Page 83 of Burden of Proof

“Are you in love, Finn?” Smith asked, dropping his head against my shoulder.

“No.”

He said it so quickly, I did wonder if it was a lie.

“Are you?” Smith asked softer, the question directed at me.

“Yes.”

“That’s good. He needs that.”

“How do…” Finn sat up, angling his body to size me and Smith up. With narrowed eyes, he took a drink of his wine, brow knit together like he was solving a crime. “I’ve had a few drinks before this one, but this feels very incestuous.”

“I assure you it’s not.”

Finn scratched the back of his neck and slowly sank into his spot on the couch, taking a drink of wine and smacking his lips together.

“If you say so.”

“I do,” I told him at the same time as Smith said, “We do!”

“They’re friends,” I said.

“Same as Lincoln and Silas?”

“Exactly,” I said.

Beside me, Smith muttered, “Not quite.”

“Not you too. Don’t downplay how fond he is of you.”

“I know he is,” Smith said. “He’s a good man. You’re both good men.”

“So are you,” Finn and I said at the same time.

Smith frowned but shrugged his shoulders. “For a really long time I was jealous of the two of you. You’ve always been so close.”

At the observation, Finn moved closer to me, but not in any way that Smith would notice. Just a subtle shift of his weight, a gesture we’d perfected over the years.

“Are you still hung up on being a Covington?” Finn asked, reaching over me to clink his glass into Smith’s.

“Hung up on a lot of things, I think,” he admitted.

“Do you still want to quit your job?”

“Sometimes.”

Finn snorted. “I think we all want to quit our jobs sometimes. As long as you don’t want to quit life.”

“I don’t,” Smith said quickly.

We both looked at Finn, and I asked him, “Do you?”

He licked his lips and smiled down into his wine. “No,” he said quietly. “Not that.”

We sat together in silence for a few more minutes, and then Finn grabbed the remote from the arm of the couch and turned on the TV, scrolling through my streaming apps until he foundone he liked. After he had it cued up, he tossed the remote into Smith’s lap.

“Would you find something to watch?” he asked, taking my wine out of my hand. Finn leaned forward and set both our glasses on the coffee table and pulled me to my feet. “And would you let me borrow some fucking clothes? These slacks are driving me up the wall.”