because Lance talks to your doctor and then he talks to me, and I know all that shit,” Henry said mildly, apparently HIPAA laws be damned. “That’s not the broken I was talking about.”
Oh dear lord. “Feelings?” Jackson asked, appalled. “You want me to talk about my feelings? Werewolf fucking Jesus, when did that happen?”
“Oh my God, you people gave me so much shit because I was repressed when I got here. You wrote the book on emotional repression. I’m just asking you if any of the shit you had to sort when we were running around trying to clear my name got sorted.”
“Oh, who cares,” Jackson snapped. God yes, he’d been talking to Ellery’s rabbi, who had appointed himself Jackson’s personal counselor for life, and yes, he felt a little better about things than he had before he’d driven himself to the damned almost-heart-attack. But part of the reason he wanted to get back to the office wasn’t so much to avoid the personal tinkering he had to do in order to make his relationship—and, face it, himself—work better, it was to have a place where he didn’t have to confront hard personal truths.
Activity and puzzle solving was oh-so-much easier, and sometimes he needed a break from his own head.
“I do,” Henry said brightly. “Emotional enlightenment works great that way.”
“I’m fine,” Jackson told him. “I’m practically giddy.”
Henry paused as they neared the cream-colored Lincoln that Galen Henderson, who technically employed Henry as his private investigator, lent out to Henry so Henry could drive him to and from work. Galen had been injured in a horrific motorcycle crash nearly five years ago and had battled addiction to painkillers afterward. He could walk now and drive a car, but not without pain. His boyfriend liked to spare him that, so they’d hired Henry to drive for Galen when Henry had first come to Sacramento.
Then there had been the inconvenient murder charge, and Henry had proved to have a knack for helping Jackson search out the truth, so Jackson had gained himself a protégé, and Henry had gained himself a calling.
“Still having nightmares?” Henry asked softly as Jackson reached to open his door.
Jackson grunted and was about to blow Henry off when his last discussion with the rabbi flashed through his mind. Allow other people to worry about you. It’s a kindness—it gives them something active to do while you go help people.
“What was it you said?” He rubbed his chest. “Always broken? My nightmares and I go way back. It’s going to take a lot more than a really decent relationship during a real bastard of a year to fix that.”
“Wow,” Henry said, sliding into the car.
“Wow what?” Jackson did the same and belted up too.
“That’s about as healthy as you probably get.” He hit the ignition switch and grinned. “Excellent. Let’s go kick some ass.”
Jackson laughed a little and let Henry speed out of Ellery’s expensive American River Drive neighborhood.
It really did feel like being let out of school.
THE PUBLIC defender’s office was located in a squat, ugly, square butt plug of a building on Seventh and H, which was sort of the center of the legal district in Sacramento. Given that the city was the state’s capitol, with plenty of lobbyists and representatives and senators floating around, the district itself was a little bigger than most, but still, Ellery’s law offices were probably within walking distance of this particular public eyesore.
They had to park three blocks away near the levee, because ugh, that was downtown, and by the time they’d walked back to mount the granite steps, Jackson could feel the sweat of a humid August day trickling down his armpits and his back.
Henry, dressed in pretty much the same non-uniform in cargo shorts and a T-shirt, was the first to remark on it.
“God, I’m so glad we don’t wear suits.”
“Oh my God, right? But you have to if you testify. You’ve got one, right?”
Henry’s slow breath of disgust told him that was a go. “Galen took me shopping right before you and Ellery offered me the job with the firm. I had no idea why somebody would buy me suits when he didn’t want up my ass, but now I know.”
“Technically we’re probably supposed to wear slacks and collared shirts,” Jackson told him, belatedly remembering that that’s what the other PIs in his and Ellery’s old firm used to wear. Just not him.
Henry looked at him in horror. “Are we gonna?”
“Oh God no. That’s the other guys.”
“Thank you,