Page 38 of Fire and Smoke (Nothing Special #9)

Lawson (Law) Sheppard

Law had waited long enough. It’d been a week of silence.

A week of brushed-off touches, rebuffed kisses, and the hollow ache of Wes refusing to allow him to sleep in his arms.

He’d been patient. But it hadn’t earned him anything, but more distance.

So tonight, he’d pulled out his best moves.

He was armed with one of Wes’s favorite meals: barbecue chicken flatbread with extra onions and a six-pack of overpriced imported lager they used to drink after a gig. Wes always said it tasted like bitter gold.

Wes’s truck was at the curb, but his mother’s gray Honda was gone.

Perfect .

He didn’t knock.

He flipped over the fourth flowerpot and pulled out the spare key.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

Law went straight for the basement.

He was at the bottom of the steps when a sudden chill hit him.

The life that was Wes’s space was gone.

There was no ten-year-old bomber jacket draped across the back of their couch, no action film playing low in the background, no gears whirring, or heat stifling the air from his lit torches.

Nothing. The room was dead.

He stood there until the bag of food slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a soft thud, the six-pack crashing after it.

His heart dropped with them.

“No,” he muttered, voice already cracking. “No, no, no—”

He rushed to the workbench, searching for something. A note. A message. Anything.

There was nothing.

Law ripped his phone from his pocket and hit the first contact on his home screen.

It didn’t even ring, sending him straight to voicemail.

Again.

And again.

Pick up, pick up, please fuckin’ pick up—

Fifth time. Voicemail.

His hand was shaking as he tried Forest. Maybe he had a local shoot. A commercial gig. A stage thing.

No answer.

His chest heaved, his eyes filling with moisture.

He jabbed at the numbers of the next name he could think of.

Free.

He picked up after one ring. “Yo?”

“Where is he?” Law’s voice broke mid-demand.

“Law?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, Free! Where the fuck is Wes?”

A beat of silence.

“I don’t know where he is right now,” Free said calmly.

Law paced the basement like a caged animal, yanking at his hair.

“Don’t do this, Free. You two have been holed up all week in your vault. What were y’all working on? What did he say to you? Did he tell you he was leaving? You knew, didn’t you?”

“I knew he was hurting.”

“That’s not an answer!” Law roared, his voice echoing off the cement walls.

Free stayed leveled. “You want honesty? Okay. Wes has been building something that made him feel in control again. Something for him . Not for the task force and not for you. And I respected that.”

Law fell to his knees, clutching the phone against his ear.

Free was quiet for a long moment before he said softly, “Sometimes love is knowing when to let someone breathe. You push, Law, and you love hard. But when someone’s suffocating, squeezing them tighter isn’t the answer.”

Law didn’t say anything.

“Maybe this is his breath.” Free ended the call.

Law sat on the basement floor, the dim light of his phone screen fading out in his palm. He’d wanted Wes safe, not gone.

He didn’t move for hours, just stayed there curled in the last place he thought Wes had been.

By morning, he was still in the same spot.

The ache in his spine matched the one in his chest.

His clothes were wrinkled, eyes stinging, and he didn’t remember falling asleep. He’d just stared at nothing until the weight of “ this is his breath ” overtook him.

Eventually, he peeled himself off the cold concrete, washed his face in Wes’s upstairs sink, and left the house in a daze.

When he arrived at the precinct, it was past one in the afternoon. The bullpen noise—heated conversations, phones ringing, civilians fussing—was overstimulating.

But when he walked into the task force department, everything slowed.

Eyes tracked him.

He felt like hell, and he knew he looked even worse.

Ruxs was the first to shoot his big mouth off. “Damn, you look like death and someone forgot to bury you.”

Law acted as if he didn’t hear the insult and went straight to Free’s corner, jaw clenched.

“Please,” he said, in a pained moan. “Did he say when… if he was coming back?”

Free paused mid-typing.

“Then can you just tell me what you two were building? Please.”

Free stood and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Law—”

“Don’t fuckin touch me!” he yelled, jerking away from Free’s touch. “Just tell me—”

“Hey!” Syn’s voice snapped him to attention.

Syn’s glare was piercing, his tone final. “Conference room. Now.”

God, Day, and Ronowski followed.

Law sat in the center chair, hands gripping his knees until his fingers ached.

Day stared at him with too much empathy. “Law…”

“Don’t,” he gritted. “Don’t tell me it’s gonna be okay.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Day sighed. “I was going to tell you to go home.”

“You’re no good to me like this,” God added. “If having Wes by your side is the only way you can function—and that’s damn sure what it looks like—then I can’t use half a man. And right now, you’re bleeding all over my fuckin’ floor.”

Law’s throat closed.

“I can still help,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I can finish what we started. I know Wes’s work. I know how he builds. It’s practically mine too.”

It was mostly true.

God studied him.

Law leaned forward. “I need you to honor your part of the deal, God.”

God frowned.

“I need to get to LA,” Law said, his voice steel under the agony.

I won’t let us end like this. I won’t.

Syn and Day exchanged a look.

God stood. “All right. You get the job done. And I’ll get you back to LA…to him.”

Law swallowed the boulder in his throat and nodded.

Finally, he had some direction.

He didn’t have Wes, but he still had a chance.