Reading Time: 122 Minutes

Title: The Burden of Decisions
Series: The Weight of Actions
Series Order: 1
Author: Bythia
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Episode Related, Family
Relationship(s): Evan “Buck” Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Evan “Buck” Buckley/Taylor Kelly
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Discussion of Canon Domestic Violence, Discussion of Post-Partum Depression, not Chimney friendly
Author Note: This story was mostly finished before 5B aired, and except for a name I didn’t include any additional information we got with 5B. But because canon brought it up: there is no cheating involved despite the two parings tagged. Besides my artist and my beta reader, I would also like to thank AngelNDarkness for her help in figuring out some of the legal procedures and consequences discussed in the story.
Beta: starlitenite
Word Count: 106,000
Summary: When Chimney shows up at Buck’s apartment, he doesn’t notice Taylor standing at the top of the stairs and witnessing the argument and the punch. Her decision on how to handle the situation after Chimney left changes the course for all of them.
Artist: Twigen

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Chapter 17

Buck frowned at his ringing phone, feeling uneasy about the unknown caller ID it was showing. Nothing good had come out of answering those calls lately, not even the one time Maddie had called save that it had at least led to him knowing where she was. He pushed through the dread he felt and took the call with a barely suppressed sigh. “Hello?”

“Evan?”

Buck sat up straight and ignored the questioning gaze from Eddie, who was sitting beside him on the couch. “Maddie! It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Is it, really?” Maddie hesitated. “I talked to Howie earlier.”

Buck made a face. “I can just imagine what he had to say about me.”

“He wrote me an email telling me about this insane argument the two of you had. I need to know what’s going on.” Maddie sighed. “I don’t know what to think about any of this, Evan.”

“Will you listen to my side of the story?” Buck asked. He wasn’t surprised that Chimney had reached out to Maddie to tell her his story, but it hurt that she had reached out to Chimney first for clarification instead of him, and that she apparently didn’t doubt what she had heard from her boyfriend. “Because I know what he told Hen, and that was nowhere near the truth.”

Eddie wrapped an arm around his waist and Buck leaned into him. He was glad that Christopher was already asleep and that only Eddie would be a witness to this conversation that was already poised to be painful and devastating. Buck had spent yesterday night at Eddie’s house and would spend tonight here as well, much to Christopher’s delight. He hadn’t been back to his own apartment yet since he had fled after Chimney’s visit, and he didn’t particularly feel like returning there any time soon.

Maddie was silent for a long moment. “You think Howie would lie to me?”

“Yes.” Buck didn’t need to even think before he answered. It would have been different a couple of weeks ago; he had been convinced Chimney was as honest with Maddie about himself and his actions as he could possibly be, but that had irrevocably changed.

Maddie sucked in a breath.

“Can I visit you?” Buck asked. “Maybe we should talk with your therapist there as well. It won’t be an easy conversation, and I know I won’t be impartial enough to recognize when you’ve reached your limit. I’m sure you have worked a lot on your mental health, and I don’t want to be the reason for a setback if I can help it.”

“You … you know where I am?”

“Since the day after you last called me, yeah,” Buck said. “Taylor did most of the work after I had heard those bells in the background. Without her, I’d have suspected you were in Boston.”

“Howie said you sent him to Boston,” Maddie murmured.

“Eh.” Buck shrugged. “It wasn’t my intention to send him anywhere. I’d have preferred he came home with Jee-Yun, but he refused to listen to anyone about that. I just needed to let him know that you had called and sounded okay. We were both very worried about you, Mads. I told him about the bells, and he hung up as soon as I had mentioned Boston. I didn’t bother to call him again after Taylor told me she had found you. Things have been strained between Chimney and me.”

Eddie snorted and Buck glared at him. He wouldn’t get into details about the situation between Chimney and him over the phone, and he would really prefer to have Maddie’s therapist there as he had suggested. He wouldn’t even ask her what Chimney had told her until then, even though the desire to know what she thought right now was burning in his chest.

“Strained isn’t the word Howie used,” Maddie whispered.

“Wouldn’t have expected that,” Buck said.

“You didn’t contact me either.”

Buck sighed. “You made it pretty clear that you didn’t want to have contact with anyone. The only reason I didn’t accept that from the very beginning was that we had no idea where you were, and if you were getting help or were suffering somewhere on your own. If you were in danger, maybe. Knowing that you are in in-patient treatment let me sleep peacefully again. I’m prepared to wait as long as it takes for you to get better.”

“But Howie isn’t.”

“No. Which is the reason why I didn’t even consider telling him after I had found you. You deserve to have your boundaries respected, and I’m not comfortable with the way Chimney reacted to you leaving.”

Buck sighed and then bit his lip when there was only silence coming through the phone. “You still there?”

“I’ll ask about you visiting,” Maddie whispered. “I … I want to see you so badly, but I don’t know if I’m ready. Leaving was so hard, but I couldn’t stay either.”

“That’s okay,” Buck assured her. “But I think we need to talk about this thing between Chimney and me soon, and in person. I have a video of the evening in question. Taylor took it.”

“Why?”

Buck chuckled humorlessly. “Apparently she doesn’t like Chimney, and was mistrustful about him showing up at my apartment. I didn’t know about that, but then again, I had never spent any time with them together over the last couple of months.”

And whenever he had talked with Taylor about Maddie and Chimney, he hadn’t been too happy either. Taylor had been his sounding board concerning his worries about Maddie pulling away, his sorrow at barely seeing her, and his anger concerning Chimney whom he didn’t get any information from either. He had been sick of hearing from Chimney that he needed to let Maddie have her own life, and he had unloaded all of that on Taylor because he hadn’t wanted to burden Eddie with it.

“Howie said you broke up with her.”

“And how would he know that?” Buck rolled his eyes. “I have spoken with Chimney as often as I’ve spoken to you since the week after you left. And he has been on the road all this time, searching for you.”

Maddie sighed. “I never wanted any of this.”

“I know,” Buck said quietly. She’d have to live with the consequences of her actions, but that wasn’t something she had to think about now. “I’m glad you went and got the help you needed, I just wish you would have at least told me where you were going. I wouldn’t have told Chimney if you wanted to keep it secret from him.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Okay.” Buck sighed deeply. “Did you tell Chimney where you were when you talked to him?”

“No.” Maddie hesitated. “He would try to visit and … I’m not there yet. I’m not … if he brought Jee, I wouldn’t be able to let her go again. And I can’t … I’m just not ready, Evan.”

“I’m glad that you know that about yourself, and that you’re setting the boundaries you need,” Buck said. “I’ll support you with whatever you need, okay? I love you. And I’m here for you.”

“I know.”

Maddie chuckled and Buck sucked in a breath, overwhelmed by that sound. He’d never thought he would ever be this relieved to hear her laugh again, to hear her voice at all. This kind of situation should have been far behind them, and he wondered what he had done wrong that she pulled away again instead of reaching out to him. He had tried to make sure when she came to LA that she understood she could rely on him, no matter what.

“You know my schedule,” Buck said. “But even if it’s on a day when I’d have to work, I know Bobby will help me get that day off and take over another shift instead. I can come by whenever it’s best for your own schedule.”

“I’ll talk with one of the nurses about it tomorrow,” Maddie promised.

“We’re on shift tomorrow, so just text me. If I can, I’ll call you back.”

“Do you think … What will Howie think that I asked you to visit me but not him?”

Buck blew out a breath. “He needs to learn to respect your boundaries, Maddie. I don’t think it’s a good thing that he doesn’t do that, even if we cut him some slack for how clearly worried he is about you.”

Maddie sobbed. “I’m sorry for this mess I created.”

Buck pressed his eyes shut, his heart breaking a little bit for her. “It’s not … you didn’t leave us in a good place, but that doesn’t mean it’s your fault what happened here, okay? We’ll have to repair some things between all of us, but we’ve all played our own part in creating this mess.”

Maddie sighed.

“Don’t worry about Chimney, okay?” Buck said. “He’s taken leave to look after Jee-Yun and search for you, so he won’t be on shift with me tomorrow. And I sure as hell won’t tell him that we are talking, or that I’ll come to visit you.”

“It feels like everything is breaking apart,” Maddie whispered.

Buck bit his lip. All he wanted to do was pull her into his arms to comfort her. “We’ll get better again, Maddie. You already took the biggest step for that by getting the help you needed. We’ll handle the rest together, okay?”

Maddie laughed wetly. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It won’t be,” Buck whispered. “But you aren’t alone. I don’t care what everyone else will do, but I’ll always be by your side, okay?”

Maddie chuckled, her voice shaking. “I’ll text you as soon as I know when you can come by. I love you. I miss you.”

“Miss you, too,” Buck said with a soft smile. “Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you soon. Love you.”

“Yeah, see you soon.” Maddie sucked in a breath and then she hung up.

Buck let the phone fall onto his lap and turned to press his face against Eddie’s chest, hiding the tears he wasn’t able to hold back anymore. Eddie hugged him tightly, one hand stroking his back, the other buried in his hair. He didn’t say anything, and Buck was grateful for that.

“I don’t even know what I did to him,” Buck whispered eventually.

“Nothing,” Eddie said. “I think he recognized very quickly that he had made a huge mistake when he punched you, and instead of accepting the consequences he decided to turn it around and try to blame you. But he miscalculated because he didn’t see Taylor, and it’s not just your word against his like he had expected.”

Buck sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything left of our friendship to salvage anymore.”

“I agree,” Eddie murmured. “And I’m glad you see that, too.

“Maybe if he hadn’t involved Maddie this way,” Buck whispered. “If he’d left her alone, left her out of our argument. I had still hoped he just needed a little bit of time to calm down. That his anger yesterday and his threats were a reaction to being arrested. I didn’t … I didn’t think he’d really go through with it.”

Eddie kissed the top of his head. “I didn’t think he’d go there either. Mostly because I didn’t think he would burden her with something else to worry about.”

“That’s why I asked for a meeting with her therapist present,” Buck said. “She should be able to concentrate on herself and her healing, not get distracted by this bullshit. I don’t know what I should tell her.”

“Just be honest with her, even if it hurts both of you. Holding back anything and especially lying to her will only make her mistrust you in the long run, even if it was intended to protect her or because you didn’t want to overwhelm her.”

Buck sighed deeply. “You ever wish you could turn back time and change things?”

Eddie chuckled. “There was a moment or two where I thought that, yes. Doesn’t do any good to ponder that, though. You want to watch a movie before we go to sleep to distract you for a while?”

Buck nodded. Before Maddie had called, they had talked about going to bed soon, but that wouldn’t do him any good now. His thoughts would just keep circling around Maddie and his worry for her, and sleep wouldn’t come for hours. “Something ridiculous and stupid would be good.”

***

Buck watched Hen warily as she got coffee for the pair of them and came to the table she had sent Buck to when they had arrived at the little café. It was the morning after the first shift since Buck had come back from Boston, and he didn’t know what to expect from her invitation. After being accosted by Chimney on Monday, and Maddie’s phone call on Tuesday—which he still hadn’t fully recovered from—he really didn’t want Hen to follow in the pattern.

During the whole shift, Hen had only spoken to him when it had been necessary while they were out on calls. It was in part an improvement to her glaring at him like she had during previous shifts, but Buck didn’t know if it meant she had changed her mind since seeing the video or if he had to prepare himself for an intervention on Chimney’s behalf. He had no idea how he would deal with the latter, and for the sake of their friendship, he hoped for the former.

Hen sighed as she sat down, but Buck stayed silent and waited for her to make the first move. He had tried to explain himself to her once, but he wouldn’t make that first step a second time. Buck wanted to salvage his friendship with Hen, but it was the same as with Chimney—it wasn’t Buck who needed to reach out because he wasn’t the one holding the grudge.

Hen sighed again. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” Buck exhaled. He felt his shoulders drop, only recognizing how tense he had been this whole time now that he was able to relax.

Hen smiled sadly. “I’m sorry for not listening to you and for believing the worst when I should have known better. I’m sorry that I let myself be influenced by Chimney’s anger so much that I forgot the kind of person you are.”

Buck returned the smile hesitantly. “Thank you.”

Hen blew out a breath. “How are you?”

“Could be better,” Buck shrugged. “I hate this whole situation as much as everyone else. Have you met with Chimney since he’s been back?”

Hen nodded. “I brought over dinner two days ago. He has been busy meeting with his lawyer and union rep and explaining the whole situation to the Lees. And he has talked to Maddie, she called him Tuesday morning. She didn’t tell him where she is, though.”

“I know,” Buck said. “She called me that evening as well. I’m meeting with her in person next week to talk about everything that’s happened. And to show her the video. I know you said it was a breach of Chimney’s privacy, but I’m glad to have it. Because it means Maddie won’t have to wonder who is telling the truth.”

Hen took a sip of her coffee, nodding silently.

“Can I ask why?”

Hen closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her lips. “The desire not to believe a bad thing about Chimney was greater than the desire not to believe it about you, I guess. I’ve known Chimney for such a long time, we have been through so much together. I think the biggest problem was that I didn’t want to believe he had lied to me.”

“He has a history of lying, though.”

Hen opened her eyes and raised her brows. “He does?”

“He wasn’t shy about telling us how he lied to Tatiana,” Buck said. “And he managed to convince himself of his own lies there as well, otherwise he wouldn’t have proposed to her.”

“But he wasn’t keeping it a secret that he was lying, at least to anyone but Tatiana.”

“So?” Buck shook his head. “Isn’t it bad enough that he lied to her? He thought it was okay to lie to maintain that relationship, to basically trick her into dating him. There’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t think the same about other situations. Especially when like in the situation with Tatiana no one called him out for it until he wanted to propose, and then he thought we just didn’t want him to be happy.”

Hen lowered her gaze and bit her lip.

“He told you his version of our argument before he knew that there had been charges filed against him. Before you could even have known that something had happened between us because of my injury. I don’t know why he even brought it up with you in the first place. If Taylor hadn’t been there, I’d never have talked about it.”

Hen frowned. “It could have ended very badly for you if you had gotten another hit to the head anywhere near that fracture you got from Chimney.”

Buck shrugged. “Didn’t know that, did I? I told Taylor I had gotten worse in bar fights in the past, and I meant that back then. I only recognized how bad off I really was when I left the hospital the next day.” He chose not to remind her that she hadn’t believed the severity of his injury either when he had told her and Bobby about the situation.

“What kind of bar fights were you getting into?” Hen asked appalled.

Buck grinned. “The kind you get into when you are a dumb kid flirting with everyone who looks even remotely interesting. It took me way too long to learn to recognize the kind of guy I shouldn’t flirt with. The women at least only glared at me when I misjudged them. Or at least I never had a woman throw a punch at me.”

Hen shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder about the kind of life you led before you joined us, but then I remember the days before Abby came along and decide I really don’t want to know.”

Buck laughed. “Whatever. My past isn’t why we’re here anyway. Why did Chimney tell you anything about the confrontation between us?”

He had pondered that question since Maddie had called him. As much as he hated them, Buck understood Chimney’s motives in telling Maddie the same lies, but he couldn’t come up with any reason at all why Chimney had started this whole tale in the first place.

“I honestly don’t know,” Hen shook her head. “I talked to him when he was getting the car ready to leave, and he didn’t say a word about you then. But he called me not even half an hour later and asked me not to tell you anything he’d share with me about his journey because he didn’t trust that you wouldn’t try to stop him again.”

“Did you ask him if I had tried to stop him before?”

“No. I didn’t think you had, and didn’t know why you would.” Hen paused with a frown. “I told him I wouldn’t share anything he confided with me anyway, and then he told me you had tried to keep him back, had grabbed his arm when he had tried to leave your apartment the evening before, and that he had only gotten loose because he had accidentally elbowed you in the face during the struggle.”

“I don’t get it,” Buck murmured. “What did he gain from that? I’d have thought he would expect me not to say anything.”

“But why?” Hen asked. “And what would you have done instead?”

Buck took a deep breath. “Chimney was so desperate and angry that week. You saw him yourself. You can’t tell me you thought he was in his right mind. I’d have tried to excuse his actions in my head, because I didn’t want him to get into any trouble in addition to everything else that was going on. I just wanted to pretend like it hadn’t happened.”

“Buck,” Hen whispered brokenly.

“I know, I know. Dr. Copeland has had a field day walking me through this. I was so angry at Taylor in the beginning when she went to the police. I understood the anger that was building in Chimney a month ago. I understood how helpless he felt, how desperate he was. I’ve been through Maddie cutting contact while I was worried about her health and her security in the past. I understand impulsive actions. And I thought it wasn’t a big deal, that it wouldn’t bother me in the long run, and the last thing I wanted to do was make the situation worse.”

Buck crossed his arms over his chest and dug his fingers into them. “Taylor did the right thing, though. As much as all of this sucks, it was the right thing for my own peace of mind. Because if nothing else, Maddie needs to know that a reaction like this from him is possible. I really don’t believe Chimney would ever raise his hand against her or Jee-Yun, but my certainty about that from before is gone.”

Hen sighed. “You are right. I didn’t want to think about that part, but Karen set me straight on a couple of things recently. Did Bobby talk to you about the most likely consequences concerning Chim’s job?”

“He assured me Chimney wouldn’t come back to the 118,” Buck whispered, not meeting her eyes. “I … tried to argue with that at first, but … I’m glad for it now. I can’t work with Chimney anymore. Right now, I feel uncomfortable even being in the same room as him. Did he tell you he came to my apartment Monday?”

“I do know about that, but not from Chimney. Athena told me he had shown up and threatened you and demanded you withdraw your complaint with the police. I chose not to ask him about it when I went to see him.”

“Athena told me to keep my distance when I decided to open the door for Chimney, and I thought she was being overprotective and silly. But then he stormed in as if he owned the place, and for some reason, I immediately felt better as soon as I had put the table between us.”

Hen winced.

“I know it’s stupid to feel this way. I’m more than a head taller than him, and next time it wouldn’t be as unexpected as it was before. I’m confident I’d be able to evade him, but…”

“It’s not stupid,” Hen interrupted him. “Don’t say that about yourself. You are the calmest and most peaceful person I know, and I’m so sorry I forgot that for a while. That I didn’t remember even after Eddie had reminded me of it. You have never shown an ounce of violence; I’ve never even seen you raise your voice in anger. You are a ridiculously big guy, even for a firefighter, but I don’t know anyone who could be less threatening, and you broadcast that with every fiber of your being. I’m not surprised that you felt more comfortable putting space between you and a person you don’t trust anymore not to harm you.”

Buck grinned wryly. “You just haven’t seen me in the right circumstances yet.”

“I’ve seen a woman come into our fire station and slap you. Most men I know would have gotten angry and probably instinctively grabbed her arm in defense. You took several steps away from her instead. I’ve seen Bobby shove you against a wall, and you didn’t even raise your hands to push him away. I could go on like that for several minutes, Buck. I’ve only ever seen you so much as step into someone’s personal space on a call when it was necessary to protect someone else. I’ve seen you use your body as a barrier, but I don’t ever remember you even grabbing someone who was losing their mind on a call out to calm them down or hold them back from somewhere.”

Hen leaned over the table, bracing her arms on it. “I don’t know why I thought even for a moment that there could be something to Chimney’s story. It would have been so out of character for you. Again, I’m sorry that I let myself believe that because I didn’t want to believe that Chimney had lied to me.”

“I’d have killed Doug if he hadn’t already been dead when we finally found him and Maddie,” Buck blurted out. “I’d spent the whole time Athena and I had been trying to catch up to them preparing myself to kill him.”

Hen smiled softly. “You wouldn’t have. You might have fantasized about it, but I know you wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t even have harmed him.”

Buck swallowed against the lump in his throat. Her certainty was like a punch to the gut, but at the same time a reassurance he hadn’t been aware he had needed.

“You said earlier that without Taylor you wouldn’t have brought up with anyone what had happened between you and Chimney,” Hen said quietly. “And you also said you can’t imagine working with him again. How would you have solved that problem when Chimney would have eventually come back from leave?”

Buck shrugged. “Asked for a transfer myself, probably? Made up some stupid reason for it. Or maybe I’d just have tried to swallow this down and push through it.”

Hen nodded slowly. “You are right, we all hate this situation. But Karen made me see that having Chimney face the consequences of his actions was the right choice. I’ll be there for Chimney as much as he’ll let me be, but I should have never been angry at you. Chimney has only himself to blame for whatever happens now.”

Buck blew out a breath and put one of his hands over Hen’s. “Thank you for reaching out to me, for apologizing. I value your friendship so much, and I would have hated to lose it.”

Hen smiled sadly. “I feel the same. And I’ll do anything and everything that’s needed to repair this between us.”

Chapter 18

Buck rubbed his hands on his pants before he knocked on the door the nurse had led him to. It had been a week since Maddie had called him, and he had grown steadily more nervous about visiting her. He couldn’t wait to see her, to hopefully be able to hug her again, but he dreaded the conversation they would have to have.

The door was opened by a middle-aged man who greeted Buck with a smile. “Mr. Evan Buckley?”

Buck nodded. “Yeah.”

He couldn’t help but lean to the side and his heart leaped in his chest as he saw Maddie sitting on a couch, her hands lying in her lap, clasped together so tightly that even from afar Buck could see her white knuckles. She was biting her lip and staring at him, one of her legs nervously bouncing up and down.

“I’m Dr. Sean Moreno, we talked on the phone yesterday.”

Buck shook his hand, focusing on Moreno again. “I remember what we talked about.”

He had reached out to Moreno as soon as Maddie had told him the name of her therapist during a very brief phone call during his shift the day after their conversation. He was determined to show Maddie the video Taylor had taken of the incident with Chimney, but he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea at this point. He had no idea what was going on with her, so he had wanted to touch base with Moreno first. Moreno had been very understanding and supportive of his concerns, and they had made several plans for how to react if Maddie needed a break or to cut the meeting short at any point. For the most part, Moreno would hopefully only sit to the side and listen in.

Moreno smiled. “Good.”

Buck was relieved when Moreno stepped to the side and Maddie jumped out of her seat as soon as Buck was fully in the room. He had his sister in his arms before Moreno had even closed the door. Buck hugged her tightly, and for a long time they just stood there in the middle of the room, holding onto each other as if they had been separated for much longer than a month.

Buck pulled her to the couch eventually but kept holding onto her hands as they sat down. “Hey,” he whispered. “It’s good to see you.”

Maddie took a deep, shaky breath. “I’m so sorry.”

Buck shook his head. “Don’t be. You did what you felt you needed to do. You are getting what you need here, right?”

“Yes.” Maddie nodded. “It’s good here. They’re helping me with more things than I thought I needed.”

“Good.” Buck trailed his fingers through her hair. “You cut your hair. It looks good.”

Maddie chuckled. “We aren’t here to talk about my hair, are we?”

“Well, I’m mainly here to see you in the first place,” Buck smiled. “But, yeah. Can you tell me what Chimney told you?”

“That you filed charges against him,” Maddie said slowly, frowning. “You had an argument when he told you he was leaving to search for me, and you tried to hold him back. You grabbed his arms, and he struggled against you. He remembers that he hit you with his elbow, but he doesn’t remember that he injured you with that. He left before you could grab him again, and you have been hounding him ever since with phone calls and texts to stop looking for me.”

Buck sighed. “That’s basically what he told Hen as well. I’d like to just watch the video with you. We were both very worried and desperate on that day, especially Chimney, so please keep that in mind while we watch it. Do you think you can handle that?”

Maddie nodded. “I need to know what happened. It worries me that you won’t just tell me what happened.”

“I went through the whole ‘he said, I said’ game with Hen while Chimney was gone,” Buck said. “I don’t want to have that same discussion with you as well.”

Maddie bit her lip but said nothing else. Buck sighed and took the tablet that Moreno handed him, the video already cued up on it. He wrapped an arm around Maddie’s waist and balanced the tablet on his knees before starting the video.

“Oh, Howie,” Maddie whispered brokenly right at the beginning, and Buck had to admit that seeing Chimney’s utter devastation was painful. It had been painful to see it back then, but Buck had completely forgotten about that, the shock of the moment that would follow pushing away everything else.

Maddie gasped for air and Buck winced when she grabbed his thigh, her nails digging in painfully. It served as a good distraction though from having to see the punch happen on screen. He hadn’t watched the video before this, and he suddenly wished he had, just so he was better prepared. He didn’t remember that it had been so powerful. But then again, the thing about that evening that was the most present in his memories was the sheer shock about Chimney punching him at all. Everything else had become a blur in the weeks since.

Maddie turned to him, laying her hand carefully against his cheek. “Did you see a doctor?”

Buck swallowed. For a moment he was dizzy with relief about her worry, before that was pushed away by guilt for feeling that way. “Taylor made me go to the hospital. I walked around with a nice shiner for a while.”

“Concussion? Damage to the bone?” Maddie asked with a frown.

“I had a concussion,” Buck admitted. “And a hairline fracture. But it’s all healed. I’m okay. It wasn’t anything really bad. I didn’t need anything but rest, and Eddie made sure I got that by bribing me with Christopher.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maddie whispered. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his shoulder, shaking.

Buck pressed a kiss into her hair and caressed the back of her head. “I’m good, Maddie. I’m honestly more hurt by his behavior afterward. I don’t know why he told you or Hen that convoluted version of events. I don’t know why he wrote you about it at all.”

“I can’t believe he hit you.”

“Me neither,” Buck agreed. “I wasn’t the one who went to the police, by the way. Taylor did that despite my protests. I didn’t … I knew it would only make the situation worse, that it would make him even angrier at me, and that it would put you in a terrible situation.”

Maddie sat up and rubbed her hands over her face. “How can I ever trust him not to do the same to me or Jee at some point?”

Buck glanced at Moreno, but the therapist was sitting quietly at the side, not indicating at all that he thought he was needed. “Chimney isn’t Doug.”

Maddie shook her head. “Maybe I just have terrible luck with men and should stay away from them.”

“Mads,” Buck murmured. “Don’t make any rash decisions now. Give Chimney time to get his own head on straight and then talk to him. And don’t misunderstand me: if he ever dares to raise his hand against you or Jee-Yun, I’d make him regret it for the rest of his life. But I’m pretty sure he went a little crazy with his worry, and that contributed a lot to the things he has done these past weeks.”

Maddie shook her head. “It’s not rash. I swore to myself that I’d never again tolerate a partner who showed even the slightest inclination for violence, not just against me but in general. This isn’t … And he lied to me about it. Because hitting you alone wasn’t bad enough already, he also tried to make it out as if it had been your fault, and as if you were accusing him of a crime he hadn’t committed?”

Buck sighed. “I don’t have the slightest idea why he came up with that story.”

“No, me neither. That’s something he’ll have to explain at some point. It just doesn’t make any sense. I’m sorry I didn’t … I should have asked about your version instead of just listening to Chimney’s accusations.”

“If it’s any consolation, Hen did the same. And it took her weeks to give me a chance to explain myself. Chimney seems to be very convincing with his tales.” Buck swallowed. “Can I ask you why you chose to leave the way you did?”

Maddie turned her head away, biting her lip. “I’ve been struggling with PPD for months. And I saw a therapist about it, got medication. It didn’t really help anything, though. I felt so miserable and tired all the time, and I knew the therapy I was getting didn’t do much to help. I … Howie was there for me the whole time. He did everything to support me, and he tried to reassure me over and over again that I was a good mom, that I’d get better.”

“But it didn’t get better.”

Maddie shook her head. “I suggested alternative therapies. But … I don’t know … At some point Howie’s support became suffocating. And I don’t know why. He did everything I asked for, always. But he didn’t want to talk about in-patient treatment, was convinced we just needed to give the therapy I was already getting more time. He told me I needed to stay with Jee, and he made it sound so convincing that all I needed to get better was to stay with my daughter.”

Buck swallowed. “Why didn’t you reach out to me? Or Albert, or Hen, or the Lees. Josh, Sue, Linda, Karen. You’ve built such a big support system since you moved to LA.”

“I felt … feel so ashamed,” Maddie whispered, wrapping her arms around herself.

Buck carefully and slowly put a hand on her back, rubbing small circles over it. “I’ll always be by your side, Mads. I’ll always support you.”

“I asked Howie not to tell anyone,” Maddie murmured. “And then I felt so trapped. It was so much easier to pretend everything was okay the few times I allowed any of you to visit, or when I went out to see one of you. I-I could pretend for an hour or two that everything was alright, so I believed that at some point it would be alright. I just needed to push through it.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “But then … the accident with Jee scared me so much. And I somehow suddenly felt like Howie and even Jee was part of the problem. I just needed to get away, have Jee not be with me before another accident could happen, one that would maybe really harm her this time. The only thing I knew was that I needed to get away. And so I did.”

“And you didn’t want anyone to know where you had gone?”

“I needed to be by myself.” Maddie looked at him, tears running over her face again. “That’s all I knew anymore. I had reached out to this clinic some time before the blackout, before Chimney convinced me that in-patient treatment wouldn’t be the best for me or Jee-Yun. I came here without a plan, and I guess I was lucky they had a place for me.”

“Very lucky,” Buck agreed. “This is a good clinic. I did some research after Taylor found you. They are doing good work here. What’s your treatment plan?”

Maddie chuckled wetly. “I really don’t want to talk to you about my therapy.”

Buck nodded slowly. “Okay. But do you already know how long you will stay here?”

“Christmas. That’s the current timeline, at least,” Maddie sighed. “But that was before … Can I afford to stay away for so long with everything that’s happening?”

“The Lees have stepped in,” Buck said. “As far as Albert told me, they have taken over most of the day-to-day care for Jee-Yun at the moment, and they are trying to convince Chimney to start therapy himself. They are good people. I don’t think you need to worry about Jee-Yun. And you don’t need to worry about anything else at all. You have to take care of yourself first now.”

“I’ll need to talk with Chimney sooner rather than later, don’t I?”

“We can arrange for a mediated meeting with Mr. Han without a problem,” Moreno said, and both Buck and Maddie flinched. For a moment Buck had forgotten that he was even there. “I would recommend you not meet him alone at this point, Maddie.”

Maddie nodded.

“I agree,” Buck said. “Meet him on your terms, and not alone, if only to have someone there for a sanity check and as a witness.”

“You tell me to give him a chance to explain, but you don’t trust him yourself anymore,” Maddie whispered. “That doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“My conflict with Chimney doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your relationship with him,” Buck said. “I don’t know what to tell you, Maddie. I don’t know how to make this right again, how to make things go back to the way they were before.”

Moreno cleared his throat. “Is going back to how it was before the goal for you?”

“No,” Maddie said without hesitation. She grabbed Buck’s hands and squeezed them while turning to Moreno at the same time. “Going back would mean ignoring that Chimney punched Buck, and I can’t ignore that. I’m not going down that path again.”

Buck closed his eyes, wincing slightly. He had never wanted Maddie to have to compare Chimney to Doug, and his own answer to Moreno’s question would have been different. He wanted Maddie to be able to go back to being happy and excited about building her own family. It was all falling apart, and he felt it was in part his fault.

“Okay,” Moreno said. “I’m glad you know your own boundaries that well and are prepared to defend them. That is a very important step.”

“Buck,” Maddie murmured. When he didn’t react, she followed it with a soft, “Evan!”

Buck looked at her, at a loss for words.

“I hate that this happened, but Taylor did the right thing going to the police,” Maddie said, cupping his cheek with her hand again. “There is nothing you could have done to make it right, and it was never your responsibility to try. Chimney shouldn’t have hit you. But that’s on him alone. I don’t care how desperate or devastated he was, he should not have done it. Taking that punch and never talking about it wouldn’t have been the right choice.”

“You were finally happy,” Buck muttered.

Maddie laughed, but there was nothing joyful about it. “I was happy once with Doug. Then he slapped me and apologized, and I accepted it because I didn’t want to give up that happiness that I had yearned for for half my childhood. That’s not a path I’d ever want you to take, especially not on my behalf. And it’s a path I won’t take a second time. I refuse”

“This situation is strangely reversed to how I thought it would go,” Buck said, smiling sadly.

“You came in here prepared to defend Chimney for some reason,” Maddie said. “My happiness isn’t dependent on him, Evan. You don’t need to defend him to make me feel better. I did spend the last month holding onto my hope of eventually going back to him and rebuilding our relationship, but I didn’t base my healing on that. I couldn’t ever again build anything in my life resting on a foundation of having one specific person at my side. That’s part of the reason why I needed to do this alone, I think.”

Buck exhaled shakily. “I can understand that.”

“You are right, of course, I have to talk with Chimney. We have a daughter together, we live together. But I can definitely make a decision now about what I’ll accept our relationship to be like in the future based on what I saw in the video and the lies Chimney told me about it,” Maddie said firmly before pausing. “Did you expect me to ask you to drop the criminal charges against him?”

Buck frowned and shook his head. “Maybe? But I … It wouldn’t have mattered even if you had asked. I know that holding him responsible for what he did is the right thing to do. If he fights the charges and makes all of this really go to court, I’ll testify against him.”

“Good,” Maddie nodded and pulled Buck into a hug. “That’s good. That makes me a lot less worried about your mental health than your arguments so far made me believe I had to be.”

***

Taylor stopped surprised when she saw Buck sitting on the floor in front of her apartment door. “Did I forget that we had planned to meet?”

Buck looked up from his phone with a grin. “No. I just came by hoping you would have a little bit of time. Saw your car down in the parking lot and assumed you were out on a run, so I waited.” He stood and stepped away from the door so that she could unlock it.

“To what do I owe this honor?” Taylor asked. “And what’s in the bag?”

“An apology and a thank you,” Buck said, still grinning and practically vibrating with energy as he rocked back on his heels.

Taylor frowned and gestured him inside. “Apology for what? Thank you for what?”

“For making the tough decision I couldn’t make,” Buck said. He put the bag on the floor and pulled her into a hug. “I was an ass after you went to the police, and it took me way too long to see that you did the only right thing you could in that situation. I should never have hesitated about it; I should have gone with you right away.”

Taylor patted his back, feeling awkward about the sudden gratitude. “Okay. Didn’t we already go through this some time ago?”

“I went and saw Maddie earlier,” Buck whispered. “That really drove home how important your decisions were, regardless of how uncomfortable they made me. Still make me.”

Taylor looked up at Buck and tried to search his face for any sign of how that conversation had gone. She didn’t trust the happy energy he had shown just moments ago, especially as he was returning her gaze now with a very strained smile.

“Let me take a shower, okay?” Taylor said. “And then I’d like to hear what Maddie had to say. And to see what’s in that bag. I have some leftover pasta in the fridge that we could reheat for dinner.”

Buck nodded and let her go, heading to the kitchen without another word. Taylor watched him with a frown, shaking her head, but eventually turned to her bathroom. When she emerged from her shower, her hair still hanging wet down her back, Buck was sitting on her couch, once again so concentrated on his phone that he didn’t notice her stepping into the room. There were two plates with the pasta she had talked about on the table. Beside that stood two bottles of her favorite wine and an array of chocolate candy and chocolate bars from a small shop on the other side of town that she only allowed herself to indulge in once or twice a year.

“Wow.” Taylor chuckled as she sat down beside Buck. “That’s a lot more than just a simple thank you. Where did you get the wine from this fast?”

“Ordered two boxes with six bottles each a while ago after you told me about it,” Buck laughed. “I thought it would come in handy to have some stored away. I don’t know why your favorite wine has to be one you have to have imported from Europe.”

“I know you are a heathen who can’t tell one wine apart from another,” Taylor said with raised brows. “You should work on that. The right taste of wine is important.”

Buck still laughed. “I thought we had agreed to just accept that we won’t ever agree on this topic, didn’t we?”

Taylor sighed. “Right. No discussions about the importance of wine because you don’t want to learn anyway.”

Buck’s indifference about it made it even more impressive that he had ordered twelve bottles of her favorite wine just to have on hand. At the same time, Taylor felt uneasy about the gesture because she didn’t think she deserved his gratitude or an apology from him.

“How did your meeting with Maddie go?” Taylor asked.

“A lot different than I had expected,” Buck sighed. “We should eat before it gets cold again. It was good to see her, and I think she is a lot better off than I had feared.”

“Yeah?” Talyor balanced her plate on her knees with a smile. “Though, I would expect that after six weeks of treatment. She did go there right away when she left, right?”

Buck shrugged. “Didn’t ask about that, but I guess. She had looked into the clinic a while ago, even reached out to them, but Chimney convinced her not to do in-patient treatment.”

Taylor sighed. “It’s good she still went eventually. So, you talked about Chimney?”

“And the punch, and the charges filed against him.” Buck poked at his pasta with the fork without eating. “She was so worried about me. And I think she plans to break up with Chimney based on the punch alone. I didn’t expect that.”

“Really? With her history, you didn’t expect her to take several steps back from a man who punched her brother?”

“But that’s it, isn’t it? He punched me, not her.”

Taylor rolled her eyes. “And you have said yourself that you don’t know if you can still fully trust him not to turn on her someday.”

Buck shrugged. “I expected her to be angry at me as well, especially about the trial awaiting Chimney. Instead, she nearly raked me over the coals for trying to defend Chimney and asking her to give him a chance at least.”

“Why would you do that?” Taylor huffed. “You’ve already given him chance after chance to own up to his mistake. I still don’t understand why you let him in last week instead of calling the police to drag him away. He should have never come to your apartment, especially not with the kind of attitude he showed.”

“To make it easier for Maddie to repair her relationship with him,” Buck muttered around a mouthful of pasta, avoiding her gaze. “She said she drew a line in the sand for herself after Doug, about not accepting anyone in her life again who showed a tendency for interpersonal violence. And that Chimney knew about that, and he still crossed the line. She won’t move that line for him.”

Taylor stared at Buck. “I think there is your answer to why he came up with that story about striking you with his elbow while trying to free himself from you. Because that makes you the aggressor instead of him, and your injury an act of self-defense, not anger.”

Buck froze and looked up at her wide-eyed after a moment. “Oh.”

“You might have thought that Maddie would overlook this if you and Chimney could find a way back to something resembling a civilized relationship, but he clearly knew she wouldn’t. He made you the ultimate villain in his story because he knew he had just cost himself his relationship with Maddie. The only way to save that relationship was to change the narrative about how the events had taken place.”

Buck swallowed. “And I would have played right into that if you hadn’t been there. Because I thought it would protect Maddie’s happiness. When in reality I’d just have helped him violate her boundaries and break her vow to herself.”

“I’ll accept the wine and the chocolate as a thank you,” Taylor said, grinning. “But another apology really isn’t necessary. I didn’t handle the situation well either, and I deserved your anger about that part. I believe we’ve put that behind us now, though. No need to bring it up again at any point, okay?”

Buck smiled wryly. “Yeah, okay.”

“Was Chimney the only thing you talked about?” Taylor asked with raised brows. “I would have thought after six weeks of not seeing her and the changes to your personal life, you’d have a lot more pleasant things to tell her.”

Buck chuckled. “I did tell her about Eddie and me. And tried to explain our friendship to her, but I think that just confused her. She seemed to be happy for me despite being worried about all of it going too fast. After all, Eddie and I both just broke up with our respective girlfriends, am I really sure it’s not just a rebound thing for either of us?”

“I don’t know how she could have overlooked that you have been in love with Eddie for years,” Taylor shook her head.

“Oh, she did tease me about that,” Buck said. “But I don’t think she believed we’d ever do anything about it.”

Taylor snorted. “Fair.”

“I’ll go visit her once a week or so going forward,” Buck said. “Right now she’s planning to switch to out-patient treatment after Christmas, coming home then. I don’t know if that timeline will move forward or backwards now that she’ll be coming home to a completely different situation than she had thought.”

“She said she’ll break up with Chimney,” Taylor said. “That means they’ll have to find a solution for their living situation.”

“I know,” Buck said. “Didn’t ask her about that yet. She wants to meet with Chimney soon, and I won’t ask about where she is going to live until after that. I don’t think she should have to worry about that right away.”

Chapter 19

“So, what’s next?” Buck asked, turning to Christopher as they packed away the lunch they had brought with them to the zoo.

Eddie watched them with an amused smile as Christopher pulled out the map of the park and spread it out on the picnic table they had commandeered half an hour ago. Buck and Christopher had the whole day planned out, as always, and Eddie had learned long ago to just tag along without questioning them whenever they invited him to accompany them. He wondered why they even still consulted the map, convinced they knew all the paths in the zoo in their sleep by now.

“The elephants!” Christopher declared and pointed at the big enclosure in the middle of the park. “And then the baby animals and Muriel’s Ranch. We weren’t allowed to pet the animals there last time.” His finger followed the route on the map they would have to take for that.

“I made sure to check that the Ranch was open again,” Buck nodded. “The Thai Pavilion for the elephants?”

Christopher sent Buck a patented ‘Do you even need to ask?’ look as he said, “Of course!”

Buck laughed and turned around. “You ready to go, Eds?”

Eddie nodded. “I’ll just keep following you. Though, I’m not so sure how happy I am about the elephants after our own close encounter with one. I prefer the baby animals!”

Buck grinned as they left the table, following Christopher who was confidently leading the way. “At least he doesn’t want to see the alpacas today,” he whispered to Eddie.

“But we’re going to visit the chimpanzees later, right?” Eddie asked with raised brows. “I vividly remember your little rant about them when we were on that call out. I’m not sure I want to see them either.”

Buck wrapped his arm around Eddie’s shoulder. “They are securely contained in their enclosure, don’t worry.”

Eddie shoved his elbow playfully into Buck’s side. “I’m not worried.”

Buck hummed, completely unconvinced, and nodded. “Chris and I know the fastest way out of the zoo in case they do escape their enclosure, though. And we would never leave you behind.”

“Idiot,” Eddie chuckled.

“You should come along more often,” Buck said. “I know Chris would be happy about that, too.”

“And disturb your little rituals?” Eddie asked.

Buck shook his head. “Not disturb. I think we should include you in our rituals. Maybe Chris has become too comfortable only airing his worries here at the zoo, and we should work on creating other spaces where he feels comfortable speaking about those things. I’m not sure if maybe he isn’t too dependent on this ritual we created accidentally.”

Eddie raised his arm and laced his fingers with Buck’s hand that was hanging over his shoulder. “He has been good about opening up since that horrible therapy session while you were in Boston. And I think … we have also become better at signaling to him that we are there for him to open up to.”

“Did you talk with your mother?”

Eddie huffed. “I hung up on her. ’He is at an age where he needs to learn how to control his emotions on his own, Edmundo. It’s especially important for a child like him, even though we were able to give him a little more time than the other children. He’ll be judged by people even harsher for being overly emotional.’. I didn’t need to hear anything else. I told her if that’s her attitude I’d have to think about if I even wanted them to have contact with him anymore and hung up. And ignored her the two times she’s called since then.”

“I did notice that you ignored her calls,” Buck said, nodding and with a low growl in his voice.

Eddie squeezed his hand reassuringly. His parents had come to visit for a week barely a month after he had been shot, and Eddie had never seen Buck come as close to losing his temper as he had when he had heard the words ‘a child like Chris’ from Helena Diaz. Eddie had felt a silent rage over that phrase ever since he had first heard it from his parents, but he had never been able to discuss that with them, and it had been like a balm to his soul to see the same reaction from Buck.

“I remember when I got that lecture from her,” Eddie murmured. “I was a little younger than Chris is now. ’You are old enough to keep your inappropriate reactions to yourself and deal with them when you are alone!’ And the only appropriate reactions for a boy growing into a man were stoic acceptance or anger. I don’t want that for Chris. I don’t want him to be haunted by those words long into his adulthood.”

“It won’t happen to him,” Buck said. “You do so much to provide Chris with everything he needs, including a healthy and supportive mental health environment. Do I even want to know what your parents think about both you and Chris going to therapy?”

Eddie snorted. “That’s not something I’ve told them, and I don’t plan to either. I do know which battles to fight, and that’s the kind of pointless discussion I can happily live without.”

“You know, I still think you should consider just cutting contact with them.”

Eddie sighed. It was something he had thought about on and off ever since leaving El Paso, but until recently it had never been a serious thought. It had always been more a little dream of ‘what if’ and ‘wouldn’t it be nice’. That had changed in the last two weeks though because of some of the things Christopher had said during and after their joint therapy session had highlighted how much his parents’ beliefs had hindered Christopher’s growth in the past.

“I’m not there yet,” Eddie said eventually. “I want to give them a chance to change. To work on this bad behavior. But to do that, I first need to find the … courage to tell them off for it in a way they won’t dismiss as me being annoyed at them for knowing more about parenting than me.”

“Have Isabel stage an intervention,” Buck suggested.

Eddie snorted.

“No, I mean it. Your father is probably more likely to listen to his own mother than to you anyway. And we already know Isabel is on your side about everything concerning Chris.”

Eddie laughed. “I’ll think about it. And can I just say that I don’t know what to think about your weird friendship with my Abuela?”

“It’s only fair, don’t you think?” Buck asked, grinning widely. “You have been teaming up with Taylor against me, something I would never have expected to happen two months ago. I need someone of my own to team up with against you if necessary! And Isabel is a great ally.”

“Didn’t she ask you to call her Abuela?”

Buck lowered his head and grinned bashfully. “Yeah. I think I’ll need a little time and maybe a couple more invitations to do that before I actually remember and am comfortable with it.”

Eddie stopped and turned to kiss Buck. He had always been fascinated by the way Buck had just slotted into his family from the moment he had met Christopher for the first time, and despite the many ups and downs over the last three years, his place had never wavered. Eddie had decided to come to LA with Christopher because of Isabel and Pepa, who he had always felt supported him more than his parents did. Meeting Buck had felt like coming home, and Eddie still reveled in the fact that they had finally stopped denying that.

“Dad! Buck!” Christopher shouted exasperated. “Don’t dawdle! We have to go to the elephants! You can kiss all you want when we’re back home!”

They broke the kiss chuckling and turned to catch up to Christopher, who watched them with a weird mixture of a frown and a pout until they had reached him, and then turned to continue on his way. He kept stopping to look back at them, clearly not trusting them to follow on their own anymore, and neither of them could stop laughing about it until they had reached the Thai pavilion and Buck and Christopher abandoned Eddie to watch and discuss the elephants.

Eddie watched them with a smile, content to listen to them exchange facts about the differences between Asian and African elephants that he was sure they had talked about at least a hundred times before. They stood right at the balustrade of the viewing platform, Christopher’s arms braced on top of it while he leaned back against Buck, who kept one arm securely wrapped around Christopher’s chest, much the same way he had done at the aquarium when they had watched the sea otters, while gesturing with his other hand at different things in the enclosure.

“Was it good when you went to visit Maddie?” Christopher asked in the middle of Buck talking about the importance and symbolism of elephants in some Asian cultures.

Buck paused for a moment and dropped his free hand onto the balustrade. “Yeah. It was good seeing her again and knowing that she is in a safe place where she is getting help. She is … content there, and I know she is working very hard on herself to get better.”

“So that Jee won’t have to wait long for her mom to come home?”

Eddie sucked in a breath and pressed his fist against his mouth to keep quiet. He loved Christopher so much for the compassion he was showing, but he also hated Shannon a little more each time Christopher brought up his worry for Jee-Yun. Eddie had never faulted her for going to be with her mother, nor even for leaving him, but he had never understood how she had been able to abandon Christopher. There would have been so many different ways for her to be there for Janet and still be part of Christopher’s life.

Buck kissed the top of Christopher’s head. “Yeah, exactly. Right now, Maddie is planning to come home after Christmas. And Mrs. Lee, that is Jee-Yun’s grandmother, will bring Jee to visit Maddie a couple of times before then.”

Christopher sighed. “That’s good.”

“You miss your mom, huh?”

Christopher shrugged. “Sometimes. But … sometimes I wish she had never come back. Because then she couldn’t have left again.”

“I know how that feels,” Buck whispered. “When Maddie left this time around, I thought the same thing sometimes. And I felt incredibly guilty about it because I know she left because she needed help that neither I nor any of her friends could give her. But even if it’s unfair to Maddie or your mom, we’re allowed to feel what we feel, you know? I will never tell Maddie about this, of course, because it would make her feel bad, but that’s why I’m going to therapy myself, and why I talk to you and your dad about it, right? So that I can still work through my own emotions without upsetting Maddie with it.”

“I can’t upset Mom by being angry at her,” Christopher muttered. “But I think I would upset Daddy with it.” With those words, he turned his head just enough to glance in Eddie’s direction.

“He misses your mom, too,” Buck said.

Eddie took a deep breath and stepped up to them, curling his hand in Buck’s shirt right between his shoulders and grabbing Christopher’s shoulder with his other hand. “I do. But sometimes I’m also angry at her. And sometimes I wish I hadn’t allowed her to see you again. But then I remind myself that having her come back into our lives, even just for the short time it turned out to be, gave you some more memories of her. And they’re good memories, aren’t they?”

He wouldn’t mention the dark hours of the night when he lay awake and wondered if she would have still been on that street at that exact moment if he had made a different decision at any point. If he hadn’t fallen back into bed with her, if he hadn’t allowed her to see Christopher, if he had chosen another school that didn’t ask for an interview with Shannon, if he had asked for a divorce and custody agreement instead of inviting her back into their lives. He knew it was pointless to think about any of that because he couldn’t change his decisions in the past, and he hoped Christopher never started to wonder about the same things.

Christopher inhaled deeply. “Yeah, I guess.” After a moment he smiled up at Eddie. “It was an awesome Christmas.”

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“But … it was also our last Christmas with her.” Christopher turned his head and stared out at the elephants. “Sometimes I wonder … what if … this is my last Christmas with one of you? And do I want to make it awesome as well, just to be sure, or do I want it to be really horrible because then you won’t leave?”

Eddie flexed his jaw, tears burning in his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t ready to be to part of this little ritual between Christopher and Buck when all it did was break his heart. “We will always do everything we can so that our last Christmas will be far in our future, okay, mijo?”

Christopher sighed. “I know.”

“And it doesn’t have anything to do with how perfect a Christmas was either,” Buck said, voice rough and breaking at the end. “We’ll just work on making every Christmas perfect so that whatever happens in the future, none of us will ever have to regret the past. Does that sound good?”

Christopher nodded slowly.

“Yes,” Eddie agreed as well. “I think that’s a perfect idea.”

Christopher took a deep breath. “Let’s go visit the baby animals. They’ll make us happy again!”

Eddie chuckled and kissed the top of his head. “That’s a fabulous idea as well. You’ll have to show me the way, though.”

Christopher looked at him with raised brows. “If you didn’t always stay home, you would know the zoo as well as Buck and I do already!”

Buck laughed and tousled Christopher’s hair.

“Message received, mijo,” Eddie said grinning.

***

As soon as the door closed behind Carla and Christopher, Eddie leaned against the wall and let his head fall against it with a soft thud. His hands and knees were shaking again, and no amount of deep and deliberate breathing seemed to help control it. He had felt off-kilter for half the night, and even two hours after leaving the hospital to return to their station and clean up themselves and their equipment after a full night of fighting the hospital fire, Eddie still hadn’t found his bearings again.

They had returned home just in time to wish Christopher a nice day at school. He had managed to keep up the appearance of being okay just long enough for Christopher to leave. He was glad they had managed to catch him and Carla before they had left because hugging Christopher had been more calming than anything else could ever be. Eddie loved his job, loved helping others, but a fire like that always had casualties, and he hated it.

They had nearly lost a boy just a little younger than Christopher and his baby sister, had thought they had lost both children to the flames for an agonizing half-hour, and Eddie couldn’t get the image out of his head of the room where they had thought the children were hiding engulfed in flames. Afterward Buck had pulled him out of a pending panic attack before it could take hold of Eddie in the middle of their call, and they had learned they had looked in the wrong room just moments later and saved the children after all. Eddie still knew that moment when they had thought the children lost would be seared into his mind and soul for a long time to come.

Buck cradled Eddie’s face with both hands and leaned their foreheads together. “We’re safe, and the kids are safe, too.”

“Forty-three,” Eddie muttered tiredly, leaning into Buck and grabbing the front of his shirt. “And we both know they’ll find more.”

That was the number of confirmed deaths when they had left the command center. The fire had been out by then, and they had been sent back to their station to prepare for the shift change while two urban SAR units from the Red Cross and the B-shift of the 56 took over the search for everyone still missing. The hope that they would find anyone still alive was slim but not nonexistent, and they would recover all the bodies they could find as well. There was a list of missing people, but Eddie had avoided taking a look at it at all costs.

Buck sighed. “Yeah, but most of them were dead long before we were there. We aren’t the ones responsible for preventing a catastrophe like this. We did all we could, like we always do.”

“Doesn’t feel enough this time.” Eddie sighed. “Never feels enough when we can’t save everyone.”

“But we saved everyone we went in to save,” Buck said. “Including those two kids.”

“Thanks for pulling me out of my panic,” Eddie whispered, pressing his eyes shut. “I thought I had a better handle on it already.”

He had been working on it so hard during his therapy, and that work was tiring and exhausting, but he had thought he had made more progress than he obviously had. Eddie had only ever had the one full-blown panic attack when he had been out shopping with Ana, but analyzing his reactions to different events in the past during therapy had taught him that the problem had been there for a lot longer. It had just never bothered him during work until now, though.

“We both know that healing is not a straight line,” Buck said. “You’ll get there eventually, but that doesn’t mean you won’t ever be thrown by a call. If even Bobby isn’t there after more than twenty years, I don’t think we will ever be completely immune to it.”

Eddie frowned. “I’ve never seen Bobby lose his shit on a call.”

“I saw it once,” Buck said. “A couple of months before you joined us, we were called to a motorcycle accident. The driver … there was no chance for him, it was gruesome. I don’t know how he was even still alive when we arrived. And then his son called him.”

Eddie shivered. He had seen his fair share of accidents involving motorcycles, and more often than not they were ugly and heartbreaking.

“Bobby helped our victim take the call, and talk to his son, and the victim died while still on that call. Bobby dropped the phone and crawled away from the scene on his hands and knees. I wanted so much to go over and help him, but I was helping get a woman out of the car, and when I had time to look for Bobby again Athena was with him. They left together, and when Bobby came back to shift a couple of hours later, you wouldn’t have guessed what had happened earlier.”

Eddie blew out a breath. “You know how we keep promising Chris to always do everything to come home to him? I don’t know if we really did that tonight.”

“We are home, aren’t we?” Buck said. “We didn’t take any unnecessary risks, we kept each other safe. And we are both home without any injuries.”

Eddie swallowed.

Buck took a step back and waited until Eddie opened his eyes and met his gaze. “Do you want to think about another job?”

Eddie reared back. “What? No!”

Buck smiled. “Good. I really don’t want to break in a new partner. It’s horrible even thinking about working without you. Ravi’s coming along, but he’s my probie, not my partner.”

Eddie chuckled. “I don’t want to have to trust anyone else with having your back either. I’m just a little…”

“Unsettled?” Buck offered after the silence had stretched on for some time.

Eddie nodded. It wasn’t quite the word he had been searching for, but it fit well enough. “I’m not sure if we didn’t take a huge risk when Bobby told us to keep the fire away from David’s team until they could finish the surgery. By that point, they should have been long evacuated. And I understand why they stayed with their patient, but … in the end, they didn’t just risk their own lives, but also those of every single firefighter helping them. They should have gotten the patient to a point they could move him and been long gone, not have made us take unnecessary risks to protect them.”

Buck sighed. “You know we wouldn’t have stayed if it hadn’t been David in there. It was Bobby’s job to make the hard decision, and he should have ordered them to leave even if that meant letting their patient die.”

Eddie nodded. “I hope this won’t come to bite Bobby in the ass, and I’m glad it worked out for all of us and for David’s patient.”

“You know what I can’t believe?” Buck said. “That Bobby stole Michael’s proposal to convince David to leave.”

Eddie laughed so hard that he dropped his head on Buck’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around Buck’s waist to keep his balance. “They’ll never let him forget that. They’ll make him regret that decision for the rest of his life. Did you see Michael glaring at Bobby after he had thanked him?”

“He definitely lost his place as best man, if not his invitation as a whole,” Buck agreed.

“I’m honestly not sure if Michael was angrier about the stolen proposal or the fact that Bobby went with David’s craziness.”

Buck shrugged, chuckling. “Doesn’t matter, really. It will be all conflated together. But you know what that teaches us? When one of us plans a proposal for the other, do not tell Bobby. Because he’ll steal it at the first opportunity!”

Eddie took a step back, his hands resting on Buck’s hip, and cocked his head. There was nothing but honesty and love in Buck’s eyes. “Move in with us?”

It was a question that had been lingering in the back of Eddie’s mind for weeks, and not only because Buck had barely spent any time at his own apartment anyway. Eddie wanted to have Buck here with him all the time without wondering when would be the next night he would have to spend without Buck sleeping beside him. Buck had been avoiding his apartment ever since the last time Chimney had confronted him there, and Eddie would support him if he eventually decided to search for another apartment for himself, even though that was not the solution Eddie preferred.

Buck blinked. “W-what?”

Eddie grinned. It wasn’t often that he could surprise Buck with anything like he had apparently just done. “I mean, you’re basically already living here with us. You haven’t been home in weeks to get more than a change of clothes, and I…”

“This is home,” Buck interrupted him with a soft smile.

“Yeah?” Eddie crowded Buck back against the wall. “Is that a yes?”

Buck cupped the back of Eddie’s head with one hand and drew him in for a heated kiss. Eddie chuckled into the kiss and pressed his whole body against Buck. But after a moment he pulled his head back just enough to meet Buck’s gaze.

“I need you to use your words, Buck.”

Buck rolled his eyes with a grin. “Of course it’s a yes. I’ve been kinda waiting for you to ask, just wasn’t expecting it right this moment.” He bit his lip and lowered his gaze. “I didn’t want to assume, but … like I said, this has been home for a long time.”

“Good,” Eddie whispered and made a mental note that they evidently needed to work on their communication some more. He would have been happy for Buck to ask if he could move in here, but he also had a good idea of what had held him back. The last time Buck had moved in with someone hadn’t exactly ended well, though in Eddie’s opinion, from everything he knew about it, it hadn’t started very well either.

“There really isn’t much left we need to bring over from the loft,” Buck said. “But I think we need to talk about your bed.”

“Our bed.”

Buck grinned. “No, see, I think my bed is the better choice to make into our bed. Or we buy a new one. But your bed is an atrocity that could very well become a dealbreaker in this.”

Eddie laughed wholeheartedly and started to drag Buck in the direction of said bed. “Let’s see if I can’t change your mind.”

Chapter 20

Buck took Maddie’s hand and led her to the bench they were passing by. They had left the clinic this time, and Buck had driven them to a nearby park to take a walk. At first, they had laughed and talked about unimportant things, but Buck had noticed that Maddie kept hesitating in the middle of a sentence, kept starting to say something when they fell quiet between one topic and the next.

“Tell me what’s bothering you,” Buck said quietly as he pushed her slightly to sit down.

Maddie took a deep breath. “I’ve had some meetings with Chimney.”

Buck nodded. “I know. Did something happen during one of those?”

“No,” Maddie shook her head, smiling sadly. “He is exactly as I know him. He is sad and desperate, of course, and he does try to blame you for a lot of things right now, but he is also the soft and lovely man I fell in love with. It’s difficult. I didn’t just stop loving him.”

“Of course not,” Buck muttered, brokenly. “If emotions were that easy, there would be a lot less drama in life.”

“I convinced him that he needed to accept a plea deal,” Maddie said. “He should be talking about that with his lawyer today. I think the prosecutor’s office should contact you about that in a matter of days.”

Buck blew out a breath. “How did you manage that?”

The last he heard was that Chimney was fighting the charges every step of the way. Buck had started to mentally prepare himself for the moment when he would have to testify in front of a court against Chimney, as much as he hated that thought. It would be an immense relief for him if Chimney cut the whole process short by accepting a plea deal.

“I told him if he wanted any chance to be part of Jee-Yun’s life before she turned eighteen and could decide for herself, he needed to own up to his actions. And that he needs to go to therapy to deal with his anger and to let someone check if he is suffering from PPD as well. I know that threat hurt him, but how can I let Jee-Yun be around him when I can’t be sure that he is getting help dealing with the anger he has shown recently?”

“And he just accepted that?” Buck asked.

Maddie laughed darkly. “No. It was a whole long discussion, with a lot of pleading and rambling from him. He hasn’t tried to lie a second time about what happened after I told him you had shown me the video, but he has tried to relativize it. He stands by his opinion that filing charges against him was as out of line as him punching you.”

“I haven’t spoken to him at all, you know.”

Maddie nodded. “Yeah. He has complained about that as well. But that’s all part of the problem, he isn’t dealing with things rationally.”

“And you are standing by your opinion that your romantic relationship is over no matter what he does to make amends?” Buck asked.

“Yes. I won’t budge on that. I can’t … The only way I can trust myself in the future is if I hold to that line. If I cross this line for him now because I want to hold onto the love we share, what other lines will I cross in the future? And he knew that. It’s not like I didn’t talk extensively with Chimney about the boundaries I had set for myself for any future relationship. We talked about this when we were both recovering from Doug’s attack, and we talked about it again after we found out I was pregnant.”

Buck nodded silently.

“But we do have a child together,” Maddie whispered. “And Jee-Yun deserves to grow up in a healthy environment. I don’t want her to have to see us fight, or to have us use her as a bargaining chip in our fights. So we have to find some middle ground where we can be co-parents, and maybe at some point even friends again.”

“And what does Chimney say about that plan?”

Maddie shrugged. “He isn’t happy with it. I think he still hopes I’ll change my mind eventually. I won’t, and I hope he’ll come to accept that with time. If for nothing else than for Jee-Yun’s sake. We have to think of her first now.”

“Have you spoken with the Lees?” Buck asked.

Albert was keeping him up to date with some of the developments on that front, but that was mostly focused on Jee-Yun. He was loyal firstly to his brother, and Buck appreciated that. He wanted Chimney to come to his senses again, to start being an adult and make plans about how to live with the changes the last months had brought instead of stubbornly insisting everything would go back to how it had been eventually. To achieve that, Chimney needed all the support he could get.

“Anne came to visit last weekend,” Maddie said, smiling. “They’re great, you know? It doesn’t matter that there is no blood connection between them or what the law says, Howie is their son. And they may be disappointed in him, but they are prepared to do anything to support him. I’m glad that Jee at least has one set of decent grandparents. And that those are the ones living in the same city as us.”

“I’m glad Chimney has that support.”

Maddie sighed. “Yes. And I have their support too, which is even more of a relief. I don’t think they knew about Doug before this, but Albert mentioned him to them, apparently. Though, I have no idea how much Albert even knows about that.”

“He knows that Doug tried to kill you and Chimney after you left him,” Buck said. “He had heard about Chimney being stabbed, and he asked about it one day when we were watching TV and talking about injuries Chimney had sustained in the past. I didn’t go into any more detail than that, but Chimney could have told him more, of course.”

“Anne said they understand why I can’t give Chimney a second chance,” Maddie whispered. “I really hadn’t expected that. I thought they would try to argue his case with me. They’ll help us navigate whatever solution we come to.”

“Do you already have an idea of how you want to manage that co-parenting situation?” Buck asked.

Maddie huffed. “No. I don’t even have an idea about what to do with our living situation yet. The apartment only has one bedroom, one of us has to move out. Or maybe we both need to find a new apartment because eventually Jee will need her own room in each of our homes. We had planned to start looking for a new apartment as soon as we had settled into a routine after her birth.”

“I’m moving in with Eddie,” Buck said. “You can have my apartment for now. Or Chimney can take that, I don’t care.”

Maddie turned her head to him abruptly. “You’re what?”

Buck shrugged, grinning. “I mean, I’ve kinda been living with Eddie and Chris for a couple of weeks already, only going back to my apartment if I have to get anything I’m not keeping at the house. We had to clean out my whole fridge a while ago because I forgot I had groceries there, and most of it had gone bad by the time I finally remembered.”

“Isn’t that a little bit fast?”

Buck shook his head. “We have been circling around this for a long time. It may look fast from the outside, but we’ve already had a couple of trial periods for living together, so we know what we are going into.”

“But you were living together as friends then,” Maddie said. “You’ve only been dating barely a month.”

“Let’s not do this, please,” Buck whispered. “Let’s not argue about my life choices. I know you are coming from a place of concern and worry, but it’s my decision. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that Eddie is my forever.”

Maddie bit her lip. It took nearly a minute of silence before she nodded. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“We’ll move the rest of my things over the next week or two whenever we have time,” Buck said. “And there isn’t really a lot left because, like I said, I’ve been practically living at Eddie’s place for a while. I’ve thought about renting the place out with the furniture as is, rather than selling it. It’s a better investment that way. But you can have it as long as you need it until you have found an apartment for Jee-Yun and you. Or Chimney can have it, if you decide you will stay in his apartment for the time being.”

Maddie frowned. “You would rent it to Chimney?”

Buck rolled his eyes and huffed. “I wouldn’t take rent from either of you, Mads. Come on, you are family and in need of an apartment. It would be utter bullshit to ask you for rent. You’ll have to pay the utilities, but that’s all.”

“I don’t know…”

“Mads!” Buck watched her with raised brows. “It’s no problem at all. And it will give you room to push the decision about a new apartment back for a little while until you have the spoons to deal with it. There are so many other things you have to make decisions about right now, I’m glad if I can help cross one off the list.”

Maddie nodded slowly. “I’ll think about it. And talk with Chimney and the Lees about it.”

“Good,” Buck smiled. “And I’ll look into how to make those stairs baby safe in the meantime. An apartment with a loft seemed like such a good idea when I purchased it, but those stairs keep being a hassle in all kinds of situations.”

“I always thought you took that apartment because the loft reminded you of the fire station,” Maddie said, smiling. “I thought it hilarious and kinda cute that you tried to model your home after your workplace.”

“I did not!” Buck protested.

He had to admit he had been drawn to his apartment because of the loft. He hadn’t once connected it to the fire station, though, and he had come to regret the stairs a long time ago. They had been a hassle when he had been injured, of course, but they were also always a hindrance for Christopher. And when Eddie, Chimney, and Hen had all stayed with him the previous year, none of them had had any privacy for months, which had gotten old fast.

“Is Eddie’s place even big enough for you to move in there as well?” Maddie asked.

“He does have another bedroom we can use to store some of my things,” Buck said. “We even cleared that out recently, though that was mainly to finally create the home gym for Chris that Eddie had planned to create all along. We are also exchanging his bed for my bed because it’s a little bigger and much more comfortable. We have it all figured out already.”

Maddie took his hands. “I am happy for you, despite what I said earlier. And I do think you two will be good for each other.”

Buck groaned and flopped down on his back, glaring at the ceiling and throwing the screwdriver to the side. He had thought taking apart his bed would be a lot easier than it had turned out to be. It hadn’t been this difficult to put it together as far as he could remember, so he couldn’t understand why taking it apart was turning out to be a complete mystery.

“You alright?” Taylor called out laughing from the bathroom, where she was packing away what had been left of his toiletries. She had already packed the rest of his clothes while Buck had been despairing over his bed, but he had declined her offer to help with this.

“You know, I think Eddie and I should just buy a new bed,” Buck muttered.

Taylor poked her head out of the bathroom door and grinned at him. “Eddie will argue to just keep his bed.”

Buck snorted. “No way. Eddie’s bed is fine for a couple of weeks, but not longer. Why do I think this will turn into our first argument as a couple?”

“Should I take Chris out for ice cream when he and Eddie return so that you can argue that out in private?”

Buck glared at her. “Don’t be crass. We’ll talk about it like civilized people.”

“Or maybe…” The bell ringing interrupted her and Taylor frowned. “Are we expecting any other help?”

Buck shook his head, equally confused. “No. I didn’t tell anyone I was moving today. Mostly so that no one would offer help. I mean, our coworkers are great, and we can always count on each other for help, but I don’t want any of them snooping through my things.”

Taylor watched him with a cocked head. “You want me to answer the door?”

Buck sighed and jumped up. “I’ll get it.”

It wasn’t dread about opening the door to another uninvited guest that had made him hesitate, Buck tried to tell himself. The chances that Chimney would show up here again were slim anyway, and he really didn’t want to have this apprehension linger any longer in him. It was bad enough that the two arguments he’d had here with Chimney had made him lose all the love he had once held for the place.

Wanting to spend as much time with Christopher and Eddie as he could wasn’t the only reason he had barely returned to his apartment in weeks, though he hadn’t voiced that thought to anyone. He had been slowly gearing up to broach the topic during his therapy, but Eddie’s invitation to move in with him had pushed that plan aside. Maybe Buck should still bring it up at some point; even though Eddie had already given him the solution to the immediate problem, the underlying issue was still there, and he should probably talk to Dr. Copeland about it.

Buck raised his eyebrows in surprise as he found Albert standing in front of the door when he looked through the peephole. He opened the door after another moment of hesitation. “Hey. Uhm, I wasn’t expecting you, was I?”

Albert chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. “Ah, no. And I should have probably texted or called before just showing up here. Is this a bad time?”

“No,” Buck shook his head and gestured Albert inside. “It’s actually perfect timing. My bed is fighting me, so you can help me try to take it apart before Eddie comes back and mocks me for not having managed to prepare it for transport yet.”

“I can try,” Albert said slowly. “But you should know that I have no experience with either taking furniture apart or putting it together. Father hired help for that, and I haven’t needed to buy my own furniture since I came here.”

“Yeah, yeah, remind us all of how sheltered you grew up,” Buck laughed as he ushered Albert up the stairs. “Taylor is here to help as well, and Eddie and Chris are currently driving one car full of my things over to the house. I had more things left here than I had expected.”

Albert chuckled. “The number of things you own just keeps multiplying, doesn’t it? I swear I had three times as many bags when I moved of out here as when I moved in.”

Taylor came out of the bathroom and watched Albert with a smile and raised brows. “When you eventually have your own apartment, that problem will just get bigger.”

“Hey, Taylor,” Albert said with a grin but turned back to Buck right away. “That’s why I’m here, actually. Maddie told us about your proposal.”

Buck nodded and gestured to the bedframe. “Let’s get to work on this. Are you here on Chimney’s behalf?”

“No,” Albert shook his head. “Anne and John had another suggestion, one I liked a lot. I’d like to rent this place from you. Chimney will move in with them again for the time being. They don’t want him to live alone while he is going through therapy and the separation.”

“Does that mean he agreed to therapy?” Buck asked.

“It’s court-ordered anyway,” Albert shrugged. “But you do know the conditions of his plea deal, right?”

Buck nodded. A judge still needed to agree to the plea bargain the prosecutor’s office had suggested, but no one thought there would be any problems with that. In addition to the therapy Chimney had been ordered to do, he would get five years of probation, have to pay a fine of $1000, and would have to pay victim restitution to Buck. Buck had already agreed with Maddie that he would funnel that money into Jee-Yun’s educational fund because he had really no interest in the money for himself.

“Just because it’s court-ordered doesn’t mean he will take it seriously, though,” Buck said. He thought it was a real risk that Chimney would go to the appointments and just say what was necessary for him to get a pass on it, but not use the opportunity to really work on himself.

Albert shook his head. “John and Anne support Maddie in everything concerning Jee-Yun. They’ve told Chimney they’ll keep supporting her even if he decides to challenge her on her threat of keeping him out of Jee-Yun’s life. He will take therapy seriously and do even more than just what’s court-ordered because he hopes it will eventually get him Maddie back.”

“And when will he acknowledge that that won’t happen?” Buck asked. “Because I believe Maddie when she says it won’t.”

“Yeah, everyone but Chimney knows that,” Albert sighed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It stands to reason that therapy will help him understand why Maddie won’t change her mind.”

“I hope so,” Buck murmured. “He hasn’t been great the last couple of months about accepting her boundaries, so I’ll stay wary about that for some time.”

“Would you be okay with me renting your place?” Albert asked. “I loved living here, despite my sometimes-questionable roommate.”

Buck huffed out a laugh. “I wasn’t the questionable roommate between the two of us. There is nothing more questionable than making out on my couch with my catastrophically bad date when Veronica’s empty apartment was right next door!”

Albert grinned sheepishly. “Maybe.”

“She still lives there, you know,” Buck said. “Are you sure you want to have her as your neighbor?”

“I can handle that,” Albert assured him.

“I’d be happy to rent to you,” Buck said. “A lot happier than letting Chimney live here to be honest, and I know this wouldn’t have been a good place for Maddie. But it was available, and I didn’t want her to have to search for an apartment right away.”

“I was surprised that you offered to let Chimney live here, especially rent-free,” Albert muttered. “Chimney couldn’t have been less excited, though. It’s just another thing he’ll resent you for.”

Buck rolled his eyes. “I’m long past caring about what Chimney thinks about me. And the offer was never for his benefit anyway, it was always for Maddie’s.”

“Good. So, you are moving out today completely, right? Any chance I can move in tomorrow? Or soon, at least. Anne and John have been great, and I appreciate their hospitality, but I really want to finally stand on my own two feet. And not see Chimney every day. I love him, and I want to help him, but I need a break.”

Buck grinned. “Look at you, all grown up. You can move in today if you want. I’ll have a rental contract drawn up by a lawyer, though. I don’t care about rent this month, so I’ll have them date it for January 1st, okay?”

Albert frowned. “It’s just the fourth.”

“We’re friends, don’t argue with me about being generous, just take it,” Buck said.

Albert chuckled. “Okay.” Then he let out a triumphant cry as he pulled away the board at the end of the bedframe and the whole thing neatly fell apart.

Buck started at the disassembled frame. He was sure it shouldn’t have worked like that at all. After a moment, he pointed a finger at Albert. “You are not allowed to leave until you have helped rebuild this at the house!”

Albert laughed. “I’ll just consider this hostage situation my rent for the first month, okay?” He frowned and cocked his head. “I’ll have to buy a bed for myself. Where do I shop for furniture?”

“That depends on how much you can afford to spend and how comfortable you want to be,” Buck said with raised brows.

Albert made a face, and so their conversation pivoted to a discussion about what to look out for while shopping for a new bed, the pros and cons for different budgets, and the best places to look for new beds and mattresses and sheets at the same time, Taylor adding her own opinions every so often from the bathroom. When Eddie and Chris returned from their first trip transporting Buck’s things, mostly kitchen supplies he hadn’t needed at the house yet, they repacked the car and Albert followed Eddie to the house after they had managed to get the bedframe and all the rest of Buck’s things into both of their cars.

Buck and Taylor stayed back at the apartment to clean it, and Albert had promised to join them again later as soon as Buck’s bed was rebuilt at the house. Buck wasn’t sure if there would be anything left to do when Albert returned since there really wasn’t much to clean, but he wouldn’t say no to help so freely offered.

“My father’s parole hearing is on the 13th,” Taylor said as soon they were alone. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned half away from him. “I’ve decided to go. And … if your offer still stands, I’d very much appreciate not having to go alone.”

“Yes, of course,” Buck agreed without pause. “When do you want to fly out?”

“I thought the day before. And come back the day after. I already checked, you don’t have a shift any of those days, so it works for you as well.”

“That’s next weekend,” Buck said. “Let’s postpone the cleaning and book flights and a hotel.”

Taylor inhaled slowly and nodded.

“Come on.” Buck grabbed her elbow softly and led her to the couch. “Have you decided what you will say during the hearing?”

“No,” Taylor whispered. “Every time I think I have made a decision, the doubt overwhelms me. And that’s just my own doubts. I don’t know who of my family I will have to face there. They’ll all expect different things from me.”

Buck pulled her into a tight hug. “In the end, you are the one who needs to live with your decision. Don’t think about the rest of your family. Especially since you won’t be able to make all of them happy anyway. You can only think about yourself in this.”

Buck wished he could help her make a decision. He couldn’t even imagine the situation she was in, and he had no idea what to tell her other than to listen to her heart.

Taylor chuckled sadly. “I know that. The problem is that I don’t know what I want.”

“You still have some time to think about it. And maybe only making the decision the moment you have to speak during the hearing could be the right way to go.”

“And if I can’t decide even then?”

Buck sighed. “Then that’s what you tell them.”

Taylor was silent for a long time, and when she finally spoke again it was to change the topic. “Thank you for offering to come with me. I’ve been dreading this day so much, but I thought I had no other choice than to go alone until you offered to come with me.”

“You want me to buffer you from the rest of your family while we’re there?” Buck asked.

They had only talked about all of it once before, but he had understood from that conversation that one of the worst things for Taylor was her position stuck between the two camps that her family had built on each of her parents’ sides. As if the reality of losing one parent to death and the other to jail wouldn’t have been traumatic enough for a child.

Taylor tightened her fists in his shirt. “That’d be … You would do that?”

Buck chuckled. “Of course. I’ll glare threateningly at all of them, and most will probably take a step back just seeing me towering over you.”

Taylor snorted. “You think a week is enough for Eddie to teach you how to look angry and scowling instead of like a lost puppy?”

“Harsh!” Buck cried out, laughing. “I do not look like a lost puppy.”

“You look adorable and excited basically all of the time,” Taylor said. “They won’t feel threatened, they’ll probably try to adopt you. You know, like your own boss did, and like Chris did. But that could be enough to keep attention away from me.”

Buck grinned, not protesting any further. If thinking he looked like a lost puppy made her feel better, he would let her have that. “Let’s book those flights.”

Chapter 21

Taylor was quiet and mostly lost in thought the morning of the parole hearing. Buck was a silent, warm presence right at her side the whole time, keeping an arm wrapped around her shoulders or holding her hand from the moment they left the car in the parking lot where the shuttle to the prison picked them up until the moment they sat in the much too small room where the hearing would take place.

Less of her family was gathered than she had expected, and the members of her father’s family outnumbered the members of her mother’s family by far. That part at least wasn’t a surprise. Most of her mother’s family had tried to move on, tried to distance themselves from her father and his family as much as they could. Her father’s family, on the other hand, had rallied around him, complaining about the injustice of his conviction whenever someone was near enough to listen to them.

Taylor hadn’t had much contact with either side of her family since she had left for college. Many had still made sure to reach out to her over the last couple of months to tell her what they were expecting of her today. She had ignored every single one of those messages. None of it helped her to come to a decision for herself anyway. Buck staying at her side kept her family at bay, and she would make sure to remember later to tease him that even glaring at nosy and overbearing strangers looked adorable on him, at least to her.

Taylor barely listened to the proceedings, staring at her father out of the corner of her eye, her heart beating painfully in her chest. Buck poked her in the side when her name was called and Taylor hurriedly stood up, straightening her back. She hadn’t known what she would say when she was called upon until this very moment. Taylor took a deep breath and concentrated on the warmth of Buck’s hand on her calf where he had wrapped his fingers around the back of her leg in silent support. She was glad she could stand at her seat and receive his comfort.

“You asked me here to tell you if I thought my father deserves to be let go or not.” Taylor schooled her expression, drawing on every bit of experience she had gained in her years as a reporter. “I have spent the last couple of weeks pondering that question a lot. And before that, I spent years trying to find out what had really happened.

“You should know that I have never been happy with the way the trial went. But then, I wasn’t even a teenager yet when all of that went down, so what would I have known about court proceedings, right? All I took away from the trial against my father was that they hadn’t been sure in the end, but had still sent him to jail. That’s what the first trial failing meant, didn’t it? So I spent many, many years while growing up talking repeatedly with anyone either of my parents had known even fleetingly.”

Taylor wet her lips. “When I started doing that, I set out to prove that there had to have been a third person involved. Because I didn’t want to believe either of the only two scenarios everyone else had ever considered as far as I knew. I don’t want to believe my mother killed herself and left me alone. Especially that she did it at a time when she knew I would be the one to find her. But I also don’t want to believe that my father would kill her. What child wants to believe either of those things about their parents?

“Everyone I spoke to had their own theories, of course, their own questions, but also their own stories. But nothing added up to either version the court had discussed, in my eyes. No one had seen even a single sign that my mother was depressed. I don’t remember her being sad, or distant, or in any way ill. My parents also weren’t unhappy in their marriage as far as anyone could say. Even those convinced that my father killed her conceded to me that they would have never expected even the slightest kind of disagreement between them. We had been a happy family and even with twenty years of hindsight and a lot of in-depth analysis of my childhood memories, that is still what I know to be true.”

Taylor paused and closed her eyes for a moment. “The only thing I was sure about at the end of my years of research was that there wasn’t a third person involved. I was devasted about that for a long time. I had clung so strongly to that belief because it would solve all my problems and then it was taken away from me, but I still didn’t know what had happened between my parents. And I believe at this point, there is no way to find out the truth anymore, so it is a matter of choosing what I want to believe.

“You want to know from me if my father deserves another chance. But the simple and painful truth is that I don’t know how to answer that. I tried to force myself to make a decision about which of those two versions I want to believe—suicide or murder—but I can’t make that decision. Because there would always remain a doubt in the back of my mind whether I had made the right choice.”

Taylor fell silent for a moment, and she became uncomfortably aware that everyone was staring at her. She felt a tear running down her cheek, and fisted her hands, not bothering to brush it away. “If I choose to believe my mother killed herself, I’ll always wonder if I’m the reason her murderer went free in the end. If I choose to believe my father killed her, I’ll always wonder if I condemned him to a life in prison when he was innocent. We’ll never know the truth. I have come to accept that over the last couple of weeks. And I can’t be the one to tip the scales on this decision. Regardless of what choice I’d made, I know it would haunt me in the end.”

She took a deep breath and met the gaze of the man leading the hearing for the first time. “A very good friend told me I needed to do what my heart told me, and that I needed to think about my own peace of mind first. So, I won’t make a decision in this case because both of the choices I have would break my heart. There is nothing I can tell you about the decision you have to make.”

Taylor sat down abruptly, the legs of the uncomfortable chair screeching loudly on the concrete. Silence reigned in the room and Taylor grabbed Buck’s hand as tightly as she could. She wished they could just leave, that they didn’t have to stay in the room until a decision had been made. Taylor stared straight ahead, still ignoring everyone else, and resolutely avoiding looking at her father.

There was neither relief nor regret when, in the end, it was announced her father would be let out on parole. Taylor closed her eyes because it became the only way to keep ignoring her relatives’ reactions between the outraged shouting on one side and the cheering on the other. Her lack of reaction proved to herself that she had made the right choice, and that made it easy to breathe for the first time that day, even though she knew none of her family would ever understand.

Somehow, Buck managed to lead her out of the room without anyone stopping them. There was one very brief moment when she met her father’s gaze and he shook his head, his disappointment clearly written over his face. She straightened her shoulders in response and raised her chin before turning away.

“It’s over,” Buck said quietly after he had followed her into her hotel room.

Taylor shook her head. “For some of them, it will never be over. This won’t be enough for my father. He’ll dedicate the rest of his life to proving to the world that he was wrongfully convicted and nothing else will matter to him.”

“Our flight is just after lunch tomorrow, do you want to see him before we drive to the airport?”

“No,” Taylor huffed and fell down on the bed. “I haven’t spoken to him in five years. I don’t intend to change that now.”

Buck frowned and sat down beside her. “Why?”

Taylor stared at the ceiling. “He is obsessed with proving his innocence, and with getting out of jail of course. Everything else comes a very distant third to that. Including me. When I was younger, my paternal uncle took me to visit my father every other month. I loved those visits up until my last year of high school. Even in jail, he tried to be a good dad during that time. The situation was horrible, of course, only seeing him in the tiny and barren visitors’ rooms. But he always listened, always supported my dreams, playfully threatened the first guy I dated, and let me cry in his arms when that asshole found out about my dad and … well, like I said, he turned out to be an asshole.”

Taylor inhaled shakily, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to ignore her tears. The bed moved beside her and then Buck pulled her into his arms. She turned and curled against his broad chest, not caring about the tears anymore.

“What happened senior year?” Buck asked.

Taylor shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe it was all the time he had already been in jail at that point, or maybe he suddenly thought I would be useful for his cause because I was old enough, or maybe I had changed, my behavior changing without me noticing. The older I got the more pressure the aunt I was living with put on me not to visit him anymore, and maybe that’s part of why I started dreading the visits. I don’t know.”

“I hate that your relatives put you in that position,” Buck murmured.

Taylor sighed and wrapped her arms around his waist. “At some point, all he started talking about when I came to visit was how I could help him to get free. And over time that turned into pressure to concentrate all my energy on that. He thought I had chosen to become a reporter to make the injustice of his case known to the public in the most efficient way I could find. He was furious when I legally changed my name, dropping his and taking my middle name as a new surname instead. How could I present to the public how loyal I was to him, how much I believed in him, if I didn’t share his name anymore?”

Buck tightened his arms around her.

“I became tired of arguing about that with him and stopped visiting. I kept writing him letters, telling him about my life, and I tried several times to explain to him why I couldn’t dedicate my life to his cause. I don’t know if he read them at all, I’ve barely received any replies to them. Earlier he looked at me as if he was disappointed, but maybe I misjudged that, who knows. I’ll … I’ll try to talk to him in a couple of weeks, or maybe months. Maybe we’ll be able to rebuild some kind of relationship if he learns how to be less focused on himself now that he is free at least.”

Buck hummed.

“Thank you for being here,” Taylor whispered. “I don’t know how I would have survived this day on my own.”

“But you were still determined to do it on your own.”

“You and Eddie are the first people I’ve met since I left home to go to college who I told about my past,” Taylor admitted. “No one else who didn’t already know me as a teenager has any idea about my past, my family. Of course I was determined to do it alone, I did all of this on my own because I only ever had myself.”

“Not anymore,” Buck said, softly but insistently. “You have Eddie and me on your side now. And I think Chris is in the process of adopting you as an honorary aunt. Which is a huge thing. If that boy decides to adopt you into his family, you aren’t ever getting out of it.”

Taylor chuckled. “I know you are speaking from experience there.”

“I am!” Buck laughed. “Do you want to spend the rest of the day lying in bed and ordering room service, or do you want to do something to distract you?”

Taylor bit her lip while pondering that question. Room service sounded great, but at the same time, she felt a burning desire to leave the room. “Let’s go out and see if we can find a movie theater or maybe even a theatre that’s showing something interesting. Or somewhere where we can dance.”

“It’s a little early for bars or clubs to be open, but we can tag that on after the theater,” Buck agreed.

***

Eddie grinned and pulled his phone out to take a picture of Christopher, who was holding one crutch to stabilize himself and using the other hand to hold up the sign he had made for Buck and Taylor. Christopher was so focused on looking for them in the crowd of people leaving the terminal that he hadn’t taken any notice of Eddie for several minutes.

When Buck had told them he would accompany Taylor to her father’s parole hearing, they’d had to deal with a not-so-small temper tantrum from Christopher, who hadn’t forgotten the promise Buck had made when he had come back from Boston. It had taken several hours before Christopher had calmed down and accepted the reasoning for why he and Eddie would stay back in LA.

As compensation, Christopher had decided to make an extra-special sign to welcome Buck and Taylor back, and he had spent most of Sunday working on it after he and Eddie had returned home from the airport, where they had dropped Buck and Taylor off. The sign was nearly as big as him, with big colorful letters spelling out “Welcome home, Buck & Taylor”, one figure in a firefighter’s turnout gear and another figure with long, red hair and a microphone in her hands beneath it.

“Buck! Taylor!” Christopher cried suddenly, waving his sign around.

Eddie laughed loudly as Buck answered with a no less enthusiastic, “Christopher!”

Buck hurried to them, grabbing Christopher in a tight hug and whirling him around, both of them excitedly laughing and ignoring the people who had to hurriedly take a step aside so as to not be hit by the sign or Christopher’s crutch. Taylor followed at a much more sedate pace, pushing her small suitcase with Buck’s even smaller bag on top of it in front of her. Eddie left Christopher and Buck to their reunion and greeted Taylor with a hug.

“Everything alright?” he asked quietly.

Taylor nodded, looking up at him with a small smile. “I’m good. Having Buck there made it so much easier to bear.”

“How did it go?”

Taylor shrugged and bit her lip. “He’s out on parole. Though, I don’t think I had anything to do with that. Neither side of my family will have been happy with what I had to say, but Buck thankfully made sure that none of them had a chance to speak to me.”

Eddie watched her with raised brows.

“I told them that I had no idea what to say or which side to take. I don’t know the truth, none of us will ever know the truth, except maybe my father. I told them not knowing the truth made it impossible for me to decide which side I wanted to believe. I’d really prefer to believe neither.”

“How do you feel about the outcome?” Eddie asked.

Taylor shrugged. “I’m a little surprised by how indifferent I am about it.”

Before Eddie could say any more, Christopher barreled in between them, wrapping his arms around Taylor’s waist. “Taylor! I’m happy you’re back!”

Eddie watched them with a grin until Buck stepped beside him and put an arm around his waist. Eddie turned his head and greeted Buck with a short kiss, before cocking his head and raising his brows in question. Buck answered with a short nod and a warm smile, his arm tightening around Eddie’s waist.

Taylor laughed and leaned down to return Christopher’s hug. “I’m glad to be back, too. And I see you survived the two days in which you didn’t see Buck!”

“Barely!” Christopher declared. “Dad said we are eating out before going home. Are you coming with us?”

Taylor grinned. “As you are my ride, I don’t have another choice, do I?”

Christopher giggled. “Nope. You are stuck with us.” He cocked his head, and his face took on a very serious expression. “Are you okay?”

“Of course.” Taylor tousled his hair with a soft smile. “I had Buck with me to hug me and make everything better, didn’t I?”

“Buck’s hugs are the best!” Christopher agreed, nodding earnestly.

“Hey,” Eddie protested, shoving his elbow into Buck’s side, who was chuckling. “I resent that!”

Christopher turned his head to him and watched him with big eyes. “Do you know anyone else whose hugs are better?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said with raised brows. “Yours.”

Christopher giggled. “Your hugs are the best, too, Daddy. But don’t make me decide!”

Eddie laughed. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. I don’t mind sharing that place with Buck.”

Taylor grinned and winked at them. “I believe you don’t mind sharing anything with Buck. Let’s get out of here, shall we? I really don’t care for the airport crowd.”

“I’ll carry your sign, Superman,” Buck volunteered, and a moment later he and Christopher were talking about that sign while Buck walked beside him, carefully making sure to keep people out of his way if they weren’t paying attention to the people around them.

Eddie took Buck’s bag and let Taylor loop her arm through his.

“What’s so fascinating about the sign Chris made?” Taylor asked.

“It’s about the trip to Boston,” Eddie said. “Chris didn’t make one when you came back then, and somehow it turned into this huge thing. And Buck promised that next time he went away Chris and I would go with him, which Chris was unhappy about having broken.”

“Ouch,” Taylor muttered.

Eddie shrugged. “We explained, and he understood eventually, once he stopped being angry long enough to listen. We try not to make promises we aren’t sure we can keep, but in this case, life just turned out differently than we had intended. He’ll need to learn that sometimes something like that happens, and plans have to change at times. So, he turned that disappointment around and spent all of Sunday making this sign to make sure Buck wouldn’t be disappointed again.”

Taylor giggled. “Everyone watching earlier wouldn’t believe Buck had only been gone for two days.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Eddie mumbled. “Was the same when you came back from Boston. They are just inseparable, and somehow Buck always finds the energy to match Christopher’s enthusiasm.”

“He is a great dad,” Taylor said.

Eddie grinned. “Couldn’t wish for a better co-parent. I don’t even know where I would be today as a parent without Buck. He stepped into a void in my life before he even knew me well enough to have an inclination that the void even existed.”

Sometimes he wondered how he had earned the devotion Buck had shown to Christopher since the very first time they had met right after the earthquake. There had been an instant connection between them, and while many people in Eddie’s life had been irritated by that—including Shannon, but most especially his parents—Eddie had always just been grateful that there was someone else prepared to go out of his way to give Christopher the best life he could possibly have.

“I don’t think I understood Chris’ role in Buck’s life until you were shot,” Taylor said quietly. “I drove to the hospital after hearing about a firefighter being shot because Buck wouldn’t answer his phone and I feared … He came out of the hospital, your blood still all over him, and all he could think about was getting to Chris and taking care of him. I had to drag him home and put him in the shower to make sure he would be clean before going to Chris. He wasn’t able to think that far, he only knew he needed to be with your son, his son.”

Eddie sucked in a breath. “Yeah, I heard about that. I … Thank you for helping Buck in those days. And the weeks after, when he was staying with us.”

“Every time,” Taylor said. “I would do the same for you. Well, now at least. Back in May, I was just really worried about Buck. I feared … No, I knew he would lose it if you didn’t pull through, at least for a little while. And then he would have probably only been able to pull himself back together for Chris.”

“Okay, let’s stop talking about this,” Eddie said darkly.

“Agreed,” Taylor nodded. “And let’s hope we won’t be in a situation like that again for a long time to come. Or ever. You both need to take better care of yourself. And of each other.”

“What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?” Eddie asked, partly to finally stop that whole subject.

Taylor shrugged. “Sitting at home, trying not to glare at the guy who was chosen over me to report live from Marina del Rey. I really don’t have any plans. I’m not big on celebrating the New Year.”

“You wanted to get that live gig?” Eddie asked grinning.

“Of course!” Taylor rolled her eyes. “But my boss told me, in these exact words, that he thought I had found my calling reporting about the little problems of my female friends, so I wouldn’t be interested doing the broadcast about the New Year’s celebrations.”

“Ass,” Eddie muttered, though under his breath, so Christopher hopefully wouldn’t hear him.

Taylor huffed. “Right? Though, the joke is on him in the long run. A producer who really can’t stand my boss heard that comment, and now they are giving me two hours broadcast time for my PPD project, with just a couple of stipulations put on it that I can easily live with.”

Eddie smiled. “That sounds great.”

“It is, mostly,” Taylor sighed. “It’s just … I’d have liked to get that time because they are interested in the subject, in reporting about it, or because they believe in my work, not because someone wants to get back at my current boss. Who hopefully won’t stay my boss for long.”

“You’ll rock it,” Eddie said confidently. “The circumstances might suck, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use this to show everyone what you are capable of. And in a couple of years when you have made a name for yourself, you’ll look back at your asshole boss and laugh.”

Taylor laughed. “That’s the spirit. Thanks, I think I needed to hear that.”

“So, do you want to spend New Year’s Eve with us?”

“Won’t your family protest you bringing a stranger to their party?” Taylor asked after a moment of silence.

Eddie shook his head. “Buck, Chris, and I are staying at home. I just want to have a quiet night in after the year we’ve had. But you are more than welcome to join us. You don’t have to spend the day alone.”

“I’ll think about it.” Talyor leaned against him a little. “Thanks for the invite. Is it okay if I make that decision on short notice? Because sometimes I just feel like staying home alone, especially on days like that.”

Eddie hummed. “Yeah, of course, that’s no problem.”

Chapter 22

Eddie dragged Buck to the back of the loft as Bobby gathered their whole shift there after taking their station offline for an hour in the late evening. Usually that was done when they had to maintain their equipment, but Bobby had warned him about the announcement he would make. Eddie wanted to get Buck out of the way of the rest of their crew, even though he didn’t think any of them would react negatively to Buck.

“I have an announcement to make that might cause some contentious discussion,” Bobby began, standing in front of the kitchen island, his arms crossed over his chest. “I want you to keep that discussion out of this station. If you have questions or concerns, come to me with them.”

Eddie pulled Buck into a one-armed hug while observing the rest of their crew. He wondered how much they already suspected about what Bobby would tell them today. He knew that the tension between Hen and Buck right after Buck had come back from medical leave hadn’t been missed, but no one had included him in their speculations. No one had asked him about it either, accepting that Buck and Hen had decided not to talk about it. But Eddie had heard Chimney’s name mentioned a couple of times and he had been sure the others were speculating about the situation.

“In early October there was an incident between two of our own while off shift that resulted in criminal charges and an investigation by the department,” Bobby said. “The two people involved were Chimney and Buck, and we all know what kind of situation they were in right after the blackout.”

Some turned to Buck now, and Eddie glared at them, daring anyone to say anything, to ask questions even though Bobby had told them to come to him with them. Hen left her place near the kitchen and came over to them, hovering beside them in a show of support Eddie hadn’t expected. He knew Buck and Hen had talked out their differences a while ago, but the whole situation had still been a hit to their friendship.

Bobby cleared his throat pointedly, and everyone turned back to him. “Chimney punched Buck in the face, resulting in a concussion and a hairline fracture. He took a plea deal concerning the aggravated battery charges he faced, and the fire department sanctioned him with four months of suspension. Chimney will also not return to our shift or even the 118 as a whole. It has not yet been decided which station he will work at in the future.”

Buck sighed and Eddie wasn’t sure if it was in sorrow or relief. Buck was still alternating between anger, disappointment, and sorrow on a daily or sometimes even hourly basis when thinking about Chimney and the consequences for all of them. Eddie knew it would take a long time for Buck to overcome the misplaced guilt he had taken on for all of it, and that Buck still believed Chimney leaving the 118 would damage their crew irrevocably.

“Please refrain from bothering Buck with any questions,” Bobby continued. “I’m making this announcement mainly so that there will be no speculation about what happened, or different stories floating around. I, as the captain of this shift, but also the LAFD as a whole, won’t ever tolerate one of our own striking a fellow first responder in any way, no matter if they are on shift or not. I know Chimney had been here the longest of all of us and he will be missed, but he will have to live with the consequences of his actions.”

Bobby paused, but no one moved or made a sound. “I’m sad, disappointed, and furious that something like this happened between two members of our shift. Some of you might think Chimney’s punishment is too hard or unfair, but I don’t care for that opinion. I would never expect anyone to work with someone who assaulted them, so it was out of question for me to accept Chimney back on our shift anyway. I would have also argued against anyone who so much as suggested that Buck transfer to another station instead. Thankfully, no one involved in the whole process even hinted at that.”

Buck shifted uncomfortably beside Eddie. They had talked about his little insane idea to go so that Chimney could stay, and how Bobby had reacted to that. Eddie had wholeheartedly agreed with Bobby’s whole assessment. He hated how Buck doubted himself in all of this, but Eddie hoped Buck would finally be able to start working through this now that the situation had been resolved as much as possible.

“I expect every single one of you to be professional and decent about this situation,” Bobby said. “I’m open to discussing anyone’s concerns with them in private. I won’t tolerate any harassment, even if it’s just to satisfy your curiosity, but especially if it’s because you are unhappy with the decisions made.”

Eddie didn’t think anyone missed that Bobby’s gaze rested for several seconds during his next break on Hen, who solemnly nodded at their captain.

“We are offline until eleven, and will eat in half an hour,” Bobby said next, clearly dismissing the topic of his announcement. He distributed tasks checking their equipment and refueling all their vehicles, and ended it with, “Buck, Eddie, Hen, you are on kitchen duty with me.”

There wasn’t any of the usual talk as the rest of the shift stood and left the loft to take care of their assigned tasks. Eddie wished he’d been able to look into their heads because it was impossible to gauge their reactions just from their expressions or body language. He wondered if the reason for Bobby’s announcement was worry about backlash, and Eddie would like to be warned about that.

“Hey, Ravi. You are on kitchen duty with us!” Buck called out as he jumped out of his chair.

Ravi froze at the top of the stairs and turned slowly, looking from Buck to Bobby, Hen, Eddie, and Buck again with a frown. “Uhm, Cap didn’t ask me to stay? And … I got a feeling this was a semiprivate follow-up discussion of his announcement between just you four? Because you are obviously the ones who are closest to Chimney of all of us.”

Buck chuckled. “True. But Cap also didn’t assign you any other specific task, and you are my probie, so I decide you are staying. If anyone tries to get answers to their nosy questions that they don’t dare ask Bobby or Hen, they’ll probably come to you because you’re my probie, and they will think you know more about the situation than anyone else.”

“Which I don’t,” Ravi said unhappily.

“Doesn’t matter,” Buck said. “You are attached to me, so they’ll just assume. First, unload the dishwasher, then get the plates and cutlery and set the tables for everyone.”

“If anyone approaches you with questions, you send them to me,” Bobby said, looking straight at Ravi as they all gathered in the kitchen. “I don’t want to have any gossip about this around here. There will be very little public information, and I don’t want rumors to start flying around. Depending on the kind of rumor it could turn ugly, and we have had enough of that.”

Ravi blew out a breath. “Yeah, okay.”

“But you are right, this is supposed to be a semiprivate continuation of my announcement,” Bobby said. “I know Hen has regular contact with Chimney, but have you heard anything from him, Buck, Eddie?”

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t expect him to reach out to me either.”

Buck sighed. “No. And … I really don’t want to talk to him right now.”

Bobby nodded. “This was Chimney’s second significant reprimand, so there are some more consequences than I mentioned to the rest.”

“Second?” Buck asked, clearly surprised.

“The accident?” Eddie asked.

Bobby nodded.

“What about the accident?” Buck asked. “I assume you mean the rebar incident?”

“He caused that accident,” Hen said quietly, not meeting anyone’s gaze.

“And someone pointed out to me recently that it reeked of things being swept under the rug since there were no legal consequences,” Eddie said.

Hen frowned. “Taylor?”

Eddie shrugged. “And? It’s valid, isn’t it?”

“There was nothing swept under the rug,” Hen said, huffing. “The investigation ended with the decision that, since no one else had been hurt, Chimney’s injury was punishment enough.”

“But it is officially in his records that he was responsible for the accident,” Bobby interjected. “And that led to the department reprimanding Chimney for it because that’s not behavior we can accept in our firefighters.”

“The department?” Eddie asked. “Not you?”

Bobby sighed. “I wasn’t in a place to even think about it. Frankly, we should have never been called to that scene. I was too worried about Chimney to even contemplate how I should have reacted as his captain after such a violation of our code of conduct.” He looked at Ravi. “Let that be a lesson to you, and try to learn from our mistakes. There is a reason why we should never be called to a scene with a victim we have a personal connection to, and why we should make sure that when a relationship is discovered at a scene, we keep that firefighter as far away from the rescue as possible.”

Eddie sucked in a breath, unexpectedly hit by memories of Shannon lying on the ground in front of him. Buck was beside him before he could shake off those memories, one hand on Eddie’s back, the other curled around Eddie’s wrist.

“Are you alright?” Ravi asked confused.

“We were called to the accident where Eddie’s wife died, but we didn’t know who it was until we got there,” Buck said quietly.

“Oh,” Ravi muttered.

“Which only proves my point,” Bobby continued quietly. “We have a responsibility to protect each other. In Eddie’s case, it would have been difficult to prevent the situation because no one knew before our arrival that Shannon had been involved in the accident. In Chimney’s case, he asked for us, and someone made the decision to actually call us. They should not have done that. They should have only informed us when Chimney was on the way to the hospital, or even only after our shift.”

Ravi nodded.

“Anyway, this is Chimney’s second reprimand for violating the code of conduct. The next time he loses his temper in such a way, he will be out of a job,” Bobby continued subdued. “I do hope he is aware of that, and I will eventually talk with him about this. He is a good firefighter and an excellent paramedic. I don’t want him to end his career before it has to, he has damaged it enough as it is.”

“He isn’t there yet,” Hen said, staring down at the fruit plate she was preparing. “The plea deal and the department’s stipulations both include anger management, and he started that last week. He has chosen a program that is a lot more extensive than either the court or the LAFD required of him, so I’m hoping he at least recognizes that he needs the therapy.”

Buck sighed. “Or he’s only doing it because Maddie told him he needed to. But I’m not comfortable talking about what kind of therapy Chimney chose or didn’t choose. That’s not something we have a right to discuss.”

“If he doesn’t reach out to me first, I will give Chimney a couple of weeks before reaching out to him myself,” Bobby said to Hen. “I’d appreciate it if you would tell me when you think it will be a good time for me to speak with Chimney.”

“He hasn’t called you at all?” Hen asked surprised.

Bobby shook his head. “As far as I know, you are the only one he has had any contact with since he left.”

Hen frowned. “Oh.”

“What did you mean when you said he damaged his career?” Eddie asked. “Transferring stations could be a chance for advancement for him.”

“Except he won’t ever be considered for another promotion,” Bobby said. “They won’t promote someone to captain who has shown twice that he has a problem managing his anger, especially as he attacked another firefighter. Especially not with him technically being a superior to the person he attacked.”

“Could we stop calling it an attack?” Buck asked, voice tense.

Eddie bit his lip to keep from commenting, and Hen sighed.

Bobby continued without pause, “So, Chimney has reached the top of his ladder, career-wise. He has been informed of that already, and I don’t expect him to be happy about it.”

Hen sighed. “I don’t think he has really thought about any of that yet. He is very focused on Maddie right now, and on repairing as much of that relationship as he can.”

“Will he be able to redeem himself at all?” Buck asked with a frown. “Do anything to get back on the track to another promotion?”

Bobby shook his head. “I can’t imagine so.”

“Buck,” Hen said and waited until Buck was looking at her. “Chimney knew the stakes after his first reprimand. He knew what a second one would do to his career. He also knew the line that Maddie had drawn for herself that she wouldn’t ever let any partner cross again. He knew all that, and he still let his anger consume him.”

“Don’t tell me you aren’t feeling bad for him as well,” Buck muttered.

Eddie took a deep breath and bit his tongue to stop any comment about that whole topic.

Hen smiled sadly. “Yeah, I feel bad for him. But that doesn’t change that these are consequences he brought on himself. I know I was … an asshole about this for a while, but I wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer more than you already did, and protecting Chimney from these consequences would have led to that.”

“Why are you feeling so bad about this?” Ravi asked with a confused frown, stopping halfway out of the kitchen with a stack of dishes in his hands.

Hen took the plate she had prepared and clapped her other hand on his shoulder, pushing him in the direction of the table. “I’ll explain that to you later when we have a moment to ourselves, okay?”

Ravi nodded, still frowning, but Eddie was glad they wouldn’t have to analyze the inner workings of Buck’s psyche right now. He’d prefer that it wouldn’t be done at all, and that they could just help Buck get over the guilt he still felt about the whole situation. On the other hand, Ravi would be stuck with them for some time as Buck had claimed him as his probie, and it would be good if he knew a couple of things about how all of them worked.

***

“Hey, you alright?” Eddie dropped down on the couch beside Buck, who had been sitting there with his head resting against the backrest and staring up at the ceiling since they had come up to the loft twenty minutes ago.

After their very late dinner they had gotten three solid hours of sleep before they had been called out to a fire. They had still three more hours left on their shift, and most of the others had returned to the bunk room after cleaning up. Only Bobby had gone to his office, and both their ambulances were still on the way back from delivering their patients to the hospital. Eddie knew Buck wouldn’t go back to sleep this early in the morning, choosing instead to wait until he could go home and get two or three hours of sleep without the risk of being woken by the alarm again, and he had decided to join Buck instead of trying to get some more sleep himself.

Buck huffed and shook his head, but he grinned. “Yeah. You are aware that I’m very capable of taking care of myself, right? I told Bobby the same thing a while ago. And really, no one would have bothered me even without Bobby’s little speech. This is a good crew, and they all saw Hen’s behavior change from hostile to apologetic, which was probably the biggest indicator to everyone about the nature of the conflict between me and Chimney.”

“Bobby just wanted to be cautious,” Eddie said. “It’s a good thing Chimney only complained to Hen about his version of the events and cut off everyone else. This could have gotten really ugly really fast, Buck.”

Buck swallowed. “Yeah. Group dynamics suck sometimes. But no one has bothered me, except to ask if I’m alright. The way Bobby worded that, no one missed that I was out for two weeks on medical right after that confrontation.”

Eddie chuckled. “Yeah, and most of them were already here when you somehow worked a miracle and came back from getting your leg crushed, so they know that not much stops you from coming to work.”

Buck sighed. “I’m not looking forward to the change this will cause.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “Do you really think there will be so much change? Chimney has been gone for two and a half months already. I didn’t notice much change in that time.”

“But that was when everyone still thought he would come back,” Buck muttered, closing his eyes. “Now everyone knows he’s not coming back, and he will probably be put on B or C shift wherever he ends up at, to minimize the possibility of us working together even more.”

“You know, I don’t think I could work with him again,” Eddie whispered. “So I’m glad the department is taking these precautions. I wouldn’t trust him to have your back, no matter what happens when he finishes his suspension and therapy. That kind of trust in him is just broken, and it’s not something I think he’d ever be able to rebuild with me.”

“You are very biased,” Buck grinned.

“True,” Eddie chuckled. “But I think even Hen would pause and wonder if you and Chimney should be sent into a fire together again after she listened to him raging about you for weeks.” He shook his head. “I wish I knew what to say so that you’d stop feeling guilty about Chimney having to change stations.”

“Just let it rest for a while and give me a little time,” Buck muttered.

Eddie frowned, but after a moment, he nodded.

“I’ll bring Maddie home on the 30th,” Buck said. “She’s extremely nervous about it, and I’ll probably stay the night on her couch. She’ll spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with the Lees. After that, she’ll hopefully feel secure enough with Jee again to not struggle with spending the night alone with her.”

“And Chimney?”

“Won’t be anywhere near the apartment,” Buck said. “I meant it when I said earlier that I have no interest in seeing him at the moment. I made sure the Lees know that, and I think Maddie asked him to not come by the apartment as long as she hasn’t invited him.”

“And he is okay with that?” Eddie asked. “I mean, technically, it’s his apartment.”

“They changed the lease as soon as Maddie moved in with him, so it’s both their apartment. And as far as I know, he is doing everything to make Maddie happy right now. I’m sure he will leave her alone until she tells him otherwise.”

“I’m sure the threat of not being allowed to see Jee-Yun will do the rest when he finally understands that he doesn’t have much of a chance to get Maddie back,” Eddie muttered.

Buck looked at him with a frown. “She won’t keep holding that over his head. If he keeps to the stipulations she raised this one time, she’ll never bring that up again. It would be cruel to hold that over his head for years to come.”

Eddie shook his head. “But she put it out there once, and Chimney would be an idiot to ever forget it. Maddie doesn’t need to hold it over his head, because if he is any kind of decent father, he’ll always remember that stepping out of line again could cost him contact with his daughter.”

Eddie sighed and watched Buck carefully. Only the future would tell if the things Chimney had agreed to were to get Maddie back, or if he was actually interested in building the friendship and co-parenting relationship Maddie had clearly stated was all she could still imagine. Eddie didn’t think Buck had thought that far ahead or wanted to think about that right now, so he would keep his doubts to himself and hoped that Chimney turned out to be a better person than Eddie thought he was at the moment.

“Has Maddie made any plans for the future yet?” Eddie asked to change the topic.

Buck grinned. “She is going back to dispatch in March. Sue for the win in that, but May also told me the dispatcher who basically took Maddie’s place some time ago has caused a lot of trouble and is leaving. Maddie has to do the orientation course again to catch up with all changes made in the ten months she hasn’t worked, but that’s all.”

Eddie chuckled. “I missed that gossip from May! Tell me more.”

“You were too busy entertaining Chris, Denny, Harry, and the new friend they made during the Christmas party,” Buck laughed. “So, there is this new dispatcher, or not exactly new, but transferred back. She is excellent at her job but otherwise seems to be a real bitch. Especially to May, apparently.”

Buck paused and huffed. “Because the last thing May needed was another bully in her life. Anyway, said dispatcher started her career here at our dispatch, but transferred away years ago. Her attitude got her in trouble at her old workplace, just not enough that they could let her go, so they sent her elsewhere. She used some old contacts to get transferred back and the fact that many still knew her, and somehow managed it so that no one learned she had been pushed to transfer instead of finally agreeing to come back on her own, because she had been asked repeatedly.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “What did she do to need that kind of subterfuge?”

“No idea,” Buck said. “And I don’t think May knows. But once she was here, she refused to wear their uniform and was allowed to get away with it. Took May’s coffee on her first day. Took over a call from May in the middle of the whole mess. You remember the call with the chain saw guy? May wasn’t the only one she focused on, but it was only this bad with two or three people in total. And Josh of all people seemed to have been a little bit blind … which I really wouldn’t have expected from him. But anyway, May, being Athena’s daughter and all, managed to gather enough evidence after confronting the other dispatcher didn’t change anything and presented it to Sue and Josh together, who has apparently been very chagrined and apologetic about his own dismissiveness.”

“And so, the other dispatcher will leave, conveniently making room for Maddie?”

Buck shrugged. “I’m pretty sure Sue would have taken Maddie back anyway if there had been any open post. It’s not often that they aren’t hiring, there are enough people who become dispatchers but can’t deal with it in the long run, after all. But yeah, thanks to this snafu Maddie can practically get back to her old place.”

“I’m glad for Maddie,” Eddie said. “One less thing she needs to worry about. And I’m very happy for May that she was able to handle that situation and come out on top.”

Buck chuckled. “Yeah. I think it’s really good for May that she managed to handle that. But it’s fucked up that something like this still happens between adults. I’m glad this person will be gone before Maddie comes back to work.”

“Is there anything that needs to be prepared at the apartment for Maddie to come home?”

Buck smiled softly and shook his head. “The Lees and Chimney are taking care of all of that. All I have to worry about is getting Maddie from the clinic. I’ll be home in time for lunch on the 31st, in case Chris starts whining about me not being there.”

“Do we need to worry about how possessive he’s gotten about your time?” Eddie asked with a frown. He had thought it cute when Christopher had asked over and over again for Buck to move in with them and spent more time with them in general, but now he was still complaining every time Buck didn’t spend all his time with them when he was off work.

“I don’t think so.” Buck shook his head and took Eddie’s hand. “He hasn’t thrown any temper tantrums about it, so I guess we can just leave it without comment until he gets over it. But speaking of New Year’s Eve, Taylor has been bitching on and off about not getting to do the live broadcast she tried to get assigned to, and I know she doesn’t have any other plans. Would you mind if we invite her over?”

Eddie laughed. “I already did. She said she’ll decide spontaneously.”

“Good.” Buck blinked surprised before he started to grin. “I’m glad you two are getting along this well now.”

Eddie pulled Buck into a hug. “I’m glad you didn’t lose that friendship over her decision to go to the police.”

Buck sighed and leaned his head against Eddie’s neck. “Yeah, me too.”

Chapter 23

Buck kept a hand on Maddie’s back as he led her down the hall of the apartment building on their way to her apartment. He had picked her up from the clinic earlier, and the longer they had sat in the car, the more she had started to fidget. Maddie had been silent for most of the drive, wringing her hands in her lap and staring out of the window with a deep frown.

“It will be alright,” Buck whispered, smiling. “Mrs. Lee has promised me that she and Chimney cleaned the apartment, and she stocked the fridge with a week’s worth of prepared meals among other things. You don’t have to worry about anything for the next couple of days except reconnecting with Jee.”

Maddie folded her hands together and pressed them against her mouth. “But what if that is something I can’t do?”

“Mrs. Lee has been visiting you twice a week for the last three weeks,” Buck reminded her softly. “You and Jee bonded just fine in that time, didn’t you? And I’m staying tonight while you and Jee get used to being home again. Everything will be alright.”

Maddie nodded and brushed away the tears shining in her eyes as they reached the door to her apartment. Buck knew how scared Maddie was of coming home again, of taking care of Jee-Yun again, and of facing all of that on her own. It was still a difficult adjustment for her how much her personal situation had changed since she had left. Coming home to the apartment she had shared with Chimney, where they had planned to build a family together, knowing that none of their plans would come true anymore, had to be so difficult for her. And maybe part of the problem was also that this was the apartment where she’d had the accident with Jee-Yun that had finally made her break.

Not for the first time Buck wondered what he could have done differently to change where they had ended up, but he pushed that thought resolutely away. He needed to stop pondering what-ifs, needed to stop regretting the path they were on now. It was a re-occurring theme in his conversations with Dr. Copeland, but getting past them was a slow process.

Maddie’s hands shook as she unlocked the door, and she took a deep breath before opening it. Buck followed right behind her, a hand still on her back. Nothing had changed inside the apartment since Buck had been here last and noticed details like that, long before the fateful days of the blackout. For a moment he felt mocked by that fact when everything else in their lives had changed so dramatically, and he shook his head about the absurdity of the thought.

Mrs. Lee stood up from the couch with a bright smile on her face, Jee-Yun in her arms. “Look who is here, little sunshine!”

Jee-Yun laughed and shrieked as soon as she saw Maddie, reaching her arms out for her, leaning dangerously far away from Mrs. Lee’s body. Mrs. Lee laughed and held the baby steady with a hand on her chest until Maddie was near enough to take Jee-Yun out of her arms. Maddie rocked Jee-Yun in her arms, whispering to her, completely lost to the rest of the world around them.

“It’s good to see them at home together again, isn’t it?” Mrs. Lee said quietly.

Buck smiled without looking away from his sister. “I’m just sad thinking of how many milestones Maddie missed. She had been looking forward so much to being a mom in the beginning. It’s so unfair that she had such a rocky start with it.”

Mrs. Lee put a hand on his back. “They have all the time they need to overcome this difficult start. And your sister has all the support she could wish for. You don’t need to worry so much about her.”

Buck cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t have expected…”

Mrs. Lee chuckled. “For me to have any nice words for you? I don’t condone what Howie has done. He needs a lot of help himself, and I’m sad we didn’t see that earlier, that we didn’t step in more when we saw how much they were struggling in the beginning.”

“How is Chimney?” Buck asked. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about their shared regret, not with Maddie and Jee-Yun right in front of them, and not with the two of them basically on different fronts in the whole conflict.

“Not happy.” Mrs. Lee sighed. “But he has started to go to therapy, and I think it is helping. It’s good to have him home with us for the moment. We are family, Mr. Buckley. We will get through this together.”

Buck nodded slowly. “It’s Buck, by the way. If only to not confuse little Jee about why her grandparents are addressing her uncle so formally. She has been good, right? This whole odyssey Chimney took her on didn’t hinder her development, did it?”

“She is as healthy as she can be,” Mrs. Lee said, smiling up at him. “Howie made sure his daughter got everything she needed, including all the movement and exploration time she needs at this age. He has the potential to be a good father when he finally accepts that that’s all that is left for him now.”

“Good,” Buck murmured. “That’s good.”

“I’m Anne.”

Buck smiled, and for the first time since he had stepped into this apartment he didn’t feel sad. “From grandparent to uncle? Thank you. You know you will be the only grandparents that will have any role in Jee-Yun’s life, right?”

“I’ve heard some not very nice things about your parents, yes,” Anne nodded. “And I doubt Howie’s father will even remember he has a grandchild now.”

“I’m glad you are here for that role,” Buck whispered. “And that you are here for Chimney. I’m glad he isn’t alone, that he has people by his side despite the mistakes he made in the last few months.”

“You were worried about him.”

Buck huffed. “He hadn’t been himself, but every time I talked to him it just seemed to get worse. But I have been informed by several people that it’s not my place to fix him.”

“Howie can only do that himself,” Anne agreed. “It’s admirable how much you still care for him.”

Buck shrugged. He didn’t feel very comfortable with how much he still worried about Chimney, but he couldn’t just stop caring for him. They had been friends for years, and up until Chimney had been brought back to California Buck had hoped they would eventually be able to reconcile and overcome the things that had happened. He hadn’t yet been able to emotionally catch up to the realization that he didn’t want that friendship back anymore.

Anne stayed for two hours, and most of that time they spent admiring Jee-Yun while Anne shared pictures and stories of her with Buck and Maddie. Buck knew how anxious Maddie was about being alone with her daughter again, and he suspected Anne knew that as well, but eventually she left, promising that her husband would pick up Maddie and Jee-Yun in the morning.

The afternoon went by quickly, with Buck mostly keeping out of Maddie’s way while she got comfortable with Jee-Yun and started to familiarize herself with the apartment again. There was just one moment when Buck took Jee-Yun to give Maddie a moment to herself, and that was when she noticed the sign Christopher had made for her leaning against the TV. Albert had come over to pick up the sign a couple of days ago and had sent Eddie a picture of its placement, even making subtle corrections to its placement twice until Christopher had been happy with it. Maddie had started to sob uncontrollably when Buck had explained that Christopher had made it for her because he knew that Jee-Yun was too small to make one of her own, but that he knew how much Jee-Yun would have missed her mom.

After dinner and preparing Jee-Yun for bed, Maddie stared at the crib in the living room with a frown until she finally huffed and said, “I don’t want Jee to sleep in a different room than me!”

Buck raised his brows. “Do you think the door to the bedroom is wide enough to get Jee’s bed in there without having to take it apart?”

Maddie sighed and shrugged.

“Okay, put Jee in her stroller and we’ll just try it,” Buck decided. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll take it apart after breakfast and put it back together in the bedroom before Mr. Lee comes over.”

It turned out to be a very tight fit, but somehow they managed to move the crib into the other room and transfer Jee-Yun from stroller to bed without waking her. They were both panting in exhaustion when they collapsed on the couch a little while later.

“I feel so silly,” Maddie murmured.

“You aren’t silly,” Buck said and pulled her into his arms. He had missed her so much, and it had never felt like it was enough when he had gone to visit her at the clinic. He had also never felt comfortable to simply hug her and hold her during those visits. Now she leaned into him and pulled her feet up onto the couch, settling against his chest.

“I second guess every move I make with Jee,” Maddie whispered. “You are here tonight, and tomorrow night I’ll stay with the Lees, but after that, I’ll be all alone with her at night. What if something happens again?”

“The pills you are taking now, are they making you tired or fatigued?”

Maddie sighed. “No.”

“And you are feeling a lot better overall, right?” Buck asked. “I can’t even imagine how scary that accident with Jee had to have been, but you are in such a better place now. And if something happens, we are all just a call away.”

Maddie chuckled. “And Jee is crawling now and she’ll start walking soon. I know she’ll have a lot of accidents in the future, and I just have to learn to live with it.”

“You should have gotten a lot of training in that with me,” Buck agreed. “But let’s hope she doesn’t take after me in that.”

“Yeah, and don’t you dare teach her your ways!” Maddie said, swatting his chest playfully. “But that’s exactly why I feel silly. I shouldn’t be this insecure with my own daughter.”

“I don’t think it’s Jee who is making you feel insecure, but yourself,” Buck murmured. “You’ll need to learn to trust yourself again. And being all alone with her now isn’t making that any easier.”

“Do you think I made a mistake with Chimney?”

“No!” Buck bit his tongue because that had come out a lot harsher than he had intended. “Jee’s happiness and well-being isn’t dependent on you being in a romantic relationship with her father. To the contrary, if you don’t feel safe in that relationship, it would hurt Jee in the long run.”

“I know,” Maddie whispered.

“Good. Has Chimney said anything about this?”

Maddie shook her head. “He has been very careful about the things he has talked about with me. But I know he is expecting me to take him back eventually. I don’t know what I’ll do when he loses his patience.”

“I hope his therapy will help him acknowledge that he needs to let go of that hope,” Buck said. “And you shouldn’t worry about everything else until you have to face it.”

“How can I start to build a future for Jee-Yun when so many things are … When there is so much unrest and uncertainty in our life?”

Buck chuckled. “Was there any certainty in our life when you were raising me?”

Maddie huffed. “You need to stop drawing these comparisons to your own childhood. I was never your mother, never should have needed to do some of the things I did because our parents didn’t do them.”

“It’s really good to hear you say that,” Buck whispered. “Because for the longest time I think you were stuck in the mindset of seeing me more as your child than your brother. And sadly, that was our reality before you went to college, but that shouldn’t be how we are now with each other.”

“Yeah.” Maddie sighed. “Did you have any contact with them while I was gone?”

“No,” Buck shook his head. “And I doubt Chimney called them. They have no idea what’s been going on, and I’m quite happy with keeping it that way, aren’t you?”

“It was a mistake trying to reconcile with them.”

Buck sighed. “I can’t really argue with that. When you invited them, I couldn’t understand it. I understood better eventually, after I had digested the whole … after I had come to terms a little with learning about Daniel.”

“I talked a lot about Daniel during my therapy. I have talked more about Daniel than I ever have since he died. I didn’t know how much … that still hurt. I spent years barely thinking about him at all.”

“Our parents did you a great disservice, not just by burdening you with all the responsibility for me, but also by not letting you grieve your brother.”

“Our brother,” Maddie corrected a little irritated.

Buck shook his head. “I’m sorry, but he is just a name to me, Mads. I know you loved him, and he probably loved me, but I don’t have any connection to him. I don’t want to have a connection. I talked a lot about him in therapy as well, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have the obligation to feel anything for a person I never knew, even if that person was my brother. Which doesn’t mean I won’t happily listen to you when you want to share your memories of Daniel.”

Maddie was silent for a long time, shaking in his arms, and Buck wasn’t sure if she was crying or not. He just held her and waited, rubbing circles on her back. It had taken him a long time to come to a decision about how he wanted to handle the whole situation with Daniel, but this was the only scenario he had ever felt even remotely comfortable with.

“I would like to tell you about him,” Maddie said after a long time. “He was my best friend. I hated them so much for erasing him from our life. I didn’t have an ounce of compassion for them for the longest time because of that.”

Buck swallowed. “Do you still want to mend fences with them?”

“No.” Maddie’s voice broke. “I thought I needed to, for Jee-Yun. But I don’t want to have them in her life. They would only manage to make it all about themselves, about their own pain that they are still wallowing in.”

“Then we won’t have them in our life,” Buck agreed. He suspected that wouldn’t be too difficult to achieve as long as they didn’t reach out to their parents on their own. He wasn’t even sure that they had called even once since Jee-Yun’s birth, and they clearly hadn’t tried to reach out to Maddie over the last three months.

Maddie sighed.

“You’ll find your feet again in no time, Mads,” Buck promised.

***

Taylor leaned to the side and whispered, “Are they always like this?”

Christopher giggled and leaned against her side, his hands shaking so much from his laughter that he nearly dropped the controller. “Always! They are so silly.”

Taylor glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where they could hear Buck and Eddie bickering and flirting, and it was probably a good thing they weren’t in the section of the kitchen Christopher and she could see through the open door. In theory, Buck had banned them all from the kitchen to prepare their dinner, and Taylor and Christopher had followed that instruction by starting a very cut-throat game of Mario Kart, but Eddie had remained behind with Buck.

“Do you think we need to be worried about our dinner?” Taylor whispered. “Should we start making plans about what kind of take-out we want to have?”

Christopher shook his head, still giggling madly. “No. Dad won’t endanger Buck’s cooking. We’ll just have to wait longer, maybe. But I don’t care about waiting. They are really happy.”

“And you are happy with that as well?” Taylor asked, wrapping one arm around his shoulder. It was strange to suddenly have a child in her life who somehow saw her as some kind of an aunt, and it was something she still needed to get used to. Buck had warned her, but she hadn’t believed him until she had seen the sign Christopher had made for them at the airport.

“Really happy.” Christopher turned his head to look up at her. “I’ve wished for it forever and ever. Are you sad that Buck isn’t your boyfriend anymore?”

Taylor chuckled. “Not at all. You remember what I told you at the aquarium?”

Christopher grinned. “That you were there to push Buck and Dad together because they were too dumb to see how much they were in love with each other.”

“Exactly,” Talyor nodded. “I enjoyed spending time with Buck, and we were both in a little bit of a bad place and it helped a lot to have someone we could just vent to, and who would let us talk. But I knew all along that in his heart Buck belonged here with you and Eddie.”

Christopher nodded.

“And I’m very happy for the three of you that you are finally living as the family you have been all along.” Taylor tapped the tip of Christopher’s nose with her finger.

“You are family, too,” Christopher declared very earnestly. “Grandma and Abuelo would say you can’t be because you aren’t really related to us, but Abuela and I think that’s a very sad way to look at life. Family is who we chose to be family, and we have chosen you!”

Taylor chuckled. “You and your Abuela have chosen me?” She had met Isabel Diaz a couple of times while Eddie had been recovering, but she couldn’t remember ever talking much with her.

Christopher giggled. “Nooo, Dad and I have chosen Buck, and Buck and I have chosen you. I’m not sure I can include Dad in that yet, but he’ll come around.” He patted her knee as if he thought she needed that reassurance.

Taylor laughed. “I’m sure he will. Or maybe he already has. I mean, he wouldn’t have invited me tonight otherwise, would he?”

Christopher cocked his head. “That’s true.”

“Are you up to giving me another chance to finally beat you on Rainbow Road?” Taylor asked.

Christopher watched her with a wide grin. “You can have all the chances. But you will never beat me!”

“Just you wait!” Taylor said as Christopher sat up straight again, turning back to the TV. She knew he was probably right, if only because she hadn’t played any video games seriously since high school. Back then, Taylor and Rachel had been sharks at Mario Kart, but after over half an hour of being beaten by Christopher over and over again, Taylor had admitted at least to herself that getting back into the game wasn’t as easy as she had expected it to be.

They played for another half hour before Eddie joined them and Taylor could finally claim a win for herself, though she was sure Eddie wasn’t usually this easily beaten when he wasn’t sulking about being banned from the kitchen by Buck and relentlessly teased by his son about it. He did find his bearings after a couple of rounds, and Taylor took a step back from the game, watching father and son compete as if there was much more at stake than their pride.

Dinner was filled with happy chatter between all of them, Taylor and Christopher bursting out in giggles whenever Buck and Eddie got lost in each other’s gazes, which happened a lot. They were sitting side by side, with less space between them than could possibly be comfortable while eating and stealing things from each other’s plates for no other reason than that they could.

After dinner, Taylor found herself with Buck in the living room, with Eddie and Christopher in the kitchen cleaning up. This time it had been Buck who had been banished from the work in the kitchen, and after a moment of silent communication between Taylor and Eddie, she had made it her job to make sure Buck abide by that ban.

Buck glared at her as she pushed him to the couch. “I could help in the kitchen. Just because I cooked doesn’t mean I can’t help with the clean-up!”

Taylor laughed and sat down beside him. “Right. You can also live without seeing Eddie for twenty minutes and making heart eyes at him. As much as Chris and I enjoy watching you do that, I don’t think it would actually help to get the kitchen clean.”

“You are exasperating,” Buck muttered.

“If that’s what you have to tell yourself.”

“I suddenly can’t seem to remember why I was happy that you came over after all.”

Taylor grinned. “Because you love me.”

Buck laughed. “Somehow, I do.” He reached for her hand and laced their fingers together. “I’m really glad you are here, you know? I’d have been worried about you, knowing you were sitting home alone and sulking.”

Taylor shrugged, averting her gaze. She hadn’t made a definite decision about accepting Eddie’s invitation until the moment she found herself getting ready to leave and packing so she could spend the few hours that would be left after the New Year’s celebration on Eddie and Buck’s couch. If she wasn’t working, she usually spent the day alone, and she hadn’t expected to feel any different this year.

“Thanks for the invite,” Taylor said after a long moment of silence. “I wasn’t sure if I should really crash the first New Year’s with the three of you as a family. But Chris informed me earlier that I’m family, too. So, I guess I’m not really crashing anything.”

“You aren’t,” Buck agreed softly.

“How is Maddie?” Taylor asked hurriedly before Buck could start a discussion about this. She needed to sort through it on her own first. She had successfully managed not to do that since her conversation with Rachel had forced her to acknowledge that she had allowed Buck and even Eddie a place in her life she had never given anyone else before. Taylor knew she would have to evaluate this friendship at some point, and what it meant for how she lived her life, but that was something for next year.

Buck raised his brows and just watched her for a moment, but eventually he answered with a smile, “Good, I think. I mean, there are still a lot of things she needs to work through, but she was very relaxed this morning. Maybe spending more than just two or three hours with Jee-Yun again was something she really needed. She cried at the sign Chris made for her, but I think they were happy tears.”

“Chris is a treasure,” Taylor smiled. “I think it was a cute idea of his. And Jee-Yun is practically his cousin now, so he has every right to help her with tasks she can’t do herself yet.”

Buck blushed and chuckled. “Yeah. He can’t wait to meet her. I’ll give Maddie a week or two to settle down before asking her about that.”

“So, your ban on seeing Jee-Yun is over?” Taylor asked.

“I don’t think Chimney thought even for a moment to try to get that through with Maddie.” Buck blew out a breath and worried his lip between his teeth. “He knows his limits with Maddie, and she wouldn’t ever stand for him to cut me out of any part of their lives. His threats about that were nothing more than posing and trying to gain an inch of control where he didn’t have any.”

Taylor nodded slowly, though she wasn’t sure if she could fully agree with that. Maybe Chimney at one point had thought he would be able to manipulate Maddie in that way, but on the other hand, Taylor knew her opinion of him might just be very jaded. “Have you talked with Maddie about Chimney’s threat?”

Buck shook his head. “And I won’t. I guess the Lees will mention at some point that I wasn’t allowed to see Jee-Yun after I brought her back from Boston, but it would only cause conflict coming from me. I’ll try to keep as far out of their relationship as I can. The only exception will be if Maddie explicitly asks for my opinion. I can’t say I’m happy that she’ll need to arrange things with him herself, and I know that would shine through in everything I have to say about him, so I won’t start any conversations about him.”

“Understandable,” Taylor said, hoping her smile looked in any way reassuringly even if it felt strained.

This approach from Buck was nearly a complete turnaround from his initial reaction in October and the following weeks. Taylor was glad that Buck had reached this point, but she hadn’t missed that that had only happened after Buck had learned what boundaries Maddie had set for herself. She would have liked for Buck to stop trying to find excuses for Chimney’s behavior for his own sake instead of for Maddie’s sake, but she would take the win for now.

Buck nudged his shoulder against hers. “Stop worrying about me.”

Taylor snorted. “Yeah, in your dreams. I’m pretty sure no one in your life will ever not worry about you, Mr. ‘I’ll climb a crane without any protection while there is a sniper targeting firefighters on the loose’.”

Buck rolled his eyes, but before he could say anything to that, Eddie and Christopher came back into the room and Christopher declared, “It’s board game time!”

Taylor blinked. “Board game?”

Eddie nodded, grinning. “Every year after dinner on New Year’s Eve, the rest of the year is dedicated to board games in this house.” He tousled Christopher’s hair, who leaned away from that gesture with a glare. “Or at least the time it takes for little ones to fall asleep.”

“I haven’t fallen asleep before the fireworks in the last two years! I won’t this year either! I even took a nap earlier!” Christopher declared proudly. “I want to play Labyrinth.”

Taylor chuckled. “I have no idea what that is.”

Christopher paused on his way to the shelf and turned to her with wide, astonished eyes. “You’ve never played Labyrinth?”

Taylor shook her head. “You’ll have to explain the rules to me.”

Christopher lowered his gaze. “It’s a really old game. Mom played it with her parents when she was younger than me!”

For a moment Taylor was overwhelmed when she realized that Christopher was inviting her into a ritual he apparently had shared with his mother. If he was anything like her, that invitation was rare and sacred. She swallowed and wet her lips, desperately trying to push away the tears suddenly burning in her eyes.

“I don’t know many board games, to be honest,” Taylor said after a moment, her voice trembling just a little. “My parents weren’t really interested in board games, and once I lived with my aunt and uncle, I was the one who didn’t want to join most of the time.”

Christopher nodded slowly, solemnly. “But you want to join us? You could just watch.”

Taylor smiled brightly. “No, I’d very much like to join you in any game you want to play. You’ll just have to explain the rules to me. And I trust you to know the best board games!”

Christopher grinned. “I do!” He bit his lip and his face turned into the most adorable frown. “But we can’t show all of them to you tonight.”

“Taylor will just have to join us for game night at least once a month,” Eddie suggested amused, winking at her.

Christopher’s eyes lit up. “Yes!”

Taylor chuckled. “That will just be my New Year’s resolution then, deal?”

Christopher clapped his hands excitedly. “Yes! Buck and I will make a list of what we need to show you first!”

Buck laughed in agreement. “We’ll start that first thing in the morning, but for now Labyrinth is a good choice.”

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