by Lisa Henry
Gio didn’t try to shake him off this time.
Jason’s fingers brushed against Gio’s neck. He could feel his frantic pulse in his throat. “You’re okay.”
Gio dropped his head forward. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Jason figured this, whatever it was, had been a long time coming. “You’re gone now. It’s over, right?” Gio tensed. “Gio? It’s over, right?”
“Yesterday, in the mail . . .” Gio shrugged.
“What?”
“On the table.”
Jason released him and then ran a hand down his back before heading into the dining area to Gio’s small table. He picked up the envelope. Internal mail. A packet of Schmackos slid out of the envelope and dropped onto the table.
His blood ran cold.
Fuckers.
Jason exhaled heavily and ran a hand through his hair, sudden anger boiling low in his gut. He set the envelope back down, and then picked up the Schmackos and returned to the kitchen. Gio had turned around again. His eyes were red, and he avoided looking at Jason.
“What do you want to do about this?” Jason asked.
Gio shrugged. “Feed it to a dog?”
Jason’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, not what I meant.”
Gio was silent for a moment, and then he lifted his gaze. “There’s no point reporting it. You think they’re stupid enough to do anything an investigation can pin on them? A complaint will just make it worse. It doesn’t matter if I know who it is. It doesn’t matter if the bosses know who it is, or if Ethical Standards does. They can’t do a thing without proof.” He shook his head, his mouth thinning into a line. “Have you ever been on the wrong side of something like this?”
Jason glanced down at the Schmackos. “Gio, there’s no bloody right side to this.”
“I mean have you ever had this happen to you?”
“No.” And Jason didn’t have words for how disgusting it was. He’d heard about stuff like this happening before, but only in the vaguest terms. Something that had happened years ago, somewhere else, in a different division. Gossip that was stale long before it got to him, or war stories told by grizzled old coppers that dated back to the Fitzgerald era where shit like this had happened daily to whistle-blowers. Jason had never seen what it looked like close up. “You shouldn’t have to put up with something like this.”
Gio’s brow furrowed. “What other choice do I have?”
Jason had been a copper for fifteen years. He thought he knew the job, thought he knew the sort of people he worked with, who wore the same uniform that he did. He’d seen people dicked around by the Service before, screwed over by management for some reason or another, but he hadn’t seen anything this vicious before. Not colleague against colleague. He stepped closer to Gio and set the Schmackos down on the bench. “I don’t know.”
Gio smiled slightly. “Yeah. Same.”
He was close enough that Jason could smell the beer on his breath.
There was silence. A strange tension in the air that Jason suddenly couldn’t read. It felt like anticipation. Gio’s gaze catching his, and holding it. Gio’s expression was raw, naked, and Jason felt the swell of something protective, something almost proprietary, rise up in him.
Jason moved without any conscious thought to do so, his hand settling on Gio’s hip, angling his body just right and then leaning in to press their mouths together. He lifted his other hand to Gio’s head, and slid his fingers through those curls. Gio made a small, shocked noise that sounded almost like a question, but then his lips parted under Jason’s, and their tongues touched. Gio’s fingers tugged on the belt loops of Jason’s uniform pants, pulling him closer. A jolt of lust ran through Jason, hot as a burst of flame, when their bodies lined up flush.
And then it was over, and Gio was pushing him away.
“Shit,” Gio whispered, wide-eyed. “What the hell?” He wiped his mouth like he’d taken another swig of beer. “What was that? You’re not even . . .”
Jason swallowed, his heart beating fast. Fuck. He’d overstepped the line so far he couldn’t even see it from here.
“Fuck,” Gio whispered.
“Gio,” Jason said. “I—”
“Dad?” The screen door rattled open.
Jason stepped back from Gio. Fuck fuck fuck.
“Dad?” Taylor peered into the kitchen. He was in his pyjamas. “You were supposed to come and turn my light out.”
“Yeah.” Jason glanced at Gio, who had turned away again and was running water in the sink. “Yeah, I’m coming now. Gio, can we talk tomorrow?”
Gio shot him a wild look over his shoulder.
“Dad!” Taylor grabbed his hand and tugged on it. “I waited forever!”
“I know, mate. We’re going.” Jason let his son drag him towards the door. “Good night, Gio.”
Gio didn’t answer.
Gio didn’t sleep. He lay awake all night in sheets that still smelled of Richard but thought of Sergeant Quinn instead. Richard had sent a text just before midnight: Thanks for last night. Gio hadn’t replied yet. Not now that Jason Quinn had set up camp in his brain and was refusing to move out. It was a disaster: Gio’s confession, and then the kiss. Fuck. Gio couldn’t have been more exposed tonight if he’d stripped down naked in front of Jason, which, Jesus, had that even been on the table? Maybe for one crazy, heated moment, before Taylor had turned up.
Gio climbed out of bed before dawn, his gritty eyes stinging, and dug his running shoes out from the bottom of the bedroom cupboard. He used to run all the time back on the Coast—had to keep his fitness up in his team—but running along the Broadwater at dawn and looking out to the Spit as the sun rose over the glittering water had been a hell of a lot nicer prospect than whatever Richmond had to offer.
It was still dark when Gio locked his front door behind himself and headed for the riverbank. There was a bike path that ran for a few kilometres beside the river that Gio had checked out a few times on patrol. He set off at a slow jog to warm up. The soles of his shoes scuffed against the gritty bitumen at the shoulder of the road. There was no traffic to worry about. He heard the descending symphony of a semi’s compression brakes in the distance. The dawn was just starting to paint the sky pink when he reached the riverbank. A magpie was warbling in one of the ghost-pale eucalypts. A pair of sulphur-crested cockatoos sat on the back of a park bench, bobbing at one another.
There was nobody around.
Gio began to run.
The cool breeze off the river couldn’t quite cut through yesterday’s heat rising off the cement bike track. Another stinking hot day lay just underneath the horizon. To Gio’s left, the levee rose up and then dropped away steeply to the river. Gio couldn’t see the river from the bike track. The trees along the top of the levee leaned towards the water like divining rods.
Gio picked up his pace, losing himself in the familiar rhythm of running. Of muscle memory, of just putting one foot in front of the other, and not having to think. The sun was up and he was damp with sweat by the time he finally turned for home. His body ached.
He looked over at Jason’s house as he climbed the steps of his own. There was no sign of movement, except for the skinny cat sunning itself on the back steps.
Gio swallowed down the sudden sharp stab of panic that found him again. All the tension that had bled out of him on his run was back again, and rising. He tore his gaze away from Jason’s house and then unlocked his screen door and pushed his way inside. He locked the door behind him, and headed for the shower.
His heart was racing, and his stomach was in knots.
This last year had been a disaster. Gio had always been confident, outgoing, willing to admit to the mistakes he made and to learn from them. But this last year had undermined everything. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep. Couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t second-guessed every damn decision he’d made. It might have been easier if he could have kept his personal life and his pr
ofessional life separate, but that had never been an option. He couldn’t compartmentalise like that. Not when it was his entire fucking life. The only thing he’d been able to do at all was keep Dad and Sophie out of the shit fight as best he could, and the only reason he’d managed that much was by letting them both think he’d just decided to up and leave one day, even though they’d needed him there.
Richmond was supposed to be . . . What was it the assistant commissioner had called it?
“It’s a fresh start,” he’d said with a hollow-sounding affability that had set Gio’s nerves on edge. “It’s what you make it.”
Gio had no leverage with the Service anymore. Nobody was going to bend over backwards to help him out given the cloud he was already under. And what could he do anyway? Phone up the HSO and tell them that he needed a transfer out because his sergeant had kissed him? And that Gio had kissed him back for that one stupid moment where it had felt right?
Yeah, that’d be a great career move for the guy already known for screwing over the last bloke he was involved with.
Gio stepped into the shower, making the water a fraction too hot for comfort. The slight burn distracted him from the constant cycle of frenzied thoughts that whirled around in his skull.
The kiss was bad enough. The fact that Gio had told him about Pete? Had cried about it?
Gio squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his forehead against the shower wall. The grout between the tiles felt gritty. He curled his right hand into a loose fist and dragged his knuckles down between the tiles. Thought seriously about punching the wall, just to see if he could relieve the tightly coiled tension inside him that way.
He snorted at his own stupidity and flexed his fingers.
What the hell, though? What the hell had happened last night? Jason had been a solid presence, strong, strangely comforting, and Gio had blurted out the whole sorry story before he’d even had a chance to panic about how it might be received. And then . . . What the hell was the kiss anyway, coming on the heels of that? What the hell was it, and what was Gio supposed to feel about it?
“Gio, can we talk tomorrow?”
Gio really didn’t want to have whatever talk was coming, but what choice did he have? He had nowhere left to run.
Gio started at eight. Sandra was already in when he arrived, aggressively stirring sugar into her coffee. Her mouth tightened into a thin line when she glanced up and saw him.
“We’re out of biscuits,” she said.
“Oh.” Gio had no idea what response she was chasing. Was she just stating a fact, was she looking for him to be suitably outraged, or was he somehow expected to do something to rectify the no-biscuit situation?
Sandra gave him an unimpressed stare. “There’s money in the petty cash. Can you get some biscuits when you’re patrolling?”
“Yeah,” Gio said. “No worries.”
She swept past him, heading for the front counter. “Get decent ones. None of that Homebrand crap.”
Gio wouldn’t dare.
His day passed slowly, the plodding progress of the hours broken only with shards of panic that sliced suddenly into his consciousness every time he’d almost managed to forget: He kissed you. You kissed him back. And: “Gio, can we talk tomorrow?”
Gio patrolled. He bought biscuits that passed muster with Sandra. He found a couple of kids down on the riverbank and drove them back to the school. He took a complaint of wilful damage, one of theft, and attended a dispute between elderly neighbours who were arguing about overhanging tree branches. He ate lunch at the truck stop with Vicki, and checked his phone every few minutes for missed calls or messages. As much as Gio wanted to avoid whatever Jason was going to say to him, he knew he couldn’t. And as much as he was dreading it, he wanted it over with. He didn’t want to miss the call if Jason came in to work early.
“Lining up a hot date?” Vicki teased him.
“Work stuff,” Gio said, and wished to hell it was a lie.
He was back at the station just before 1 p.m., his lunch sitting heavily in his gut. He could hear Sandra at the counter, tapping away on her keyboard. The phone rang once, and she answered it. Gio couldn’t hear the conversation, only that she laughed a few times. Gio tried to concentrate on his paperwork, but this was his job. This was his job, and after every fucking thing he’d been through down the Coast, he was barely hanging onto it by the skin of his teeth, and he’d fucked up. He’d played right into the hands of everyone who wanted him gone. For months, for fucking months he’d weathered the stress and panic of the nonstop shit-storm that had become his life, and now, when he’d actually had a moment to breathe again, he’d fucked up. Because there was no way—no fucking way—that Gio would be allowed to be the victim in this. Not with his history.
And because for a moment, just a breathless, insane moment, Gio had kissed him back. Kissed him back before he’d come to his senses and pushed him back.
“Gio?”
Gio jerked his head up to see Jason standing in the doorway that led out to the car park. He hadn’t even heard him come in.
Jason nodded towards the rear door of the station.
Gio followed him outside into the heat of the day.
The door swung shut behind them.
The sun beat down on the nape of Gio’s neck as he pressed the toe of his boot down onto a rock, and rolled it back and forth under his foot. He exhaled slowly and watched as Jason leaned against the bull bar of the LandCruiser.
“Okay,” Jason said finally. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I think we need to get some things out into the open.”
Gio nodded, bile rising in his throat.
“First of all, what happened was the textbook definition of inappropriate workplace behaviour and, ah . . .” Jason cleared his throat. His forehead was creased with worry. “So I apologise for that, firstly. I’m your boss. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Gio froze, unsure if he could trust Jason’s apology, and unsure that it even mattered. Shouldn’t have done it, okay, but he had, and Gio didn’t know if there was an apology in the world that could make him forget it. And before Gio could think about forgetting it, he wanted to understand it. Gio had lain awake all night wondering what the fuck had happened. Jason didn’t get to brush all that aside with an apology.
He forced another nod, pressing harder on the rock underneath his boot. He lifted his gaze, wary. “Why did you?”
Jason chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t . . . I wasn’t fucking with you, Gio.”
“What?” Gio’s heart skipped a beat. “But you’re not . . . You were married.”
Jason tugged his hand out of his pocket and dragged his fingers through his hair. His mouth quirked in an almost bashful smile. “I met Alana at uni because we were both seeing the same guy.”
“You’re bi.” Gio didn’t know what to make of the sudden burst inside him of some emotion he couldn’t name. It wasn’t anything as positive as hope. It was relief, maybe, to discover that whatever it was that had passed between them the night before, however ill-advised, was at least still in the scope of Gio’s understanding. That Jason had been acting on attraction, not on something predatory and ugly. That was some consolation, wasn’t it?
Jason’s smile slowly faded and he nodded.
“Okay,” Gio said at last, glad his voice didn’t waver.
“Okay?”
Gio held his gaze. “What else do you want me to say?”
Jason exhaled slowly. “Gio, I’m telling you that I fucked up, and that I’d really like to know that it’s not going to be an issue.”
“You mean you’d like to know that I’m not going to make it an issue,” Gio said, his stomach clenching. “With my speed dial to Ethical Standards and everything.”
“That’s not what I said.” Jason’s tone was suddenly steely. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I meant what I said last night. I believe you.”
“Okay.” Gio pressed his mouth into a thin line before forcing himself to
relax, or to at least appear relaxed. “Then it’s no problem. It was just a lapse in judgement.” He caught Jason’s look, and wasn’t sure how to read it. “From both of us, I mean. And it’s nothing that anyone else needs to know about.”
“Right,” Jason said. The word was bitten off, sounding somehow abrupt and relieved at the same time.
Gio folded his arms over his chest, his heart pounding. “Are we good, Sarge?”
He waited for Jason to correct him like he had before: “It’s Jason.” But today Jason let it go, let Gio insert that space between them again. Because today, Gio figured, they both needed it.
“Yeah, Gio,” Jason said at last. He tilted his head forward in a nod, and the sunlight shone in his hair. “We’re good.”
When his shift ended, Gio went home and changed, and then picked up some groceries from the small supermarket in town.
“Oh,” said the lady stacking the dairy case in the supermarket. “You’re the new police officer, aren’t you?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
It still felt strange to be recognised as a copper, even out of uniform. It had rarely happened on the Coast. He’d had people give him a second glance a few times, frowning slightly as they tried to place him, but Gio had usually been able to slip away before it had clicked that he was the guy who’d given them a Notice to Appear last week when they’d been taking a drunken piss in a public street. Things were very different here.
The woman’s gaze fell curiously on his basket of groceries, and Gio was suddenly grateful he hadn’t stocked up on condoms and lube. He was pretty sure she was already hard-core judging the fact he was a man in his midtwenties who was buying Munchables snack packs with Jelly Babies.
The woman crooked an ill-kempt eyebrow at him as he escaped to the checkout.
Back at home, Gio sat on the front veranda with his feet on the rail and watched low grey clouds roll in from the horizon. The afternoon shadows gradually darkened. A bead of sweat slid down Gio’s spine. He gazed out across the yard over to the station. One of the LandCruisers was missing, which probably meant Jason was on a job, or on patrol.