by Walker, Max
Couldn’t focus on any of that—this was about the job and that was it.
Fuck. If only he had a picture with his emails, at least then I’d have been prepared for this.
“You can call me Fox. Come with me.” I turned and led him past Holly’s desk, who was considerately building an indoor pool for us to use with the amount of drool she was collecting in front of her.
Come with me… hah. More like come on m—
No. No. This is a potential colleague. I have to stop thinking like that.
And then I got a whiff of Jonah’s cologne: cedar and orange and a boner-inducing musk.
My thoughts crumbled instantly after.
4 Jonah Brightly
All right… Okay… all right, this guy—no, this man— was not who I expected to be interviewing me today. He was sitting across from me, the sunlight from the open window playing on his face and highlighting him like a spotlight, and I was sitting in front of him, currently wondering what the hell was going on with me.
When I found this new job opening, I envisioned working out of a dimly lit and badly furnished office with a bunch of older guys cosplaying their inner Sherlock fetishes. I had no idea I’d be working out of a beautiful space alongside a man who could easily walk outside, pose by a palm tree, and have a full-time career as a cover model.
He was wearing a gray pair of slacks that fit him pretty tight, and he was definitely gifted with an ass, that part was obvious (and kind of hypnotizing if I’m being totally honest). I had a difficult time keeping my eyes from trailing downward when Fox was leading me to his office.
He was attractive, there was no denying that. Whether you were straight, gay, bi, wherever you landed, as long as you had functioning eyes, you could see that Gabriel “Fox” was a man who commanded attention. And if your eyes were of the nonfunctioning kind, you would most likely be able to tell how handsome he was by touch and scent alone.
Fingers softly brushing up that stiff jaw, over the freshly shaved cheeks, still gray with hair already growing back. The strong brows that marked eyes shielded by impressively long eyelashes. A nose that may have been broken once, but most likely healed better than it had started as.
And those lips. They were thick enough to lay your head on for a nap.
Holy shit, this guy was hot.
Hot? I mean… he’s attractive. He’s good-looking. Hot, though?
He leaned back in his seat. This had the effect of stretching his shirt over his chest, showing a dedication to the gym through the obvious rise and fall of his muscles. His expressive hazel eyes were locked on me, and it was only then that I realized he had asked me a question and I had yet to respond.
Mainly because I forgot the question.
Shit… Yep, this guy’s hot.
I’d deal with the bullshit that came with that realization later. Sure, I had found plenty of men attractive in my past, but… well, never like this. I had never felt this kind of heat before. A heat that rose inside me at such an intense clip, matching the undeniable heat that was sparking throughout the air around us.
“Sorry,” I said, clearing my throat. “The question again?”
He smirked, and for a second I thought that the bastard was taking pleasure in knowing just what he was doing to me.
“What would you say your biggest flaw is?”
Oh, yeah, that was the question. One of the classic and universally reviled interview questions known to mankind.
“I’m too organized,” I said, giving the classic and universally reviled answer known to interviewers.
He smiled and moved on, apparently knowing the question and answer were bullshit. We had already been sitting down together for a good half hour, and time was moving fast. I didn’t even realize how much time had passed from us just talking. For the first few minutes of the interview, I was nervous that Fox was one of those hard-asses that made things difficult for no reason other than to make things difficult. Thankfully, moments into the interview, I was assured that wouldn’t be the case. Fox was warm, if not a little guarded, and seemed to be as interested in me as I was in him.
In the job. As interested as I was in the job.
“All right, so now that we’ve got some basic questions out of the way…” Fox grabbed a folder from the side of his desk and opened it. I saw a copy of my resume flash in his hands before he leaned back and scanned it. I was sitting across from him in a comfortable dark blue chair. His office was big and airy, but it lacked anything that told me about Fox. There weren’t any picture frames or mementos; there weren’t any art pieces hanging on the wall or any books on the empty shelf. There was just a sad little plant that was definitely on its last leg—eh, last root?
“It says you were a police officer for three years before leaving the force?”
I nodded, pursed my lips. It was obvious what that looked like. Fox probably thought I had some kind of disciplinary issue, or maybe got booted off for some other, more nefarious reason.
It was neither of those things. Far from it. If I could, I’d still be out there, taking calls and making sure the Miami streets were safe for everyone. But with my tremble, I couldn’t do any kind of job that required me to have a gun.
“There was an incident,” I said. The back of my head started to burn, as if someone were pressing a hot brand against the inside of my scalp. “It was bad.” And it was still difficult for me to talk about. Weird how those things worked. I was never one to hold things back or find conversations difficult. Growing up, my emotions were always on full display, my barriers on low.
And then I got shot, and all of that changed.
My emotions turned inward, and a shield came up.
“We don’t have to discuss it right now.” Fox threw me a life raft. He saw me sinking and stopped it from happening.
“It won’t affect my job, I guarantee that.” I sat up a little straighter in the chair. It was getting harder and harder to meet Fox’s gaze although I had no idea why.
“And I believe that.” He put the resume down on his desk. His chair squeaked under his weight as he shifted. “What I don’t believe is that you were a cop. With that baby face, I’m thinking more… ‘Gerber baby bottle model’ than officer of the law to me.” He arched a brow and cracked a wickedly hot smile. “Sorry.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, narrowing my eyes to slits. I could feel my cheeks getting red under his gaze.
Why did he have this effect on me?
And then I laughed. “That was my first job, actually. I just decided to leave it off the resume. Didn’t want to intimidate you with my esteemed modeling background.” I could take a joke, and I could hurl one back. Fox laughed, too. It was a belly laugh, not one I’d heard from him yet but one that I wanted more of for some reason.
“And you, Fox?” I asked, wanting to turn the tables for a moment. “What was your profession before you joined Stonewall Investigations?”
He was about to answer before I cut in. “Wait, wait. Let me guess…” I chewed my lip, rubbed my chin. My cheeks were no longer red from his stare, but oddly enough, I could feel the flush start creeping across my chest. “Before being a detective you were a… sexy TV magician.”
Did I just say sexy? No, I couldn’t have said sexy. My mind colored that in after the fact.
“Sexy TV magician, huh?”
Fuck me, I did say sexy.
“No, although that would be an interesting career, I’m sure.” Fox didn’t latch onto my slipup, thank God. Even though I knew I’d be thinking about sexy-gate for a minimum of sixteen years, most likely during the middle of a sleepless night or in the midst of a hot shower. Those were always the moments when the most embarrassing memories slapped you right across the face for attention.
Ugh. I was just trying to be funny, what the hell.
“I was a sexy independent contractor.”
Ah, fuck. He wasn’t going to let it go.
I laughed, trying to play it off as an insignificant moment even thou
gh it was already being hung up in the halls of my brain folds.
Shit, I don’t even call Wendy sexy. What the…
“Before that I was in the army.” Fox smirked, the warmth in my chest spreading faster than a wind-driven wildfire across a drought-struck hillside. “I was a sexy soldier.”
Oh for fuck’s sake.
“Okay, that was a mistake,” I cut in. “You’re not sexy… I mean, maybe you are to other men. Or women. Whatever you’re into, I’m sure people find you sexy. But that was… that was a slip of the tongue. It was a mistake, okay?”
His smile grew. It was like a cat discovering a brand new ball of yarn, claws at the ready to sink in.
Sink in deep.
“So… you don’t think I’m sexy?”
The question surprised me, and I was left without an answer. Thankfully it wasn’t for long. Fox started to laugh, the laughter quickly spreading to me. Soon we were laughing, and soon we had both forgotten about what. In the blink of an eye, this interview had morphed into something that felt more like two old friends catching up than two strangers meeting for the first time in their entire lives.
“Kidding, you don’t have to answer,” he said, saving me from the self-imposed torture pit I had fallen into. “Men, by the way.”
“Hm?”
“I’m into guys. You mentioned it—”
“Oh right, yeah. Right.” Gasoline from some unknown source was poured into the heart of the inferno now burning inside my body. “Got it. I’m, uh, straight.” For some reason I felt like it was only polite to reciprocate the information. Except, when I heard it back in my head, I realized how douchey I had said it. “Not that I’ve got any issues with gay men or anything. Obviously, I’m here. I just… you… this interview. I’m…” I was going haywire. Another side effect from the gunshot wound, a rare one. It only happened when my nerves were at their peak. It made finding words difficult, like pulling them out of a tar pit. I had to dig for them, and even then, I may not pull out the right one. It led to pauses and stumbles and gave my self-confidence a huge hit.
“Hey, it’s all right. No worries, Jonah.” He got up and walked over to a small black fridge set in the corner. He opened it and grabbed a bottle of water.
“Here you go.” He leaned on the table, handing me the bottle. It was cool in my hands.
And it lasted approximately four seconds in my hands before it fell, tumbling down and spinning through the air, almost in slow motion.
The bottle landed, miraculously, on its bottom, preventing it from exploding and spilling water everywhere.
“Shit, sorry.” I reached down, steadying my hands with a breath. “Palms are sweaty.”
My hands steadied enough for me to grab the bottle. I lifted it, feeling the muscles in my fingers and palm and wrist all working in a fucked-up unison. Like they were all following the beat to a different song.
I was able to lift the bottle without dropping it again. I put it between my legs and left it there, deciding I could quench the dryness in my mouth later.
“I’ve got a gay brother,” I said, doubling back on the conversation. I didn’t want to leave it the way I had. Up until now, I felt like I had been pretty much acing the interview. But suddenly, it looked like the road up ahead was leading straight toward a mile-long drop off a steep cliff. “It’s part of the reason why I want to work here so bad. He’s my younger brother, by two years, and I’ve always looked out for him. I always had his back. When he came out, which he did in such an awesome way, I made sure everyone in his class was okay with it, and anyone who wasn’t would get a… well, they’d get a pretty rough talking-to from me. I protected him… and then, one night, I couldn’t protect him. He was walking to his apartment with his boyfriend. This was a couple years ago. They were holding hands, when…uh… two piece-of-shit thugs… they run up behind them and start beating my brother and his boyfriend with bats.”
The memory of that night was coming at me with the speed of a Formula One driver. The memory of driving to the hospital and not giving a fuck about speed limits, just wanting to get to my brother’s bedside.
“My brother managed to get up and fight back. So did his boyfriend. And then one of the thugs pulled out a knife. There was another struggle, and then they were stabbed.”
Fox was a stoic man. I could tell he was rarely affected by things as much as someone more sensitive, someone like me. But this story seemed to have cut to his core, because his face cracked and his jaw dropped.
“Fucking hell, Jonah.”
“My brother survived,” I said. “His boyfriend, though… he didn’t make it. Died in my brother’s arms while the ambulance got there. The two men had run off when they heard someone calling the police, and… they were never found after that.”
“I… Jonah. Fuck.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“Sorry. I normally have more words than that… That just makes me so fucking angry.” I could hear it in his voice, the emotion. His fists were clenched, pale around the knuckles from how tight they were.
“That’s okay, I get it.” Something about Fox’s anger felt familiar. It was the burning sensation I had felt inside me, a different kind of heat than the one I was currently feeling. It was a cold heat. The kind that doesn’t lick at your skin but tears it off, a vicious kind of heat that made it difficult to breathe. Hard to see straight.
“You know, this is weird, but… it’s oddly comforting to see you get upset over my brother the way I did. When I first got the news, I wanted to find the two fuckers and wring them by their necks. It made me ashamed of myself. But I couldn’t stop it. And the night it all happened, Wendy, my girlfriend, well… she deals with things differently. She saw the anger and how deeply upset I was, and she, uhm, she told me to go stay at a hotel that night. The night my brother almost died, and the night his boyfriend did die.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“And my anger was never directed in any way toward her, at all, just to make that clear.”
“I’d never even think that.”
“But she still didn’t want me around.”
“So you stayed by yourself that night? In some random hotel? While your girlfriend slept in your bed?” Fox’s forehead grew wrinkled from concern. “Sorry, I shoul—
“No, that’s okay. I didn’t sleep in a hotel that night, but I did sleep alone. I went to my parents’ house and slept in my childhood bedroom. Not that there was much sleeping that night, obviously. Or the nights after, which she also told me to stay away for.”
His brows rose even higher. “Are you kidding me? Why would she do that?”
“She said she liked the space and felt like it would be good for our relationship if it was extended a few days.”
Fox stayed quiet for a moment. “Wow.” He went back to his seat, rubbing a hand over his cheek, up into his hair. This created a gap in the buttons on his shirt, giving me a clear view of the tattooed chest, bright colors popping through the gap.
I quickly pried my eyes away, although his gaze suggested I might not have been quick enough.
“Anyways,” I said, waving a hand through the air, half expecting it to get caught in whatever tension was thickening the space between us. “I should veer back to the interview. This isn’t a therapy session, and I really don’t want to have to pay you to psychoanalyze me.”
I was shocked at how much I had opened up to this man. Barely an hour after meeting him and I felt like we’d been friends since Ms. Tina Georgina’s kindergarten class back from 1995.
“Interview, right.” He laughed, a sound that came from deep in his chest. “Listen, Jonah, I think it’s safe to say that you’ve got the job.”
“Whoa, wait… for real?”
“You’ve got good experience as an officer, and you rose in the ranks faster than I’ve seen anyone do in a while. You’re charismatic and sharp, you’ve got drive and passion. You’ve got your Florida detective licensing in order and passed the exam
with the highest percentile bracket.” He was smiling, showing off his pearly whites.
It was nice.
More than nice, it drew me in faster than a moth to a campfire.
“Stonewall Investigations would be lucky to have you.”
“I’d be lucky to have you.” My eyes almost fell out of my skull. “Yoouurr blessing. Lucky to have your blessing. Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said, his eyes once again suggesting he wasn’t falling for any of my bullshit.
“So, when can I start?”
“How does now sound?”
Both of my eyebrows jumped. “Oh, okay, yeah. Now’s as good a time as any.”
And with that, I was officially hired as a Stonewall detective, after an interview where I had made a solid and convincing case for myself while simultaneously coming off as a complete and utter fool.
Sexy TV magician, really? Really?
All in all, though, I was feeling more and more confident that coming to this interview and taking this job would be one of the best things to have happened to me in a very long time.
Another good thing?
Meeting Gabriel “Fox” Morrison.
That was one other really good thing. Maybe even the best thing…
5 Gabriel “Fox” Morrison
Jonah had blown my expectations out of the water. All the previous detectives who had come in for a spot were similarly bright and driven, but none caught my attention as much as Jonah Brightly had. There was something about him that had me spinning off my axis. He changed the way I breathed, how I stood, the way I laughed. All from a simple hour or so of speaking with him.
And then the kick to the nuts that I needed: he was straight.
He was going to be a great friend, I could already sense that, but that was all he would be. A great friend and a great detective. I needed to be okay with that and nothing more.
I had to get rid of the fantasies that started cropping up in my head. The fantasies that involved Jonah, his legs spread wide, his body aching for my touch. Mine for his.
