Epilogue
Yardley, Montana, was a shitshow.
That wasn’t unexpected, given Kincaid’s hand in securing Javi’s placement here.
It turned out it was the exact sort of shitshow where Javi thrived, but that wasn’t the point.
He stripped off his wet-weather gear at the back of his car. Water dripped down his neck as he stashed the sodden slicker in the trunk.
“Not a bad result,’ Sgt. Moira Grant noted laconically as she walked over to him. She propped her hands on her hips and squinted against the rain as she watched her people break down the mobile meth lab for transport. “Can’t fault your people, Merlo.”
Javi wiped his hand down his face, stripping the water off. “Your people nearly let our subjects get away. They should have been ready to intercept three miles back.”
It sounded ungracious, but in the last six months he’d learned that in the Midwest, a lot of people mistook his abrasiveness for being straightforward. It helped explain why Javi’s personality had always been water off a duck’s back…well, some of it. The rest was down to damage.
Grant sucked her teeth and acknowledged, “Fair,” she said. “But a rancher stalled his tractor in the chicken foot down on the access road. Took a minute to get around him. Got here in the end, though, and you can’t argue with results.”
Rain dripped off Javi’s curls as they flattened to his head. He gave the slicker in the trunk a wry look—it was drier than him now—and raked his hand back through his hair.
“Once you get them back to the station and booked, I’ll agree with you,” Javi said. “Anything else, Sgt?”
Moira freed a hand from her hip to point at him.
“Come over to mine this weekend,” she said. “It’s my husband’s birthday, and we’re having a barbecue. Have some good food, meet some people you don’t work with.”
Javi smiled thinly at her.
“I’d love to,” he said. “But I’m hoping to see my boyfriend this weekend.”
Moira raised a gray-streaked eyebrow. “Fair enough,” she said. “It’s an invite, not a command performance, but for the record? Hoping to see someone is a lot less satisfying than my husband’s steaks.”
“You’ve not met my boyfriend,” Javi said.
Moira laughed, waved her hand in a “you win” gesture, and sauntered off.
She did—Javi reluctantly admitted to himself—have a point.
He might be thriving on Montana-issue chaos, but the whole long-distance thing was taking its toll. Reading about Cloister’s mouth on him was a lot less satisfying than having it on him.
Javi thought about that for a beat. Then he slammed the trunk of the car and the door to that idea with the same finality.
He had things to do.
The cow skull mounted on the wall of Javi’s office looked at him mournfully.
Javi finished his paperwork for the night and stared back at it.
At some point, he really needed to sort out the work order needed to get that down.
It was bolted to the wall. Javi’s predecessor, a Portland export who’d invested heavily in Stetsons and denim when he arrived, only to barely last two years in the post, had told Javi during handover that there was a real problem with skull-rustlers.
He hadn’t been popular.
The skull was a problem for the morning, though. Javi had a date.
Probably.
Maybe.
The “sure” he’d gotten from Cloister when he suggested they chat to firm up plans for their weekend hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic.
It had been a day ago as well. Javi resisted the urge to grab some more busy work to pretend that was the only reason he was working late.
He checked his phone instead. Still nothing.
His stomach sank.
Javi took a deep breath and gave himself a mental shake.
It was a blip. He’d ghosted Cloister for longer than this when he wanted to pretend he didn’t feel anything.
Cloister got to have his own doubts. It was just part of being long-distance, having to try and deal with doubts without the warmth of a body against you.
But Javi was going to fix that.
He pulled his drawer open and lifted out the small red velvet box. It weighed nothing, but he held it like it had weight. He opened it carefully and looked at the rings nestled in their cushion.
Over the last few months, he’d wasted hours of various jewelers' time as he tried to decide what sort of ring would say “this is us.” In the end, he’d charmed Joel into sending him the bullet they’d dug out of his calf and had it melted down and made into two plain steel bands.
The sound of a flurry of activity from outside his office made his ears prick up, but he reminded himself he was off the clock.
If it was important, someone would come and get him.
If it was takeout, he could grab it cold.
He flicked the box shut and dropped it back in the drawer, then hesitated with his hand on the wood as he stared at it.
If he was honest, he’d had a few second thoughts about the bullet symbolism, but if he was going to propose in Nevada this weekend, he needed rings, so—
The “ping” of his phone’s notification interrupted him.
He turned and grabbed it, the corner of his mouth quirking up as he saw Cloister’s name.
He swiped the message open, and it felt like his whole body just stopped.
Like he had to be put on pause while his brain tried to absorb the blunt words on the screen.
I know I said I could, but long distance isn’t working for me. We need to talk.
Javi closed his eyes. He swallowed, and it felt like stones.
He should have picked the rings quicker. He’d known he wanted to propose for months, so why wait? So he could tell his parents they’d known each other long enough for it to be a “sensible” next step? For the suite he’d wanted to have an open weekend?
Why did any of that matter?
His phone pinged again. Javi couldn’t bring himself to look at it in case it was Cloister pulling the plug. The big deputy had always had a “rip off the Band-Aid” approach to life.
Someone cleared their throat.
“Not now,” Javi snapped. “I’m—”
He swung around to glare at the interruption, and it was six foot three of blond leaning against his door frame, phone in hand. Cloister.
“Cloister?”
Javi looked at the phone. The last text read “turn around.”
“You son of a bitch,” he said as he scrambled to his feet.
Cloister tucked his phone into his jeans and held up both hands. “In my defense,” he said, “I thought you’d turn around.”
“Why are you here?” Javi said. He didn’t care, but he had to say something as he crossed his office. “I thought we were going to—”
Cloister caught his hip and pulled him into a kiss. “I missed you.”
He tasted of cheap soda and fried food. Javi kissed him back and then tipped his head back.
“How long are you here for?” he asked, because he needed to brace himself.
Cloister looked uncomfortable. “About that—”
Down the hall, Javi heard someone clap. He looked that way in annoyance and saw Bourneville sitting on her haunches, high-fiving the rookie with one paw.
He frowned. Not that he wasn’t glad to see her, but K-9s didn’t get vacation days.
“I meant it about the long-distance thing,” Cloister said. “I hate it. So…I guess I’m here for as long as you’ll have me? And the dog…and her cat.”
Javi dragged his attention back to Cloister.
“You brought the cat?”
“It’s Bon’s cat.”
Javi supposed he couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t know why he wanted to argue. It felt safer than anything else, he supposed. He clenched his jaw against the clumsy wash of emotion and tried to be logical.
“What about your job?”
Cloister shrugged. “I quit.”
“Where are you going to live?”
Why? WHY? Javi mentally flinched from the mental slap he’d just given himself. He didn’t know. He’d wanted Cloister to move in with him back in Plenty. He’d been about to propose. So he’d no idea why he was acting like he was concerned about a hobosexual hookup taking over his couch.
“My house is on wheels,” Cloister reminded him. “It’s parked in your lot.”
Javi put a pin in the need to come back to that later, when he could pretend he’d led with “I have plenty of room” and not…what he had.
“You hate Montana,” he said.
That was true. It was also shorthand they both understood for a lot of things, from the mystery around his brother’s disappearance to his complicated relationship with his family.
All that weight was just dismissed with a shrug from Cloister as he lifted a hand to brush his thumb along Javi’s jaw.
“I do, I really do,” he said. “But I love you more.”
Oh.
Javi took a breath of air that tasted of Cloister and, for once, didn’t have anything left to say.
He smiled, slow and sweet, and grabbed Cloister’s hand to drag him into the office.
The thought of the rings in the drawer occurred to him between kicking the door shut and pulling Cloister into a kiss, but that could wait.
He wanted to do that right.
THE END
….FOR NOW!