“Stop it,” Josiah said from beside him.

Mateo looked his way. “Stop what, mi precioso?” Though he knew exactly what Jay meant.

“You’re worrying about something. I can see it. Everything’s perfect. It’s going to keep being that way. We deserve it.”

When Jay said stuff like that, he wanted to believe him. He needed to believe him. No one could make him think that way except for Josiah. “Okay,” Mateo replied simply, making Josiah smile.

They both turned Tristan’s way. He opened his mouth, but before he got any words out, there was a knock at the door. No one knocked on their door. There was only one person the doorman could let upstairs without telling them first.

Mateo’s body stiffened. He squeezed the glass in his hand to keep from throwing it across the room.

“Relax. Josiah, answer the door. You invited me over for breakfast as a thank you because I let you spend some time in my apartment next door when you lost your keys. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Mateo couldn’t make himself look at Tristan as Tristan spoke. He kept his eyes trained forward, hand on the glass, as Josiah stood and went for the door.

They’d talked about this. Tristan didn’t keep work papers in the apartment. He had his laptop with him, and Tristan assured him the department was overbooked and most of them didn’t give a shit enough to try and push it on clothes. How could they prove they weren’t Josiah’s? He had a room set up for himself and clothes in it. Tristan’s were with Josiah’s in the room they slept in, but still, the fact that they even had to do this made him feel like shit. That the shit he’d done put Tristan in this situation ate him up. It wasn’t that they were in this position because of the things he’d done to protect Josiah. It was because Mateo had been a dumb fucking kid who’d sent Josiah away so Mateo could be a thug.

“Relax,” Tristan said through tight lips as Mateo heard Josiah say hello to his PO at the door.

A few seconds later, Jay led his PO into the kitchen, another police officer by their side. “Mateo, there’s someone here for you.”

His legs shook as he pushed to his feet and set the glass down. Mateo nodded at him, but his PO wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were trained on Tristan, who eyed him back without saying a word.

Mateo watched as Mr. Sanders’ eyebrows pulled together and his body language changed, though Mateo wasn’t sure what it meant. But his own? He definitely knew what the stiffness in his body and the fire racing beneath his skin meant.

Mateo clutched the edge of the table, gripping it as tightly as he could. He belongs here with us. I belong here with them. The words teased his tongue, burned it with the need to break free. He wanted the question in the man’s eyes gone. Wanted it to be okay that he was with Tristan, the same way he’d wanted it in the elevator that day.

And Tristan did, too. Mateo saw it in the challenge in Tristan’s eyes and the slight smirk on his face.

Which was exactly the reason he needed to get the fuck away from here and get Tristan gone.

Neither Tristan, nor his PO nor the cop paid him any attention, so Mateo forced himself to turn to Josiah. All he had to do was stare at him, tell him with his eyes what he needed, and Josiah nodded.

“Thank you for having breakfast with me, Tristan. I’ll walk you out,” Josiah told him, breaking the spell between the two men. There was hesitation in Tristan’s movements, but still he bent, grabbed his briefcase and laptop bag from beside the table.

He didn’t look at Mateo as he followed Josiah to the front door, as though their lover had to lead him out of their house. The ache inside him grew, fucking expanded to run the length of him, as Tristan stepped out of the apartment door, without a word to him.

Because he didn’t have a choice.

“You gonna look around or what?” Mateo crossed his arms.

The fucker grinned at him as though he knew he had Mateo by the balls. He didn’t think it had anything to do with Tristan. The man couldn’t know what was going on with them, but he knew he had Teo at his mercy, and that was almost as bad.

“That’s why we’re here.”

He moved through the kitchen, the cop right with him, opening a couple drawers and cabinets as he went. Teo followed behind him, fighting the urge to grab the man and throw his ass out. Kitchen to living room, living room to hallway, hallway to office, office to the room Mateo never spent a night in but pretended he slept in every night.

He heard Josiah step in behind them as Mateo followed him into their room. The room he shared with his men. The one he dreamed in, they slept in, they fucked in, and that urge to beat the hell out of him slammed into Mateo again. The bastard didn’t belong in their space. He didn’t want him to touch Josiah’s and Tristan’s things. To flaunt his shit like he could do anything he wanted in here, even though he probably could.