The apartment was dark.

Avi stood outside the threshold, rainwater pooling off Nicholas's grey umbrella onto the welcome mat in a heavy, rhythmic drip-drip-drip. The damp had crawled high up the cuffs of his jeans, freezing his ankles. His fingers hovered over his keys, trembling so badly he missed the keyhole twice before forcing the metal inside.

The deadbolt cracked open.

Warm air hit him first, thick with the scent of damp wool and stale coffee—followed immediately by an suffocating, unnatural silence.

Avi collapsed the umbrella with a wet thud, leaning it against the wall. He kicked off his shoes. One pair was already there. Nicholas. He was home. Avi's stomach dropped into a void. It didn't help one bit that there was a second pair, women's combat boots, dark leather, lying next to them unceremoniously.

His pulse hammered violently against his ribs as he rounded the corner into the living room.

The overhead fluorescent strips bled harsh, sterile light across the floorboards.

Nicholas sat slouched in a dining chair, broad frame hunched forward, two fingers dug so hard into his temple the skin was stark white. Between his elbows lay Shane's notebook. Open. The worn pages creased down the spine. Beside it sat a mug of coffee with a cold, pale film skinning the top.

A few feet away from him, sat at the edge of the sofa, hands clasped between her knees, looking like she'd been staring at the same spot on the rug for twelve hours, was Oriane.

She lifted her head as she heard Avi's arrival. When their eyes met across a space the devastating pity in her eyes made Avi sick to the core.

For several agonizing seconds, Avi froze in the doorway. The room filled with the deafening, dry click of the wall clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"...Nicholas?" Avi whispered.

"Close the door."

The voice didn't carry rage. It didn't carry exhaustion. It was a flatline. Completely empty.

Avi turned like a automaton and pushed the door until the latch clicked.

When he faced the room again, Nicholas was staring straight through him.

The weight of it hit Avi like a physical blow. There was no fury to fight against. But the ice-cold, clinical gaze of a federal agent looking at a suspect he'd already condemned wasn't entirely endearing to look at right now.

"Sit."

Avi's legs moved before his brain could protest. He didn't slouch. He didn't make a sharp remark. He pulled out the chair across from Nicholas, the legs scraping loudly on the hardwood, and dropped into it. Back rigid. Hands locked together between his knees.

He looked nineteen years old, waiting for the trapdoor to spring beneath his feet.

When Nicholas brought his hand down and slammed the notebook shut and the heavy leather hit the wood like a gunshot he visibly flinched.

"Did you read it?" Nicholas asked quietly.

"Yeah."

"Every page?"

"Yes."

Nicholas's jaw flexed, a muscle ticking beneath his ear. He inhaled through his nose, long and slow, as if convincing himself not to tear the table in half.

Silence pulled taut.

Nicholas's fingers dug into the leather cover. "Then you knew about Boaz."

Avi swallowed hard, his throat dry as ash. "Yes."

"And you sat across from me every morning and said nothing."

"I didn't know how to fix it!" Avi snapped, his voice cracking down the middle.

"You didn't have to fix it!" Nicholas roared, slamming his fist onto the table. The cold coffee sloshed over the rim, black liquid pooling on the wood. "You had to fucking tell me, Avi!"

"I HAD NO CHOICE!" Avi shoved himself back against his chair, fingers twisting violently in the hem of his sweater. "I knew what Shane wanted! I knew what you'd do if I gave it to you! You'd tear Boaz's life apart!"

"Boaz is a criminal!"

"And you're a fucking cop!" Avi's eyes burned, "If I gave you that book, Boaz loses everything. If I didn't, I'm betraying you! I was trying to find a way where nobody got destroyed!"

"Oh, don't flatter yourself," Nicholas spat, leaning over the table until they were nose-to-nose. "You didn't want to save anyone. You wanted to play God."

The words landed like a blade. Avi went completely still.

"You sat at my counter," Nicholas said, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. "You ate my food. You let me pull you out of the gutter while you buried evidence in your pocket. You watched me tear my life apart searching for answers you were holding behind your back."

"Nick, please—"

"You decided you knew better than the law. You decided you knew better than me."

"I was trying to protect you!"

"PROTECT ME?" Nicholas stood up so fast his chair screeched and hit the floor behind him. He stalked around the table, looming over Avi. "Is that what you tell yourself? Fucking martyr! Every arrogant, reckless idiot who bleeds out in an alley tells themselves the exact same lie! 'I'm protecting them! I'm fixing it!' And then they wind up in a body bag!"

Avi flinched, looking away.

"You read forty pages of Shane begging you to stop," Nicholas hissed, grabbing the back of Avi's chair and shaking it. "He begged you not to become him! And what did you do? You went straight to the people you were hiding from. You kept digging your own grave!"

"I had to know!"

"YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SPECIAL!" Nicholas screamed, the veins in his neck bulging. "You thought you'd be the one exception! You thought you could dance around the fire and not burn to ash!"

His voice cracked—a brutal, ragged tear in his composure. The silence that followed was suffocating.

Nicholas reached into his dark coat, yanked out a folded document, and shoved it hard against Avi's chest.

Official seal. Dark ink.

Avi caught it, his eyes darting over the header. "Witness Protection... what is this?"

"I'm taking the case."

"You can't—"

"Cry about it." Nicholas's chest heaved. "From this second on, you don't step a toe outside this apartment. You touch a phone, you try to reach Boaz, I will put you in handcuffs and lock you in a federal holding cell myself."

Avi gave a bitter, breathless laugh. "You're insane."

"Try me."

"Nick—"

"I don't give a fuck if you hate me for the rest of your life," Nicholas growled. He lunged forward, his broad hand diving straight into Avi's hoodie pocket.

Instinct flared. Avi grabbed Nicholas's wrist, digging his nails in. "Don't touch me!"

"Move."

"NO!"

Nicholas didn't hesitate. He twisted his wrist sharply, breaking Avi's grip with an iron lever-wrench, caught Avi's forearm, and shoved him hard face-first onto the wooden table.

Pain exploded in Avi's shoulder. "Ah—"

Oriane bolted off the sofa. "Nicholas, stop!"

"Stay out of it!" Nicholas growled. He yanked Avi's arm higher up his back, pinning his torso to the wood with his full body weight.

"Get off me, you fucking asshole!" Avi choked out, his cheek smashed against the cold varnish.

Nicholas dug his free hand into Avi's pocket, ripping out his keys, his phone, and his wallet, shoving them into his own coat. Then he released the pressure.

The second the weight lifted, Avi spun around and swung a wild, vicious hook straight for Nicholas's jaw.

Nicholas blocked it cleanly, caught Avi by the throat and shoulder, and slammed him backward into the drywall. The frame on the wall rattled violently. Nicholas pinned both of Avi's wrists against his chest with a single, crushing hand, leaning his full weight into him.

"DON'T!" Nicholas roared, his face inches from Avi's.

Avi thrashed desperately, kicking at Nicholas's legs, his face flushed crimson. "GET THE FUCK OFF ME! LET ME GO!"

"STOP MOVING!"

"I HATE YOU! GET OFF ME!"

"YOU THINK I WANTED THIS?" Nicholas's voice shattered, an absolute explosion of raw, ugly fury that rattled the windows.

Avi froze, his chest heaving wildly against Nicholas's forearm.

"You think I enjoyed reading that notebook?" Nicholas screamed, tears of rage glistening in his eyes. "You think I enjoyed finding out that the person I trust most in this world has been lying to my face for weeks? You think I want to carry another corpse out of an alley?!"

"I chose you!" Avi sobbed, thrashing once more. "I chose you over him!"

"I DIDN'T ASK YOU TO!"

The words ripped straight out of Nicholas's throat, destroying whatever control he had left.

"I didn't ask you to ruin yourself for me," Nicholas whispered, his voice breaking violently on the last word.

Avi went completely limp against the wall. The fight drained out of him all at once. His breathing hitched and the next thing Nicholas saw were the tears spilling down his pale face in hot, unchecked rivers.

"Nicholas, let go of the kid! You're fucking hurting him!"

Nicholas stared down at him. The sound of Avi's choked, desperate crying rattled through him like shrapnel. He looked down at his own hand—the knuckles stark white, his fingers crushing Avi's thin wrists against his chest, pinning him against the drywall like a cornered animal.

He recoiled as if burned.

Without Nicholas's weight holding him up, Avi's knees gave out completely. He slid all the way down the drywall, his back scraping against the plaster until he collapsed onto the hard floorboards. He curled inward, pulling his knees up to his chest and clutching his sore shoulder, his body trembling violently.

Nicholas closed his eyes, his breathing ragged and uneven, his chest heaving as he tried to force his racing heart back down into his ribs. But when he finally opened them, the cold, lethal mask had slid back over his features, shutting out the devastation right in front of him.

"He's yours," Nicholas said flatly, turning toward Oriane.

Oriane stood frozen beside the dining table, her eyes wide as she looked between Nicholas and the boy weeping on the floor. "...What?"

"Keep him inside."

"Damine, I'm not a fucking prison guard—"

"Keep him inside or I'll lock him in a cell!" Nicholas barked, his voice razor-sharp, cutting her off.

He snatched his heavy coat off the back of the chair. He reached the threshold, his hand closing over the brass doorknob, and finally stopped.

Nicholas turned his head just enough to cast one last, trembling look at the nineteen-year-old collapsed on the floor. Seeing Avi rolled up in a ball, shuddering from head to toe, tears soaking into the sleeves of his dark sweater, made something inside Nicholas fracture completely. His jaw tightened so hard the muscle twitched beneath his skin.

"Don't make me choose, Avi," Nicholas said, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying tremble, "between my badge..."

An agonizing beat stretched between them, thick and suffocating.

"...and shooting you myself to keep you safe."

The front door ripped open. Slammed shut.

The heavy deadbolt clicked into place from the outside with a cold, absolute snap.