Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 82187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“That’s not an answer!” Law roared, his voice echoing off the cement walls.
Free stayed leveled. “You want honesty? Okay. Wes has been building something that made him feel in control again. Something for him. Not for the task force and not for you. And I respected that.”
Law fell to his knees, clutching the phone against his ear.
Free was quiet for a long moment before he said softly, “Sometimes love is knowing when to let someone breathe. You push, Law, and you love hard. But when someone’s suffocating, squeezing them tighter isn’t the answer.”
Law didn’t say anything.
“Maybe this is his breath.” Free ended the call.
Law sat on the basement floor, the dim light of his phone screen fading out in his palm. He’d wanted Wes safe, not gone.
He didn’t move for hours, just stayed there curled in the last place he thought Wes had been.
By morning, he was still in the same spot.
The ache in his spine matched the one in his chest.
His clothes were wrinkled, eyes stinging, and he didn’t remember falling asleep. He’d just stared at nothing until the weight of “this is his breath” overtook him.
Eventually, he peeled himself off the cold concrete, washed his face in Wes’s upstairs sink, and left the house in a daze.
When he arrived at the precinct, it was past one in the afternoon. The bullpen noise—heated conversations, phones ringing, civilians fussing—was overstimulating.
But when he walked into the task force department, everything slowed.
Eyes tracked him.
He felt like hell, and he knew he looked even worse.
Ruxs was the first to shoot his big mouth off. “Damn, you look like death and someone forgot to bury you.”
Law acted as if he didn’t hear the insult and went straight to Free’s corner, jaw clenched.
“Please,” he said, in a pained moan. “Did he say when…if he was coming back?”
Free paused mid-typing.
“Then can you just tell me what you two were building? Please.”
Free stood and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Law—”
“Don’t fuckin touch me!” he yelled, jerking away from Free’s touch. “Just tell me—”
“Hey!” Syn’s voice snapped him to attention.
Syn’s glare was piercing, his tone final. “Conference room. Now.”
God, Day, and Ronowski followed.
Law sat in the center chair, hands gripping his knees until his fingers ached.
Day stared at him with too much empathy. “Law…”
“Don’t,” he gritted. “Don’t tell me it’s gonna be okay.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Day sighed. “I was going to tell you to go home.”
“You’re no good to me like this,” God added. “If having Wes by your side is the only way you can function—and that’s damn sure what it looks like—then I can’t use half a man. And right now, you’re bleeding all over my fuckin’ floor.”
Law’s throat closed.
“I can still help,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I can finish what we started. I know Wes’s work. I know how he builds. It’s practically mine too.”
It was mostly true.
God studied him.
Law leaned forward. “I need you to honor your part of the deal, God.”
God frowned.
“I need to get to LA,” Law said, his voice steel under the agony.
I won’t let us end like this. I won’t.
Syn and Day exchanged a look.
God stood. “All right. You get the job done. And I’ll get you back to LA…to him.”
Law swallowed the boulder in his throat and nodded.
Finally, he had some direction.
He didn’t have Wes, but he still had a chance.
Ramon Vasquez
Vasquez jolted awake to the sound of fists pounding on his front door. If they beat any harder, the damn thing would come off the hinges.
He couldn’t have been asleep long, but it was hard to tell what time it was. His blackout curtains kept his room pitch-dark.
He squinted at the neon digits on his clock: 8:02 a.m.
Christ. He’d just crawled into bed at 6:30.
The banging came louder.
“Ramon!” a voice bellowed through the door. “I know you’re in there. I saw you come in!”
He swung his legs out of bed, feet hitting the freezing floorboards. He trudged to the door in sweatpants and an undershirt, already regretting the decision to open it.
A blast of cold air hit him in the face—and so did his landlord’s nicotine-infused breath.
Mrs. Zellman stood there in a paisley-print smock and a pair of sagging denim pants tucked into her gardening boots.
She was a scrawny, evil woman in her mid-seventies, with thinning ginger hair and a permanent scowl of disdain etched into her face.
“You’re three months late now,” she barked, thrusting a jagged fingernail at his chest. “I don’t give a shit about your daddy and all his costs. I want my money by Friday, or you’re out. You hear me?”
Vasquez slammed the door in her face so hard, it knocked the framed picture of his mother off the wall.
He pressed his forehead against the chipped wood, breathing hard.
The nursing home had demanded he catch up his bill, plus the late fees this week, and to make matters worse, his car had needed brakes to pass inspection.