Onley James

Death seemed preferable to loneliness. And Noah couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t lonely. Had he ever felt like somebody cared?

I like your freckles. They were the first thing I noticed about you.”
Noah smiled ruefully. “And here I thought it would be the gun in my hand.”

Adam snagged Noah’s hand. “You have freckles on your fingers, too,” he mused.
“You’re obsessed with freckles,” Noah teased.
Adam flicked pale blue eyes upwards, snagging Noah’s gaze. “No. Just yours.”
If he didn’t stop saying things like that, Noah was going to do something stupid like fall in love with a murderer.

Was it wrong that he wanted somebody to love him and look at him with movie level fuck me eyes?

“You know me,” Adam insisted.
“But you don’t know me,” Noah countered, voice a harsh whisper.
“I don’t need to know everything about you to know that you’re what I want.”

“Instinctively, what do you think you should do?”
“Run fast and far away from you,” Noah said without thought.
Adam grinned like he’d just somehow put Noah in check mate. “Then, by your own logic, you should do the opposite. And stay. With me.”
“This is crazy.”
“All the best things are.”

Cy was half-black

of criminals. Somehow, most of them black, despite eighty-five percent of the town being white.”

Nicky’s breath. “I… I’m not straight either,” he whispered.

Finally, Kendrick hesitantly said, “A program where we pair…neurodivergent operatives with neurotypical handlers in an attempt to make them effective deep cover operatives.”