Tristan walked over, stopping in front of Mateo. “He’s hurting. He’ll be okay. We have to be okay.”

They did have to be okay. There wasn’t another option.

Mateo repeated that in his head as Josiah was quiet on the way to the PO. He didn’t speak when they went to the Wharf, either. It drizzled outside, the sky dark gray. Not many people were down there, a jogger here and there.

Josiah answered questions, held Mateo’s hand when he reached for it, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t his Jay.

Before they left, he stopped Josiah, grabbed a hold of him, and forced Josiah to look at him. “Don’t do this, Jay. Let me in.” He brushed Josiah’s hair from his face. “What’s goin’ on in that head’a yours?”

Josiah leaned into him, rested his head on Mateo’s shoulder, with his face in Mateo’s neck. “I don’t know.”

It was those words that sent ice through Mateo’s veins. Josiah always knew. No matter what, he always believed things would work out. Even when he didn’t have the answers, he somehow did because he believed things would get better, and he told Mateo and Tristan that. No matter how much shit fell apart, Josiah led them from the darkness.

This time, they lost Josiah to its depths.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Josiah

Most things in the world didn’t make sense. People liked to pretend they did; they wanted a reason, an explanation for everything. How could Teo’s dad hurt him the way he had? How did Mateo grow into a man with such a good heart despite all he’d seen and done?

Why couldn’t Tristan’s grandparents accept their daughter’s pregnancy? How could they turn her away? Would Tristan be as good a man as he was if he hadn’t lived such a hard life? Would Teo?

Out of all the billions of people in the world, how did they find each other? Why did Teo go to the same home as Josiah, or, out of all the seconds in a day, all the minutes in an hour and days in a year, what made Tristan and Josiah both be down at the water at the exact same moment?

Josiah didn’t have an answer for those things, the same way he didn’t have an answer for why he felt the way he did right now.

He felt detached from his own life, but almost within reaching distance at the same time. He stretched and stretched, trying to grab hold. Trying to keep himself afloat, trying to let Mateo and Tristan do it for him, the way he always wanted to do for them.

No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he reached, he couldn’t grab on, though.

Teo used to always wait for the other shoe to drop. When things were going good, he expected the worst. Waited for it, because good could never last. Josiah always believed it could. He told Mateo that a million times over the years, and he always believed it.

Now, he didn’t know how to make himself.

They were at their high at the beach house. From then on out, it was as if someone took a whittling tool to them, one chip with the PO, then another with Tristan’s boss.  A crack formed down the middle of them, the middle of Tristan and Mateo soon after, breaking apart the circle they formed.

He wasn’t playing his role, and he couldn’t figure out how to get back into it again. And what would happen to them all if he couldn’t find a way to be who they needed him to be?

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Tristan

“Do you deny that you showed up at the scene of the fire, in the middle of the night, with Mateo Sanchez?” Larry asked Tristan.

He knew it. Jesus, he fucking knew it.

“What would be the point in that? We both know it wouldn’t be true.” They’d driven together. Walked to Josiah together. Tristan had held Josiah, then Mateo had.

“And the other one...Josiah. What is he to you?” Larry had a smirk on his face.

It wasn’t his business. Larry couldn’t ask him that. Both Tristan and Larry knew it. Still... “He is mine,” Tristan said simply. The smile fell from Larry’s lips. Confusion creased his brow. “Mateo is mine, too.” What was the purpose in denying it? There was a possibility they would both have to be there for Josiah in the future. If they did, it wouldn’t be something they could hide.

He didn’t want to hide it anymore, either. Tiredness tugged at his muscles, made his bones feel too heavy to carry around. He was so tired of hiding. So tired of feeling like no matter what they did, they would still lose.

Larry watched him for a moment, apparently at a loss for words. “You have to understand where we’re coming from. He...they...one of them spent time in prison. He has a PO in this very building, and the arson at the coffeehouse... Whether he did it or not, he’s been questioned. We can’t have one of our head attorneys tangled up in a mess like this. We’ve been able to contain it getting out for now, but who knows how long that will last? It’s a paid leave—”