School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,142

thing was that Jackson didn’t have a roadmap for how a normal life looked.

Ellery needed to give him some pointers, and he couldn’t do that in a place where every breath was measured against how he’d felt healthy and how he’d felt dying.

A week in Monterey sounded like the perfect getaway. And every time they’d gone out of town before now, they’d had a case. Ellery was really curious to see what they could manage without one.

Getting a room at the hotel in the center of downtown Monterey, overlooking the bay, was expensive and ostentatious, and Ellery didn’t give a shit. He had princess diamond tiara status or whatever in the hotel chain, and he wanted Jackson to wake up every morning and look out at the crystal waters of the bay.

Ellery had never really wanted to abuse his wealth until he’d loved someone who had grown up not having enough to eat.

Jackson had looked around with shy appreciation as they took the elevator to the top floor. “There’s a skyway across the street,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s sort of Monterey’s main street,” Ellery told him. “There’s shops, tourist kitsch, antiques, fudge.”

Jackson laughed softly. “We can walk to the aquarium,” he said. “It’s the one they had in Star Trek IV, but they called it something else.”

“You want to go?”

“Go see about the smart fish? Yeah, why not. I hear they have a mantis shrimp there. Do you know those little bastards have a dozen or more color cones in their eyes? They can practically see sound. They can power punch through six inches of fiberglass. It’s like a little karate death underwater butterfly. I want to see that.”

Ellery looked at him, appalled. “You want to go see a karate death underwater butterfly?”

“I hear they have otters too.” Jackson smiled sleepily, the combination of little-kid wonder and snarky asshole almost irresistible.

“Tomorrow,” Ellery told him. “We can go tomorrow. And maybe drive down the coast some the day after. The shopping in Carmel is really wonderful.”

Jackson grunted. “Shopping?”

“We can get my mother’s Hanukkah gift early.”

“Sure.” Jackson wrinkled his nose. “And yours, I guess. And your birthday gift while we’re at it. I sucked at your birthday gift.”

“You got me a very nice tie.” It had Siamese cats on it, like Billy Bob except with four legs. Ellery sort of treasured it, as tacky as it was, because Jackson had tried—hard—to reconcile their two different worlds.

Jackson’s laugh cracked. “I got a pass because last year was fucked way up. No more passes. I have to give better gifts.”

No. No, you don’t.

“Then we have to go shopping together,” Ellery said, voice thick. “It’s a skill.”

Like resting.

“WHAT ARE we going to do this evening?” Jackson said it with bright interest, but his steps dragged. People don’t like to admit that traveling is exhausting, particularly people like Jackson who felt like they were cheating at life when sitting still.

“You’re going to go sleep some more, and then we can go walk around and find a restaurant.” And Ellery could research the three cases they’d gotten in the past week. He’d be super excited about how he and Jackson kept attracting media attention with their high-profile cases if it didn’t mean Jackson ended up in the hospital all the fucking time.

“Aw, come on, Counselor. At least let me use my Google Fu and help you brain words.”

That was actually not a bad idea. Jackson’s instincts—whether he was up and around or not—were usually spot-on.

“Fine. Nap first.”

“Lay down with me?” And Ellery might have said no if Jackson had done that suggestively. But he didn’t. Instead, it was couched as a simple request, bare and particularly vulnerable.

Ellery couldn’t ignore those. Jackson so rarely made them.

“Sure.”

Jackson lay down dutifully as Ellery set up their luggage—Jackson’s battered duffel, Ellery’s Samsonite Rollaboard. Ellery put both their shaving kits in the bathroom and came back to the bed, where he kicked off his loafers and arranged himself neatly next to Jackson. Jackson had brought a blanket from home, something he’d owned before they’d gotten together that he’d picked up at a craft fair, and he was curled up underneath it, watching Ellery with hooded eyes. His hand on Ellery’s middle was warm and welcome, and Ellery closed his eyes, relaxing into the comfort he’d insisted upon.

“Going to nap with me?” Jackson asked. “The traffic was pretty awful on the way down.”

Yes, it had been. And, well, Jackson needed a roadmap. It was up to Ellery to provide. He slid lower on the