by Layla Reyne
“Holt, you get lost in there?” Helena called. “The bacon is almost gone!”
“Coming!” He wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve, gave his head a sharp shake, then stood and returned to the dining room.
He quelled Brax’s concerned look with a kiss and an “All good,” then dug into the plate Brax had made him. Everything was delicious, and their plates were clean in less than twenty minutes, though the house was no less full of pleasant sounds. Marco had cornered Jax and Marsh to talk computers, the cats were tussling in the corner over Marsh’s cowboy hat, adding their claw marks to the ring of Lily-sized teeth marks around the brim, and Celia, Mia, and Avery were in the kitchen trading pastry recipes. A family at home for the weekend together.
Across the table, Hawes cleared his throat, drawing his and Brax’s attention. “Notice you didn’t take your badge back?”
Holt swung his gaze to Brax. “You what?” He’d missed that in all the commotion at the station—the reunion, the backslaps, the statements, and the sorting of evidence and follow-up appointments.
Brax drew a caramel out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. “To be determined.” He handed the shiny wrapper to Lily to play with. “My priorities are shifting.” He clicked the hard candy against his teeth, once, twice, then cheeked it. “I want to be with my family.”
Chris stretched an arm over the back of Hawes’s chair. “As an ex-lawman, I got no complaints about working this side of the equation. Whole lot less rules.”
Brax chuckled, and Holt’s head spun. Had he had too much coffee, or had the world flipped on him again? “Brax, what’s going—?”
Brax’s fingers over his lips silenced his words. “We’ll talk about it later,” Brax said. “Right now, I just need a shower and you.”
“And that’s the cue for babysitters,” Helena said, pushing up from where she sat on the other side of Hawes. She rounded the table and plucked Lily off Brax’s lap. She moved to turn, but Brax stopped her, a hand on her arm.
“Thank you, and not just for babysitting duty.” He glanced across the table at Hawes and Chris, then back to Helena. “What you all did for me…”
“Small price for giving us back our brother,” Helena said with a smile that lacked any of her usual coyness. One hundred percent genuine.
“And for the past six years,” Hawes added.
Helena turned her smile on Holt. “A price we thankfully didn’t have to pay, thanks to you.” She dipped her chin and kissed his head. “Nice job, Little H.”
“Thanks, Hena.”
Of course she ruined—no, made perfect—the moment by knuckling his head, then encouraging Lily to do the same to Brax. They were all still laughing when Hawes waved them toward the stairs. “Go on up, we’ll see you in the morn—afternoon.”
“Try evening,” Chris pretended to whisper. “Maybe.”
Heat rushed to Holt’s face and stayed there as snickers followed him and Brax up the stairs to the third floor. He was sure his face, his nose, his neck—all of him—was beet red by the time he shut the bedroom door behind them. “Thanks for coming back here,” he said, eyes downcast, looking anywhere but at Brax, the sudden embarrassment silly yet inescapable. “Especially after that.”
Brax’s toes appeared in his line of sight, then his hands landed on his hips, backing Holt up until he bumped against the wall. Brax lifted his chin, forcing his gaze. “We needed to be with family.”
“You understand their yours now? That we’re yours?”
Bruises and bandages be damned, Brax’s smile could have lit the whole house. “I do.”
Holt gently cupped his cheeks, wanting to feel that smile, to capture a piece of it beneath his fingertips and in his memory forever. “Thank you for loving us.”
“Thank you for giving me a family.” Brax brought their lips together in a kiss filled with the same gratitude as his words, meeting its match in everything Holt was grateful for in return.
“Chris was right,” Holt whispered against his lips. “If something happened to you, I’d fall apart or burn the world down.”
Brax snaked a hand around his waist, between the wall and his ass, and hauled him close. “You’re still here.”
“And I almost burned the world down for you.”
And closer, a knee shoved between Holt’s legs, Brax’s dick digging into his thigh. “Fuck, Holt, what you do to me.”
Holt threw back his head and laughed in joy at the familiar words, at Brax’s easy freedom to say them and at his own privilege to drown in them the rest of his fucking life. In this love, in the kisses Brax rained down his neck, and in the cock rutting close to his own, both growing harder by the second.
Holt righted his head, lips trailing along the shell of Brax’s ear. “Thought you wanted a shower?”
“Fuck the shower,” Brax growled into the crease of his neck. “Just need you to fuck me.”
And fully hard. “Holy fuck.”
Brax spun out of his arms so fast that Holt almost toppled forward, off-balance and bereft. Almost whined aloud. Until Brax shucked his shirt off over his head, the muscles of his back rippling. And as if that beautiful sight wasn’t enough, he dropped his jeans and boxers, his tight round ass flexing as he added an extra sway to his hips on the way to the bed.
Holt tried not to pounce, not wanting to injure him any further, but it was a near thing. But Brax didn’t seem to be in the bad kind of pain as they kissed, grappled, and stripped Holt too, both of them getting naked and tangled in the sheets together. Greedy touches and greedier kisses, only coming up for air when their greedy bodies demanded more. “Fuck, Cap, tell me where you want me ’cause I’m not going to last much longer.”
“Don’t think I’ve got multiple rounds in me this morning either.” He drew him up by the wrist, both of them on their knees, chests and groins bumping. “Want to feel all of you in me. Nothing between us.”
“Not helping,” Holt gritted out.
The asshole in bed with him smiled, wicked and gorgeous, and Holt had to kiss him again to bank the rising tide of desire. It worked, but only for a moment. Until Brax pulled away and put on an even more wicked display—him on his knees, hands gripping the headboard, his ass thrust out in invitation. Holt had to grab the base of his dick to keep from coming right there.
Brax grinned over his shoulder. Fucker knew he was pushing Holt to the edge. “I trust there’s at least lube around here.”
Holt had never moved so fast in his life, snatching the bottle from the bedside drawer and coating his dick and fingers with a generous amount. But that was where fast ended. As hard as he was, as much as he wanted to bury himself in Brax, he wanted to make this good for him too, as good as Brax had made it for him the other night. And fuck if he didn’t enjoy the push and pull of Brax’s ass around his fingers, the moans and shivers he coaxed out of him with each nudge against his prostate, the torture he was inflicting on both of them.
“Now, Private.”
The barked order was as good as a spank, precome leaking from Holt’s dick. He caught it in his palm and stroked it down his length, adding to the slick of the lube. Ready, he lined up at Brax’s hole and pushed in slowly. The heat was overwhelming, compounded by the heat of Brax’s body as he bowed his back, forcing Holt to round over and around him. His knuckles whitened around the rail, his body tensed beneath Holt’s, and for a second Holt considered pulling out, until the resistance around his cock eased, same as it had around his fingers, and he slid the rest of the way in. He wrapped his arms around Brax’s front, hands splayed over his chest, fingertips weaving through the sprinkling of chest hair. Warm all over. Under his hands, under his body, around his cock. “Fuck, Cap, this—you—feel amazing.”
Brax pushed off the rail, levering them both up to kneeling, and fuck if that didn’t feel even better, Brax spread over his knees, sinking down on his cock, both of them driving the motion.
Together.
Same as their hands moved, Brax
’s entwined with his, guiding them opposite directions, one over his heart, the other around his dick, jacking him together as they continued to rock. Faster and faster, Holt thrusting up, Brax slamming down until Brax, head tossed back on Holt’s shoulder, tensed in his arms and spilled over their hands. The blast of sticky heat and the vise around his cock sent Holt over the edge right behind him, spilling into Brax and groaning against his neck.
Bodies and hearts satisfied, they fell together onto their sides, Brax still in his arms. Holt peppered the flowers and vines on his shoulders with kisses. “I don’t ever want to go without this feeling again. Don’t ever want to go without you again. I can’t lose you, Cap.”
“My answer hasn’t changed, Private. You won’t. I’ll protect you.”
Brax tried to burrow back into him, then grumbled when Holt rolled him over instead, wanting them face to face. For the promise he had to make, the question he had to ask. “And I you,” Holt said. “Make it official?”
Laughter erupted, the body against his shaking. Brax threw a leg over his hip, bringing them even closer. “Did you just propose to me?” His smile was so big, so bright, reaching all the way to his eyes where it had been missing for too long.
Holt would happily spend the rest of his life making sure that smile—his man—never got lost again. “Marry me, Braxton Kane.” He stole a quick, hard kiss from the smile and the man he loved. “I want to spend the rest of my life with my best friend. If he does too.”
Somehow, impossibly, wonderfully, Brax’s smile grew even bigger. “He does.”
III
Brax
Chapter Twenty-Five
Later That Year
Brax stood in front of the door at the end of the second-floor hallway, trying and failing to shake the sense of déjà vu. It had been well over a year since he’d last been there, helping to haul Hawes’s moving boxes at the time. The only stronger sense in this moment was curiosity. What in the hell was he—was she—doing there?
Ignoring the thumbprint reader, he raised his fist to knock. It never landed, the door swinging open to reveal a gala-ready Melissa Cruz. Curls piled atop her head, she was dressed in an elegant green ballgown, emeralds around her neck to match, and sparkly heels that peeked out from the dress’s thigh-high slit.
“Shit, Mel,” Brax said. “We can do this another time. I didn’t know—”
“Please, it’s a TE gig I’d rather be late for.” She ushered him in and closed the door behind them. “Besides, the real party’s next week. Your crew still coming?”
New Year’s Eve at Nic’s brewery, Gravity. Talleys, Madigans, and the strays like him and Mel they’d picked up along the way. Ask Brax two years ago if that’s where and who he thought he’d be spending the holidays with and he would have said impossible. But over the past year, the impossible had become possible, beyond his wildest dreams, including those he’d kept locked away for over a decade. “We’ll be there.”
“Excellent.” Stepping past him, she sashayed on her high heels down the long entry hall of Hawes’s old condo.
“I was wondering what happened to this place.”
“Turns out it’s right around the corner from our flat.”
“Just turned out that way?”
She shrugged a single bare shoulder, exposed by the gown’s asymmetrical collar. “Boat is good for mobility, but a stationary base of operations is good too, especially given the rampant seasickness in our ranks.”
Brax’s laugh died on a gasp as he cleared the end of the hallway. The large open area that used to be Hawes’s living space had been completely transformed. Where the reclaimed-wood dining table had sat now lived a sleek conference table with black leather office chairs around it. In the adjacent seating area, near the seismic struts and big glass patio doors, were now matching workstations. The bolted in ladder to the panic room and wall-mounted TV still existed in the living room, but along the opposite wall, where a built-in desk and shelving unit used to be, was a state-of-the-art command setup—monitors, keyboards, speakers, peripherals—that rivaled and looked an awful lot like Holt’s setups. Not the full-scale MCS or Pac Heights ones—this space wasn’t that large—but comparable to the one at the house in Pacifica where they’d decided, with zero debate, to move in together. Finally, at the far end of the space, the kitchen looked mostly the same—save for an extra coffeemaker—but above it, the former lofted bedroom had been glassed in and converted into a private office.
Brax’s stunned gaze traveled back to the wall of computers. “Do I want to know who helped build this?”
“Our friendly neighborhood hacker collective.”
“Including my husband?”
She quirked a brow, and Brax failed to hide his smile.
“First night of Hannukah,” he said. “On the beach in Pacifica. Just the family.” After Hawes and Chris’s big wedding in January, and Helena and Celia’s Paris elopement, he and Holt had wanted something small, private, and close to home. A festival of love and lights where sand met the ocean. A celebration for them and their family.
“About fucking time. I’m happy for you, Brax.” She squeezed his shoulder before crossing the room to lean a hip against the ladder. “I guess I know why you’re here then.”
“You had it right all those months ago. My priorities have definitely shifted.” That night she’d come to him, he’d been so tired he could hardly think straight. Quicksand, he’d described it, the feeling of sinking with no way out, unable to juggle his increasingly large stack of conflicting priorities. The quicksand had only gotten denser, more aggressive, nearly swallowing him whole earlier in the year, but he’d survived by following his heart, by grabbing hold of the man he loved, and letting Holt and his family help pull him free. They’d been willing to sacrifice everything for him. Holt was giving him everything he could. More than enough. It was Brax’s turn to do the same. “I can’t have the life I want, the family I want, and be the chief of police. You were right. The decision is here, and I’d appreciate your help navigating through it.”
“You’re ready to walk away? The work you’ve done with SFPD—”
“I’m leaving the department in good hands.” It had taken him longer to extract himself than anticipated, but everything was in place now. “Maya will continue the work we started, with Fletcher’s help, and I’ll be there to help too, in a civilian capacity, as needed.” But that was the most he could give them. Holt and their family deserved the rest.
“All right, then,” Mel said. “Follow me.”
Brax followed her up the stairs into the overwatch office… with two desks. The far one was bare but for a laptop, chair, and lamp. The closer one, which Mel rested back against, was in use but minimally cluttered—lamp, chair, laptop, legal pad and pen, a framed ace of hearts playing card, a business card holder, and a stack of files. “I need a partner.”
Brax snapped his gaze back to her face. “Tracking bounties?”
“Tracking bounties with a very specific crew.” She grabbed the stack of files off the desk and held them out to him. “I hear you’re particularly good with recruitment, with finding the best in people.”
Déjà vu whacked him over the head again. Chief Williams had offered him a stack of files six years ago, his first day on the job, and his life had been forever turned on its head. Everything he thought he knew about his best friend had been recast in a new, unexpected, terrifying darkness. Over the years he’d learned Holt was still Holt, and there were more layers—more light than dark—to the Madigans than those files depicted, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was standing on the edge of a similar life-upending moment. Unlike Williams, though, he trusted and respected Mel. She was an ally and, more importantly, a friend. If she were about to up-end his life, it had to be for a good cause.
Accepting the offered files, he flipped through them, his jaw hitting the floor with each name he recognized. Some only in passing, others in a much closer context. “These are—”
&nb
sp; “I love a good redemption story, don’t you?”
He returned her earlier quirked brow. “Speaking from personal experience?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” She reached for the business card holder, slid out a single piece of thick cardstock, and held it out to him.
Another offering. Another life-changing moment.
REDEMPTION, INC. the card read in silver-pressed foil, peaking out of the swirls of gray.
Like his husband’s beloved fog.
And printed below the company name were his and her names. As cofounders.
He flicked the card against his knuckles, fighting a smile. “Confident much?”
“I’ve been called worse.”
He laughed out loud as another once impossible future unspooled in front of him. Suddenly possible. All because a certain ginger-haired private had stepped off an army transport and into his life fourteen years ago. Holt had made the impossible possible for him—a life full of love and family—and had opened the door to another unexpected opportunity. A chance to make the impossible possible for others too.
“I’m in.”
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