Page 89 of More than Need

Gideon ran a hand through his hair. He knew she was right, and he didn’t want her to be. Is this what his life would be like from now on? Some other man taking up the mantle when he failed because he had to work all the time?

Lucia softened and squeezed his forearm gently. “If you aren’t comfortable with it, then I won’t. I can call your parents and drop him off there on my way home. They’d love to see him; it’s been almost a week, and you know your mum hates it when she doesn’t get to dote on him often enough.”

Gideon almost said yes. Hewouldprefer that. He also knew that even though they weren’t married anymore, they were raising Hudson together, and they had to be able to trust eachother’s decisions when it came to Hudson, without having to constantly check with each other. “No,” he said reluctantly. “If you trust him with Hudson, then”—he couldn’t say he trusted the guy, not without lying—“I trust you.” He checked his watch. He needed to call Ange on his way, and crime scenes wouldn’t wait.

Gideon quickly said goodbye to Dawson and Hudson, hugs lingering with them both. He clung a little tighter to Dawson. Gideon ignored his curious look and kissed him once more before leaving.

Riley’s name popped up on his screen as he turned out of the car park.

“I’m leaving now,” he said as soon as he answered. “Just about to call Ange. Has something changed?”

“Let me find someone else,” Riley said after a heartbeat of silence.

What the hell? “No. If you start giving me special treatment because you’re fucking me, where does it end? Before all of this, would you have given it to someone else?”

“If you’d said you were spending time with your son? Yes.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Gideon shot back. That’s not how Riley operated. Unless there was some kind of actual emergency, he would expect his detectives to do their job when he needed them to. “We all have lives outside of work, things that are important to us. But our jobs have to come first, they always have. It’s what we chose when we took up the badge. Ange and I have a job to do. If you could get someone else out there, you would have done it already.”

“Gideon—”

“We can’t let this effect our jobs, or your priorities as myboss. If it does, then we need to make some changes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Gideon said truthfully. They’d said they would keep it separate. This wasn’t that. “We didn’t think it through, at all, when we started this. And we need to make sure that it doesn’t jeopardise us or our careers. If we get caught, and this gets out”—they couldn’t be so naïve as to think it wouldn’t eventually—“we need to make sure that we’ve upheld all the standards we had before this, and no one can even pinpoint where it started or use it against either of us.”

Riley took his time answering. “If there are any problems at the scene, call me.”

Gideon spent the next few hours dealing with a corpse that had seen better days, searching a house that needed a thorough cleansing, canvassing the neighbourhood—with more than a few disgruntled people letting him and Ange know what they thought of getting their dinner interrupted—and then a few more after that thinking they were trying to sell something and slamming doors in their faces.

By the time they called it just after midnight, they were both cranky, tired, and hungry. Gideon waved off her offer to go to hers and drink something super strong. Normally he might have, but he didn’t even have the energy to stop into a drive-through on his way home, let alone go to hers. It would mean staying the night, and he wanted his own bed. Wanted his men. He could only have one, and that kind of made him extra cranky. Hopefully, he at least had something quick and microwavable in his cupboards to eat before he collapsed in said bed.

The messages he’d received from Dawson and Riley a few hours ago were eerily similar, both different versions of “tell me when you get home safe.” They’d helped as he tried not to stab himself with his own pen.

Riley hadn’t been at the station when he and Ange had dropped off their stuff, inputted some notes to go over in the morning, and signed in some of the evidence they’d bagged atthe scene. Gideon would have bet his last dollar that Riley had taken work home with him. He almost wanted to message, ask if Riley had room next to him on the couch. That felt too needy. He could deal perfectly fine on his own at home.

By the time Gideonfinally got home, his feet were basically dragging on the floor, and getting one foot in front of the other felt like a monumental task. He’d never felt quite so tired as he did in that moment.

He shut his front door behind himself. The silence of the place rang in his ears. Empty apartment. Emptylife. Not with his son. Not with his men. Alone, after having spent the last five hours with Ange and the dead. Dealing with bullshit, when he should have been at home cooking his son dinner, listening to him talk excitedly about Auskick and whatever he’d done that day at school.

Fucking hell, he should have taken Ange up on her offer.

With an angry cry, Gideon kicked the nearest box. It tipped over from the force, and a bunch of kid toys tumbled out. Hudson’s toys. He spent so little time here they hadn’t noticed there were some missing. Sitting in a box, forgotten, for months.

Gideon sat heavily on his couch and dropped his forehead into his hands.A silent scream left him, his nails scraping over his cheeks. Hudson should have been here. All this shit should have already been unpacked. He should have his life together. He hadn’t thought of any of this when he and Lucia had finally admitted to each other that they were over. They had talked about what was best for their friendship, and for Hudson. “What happens when we move on” hadn’t entered the equation. Whathappened when Gideon’s career derailed his ability to look after his son even more now that they weren’t living together.

He tugged on his hair and stood. He needed to do something before he went insane.

He righted the box he’d kicked over and looked inside it. Along with Hudson’s toys were DVDs and a blanket shoved at the bottom. Random things that he should have unpacked months ago. More than a dozen boxes were still lying around. Half his life, packed away. He hadn’t been able to stomach putting the stuff away, accepting his new reality.

He ignored the box and moved through the living room, randomly picking up objects that Hudson had left lying around. More boxes pushed against the wall, in corners, one next to an empty bookcase. It looked like he’d only moved in a week ago.

Gideon spent the next hour unpacking all the boxes in the kitchen, putting away glasses and plates and random Tupperware—where the hell had that even come from? He flattened the boxes and left them beside the front door.

He didn’t feel better.

Instead of doing any more, he raided the snack shelf—filled with food for Hudson but also for occasions like this. He took one look at his messy round dining table and decided that he couldn’t be fucked with cleaning it off and instead slid to the floor right there, against the cupboards between the oven and the fridge. He spread the food around him like a summoning circle.

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