Page 25 of Cross & Crown

when Kelly was there to spend time with him, and he’d shoved

the files away in favor of resting his head in Kelly’s lap as they watched a movie on Netflix.

Kelly smiled softly with the memory. Nick had swiftly

drifted off to sleep, and Kelly had ignored the movie in favor

of twisting his fingers through Nick’s curly hair.

The memory made the silent boat feel that much lonelier.

Kelly fought past the tumbling feeling in his gut. He had two

more weeks here. He wasn’t going to start getting melancholy

about leaving yet, Jesus.

He stretched to flip on a lamp beside the couch so he

wasn’t sitting in the dark like a creeper, and then absently

flipped through the pages of Nick’s files on the table. Was it

illegal for him to be seeing this information? He shrugged and

scanned Nick’s handwritten notes. He loved the way Nick

wrote; block print, no discernible quirks, only the slightest

hint of a lefty slant. But the faster he wrote, or the more

agitated he grew, the more beautiful the scrawl became. He

lost the blocking and it took on a personality all its own, a

hybrid of print and cursive with precise curves and flourishes.

It was so telling of Nick’s personality, the hidden part of him only a few people got to see.

He must have written the notes in shorthand or some sort

of code, though, because it read like nonsense. Kelly placed

the notepad back where he’d found it and sighed deeply, then

25

hunted for the remote. He might sleep if the television was

going.

He found the remote resting on top of a book beside the

lamp:Mysteries of the Golden and Rosy Cross.

Kelly frowned at the title. Nick liked adventure books,

especially the ones that added a little historical mystery to

---