Page 115 of Under Cover
“So, uh, Judson,” his father said, his once powerful voice uncertain. “I’ve heard some… some troubling things from the guys back in the precinct. Have you heard about your old partner? That he’s in the hospital?”
“Yup, Dad. In fact, I sort of put him there.”
“Judson?” He sounded appalled. “Judson—McEnany’s a good cop—”
“No, Dad. He was never a good cop. He was sort of a racist shitbag. I told you that two years ago—it didn’t change when he got here and tried to have me and my team killed.”
His father gasped. “You… you must have it wrong,” he said weakly. “Collie McEnany—he’s from the neighborhood—”
“And the neighborhood was fine with him murdering a kid in cold blood,” Crosby said, remembering his words to Creedy. A real father didn’t raise his kid on hatred. “And he may not go to prison forthat, but believe me, my unit found lots of other stuff that’s going to put him there to rot.”
Crosby felt particularly liberated saying the words out loud. His father, the guy he’d joined the force to be like, could either be proud of him, or he could not. Crosby had a home, and he had his book, and he had a cat.
And he had his integrity, a job he could be proud of, and a lover who would partner with him and have his back, literally through thick and through thin and better and worse, and probably through richer or poorer, although Garcia wasn’t letting him pay rent.
“But….” His father’s voice faltered. “Son, your mother and I—we can never go home again. Not after this.Youcan never go home again.”
The Chicago FBI field office had been dealing with death threats aimed at Crosby from this exact thing. Three cops—or their spouses—had already ended up on the wrong side of the law because those threats had been easily traced. Garcia wasn’t taking down the security system anytime soon.
“Dad,” he said, and decided to go for the whole enchilada. “I’m living with a guy. I’m in love with him. Do you think I could go home again anyway?”
His father’s caught breath had chilled him to the bone. “Is this why… is this why you didn’t come visit over Christmas?”
Crosby had choked back a broken laugh. “No. The ‘my father is a racist’ thing is why I haven’t come home during Christmas. The ‘I can’t believe the old man built his career on this bunch of douchebags’ is why I haven’t visited. The ‘I’m bisexual and in love and actually happy’ is a me thing, not a you thing. But I know what it means. It means the old man who thought I should just okay the shooting of a Black teenager because going along means getting along is not ever going to let me darken his door again.”
“Son….” His father’s voice had diminished somehow. “You’d do that? Cut your mother and me out of your life?”
Crosby had sighed. “I don’t want to,” he said, memories of what had seemed to be a decent childhood playing behind his eyes. “But Dad, I made my choice. I made my choice the day I testified against McEnany in Chicago. In fact I made my choice the day I told him I didn’t want to come to poker night. My choice is, I’d rather die a good man than live as a bad one. I spent six weeks undercover seeing how the bad ones lived because McEnany was using me as a pawn, and it hasn’t changed my opinion any. You need to either love me as a good man—one who lives with another good man—or despise me because I’m not who you think I should be. But that’s all you. You know this number. Call me when you get it figured out.”
He hung up then and leaned his head against the back of the chair, his phone—and the book he was reading on it—falling to his lap. The cat, who had stayed Sampson after Crosby had pulled him in the house that night, continued to drool and was not unhappy in the least when he buried a hand in that glorious white-and-gray fur.
Garcia found him there an hour later, still staring into space, his face wet with tears.
“Hey, Cowboy,” he’d said into the lowering twilight. “What’s up?”
“My father called,” Crosby replied, his voice toneless.
“What’d you say?”
And Crosby’s own words had echoed back in his head, making that moment clearer and, while painful, also more beautiful, etched in his heart forever.
“I said I would rather die a good man than live a bigot,” he said, and it was as true now as it had been, over two years before. “And I was living with a good man, and I was in love.”
Garcia’s slow smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “What a coincidence,” he said softly. “So am I.”
Crosby had grinned up at him from the chair, and Garcia had—gently but firmly—moved the cat to the floor and then kissed him, a gentle kiss because they’d both been healing over those weeks, resting, getting ready for the massive amounts of cleanup in the future.
But Crosby hadn’t wanted gentle. He’d wanted firm and real andalive. They’d ended up having sex in the chair, Calix kneeling on the cushion, face mashed against the back, Crosby holding his hips and fucking him from behind while Calix spurred him on. They’d come together, and Crosby had collapsed against Calix’s back as the chair had collapsed beneath their combined weight, leaving them on the floor in a heap of fabric stuffing and broken wood.
Calix hadn’t stopped laughing, not through cleanup, not through lugging the chair out to the front curb for trash pickup, and not through picking out another sturdy “big and tall” chair online and arranging for delivery.
They’d eaten dinner in a daze of fractured conversation and random laughter and had fallen asleep, Crosby’s back to Garcia’s front, Garcia still giggling into the nape of Crosby’s neck.
And while the next two months had been tough—working apartsucked—that beginning glimmer of happy, ofthem,hadn’t faded yet.
Crosby was starting to suspect it might not fade ever. This moment here, Calix collapsed in his arms, still panting, the air scented with sex and sweat and a little of air freshener and a little like cat, seemed to be the best moment of their lives, made even better with the promise that it would happen again and again and again.
“When we get up,” Calix said, sounding content as the damned cat, who was asleep in his cat bedunderthe human bed because he weighed a bloody ton, “we need to eat and then shower before we go out to dinner and eat some more. I mean, it’s totally worth it, Cowboy, but sometimes you need food tofuelthe sex.”
