Page 54 of What We May Be

“You’re here for me, yes, but also for your dad.” Sean reached out and ran a hand over Marsh’s upper back. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Thanks, Hale.” He patted the hand still on his shoulder. “Now, speaking of sorted, you mentioned Trevor.”

Yep, not off the hook. Sean nudged him a different direction, physically and conversationally. “You can meet him later. Someone else I want to introduce you to first.”

Marsh, however, wasn’t to be deterred. “Charlie’s a looker,” he said. “I can see why you’re hooked.”

Heat hit Sean’s cheeks and he looked anywhere but at his friend.

Marsh’s laughter boomed around the wide-open cemetery, sending several crows scattering off headstones. “That blush, Hale. There’s a reason you could never do undercover work.”

“Says the giant cowboy.”

“You got that right. There’s a reason I work behind a computer.” He added a quiet “mostly” that made Sean slow and loop an arm through his. That mostly had cost them a dear friend, and the loss, while a couple years old now, still stung whenever it came up for either of them. Marsh, though, as was his way, didn’t let them linger on the sadness for long. “So, where do things stand with your exes?”

“I’m working on it.” After the scorching kiss with Trevor earlier and the heat that seemed to flare anytime he was within ten feet of Charlie, he wouldn’t deny wanting to know what would happen when all three of them were in the same room again. And with the knowledge they were going to be in DC too… Possibilities that included him in their plan to move on were hard to look away from, if he could make them happy again.

“Am I going to be a problem?” Marsh asked.

“You’re gay and not poly, so no.”

Marsh lifted a brow. “Charlie know that?” And lifted it higher. “Trevor?”

Sean blew out a breath. “No, I need to have that talk with them, but there are a few other conversations that need to come first.” He drew to a stop and tilted his head toward the angel statue in front of them.

“Alice?”

Sean nodded, and Marsh removed his hat, approaching respectfully. That same night Marsh had let slip about Brax, Sean had confessed the secret he’d been carrying for years. A secret he couldn’t keep from Charlie and Trevor if he wanted another shot with them. “They both deserve to know why I left and stayed away. And they deserve to know the truth about Alice’s death if they don’t already.”

Marsh circled Cal’s grave. “You think they know?”

“There’ve been a few times where I thought she might. And when we identified the next victim as Ophelia…”

“Guilty of conspiracy.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Everyone’s a Shakespeare expert but me. I had to get the damn CliffsNotes.”

Marsh smirked. “Probably because you were too busy chasing a certain pair in college.”

“Oh, and you weren’t chasing all the guys?”

He twirled his hat, caught it by the brim, and landed it perfectly on his head. “I can multitask.” He made a go-on gesture. “Now, you were saying about Alice?”

Arms crossed, Sean rested against Mitch’s gravestone. “She tried to hide it, but Charlie reacted strongly when it was suggested Trevor could be the next victim.”

“It could be something else.”

“What else could there be?”

“It’s been ten years, Sean. A lot could have happened.”

He flew off the gravestone, bearing down on Marsh as the sting of betrayal burned in his chest. “You investigated them?”

It was a bedrock of their friendship, one of the first ground rules he’d laid down when they’d become tight and when he’d discovered what Marsh could do with a computer.

Marsh met his charge, and in the blink of an eye, he had both of Sean’s arms twisted behind his back and his torso forced over Cal’s headstone. Fuck if Sean didn’t forget about that whole military training thing sometimes. “You know me better than that,” Marsh hissed in his ear, all humor gone from his voice. “I only dug when you asked me to.”

“I’m sorry,” Sean relented, justly scolded. He forced his body to go limp and waited for Marsh to release him.

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