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Mateo spent a lot of time with Tristan’s mom He didn’t knohat they did or what they talked about, but he knew his mom loved Mateo He knew that as much as she made him feel better, he did the sa run Tristan and Josiah had hated letting him do it, but they couldn’t be indebted to anyone fro that run had been the only way out of it all

The case had been closed on the coffeehouse fire They didn’t have evidence on Josiah They had enough other things to worry about in the city that it got pushed to the sidelines

They’d done soet ahold of his contact in New York again, only to discover theafter Javier He’d realized what the man was capable of, and hadn’t wanted a part of it They could only assume whoever Javier had killed had been Ricky’s man

Tristan’s hands were still clean Mateo’s weren’t, in his mind, but he was able to live with it better now Maybe that was both a good and bad thing, but all Tristan kneas that their lover was happy and felt as though he’d done what he was supposed to do: be their guardian angel

Tristan leaned forward in his office chair They were back in their ho, and he picked up his phone

"Now I kno you used to feel when I called you all the ti a bit hter in Ben’s tone, Tristan kneas hurting Everything had gone off without a hitch when it came to Javier’s murder They had been lucky lately, maybe for the first ti And not only because of Tristan, either

"Full Circle opens next week Why don’t you come to town? You can see the coffeehouse, and we can discuss o back to work at the prosecutor’s office He realized in the past few h; he had just been going about it the wrong way

He hadn’t helped his ht kind of people He wanted to open a private practice, and he wanted Ben to move to California and ith hih

"Stop pitying me And it would never work out and you know it I would try to fuck you, and then I’d have your men to deal with"

Tristan shook his head "No, you wouldn’t You’re too good aon inside my head You don’t want to see me like this, Tris I don’t want you to seeh New York Maybe soon I won’t have a choice but to go to San Francisco, because there won’t be anyone left"

There was a loton in Ben’s head than Tristan knew Maybe he would never know Yes, Ben was his friend, but ht

"I’hed "Stop sounding so put together It doesn’t suit you"