Ben had slept fitfully last night, when he slept at all. Mostly he did what he was doing now: staring at the ceiling illuminated by the cold blue light of his mini-humidifier. Allergy season would be over soon, and then he could put that thing away until October. One fewer reminder of his time with Evan.

Robert had texted him after the match yesterday, sharing the news of the Warriors’ loss after Evan injured himself scoring a “right screamer.” Ben wondered whether it was his own fault. Surely the stress of a blown cover and a sudden breakup would weaken any human body.

Though he knew he shouldn’t, Ben rolled over and picked up his tablet. After switching off the Wi-Fi just to be safe, he brought up the video they’d made two weeks ago in Stromness, declaring their love and waking their neighbors with Sunday morning sex noises. He’d already watched it twice with Evan and twice more by himself. This would be the last time. Or perhaps the first of the next hundred times, he wasn’t sure.

On this morning’s viewing, he didn’t focus on Evan’s face and body as he’d done before. And of course he wasn’t about to watch his own awkward self. Instead he stared at the space between them, at the intersection of skin and skin.

Ben studied the places where hands met chests and shoulders, where lips met lips and tongues met tongues. He searched for distance, for traces of distrust. Surely a warning sign lay here somewhere. Surely the merging of their souls had been a passion-induced illusion. Hormones did funny things to one’s mind.

But on this video, not one inch of them seemed a stranger. Every finger was certain in its placement. Their shared, synchronized breath gave and took strength in an endless circle.

In those moments—and in so many others, in and out of bed—he and Evan had been truly united, in that almost mystical way he’d read about in Bahá’í writings or heard about in wedding vows, a way he’d never dared to believe was real. And now that they were over, Ben felt like he was missing part of himself—not just a limb, but something at his very core. How could his heart still manage to beat after he’d given Evan a piece of it, then walked away without getting it back?

When the video ended, Ben dropped the tablet onto the bed beside him. He’d found no hidden clues justifying their breakup, nothing that had to do with them. Circumstances beyond their control had pulled them apart. Ben couldn’t help that Evan was an MI5 officer, and he couldn’t help that his own curiosity and lack of guile made him constitutionally incapable of secrecy.

Perhaps if they’d met earlier in life, or later, they could have worked. But not as the men they were now.

A buzz came from the wall, signaling a visitor at the building’s front entrance.

Evan?!

Ben rolled out of bed and stumbled over to smack the intercom button. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” his mum said.

Ben stared at the speaker for a moment. “Oh. Right.” They were meant to go over plans for the Rainbow Regiment couple’s wedding. “Sorry, I just…come on up.”

After releasing the lock on the front entrance, Ben put on his glasses, but he could barely see through them. He took them off to see the lenses splashed with small white spots—dried salt from his tears.

He cleaned them with the end of his T-shirt as he went to his desk to get his wedding files. Every muscle in his body ached.

When a knock came at the door, he opened it to his mum. “Hey.”

She stared at his face in shock. “Ben, what happened?”

He tried to say, “Nothing, why do you ask?” but when he opened his mouth, the tears choked off his words.

She stepped across the threshold and pulled him into an embrace so strong it seemed it could hold up the world. As he wept against her soft dark hair, she rubbed his back and whispered, “It’s all right, nouré cheshm-am,” which only made him cry harder.

When he could finally talk, he said, “It’s over with me and Evan. Like, really over.”

“I’m so sorry.” Then she asked the question he’d dreaded. “Why?”

The truth was classified, obviously, so he offered the reason that should have been true, if he’d not been such a hypocrite.

“You were right when you said I’d have to choose between him and my faith.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I chose God.”

His mother’s eyes softened in sorrow at first, but then they narrowed. She tilted her head at a skeptical angle. “I don’t believe you.”

Evan’s shite Saturday had rolled straight into a shite Sunday.

As if losing the man he loved, injuring a hip, and watching Warriors lose another quarterfinal weren’t enough, this morning he’d been greeted with the news he was suspended from work. He’d been let off two weeks for the twin sins of 1) failing to disclose that Ben was still involved with same-sex weddings and 2) sharing information about an investigation with his father, who’d not been cleared to know it.

So he was in the worst ever mood, and he was well primed to take it out on his dad. If he could find him.

The Necropolis graveyard behind Glasgow Cathedral was nearly the size of downtown Stromness. When his father would come to visit for Evan’s or Justine’s birthdays, he would hide somewhere in the town and send his kids a series of clues they’d have to follow to find him.

“This was great fun when I was ten,” Evan muttered as he trudged up the sloping pavement in the rain. “Not so much now.”

Enter Sandman read the clue on his phone screen. Since as far as Evan knew, no members of Metallica were buried in the Necropolis, he reckoned this was a reference to William Miller, author of the nursery rhyme “Wee Willie Winkie,” a shadowy figure who went door to door to make sure all the bairns were asleep. At least Miller’s memorial was in the lower part of the Necropolis—if his dad had wanted to meet at the top of the steep hill, Evan would’ve told him where he could stick his clues.

He found his father smoking a pipe beside the poet’s granite obelisk, wearing a black trench coat and holding a black umbrella.

“So you’ve gone full cloak-and-dagger now you work with James Bond?” Evan asked.

“I thought a wee puzzle would bring back fond childhood memories.” He puffed his pipe. “Also, I’ve been suspended a week, so I’ve plenty of spare time.”

“Just one week? I got two.” Then again, he had broken two separate rules, so it was probably fair. “Why did you leave MI5—you of all people, who referred to Six as the enemy?”

“That was a joke, and probably misdirection.”

“So it wasn’t enough to hide the truth.” Evan’s fists clenched around the rain-slick cuffs of his jacket sleeves. “You had to deliberately mislead me. I want to know why.”

“Then shut your gob for a second so I can explain.”

Evan obeyed, hoping to get a straightforward answer for once.

“After 9/11,” his dad said, “counterespionage became an afterthought. There was no room in the Service for a Cold Warrior like myself. MI5’s D Branch carried on, but budgets are limited, and Russia seemed a shrinking threat in the eyes of the geniuses running our government. I could read the writing on the wall.” He looked off into the distance, toward the green roof of the Glasgow Cathedral. “G Branch made me a half-hearted job offer, but counterterrorism is a whole different game, and while you can teach an old dog new tricks, it’s a waste of a bloody useful old dog. So I went where my knowledge and talents were better appreciated.”

Evan hated the decision, but he understood wanting to be needed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t need to know.”

“I should have known where my information was coming from.”

“It came from British intelligence, and that’s enough. Evan, you’re not angry for professional reasons, you’re angry for personal reasons. You think I lied to you.”

“Because you did lie to me.”

“Yes, it’s what we do.”

“Not to each other,” Evan said. “Isn’t that the point of being part of this same strange community? That we can talk about these things, be real together?”

Dad let out a heavy sigh. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“That you warned me not to follow in your footsteps.”

His father saluted him with his pipe. “Got it in one.”

“I tried. I never would have joined MI5 if I’d been a decent architect,” Evan said, knowing it was utter pish.

“You were a decent architect. But it wasn’t enough for you to be decent. You needed to excel, and I respect you for that. I just wish you’d found another use for your talents.”

“Aye, like con artistry or professional gambling. That would’ve made you proud.” Evan tugged his hood as the rain pelted harder. “I don’t regret it, you know, not even after all this. Not even after losing Ben.”

“Losing—” Dad looked at him in alarm. “What’s happened?”

Evan hesitated. He wasn’t ready to tell his father the whole truth, about Ben blowing Evan’s cover to two of his teammates. He’d had Fergus, Liam, and Robert sign copies of the Official Secrets Act, but due to his suspension, Evan hadn’t been able to submit the forms yet (they weren’t the sort of thing one casually dropped in the post).

Still, he could share the essential truth of the breakup. “Ben couldn’t take the secrecy anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. When did this happen?”

“Yesterday.”

“And you’ve phoned him since?”

Evan squinted at his father. “Whatever for?”

“To try and change his mind.” Dad shifted his umbrella and pipe to the opposite hands. “Unless you don’t want him to change it. Perhaps you’d rather wallow in solitude and feel noble for the sacrifices you’ve endured on behalf of your country.”

“Is that what you did when Mum left?”

His father opened his mouth, then shut it.

Evan softened his tone. “Or maybe it’s not so simple.”

“Once your mother was gone, I stopped trying to keep her. But before that…” Dad shifted a rock back and forth with his toe, following its movement with his eyes. “The version I’ve always told you isn’t exactly accurate.”

Here we are at last. “In what way?”

“I didn’t let her go so she could escape the nightmare of marriage to an intelligence officer. I let her go because I had no choice.” His shoulders sagged, and in that moment Hugh Hollister looked every one of his fifty-eight years. “She didn’t want me anymore. Not because I was a spy, but because I was”—he bit out the words—“someone other than Magnus Muir.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” was all Evan could think to say.

His father flicked his hand in a dismissive motion that contradicted the pain on his face. “My point is, unless Ben has some secret Orcadian old flame on the side, there’s no reason you can’t work this out.”

“He seemed dead certain he didn’t want this life.”

Dad barked out a laugh. “God’s sake, Evan, no one wants this life. The pay is shit, the recognition is nil, and the damage to our souls is irreparable. But we do it anyway, because it’s necessary and challenging and sometimes pretty fucking fun. If Ben really knows you, he’ll get that this is who you are. And if he really loves you, he’ll realize you’re worth the high price of admission.”

A sudden gust came up then, catching his umbrella. Evan’s father hung on and tried to aim its peak toward the wind, but it flipped inside out with a thwup.

“Bloody cheap piece of crap,” Dad growled. He dropped it on the ground and stomped on its soggy carcass. For a moment he just stood there, soaked and bedraggled, his pipe smoldering in the falling rain.

Then he pulled a spare travel umbrella from the pocket of his trench coat and deployed it with a deft gesture. “Sorry, where were we?”

“You were telling me to get Ben back.”

“Yes. Do that.” He stepped onto the paved walkway. “But first, let’s go and have a pint of whatever the unemployed drink.”

Ben’s mum had insisted on making him scrambled eggs and a strong cup of tea before they’d continued their conversation, hoping he would talk more sense with an infusion of protein and caffeine.

After the first bite of unwanted food, Ben set down his fork. “I can’t tell you the real reason Evan and I broke up. But you’re right, it wasn’t because of my religion.”

“Okay.” Standing on the other side of the breakfast bar, she sipped her tea and frowned at his full plate.

“Still, it’s true, isn’t it? I can’t have a boyfriend and still be Bahá’í. And you were right—there’s no loophole. I’ve reread all the writings about it and found nothing to give me hope.”

So there was an upside to leaving Evan: At least now there’d be no conflict with his faith. Ben would never have to make that soul-wrenching choice.

“Do you love him?” his mother asked.

“It doesn’t matter.” He thumbed the edge of his blue dinner plate, remembering how Evan had liked its design. “They say, ‘No matter how devoted and fine the love may be between people of the same sex, to let it find expression in sexual acts is wrong.’ I burned that quote into my brain. ‘No matter how devoted and fine the love.’”

His voice broke then, so he stopped and picked up his fork, though he’d no intention of using it.

Finally his mum said, “It hurts my heart to see you suffer like this again.”

“‘Again’?” He couldn’t remember ever feeling this ravaged.

“When that boy you loved at school went to America.”

Ben froze. He’d always thought he’d hidden the true nature of their relationship. “You mean Rhys? We were just mates.” He looked up at his mum and knew he couldn’t maintain the lie, and anyway, what was the point? “Okay, more than mates eventually. I didn’t know you knew.”

“I wasn’t certain at the time, but the fact you officially committed to the Bahá’í Faith a week after he left rather confirmed it for me.”

“I wasn’t using religion some sort of rebound relationship, if that’s what you’re thinking. I really did intend to be true to our laws. I tried to be celibate—and I succeeded, for almost three years.”

She looked impressed, as though hearing this for the first time. “What changed?”

“Obviously my ‘lower nature’ took over,” he said bitterly. “That’s what our teachings would say.”

She leaned forward, crossing her arms upon the breakfast bar. “But what really changed?”

He took a long sip of tea, then another, trying to clear his brain enough to remember what he’d been thinking when he’d started hooking up with men again. “It wasn’t all at once. There was this thought that kept coming up more and more often: Why would God make me like this—why would he make so many people like this—just to watch us suffer? It didn’t seem like the God I knew.”

Now his mum was the speechless one, simply nodding as her eyes began to glisten.

“I tried to remind myself,” he continued, “that many people suffered from many things, that being born gay was a ‘handicap’ my soul would have to overcome through prayer and determination. That’s what we teach, right?” Hearing no response, he kept going, staring at the fluffy eggs on his plate as their steam faded. “But Bahá’u’lláh also wrote that the union of two souls is a ‘fortress for well-being and salvation.’ So being gay can’t be the same as being blind or quadriplegic. Vision and walking don’t make us better people, but finding that one person…” He looked up at her. “But rules are rules. I either remain a Bahá’í with no partner, or I leave the faith to find happiness with a man.”

“Listen.” She reached over the breakfast bar and took his hand. “No matter which path you choose, God will still love you. That’s not just feel-good wishful thinking on my part. That’s from all the writings of our faith. I could recite a dozen passages—”

“No bother. I know you’re right.” He did know it. He felt it in his bones. “Losing my Bahá’í membership wouldn’t mean I’d lose God. But it’s still a loss.”

“I know.” She came to hug him again. This time he didn’t cry.

“Promise me one thing?” he asked. “You won’t sacrifice your own standing for my sake. Like, if I ever leave, you won’t follow me, okay?”

“I can’t promise that, Ben.” She pulled back and tugged down her black jumper with an air of finality. “Especially not after the decision I just made.”