Page 90 of In Too Deep

chapter twelve

Exposed Rafters

Harrison could pretend the alarm woke him.

But that would be a lie.

He’d been awake long before it went off. If he’d slept at all.

Because every time he closed his eyes, the same thoughts kept circling back around. Lauren Pike. A woman vanished from the streets of Hull who somehow ended up dead in the River Hart beside Hartswick’s Industrial Estate. Brutalised enough for identification to have taken days. Dumped carefully enough to suggest planning, but violent enough to feel personal. It bothered him. Not just the murder itself. The effort afterward.

People only went to those lengths to hide something bigger than a body.

But beneath that sat the other thing relentlessly gnawing at him. Nigella’s phone call. The possibility the Falcon case could reopen. That Chris’s name could be dragged back through everything all over again. That maybe Chris had been right. Maybe the intelligence had been flawed from the beginning and Harrison had spent the past three years clinging so tightly to procedure and blame and anger that he’d failed the one person he’d loved most.

If he’d listened harder—

Jake grunted softly beside him and reached blindly across the mattress to slap his hand over the cheap alarm clock before it could properly start ringing. Then, with sleepy determination, he wrapped his arm back around Harrison’s waist and buried his face into his chest again.

Harrison smiled.

Because the main reason he hadn’t slept?

Jake.

This maddening, intense, beautiful man who’d somehow forced his way beneath Harrison’s skin faster than he could cope with. If either of them had been carrying less grief, less damage, less history… maybe this could be easy. Could be beautiful without hurting quite so much. But nothing about either of them was light anymore. And Harrison had made it worse last night by calling him Chris.

Shame twisted through him all over again.

He’d seen the hurt on Jake’s face. The way he’d pulled back. And Harrison couldn’t blame him for any of it. He’d have been hurt too. Furious, probably. Jake deserved better than to being mistaken for a ghost.

Harrison stared at the cracked ceiling and exhaled slowly.

Where the hell had that even come from?

He’d been exhausted, that was obvious. Barely fucking conscious, slumped in Jake’s doorway after a day that had wrung everything out of him. Then Jake had come home, crouched beside him and pressed his mouth to his skin. Whispered in his ear. Softly coaxed him towards bed.

And Harrison had melted into it.

The warmth of Jake close to him. His voice in Harrison’s ear. That sudden, overwhelming relief of not having to think or explain or hold himself together for another fucking minute. And somewhere in that half-conscious haze, his mind had reached for Chris.

Because Chris had been that once.

Safety. Comfort. Home.

And apparently, somewhere Harrison wasn’t ready to examine too closely, Jake was beginning to feel dangerously like those things too.

Fuck.

Which then also begged the question…. where had Jake been all night?

Harrison chose very carefully not to pull at that thread yet. Because he had the uncomfortable feeling if he did, this thing between them might finally tear open properly. Had Jake gone looking for comfort somewhere else? With someone else? He shut that thought down immediately. He had absolutely no right to be jealous. Which, unfortunately, didn’t seem to stop him.

So instead of thinking about that, he slid his fingers through Jake’s curls as Jake lay heavier over his chest. Warm. Sleepy. Cute.

Until he snored.

Loud enough to make him laugh.