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He offered to help me do a functional redesign of my office that sounded expensive as hell: a small library for writing andresearch, a private, a fully-equipped lab just for me, a consult room, a profiling room, a yoga room (if I wanted it), a fireplace for me for me and Panther… whatever I wanted, in whatever combination I wanted.

I told him no.

That time, I definitely got the sense he’d been hurt by the quickness of my refusal.

I glanced out the window at the familiar entrance of the S.F.P.D. Northern District Police Precinct building on Fillmore. I used to know the inside of that building almost as well as Nick and Angel did. I’d walk over there a few times a week to try and grab Angel or Nick for lunch, or for a drink after work. I’d also see them in the coffee shop downstairs.

The shop had changed owners; the coffee wasn’t as good now.

That, or Black had spoiled me rotten with his expensive machines and imported coffee beans and supernatural knack with the milk-steamer.

Coffee wasn’t the issue, though.

Nick didn’t work across the street anymore.

Angel didn’t work there, either. She occasionally still went inside that Fillmore station, likely to waves and cheers, but no longer as “one of them.”

More to the point, being back here, at my old office, felt… well, bad.

It felt grim, verging on depressing.

My admin assistant from those days, Gomez “Gomey” Ramirez, wouldn’t be coming back to handle reception at the front desk, driving me crazy with his endless (and loud) personal phone calls, and frankly making me wonder why I paid him at all, given his frequent breaks, his refusal to get my coffee orders right, and his inability to take down a message without garbling it, transcribing the number wrong, or losing it altogether.

Gomey died in this office.

My chest began to throb, constricted with an imaginary weight.

Gaos.Why had I come back here?

That’swhy I left.That’swhy I hadn’t ever wanted to return.

Panther whined, and I dug into my pocket and fed him a treat. I stroked his soft neck and looked around the room while he crunched it with his teeth.

I’d never know how badly Brick hurt Gomey that day, before he finally snapped his neck and left him on my waiting room floor like a broken doll. Guilt and grief nearly overwhelmed me whenever I thought about him. It was impossible not to feel responsible. He’d died because he worked for me. If he’d worked for anyone else, he’d more than likely still be alive.

I’d wondered why Black held onto this place.

He’d renewed the lease even after I told him he could get rid of it. He never saidwhyhe held onto it, or even that he had, not until I intercepted a call from the landlord one day and confronted him. Before, I might have guessed it was guilt, or even nostalgia.

Now I wondered if it had been something else entirely.

Despite how brusque and callous-seeming Black could be, he was eerily perceptive in some areas. Maybe he thought I’d need to come back here one day.

Maybe he thought I’d need to face it.

I let out a disbelieving snort, and Panther looked up at me, ears perked.

Bastard. Not the dog… Black. Clever, subtle, possibly manipulative, impossibly smart, reverse-psychologybastard.

I knew that wasn’t entirely fair. I was sure Black had been trying to help me.

Just like he’d drag me with him some mornings, when he got up at four, sometimes even three in the morning to go running.

Sometimes we’d stop by Jem and Nick’s house for coffee at the end of our run, and see if either or both of them wanted to walk down the street for waffles. Sometimes we’d look at houses and joke about moving into one ourselves. Black would tease me about buying one next door to Nick, just to watch Nick freak out.

Really, I let Black think it was a joke, but I wasn’t adverse to the idea, myself.

When I thought about the four of us living near one another, it made me feel safe.