Reading Time: 103 Minutes

Title: Regrowing Roots
Series: Like Stars Aligned
Series Order: 4
Author: Bythia
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Established Relationship, Family, Slash
Relationship(s): Evan “Buck” Buckley/Tommy Kinard
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: *No Mandatory Warnings Apply, discussion-domestic violence, canon typical violence
Beta: starlitenite
Word Count: 51,554
Summary: Since settling down in LA, Buck started to lose hope that he would ever hear from his sister again. All the bigger is the relief and joy when Maddie shows up in LA without a warning. Reconnecting is more difficult than he expected, though, and he might not be prepared for the trouble following her.
Artist: penumbria

 

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Chapter 06

“Evan’s sister hates me,” Tommy said darkly and drained half his tea in one go.

Right at this moment, he wished he hadn’t said no to the wine, but he wouldn’t change his mind about it. Karen had told him, not for the first time, that it was okay if he drank wine, but she had been avoiding alcohol ever since she had started her hormone treatment in preparation for IVF, so Tommy had insisted that their wine nights would be tea nights instead for the time being.

He should have been on shift, but his captain had forbidden him from even coming into the station for light duty for the first couple of shifts after the earthquake. Tommy hated Hayden a little bit for it, but at least in the privacy of his own mind, he had to admit that maybe it was the right choice to give his wrist a week of rest. At least with his usual four days off, he was only missing two shifts in total, if his doctor’s appointment the next day went as Tommy hoped it would.

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Karen said.

The only bright side of being banned from working was that his schedule had unexpectedly opened up to spend a wine night, or rather a tea night, with Karen. It was a school night, but Denny was spending the night at a classmate’s house. So Karen had come over to Tommy’s with the full intention of staying in his guestroom.

“No, I think it is,” Tommy murmured bitterly. “I’m sure her first impression of me was horrible, and now she’s convinced herself that what Evan and I have is just a fling. She told me Evan is my midlife crisis.”

Karen laughed. “Your what now?”

Tommy shrugged.

“I think you just need to give it time,” Karen said. “Buck and his sister need to get to know each other again. And she’s just uprooted her whole life, so I’m sure she has a lot on her mind.”

“What do I do if she doesn’t change her mind about me eventually?”

“Then you support Buck in finding a way to deal with it,” Karen said. “If Hen and I could figure out how to deal with Toni’s disapproval while she still turned out to be a doting grandmother, Evan and you can figure out how to deal with his sister.”

“You could give me some time to complain instead of being rational,” Tommy muttered into his tea.

Karen laughed. “Next time. When it’s not about something that might send you spiraling into old insecurities. Buck was there to help you deal with your family. Now it’s your turn to help him with his.”

Tommy made a face at the reminder of his own family. “It’s really good she didn’t show up a month ago. And that we didn’t have to go back down to San Diego to finalize the inheritance. Evan would’ve been so devastated to learn she had been here but didn’t wait for him to come home.”

“You think she wouldn’t have waited?”

Tommy shook his head. “I think she would’ve run. I mean, she nearly did despite finding Evan. I have no doubt that if she’d had to wait for more than one night, she’d have left, and Evan would’ve come home to have to report a breaking and entering.”

“I’m still so angry she was just let into Buck’s apartment,” Karen said with a frown. “I helped him find that apartment. I was there when he told the landlord about the ongoing issue with the catfished women. And now that whole ordeal of looking for an apartment for him will start all over again.”

Tommy chuckled. “I think it will be much less of a hassle this time. He already knows what he is looking for this time, after all. We started looking at listings yesterday, now that Maddie is settled into her own apartment.”

“Let me guess, there are lists and spreadsheets involved.”

Tommy grinned smugly and shrugged.

“Hen’s not here to complain about you oversharing,” Karen pointed out.

Tommy laughed and shook his head, but before he could say anything, his phone rang. He frowned when he saw the contact details on the screen. “I’ll need to take this, sorry.” Then he answered the call with a sharp, “Kinard.”

“Mr. Kinard, this is Chase Wagener.”

“I didn’t expect to hear anything from you so soon,” Tommy said.

“Ah, yes.” Wagener sighed. “I don’t have all the information you asked about yet. But I have been able to confirm that Doug Kendall left town several weeks ago, and no one knows where he is. He took an extended leave of absence from the hospital, citing a family emergency. From what I have heard, his boss isn’t happy about it.”

Tommy lowered his gaze. “Do you know where he is?”

“No, and that is why I’m calling. I can’t investigate both his life in Hershey and try to track him down at the same time. Especially as we have to assume he is headed in your direction. It only takes a five-minute Google search to find Evan Buckley.”

Tommy rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Do you have someone who can look for Kendall?”

“I do, but that exceeds what was stipulated in our contract, so it will incur additional costs.”

“I assume the same fees apply to your colleague as for you?” Tommy asked.

“Yes.”

Tommy nodded. “I’m off shift tomorrow, but I work the day after. If you could send me the contact information for your colleague and arrange a meeting for tomorrow, that would be great. If Kendall is here, I want to have eyes on him as soon as possible. Any time after ten is fine for a meeting.”

“I’ll arrange it,” Wagener said. “I believe your worry about Doug Kendall is valid. People noticed Mrs. Kendall’s absence, and some of the neighbors have already been very happy to share some gossip with me. There was one, especially, who was very relieved to hear that Mrs. Kendall left her husband and was worried about Mr. Kendall’s reaction to it.”

Tommy nodded, not at all surprised that at least some of the neighbors had known what was going on, and quickly wrapped up the call. When he dropped the phone on the table and refilled his mug with tea, he was met with an intense stare by Karen.

“So, you did hire a PI after all.”

Tommy nodded. “With good reason.”

“Does Buck know?” Karen asked.

Tommy sighed and averted his gaze. “I decided this is a case of asking for forgiveness rather than begging for permission. I guess I’ll have to tell him now that there’s reason to believe Doug Kendall is in LA. Or at least on his way here.”

Karen shook her head and took a sip of her wine. “This won’t endear you to Maddie.”

“I’d rather she stay alive and in town and that we find a way to keep her husband away from her,” Tommy said. “If that means she’ll always hate me, so be it.”

It wasn’t quite that easy, of course. Tommy was plagued by a quiet voice of doubt in the back of his mind, wondering what kind of impact her opinion about him might have on his relationship with Evan. He tried to ignore those doubts by regularly reminding himself that no matter what came up, Evan and he would be able to talk about it. And no matter the outcome, for the moment, the most important part was that Tommy could somehow help keep Evan’s sister safe.

“What do you think that PI will find?” Karen asked.

Tommy shrugged. “I have no idea. The best-case scenario would probably be to find something to put the guy behind bars. That would keep him occupied and give Maddie some time to build a new life. But I’ll be happy enough if we find something to blackmail him with into staying away from her.”

Karen sighed. “Blackmail, really?”

“If I were a little less scrupulous, I’d hire a hitman,” Tommy said darkly. “I do have the money for that now. Maddie has only admitted to things being bad for a year, but Evan remembers injuries and other details from before he left Hershey that have been put in a very different perspective now. If we can’t use the law against him to keep Evan’s sister safe from him, we’ll find another way.”

“You think she is in that much danger?” Karen asked softly. “Despite being on the other side of the country now?”

“I’ve transported too many victims to the hospital to give that guy the benefit of the doubt,” Tommy said. “That he left his home in a hurry after his wife fled tells me that I’m right to expect him to cause trouble.”

Karen frowned in clear worry. “Do you think she would mind being introduced to some more of Buck’s friends?”

“I have no idea,” Tommy said. “If her standoffish behavior with me is about her mental struggle at the moment, she might react in a similar way to anyone she feels might know her brother better than she does. Which would be all of his friends here. No matter what she claims, she can’t be so blind as not to know that she really doesn’t know the adult man her brother is now.”

“You think that’s a problem?”

“She missed years of Evan’s life,” Tommy said. “Even before Evan left Hershey, she didn’t know about most of what was going on in his life after she left for college. And I realize that it’s probably all going to trace back to Doug Kendall isolating her from her family. But it doesn’t change the fact that she and Evan are basically strangers now. I think she is trying to ignore that.”

“And Buck?” Karen asked worriedly.

Tommy shrugged. “He is aware of the problem, but he won’t confront her about anything because he doesn’t want to rock the boat.”

Evan’s fear that Maddie might run away again was too big for that. It worried Tommy a little, even though he understood Evan’s fear and knew it wasn’t unreasonable. But eventually it still might turn into a problem.

***

“We had Chris at the station for a couple of hours yesterday,” Buck said while he loaded the dishwasher in Tommy’s kitchen.

He had come over for dinner after spending the morning with Maddie and the afternoon by himself following his appointment with Dr. Copeland. Sometimes he missed the breakfast routine he’d developed with Tommy. It just wasn’t the same having breakfast with Maddie after a shift as with Tommy, but he tried to make as much room as possible for his sister—he still wondered if having Maddie in his life wouldn’t be over sooner rather than later, even though she did seem comfortable with building a new life here in LA.

Buck and Tommy still had breakfast together sometimes, but most of their routine had shifted to spending their free afternoons together. Buck wasn’t sure yet if he wanted it to stay this way or if he would work on shifting his time with Maddie around a little so Tommy and he could go back to meeting for breakfast after shifts.

“Chris, as in Eddie’s son Chris?” Tommy asked, surprised.

“Yeah.” Buck shook his head with a worried frown. “Eddie’s grandmother picked him up from school. That’s apparently the routine on schooldays when Eddie is on shift. But she fell down the stairs of her back porch and broke her hip.”

“She has to be up in age already, right?”

“Eighties, I think, but I didn’t ask. Anyway, she ended up in the hospital, and Eddie didn’t have anyone to stay with Chris until his aunt could come by after her workday. Which ran late, because she had to take an extra break, too, to take care of her mother in the hospital for a couple of hours. I cleared it with Bobby so that we could take Chris to the station, and most of the time Eddie was man behind until his aunt could pick him up.”

Tommy hummed. “That was generous of Bobby. I’m sure there aren’t many captains who’d have allowed that. I know Hayden wouldn’t. And he is a good captain, but … having a child at the station for more than a brief visit is risky.”

“Eddie knows it can’t happen again,” Buck said quietly. “He had set up a home health aide for Chris when he started at the academy. The service was supposed to provide overnight care once Eddie started working 24 hour shifts, but instead, the service canceled its contract with him. I didn’t get a lot from him, but I think it has something to do with the shitty pediatrician who has a problem with single fathers.”

“So, he needs something new set up asap,” Tommy said thoughtfully.

Buck nodded. “I reached out to Carla. Haven’t heard back from her yet, but maybe she can help out.”

“Carla?” Tommy asked.

Buck paused for a moment until he remembered that, of course, Tommy wouldn’t know who Carla was. Buck had only met her once himself, after all, and that had been before he met Tommy.

“You remember Abby?”

Tommy frowned. “The dispatcher who stole your number after a call to get in contact with you because she wanted to get laid?”

Buck laughed. He had long since gotten over the disappointment at the very different expectations Abby and he had had. Tommy, however, was still put out over how that contact had been initiated. It had come up once before, when Buck found the obituary for Patricia.

“Yeah. Carla was her mom’s home health aide. The first one Abby found who really cared for her patients. I met her when Abby’s mom was missing and I went over to help search for her. We exchanged numbers to coordinate the search. Hopefully she can give Eddie some good recommendations and maybe even help with some of the red tape he is drowning in.”

“That does sound like it could be a good contact,” Tommy said with a smile. “I can ask around, too, if you don’t hear back from her. I’m sure someone among my contacts knows someone who can be helpful.”

“That would be great!” Buck agreed as he closed the dishwasher.

“I need to tell you something,” Tommy said out of the blue and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest. “And I know you won’t be happy about it. But I’m convinced it was necessary. So, I’m not sorry I did it, but I am sorry I hid it from you.”

Buck frowned and watched Tommy carefully. “Okay.”

“I know you told me not to, but I hired a PI to investigate Doug Kendall,” Tommy said. “And your sister.”

“You did what?” Buck yelled, instantly feeling hot anger bubbling up in his chest. “We agreed that that was a stupid idea!”

Tommy shook his head. “We didn’t agree on anything. You told me not to do it, and I decided to do it anyway.”

“Why the hell would you hire someone to investigate my sister?”

“Not really your sister,” Tommy said. “But we both know she hasn’t told you everything and that it’s extremely unlikely she’ll tell you the truly important things. Like how dangerous her husband really is.”

Buck shook his head. “Maddie will hate me for this! I barely convinced her to stay here, and this might just make her run again!”

If Maddie left now, Buck was sure she would never return or contact him ever again. It felt like a small miracle that she had come here at all, and he needed to make sure she had no reason to leave again, or to break off the contact between them again. Having someone snoop around in her past felt like the kind of violation Buck couldn’t walk back from.

“Good thing you can just blame me. She doesn’t like me anyway, giving her a proper reason for that only seems fair.”

Buck huffed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t try to distract me.”

Maddie barely knew Tommy, so she could hardly dislike him. She was wary of everyone here in LA, that much was true, but clearly Tommy took that way too personally.

“Doug Kendall left Hershey two weeks ago,” Tommy said. “Someone is trying to track him down, but I’m pretty sure we have to expect him to be here in LA by now.”

“We knew it was a possibility he’d follow her,” Buck snapped. “That’s why we showed everyone a picture of him so they could warn us if they saw him. That doesn’t mean you have to pay someone to snoop around in Maddie’s life. She’ll tell me what she wants to tell me when she is ready.”

“She won’t,” Tommy said.

“She just needs some time!” Buck insisted.

He wished Maddie had agreed to be put in contact with Tanika’s sister, and he kept bringing up Imani because he knew he couldn’t provide the kind of help Maddie needed by himself. But Maddie had insisted repeatedly that it had never gotten really bad enough to warrant her needing the help of a shrink or to get help from an organization that put their time and energy into helping victims, when she kept insisting she wasn’t one of those.

Tommy shook his head. “Time is the one thing we don’t have. Evan, I know you know this. Right now is the most dangerous time for Maddie. She might not be able to deal with that fact and can try to pretend that just leaving and settling down in a different city will solve all her problems. But that just means that you need to keep an eye out for that danger for her. And that’s what I’m trying to help you with here.”

Buck shook his head. “You need to call this guy off. And Maddie can never find out about this!”

“I’m not calling him off,” Tommy said stubbornly.

“This has nothing to do with you!” Buck snapped. “You have no right to make this decision.”

“It has to do with you, so that makes it my problem!”

“You’re crossing so many fucking lines here! It’s none of your concern!”

Tommy shook his head. “And when will it be my concern? When Doug Kendall shows up here and attacks you or Maddie or both, and I have to visit you at the hospital?”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Buck protested.

“We don’t know how he will react!” Tommy said heatedly. “That’s the whole point of trying to find out as much as possible about the guy!”

“You can’t just go over my head, over Maddie’s head, and decide that!”

“I already did, and I’m not taking it back.”

Buck glared at him. He felt frustrated and hurt that Tommy wouldn’t listen to him, but it was also clear that this conversation would lead to nothing. So Buck turned on his heels and stalked out of the kitchen and to the front door.

“Evan!” Tommy called after him.

“No, leave me alone,” Buck said through gritted teeth and slammed the door with a loud bang.

***

What followed was a very restless night, where Buck tossed and turned all night and tried to make sense of how he felt. He was angry at Tommy for violating Maddie’s privacy, and the fear of Maddie packing her few belongings and just vanishing when she learned of it overwhelmed nearly everything else. But it didn’t quite manage to drown out the quiet and annoyingly reasonable voice in the back of his mind that reminded him that Tommy had a point.

Tommy had sent two texts that evening, but Buck had ignored them, hadn’t even opened them. Buck was already at the station the next morning before he finally opened the chat with Tommy. They had a morning ritual when they went on shift, and Buck wouldn’t break that just because they’d had a fight. For a moment, he stared at the two messages from the previous evening.

Tommy: Can you call me? I’d really like you to come back.

Tommy: Good night, Evan. I miss you.

Buck rubbed a hand over his forehead, then he sent a text of his own.

Buck: Be safe. B is still out with the ladder. So my shift will start with cleaning duty, probably.

The message jumped to ‘read’ nearly instantly.

Tommy: Be safe, too. I already endured a checkup from Tarek.

Tommy: I’m sorry for the fight. Missed you last night.

Buck bit his lip. That wasn’t an apology for the reason of the fight, but he didn’t expect one anyway. Tommy had made his opinion clear, and Buck thought there was no way to change it.

Buck: I’m sorry, too.

Buck: I slept like shit last night.

Buck: Wanna talk this out tomorrow?

Tommy: I’ve got an appointment with the PI here in LA, trying to track him down. 2 pm. Want to come?

Buck stared at the text. He really didn’t want to talk to any investigator looking into Maddie’s life. It felt so horribly intrusive, and Buck didn’t want to learn things about Maddie she wasn’t ready to share with him. That wouldn’t help them build any kind of trust and familiarity between them again.

“I thought Maddie had her own apartment now.”

Hen’s voice made Buck flinch so badly that he nearly dropped his phone.

“So why do you look again as if you’ve spent the night on that shitty air mattress you got while she was stealing your bed?”

“She wasn’t stealing my bed,” Buck murmured. He locked his phone and shoved it in his pocket. “I gave it to her of my own free will, and the air mattress wasn’t that shitty. You’re pretty late. I thought I was the last one arriving.”

“Denny had a bit of a breakdown over homework he should’ve done yesterday but didn’t,” Hen said. “The perils of being a parent. I’m not too late, so everything is fine. So, spill!”

Buck groaned and braced his elbows on his knees. “I had a fight with Tommy.”

Hen whistled. “Okay. Want to talk about it?”

“I think this was our first serious fight,” Buck murmured. “I just walked out on him because I was so frustrated by how fucking stubborn he is. And that he doesn’t see how fucked up his behavior is!”

“What did he do?” Hen asked with a worried frown.

“Hired someone to snoop around in my sister’s life,” Buck said darkly.

“Your sister’s life or her husband’s life?”

Buck glared at her. “Same difference!”

“Not really.” Hen sat down beside him and put her neatly folded uniform in her lap, settling her hands on top of it. “You don’t think it’s a good idea to learn more about the guy your sister is running away from?”

“He is an asshole who hurt her,” Buck said. “That’s all we need to know, isn’t it?”

Hen made a face.

“She doesn’t want to talk about it! Going behind her back to find out things she doesn’t want me to know won’t help me repair my relationship with her!”

Hen sighed and put her arm around Buck’s shoulders. “I agree she will probably not be happy. But if her husband is a problem, you need to be aware of that sooner rather than later.”

Buck watched her skeptically. “Did you know Tommy had hired someone?”

“No,” Hen shook her head. “But it makes sense to me.”

“I don’t want Maddie to leave,” Buck murmured. “I don’t want her to vanish from my life again. And that is what she does when she feels pushed. She did that when I was young, too. I remember her ghosting me for a couple of weeks when she started college and later for months on end when she was in Boston with Doug. But … even before she met him, when she was still in high school … if I pushed too much about something, she’d just ignore me for days. That’s something that Doug used, not something he created in her.”

Hen squeezed his shoulder. “All you can do is offer her your support. But that doesn’t mean blindly giving her everything she asks for, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Buck murmured.

The first couple of days, he had given her nearly everything she had demanded of him, including a lot of his time he had originally planned to spend differently. It hadn’t been a hardship, but he had soon recognized—though mostly because Imani had pointed it out to him—that he’d need to keep some strong boundaries so she wouldn’t overtake his whole life wherever she could. She was clinging to him, and he understood that, but Imani had been right to tell Buck he couldn’t let Maddie cling to him so much that he suffocated.

“I just don’t want to lose her again,” Buck whispered.

“You have to have some faith in her,” Hen said. “She came here in the first place. That means a lot. It means most of all that she missed you enough to risk leaving a trail for her husband to follow. You want to protect her, right? The best way to do that is to learn as much about her husband as you can. If she won’t provide any information, you’ll have to get it from another source.”

“I told Tommy not to hire a PI when he first brought up the idea.”

Hen chuckled. “Okay. So, he went behind your back, and that wasn’t great. I’m sure you can make him grovel for that. But do you really think he was wrong?”

Buck shrugged.

“I think if you were convinced he was wrong, you wouldn’t be sitting here looking sad and pathetic. You’d be pacing around or maybe punishing the punching bag and loudly sharing your anger with anyone who had the misfortune of not escaping you fast enough.”

“Hey, that’s unfair!” Buck complained. “I wouldn’t shout at everyone who couldn’t run away fast enough!”

Hen chuckled. “But you agree with the rest, yeah?”

Buck sighed deeply and shrugged.

Hen patted his back. “Talk this out with Tommy the next chance you get. I’ve gotta go run now and change before Bobby thinks I’m too late.”

“Thank you,” Buck said softly and caught Hen in a quick hug before she could stand.

“Any time,” she promised with a smile.

Buck let her go and unlocked his phone again. He opened the chat with Tommy again and stared at their exchange from earlier for a moment.

Buck: I’d like to be there with you for the appointment.

Buck: Want to get breakfast tomorrow?

The answer came so quickly that Buck wondered if Tommy had been staring at his phone the whole time.

Tommy: Looking forward to breakfast.

Buck: Me too. Can’t wait. Be safe. Gotta run now.

He grinned as he put his phone back in his locker and hurried up to the loft for the start-of-shift meeting. Hopefully, their shift would keep him busy enough that he wouldn’t have too much time to think about the fight or about anything the investigator might have to tell them.

Chapter 07

Tommy was a little nervous while he waited for Evan. It didn’t help that he had been waiting far longer than normal, because they had agreed to meet near Tommy’s place despite Evan’s shift running late, so Tommy was sitting in what had somehow become their booth, nursing a coffee and staring out the window. The text exchange with Evan the previous day had been positive at least, but Tommy still felt uneasy about their fight despite knowing he had brought it on himself.

“Hey!”

Tommy looked up, a little startled. He had been so lost in thought that he had somehow missed Evan arriving.

Evan laughed and sat down beside Tommy instead of opposite him. “You good?”

“Maybe a little tired,” Tommy admitted. “I was in the air half the night.”

“So, we both had busy shifts.” Evan nodded and then yawned. “Maybe we can take a nap at your place after breakfast.”

Tommy smiled hesitantly. “Yeah?”

Evan sighed. “I’m sorry for the fight. And for ignoring your texts that evening. That part was childish.”

“It’s okay. I knew you’d be angry; I still went behind your back.”

“And you aren’t sorry for doing it,” Evan said, with a nod.

Tommy shrugged helplessly. There was no point lying about it.

“I hate it,” Evan murmured. “But you’re probably right about trying to prepare for whatever Doug will do. I had a couple of conversations with Hen and Tanika throughout my shift. They’ve been trying to convince me that even though Maddie will have a right to be angry when she eventually learns about it, it doesn’t negate that some precautions are necessary. Better she is angry at me than…”

“Than that he comes here and kills her,” Tommy finished quietly.

Evan flinched. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t see a different way to help with this situation,” Tommy said. “And that I didn’t even look too hard for a different way. Other than making sure we know everything about Doug we can know, I don’t know how to help.”

“I don’t know what to do either,” Evan murmured. “Maddie doesn’t want to talk about it. I think she’d prefer to ignore everything that was in the past and just move on. But at the same time, she is visibly so afraid that I can’t help but wonder when the other shoe will drop.”

Tommy nodded and put his arm around Evan’s shoulder when Julie approached. They gave their usual orders, and thankfully, Julie didn’t stay for the small talk they usually engaged in. She was always good at noticing when her customers weren’t up for talking or when they maybe needed a little extra attention and distraction in the form of a little gossip.

“I think what your sister needs is patience,” Tommy said. “Her husband just might not give us the time for that. I’ll feel much more comfortable as soon as we find out where he is. And until we have confirmation of his whereabouts, I’m going to assume he is somewhere in LA plotting how to get to your sister.”

“I’m really glad Tanika’s sister could point us to that apartment,” Evan murmured. “She has a security guard sitting in the lobby, and I made her give them a picture of Doug and at least tell them he is her ex, who isn’t happy that she left. They won’t let him get into the building, not even as a guest of another tenant.”

Tommy hummed. After the experience they had had with Evan’s building management—who had accepted Evan’s complaint about Maddie being let into his apartment but hadn’t seemed to take it all that seriously—he only hoped they’d have more luck with Maddie’s place. He was probably too anxious about that, considering that the building had come highly recommended from a place that specialized in providing someone in Maddie’s situation a safe place to land.

“The waiting and not knowing sucks,” Tommy said.

Evan huffed. “So much. I wish Maddie would be more honest with me. She has to know that her lies about how bad the situation really was are super thin, right?”

“Maybe she doesn’t know. Or she is really, really good at ignoring it and convincing herself of her lies. That might have been a coping mechanism for her in the past.”

Evan made a face. “She needs therapy. Pretty sure she won’t agree with that, though.”

“Give her some time,” Tommy said. “A lot has changed for her. Certainly more than we’re aware of. Let her settle in here, let it sink in for her that she really managed to take that step of leaving him.”

“You said the other day that Maddie doesn’t like you anyway, and to let her be angry at you about the investigator stuff,” Evan said hesitantly. “Why do you think she doesn’t like you?”

“She doesn’t have to like me,” Tommy said instead of answering the question.

Evan rolled his eyes. “I’d prefer if she liked you, but yeah, I know it’s not a requirement. She barely knows you, and she is awkward with everyone right now. It doesn’t seem to me like Maddie behaves any differently with you than she does with anyone else.”

Tommy leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t know how to answer that question truthfully without causing tension between Evan and his sister. He could still hope Maddie would eventually come around, and none of this would matter in the long run.

“I think she has a pretty static picture of you,” Tommy said. “Based on what she remembers of you from … I don’t even know when you last spent a significant amount of time with her. I don’t fit into that picture she has of you. Maybe she is just struggling with that because she clung to that picture as the only thing she had to hold onto for so long.”

“You think Maddie is homophobic,” Evan asked, and Tommy couldn’t quite decipher his tone. He seemed to be irritated, but there was also something else.

Tommy sighed. “Even the most dedicated ally can have a knee-jerk reaction if someone very close to them comes out unexpectedly. There was a time when she knew every single thing about you, right? I’m probably the most glaring evidence that that’s not true anymore.”

Evan lowered his gaze and leaned away from Tommy, angling himself so he could glare at him. “What did she say to you when the three of us had breakfast?”

Tommy shrugged. He had really hoped Evan wouldn’t catch on to that. “She accused me of using you as my midlife crisis.”

“What?” Suddenly, Evan laughed. “You aren’t that old. You’re just two years older than her. Isn’t a midlife crisis for your fifties?”

“She didn’t think that was a valid argument when I pointed it out,” Tommy said with a grin. “Honestly, Evan. I don’t think there is much to it. She had a fantasy about what your reunion would be like, and I practically ruined it. By more or less defiling her brother right in front of her.”

That made Evan laugh even harder. “We made out a little. That’s hardly a crime. And we couldn’t know she was there!”

“Did you tell her about any girlfriends you had before you left Hershey and what you were doing with them?” Tommy asked. “Or while you were on the road in your postcards?”

Evan made a face. “Ew, no. Why would I talk to my sister about that?”

“To get advice, or so I’ve heard,” Tommy said. There had been some wild stories he had heard from Sal about his siblings, and even Karen had shared some funny stories about her brother’s sexual escapades and misadventures as a teenager. “What do you think the chances are that she sees you as some sexless being, because during the years when you were really close to each other you were literally a child? And here I am, bursting that bubble in a very spectacular way. And to top it off, it’s her very first impression of you after not seeing you for the better part of a decade.”

“Stop making sense,” Evan muttered.

“I’m sure Maddie and I will find a way to co-exist in your life once we aren’t all distracted by the threat of her probably very violent husband showing up,” Tommy said.

“I want her to get along with you,” Evan said petulantly. “I want her to like you!”

Tommy chuckled and grabbed Evan’s chin to turn his face to him and kiss him. Then he promised, “Once I’m not playing the asshole anymore by having investigators go through her life in the hopes it will protect her, I’ll do my best to find a way to win her over.”

***

Buck opened the door to his apartment for Carla with a nervous smile. She had texted him back during his shift the previous day, providing a welcome distraction from worrying about his sister and his fight with Tommy.

With Carla reaching out to him after all, Buck had thought it was a great idea to set up a meeting between her and Eddie as soon as possible, without telling Eddie. It hadn’t been difficult to organize: Eddie had already complained for most of the shift that Chris was spending the afternoon with his cousins and had declared that his father was not needed at that time. Hen and Tanika had spent quite a lot of their shift teasing Eddie about the woes of parenthood and the pain of your children outgrowing the need to have you around all the time.

But now Buck wasn’t so sure about that secrecy anymore. He was already dealing with so much secrecy concerning Maddie, and he worried now that Eddie might feel the same way about the surprise meeting with Carla as Maddie would eventually feel about Buck and Tommy working with a PI to learn more about her life and her husband.

Buck had just spent a whole hour sitting with Tommy in the office of the private investigators he had hired. There, Margot Patton—the second PI Tommy had hired to find Doug—had told them what her colleague in Hershey had found out about Doug Kendall. Buck was unspeakably angry that most neighbors seemed to know exactly what was going on in the Kendalls’ house, but somehow had never been able to produce any evidence that would have led to charges against Doug even without Maddie’s cooperation. There was nothing they could use against Doug so far, either, but it was confirmation that he posed a very real threat. Patton had questioned Buck about everything he could remember about Doug in the hope it would somehow help her figure out where Doug was at the moment.

Buck knew that his anger was misplaced and unfair, but it was easier to focus on the anger than on his guilty conscience from snooping around in Maddie’s life behind her back. He shouldn’t know any of this because she wasn’t ready to tell him anything.

Sometime between promising he’d come over to Tommy’s for the night after his planned dinner with Maddie and arriving back at his apartment, Buck had started to compare his secrecy about the PI and Maddie to his secrecy about Carla and Eddie, and now he couldn’t stop worrying about that.

“So, where is your friend?” Carla asked after Buck had given her a quick tour of his place.

“He should arrive soon.” Buck pulled his shoulders up around his ears. “And I might not have told him you were here or the reason I asked him to come over. Chris is spending the afternoon with his cousins and has banned his dad from hanging around the same place.”

Carla chuckled. “Ah, he has reached that stage already, has he? One of the worst moments in any parent’s life, as I hear it.”

“I really hope you’ll be able to help Eddie,” Buck said. “And I’m glad you answered my text. Abby probably didn’t have a lot of good to say about me later on.”

“She was a little put out that she didn’t get what she wanted from you,” Carla agreed. “But I had met you by that point. Not many people would show up the way you did. And I did hear the truth beneath Abby’s … let’s call it disappointment, that you were very honest about what you wanted from her the whole time.”

Buck just shrugged.

“She left for Europe after her mother died, to find herself,” Carla said. “And that’s the last I heard of her. I just hope she’ll find the healing she needs.”

“I’m really grateful you could take some time to meet Eddie,” Buck said. “You have to be busy with patients. I know you have to be very popular with them.”

Carla laughed and patted his arm. “Not always. I always try to do my best, but sometimes personalities clash. In fact, I’m in between long-term patients right now. I’m kind of hopeful that you’ll introduce me to my new client today.”

“You work with children, too?” Buck asked, surprised.

“I am certified for a wide range of clients,” Carla said. “I started out in a nursing home when I was young. It was satisfying work, but I knew I needed a change before I’d burn out, so I branched out beyond geriatrics. Having as many certifications as possible is a great help for my current job. I think after Patricia and my last very annoying client, working with a child for a time might be exactly what I need.”

Buck grinned. “Great! So, now we only need to hope Eddie won’t storm off in anger when he learns I kind of misled him about why I wanted him to come here.”

Thankfully, Eddie wasn’t quite as put out as Buck had feared. And after he overcame the confusion of the first couple of minutes—accusing Buck of trying to set him up on a blind date, as if Buck would do that in his own apartment—Eddie was all too happy to unload all the trouble he’d been having on Carla. Buck wasn’t really needed for that conversation, so he mostly just made sure that their supply of coffee and tea didn’t run out, and otherwise tried to read on his phone.

Eddie and Carla were two hours into discussing all of Eddie’s problems, and Buck was thinking about how to tactfully tell them they’d need to leave soon, when his doorbell rang. The last person Buck expected to see when he opened the door was Carl Johnson. He didn’t have anything to do with Johnson outside the job—and even during shifts, they didn’t really talk much. Johnson was one of the guys who still found the whole situation with the catfished women and their reaction to being ghosted highly amusing, which he had proven not that long ago when he had told Eddie all about it right at the beginning of Eddie’s first shift.

“How do you even know where I live?” Buck blurted out incredulously, and held onto the door, prepared to close it in Johnson’s face at a moment’s notice.

“I asked Cap for your number,” Johnson said, fiddling nervously with his hands. “When he asked me why, and I told him, he said it’s probably better if I tell you in person. So he sent me here, after making me swear not to give out your address to anyone else. I think he might be on his way here himself.”

“That’s not ominous at all,” Buck muttered.

“Everything alright here?” Eddie asked with a worried frown in Johnson’s direction.

“Probably not,” Buck said. He took a step back and gestured for Johnson to come in. “So, what brings you here?”

“A couple of weeks ago, Cap made us all memorize the face of that guy who is bothering your sister,” Johnson said. “I honestly thought it was stupid and you were overreacting.”

“Doug contacted you?” Buck asked with a frown.

Johnson shrugged. “He said his name is Jason. I met him for the first time at a bar three days ago. It’s kind of a badge and ladder bar, but not exclusively. He played a couple of rounds of pool against the guys and me. Paid for a round of beers. I didn’t notice then, but he managed to get everyone to tell him what station they worked at. I didn’t think anything about it. I didn’t even recognize him then.”

Buck inhaled deeply and fisted his hands at his side.

“Today, I ran into Jason at my usual gym,” Johnson said. “Didn’t think anything of it at first. He had said he was new in town and was still looking for a good gym. A couple of guys had given him recs, not just me. We talked some. At the bar he said he was a surgeon starting a new job. So today he complained about some of his new colleagues. I complained a little about my colleagues.”

Johnson made a face and dragged his fingers through his hair.

“You complained about me,” Buck concluded.

Johnson shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Among others. Eddie, too, honestly. Cap a little.”

Eddie huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at Johnson.

“Seemed like a friendly enough guy, so we agreed to meet up for a beer in a couple of days and said goodbye. Then I’m sitting in my car, and something just keeps niggling in the back of my mind.” Johnson sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I remembered that the picture Cap showed was taken from the website of a hospital in Hershey. Remembered you’re from Hershey because I couldn’t believe you’re from chocolate town. Anyway. I went through the hospitals until I found the right picture. And look at that, it’s the guy who told me his name is Jason and pretended to be from Boston. Even knew a lot about Boston.”

“My sister and Doug lived in Boston for a while,” Buck said. “So, he’s here. And snooping around my colleagues.”

“I’m not going to grab a beer or hang out with him again, of course!” Johnson said hurriedly.

“Maybe you should,” Eddie said. “Turn the tables on him. Try to find out what his goal is.”

Buck shook his head. “Finding Maddie, clearly!”

“Can I ask what this is about?” Carla asked with a worried frown.

Buck rubbed a hand down his face. “My sister left her abusive shit stain of a husband. Now he is here in LA trying to find her through me. Which is not a surprise because we knew finding me wouldn’t be a big problem.”

“Is your sister safe?” Carla asked.

“As much as she can be, I think,” Buck said. With a sigh, he turned back to Johnson. “Thank you for telling me. And I’d prefer you didn’t show up to that meeting with him. Text me where and when you planned to meet, though. Tommy and I hired a PI. That’s probably the better person to try to wheedle information out of Doug.”

Johnson nodded. “Still don’t have your number, but I can do that.”

“And thank you for telling me as soon as you recognized him,” Buck said.

“No need to thank me. I know we clash a little bit. But everyone deserves better than being stalked by a creep.”

Buck nodded and didn’t point out that Johnson had laughed when he was being stalked. The woman who tracked him down and threw rocks because Chimney had catfished and then ghosted her wasn’t all that dissimilar from Doug. Of course, the biggest difference was that he was a man and Maddie a woman, and for guys like Johnson, that made a world of difference.

Buck exhaled slowly. “I guess I need to call our PI. And then I’m meeting Maddie for dinner anyway, and I have to tell her that Doug is in town. When she barely wants to talk about him with me at all.”

“You can give that PI my number,” Johnson said. “If he needs to know anything more, I can talk with him about what Jason …. Doug said.”

“The PI is a woman,” Buck said. “At least the one here in LA trying to find Doug is. We have another one in Hershey trying to find anything we might be able to use as leverage against him.”

Johnson shrugged. “Okay. Still.”

***

Buck felt like his paranoia had spiked from zero to a hundred since Johnson had shown up at his place. He had taken a big detour to the restaurant Maddie wanted to try out, constantly checking if anyone was following him. He hadn’t noticed anything, but as soon as he walked into the restaurant, he scanned the crowd, pretending he hadn’t seen Maddie, so he could look at the rest of the patrons to make sure Doug wasn’t here.

“You’re late!” Maddie said with a playful scowl when Buck finally approached her table. She greeted him with a hug as she always did, and Buck held onto her tightly for a moment.

“Something came up just before I wanted to leave,” Buck said with a strained smile. “How are you? You’ve just come off shift, right?”

Maddie laughed. “Yes. The shift was okay. Sometimes it’s really exhausting how stupid people can be, right?”

“I have a lot of stories about that, too!” Buck agreed with a grin.

He let Maddie talk about her shift for a while, just enjoying seeing her relatively carefree while they inspected the menu. Buck wouldn’t bring up the things he had learned about Doug before they had eaten, just because he didn’t want to ruin Maddie’s appetite. So he just let the conversation flow about some ridiculous calls Maddie had had and then shared about some of the things he had responded to. It was an easy conversation, but Buck hated how intensely aware he was that somehow talking about their work was the only thing they could talk about so easily.

“I have something to confess,” Buck said when they were halfway through their desserts.

Maddie chuckled. “Oh, wow. That sounds serious.”

“I have done something, and you’ll probably not be very happy about it,” Buck said. Tommy had told him to blame everything concerning the PI on him, but Buck didn’t want to do that. If Maddie really didn’t like Tommy, he didn’t want to add to that. “I am really worried about you. And about Doug. And I understand why you don’t want to talk about any of it.”

Maddie turned her head away from him and snapped, “Then why are you bringing it up?”

“Because it’s not going to go away just because you ignore it.” Buck put his spoon down and sighed. “You told me he threatened to kill you if you left.”

Maddie flinched. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Buck murmured. “I’m grateful you told me. Because that means I can react to it. I can prepare for it.”

“Prepare for what?” Maddie asked bitterly.

“For Doug showing up here and trying to ruin your life,” Buck said.

“He won’t find me.”

Buck sighed. “Maddie. I’m not exactly difficult to find. I was on national television less than a year ago.”

Maddie’s hands started to shake, and she dropped the dessert fork to hide them under the table.

“You deserve to be safe from him,” Buck said. “I needed to know more about him. But I didn’t want to push you to talk about him. So Tommy and I hired a PI.”

“Tommy?” Maddie spat and glared at Buck. “Is he making decisions for you now? That’s how it started with Doug, too, you know?”

Buck swallowed but tried not to show any other reaction outwardly. She was angry, he reminded himself, and scared. It was expected that she was lashing out and trying to go for the most hurtful thing she could think of. He had come here expecting that. But that didn’t mean her words didn’t feel like a knife in his chest, and for the first time, he wondered if Tommy was right about his assessment of Maddie’s opinion of him.

“I wasn’t happy about the suggestion at first,” Buck admitted. “But it made sense. So, yeah. I know a lot of rumors from your neighborhood now.”

“Rumors?” Maddie said with a scoff. “That’s what your great PI went after?”

Buck shrugged. “It’s the first thing they found. It’s not the end of their investigation. I just … want you to know that I know, I guess.”

“And what do you think you know?”

Buck lowered his gaze. “I know about some of the neighbors calling the police about disturbances at your home. I know about all of them knowing about your injuries. I know about Mrs. Norton trying to convince you to leave regularly. She didn’t admit to anything, but our guy thinks she might have sold you her old car the first day Doug was away at a conference. So that you had a car to leave in, one you could be sure Doug wouldn’t have bugged and be able to track through GPS.”

Maddie shook her head. “You know nothing.”

“I know it’s been longer than the year you claimed,” Buck said softly. He wanted to reach out to take her hand or even to hug her, but he feared her reaction should he move in any way in her direction. “And I didn’t need any PI for that, didn’t need your neighbors confirming that they’ve been calling the cops on Doug regularly for years.”

Maddie kept glaring at him, but there was also something else shining in her eyes that Buck couldn’t quite place.

“I really don’t want to push you, Mads,” Buck whispered and leaned over the table a little, placing his hand in the middle of it, palms up, in a silent invitation. “I noticed so many things back then. But I couldn’t place them, couldn’t make sense of them. I wish I had understood then. I wish I hadn’t left angry at you, that I’d just dropped by your place when I knew Doug was at work and you were home.”

Maddie’s shoulders shook, and she shook her head slowly. “You’re imagining things,” she said through gritted teeth. “There is nothing you need to worry about. You had no right to go digging into my life like this!”

“I know I’ve been crossing a lot of lines with this,” Buck agreed. “But I also know I’m not imagining anything. When you gave me the Jeep, did Doug find out? Is that why you wrote me a letter instead of telling me yourself that you had changed your mind?”

“No,” Maddie said through gritted teeth. “I was busy at work, and it had been a mistake to even entertain the thought of going with you.”

Buck smiled sadly. Her tone and the look in her eyes confirmed everything he had said, despite the denial in her words. He didn’t think it would be good to argue with her about that.

“Have you shown your coworkers a picture of Doug like we talked about?” Buck asked. He didn’t know how to tell her that Doug was here. The words burned on the back of his tongue, but he just couldn’t form them.

Maddie rolled her eyes. “No, of course not. It’s none of their business.”

“You were ready to leave again, ready to run away all by yourself right in the beginning,” Buck said. “That very much looked like you were expecting him to follow you. Have you changed your mind about that?”

Maddie shrugged. “I was silly. And stressed. And tired from the journey. I spent four days driving across the whole country, Evan. You can’t exactly expect rational thoughts from anyone after that bullshit.”

“You could’ve flown here,” Buck said. “Would’ve been cheaper, too.”

Maddie flinched once again.

“But it would’ve been easier for him to follow you then, right?” Buck asked. “Can’t buy a plane ticket in cash. Have to give your name for the ticket. Buying an old car from a helpful neighbor with cash is no problem. Especially if that neighbor has tried to get you to leave him for some time, so you could trust her not to tell Doug anything, maybe even mislead him when he talked to her.”

Maddie lowered her gaze.

“That’s a lot of subterfuge. So you clearly expected him to follow you when you left. I’ve shown a picture of Doug to everyone at my station.”

“You did what?” Maddie asked, her voice raised enough that several people from other tables turned to them with annoyed frowns.

Buck sighed. “I wanted to make sure that he couldn’t just spy on you or me through my colleagues.”

“You had no right!” Maddie hissed. She slapped her hands on the table and stood, her chair falling over behind her loudly.

“Maddie,” Buck said softly, trying to calm her down. He pushed his hand forward to reach for hers, but she slapped his arm away.

“Don’t you dare touch me, Evan Buckley! I shouldn’t have come here! I shouldn’t have trusted you with any of this!”

“Maddie,” Buck said again. “Listen…”

“No!” Maddie stepped away from the table just as a waiter approached them. “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had to pretend to be some hero! None of this concerns you! Just leave me the fuck alone.”

Before the waiter could say anything, Maddie stormed off. Buck jumped up to follow her, but the waiter caught his arm. “Sir, I need you to pay your bill and then leave.”

“I need to…”

“You aren’t running out without paying,” the waiter said through gritted teeth. “And you and your companion are not welcome back here.”

Buck lowered his head and sighed after Maddie had rushed out of the restaurant. There was no chance anymore to catch her. “I’m sorry for the scene, truly.”

The waiter just stared at him with an unrelenting glare.

Buck paid for the meal and left a generous tip. He was reminded again not to come back as he was escorted out of the restaurant, but he barely listened to that. As soon as he was alone, he pulled out his phone and tried to call Maddie, but the call went straight to voicemail. He opened his chat with her and stared at the blank field, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard.

He hadn’t told Maddie that Doug was in town, and that felt dangerous. But he couldn’t tell her through a text. Buck couldn’t even imagine how she would react to that, especially not right now, with how angry she was.

Buck closed his eyes and lowered his phone. Doug was snooping around Buck’s coworkers, which meant he probably didn’t know where Maddie was. And Patton knew about Doug, knew about the false name he used. She had promised to have eyes on him as soon as possible. Tommy had already authorized her to have more people support her. That meant he could probably give Maddie a day to calm down before he reached out again to tell her about Doug. And by then, they might already know more about what Doug was up to.

So Buck shoved his phone into his pocket and turned to his car. There was no harm in giving Maddie some time to calm down. He needed some time for himself after the fight. At least Tommy was waiting for him and would surely be very happy to distract Buck for a little while and then hold him throughout the whole night.

Chapter 08

Tommy glanced at his phone again, even though he knew it was pointless. His last shift had been relatively slow, and he had spent a lot of that time texting with Evan, who was a nervous wreck over his fight with his sister. Tommy wished he knew what to tell his boyfriend, but there wasn’t really anything he could say. He was convinced that Maddie would eventually come around, because if she wasn’t invested in creating a new relationship with her brother, then she wouldn’t have come here and stayed in the first place. But pointing that out wasn’t enough at the moment.

Evan’s plan was to call Maddie as soon as his shift ended so he would catch her before her own shift at dispatch started. They could only hope that she would answer his call. If she didn’t, Evan planned to go by her place after her shift, so he could tell her about Doug being in LA. The worst part was that they didn’t know where Doug was exactly at the moment, because, despite what Patton had promised, no one in the PI firm had been able to get eyes on him.

Tommy expected Evan to call him, no matter whether Maddie answered his call or not. He suspected that the long time it took for that call to come meant that she had answered her brother this time, but whether that was a good or a bad thing remained to be seen. So, when his phone finally rang, Tommy grabbed it and answered the call without even looking at it.

“Evan?”

“No, fuck. Where are you?”

Tommy frowned, and it took him a moment to recognize the voice. “Eddie? Do you need help?”

“Buck needs help,” Eddie said through gritted teeth. “Where are you?”

“I just came home from my shift thirty minutes ago.” Tommy frowned. “What do you mean Evan needs help?”

“I forgot a couple of forms at Buck’s place the other day when he introduced me to Carla,” Eddie said. “Because it all became pretty hectic once Johnson and then Bobby showed up, and I didn’t check if I had everything. So I was following Buck home today, but he asked me to give him a couple of minutes so he could call Maddie.”

Tommy nodded along. “Okay.”

“Just as I was arriving at his place, I saw a guy push Buck into a car. Not Buck’s car. Buck looked completely out of it. I’m not sure he was conscious at all. I was too far away to do anything, and by the time I was close enough to recognize the other guy, Buck was already in the car, and the other guy was getting into the driver’s seat. I’m pretty sure he is abducting Buck.”

“Doug?” Tommy asked and turned on his heels, hurrying to grab the keys to his car and leave. “Where are you?”

“I think so, yeah,” Eddie said. “I’m following him. I already called dispatch; thankfully, I didn’t end up talking to Maddie. Then I called Bobby. Now you. I have to call back dispatch in a moment, and I told them I’d keep them up to date on where Doug is going. And that I wouldn’t engage.”

“Where are you?” Tommy repeated through gritted teeth.

“I’m going to share my live location with you, okay?” Eddie said. “I might have spent a lot of time here visiting family, but I’m not sure how good I am at giving directions right now. Dispatch can at least track my phone directly.”

“I’m on my way.”

Eddie sighed. “Yeah, okay. Not sure if you and I can do anything. But I had to let you know.”

The call ended without further notice, and a moment later, Tommy received the link that would share Eddie’s live location with him for the next hour. Tommy cursed loudly when he dropped the phone as he got into the car and opened the link at the same time. He tried to ignore the way his hands shook.

He had expected Doug to act against Maddie, not against Evan. Tommy hadn’t even thought of the possibility that Doug might target Evan directly to get to Maddie, and he felt completely stupid about that now. Evan was an easy way to Maddie, but somehow, they had only thought about how easy it would be to find him and through him Maddie, not that he would become a target in whatever plans Doug had to get Maddie back or punish her.

Tommy tried to keep his mind focused on driving for the next half hour until he had caught up to Eddie. He didn’t know any more than Eddie about what they could do, but for the moment, they could follow Doug, so at least the police could track them to him, and they’d be in a position to do something when he eventually stopped.

***

Buck regained consciousness, or at least something near to it, with a groan. His head pounded painfully, his mouth was dry, and there was a dull pain in his neck. Then Buck noticed that his hands were tied behind his back, and he couldn’t move his feet either. Buck blinked his eyes open slowly and found himself in an unfamiliar moving car, sitting in the back with the seatbelt keeping him upright. With his hands trapped behind his back, the seatbelt was a pretty good additional restraint.

“Don’t even think about doing anything stupid.”

Buck blinked and turned his head to the driver. “Doug. What the hell, man?”

He took a deep breath, wincing at the way he slurred his words. His mind felt foggy, too, and he couldn’t quite remember how he had gotten here. Buck remembered driving home. He even remembered parking his car and walking up to his apartment. He had talked to Maddie on his phone on the way up, he thought. But that call had ended just after he had gotten inside his apartment. Then there was nothing else he remembered.

“Did you really think I’d let you get away with this?” Doug asked.

“Maddie left you,” Buck mumbled. He rolled his head back to the side and looked out the window. They were on some highway, but he didn’t recognize anything. He couldn’t even focus on anything because they were moving too fast and the motion made him feel nauseous. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath.

“Maddie knows better than to try to leave me,” Doug said. “She knows who she belongs to.”

“No one ever belongs to anyone but themselves!” Buck whispered.

“Shut up,” Doug snapped. “That right there just shows that you have no idea about love or relationships. No wonder you’re letting some fag bend you over.”

Buck blinked tiredly. The insult stung, but there was a voice in the back of his mind telling him that he needed to save his strength for other things. The voice sounded suspiciously like Bobby, and Buck got distracted for a moment by wondering what Bobby was doing in his head.

“You were always clinging to Maddie like a fucking leech,” Doug said, sounding more bitter than angry. “It might have been cute when you were a baby, but it became creepy when you were older and just wouldn’t learn how to let go. You were always jealous of me and my place in Maddie’s life.”

“Nah,” Buck murmured. “Just knew you were a no-good asshole who gets off on hurting people. Wish someone had listened to me then.”

“I’ve never hurt Maddie unless it was necessary,” Doug hissed. “She knows I don’t enjoy it when I have to teach her a lesson. She is just like every other stupid woman and won’t learn.”

Buck was hit by another wave of nausea, one that had nothing to do with motion sickness or the drugs he suspected Doug had given him. There was no other explanation for how foggy he felt. “What did you give me?”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Doug said. “You won’t live long enough to have to deal with it.”

Buck inhaled sharply and pressed his back against the seat. “Fuck.”

Doug huffed. “What, did you think I’d just let you get away with harassing Maddie and somehow tricking her into coming here? No, Evan. You’ve tried to interfere one too many times. I should’ve done this when you were still in school, you know?”

Buck concentrated on his breathing, because that was the only way he could keep himself from throwing up. “Did you threaten her with that?”

Doug turned his head for a moment to send Buck an icy grin. “I had to convince her somehow that you didn’t need her and that she could come to Boston with me, didn’t I?”

“Bastard,” Buck muttered.

“Should’ve gone through with it,” Doug said. “We wouldn’t be in this situation if I had. You would not have caused trouble in my marriage over and over again.”

“You’re crazy,” Buck said.

“I’m going to make Maddie watch,” Doug said as if he hadn’t heard Buck. “She complained so much that she didn’t get to watch the last time her brother died. I’ll make sure she won’t miss a single second of your last moments.”

Buck frowned. That didn’t make sense at all.

“I’ll call her from your phone, and she’ll come running right back into my arms,” Doug said. “She won’t ignore me this time.”

“She won’t fall for that.”

Doug laughed. “She’ll want to try to save you! The way the two of you can’t let go of each other is just sick, you know? Siblings shouldn’t be this co-dependent.”

Buck swallowed and tried to look outside again. Maybe if he figured out where they were going, he’d have a chance to come up with a plan. No one knew Doug had him, or that he was missing. Buck blinked. Maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe someone would know he was missing, because hadn’t Eddie wanted to follow him? Eddie would wonder about it if Buck didn’t open his door or answer his phone. But that didn’t mean he would suspect anything bad had happened or do anything about it. They hadn’t known each other for that long yet, he wouldn’t even consider Eddie a friend yet.

“What the fuck?” Doug suddenly cursed, and then the car stopped so abruptly that Buck was thrown forward, slamming harshly against the seatbelt.

Buck gagged, and this time he couldn’t keep the nausea at bay. He barely managed to turn his head to the side so that he vomited over the seat beside him instead of all over his lap. He heard Doug curse again, but couldn’t make out the words. His head hit the seat in front of him when Doug put the car in reverse and hit the gas before braking sharply again. The cursing grew louder, and Buck couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening.

Suddenly, the door next to him opened, and Doug snapped open the seatbelt. Then he pulled Buck out of the car, wrapping his arm around Buck’s neck and pulling Buck’s back flat against his chest. Buck stumbled, but he somehow managed to stay on his feet despite his legs being bound together. Doug dragged him away from the open door.

They weren’t on a highway anymore, Buck realized, confused. It looked more like a backroad, but Buck couldn’t imagine they had made it out of LA already. Or maybe he had been out of it for longer than he had thought.

“Back away!” Doug called out. Then he hissed into Buck’s ear, “What the hell did you do?”

Buck blinked, trying to focus on anything that wasn’t the car Doug had dragged him out of. It took him a long, long moment to notice that there were police cars blocking the road, and a number of officers standing behind them and pointing their weapons at him.

Buck felt something cold press against his temple.

“I’ll kill him if you don’t let me go!” Doug shouted.

***

Tommy had lost track of how long he had been following Eddie. At one point, Eddie had created a conference call between himself, Tommy, dispatch, and Sergeant Grant, for some reason. Tommy didn’t quite know how she had gotten into the mix, but if she had already been on duty, it probably made sense to involve her because she knew Buck.

“There is a bend in the road a mile ahead of you,” Josh from dispatch said. His voice was calm, though Tommy had heard a tense moment earlier when there had been a woman’s voice in the background, which Tommy was pretty sure had been Maddie. “We’ve put up a roadblock right behind it that should stop him.”

Tommy made a face but didn’t protest. They didn’t even know if Evan was wearing a seatbelt, and he didn’t want to imagine what could happen if Doug Kendall didn’t manage to stop the car before crashing into the roadblock. But he knew they had been lucky, both that they hadn’t lost Doug’s car and also that they hadn’t been spotted by him so far. They didn’t know where he was heading, and a roadblock was the best solution to the ongoing abduction.

“There are some additional police cars right behind you,” Josh continued.

Without thinking, Tommy threw a glance in the rearview mirror. The street behind him was empty.

Eddie seemed to have had the same thought, because he said, “There is no one behind us.”

“They should be just out of sight,” Josh said. “I’d prefer it if you stopped right now. The officers at the scene will handle the situation.”

Tommy tightened his hold on his steering wheel and gritted his teeth.

Grant huffed. “Kinard might have been transferred, but at the heart, they’re all 118.”

It sounded like an insult and was probably meant as one, but Tommy couldn’t help but grin about it. The 118 was famous among the LAFD and LAPD for being cursed. No one wanted to mess with the station as a result.

Josh sighed. “Right. Use your cars to block the road behind him. Then get out of your cars and behind the closest building. Kendall already has one hostage, don’t let him get two more. Firefighter Buckley won’t thank you if you get hurt trying to help because you were stupid.”

“Nearly there,” Eddie said.

Tommy slowed his car down a little as he watched Doug’s car navigate the bend. Eddie seemed to do the same, then he turned his car sharply sideways as he stopped. Tommy turned his car in the other direction, blocking most of the rest of the street. He could just barely see around the curve from where he was, but he saw Doug’s car back up for a moment, then stop again.

Tommy just watched for a moment, taking in the police cars on the other side of Doug’s car. Then Doug jumped out of the car, and a moment later he dragged Evan out from the back, wrapping one arm around his throat. Evan stumbled, his hands bound behind his back, and his legs seemed to be bound together as well. Tommy ended the conference call with one touch to the screen, then got out of his car.

He exchanged a look with Eddie, and they came to a silent agreement that they wouldn’t just back away. There were still no police to be seen behind them, and they wouldn’t give Doug such an easy route to escape by just leaving.

“Back away!” Doug called out, facing the other direction, dismissing them as a threat compared to the police on the other side. He raised his free arm, and Tommy sucked in air through his teeth as he saw Doug press a gun against the side of Evan’s head. “I’ll kill him if you don’t let me go.”

“Yeah, because you’ll just let Buck go if we let you go,” Eddie murmured right beside Tommy. “Who are you kidding, asshole?”

“We should’ve been prepared for him to go after Evan,” Tommy said quietly without taking his eyes off his boyfriend.

He seemed to be struggling to keep his legs under him more than his restraints should warrant, and Tommy worried about that a great deal. There was no way Evan had let Doug drag him into his car without a fight, so either he was hurt badly enough that he was barely resisting now, or he was drugged. Tommy didn’t like either of those options.

One of the officers on the other side shouted something at Doug, but the sound didn’t quite carry all the way to Tommy and Eddie. They were too far away to get any kind of control of Doug, or to even use anything to sneak up on him.

“I didn’t think he’d threaten Buck’s life so openly just because of a roadblock,” Eddie murmured. “This speaks to more desperation than there should be.”

Tommy shrugged.

A car stopped behind them. That had to be the backup Josh had talked about finally arriving.

“You really just can’t follow orders, can you?” Sergeant Grant hissed as she joined them behind Tommy’s car.

“And leave him an opening to flee?” Tommy asked. He bit his lip. “You need to do something. He’s gonna shoot Evan. There is no way out for him, and he seems to have gone completely off the rails.”

“I’m not saying it again!” Doug called out. “Clear the road and let us leave. This is nothing but family business! Your involvement is just a misunderstanding!”

Sergeant Grant grabbed Tommy’s elbow. “Get behind my car and—”

She didn’t get to finish that sentence. Suddenly, Evan slumped down and crumpled to the ground. Tommy wasn’t sure if his legs had just given out or if he had deliberately tried to drop. It caused Doug to stumble back, and his arm with the gun flew wide as he tried to regain his balance.

A shot rang through the air, and sharp pain exploded in Tommy’s shoulder. He stumbled back, shoved by some force he couldn’t place. Tommy only understood what had happened as the world tilted around him and he found himself lying on the ground, staring up at the sky. He pressed his hand against his shoulder, feeling blood seep between his fingers.

Shouting filled the air, and then more gunshots. Eddie’s face appeared above Tommy, but Tommy tried to push him away, trying to get up again.

“Evan!” Tommy said urgently.

“Someone will take care of him,” Eddie hissed. “Let me see your shoulder. Buck will be so angry about this, you know?”

Tommy frowned. “I need to…”

“You need to get your shoulder treated,” Grant snapped. “Buck’s secure, Kendall is dead. We have a second ambulance on the road for you.”

“Doug’s dead?” Tommy nodded. “That’s good.”

Grant sent him a shrewd look.

“Don’t judge me, he shot me!” Tommy protested and finally let Eddie push his hand away from his shoulder so he could take care of the wound with the supplies from the first aid kit Grant had given him.

“By accident,” Grant said.

“He’d have killed Evan,” Tommy murmured. “If he’d gotten a chance.” He blinked as his vision started to blur. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Yeah, you’re losing a lot of blood, buddy,” Eddie murmured. “It’s a through and through, and it’s bleeding like hell.”

“Got out of the Army without ever getting shot,” Tommy murmured. “Kind of unfair it happened now.”

Grant chuckled. “Keep your eyes open, Kinard. Why’d you leave the army? I hear you got your flight license there. They wouldn’t have let you go on a whim.”

Tommy shrugged, then groaned at the pain. “Got some PTSD from a crash and being held hostage for a couple of days. Couldn’t talk to the therapists because of the gay thing. Thought I was too damaged to still let me fly, so I got medically discharged.”

“Because of the gay thing?” Eddie asked with raised brows.

“Was convinced anything I said would out me,” Tommy said. “DADT, you know? Even if I talked about things that had nothing to do with it. Like the crash. Or the fucking insurgent camp. Didn’t want to end up in jail or dishonorably discharged. So I didn’t talk. Is the reason it took so long to get my license again as a civilian. Had to jump through some extra hoops because of the discharge paperwork.”

“Okay, so that’s a story for any party in the future then,” Eddie said with a terse smile, his gaze fully focused on Tommy’s shoulder. “Not getting shot while you’re being paid to get shot at. And then when you aren’t paid anymore, you’re suddenly shot.”

“Probably doesn’t feel any better to get paid for it.”

That made Eddie grin for a moment. “Yeah. It really sucked while I was getting paid for it. Could’ve done without it.”

Tommy closed his eyes for a moment.

“Look at me, Tommy,” Sergeant Grant said.

“Is Evan okay?” Tommy asked tiredly and forced his eyes open again.

“A paramedic will look after him in a moment. But you’re actively bleeding out here, buddy, so you’ll be the one they look at first. And the one who’ll be transported to the hospital first.”

“Same hospital,” Tommy murmured.

“I’ll make sure of it,” Eddie promised. “I’ll hitch a ride with Buck, okay?”

Tommy nodded. Then everything got too confusing to keep track of as Eddie was replaced by two paramedics Tommy didn’t know.

***

Buck woke up in a moving vehicle again. But this time he was lying down on something he was pretty sure was a stretcher. He inhaled deeply and shook his head against the mask over his mouth and nose. His arms and legs were restrained, but somehow differently than before, and Buck couldn’t make any sense of it.

“Keep that where it is.”

Buck frowned. That was Eddie’s voice. First, he had been hallucinating Bobby’s voice, now Eddie’s? Who was next, Hen?

“You’re in an ambulance,” Eddie said. “Do you know what Doug drugged you with?”

“No,” Buck whispered. “Wouldn’t say. Where is he?”

“He isn’t ever going to be a problem again,” Eddie promised. “Tried to use you as a human shield. That didn’t do him any good.”

“Oh, yeah.” Buck frowned and tried to open his eyes, but the lights were too bright. “I remember that. I let myself drop down. I hoped he wouldn’t be able to hold me up. And wouldn’t shoot me by accident.” He paused and tried to figure out where all the pain was coming from. “Did he shoot me?”

“No, Mr. Buckley,” a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize said. “You don’t have any gunshot wounds. Are you in pain?”

“Everything aches,” Buck murmured. “Chest and shoulder hurt. But everything, really.”

“We were told the vehicle you were in had to make an emergency stop at a significant speed. There are bruises forming on your shoulder and chest that could come from a seatbelt.”

“Right.” Buck sighed. “I remember that. Threw up too, after that happened.”

“Are you still nauseous?” the woman asked.

“Don’t know. Driving while lying down is not great, though. Didn’t throw up because of the accident. Was it an accident? But had been nauseous since I woke up in Doug’s car. I think he drugged me.”

“There is what looks like a needlemark in your neck,” Eddie said. “That’s why I asked if you knew what he had given you.”

Buck shook his head slightly. “Ugh, okay, that was not a good choice. Now I’m nauseous again.”

There were hands on his head then, holding him in place. “Don’t move,” Eddie said softly.

“Did I make him shoot himself?” Buck asked. “I know there were shots. The first one was really loud. Ears are still ringing.”

When no one answered, Buck forced his eyes open and found Eddie staring at him with a worried frown.

“What?” Buck asked. “Who did he shoot?”

“You didn’t make him do anything, Buck,” Eddie whispered. “Okay? That Doug was killed is his own fault. And … yeah, Doug fired a shot that hit someone, but that’s not your fault.”

“Who?” Buck asked, growing more worried the longer Eddie wouldn’t tell him.

But Eddie shared a look with the two paramedics and shook his head. “It’s probably better to wait until you’re in the hospital, Buck. Okay? He’s gonna be okay.”

“He?” Buck frowned. “You said Doug is dead. Can’t be him then. Wouldn’t be worried about him anyway.”

Eddie sighed.

“No, Eddie, you need to tell me!” Buck demanded. “Can’t have been some random officer if you’re so worried! Was it someone from the LAPD we’ve worked with a lot? I’d think Athena, but you said he. Wait. Wait! Bobby?”

Eddie blinked, looking startled for a moment, and Buck exhaled in relief because that at least was an answer. “Why would Bobby have been there?”

“Because he is dating Athena,” Buck said and rolled his eyes, and then groaned because that didn’t help his nausea either. “If he was with her or she called him…”

“Bobby is going to be at the hospital when we arrive,” Eddie said. “Hen will be there, too. And Maddie.”

“And Tommy,” Buck added, and Eddie blanched. “What? Eddie? What are you talking about? Tommy couldn’t have been there! Tommy can’t have been shot!”

Eddie ran his tongue over his lips. “Tommy will be fine, Buck. I promise you, he’ll be fine.”

Buck shook his head, ignoring the bile rising in his throat over that movement. “No, no, no, no.”

“Buck!” Eddie snapped. “Stop moving! And listen to me, Tommy will be okay. He was shot, yes. In the shoulder. But he was well enough to complain that he didn’t get shot when he was paid for it by the Army, but did now that he isn’t paid for it anymore.”

Buck blinked rapidly, and he knew there were tears gathering in his eyes. “I didn’t want that! Why was he there?”

“I saw Doug shove you into his car,” Eddie said. “And I knew you weren’t going of your own free will. So I followed him, called dispatch, called Bobby, then called Tommy.”

Buck took a deep breath and fisted his hands.

“I shared my location with Tommy,” Eddie continued. “I thought … I thought if the police weren’t there when Doug stopped somewhere, Tommy and I could figure out together how to overwhelm him. We both know how to fight. How to disarm someone. I was sure we’d find a way to get you away from him without anyone getting hurt too badly. Granted, I didn’t count on him having a gun.”

Buck closed his eyes tightly.

“It’s a through and through at the shoulder,” Eddie said softly. “Left shoulder. I know from experience that kind of wound is a beast to heal from, but if he follows the instructions of the doctors, he’ll be just fine. He’ll be back on the job in a couple of months.”

“Months…” Buck whispered brokenly. “I need to see him!” He turned his head and looked at the paramedics. “You need to take me to the same hospital!”

“Already arranged,” Eddie said. “Tommy asked for that, too.”

“Good,” Buck murmured. “That’s good. I can see him when we arrive, right?”

“Your friend might already be in surgery,” one of the paramedics said quietly.

“Boyfriend,” Buck corrected.

One of the paramedics grabbed his wrist and squeezed. “Okay. I’m sure they’ll be able to put you in the same room.”

Chapter 09

Tommy was barely awake when his bed was rolled into the room that would be his for at least one night. He hated staying in hospitals, and he hoped with all he had that he would be discharged the next day. The surgeon had been happy with the surgery and assured Tommy that, by some miracle, there was no damage to the bone. The bullet had entered in the front and exited just beside his shoulder blade, nearly under his armpit. The bleeding had been the biggest problem, and the surgeon had taken care of that. His body would need time to heal, but there should be no lasting damage.

“Tommy!”

Evan sounded much too excited and entirely too awake for Tommy’s taste. And he was definitely too far away in his own bed when the nurse locked his bed in place in the room.

“Stay where you are, Mr. Buckley,” the nurse ordered him sternly.

“Evan,” Tommy murmured and turned his head, reaching out his good arm. At least Evan was placed on his right side, that might make some things easier. “How are you? Are you hurt?”

“Just some strained muscles,” Evan said with a wide grin.

“And a number of nasty bruises. And a still unknown drug that has switched from making him very sleepy und nauseous to making him very happy and awake, as you can see,” The nurse said. “We hope the blood test will be back soon. Mr. Buckley will be staying for the night just as you so that we can monitor Mr. Buckley.”

“Is it already nighttime?” Tommy asked with a confused frown. He didn’t think he had spent that much time in surgery.

“Mr. Buckley is going to stay for 24 hours to monitor the effects of the drug,” The nurse continued with a reassuring smile. “And you just missed lunch. I’ll bring by a snack in a little while, so you won’t have to wait until dinner.”

Tommy nodded.

“If you need anything, press the call button. If Mr. Buckley does anything strange, please also press the call button.” The nurse sighed. “We had to throw out a whole host of people earlier. I’m sure they’ll all be back for afternoon visiting hours.”

Tommy grinned half-heartedly. “They mean well.”

The nurse huffed. “We have all heard the stories about the 118 here. I’m not very happy to have two of you here at the same time. I’d prefer not to deal with the chaos you seem to cause everywhere.”

“Not gonna leave this bed for some time,” Tommy said. “I can hardly cause chaos from here. Also, technically, I’m not at the 118 anymore. Haven’t been for more than a year! I don’t make any promises for Evan, though.”

Evan giggled and waved at Tommy when he looked at him.

“We’ll see,” the nurse said with a skeptical frown as he left the room.

“Are you alright, Tommy?” Evan asked a moment later with a strange mixture of clearly artificial happiness and worry.

“At least two months of healing and PT, but there should be no lasting damage,” Tommy said with a reassuring smile. “I hope they’ll let me go home tomorrow.”

Evan sighed deeply, looking at him with a troubled frown. “Is my fault.”

“It’s not.” Tommy shook his head. “I could have listened to Sergeant Grant and left the area as soon as Doug was backed into the roadblock. I decided to stay where I was.”

“Shouldn’t have let him jump me,” Evan murmured.

“What happened?” Tommy asked.

“It’s a little fuzzy.” Evan shrugged and frowned in concentration. “I talked to Maddie about meeting again. So we could make up after the fight. And so I could tell her Doug is here.” He fisted his hands in the blanket. “I should’ve done that earlier. But we fought instead.”

Tommy nodded patiently.

“I was still talking to her when I unlocked the door, I think?” Evan shrugged. “Maybe I ended the phone call before. I can’t remember. I don’t think I saw him. I came home and went to the living room because Eddie had forgotten some paperwork from Carla. Then someone grabbed me from behind and I felt something stab me in the neck.”

Evan raised his hand and pressed it against his neck where some dressing was covering part of his skin. He made a face and shook his head but stopped abruptly as he turned pale. “Ugh. No shaking my head. Remind me not to shake my head!”

“I will,” Tommy promised, watching Evan worriedly.

Evan’s eyes grew wide. “He was in the apartment! I closed the door behind me! I know I closed the door!”

Tommy sighed and nodded. He wished he could be surprised, but he really wasn’t. Not after how uncooperative the building management had been about the situation with Maddie. They had of course promised something like this wouldn’t happen again, but as far as Tommy knew, the guy who had let Maddie into Evan’s apartment hadn’t even been reprimanded.

“You were shot,” Evan murmured. He turned and swung his legs out of the bed.

“You’re supposed to stay in bed!” Tommy said.

Evan huffed and pouted. His mood swings and also the jumps in topics were a little bit dizzying, especially as Tommy was still feeling the effects of the anesthesia.

“I’m fine,” Tommy promised again. “The arm is going to be trapped in the sling for a while. And I won’t be able to work for longer than I’d like. But the damage is manageable. And it’s really my own fault. I should’ve taken better cover.”

“I dropped down on purpose,” Evan said with a deep frown. “He said he’d kill me. I didn’t have anything to lose, but I also couldn’t do much.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” Tommy said with a tired smile. “I was worried about you. I … I’ve been kicking myself in the ass that we didn’t think about him targeting you to get to Maddie.”

Evan’s face fell. “He said he’d kill me in front of her. Would make her watch. Because she couldn’t watch the last time her brother died. Which is stupid, I never died before.”

Tommy blinked, confused by that comment. Evan had never mentioned another brother, and clearly that wasn’t his first thought, but it was the only thing that made sense for Tommy. The age difference between Evan and his sister was large enough that there might have been a brother who Evan couldn’t remember because he had been too young.

Tommy looked around, searching for his phone. Then he remembered he had left it back in his car at the scene where they had stopped Doug. Which meant it was probably still in the car. He would need to text Patton or Wagener later to update them about the events of the day and ask them to look into Evan’s family. Maybe he would be able to have answers for Evan before Evan’s mind caught up to asking the right questions.

***

When Buck woke up in the hospital the day after Doug had kidnapped him, he barely remembered anything about the previous day. The few memories he did have were hazy and unclear. He knew what had happened, remembered that he had been drugged and Tommy had been shot, and that practically everyone had been here in the afternoon to visit them.

Including Maddie, who had come over right after her shift, and who everyone had given space only after Athena had taken control of the room and cleared it of everyone so Maddie wouldn’t feel crowded. Buck had no idea what his sister’s first impression of his friends was after that bit of chaos.

Maddie was the first one to arrive again right after breakfast, right as visiting hours started, clearly using her knowledge of how the schedule in a hospital worked. This time Buck noticed that she barely acknowledged Tommy at all, and how forced her smile was when Tommy greeted her. Then a nurse came just as Maddie and Buck had settled at the small table by the window and helped Tommy into a wheelchair to bring him to his post-surgery checkup, and Buck watched as the tension in Maddie’s shoulders visibly dropped as soon as they were alone in the room.

“Tommy is a good guy, you know,” Buck said softly.

Maddie shrugged. “How long do you have to stay?”

“I hope I can leave with Tommy later,” Buck said. “They’re going to keep me here at least until noon. They weren’t able to identify exactly what I was drugged with, so they’re insisting on the full 24 hours they decided on yesterday. No matter that I feel fine now!”

“Better to be cautious,” Maddie said quietly. “I’m so sorry, Evan.”

“None of this is your fault,” Buck said with raised brows.

“He never would’ve come here if I…”

“No, stop,” Buck said. “It was the right choice to come here. It was the right choice to leave him. And now, you’re free of him.”

Suddenly, tears were running down Maddie’s face, and she hastily wiped them away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t…”

“It’s okay to be sad, too,” Buck said, trying to keep his voice soft and warm again. “You’re allowed to be sad about everything you went through, Maddie. About everything Doug did, to you and others. And you’re also allowed to be sad he’s dead.”

Maddie shook her head, sobbing quietly.

“Tommy and I are going to be fine,” Buck continued. “And you don’t have to be afraid of Doug anymore.”

Buck wished they could’ve put Doug in jail for a very, very long time for everything he had ever done, for every instance he had ever raised his hand against Maddie. Buck still didn’t know a lot about what Maddie had gone through, but while a lot of the previous day was hazy, the things Doug had said to him had been burned into his brain. And those things told him that Maddie had lived in her own personal hell, probably ever since she had followed Doug to Boston.

But Buck also knew that the chances of Doug getting prosecuted and sentenced for anything he had done to Maddie were slim. It would have been a different kind of hell for Maddie, too, forcing her to defend herself in ways she shouldn’t have to. And in the end, even if all of it was successful, Doug wouldn’t have been in jail for as long as he deserved.

So, Buck was glad that Doug was dead. Because it meant Maddie was safe from him for the rest of her life.

“Are you going to stay here?” Buck asked after a long moment of silence.

“I don’t know,” Maddie whispered.

“Do you want to go back to Hershey?” Buck held his breath, hoping for her to say no.

He wouldn’t fault her if she said yes; she had a life there and friends, at least he thought so. She had some neighbors who had clearly been trying to help her, and he knew at least Maddie’s boss had supported her, too. And their parents were there, though Buck didn’t know what kind of relationship Maddie had with them. There were potentially a lot of reasons for her to go back, now that she was completely free of Doug.

But Maddie shook her head. “I can’t go back. I can’t.”

“I’d be very happy if you stayed here,” Buck said. “But I’d understand if you wanted to see something of the world. Or find a place to settle down that doesn’t have any memories of Doug.”

Maddie kept shaking her head, and Buck wondered if maybe he had asked an impossible question.

Then, Maddie asked, “What happened yesterday?”

Buck shrugged and shared what he remembered, watching Maddie carefully. He didn’t know what she was searching for, what answers she hoped she’d get from him. He wouldn’t tell her what Doug had told him about his plans, pretending not to remember much of what had happened in the car. Buck didn’t want to have that thought in her head that had made him wake up from nightmares twice the previous night. So, he only told her that Doug had intended to use him as bait to lure her into a trap.

“I should’ve never come to you,” Maddie whispered. “I should’ve never brought him to your doorstep.”

Buck smiled sadly, wondering how often they’d have to get through this conversation before she stopped thinking that way. “I’m glad to have you back in my life, Maddie. I missed you.”

Maddie exhaled slowly, and then she gave him a shaky smile. “I missed you, too.”

“Let’s focus on that, okay?” Buck asked. “Doug is behind both of us. Hershey is behind both of us.”

“I’ll have to go back to take care of the house and everything, I guess,” Maddie murmured with an unhappy frown.

Buck chuckled. “Okay, so maybe Hershey will be behind both of us soon. If you want, I can come back with you to help with whatever needs to be taken care of.”

Maddie shrugged and turned her head to stare out the window.

“Do you like working for dispatch?” Buck asked.

“It’s nice,” Maddie whispered. “Very different, but still … It was a good idea. So, thank you for suggesting it.”

“You can always go back to nursing eventually,” Buck said.

Maddie chuckled lightly. “Yeah, maybe.”

It sounded like a ‘no, never’, but Buck didn’t call her out or question her on it. Now with Doug gone, it wasn’t so pressing anymore to learn what she had gone through. She could keep her secrets, could believe she was protecting him even if that was bullshit.

“I’m going to stay with Tommy for a while,” Buck said. She had avoided his question earlier, so he had to try a different approach to make her talk about his boyfriend. “His arm will be out of commission for a while.”

“I’m sure he can manage.”

Buck shrugged. “Probably. Doesn’t mean he has to.”

Maddie frowned. “Okay. But why are you telling me this?”

“You don’t like him very much. I’d just like to know what’s going on there.”

“Did he tell you that?” Maddie asked with a sneer.

Buck chuckled. “He didn’t need to. Come on, Maddie. There are a ton of things we need to relearn and get to know about each other again. But the way you look at people you don’t like hasn’t changed much. The way you are short with him, barely returned his ‘good morning’ when you arrived earlier. The way you instantly relaxed as soon as he was out of the room.”

“Of course we know each other!” Maddie insisted, conveniently ignoring anything else. “That’s something he has put in your head, isn’t it?”

Buck shook his head. “Tommy isn’t putting anything in my head, Maddie. It’s a fact that there is more that you and I don’t know about each other than we do know about each other now. It’s been seven years since we last saw each other. That’s practically my whole adult life!”

Maddie huffed and pursed her lips, but she didn’t argue and just turned her head to stare out the window again.

“And honestly, I don’t think I ever truly knew you, Mads,” Buck said softly, watching her with a sad smile. “You were the center of my life at one point, but I was so young and had such a skewed perspective of the world. Then you went off to college and later to Boston, and I put you on a pedestal in my memories because you were the only member of our family who ever cared about me.”

“Mom and Dad love you,” Maddie protested with a frown. “I know they weren’t the best parents, but they’re good people.”

Buck shook his head. “I think we have two very different impressions of them. But that’s really not the important part. The important part is that I want to get to know the person you are now. And that I want to share with you the person I’ve grown into. And that includes sharing with you everything about this really amazing guy I have fallen head over heels in love with.”

“He doesn’t look so amazing from where I stand,” Maddie murmured.

“Is it because he is a man?” Buck asked, tone a little sharper.

Maddie’s eyes grew wide in clear surprise and she paled a little. “What? No! Of course not!” She shook her head. “God, Evan. I don’t care if you’re straight or gay. Or bi.”

Buck stared at her for a moment and eventually nodded. “You don’t know Tommy. So I don’t know why else you’d have such a harsh opinion about him.”

“I know how he commanded you around as if you weren’t allowed your own opinion that day when you came home.”

Buck couldn’t help but laugh. “You mean when he interrupted me because I was angry about you being inside my apartment and cockblocking me?”

“Could you stop using that word?” Maddie asked and made a face.

“But it’s exactly what happened! We came home from a date, and I was expecting to get laid. Turns out, I’m not very tactful when those plans get interrupted.”

Maddie rolled her eyes.

“Tommy is the real deal for me,” Buck said. “I have every intention of building my life with him, of growing old with him.”

“You can’t build a family with him, Evan,” Maddie said with an exasperated sigh.

“There are ways to get children if we wanted them,” Buck said with raised brows. “Hen and Karen have a wonderful son. And they’re working on expanding their family. But I don’t want to have children.”

Maddie lowered her gaze and opened her mouth.

But Buck hurried to continue, “See, this is also what I mean when I say we don’t know each other. I never talked about wanting to have children as a teenager. You just assumed that about me.”

Buck bit his tongue before he could ask if she wanted children, if she was projecting her own desires onto him. Maybe one day they could have this conversation, but he thought that Maddie needed a lot more time and most of all distance from everything that was Doug before he could ask that question.

“I…” Maddie trailed off with an unhappy frown. “Why wouldn’t you want to have children?”

Buck shrugged. “It’s just like that. I mean, I’ve thought sometimes about children of my own over the years. But it’s not something I have any burning desire for, and I’m very content with not having children.”

Maddie stared at him with a silent frown.

“Let’s make a deal, okay?” Buck asked. “Let’s work on getting to know each other again. I want to know you. I want to share my life with you. There are so many things I always wanted to share with you that I never had space on the postcards for. And even before that, the few times you came to visit when I was a teenager, there were always so many things going on that I never told you about.”

“I still think you’re being overly dramatic about this,” Maddie said. “But yeah, okay.”

***

Tommy was relieved when he was allowed to leave the hospital after only one night. He had to wear a sling, the kind that wrapped around his torso, too, to make sure he wouldn’t move his arm at all. He had another follow up appointment two days later and already a first PT appointment for the day after that, but he was allowed to go home.

Bobby picked Tommy and Evan up from the hospital in the early afternoon and drove them to the precinct nearest to Evan’s place first. A detective there had caught the case of the abduction and the eventual deadly shooting, because that was where the initial crime had taken place. They each had to give statements, and Tommy had to endure a lecture about inserting himself into that situation at all, but he just shrugged that off.

Then Bobby dropped them off at Tommy’s house, where Hen, Karen, and Denny were already waiting. Denny hovered around Tommy for a long time, worriedly inspecting the sling and what he could see of the bandages, asking too many questions about the injury that Tommy couldn’t answer. Evan and Hen in the meantime prepared dinner and a whole list of meals Evan could prepare later so that Tommy would be able to heat them up one-handed for the days when Evan was on shift.

Later, Eddie joined them for dinner and brought his son. Tommy knew Eddie had gone between the hospital and the scene of the shooting twice the previous day, first to pick up his own car, then to pick up Tommy’s car and drive it to Tommy’s house, where he picked up Tommy’s phone and the bags for the hospital that Tarek had packed for Tommy and Evan. Tarek might be a paramedic, but he avoided hospitals as much as he could, so Tommy wasn’t too put out about his friend not coming by for a visit. There had already been too many people visiting them at the hospital as it was.

Chris and Denny got along like a house on fire and the parents were barely able to separate the boys after dinner. Eddie was visibly relieved about Chris finding a friend so easily outside of his cousins, and caved much faster to the demands of arranging a playdate than Hen and Karen did. Tommy was glad when the discussion about that was finished outside his house while the boys were ushered to the cars.

“I love our friends,” Tommy murmured as he closed the door. “But I’m so glad to see them go right now.”

“Yeah,” Evan chuckled tiredly. “At least it was just three of them. Have to hold onto the positive things.”

“And two kids,” Tommy added, shaking his head. “But the rest will show up tomorrow. They just know Hen and Karen always call dibs.”

“Eddie is too new to know that yet,” Evan said with a nod and a mischievous smile.

“Eddie assumed—rightfully so—that getting shot at together gives him some privileges,” Tommy said with raised brows. “It does create unique bonds, after all.”

Evan’s face fell and Tommy immediately regretted trying to joke about that part. He cupped Evan’s neck with his good hand and pulled him into a careful hug. Evan exhaled slowly and leaned into him, wrapping his arms around Tommy carefully.

“I’m sorry,” Evan murmured.

“I already told you yesterday, none of this is your fault,” Tommy whispered.

“I think I’ll need some time to believe that.”

Tommy hummed. “I’ll just repeat it until you believe it. And I have no doubt Dr. Copeland will support me in that endeavor. Have you called her office?”

“No. I already have an appointment tomorrow anyway.” Evan sighed.

“Okay,” Tommy nodded.

He had called his own therapist earlier because it was nearly two weeks until his next scheduled appointment, and Tommy knew he shouldn’t wait that long. Every time he took his eyes off Evan at the moment, he was overcome again by the intense fear that had wrapped itself tightly around him the moment Eddie had told him about Doug dragging Buck into his car.

“Let’s get ready for bed,” Tommy murmured around a yawn. “I feel I could fall asleep right where I’m standing.”

Evan chuckled. “Yeah. Do you think it works with your shoulder if we sleep in the same bed? I could take the guest—”

“We’ll make it work,” Tommy said, and it took all his strength not to ask Evan to just move in with him.

Evan needed a new place to live, not just because the apartment was currently considered a crime scene and closed off anyway. But Evan had been very determined earlier in the year to have a place all to himself, had been very excited about experiencing that despite how much he had struggled with finding an apartment. Tommy didn’t think that anything had changed about that.

For now, it had to be enough that Evan was staying until Tommy’s shoulder was better. But Tommy wouldn’t let him get any strange ideas about sleeping in separate beds.

Evan took half a step back, letting one hand linger on Tommy’s back with the other on his chest, and watched him for a moment with a thoughtful frown. Then he nodded. “Yeah, okay. I … don’t want to sleep in different beds. But if it doesn’t work with your shoulder…”

Tommy threw him a look.

Evan smiled hesitantly. “We’ll make it work.”

“We will,” Tommy repeated. Then he changed the topic. “Oh, and we need to set an alarm. Because Karen’s friend Tori has invited herself to breakfast after Karen apparently vented to her about her anger concerning … everything, probably.”

“Tori?” Evan asked confused. “Isn’t that the lawyer friend who specializes in criminal law? Why does she think we need a lawyer for that?”

“Because she thinks everyone who deals with the police about a criminal matter or anything at all needs a lawyer. Even if they’re the victims.”

Evan inhaled sharply at that word and shook his head.

“Maybe especially if they’re the victim,” Tommy continued with a frown.

“We aren’t…” Evan trailed off, and Tommy hoped that was because he recognized the foolishness of his denial.

“You were abducted, Evan,” Tommy said softly. “And drugged. I was shot. That’s making us victims.”

Evan exhaled slowly. “Right.”

“We’re gonna deal with it,” Tommy promised with a reassuring smile. “By working through it in therapy. By being there for each other. By letting our friends hover for a little while before we tell them off. I’m sure Tanika and Bobby and Tarek will show up tomorrow at some point. Sal might even show up.”

Evan chuckled and leaned their foreheads together. “Yeah, okay.”

***

Victoria “Tori” Warren was an imposing woman who arrived at 9 am on the dot just as Karen had warned them she would. Buck hadn’t met Tori before, but he had heard some stories from Karen, and even just welcoming her into Tommy’s house convinced him that none of Karen’s stories about how no prosecutor in LA wanted to face her in court could have been an exaggeration.

Tori brought a bag of fresh bagels and happily accepted Buck’s offer of scrambled eggs to go along with what they found in Tommy’s fridge. They really weren’t well prepared to have anyone over for breakfast, but Buck figured that was something to complain about to Karen for making this invitation in the first place.

“How are you?” Tori asked, watching first Tommy and then Buck after she had settled down at the kitchen table.

Tommy shrugged and adjusted his sling. “Could be better. I just got back from a pretty stupid injury during the earthquake. Now I’m going to be off work again for weeks.”

Tori frowned. “Will your captain be a problem?”

Tommy laughed. “No. Hayden will be okay. I just hate being grounded.”

“And you, Buck?”

Buck sighed and concentrated on the eggs he was stirring in the pan. “I can go back to work the day after tomorrow for my next regular shift.”

Tori looked at him unimpressed when he turned around for a moment. “That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know,” Buck said, shaking his head. “Mostly I’m glad the asshole is dead. And I’m glad he didn’t abduct Maddie but went after me instead. My sister doesn’t need more trauma attached to that man. She is already avoiding admitting to any kind of trauma he caused.”

Tori hummed and kept staring at him. Buck felt a little bit as if he was on the witness stand being made to defend himself.

“I’m already seeing a therapist,” Buck said petulantly, and distributed eggs on three plates. “I have an appointment this afternoon!”

“Good,” Tori said.

“Why are you here?” Buck asked. He carried the plates to the table, then turned around to the tea kettle to pour the hot water into a teapot before he sat down beside Tommy. “I honestly have no idea why we’d need a criminal lawyer.”

“Because you should have someone to advocate for your rights,” Tori said. “Do you know if the police are investigating the man working for your building management who has opened your apartment to strangers twice now?”

Buck bit his lip and lowered his gaze. “I mean, what is there even to investigate? He admitted that he let them in because they both claimed to be family.”

Buck felt honestly pretty nauseous at that thought. He had somehow convinced himself that it wouldn’t happen a second time after he had talked to his building management about the first time. When he had given his statement to the police the day before, the detective had told him that the man who had let Doug in had claimed that the first time had been the right choice, too, despite Buck’s complaint.

“He was an accomplice to breaking and entering at least,” Tori said. “It could even be argued an accessory to your kidnapping and attempted murder. And to any other crime that occurred after Doug Kendall was let into your apartment.”

Buck flinched. “How do you know that he planned to kill me?” He was pretty sure he hadn’t told anyone that except the detective who had taken his statement. He might have told Tommy at some point while he had been too drugged up to remember it now, but he wasn’t sure about that.

Tori raised her brows. “From what I heard about the incident, he held a gun to your head. I assumed based on that and what I know of men like him. What did he say to you?”

“He … wanted to kill me in front of Maddie,” Buck whispered and Tommy’s hand settled on his shoulder, warm and grounding. “To teach her a lesson, or something. I haven’t told Maddie. I don’t want her to know.”

“You can’t shield her from his actions, Evan,” Tommy said softly. “Considering that she is trying to do the same to you, very unsuccessfully, I think you’re aware she’ll eventually learn the truth.”

“Yeah,” Buck whispered. “I still can’t…” He shook his head.

“How is your sister?” Tori asked.

Buck huffed. “I wish I knew. Shaken for sure. Grieving, I think, but that’s not something she’ll admit to. Shocked. But I’m not sure. There are a lot of tells I still recognize, but sometimes I wonder if the meaning of those tells hasn’t shifted over the years.”

Tori nodded. “It will take her time to heal. Probably much longer than it will take the two of you to work through the events of two days ago.”

“It’s already complicated by her aversion to therapy,” Buck said darkly. “She was shocked to hear I was seeing a therapist. I didn’t even tell her about…”

“About?” Tori asked with raised brows.

Buck shook his head. “It’s not important.”

Tommy huffed. “It’s a trial waiting to happen once they manage to get the investigation completed.”

Tori raised her brows and watched Buck pointedly.

Buck rolled his eyes. “There was an incident with a therapist I saw after my first loss on the job. She is under investigation for sleeping with several of her patients and blackmailing some of them after I reported her. Not me. I just had sex with her during my appointment. She isn’t practicing anymore, of course. There is probably going to be a trial eventually, but I have no idea when.”

Tori lowered her gaze. “Do you have legal counsel for that situation?”

“No,” Buck said and once again rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I didn’t think I needed counsel for something like that. Or for that situation with my apartment.”

“You should always have counsel when talking to the police,” Tori said. “Too often they put pressure on victims of crimes for whatever reason. Because they’re convinced it will help their case move along faster. Or because they don’t believe the victim. Or they think the crime isn’t important enough to spend their time on and want the victim to drop their complaint.”

Buck frowned, and was glad when the timer for the tea went off and he had an excuse to busy himself getting the infuser out and pouring tea for all of them.

Tori sighed. “The cops like to dismiss the complaints of anyone who’s part of a minority. There are too many who do anyone dirty who doesn’t fit in their picture of the middle class, straight, white male. And even then, they might be selective if they think it’s a crime the victim shouldn’t have let happen to themselves. You can’t trust the system to work for you, you have to force it to work for you. That means having someone on your side who knows all the rules, who isn’t emotionally involved in the situation and is able to keep a level head.”

Buck returned to the table with the three mugs and put them down before he sat next to Tommy again. “That sounds like a pretty harsh opinion.”

Tori shook her head. “It’s one of the first life lessons I learned. It’s the reason I went to law school. It’s a lesson I try to teach every single one of my friends before they learn it the hard way.”

“You really think there should be criminal charges against the man who let Doug into Evan’s apartment?” Tommy asked.

Buck was relieved by the redirect. Tori’s words rattled him in an uncomfortable way, but he didn’t think he had the ability to deal with it at the moment.

Tori nodded. “Yes. That he has a key doesn’t mean he has a right to enter the apartment, much less allow others to do so. There should be consequences. There should’ve been consequences when he let your sister in, Buck. But this time it had a very different outcome. I doubt the police or the DA will follow through with any charges if you don’t put pressure on them. Because the main perpetrator is dead and they might want to avoid the costs of a trial because of that. They also might not want anyone looking too closely at Doug Kendall’s death.”

“It’s something you should think about,” Tommy said.

Buck turned to look at him. “Really?”

“Doug could’ve killed you right there in your apartment,” Tommy said quietly, and his hand on Buck’s shoulder shook slightly. “In the end it was lucky that he planned to torture your sister. Your home should be safe—you shouldn’t have to look over your shoulder or check every room when you come home.”

“I don’t know,” Buck murmured.

“Would you tell me about the things you remember?” Tori asked. “Karen mentioned the drugs have addled your memories, but you do seem to remember some things.”

“I think I remember every word he said to me, even though some of it still doesn’t make sense even without the drugs,” Buck said. “The rest of the day afterwards is barely there, though. I know the hospital room was full of people because everyone was there to check in on us. But I barely remember any of the conversations.”

Tori nodded. “Then tell me what you do remember.”

Buck sighed and looked at Tommy who gave him a warm, reassuring smile. So, Buck swallowed and started talking, even though he still wasn’t sure why Tori was even here.

Chapter 10

Tommy felt wrung out once Tori left. He hadn’t been there when Evan had given his statement to the police, as they had been separated for that. There had been some questions during that conversation with the police he had been uncomfortable with, and Tori’s little lecture had put a bit of a different perspective on those questions. But it was mostly Evan’s very neutral and distant accounting of what he remembered that rattled Tommy. It was very different hearing it now than the little snippets Evan had shared while he had still been high.

“Did you call your investigator already?” Evan asked, looking lost with the way he stood in the hallway after closing the door behind Tori. They had promised to call her if the police should come knocking on their door again about any of their legal situations.

“I completely forgot to yesterday,” Tommy admitted.

Evan nodded. “Doug said Maddie saw a brother die. I don’t know anything about a brother. I don’t remember one, and no one ever told me about one.”

Tommy nodded. “I figured.”

“Which means I had to have been really young. Or maybe it was before I was even born.” Evan exhaled slowly. “Let’s call your PI.”

“You could ask Maddie,” Tommy suggested.

“I don’t think she would answer me,” Evan said and turned his head away. “If there really was a brother, she never told me about him. I know she is lying about practically everything concerning Doug. She’s used to lying to me. Maybe she’s been used to it for her whole life.”

“Come here,” Tommy said softly and pulled Evan into a one-armed hug. “Give her some slack, okay? She’d have been really young, too, wouldn’t she?”

Evan nodded and leaned his forehead against Tommy’s good shoulder. “She’d have to have been. But if it’s true, Tommy, maybe I never knew … anything that’s true about anyone in my family!”

“That’s a little harsh,” Tommy whispered and kissed Evan’s temple. “The sister you remember from when you were a child is still the person you knew at that time. You might not have known what made her who she was at the time, but you still knew her.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” Evan murmured.

“You were a child, maybe she didn’t know how to tell you about a brother you couldn’t remember,” Tommy said. “Or your parents didn’t want her to talk about him. They clearly didn’t leave anything out in your childhood home that made you ever even suspect there was another child, right?”

Evan nodded.

“Do you want to know?” Tommy asked.

Evan inhaled sharply. “I think I need to know. I need to … know what to ask Maddie so she won’t change the topic or tell me I’m imagining things.”

“Then let’s call Wagener and change the focus of his investigation in Hershey,” Tommy said. “He is already there, but we don’t need him to find out anything else about Doug anymore. Unless, do you want—”

“No,” Evan said hastily. “I don’t want to snoop in Maddie’s life like that. I never wanted that. And now there is no reason for it at all anymore. I’ll be patient and wait for her to tell me whatever she wants to tell me.”

Tommy nodded. “Good. Then let’s make that call, before we have to entertain any other guests. It can’t be long before Tarek or Sal show up.”

Evan huffed and rubbed his face against Tommy’s neck. “We could just tell them to stay away.”

“Yeah, because they’d listen to that,” Tommy murmured and rolled his eyes. “Everyone who didn’t come to the hospital yesterday to convince themselves we were okay will come by today. And there is no getting around that.”

“They’ll come around to make sure you’re okay, you mean,” Evan said softly and took a step back, his gaze lingering on Tommy’s injured shoulder.

Tommy shook his head with a lopsided grin. “No. They will want to check up on you as much as on me, I promise you.”

Maybe his friends showing up here today would finally make Evan understand that at some point over the past couple of months at least Tarek and Sal had also become Evan’s friends and not just Tommy’s.

***

A week later, Tommy and Evan found themselves sitting down in Wagener’s office, who had just returned to LA from Hershey. He had asked them to come to the office without giving away any information about what he might have found in Evan’s hometown, and that alone told Tommy that this conversation wouldn’t be an easy one.

“You found something,” Evan said with a dark frown. He reached out to grab Tommy’s hand like a lifeline, squeezing tightly.

Wagener nodded. “I got the impression during our phone call that at least the existence of your brother wasn’t out of question.”

Evan shrugged. “Doug wouldn’t have had a reason to lie about it when he mentioned it. What was his name?”

“Daniel Buckley,” Wagener said. “He died of juvenile leukemia when you were just a year old. Your sister was ten, your brother eight.”

Evan flinched. “Fuck. How did I never … Why didn’t I know about this? How has no neighbor ever even mentioned this?”

“Your neighbors in Hershey didn’t know,” Wagener said. “Your family moved to the house you grew up in three weeks after Daniel’s funeral in November 1992. Before that, your family had lived in Harrisburg. They cut contact with anyone in their old neighborhood.”

“How do you know that?” Tommy asked.

“I went to Harrisburg and talked to some of the old neighbors. I talked to the parents of a childhood friend of your sister Maddie. Their daughter and Maddie went to school together, and were apparently inseparable from the first day of school until the day your family moved away.” Wagener put a picture on the table in front of Evan. “This is your brother, your sister, and her best friend during his last summer.”

Tommy fisted the hand trapped in the sling. He wanted to pull Evan into a hug, but that would require letting go of Evan’s hand, and he didn’t think he would be able to pry his fingers out of Evan’s grip. Evan stared at the picture of the three children, pale and shaking. The boy in the picture was visibly sick, but all three children were still smiling widely.

“Why would they just erase him?” Evan whispered.

“Some people express their grief in ways others can’t understand,” Tommy murmured.

Wagener sighed. “That’s one aspect. But they were also ashamed, according to the people I talked to. It was no secret in the neighborhood that…” He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, Mr. Buckley. There is no easy or good way to say this. Neither your parents nor your sister were a match for a bone marrow transplant that might have saved Daniel.”

Evan closed his eyes. “So they made one. That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It was quite a controversial decision,” Wagener said.

“I’m surprised they let anyone know,” Tommy said with a frown.

Wagener shook his head. “I don’t think the elder Buckleys intended to do. But they did tell Maddie and Daniel that the new baby would save Daniel. And the two children told everyone.”

“But I didn’t save him,” Evan murmured and dragged the fingers of his free hand through his hair. “Was I not a match after all, or did something go wrong?”

“I don’t have access to your medical files, of course,” Wagener said. “But the word among the neighbors is that your parents had you donate bone marrow as soon as the doctors allowed it. But Daniel had been sick for a long time, and he hadn’t been doing well for the whole summer. It might have just been too late. Or you were a match for the donation on paper, but his body still rejected it. That happens.”

Evan nodded slowly.

“I still don’t understand why they would move and uproot their daughter, making her lose all the rest of her life, too,” Tommy said with a frown.

“I don’t have any definite answers to that,” Wagener said. “But it seems they wanted to escape the judgment of the neighbors. And maybe they also couldn’t deal with constant reminders of their loss.”

“Except I looked like a near exact copy of the son they had lost,” Evan whispered, staring at the picture again. “You could put a picture of me at eight beside this, and the only difference you’d see would be my birthmark. And that I wouldn’t be so visibly sick, of course.”

This time, Tommy did free his hand from Evan’s grip so he could wrap his arm around Evan’s shoulders, turning in his chair so he could pull Evan against his chest and press a kiss to his hair. He’d heard enough stories about Evan’s childhood that he knew he never wanted to meet his parents. The explanation for his parents’ distance was very obvious now, smiling up at them from the picture on the table.

“They got rid of everything about him,” Evan murmured. “I know that for a fact because I spent two years with Dante going through the whole house whenever my parents weren’t there. We looked at everything, found every hiding place.”

Tommy chuckled. “Really. Why?”

Evan shrugged. “I kind of had convinced myself I was adopted and tried finding the paperwork for that. Found my birth certificate instead, which was proof enough that my parents were really my parents, but we still continued to go through the whole house. If they kept anything, they aren’t keeping it at the house. Or at least they didn’t when I still lived there.”

“Which means your sister didn’t have anything to remember Daniel by either,” Wagener said. “I have the contact information of the family I spoke to. They’d be open for Maddie to reach out to them and reconnect. They assured me their daughter would be delighted if Maddie reached out. I also have a couple additional photos from them.”

Evan shuddered and took a measured breath. “Doug said … that Maddie complained about not being there when Daniel died.”

Wagener nodded slowly. “You and your sister apparently spent the last two or three days of Daniel’s life with the family I mentioned. It was another thing that was discussed among the worried neighbors. They contemplated contacting social services to get your family help. But then your parents moved, and they didn’t leave any contact information behind. No forwarding address. No one knew where your family had relocated to.”

Evan didn’t react. Tommy and Wagener let the silence settle for a little while, then Tommy thanked the PI for his work and carefully steered Evan out of the office. When he suggested calling an Uber, because Tommy was not allowed to drive yet and Evan didn’t seem in the right mindset to, Evan shook his head quietly and walked to the car without looking back at Tommy.

The drive home was silent, and Tommy watched Evan worriedly without trying to hide that. They had expected news about a dead brother; they had speculated about it a little over the past week. But they hadn’t expected the rest of the horrible tale, and Tommy already didn’t know what to think about it, so it was even more difficult to try to gauge what Evan was feeling or thinking.

Evan stopped the car in front of Tommy’s garage and sat there for a moment, staring at his hands. Then he hit the steering wheel with both hands hard enough to make Tommy flinch and shouted “Fuck!” before he jumped out of the car. Tommy followed him around the house into the back yard, where Evan was pacing back and forth, both hands buried in his hair.

“Every single fucking thing that Doug did to Maddie is our parents’ fault!”

Tommy blinked. He couldn’t quite follow that logic. “What?”

“They abandoned us!” Evan snapped. “All three of us, really, because who the fuck erases their own child like that? They forced Maddie to forget all about Daniel, too, didn’t they? I bet that’s why she didn’t tell me, even when I was older. Or maybe that was about Doug controlling her at that point already! How was she ever able to grieve her brother if our parents erased him? And ripped away any kind of support system she might have had outside of them?”

Tommy nodded slowly.

“But Doug knew about Daniel! He fucking used that knowledge and threatened me to keep her in line!” Evan breathed heavily, stalking past Tommy several times and pulling his hair. “At one point, she trusted him. Was he the first person she ever told about Daniel after his death? Our parents practically handed him a whole arsenal of tools to make it really easy to separate her from us, isolate her from us. Because they checked out of our lives with Daniel’s death, forced her to ignore her own grief and take care of me instead, because I sure as hell wasn’t able to take care of myself.”

Tommy flinched. “You were a baby.”

“Yeah, a baby born to save their precious son who failed his only purpose.”

“Please don’t say that!” Tommy caught Evan’s elbow and pulled him to a stop. “Evan, look at me.”

Evan flexed his jaw, but then he turned his head to follow the instruction.

“You aren’t a failure, Evan,” Tommy said. “Don’t ever say that. Don’t take on that burden. You did nothing wrong. You. Were. A. Baby. The people who were failures are your parents. They failed you and your sister. Never the other way around.”

Evan inhaled shakily and nodded slowly, tears shining in his eyes. And then, Evan’s legs crumpled, and Tommy couldn’t catch him, so they ended up sitting on the ground as Evan broke apart, clinging to Tommy as if his life depended on it.

***

“You talk about getting to know me again, and then you avoid me for two weeks?” Maddie asked, but her tone was light and amused.

Buck chuckled and hoped it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. “To be fair, your shift schedule has been clashing horribly with mine for those two weeks. You’ve worked on every one of my free days, and I was on shift for your free days!”

It was true, though, that he had avoided Maddie for over a week now. Since he had learned the details about Daniel, Buck hadn’t known how to face his sister. In those ten days, he’d had three emergency appointments with Dr. Copeland because there was a lot he needed to work through, suddenly. Most of all, he had needed a plan about how to approach Maddie with this topic.

“I stand by my point, though,” Buck said and followed Maddie into her living room. He had brought takeout for dinner and insisted they meet at her place. He didn’t want to confront her with the topic in an unfamiliar place or out in public.

Maddie smiled, and it felt like a slap in Buck’s face how much lighter and more honest it looked than it had in the two months since she had come to LA. Buck wondered if she was aware how visible the burden falling off her had been.

“I still think it’s silly,” Maddie said. “But I’ll play along. What do you want to know?”

Buck put the bag with the takeout containers on the table and sat down beside her. He held out his hand, and after a long moment of staring at him, she hesitantly took it. Buck sighed deeply.

“I’d like to know about Daniel.”

“What?” Maddie whispered nearly tonelessly.

“I would like to know about Daniel,” Buck repeated softly.

Maddie pulled her hand back as if she had been burned. “How do you…?” She jumped up and backed away from him. “Your PI dug into our family?” she spat.

Buck reminded himself to breathe calmly. Expecting her to have a bad reaction was one thing; seeing her look at him with a deep-seated fear in her eyes that he knew their parents had put there was a completely different thing. It was so difficult not to take that fear personally.

“No,” Buck whispered, meeting her gaze calmly. “At least not at first. When Doug abducted me, he said you had seen a brother die before and would come running to save me.” It was a small lie, but one that Buck had sworn to keep up for the rest of his life. He never wanted Maddie to know what Doug had really said, no matter what Tommy had said about that. “It didn’t make much sense. And for a couple of days, I tried to convince myself that I had misheard because of the drugs. But I couldn’t shake it.” He wet his lip. “And I couldn’t ask you.”

“You should’ve asked me!” Maddie said sharply, her whole body shaking.

Buck shook his head. “You would’ve denied it. Would’ve told me Doug had made something up to confuse me. Or scare me.”

Maddie’s breathing was erratic and uneven, and she backed away another step until her back hit the bookcase.

Buck closed his eyes for a moment. “The PI was still in Hershey because we hadn’t had a chance to call him and tell him what happened. So, we asked him to search for any information about whether I’d had another sibling. I know the basic facts. I know Daniel’s name, his age when he died, and my age when he died. I know about the leukemia. I know about the failed bone marrow transplant.”

Maddie shook her head.

“But I don’t know about the boy I never got to meet,” Buck continued quietly. “I don’t know about the girl who had a brother just a little younger than her. I don’t know about the girl who had a friend and lost that friend. I want to know about those two children.”

“We can’t talk about him,” Maddie whispered.

“Why?”

“We just can’t!”

“Because our parents forbid it?” Buck asked softly. “Because they decided to erase him instead of valuing their memories of him?”

Maddie shook her head violently. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand their grief. Losing a child is…”

Buck swallowed, because he didn’t miss how her hand went to her abdomen just briefly. Another little piece of the puzzle about her life with Doug she would most likely never admit to him out loud. Then she fisted her hands and pressed them against the side of her legs.

“You’re right, I don’t understand their grief,” Buck said. “And I don’t want to. Because if that’s their grief, I’m glad I never experienced their love.”

Maddie flinched.

“But I experienced your love,” Buck continued. “You’re the one who laid the foundation for the man I am today. I think we both know that our parents had nothing to do with that.”

“They love you,” Maddie whispered.

Buck closed his eyes briefly, Dr. Copeland’s voice echoing in his head. Maddie had a different perspective of their parents, and maybe she would never be able to see Buck’s perspective. But Buck didn’t have that same kind of trauma binding him to his opinion about their parents. He was able to step away from his own experiences enough to listen to Maddie.

“They were different when Daniel was still here, weren’t they?” Buck asked.

Maddie shrugged and lowered her gaze.

“Maybe I should learn about the parents of that little boy and girl I don’t remember, too.”

Maddie stared at him wide-eyed and pale, and her eyes were still filled with so much fear. Deep inside, Buck was still so fucking angry at their parents for putting that fear there, for giving Doug all the weapons he needed to make that fear so all-consuming, for using it to trap her even more when she had tried to escape their parents’ indifference.

He didn’t want to learn about their parents, but he wanted to learn about the good memories of Maddie’s childhood at least. And those would inadvertently include their parents.

Maddie pulled her lips between her teeth and lowered her gaze. Buck held out his hand, inviting her to take it again, to come back to him. She didn’t react for a long time, but Buck kept his hand held out, waiting patiently. Because he would always wait for her to come back to him, even when he was all the way across the country.

Finally, after long minutes of silence, Maddie carefully and slowly came back to the couch. She didn’t take Buck’s hand, but she sat down and gave him something that nearly looked like an honest if tiny smile, though she wouldn’t look at him. He had known asking about Daniel was poking a hornet’s nest, but he was hopeful now that Maddie was sitting beside him again that it might have been the right decision.

“What do you want to know?” Maddie asked, her voice rough and her hands folded tightly in her lap.

“What’s your favorite memory of Daniel?”

Maddie inhaled sharply, tears running down her cheeks. She needed a moment, but eventually she started to talk softly, never looking at Buck, stumbling over her words every so often. But she talked and talked, and Buck felt like maybe she finally understood when he said that they really didn’t know each other anymore.

They’d fix that, one story at a time.

***

Buck stood in front of his apartment door and stared at the wood. The door was closed, the key was dangling in his hand, and Buck stared at the spot where the police had left behind a little part of the seal they had put on the door when they had declared the apartment a crime scene after his abduction.

He couldn’t bring himself to unlock the door. It had been three weeks since he had come home from a shift to be surprised by Doug, and he hadn’t been here a single time since that day. He had been content with staying with Tommy, had been content with the police holding the apartment as a crime scene, giving him an excuse that he couldn’t go home. Of course, he hadn’t thought about it in that much detail.

But Tori had finally convinced him that he needed to push the police to get a move on, and so he had. And now he stood in front of the door after dropping off Tommy at his house after PT. He was still going to spend the night at Tommy’s place, had argued that Tommy still couldn’t use his arm fully, even though he was allowed to spend some time without the sling now.

The truth was that Buck really didn’t want to go back inside the apartment. Not even to pick up the clothes he had come here to get because he couldn’t keep cycling through the four sets of shirts and two pants he’d had stored at Tommy’s place and the station.

After another minute of staring at the door, Buck turned on his heels, shoved the key back into his pocket, and left the building. He couldn’t go inside that apartment, and he didn’t want to waste time standing in front of a door he knew he wouldn’t open.

He drove back to Tommy’s place with the fear of his own apartment lingering inside him. Buck didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t know if he even wanted to push through it. Because Doug wasn’t the only problem with his apartment, but he hadn’t even noticed that until he had stood in front of the locked door and wished he were in a very different place.

“Evan, that was fast!” Tommy called out from the living room.

Buck smiled at the easy greeting. He’d had a key to Tommy’s place for a couple of months now, though he hadn’t really used it a lot until after the whole thing with Doug. Now, he had gotten used to freely coming and going from Tommy’s place, had spent time alone here while Tommy had been at medical appointments or PT.

Buck found Tommy in the living room on the couch, his feet braced on the edge of the table so his knees were elevated enough to rest his book on top of them since he couldn’t comfortably hold it up with just one hand. Buck walked over to him, carefully placed Tommy’s bookmark on the open page, and put the book aside. Then he cradled Tommy’s face with both hands and kissed him.

“Hey,” Tommy said with a soft smile. “I’m happy to see you, too. Though it’s not been that long since you left.”

“This is my home,” Buck said and watched Tommy carefully.

Tommy stared at him, clearly confused. “What?”

Buck smiled and shrugged helplessly. “That apartment was never my home. And the room share I was in before wasn’t either. But this here? Your house? With you in it, most importantly?”

Tommy chuckled and pulled his legs from the table, turning to Buck and placing his hand on Buck’s waist.

“At some point over the past few months, this has become my home,” Buck continued quietly. “And I didn’t even notice. Or maybe I did, but tried not to. I mean … It might feel like you’ve always been part of my life, but realistically, it’s been less than a year.”

“I’d love for you to move in here,” Tommy said. “I would’ve asked weeks ago, but you were so excited to have your own place.”

Buck grinned. “Really?”

Maybe he would admit later that his excitement for his own apartment had mostly been about reaching a milestone he felt he was long overdue. Mostly because he had felt he was judged by others for not reaching it yet. It wasn’t like he hadn’t ever lived on his own, but that had been in motel rooms or one-room apartments that had been provided by whoever he had worked for. Or he had simply lived in his car.

His room share here in LA had been a very bad fit in the end, but looking back now, he could have just looked for another room share situation, one where the roommates would be more considerate of Buck’s shift schedule. He didn’t really enjoy having an apartment all to himself, and the fact that he had barely spent a single night alone without Tommy, except for the very few nights where Tommy had picked up an extra shift, should’ve been a clear sign of that a long time ago.

“Feels like we’ve been living together anyway since before you found that apartment,” Tommy murmured.

Buck chuckled. “Yeah, exactly. I was honestly not mad at the police for locking up the apartment and giving me an excuse to stay here.”

“You don’t need an excuse,” Tommy said. “Please move in here. I want to have you around all the time.”

“Day after tomorrow?” Buck asked. “It’s too late today, and I’m on shift tomorrow. If I ask everyone to help with the packing it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to get my things packed up and moved here, right?”

“Deal,” Tommy agreed. “I’d offer to do the packing tomorrow by myself. Or with Sal’s help. But I don’t think that’s a doctor’s approved activity yet.”

Buck made a face. “No, I … fuck.” He leaned his head against Tommy’s. “I don’t want you in there alone. Because Doug was in there. And the police. And who knows who else! I’m just… I couldn’t even unlock the door, Tommy.”

“Evan,” Tommy whispered. He pushed Buck away a little and then cupped Buck’s cheek with his hand, watching him with a deep frown. “Are you alright?”

Buck shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I’m gonna work on it with Dr. Copeland. I just stood in front of that door earlier and couldn’t make myself go inside. But the whole time I thought how grateful I am that it wasn’t this place. That Doug hadn’t … violated my real home. It didn’t really matter that I couldn’t get into the apartment, even to just grab a couple clothes, because the place that matters is here.”

Tommy lowered his gaze. “Maybe I should grab Sal … and Karen and Martin to pack up your things tomorrow.”

“No.” Buck rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sure it will be fine when I’m not there alone. I’ll have Bobby and Hen and Tanika and maybe Eddie. Hen can bring Karen, Tanika can bring Martin. No way am I letting Sal of all people touch my things! He’d intentionally mislabel my boxes just to annoy me.”

“I’d supervise him!” Tommy said with raised brows.

“No!” Buck said with a huff.

Tommy laughed. “Okay, I’ll not let Sal go through your things. I don’t know what kind of favor he’d demand in return anyway. Even though I’d rather have you move in right this moment than wait another two days.”

Buck kissed Tommy and then snuggled up against his side. He wasn’t prepared to return to his apartment today, otherwise he might have suggested calling their friends to help him pack up his things before the evening was over, no matter how much teasing he would be subjected to over that.

“Two days will go by in no time,” Buck said instead.

“Not fast enough,” Tommy said with a low chuckle.

“I’m basically already living here. It’s just my things that haven’t caught up with the fact yet, really. We’re getting rid of my couch, right? We’re donating it somewhere; it doesn’t fit here anyway.”

Tommy’s chuckle turned into a laugh again. “Okay.”

“But we’re keeping my bed,” Buck decided. “Yours goes to the second guest bedroom.”

“That room isn’t ready for any furniture!” Tommy protested, amused.

“I don’t care. You can ask Sal to come by and fix what still needs to be fixed so we can move your bed in there to make space for my bed in the bedroom,” Buck said. “My mattress is so much better than yours, don’t even try to argue that point!”

Tommy pushed Buck away and then turned, climbing into Buck’s lap, steadying himself with his good hand on Buck’s shoulder. “If that’s the plan, maybe we should give my bed a proper farewell,” Tommy murmured before he kissed Buck.

Buck grinned and eagerly leaned into the kiss, though he was pretty sure they wouldn’t make it from the couch all the way to Tommy’s bed with the way this kiss went. They could come back to that for round two, though, because Buck very much liked the idea of properly saying goodbye to all the things that at the moment belonged to just one of them, and would very soon belong to both of them.

 

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