choose.
" The faintest smile. "He's a terrible gossip for a cop.
Though, he is quitting soon I'm told. Going to take on security full time for us like Nero did. "
That was news to Jack, though not surprising. He was sure Lady Leo paid more than shifter police ever could.
Amani looked at the counter again. His hands were flat on the surface, fingers spread over the names.
"I came here to tell you something and I've been putting it off for a while.
And don't worry, it's not that Harold and you are together and I'm somehow upset about that.
You seem happy, he does too. It's not my business. But this..." Amani took a deep breath.
Jack waited. He'd learned to wait from watching Harold wait, and from watching Nero wait, and from the weeks of standing at the bar while Amani decided, in his own time, whether to speak to him directly or through the relay. Amani's timing was his own. Nobody rushed a lion.
"I forgive you for the part you had in what was done to me," Amani said after a few minutes where they simply stared at each other.
The words landed in the room and Jack felt each one settle between them. His lungs tightened. His hands gripped his own arms hard enough that the healed cuts protested. He opened his mouth and nothing came out and he closed it and stood there against the wall and let the words exist between them.
"That doesn't mean I'm over it," Amani continued.
"It doesn't mean I don't still flinch when I smell sharks on a crowded night.
It doesn't mean the hoodie is going away or that the nightmares have stopped or that I don't still check the locks twice before bed.
" He took a shuddering breath. "It means I've decided to put down the part of it that's about you.
You drove the van. You tied the rope. You knew about the crane.
All of that is true and I'm not pretending it's not.
But you also called in the tip. You sat in holding for months.
You came to my bar every night and worked harder than anyone I've ever hired and you told me the truth about the crane when you could have kept it hidden forever.
And you walked out of that house, called Harold, sat on those steps because you chose us over them.
You destroyed your shiver for us. You killed one of your own kind for us. "
Amani stood up from the stool. He crossed the small apartment to where Jack was standing against the wall.
Jack didn't move. Couldn't move. Amani stopped in front of him, inside the arm's-reach distance that had been forbidden since the first day, and Jack could smell the warm amber of lion and the coffee from whatever Amani had been drinking and the faint clean scent of laundry detergent.
Amani put his arms around Jack and hugged him.
Jack's body locked. Every muscle, every joint, the rigid freeze of a person who didn't know what to do with an embrace that wasn't preceded by a fight.
Amani's arms were around his shoulders, firm and warm, the hoodie fabric pressing against Jack's neck.
The lion held him the way people hold something they've decided not to break, with deliberate care and no hesitation.
Jack's arms came up. Slowly, the way a rusted hinge moves when it's forced open for the first time in years.
He put his hands on Amani's back, held on and the sound that came out of him was not crying and not words, just air, pushed out of his chest by the weight of something he'd carried for months that was suddenly lighter.
Amani held him for thirty seconds. Then he pulled back and looked Jack in the face and his amber eyes were bright but steady.
"Harold thinks you'd be good for security.
I partially wanted to come ask about that too.
See why you don't want to wear the shorts anymore. " He tried to smirk, though it failed.
Jack blinked. The emotional whiplash of going from a hug to a job discussion was so disorienting that he nearly laughed.
"I. Yes. I want to be on Nero's team. Security.
Though I have zero training, no qualifications, and I hadn't even decided to ask your mom, or Nero about it yet.
I didn't even know Harold thought I could be good for it. "
"Why security?"
Jack shrugged. "Because I'm good at watching doors.
And because I want to spend the rest of whatever time I have here making sure nobody gets into that building who shouldn't be there.
" Jack looked at the counter, at the fifty-seven names.
"I can't undo what I did. But I can make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. "
Amani nodded. "Talk to my mother. She makes the hires. But Nero already said yes, so it's a formality." He walked toward the door, then stopped. "Jack?"
"Yeah."
"Listen to me carefully here, Harold is a Dom and you're a sub. The rest of it is just icing. Don't overcomplicate it."
Amani left. The door closed behind him and Jack stood against the wall in his apartment with the ghost of a lion's arms around his shoulders and the word forgiveness sitting in his chest like the first breath after almost drowning.
He called Harold.
"Come over," Jack said.
Harold was there in ten minutes. He came through the door and Jack kissed him before he'd taken his shoes off, his hands on Harold's face, pulling him down, and the kiss was different from every kiss before it because Jack wasn't hungry or desperate or discovering or proving anything.
He was kissing Harold because Amani had forgiven him and he was going to be on the security team and the names were on the counter and the lock was on the door and Jack finally understood what Harold had been telling him for weeks.
He was allowed to want this. He was allowed to reach for someone because he wanted them and not because he owed them or needed them or was trained to. He was allowed.
"Bed," Jack said.
They made it to the bed. Clothes came off in the short distance between the door and the mattress, Harold's shirt caught on his badge, Jack's jeans kicked into the corner.
They fell onto the white sheets, Harold on his back, Jack above him, and for the first time Jack was on top and looking down and the position that had frozen him on the apartment floor during the wrestling didn't freeze him.
"I want to see you," Jack said. "I want to do this face to face."
Harold reached up and put his hand on Jack's jaw. The familiar gesture, thumb on cheekbone. "Whatever you want."
Jack lowered himself and kissed Harold and their bodies aligned, chest to chest, hips to hips, and Jack reached between them and took Harold's cock in his hand and stroked him until Harold's hips were lifting off the bed and his breathing was shot.
Then he reached for the bottle on the nightstand and opened himself with his own fingers while Harold watched, and the watching was part of it, Harold's eyes on his body, dark and hungry and tender all at once as Harold stroked over Jack's hips.
"You're so fucking beautiful," Harold whispered.
Jack wanted to argue. He nearly did. But he couldn't get the words out when Harold was staring up at him like that. Like he was precious. Like he was a gift and not just another body, not another hole.
Jack lowered himself onto Harold's cock and they both stopped breathing.
The angle was different from the pool and the carpet.
Deeper. Harold's hands rested on his hips and held but didn't guide.
Jack set the pace. Slow at first, adjusting, finding the rhythm, and then faster as his body took over, the pleasure built. Harold's hands tightened on his hips.
"Jack." Rough, reverent. "Look at me."
Jack looked at him. Brown eyes in a flushed face, the big shoulders pressed into the white sheets, the broad hands on Jack's hips.
Harold, who had sat on concrete steps at three in the morning.
Harold, who had named the thing the shiver did with one word.
Harold, who had stopped every time Jack went blank.
Harold, who had shifted to bloodhound and run across the city and pressed his nose against Jack's bloody face on the concrete floor of a pool.
Jack kept his eyes open. He rode Harold with his eyes open and his hands on Harold's chest and the pleasure building in his body like a wave he was swimming toward instead of running from.
Harold's hand wrapped around his cock and stroked him in time and the dual sensation pushed Jack toward the edge and he stayed present for every second of the approach.
"Fuck yes, Harold," Jack said when he came.
Not a shout, not a gasp. His name, said clearly, with his eyes open, looking directly at the man underneath him.
Harold followed him over, his body arching off the mattress, his hands gripping Jack's thighs, and the sound he made was Jack's name in return.
They lay in the white sheets in the apartment with the city lights coming through the window. Harold's arm was around Jack's shoulders. Jack's head was on Harold's chest. The heartbeat under his ear was steady and slow.
"Stay," Jack said.
"I wasn't planning on leaving."
Jack closed his eyes. He slept in Harold's arms in his own bed in a room with a lock on the door, and he didn't go blank once.