Reading Time: 124 Minutes

Title: The Strength of Responsibility
Series: The Weight of Actions
Series Order: 2
Author: Bythia
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Contemporary, Family
Relationship(s): Maddie Buckley & Howard “Chimney” Han
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: canon typical violence, discussion of canon domestic violence, discussion of Postpartum Depression, discussion of past suicidal thoughts, in parts not Chimney friendly
Beta: starlitenite
Word Count: 93000
Summary: When Maddie left to get help for her PPD, she didn’t expect to find her family in shambles once she eventually returned. It is a struggle to deal with the consequences of her and Chimney’s actions, but in the end, there is only strength to be found in taking responsibility for her life and the future she intends to build for her daughter.
Artist: Twigen

---

---

Chapter 06

Albert looked up from his book as Chimney came into the living room and stopped halfway to the kitchen. “Everything alright?” he asked with raised brows.

“What are you doing here?” Chimney asked, frowning.

“I’m waiting for John.”

“He’s at his volunteering job this afternoon,” Chimney said. “Usually, he’s already gone by now.”

“He starts an hour later today,” Albert said. “And I’m going with him.”

Chimney blinked. “Why?”

Albert shrugged. “I want to see what he is doing. And he said I could be helpful, so maybe I’ll go with him more often.”

“Do you really have nothing better to do on your day off?”

“Nope,” Albert shrugged. “I’m happy to help John. Did you ever go with him? Do you know what he does exactly?”

Chimney sighed. “No. He never asked, I never offered. And I know he is … some part is about translating things for some people who won’t learn English. So, I wouldn’t be much help.”

“I know you still understand Korean, but do you still speak it?” Albert said. “I mean, using it yourself is different than just understanding it, right?”

Chimney frowned. “What does that matter?”

Albert sighed. “Come on, Chimney. You know that it will matter for Jee-Yun. Maddie is hell bent on having her grow up with English and Korean, and Anne will support her in that because she hated that she had to learn it later in life. I will support Maddie in this plan because I know how important it is to her, and because I think we’d all do Jee-Yun a disservice not providing her that opportunity.”

Chimney rolled his eyes and slumped down on the second couch. “What exactly is the harm in my daughter growing up with only one language? I know everyone talks about children who grow up bilingual having an advantage, but I don’t buy that bullshit.”

“There are studies about different ways to think being formed by using different languages,” Albert said softly. “They state that different languages are processed differently in the brain, and that also information is transported differently, thus providing different structures to think. And from my own experience with different languages, I don’t see any fault in that argument. I can see how that forms the way people think differently. So it stands to reason that someone who grows up with a second language develops both ways to think during their childhood, and therefore has an advantage compared to others. And of course, they are also able to communicate freely with more people.”

Chimney frowned.

“It is also cultural inheritance you would deprive your daughter of,” John said as he stepped into the room from the garden. “And everyone in our family except you agrees that it is an important cultural heritage. I expected that you giving your daughter your mother’s name meant you planned to also provide her with all the knowledge your mother provided you.”

Chimney winced and Albert sighed, once again tempted to argue his point about the way Chimney handled his grief. There was no time for an argument, though, and Albert was sure bringing up Chimney’s mother could only lead to a fight with how high-strung Chimney had been for weeks now.

“And you don’t even need to speak Korean yourself, necessarily,” Albert said instead.

Chimney huffed and rolled his eyes. “Right, because that would be so easy to accomplish. If Jee-Yun learns Korean, she’ll expect me to speak it with her as well.”

“Or maybe not speaking Korean with her from the very beginning will teach her a valuable lesson of not expecting someone to know something based on their appearance,” John said. “I’m sure at one point Anne already told you about her own experiences with that. People expected her to know Korean when her parents had, much like you, decided to leave everything reminding them of Korea as far behind them as they could. They had their reasons, as have you, but that doesn’t mean it was the best decision for their daughter.”

Chimney crossed his arms over his chest.

John sat down in the armchair and braced his elbows on his knees, watching Chimney intently. “When I learned you had named your daughter after your mother, I expected you to also teach her everything your mother had taught you. I was happy to see you take this step.”

“And now you are disappointed?” Chimney asked defensively.

John sighed. “No. I’ve never been disappointed in the way you handled your grief, but it has made me sad. What do you want your daughter to know about her namesake? Do you want her to know her at all?”

“My mother has been dead for a long time,” Chimney muttered. “She’ll have no impact on my daughter.”

“She could if you shared your memories of your mother with Jee-Yun,” Albert said quietly. “Our grandfather died before I was old enough to remember him for myself, but I still know the man he was because AppaAppaDad and HalmoniHalmoniGrandmother told me about him.”

He also knew who Chimney’s mother had been, what kind of person she had been, because his father had talked about her often. Albert’s mother had always been indulgent in that, had supported her husband in keeping the memory of his dead wife alive. As far as Albert remembered, his mother had never shown any kind of jealousy regarding his father’s first wife, and had been happy to answer Albert’s questions about things he had felt his father wouldn’t want to talk about.

He didn’t think it was a good idea to mention that to Chimney, though. One of the first things Albert had learned about his brother after he had come to Los Angeles was how jealously he guarded the memory of his mother. Albert was convinced that Maddie had been the first person Chimney had ever voluntarily shared any information about his mother with.

“Those are stories, nothing more,” Chimney spat. “And as they all come from our father, I wouldn’t expect even half of them to be true.”

Albert pushed his anger at that comment away. “Since you would tell Jee-Yun about her grandmother, you could make sure that she only learns things that are true.”

“I think Anne would be happy to share her memories of your mother as well,” John said softly. “She is holding very tightly onto those memories.”

Chimney frowned. “Anne has never talked with me about my mother.”

John chuckled. “Would you have welcomed such a conversation? Anne would never want to hurt you by bringing up your mother when you don’t want to talk about her.”

Chimney bit his lip and turned his head away. Albert wondered how he had managed not to talk about his mother for all these years, though it was also startling to see their father reflected in Chimney so much in this behavior. After Albert’s grandmother had died, his father hadn’t been willing to talk about her for nearly a year. And even now, five years later, it was clearly still a painful topic, but he had begun to remember her fondly and to slowly let go of his hurt. Albert really thought that it would do Chimney a world of good if he finally started to share his memories of his mother with others.

“If you don’t want Jee-Yun to learn about your mother, Anne will respect that,” John said. “But you need to tell her that yourself. I won’t do it for you. Anne will also not just assume. If you stay quiet about it, Anne will eventually tell your daughter about her friend.”

Chimney shook his head, stood, and left. Albert followed him with his gaze and blew out a breath. He hurt for his brother and his obvious struggle, but he didn’t know what to do about any of it.

John sighed deeply. “That could have gone better.”

“Why he doesn’t want to teach Jee-Yun anything about Korea is really all about his mother, isn’t it?” Albert whispered.

“Anne told me what you said about Howard’s grief,” John said. “She was not very happy about it, but I agree with you. At some point in the last twenty-seven years, Howard made the decision to hold onto his grief. I don’t think he was aware that he might need to change that decision now, especially with naming his daughter after his mother.”

“How do you feel about that?” Albert asked.

John huffed and shook his head. “I was uncomfortable with it for a moment, but Maddie’s expectations and family traditions played into that decision, didn’t it? I expect it won’t be the only time that American and Korean traditions and cultures will clash. They will just have to figure out a middle way for themselves.”

“I was so shocked,” Albert admitted. “I mean, I knew it was a tradition for many cultures, and I had seen it in action with friends I had at school, but … For months it still felt really wrong for me, you know?”

“I’m sure that was not the only time you were surprised or baffled by something that’s perfectly normal for people here.”

Albert laughed bashfully. “True. But it was the first time it really hit close to home. I think we need to go if we don’t want to be late for your thing, right?”

John sighed. “Yes.” He turned his head in the direction Chimney had vanished. “I wish I had time to try to talk to him again.”

Albert shrugged as he stood. “Honestly, I’m not sure how much good that would do.”

John shook his head as he led Albert through the garage. “You are right, Howard tends to be very stubborn and set in his ways. It’s better to let him calm down and come back to it later.”

“Where are we going anyway?” Albert asked. “All Anne or you ever said was that you volunteer with the community.”

John chuckled. “I guess we never really talk about it. We both know what we are doing, and we aren’t doing it to be lauded for it.”

Albert nodded. “So, what are you doing? And how can I help?”

John was silent until they had left the driveway and were on the street. “There are many people in our community who don’t speak English, or don’t speak a lot of English. But they still have to deal with all kinds of mail and forms and so on that are mostly written in English, and even if they are available in other languages, it’s seldom Korean. And then there is of course also the problem that many official forms or letters aren’t easy to understand even for someone who does speak good English.”

Albert huffed. “Yeah, you don’t need to tell me about that. Applying for the fire academy was a headache, and I basically grew up bilingual.”

“I offer people a place to get help with that kind of paperwork,” John said. “I’ll spend four hours in this nice little café, and people know they can come to me and show me the letters or forms they don’t understand, and I’ll help them go through everything, explain what they need to do, and sometimes help them fill out the forms as well.”

“And they don’t have to pay you for it,” Albert said, because he knew John didn’t make any money with this. “Which is probably a great relief for some.”

“Those who can afford it leave a couple of dollars with the owner of the café. At the end of the month, that’s usually more than enough to pay off the coffee I drink while I’m there. What’s left after that bill is paid is donated to a local youth center.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Albert asked thoughtfully.

“I started to offer my help twice a month many, many years ago,” John said quietly. “More than twenty years ago, I think. It started out as help with taxes and insurance because I knew most everything anyone could have asked me about that through my job. Once I retired, I had time to educate myself in everything else, and even if I don’t know something, I at least know in which direction to point the person who asked for help. I’m also not the only one who is doing this, there are two other men and a woman doing the same, and each of us comes from a different professional background. That sometimes is already enough to get the answers one of us can’t give.”

Albert was silent for a while, and then he blew out a breath. “And how can I be helpful with this? I hardly have any knowledge about anything regarding legal or financial questions here in the US.”

“But you are young and can translate,” John said. “For many people your age, or even up to Howard’s age, getting a translation and a little bit of direction is all they need. And for those who do need more help, talking to you first before coming to me or one of the other three will be easier. As much as our age can be helpful because people believe we have the life experience to help them, it can also be intimidating.”

Albert chuckled. “I can see that. Does what you are doing have anything to do with Chimney’s mother?”

John was silent for a long moment. “In a way. She was Anne’s best friend, and it was startling and painful to see how much worse her situation was because there was this language barrier for her. Anne helped as much as she could, even when Jee-Yun’s pride made it difficult. After she was gone, we talked a lot about this problem, and this is one of the things we started to do to honor her memory.”

“That’s really nice,” Albert said softly. “And I can imagine very helpful for a lot of people.”

“Jee-Yun gave us a lot,” John said. “And we struggled to find a way to show our gratitude for that.”

Albert frowned. “What did she give you?”

John chuckled. “Her son. She trusted us to care for him, asked us to stand in as his parents when she was gone. The very first thing she did after the doctors had told her there wasn’t any chance left to defeat her cancer was to sit down with us and talk about Howard’s future. We knew Howard didn’t want to return to Korea, he had been very vocal about that ever since your father had to return. I think that was a big part of Jee-Yun’s decision to stay here. She wasn’t keen to return to Seoul, but I think if Howard had been happy about going back to Korea, she wouldn’t have said anything negative about the move.”

“I mean, that’s not really surprising, is it?” Albert asked. “That Chimney wanted to stay here. He had spent more than half his life here at that point, and probably didn’t remember much of his years in Korea at all.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “Jee-Yun also knew we had always wanted another child, but it hadn’t happened. And of course, at that point, Howard and Jee-Yun had already been living with us for nearly a year because she hadn’t had the energy to take care of Howard the way he needed.”

Albert bit his lip and stared at the street with a frown. “Didn’t my father offer any help?”

“He did,” John said. “I think he made many mistakes regarding Jee-Yun and Howard, but I know he loved them both very much. Still does probably. I think he isn’t the kind of man who ever lets go of that kind of love.”

Albert nodded silently.

“He had offered to come back temporarily while she was sick, but Jee-Yun didn’t want that,” John said. “Partly because she was still very hurt that he had left in the first place, and partly because she would have felt guilty about Chul-Min risking your family’s company for that. He came to visit very regularly, though, and he made sure that Jee-Yun got the best care available and that all her bills were paid off.”

“Chimney said once that our father never returned after he went back to Korea,” Albert said surprised. “And Father himself never talked about that time.”

“Howard declined to see his father whenever he was here,” John said. “And I think he has convinced himself that Chul-Min really was never here during those two years.”

Albert sighed.

“As I said, I think your father made many mistakes, but not in the way he took care of both Jee-Yun and Howard during that time in whatever way they allowed him,” John said. “And also not in … I’ll be forever grateful that he allowed Howard to stay here with us, that he didn’t hesitate to give us as many legal rights as he could regarding Howard. It would have been easy to take Howard back to Korea with him, but I don’t think that would have been the right decision for Howard.”

“Chimney would have resented Dad for that for the rest of his life,” Albert muttered.

“He would have,” John agreed. “Your father really couldn’t win in that situation. Howard feels abandoned by your father, but if Chul-Min had done what everyone was expecting of him Howard wouldn’t have felt any better about him. This way he at least got to keep the life he was used to and that he wanted to have.”

“How well do you know my father?” Albert asked thoughtfully.

“Not very well at all.” John sighed deeply. “I didn’t know Jee-Yun very well either until she got sick and Anne insisted that we would help her. But your father … I think he is a good man, overall. I think you mentioned a while ago that he never returned here after Jee-Yun’s death, but that’s not true. He was here when Howard graduated from school, though he kept out of his way to such a degree that Howard never noticed him. He also … came to Kevin’s funeral. He took even more care then that Howard wouldn’t see him, but he spoke with Anne and me, offered any support we needed.”

Albert frowned. “I don’t remember that at all.” Albert knew that he had to have been around ten when Kevin had died, and he was sure he would remember if his father had ever been gone for a couple of days without explanation in that time. “I don’t think even my mother knows about that.”

“He stayed for about a week,” John said. “And you were pretty young, you can hardly trust your memories. There will be a lot of things your parents never discussed with you.”

Albert rolled his eyes.

“You can ask him about it the next time you visit him,” John suggested. “But I would ask you not to mention this to Howard. He has built his own truth about your father while he was grieving his mother, and I think we missed the chance to put that to rights a long time ago.”

Albert cleared his throat. “He does that a lot, right? Turning the truth in his head around so that it fits his own expectations. He’s doing that with his relationship with Maddie right now.”

“Yes,” John said quietly, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. “We failed him after his mother’s death by not putting a stop to that, and even though you are part of his life now, I still feel it robbed him of what was left of his family. We will not fail him a second time.”

***

It felt a little bit like a deja-vu when Chimney sat down at the table with Tommy, both of them with a beer in front of them. It was even the same bar and the same booth they had met at last time. Three weeks later, and nothing had really changed for Chimney except that he was even more frustrated about his situation.

He couldn’t wait to start working again, to finally have something more to do than go to therapy, sit at his temporary home with the Lees, and wonder what was going wrong with Maddie. He couldn’t follow the turn she had taken since she had left in October, and he couldn’t stop wondering how much of that was Buck’s influence during the time when Chimney hadn’t known where Maddie was. So many of the things she said and did weren’t at all things the Maddie he knew would say or do.

“So, how is B shift?” Chimney asked.

Tommy had worked three shifts now with B shift, and there would be three more before he took over as Captain. Six more shifts until Chimney joined them as well, and he couldn’t deny that he was anxious about joining a new house. It hadn’t felt real until recently, even after he had been informed which house he would join.

“They’re a good group,” Tommy said. “You know how I said I wasn’t sure about this being my first assignment as captain? I think I was mistaken there. Maybe it will be a good thing that they aren’t such a tight-knit group and are used to change. I guess Bobby would have had a little bit of an easier time if we hadn’t been such a well-formed group, or weren’t so jaded about new captains coming and going constantly.”

Chimney laughed. “I mean, part of that was also Bobby’s fault. Coming in and expecting LA to be the same as St. Paul, Minnesota? I’m still teasing him about his idea to take the highway.” He sobered up. “Or I did. Won’t be able to do that now anymore.”

“Have you met with Bobby in the meantime?” Tommy asked.

Chimney shook his head. “He still hasn’t reached out to me, and I just…” He trailed off with a shrug.

“Maybe he is waiting for you to reach out?” Tommy suggested. “You said you ignored everyone for a while after your girlfriend left. In his place, I’d probably have been waiting for you to reach out.”

“He is … was my Captain and didn’t deem it necessary to inform me himself that the department was investigating me,” Chimney said darkly. “He knew exactly when I returned to LA, because he had to have given Buck some time off to go to Boston so that he could bring Jee-Yun back since I wasn’t allowed to keep my own daughter once I was arrested.”

Tommy winced. “I had forgotten you were arrested at one point.”

“And Athena had the gall to threaten me with another arrest when I tried to talk to Buck about his bullshit,” Chimney muttered into his beer. “She would have told Bobby all about that.”

“Athena as in Sergeant Grant?” Tommy asked with raised brows. “What does she have to do with Bobby?”

Chimney blinked. “You don’t … How do you not know this? They have been married for … going on three years now! They married shortly after our truck was blown up, all in secret and with only Athena’s children in attendance. Hen still hasn’t forgiven them for avoiding a big party.”

Tommy laughed surprised. “Really? No, I didn’t know anything about that. Though, you’re the only one from the 118 I’m still in regular contact with, so I’m not surprised.”

“Not with the 118 anymore,” Chimney said darkly.

“I think you should try to talk with Bobby,” Tommy said. He took a big gulp of his beer and sighed deeply. “If you say you haven’t spoken with him since before you left LA to search for your girlfriend, then all he knows is what Buckley told him and what is the official department line about it.”

Chimney huffed. “He should have reached out to me to get my side of the story then.”

“True,” Tommy agreed. “I’m not saying you don’t have the right to be angry at him that he didn’t reach out to you. But I think it would be good for your friendship with him and for you farewell from the 118 if you talked with him, and that won’t happen if you don’t reach out to him yourself.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen your file since last time we were here,” Tommy said. “All this paperwork could very well be something that makes me regret agreeing to become a captain. Over the last two weeks I’ve had to read the files for everyone on our future shift. And if I didn’t know you, if I only knew that file, I’m not sure I would have wanted you on my shift. Though, this is a valuable lesson to never judge someone according to their file in the future either, for good or bad.”

Chimney frowned. “What did they put in there?”

Tommy shrugged. “Nothing you haven’t told me already, but the way they put it together still had a very different spin to it. Any captain getting that file would read that you attacked a fellow firefighter during a dispute and caused a two-week-long medical leave for that firefighter. Buckley’s name isn’t mentioned, by the way. It’s written up as a breach of the Code of Ethics we all signed and agreed to adhere to.”

“That argument didn’t even have anything to do with our jobs,” Chimney spat.

Tommy rolled his eyes. “No, I totally agree with you. I could see that violation if the argument had happened in a public place and people there had been aware you were firefighters. But this happened far away from the public and was something personal between the two of you.”

“Buck’s girlfriend is a reporter,” Chimney muttered into his beer. “She probably threatened to publish that damn video she took. That’s exactly what she would do.”

“Do you think there is a chance she will still do that?” Tommy asked, leaning over the table and watching Chimney with a worried frown. “I could access the video and watch it, but I haven’t done that because I have no interest in breaching your privacy in that way.”

Chimney’s eyes grew wide. “What?”

“Only your captain and other people up the chain of command can access it,” Tommy said with a small smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “Not even the other captains of the 217 can access it, we tested that. Otherwise, we would have already protested this whole bullshit. You didn’t answer my question.”

Chimney blew out a breath. “Who knows what that woman will do on any given day? You know how we met her? I mean, after we rescued her from her downed helicopter. She came to make some kind of news report about us, and the powers that be were all too happy about the free PR, so they let her. And she was there exactly the day when everyone but me got dosed with LSD through brownies that had been brought to us as thanks.”

Tommy laughed, startled. “Why didn’t I hear about any of this? This has to have been on the same scale as your whole shift getting framed for a jewelry heist. That was all over the city for months after it happened.”

“I’m not eating things when I don’t know where they come from, right?” Chimney said. “Thankfully, since that day we don’t even accept that kind of donation anymore. So, anyway. We are called out to a beauty pageant for these really small girls. They were all preschoolers. One of the moms had been stabbed in the face with a heel. I’m there with Hen, Eddie, and Buck, and suddenly Athena is calling me over because they are behaving strangely. Ended up with all three of them being cuffed for their own safety.”

Tommy snorted his beer over the table. “Damn, I wish I could have seen that.”

“You would probably have been just as high as them,” Chimney said with raised brows. “You wouldn’t have kept your fingers off the brownies that caused that whole scene. So, we are out on that call and have to call in reinforcements, and Bobby is back at the station with the rest of the shift and Taylor Kelly, and he starts to hallucinate. He climbs up on the top of our house, standing on the edge of the roof and talking with whatever he is seeing, and what does Taylor Kelly do? She is down there in the parking lot filming it all, not contemplating for a second doing anything to help him.”

“Bitch,” Tommy said darkly.

“Right?” Chimney huffed and rolled his eyes. “And the only reason she didn’t use that in her broadcast was that the LAFD sent a couple of lawyers her way. But Buck, of course, only saw a pretty face and still hooked up with her.”

“You know, I’m really glad I never had to work with him,” Tommy said.

“The only good thing about being transferred out of the 118 is that I don’t have to work with him anymore,” Chimney muttered. “I’m not sure I could still trust him to have my back, even if the only thing that had happened had been that he didn’t tell me where Maddie was.”

“How is it going with Maddie?” Tommy asked.

Chimney sighed. He downed what was left of his beer in one gulp and raised his hand to signal the waiter that he wanted another. “Not sure I want to talk about that. It’s not going well at all.”

Tommy made a face. “I’m sorry.”

“I suggested we should look for a new apartment together,” Chimney began slowly. “The commute from our current apartment to the 217 is hell. And it’s not much better from the Lees’, where I’m staying for the moment.”

“And Maddie wasn’t happy about that, I assume?”

“She nearly completely lost it,” Chimney said, staring at the table.

“Maybe you should give her time,” Tommy said. “Look for an apartment for yourself at first, maybe one she will be able to move into as well. You should know what she would be looking for in an apartment, right?”

“With all the money we both have to pay for therapy right now, we shouldn’t be wasting money by paying for two apartments,” Chimney said. “Maddie doesn’t have insurance through work right now, as far as I know, and my insurance only pays part of the bill despite the whole thing being required by the department.”

Tommy shrugged. “Sometimes thinking about the money is the last thing you should do. If Maddie needs time, you should give it to her. Frankly, you probably need more time as well. You said that the way she left had damaged your trust in her, and it clearly left you floundering for weeks afterward.”

“It’s really too much to ask for things to just go back to how they were, isn’t it?”

Tommy laughed sadly. “If that worked, we would have a lot less shit to deal with, not just in our line of work but also the world over. Though, I know what it feels like to wish for that.”

“What do you think it will achieve if I talk to Bobby?” Chimney asked. “I feel as if anyone I’m talking to … sees everything I do as wrong. Even Anne and John have been lecturing me, very softly, but it’s still clear they don’t approve.”

“Don’t approve of what exactly?”

Chimney shrugged. “That I’m looking forward to rekindling my relationship with Maddie. That I’m not happy about Maddie’s plans to teach Jee Korean when I haven’t spoken Korean in decades. That I hate the fact that Albert chose to take Buck up on his offer to move into his apartment. That’s not the kind of support I’d expect from my brother, but apparently I’m the only one who sees a problem with it.”

Tommy frowned and shook his head. “Wait a minute, I think I missed something.”

“Buck owns this up-scale, way too expensive apartment, but he recently moved in with Eddie because apparently they finally decided to do something about their UST. Buck offered to take me on as a tenant so that Maddie and Jee-Yun could stay in our apartment while we aren’t living together. As if I would want to stay anywhere near anything that’s his. John suggested Albert take that apartment instead so that I could stay with them without their house being overly crowded.”

“You think Buckley had ulterior motives with his offer?”

“How couldn’t he?” Chimney asked. “He made the damn offer while I still had standing orders from the police to stay away from him. How would that have worked out with me living in his apartment? And I don’t think Buck is even capable of a long-term relationship, so he’ll need that apartment back sooner rather than later.”

“Seems risky to move in with a co-worker if you aren’t sure that the relationship will stick,” Tommy muttered.

Chimney shrugged. “I haven’t talked with Eddie since all of this started. I really don’t care much if he just ruined his own future at the 118 by starting this fling with Buck. When that relationship blows up and they aren’t able to work together anymore, I can’t see Bobby deciding against Buck. Not my problem, though, thankfully. I’ll learn all about that gossip from Hen.”

Tommy grinned into his beer. “And you’ll probably enjoy that gossip quite a bit, huh?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Chimney asked. “Maybe Buck will even decide to move on again once he has gotten Eddie out of his system. They have been circling around each other ever since Eddie joined the 118.”

“That’s been a couple of years, hasn’t it? Do you really think the excitement will burn out so fast after years of pining?”

Chimney shrugged. “The only time I saw Buck trying his hand at a serious relationship ended with that girlfriend leaving for Europe and ghosting him. I think that says a lot about him, don’t you? And did I tell you that he used to steal the firetruck to get laid in it?”

Tommy raised his brows. “I think I remember that part, yeah. If one of my firefighters did that, I’d see them fired. Though, looking at it that way, maybe it’s a good thing you can leave that sinking ship before it’s too late. And I’m glad Hen will leave soon as well. Neither of you deserves to be caught up in that kind of bullshit.”

Chimney sighed. Maybe Tommy was right. Things had changed at the 118 over the years, and while Chimney had for the most part thought those changes were good, he just might not have noticed that there had also been bad parts creeping back into the firehouse.

He had felt comfortable with the 118 ever since they had gotten rid of Gerrard, but aside from Hen, there was no one left who remembered the hardship it had been to work with that kind of boss, or the victory it had been to finally see their shift change for the better. For the longest time Chimney had thought it was a good thing that barely anyone remembered that time anymore, but with the lack of support he had gotten from his colleagues over the past couple of months, he had recognized that the camaraderie with his co-workers wasn’t the same anymore as it had once been.

“On the other hand,” Tommy said, leaning forward and watching Chimney with a grin, “that means gossip. I think you have held out on me so far. I need to know all about the crazy that happened to you!”

Chimney snorted and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t protest and dove straight into the craziest stories he could remember.

Chapter 07

Maddie bit her lip as she rang the bell, shuffling from one foot to the other, unsure of her welcome despite being invited. She felt that her contact with Buck had been very sparse since she had come back home, only seeing him for an occasional coffee someplace. They still met at least once a week, but it had felt strangely impersonal because it had never been at either of their homes, and never for longer than an hour. She knew Buck was busy between his job and moving in with Eddie, and she wasn’t any less busy between therapy and finding her footing as a mom, but none of that should be an excuse for barely seeing each other.

Maddie sighed when there wasn’t an answer even after an appropriate amount of time it should take if Buck had been at the other side of the house. She rang again, trying to push down her annoyance. Christopher was at school, and Buck had told her Eddie had some appointment that would keep him away for most of the morning. When he had explained that to her, Maddie had wondered if he thought she didn’t want to see him if Eddie was there as well, but now it only meant that there shouldn’t be anything to distract Buck from opening the door.

Again, nothing seemed to happen for a long time, but the door opened just as Maddie reached out for the bell again.

Buck grinned sheepishly, his hair disheveled, his cheeks red from sleep. “Sorry! We fell asleep and I forgot to set an alarm.”

Maddie cocked her head and raised her brows. “We?”

“Taylor came by surprisingly, earlier,” Buck explained as he stepped aside to let her in.

Maddie blinked but stepped into the house without more questions. Eddie’s front door led directly into the living room, something Maddie had already put as a no-go on her list of requirements when she started searching for a new apartment or even a small house for herself and Jee-Yun. She didn’t want just anyone she opened the door to getting an immediate view into her space.

Maddie stopped just far enough inside the house that Buck could close the door behind her and watched Taylor, who looked as disheveled as Buck did, stand up from the couch, a throw blanket wrapped tightly around her. She smiled tiredly and nodded at Maddie without saying a word.

Maddie cleared her throat. “Uhm. I’m sorry to interrupt?”

Taylor rolled her eyes. “Nothing much you interrupted.”

“You can lie down in the bedroom,” Buck said softly, walking over to Taylor to rub a hand over her back while softly pushing her in the direction of said room. “Do you need anything? Tea? A snack?”

Taylor shook her head. “I’ll just lay down and…” She sighed deeply. “Thank you,” she whispered after a moment and pushed herself up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to Buck’s cheek. “Don’t let me interrupt your time with your sister.”

Maddie followed Taylor with her gaze as she went down the hall, her feet shuffling over the floor audibly. She waited until she heard the door to the bedroom close before she turned to Buck with a frown, “What was that?”

Buck sighed. “If there was a competition about who had the worst parental units, Taylor would probably even beat us for the trophy. Do you want anything? Tea? Cookies? We just made a fresh batch yesterday.”

“Coffee?” Maddie asked grinning.

“Sure, coffee is an option, too.” Buck grinned and motioned her to follow him into the kitchen where he quietly closed the door to the hall. “Taylor’s father is an absolute asshole, and she drove herself crazy over that for most of the night, barely slept at all, and cried herself to sleep on my chest earlier.”

“And what does Eddie think about all of that?”

Buck frowned and turned to her, his hand hovering in the air above his head as he reached for the coffee. “What do you mean?”

“Your ex crying herself to sleep in your arms? You sending her to sleep in the bed you share with Eddie?”

Maddie shook her head, wondering how Buck couldn’t see the problem with that. She didn’t understand how Buck could still be friends with his ex-girlfriend, she surely had never had any desire to stay friends with the boyfriends she had had before Doug. And she also couldn’t imagine that she would have been comfortable if any of her partners had ever tried to introduce her to one of their ex-girlfriends. It was hard enough to try to build a friendship with Chimney now, but that was a completely different situation, and she only planned to do that for her daughter’s sake.

Buck chuckled and shook his head as he continued to prepare the coffee. “That’s really nothing you need to worry about. Taylor is part of our family. Even Chris approves of her, so there is no way she is getting rid of us again.”

Maddie sat down at the table. “I don’t understand. She’s your ex.”

“So?” Buck shrugged. “She is also a very good friend, to both Eddie and me. The situation this morning wouldn’t have been any different if Eddie had stayed home and I had gone out to an appointment. Taylor would still have stayed and cried herself out in his arms instead.”

“But how can you be friends with an ex?” Maddie asked. “How can Eddie be friends with your ex? This whole situation seems to be guaranteed for disaster!”

Buck turned to her, and he was clearly carefully contemplating his words before he spoke, “I’m friends with a lot of people you could classify as an ex.”

“I thought Abby was your first real girlfriend,” Maddie said with raised brows. “I didn’t know you had contact with her. And I know for a fact that you don’t have any contact with Ali.”

Buck rolled his eyes. “Because Ali turned out to be a pretty terrible person who took the first opportunity she had to try to mold me into someone I wasn’t.”

Maddie winced. She had witnessed the argument that had led to Buck breaking up with Ali not even two weeks after he had come home from the hospital after his leg had been crushed. Ali had been horrible about the situation, and about her expectations concerning Buck’s future. Maddie hadn’t been happy about Buck’s conviction that he would return to being a firefighter eventually, and she had tried to talk him out of it herself, but she was convinced she hadn’t been nearly as pretentious and condescending about it as Ali had been.

“And Abby is another matter altogether. She also wasn’t my first real relationship, whatever real even means in that context. I had a life before I came to LA, you know, regardless of what Chimney and Hen believe.”

Maddie bit her lip. She wanted to protest the jab aimed at Chimney, but she had become painfully aware that she barely knew anything about Buck’s years of travel except for the things he had mentioned in his postcards. In the years since she had reconciled with Buck, she had never bothered to ask him, always distracted by other things that seemed more important, and also happy that Buck didn’t ask any questions about her life during that time. Part of her had always felt that she would need to face similar questions if she asked him about his travels, and she never wanted to talk with Buck about that time and what she had had to endure.

“I made a number of friends in that time who I stay in contact with through social media and email, and some of them are ex-partners. It’s really pretty easy. Though, those are the people where the relationship ended very quietly and with both of us agreeing that our lives were going in different directions. Not like Abby, who abandoned and ghosted me instead of talking to me like an adult, or Ali, who thought she could change me into the person she wanted me to be.”

Maddie blew out a breath. “I just can’t imagine this, you know?”

“You don’t have to,” Buck said. “This is something only Eddie, Taylor, and I have to understand in the end, no one else. We don’t need anyone else’s approval either. It’s our friendship, and we will handle it as we see fit.”

Maddie smiled weakly. “Understood.”

“If you feel uncomfortable with Taylor in the house, we could go out and…”

“No,” Maddie interrupted him. “It’s okay.”

Buck bit his lip and eyed her carefully. “I just … You seem uncomfortable sometimes if others are around, and I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“Is that the reason you assured me that Eddie wouldn’t be here?”

Buck shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Maddie blew out a breath and looked down at the floor. “Sometimes that’s true. People can be very exhausting. But I know he is an important part of your life now, and I would really like to get to know him better. Chris as well, if that’s okay.”

Buck chuckled. “Chris will be delighted to hear that. He has fully accepted Jee-Yun as his cousin already and can’t wait to meet her.”

“I put the sign he made me up on the shelf where it’s clearly visible for anyone who comes over,” Maddie said. “I still start to tear up sometimes when I see it. It was so very thoughtful and sweet of him.”

Buck nodded smiling and turned back to the coffee maker when it beeped. “Do you want to stay here or go back to the living room?”

“Living room,” Maddie decided. “These chairs aren’t exactly comfortable.”

Buck huffed out a short laugh, sounding deeply amused. “Please tell Eddie that. I won the fight over the bed, and that seems to mean Eddie will win every other fight about furniture.”

Maddie raised her brows but waited until they sat down on the couch, each of them cradling their mug in their hands before she asked, “Fight over the bed?”

“I was sure Albert would tell you about that,” Buck said, rolling his eyes and taking a careful sip of his coffee. “I was able to convince Eddie that my bed was the one worth keeping, but it was not an easy fight. And then I couldn’t figure out how to take it apart until Albert came over and performed some miracle. It took Eddie almost the entirety of December before he would admit that I had been right about the bed.”

Maddie laughed and pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. “Albert only talked about showing you how to put the bed back together when he hadn’t ever put together any furniture himself before. He was really proud of that part.”

Buck put his mug on the table and turned to her with a soft smile. “It’s really great to see you laugh, you know? Even if it’s at my expense.”

“It’s really more at Albert’s expense,” Maddie claimed, chin raised. “I mean, he is twenty-three and has never had to put together his own furniture?”

“I hear there are people who go through life without ever learning that,” Buck said. “I think Albert should be grateful that he doesn’t need to be one of those people thanks to me.”

Maddie snorted and just barely managed not to spill any of her coffee.

“How are you?” Buck asked. “We haven’t had much time to really talk the last couple of weeks. Our schedules never seem to fit together.”

“And who knows how that will go once I’m working again,” Maddie nodded. “I’m starting to learn Korean for Jee-Yun. I already have the books.”

Buck’s whole face lit up and he leaned in eagerly. “Really? That’s a great idea! Maybe I could join you as well? I mean, she’ll grow up bilingual, right?”

Maddie groaned and collapsed back against the couch. “That’s apparently not decided yet. Chimney isn’t exactly … I thought that, too, right? I mean, it should be a foregone conclusion, shouldn’t it? But I recently learned that Chimney hasn’t spoken Korean since his mother died, and even before that he had only spoken Korean with her because her English was pretty bad.”

“Really?” Buck asked quietly.

“So, he doesn’t want to speak Korean now either,” Maddie continued. “And it has turned into this huge problem between us. Add to that the fact that he apparently believes we will eventually move into a shared apartment again. He mentioned looking for a new apartment for us that’s not so far away from the 217.”

“That’s … fuck, I’m so sorry, Maddie,” Buck whispered.

“I don’t know what to do,” Maddie murmured, turning to the side to face Buck and pulling her legs onto the couch. “I can’t do that again with Chimney. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do that again with any man. I mean, look at me, I’m apparently not able to find a man who will respect the boundaries I set for myself.”

Buck sighed and reached out a hand which she gratefully took. He pulled softly, clearly leaving it completely up to her to follow the silent request, but she didn’t resist at all as he pulled her into his arms. Maddie sighed, resting her cheek against his chest.

“What do I do if he doesn’t stop pushing?”

Buck hummed. “Do you think that’s likely to happen? Have you talked with Anne and John about this?”

“They are trying to make him see reason,” Maddie said. “But he is so damn stubborn.”

Buck chuckled dryly, though it didn’t sound amused at all. “If Chimney is anything, it’s stubborn, agreed. But with this, he doesn’t have any other choice but to accept it eventually. Because if he doesn’t … you always have the option to cut him out of your life completely, you know?”

Maddie frowned. “We have a child together.”

“And you can easily get sole custody,” Buck said quietly. “Which you should consider bringing up if this situation isn’t resolved soon. Chimney’s behavior is clearly stressing you out, and that’s the last thing he should be doing right now.”

Maddie shook her head. “I can’t threaten him with that.”

“Why not?”

“Jee-Yun is his daughter!”

Buck sighed and rubbed one hand up and down her back. “She is also your daughter, and in the end you have to protect her too. You being stressed out or even being pushed back into any kind of depression because of this won’t help her at all. I’m convinced Chimney can be a great father if he manages to pull his head out of his own ass, but as long as that doesn’t happen his behavior is damaging to both you and Jee-Yun.”

“But maybe Chimney is the one who should get sole custody if I have to cut him out of my life completely.”

“What?” Buck stiffened and he fisted his hand in her shirt. “No! What the hell, Maddie? Why would you think that?”

“I’m the one who ran away,” Maddie said quietly. “The one who was so overwhelmed by being a parent that I endangered my daughter.”

“And Chimney is the one who went completely off the rails the moment things didn’t go exactly the way he wanted them to,” Buck said. “And the one who had to be blackmailed into getting help concerning that behavior. You, on the other hand, didn’t just leave willy-nilly. You went to get therapy for the things you were struggling with. And before that, you went to great lengths to make sure that Jee-Yun was okay. We can’t exactly say the same about Chimney when he took her on a road trip with no end in sight.”

Maddie bit the inside of her cheek. “You are still pretty angry at Chimney.”

Buck blew out a breath. “Not for … Everyone expects me to be angry about the punch, but I’m really just sad about that part. I’m angry that he has been ignoring what you have been asking of him, and that he lied to you. I thought … Don’t get me wrong, I was really confused when you hooked up with Chimney. Probably pretty similar to how you feel about my friendship with Taylor now, or my relationship with Eddie. But I thought you could be happy with him, that you could build the future you deserve with him. And I’m angry that he took that away from you again because he fell back into old behavior that I thought he had overcome with meeting you.”

“Maybe I don’t deserve a bright and happy future,” Maddie whispered.

“Don’t say that!” Buck growled, and Maddie could practically hear his frown. “Of course you deserve that, and I’m convinced you’ll eventually find that. With or without another partner. With Chimney as a co-parent or not.” He paused and took a deep breath. “With me as part of your life or not. All of that is your choice. Though, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Chimney if his behavior drives you away from LA or into hiding.”

Maddie sat up abruptly, staring at her brother. “Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s what you do to feel safe, Mads,” Buck whispered, softly cupping one of her cheeks with his hand. “And don’t try to deny it. You left our parent’s house as soon as you could, and while nine-year-old me might have been very angry about that, looking back I understand that you never felt safe in that house. You needed to get away to save yourself. And I think that set a precedent that has just stuck with you. And it was probably reinforced very strongly with everything that happened with Doug after you came here.”

“I won’t leave,” Maddie said with a frown.

Buck sighed. “I won’t stop you if you feel it’s the best thing for you to do. I’d appreciate it if you would keep in contact, but I wouldn’t even begrudge you if you cut off contact with me as well.”

“That’s bullshit!” Maddie said forcefully. “I won’t leave, do you hear me?”

Buck smiled. “I hope so. But if you do it’s alright, okay?”

Maddie shook her head. She had no idea where this idea even came from, it was nothing she had ever contemplated even for a second before. Maddie couldn’t imagine even for a moment facing the prospect of raising Jee-Yun alone and without the support system she had here in Chimney’s family, Buck, and her friends. For that reason alone leaving wasn’t an option, though she could see in Buck’s eyes that nothing she could say at the moment would convince him. Leaving to get therapy the way she had, without notifying anyone of her real plans, might have been one time too many to leave Buck.

“I won’t leave,” Maddie repeated. “But I guess it will take time to make you believe that.”

Buck shrugged with a sad smile.

“Enough of the talk about me,” Maddie decided. “How has it been living here with Eddie and Chris?”

Buck watched her for a moment with a thoughtful frown before he relented with a sigh. He let his hand drop from her cheek and turned to reach for his mug. “It’s everything I could wish for. There are some growing pains of course, but we deal with it. And all three of us are completely all in on this.”

“Growing pains?” Maddie asked with raised brows.

Buck grinned and tried to hide it by taking a gulp of his coffee. “I’m sure you’ll understand all too soon the pain of your child throwing a tantrum and throwing things at your head while shouting things she doesn’t mean because she is angry at you. It will be one of the worst moments of your life.”

Maddie raised her brows. “Chris threw a tantrum?”

“More than one. And Eddie insists I have to deal with it like any other parent instead of leaving it all to him to deal with. Chris is becoming a teenager way too rapidly,” Buck said. “Turning twelve this year means it’s just one more birthday until he’ll officially be a teen. Though, I’m not sure he’ll wait with the antics until he reaches that milestone. I just hope he won’t stop wanting to go to the zoo with me anytime soon. I already know I’ll be heartbroken and never recover from it when he tells me he is too old to go to the zoo with me. I might need to steal Jee-Yun to come with me then.”

Maddie laughed. “You really think that will ever happen?”

Buck sighed sadly. “At the latest when he goes off to college in another state, right?”

Maddie shook her head grinning. “You are ridiculous!”

“Ha!” Buck pointed a finger at her. “I’ll remind you of your mockery as soon as you reach that point with Jee-Yun! Don’t think I’ll forget your heartless reaction here! You are my big sister, it should be your duty to console me!”

Maddie laughed loudly, holding her sides until she was eventually interrupted by a bad case of hiccups.

“Speaking of the zoo and stealing Jee-Yun for it when Chris cruelly abandons me,” Buck said, a smug grin on his face. “Would you and Jee-Yun like to come with Chris and me sometime? Just the four of us. Jee-Yun’s first trip to the zoo, and some sibling time for us.”

“Will Chris be okay with that?”

“Like I said, he can’t wait to meet Jee-Yun,” Buck said. “He’s already calling you Aunt Maddie now when he talks about you, you know? So yes, he will be more than okay with it. We have been opening up our little ritual a little more to the whole family for the last couple of months. When he wants to spend time alone with me or with Eddie or anyone else, really, he makes sure we know that.”

Maddie smiled and nodded. She knew it was more than just a simple invitation to the zoo, that it was an invitation into a part of Buck’s life that he had guarded heavily in the past. It wasn’t just her he had guarded it from, but she knew that the way she had treated him in some aspects had contributed to him not letting her into that part of his life. She felt warmth spread through her chest at the prospect of finally removing that barrier between them.

“I would be very happy to go to the zoo with you and Chris,” Maddie said. “Though I’m not sure how much Jee-Yun will notice at her age.”

Buck grinned brightly and winked at her. “It’s important to start her acquaintance with the zoo as soon as possible, believe me.”

***

“Hey.” Bobby smiled, carefully reserved, as Chimney sat down at the table.

Chimney just nodded as he shuffled around in his chair. He had eventually heeded Tommy’s advice. He was disappointed in Bobby, but it might just be the right thing to do to talk with him about what had happened. If for no other reason than to make a clean break from the 118. Tommy had invited him over to a team barbeque to meet the rest of his new team before starting to work with them, and Chimney was surprised by how much he was looking forward to it. Having to leave the 118 still hurt, but Chimney was now looking forward to starting anew somewhere else.

“I’m glad you finally called,” Bobby said.

Chimney scoffed. “You could have just as easily called me. Why didn’t you?”

Bobby leaned back in his chair, one hand laying on the table, his fingers slowly drumming on the wood. “I did, you didn’t answer. So I decided to wait until you reached out to me.”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “Sounds like a hell of an excuse.”

Bobby frowned, but his answer was delayed by the waitress bringing his coffee. Chimney ordered a beer. It was still early in the afternoon, but he felt sure it would be needed. This whole confrontation had already started off anything but good.

“How often do you think I should have called you before I accepted that you didn’t want to talk?” Bobby asked. “How many unanswered calls would it take before you left a similar voicemail for me as you had for Buck where everyone calling you would hear it?”

“Buck deserved that,” Chimney muttered.

“You didn’t accept anyone’s help back in October, or long before that,” Bobby said with raised brows. “None of us could do any more than offer to help. Taking that help, telling us exactly what help you needed, that was your responsibility. And your choice. You choose not to accept anyone’s help. Damn, I know Hen offered to come with you on your ill-advised road trip, she couldn’t have offered to sacrifice more to help you. In that instance, I was actually glad you said no. But for everyone else, I was sad to see you withdraw from them.”

Chimney crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Bobby. “And what a great help you all were, just falling into line with Buck’s story instead of stopping him from pulling that bullshit while I was searching for Maddie.”

Bobby stared at him for a long moment. “You honestly believe that, don’t you? That we should have stopped Buck, and by not doing that we took some kind of side.”

“You didn’t even fight to keep me at the 118!” Chimney said agitated, nearly shouting. “You let Buck drag us all into that lawsuit and took him back, but you didn’t even bother to ask me about what had happened before pushing me out of the house I fought tooth and nail to make into what it is today!”

“I can only ask again how often you think I should have called you,” Bobby said calmly, clearly unimpressed by Chimney’s anger. “I called you right after you left, three or four times. I called you again after Buck told me what happened. And I called when HR told me they were unable to reach you. You ignored every single attempt I made to contact you, including every message I left either as a voicemail or as a text.”

Chimney wished he’d already had his beer, just so that he could have something to do. He knew he couldn’t refute Bobby’s argument. Until the police had dragged him back to LA, he had deliberately ignored everyone back home except for Hen. Chimney had been angry at Hen for not telling him, but he also understood her reasoning. He would probably not have taken it seriously anyway if she had told him. Even now, he couldn’t believe that anything had come of those charges.

“You could have called once you knew I was back in LA,” Chimney muttered darkly. “Athena probably told you all about it right away, how she threatened to arrest me when I went to talk with Buck because suddenly he wasn’t able to talk to me anymore.”

Bobby sighed. “Athena hasn’t told me anything. I’m not even sure what exactly you are talking about. But if she was in uniform, it was her job, and aside from calls we have both been part of, we barely talk about our work in any kind of detail.”

“Sure.” Chimney rolled his eyes.

Bobby shrugged and dared to grin. “There are some famous exceptions, of course. Like the day we got jinxed. You can be sure she heard all about that craziness.” He turned somber again and sighed. “But care to share what you thought Athena would have told me about?”

Chimney frowned. He didn’t know if he believed that Bobby didn’t know anything about the encounter. “The police arrested me in Boston, but I’m sure you know about that. Anne and John told me Albert brought them over to the 118 for a meeting with you, Buck, and Hen when that happened.”

Bobby nodded slowly. “Yes. Albert and Buck needed help figuring out what to do because they had both been contacted concerning temporary custody of Jee-Yun to bring her home.”

Chimney rolled his eyes. He would never forgive Buck for his antics leading to Jee being taken into custody by a social worker after he had been arrested. That was an experience his daughter should never have had, and while Chimney hoped that she had been too young to ever remember it, he still feared it would leave an impression. It was one reason why he didn’t trust Buck with his daughter, and it was just another strain on his relationship with Maddie that he wasn’t able to talk with her about his concerns in this matter. He hadn’t even dared to mention restricting Buck’s access to Jee-Yun so far because Maddie had always been entirely too focused on her brother’s well-being and comfort, something that seemed to have only gotten worse recently.

The waitress finally delivered his beer and Chimney took a deep gulp before he continued, “I had no idea what was even going on until Albert came to talk to me in Boston. They didn’t keep me in jail once I was here, of course. So I went to Buck to ask him what the hell he was thinking. But instead of having an adult conversation with me, he called Athena to have her throw me out of his apartment.”

“A conversation like that would need both sides to be calm,” Bobby said. “Were you calm when you went to Buck’s?”

“How could you expect me to be calm when I’d just been brought home by a police escort?” Chimney asked with a frown.

“Then you should have considered taking more time to calm down before seeking out a conversation with Buck,” Bobby said. “And additionally, I know that Buck had been advised not to have any kind of conversation with you without a witness until the situation was resolved.”

Chimney scoffed. “Advised by who?”

“The detective leading the investigation. And Athena.”

“You really decided to be on his side without even contemplating giving me a chance to tell my side of the story, didn’t you?”

Bobby sighed deeply. “There wasn’t much of a choice to make, Chimney. I saw the video.”

“I haven’t,” Chimney said, leaning forward. “But I’d bet Kelly tampered with it. She is the kind of person to do that.”

Bobby lowered his gaze. “If you’re so convinced of that, why didn’t you fight the charges?”

“For Maddie’s sake!” Chimney hissed. “Because Buck hadn’t wasted a single thought on what all of this would do to his sister! She has been at the end of her rope for a long time, but it was more important for Buck to get one over on me!”

Bobby raised his brows and shook his head. “How is therapy going for you?”

Chimney reared back, confused by the sudden change of topic. “What?”

“You are still pretty angry,” Bobby said. “And projecting a lot of blame onto Buck that isn’t his to bear at all. I would also be very careful about the kind of accusations you just made. Tampering with evidence of a crime is a serious allegation. If you can’t prove that without a doubt, you risk facing another lawsuit for defamation of character. And I don’t think Taylor would hesitate with that for even a second.”

Chimney laughed darkly. “Yeah, I can just see how she would be all too happy for such an opportunity.”

“So, how is therapy going?” Bobby asked again.

Chimney shrugged. “I really don’t care to talk with you about that.” He hated every moment of it, but he knew from experience that no one was ever in any kind of sympathetic mood about it with him. Even the Lees had told him it was something he needed to do, and he had tried to see the point in it, but it was just not something that worked.

“Okay,” Bobby nodded. “You don’t have to talk about that with me, of course.”

“Why didn’t you fight to keep me at the 118?” Chimney asked.

“Because it would have lost me the trust of everyone in that house,” Bobby said. “And I mean everyone, not just our shift. I also was not prepared to punish Buck for your behavior by sending him somewhere else.”

“None of the rest of the house would have needed to learn anything about the situation,” Chimney said with a frown. “No one would have stopped trusting you.”

Bobby laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head. “You aren’t really that naive, Chimney. There was no way to keep quiet about what happened between you and Buck, too many people knew about it. And some of them are only too happy to tell the tale.”

“Buck, you mean,” Chimney hissed.

“No. He hasn’t said a single word about the whole situation anywhere near any of the other firefighters. Eddie, on the other hand, is really not happy with you and not at all quiet about the reason for it. He wouldn’t have worked with you again. But in the end, none of that mattered for this decision. I would never, under any circumstance, let someone work under my command who was violent against one of our own.”

“Nothing that happened between Buck and me had anything to do with the fire station!” Chimney growled.

“Really? So you would have just been okay working with Buck again?” Bobby asked. “You would have been able to trust him to have your back in any kind of situation we could have found ourselves in? To put your life in his hands?”

Chimney closed his mouth, his teeth clicking together loudly. He hadn’t thought about that at all, too angry at being pushed out of the 118. Would he be able to trust Buck with that? The possibility they would end up in such a situation eventually was still there, even if there would probably have to be a huge disaster first, but it wasn’t completely impossible.

He had no desire to work with Buck again, but there had been many other people in the past Chimney hadn’t had any desire to work with, and he had survived then. And he had for the most part still trusted those people, if only because not having his back would have besmirched their own career, and he had known they wouldn’t want something like that to happen. Once he became a paramedic there had only been a few occasions where not having his back could have easily been explained as an accident anyway.

Bobby nodded as the silence stretched on. “That’s what I expected. You wouldn’t have been able to work together anymore. Even if it hadn’t been other people higher up the chain of command who made the decision, I would have needed to decide which one of you I wanted to keep.”

“And you never would have chosen me,” Chimney said dejectedly. It was clear from everything else Bobby had said so far, but for some reason Chimney still wanted to hear him say it.

“In these circumstances?” Bobby leaned forward and folded his hands on the table, watching Chimney intently. “Would you have? If you had to decide between two firefighters on your team after one had gravely injured the other during an argument? Would you have really decided to keep the one who threw the punch?”

“If he had as much reason for throwing that punch as I had, yes!” Chimney slammed his beer on the table with a loud thud and shoved his chair back, just barely refraining from jumping up. “His silence could have killed Maddie!”

“And him breaking his promise to Maddie would have changed what exactly?” Bobby asked. “He knew as much about Maddie’s whereabouts as you did. You wouldn’t have found her any earlier. But if he had told you, it could have very well destroyed Maddie’s trust in him when she eventually learned about it.”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “You are all parroting the same bullshit over and over again. Buck had no right to keep that information from me in the situation we were in!”

“And you had no right to get physical with him,” Bobby said. “You broke his face. You were told that, right? He had a fracture in his cheekbone!”

“A hairline fracture,” Chimney scoffed. “That’s really nothing anyone would need to be concerned about. He had to stick to light duty for a while, so what? He should have been helping me find Maddie instead of working anyway.”

“Because you were so accepting of any help offered,” Bobby said with raised brows. “Would you really have wanted Buck to tag along on your journey before that evening when you hit him?”

Chimney blew out a breath. “He didn’t exactly offer. He tried to tell me the whole time everything would be alright and that Maddie would come back on her own.”

“And he was right about that, wasn’t he? Maddie was in a safe place, and she would have eventually come back.”

“Yeah, and he probably knew that from the beginning, but I didn’t!”

Bobby sighed. “Where are you being transferred to?”

“Do you really care?” Chimney asked. “For all I know, you couldn’t get rid of me fast enough!”

“I would have preferred if none of this had ever happened,” Bobby said, leaning back again. “If I had a chance to go back in time for just a couple of months, I’d at least go back to the blackout and send you home to Maddie and Jee. Or even further back to prevent what happened to you, Maddie, and Buck wholesale, though you didn’t accept any more help then than you did after Maddie had left. I have no idea how we could have helped you back then, but if I’d had any idea of what was to come for you, I would have pushed a lot more for that!”

“We were fine until the blackout,” Chimney said through clenched teeth. “We were on a good path to dealing with Maddie’s problems.”

Bobby nodded slowly. “So, sending you home during the blackout would have been all you needed?”

Chimney lowered his gaze. “We were all required to work!”

“Exceptions could have been made,” Bobby said. “There were exceptions made all over the city. I would have been happy to make an exception for you. Maybe it wouldn’t have been for the whole time, but at least for long enough in the beginning that you could have set Maddie up either with the Lees or Karen, or even with Michael and David over at my place.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted that,” Chimney said.

“But she would at least have had the choice,” Bobby said. “But it doesn’t do us any good now to discuss what could have been. We can’t change the past. We have to live with the decisions we made, and the consequences. And in this case, we all have to live with the consequences that you lost your temper.”

“You mean we have to live with the consequences that Buck dragged a family matter into public,” Chimney muttered.

“If you really think that, you still have a very long way to go in therapy,” Bobby said quietly.

Chimney scoffed and drank the rest of his beer. “Maybe meeting you was a mistake. You clearly made your decision about which side you are on a long time ago. Nice to see how much you don’t value our friendship.”

He stood and left without even leaving money behind for his beer, too angry and disappointed in Bobby to stay with him a moment longer.

Chapter 08

Maddie stood in the kitchen drying the dishes just to have something to occupy her hands with. She had washed all dishes by hand instead of putting them in the dishwasher for the same reason, and she was already desperately searching for another task to do, because soon enough she would have put all the dishes away.

Chimney was putting Jee-Yun to bed, and Maddie didn’t know yet how she could tell him that he should leave right away when he came back from the bedroom after that. Maddie already felt uncomfortable that he was in her bedroom at all, which was such a stark change from how it had been even two weeks ago. She had thought that with Chimney going to therapy, and her finding her own bearings again, things would slowly get better, but right now the exact opposite seemed to be happening.

They hadn’t talked much since their fight about how to raise Jee-Yun had somehow turned into a fight about Chimney’s expectations for them to move in together again. For the most part, they had only seen each other during the family dinners Anne insisted on. Those had been peaceful and lighthearted, but there they also had the buffer of John, Anne, and Albert to prevent any more fights.

Maddie couldn’t stop expecting another fight, and this was the first time they had been alone together without expecting anyone to join them any time soon. It was also the first time Chimney had come over to her apartment again. Somehow it felt strange to have him here now, though at least she wasn’t overcome anymore by the dread that had led her to flee to Josh after her argument with Chimney.

“Is the dishwasher broken?” Chimney asked as he came out of the bedroom.

Maddie shook her head. “Sometimes it’s kind of meditative to do the dishes by hand, you know?”

“Do you need help?”

Maddie sighed and put the towel down on the kitchen island. “No. And I don’t want to be rude, but I’d appreciate it if you left. I’m pretty tired and would just like to wind down, maybe take a short nap myself while Jee-Yun is napping.”

Chimney frowned. “I thought we could finally talk. We seem to have missed each other constantly over the last couple of weeks.”

“Really?” Maddie stared at Chimney. “It wasn’t obvious at all that I was going out of my way to avoid you?”

Chimney flinched. “I had hoped I was misinterpreting something.”

Maddie shook her head. “No, I think you were telling yourself what you wanted to believe. The same thing you have been doing all along.”

Chimney sat down on the armrest of the couch, facing her. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“No?” Maddie braced her hands on the kitchen island, meeting his gaze full-on. “You don’t remember telling me over and over again that I just needed to keep going, needed to stay with Jee-Yun and you, and that that would be enough, in the end, to get over my PPD? You don’t remember expecting me to move in with you again when I told you from the very beginning that wasn’t an option anymore?”

Chimney crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “I did all I could to help you before you left! I know I made a mistake during the blackout when I didn’t insist that Bobby let me come home at least for a little while every day, but…”

“You dismissed my suggestion of in-patient treatment for me,” Maddie interrupted him. “And you obviously dismissed it to such a degree that you didn’t even remember I had talked with you about the very clinic I ended up going to after all. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to Boston to search for me.”

“I went to Boston because Buck sent me there to chase my own tail,” Chimney muttered.

“Just stop!” Maddie hissed. “Stop putting the blame for everything that happened on my brother! He has nothing to do with the situation between us, not back then and not now!”

“Oh, really?” Chimney asked. “So it’s not Buck putting a bug in your ear that you can’t give me another chance?”

Maddie stared at him with a blank face and curled her fingers around the edge of the counter. “That’s a decision I made for the rest of my life before I even met you. And you know that. I told you that. We talked about it three times in total, but I think you like to forget that. We talked about it before our first planned date. We talked about it again after our actual first date. And then we talked about it right at the beginning of my pregnancy. And every single time you told me you would accept my boundaries! Only to now ignore them outright!”

“That’s not fair,” Chimney hissed. “You can’t hold one single mistake against me!”

“No?” Maddie asked. “When should I start holding mistakes against you? When you lose your temper next time and hit me? Or should I wait until you hit Jee-Yun?”

“I would never do that!” Chimney protested.

“And how can I ever be sure of that? Especially in the face of the fact that you aren’t even sorry at all you hit Buck! You go on and on about how he deserved it, how he shouldn’t have lied to you. Do you know how that sounds to me? That you would hit him again. And that means you would hit others as well, me and Jee-Yun included. I will not, under any circumstances, put myself into that kind of situation again. I will not ignore under any circumstances any kind of behavior I regard as a red flag, not even for you! And I won’t let my daughter grow up in that kind of situation either!”

Chimney jumped up. “Are you really comparing me to Doug?”

“I will, for the rest of my life, compare every single man to Doug. Whether I date them or even just befriend them. And not to the man he was at the end when I left him, but to the very sweet and caring man he presented himself as when I met him in college,” Maddie said. “I’ll compare them to the man I fell in love with back then. I look at the warning signs I should have seen back then, and will look for them in any man who will become part of my life. Do you think how Doug was at the end was how it started?”

Maddie took a deep breath and shook her head. “It started with controlling me and separating me from my family and friends. Not that he had to do much work with that. We moved to Boston for school and I didn’t have any friends there. My parents bothered to reach out to me back then as much as they do now. And Evan was young and angry, in no position to be an anchor for me. I ignored the first time Doug hit me because he apologized, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it anyway. I ignored it the second and third and fourth time for the same reason, and after that it was just habit, part of life.”

She didn’t try to stop the tears that were running down her cheeks. It was such a relief to finally get all of this off her chest. It was the first time she said these things aloud and all at once. “I should have been out of there the first time he raised his hand against me. Honestly, the first time he threatened violence.

“And that wasn’t even against me, that first time was against Evan, voiced as a joke about an annoying little brother. Then it was against another student who had shown up Doug in class, and that time it didn’t sound as much like a joke. I missed those signs because I didn’t want to see them, too relieved to be out of my parents’ reach, to have someone else to support me.

“I won’t miss those signs again! I won’t ignore them again! Ignoring them would mean losing all trust in myself! And right now, ever since I called you the first time after I left to get treatment, I see way too many of those signs in you!”

“That’s crazy!” Chimney nearly shouted.

“Keep your voice down or leave!” Maddie hissed. “Jee-Yun does not need to wake up to us shouting at each other!”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “She wouldn’t even remember in a couple of weeks.”

“She would remember the emotions attached to hearing us fight, and I don’t want that for her,” Maddie said. “If you can’t accept that, leave.”

Chimney scowled, but his voice was quieter when he spoke again, “You can’t really hold it against me that I didn’t remember the clinic, do you? We had agreed that it was a bad idea and too expensive. That you couldn’t keep Jee-Yun with you and that would only estrange you from her! We really had a lot of luck that that didn’t happen in the end!”

“We hadn’t agreed on anything,” Maddie said. “I had just given up arguing for it because I was too exhausted to constantly disagree with you. You didn’t listen to a single point I made. But that’s a character flaw of yours I’ve become very well acquainted with over the last six months or so. It’s a character flaw I knew about before, of course, but not to this extent.”

“Of course we had agreed!” Chimney insisted.

“You know, this behavior right here is exactly the reason I’ve been comparing you to Doug lately,” Maddie said. “Not because you hit Buck. That crossed a line I had drawn in the sand for myself, yes, but that could have just been a mistake in a very emotionally charged situation for you. I can’t imagine how it couldn’t have been the end of our relationship, but it wouldn’t have made me compare you to Doug. But all you have done since then, and honestly even before that, is to talk over me, to ignore what I tell you or ask of you.

“I told you I needed more help than I was getting before the blackout. Do you know the reason why I left the way I did? Because I was convinced you wouldn’t let me go. I had reached my breaking point, and I knew if I didn’t want to hit rock bottom that I needed to get the help I had been trying to get for a while already.

“And I was fucking scared of hitting rock bottom, because I’m not sure I would have survived that. I was there in the past, and the only reason I was able to push through that and climb back out was because Evan hadn’t even started school yet and I knew he wouldn’t make it through childhood without me. He had no one but me.

“I don’t have that kind of sole responsibility anymore. Not even for Jee-Yun. She has plenty of people who would take care of her and love and support her if I was gone. So, if I reached that place again, I don’t see—” She took a deep breath, unable to finish that thought. “—But I knew you would hold me back, and that I would be too weak again to push through your protests. So I made sure you couldn’t protest against it this time. Because you holding me back would have killed me, Chimney!”

Chimney stared at her, pale and shaking.

Maddie swallowed and lowered her gaze. “I’m not saying this to make you feel bad. I just need you to finally see what you are doing!”

“What I’m doing?” Chimney asked, voice low.

Maddie shuddered a little. There was something in his voice she couldn’t place, but it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“You are pushing and pushing and pushing,” Maddie said, looking up at him again. “You aren’t leaving me any room to breathe or to move, and that’s been going on since long before I left. And if you won’t stop, everything will break even more than it already has. And I don’t know what will remain then. If anything will remain at all.”

She had hoped to see understanding in him, but when the color returned to his face it was because he had clenched his fists and his teeth in anger. Maddie pressed her lips together and forced herself not to react to it. She had to push through this, had to defend her place.

She couldn’t run away from a fight again like she had done last time. At least not yet, not before she had at least seen a little bit of understanding in Chimney. They had been stuck in this situation for so long now because Chimney wouldn’t move from his position, wouldn’t see the fault in his own actions. It couldn’t go on this way.

“Of course I’m pushing!” Chimney hissed. “I did everything I could to help you while you were fighting against the PPD! You asked me not to tell anyone, and I didn’t! Which also meant that I couldn’t get help for myself! I was there for you and Jee, I supported you through your whole therapy until the blackout. And I didn’t talk you out of the clinic like you claim! That was a decision we made together! And when you left, I thought you had left to kill yourself!”

Maddie sighed. “I’m so very sorry you got that impression. I thought my video would be enough to make sure you knew I was getting the help I needed. And I really thought you would remember the clinic. I didn’t expect you to lose your mind the way you did. Maybe I should have but even then … The clinic was the only way I saw to save myself. I think it honestly was the only thing that saved me, in the end.”

“I’m not the one who lost their mind!” Chimney said, raising his voice again.

“You went and took Jee-Yun on some insane journey,” Maddie said, exhausted and resigned. “You don’t call that losing your mind? You ignored everyone who tried to warn you about your actions. And I’m pretty sure the only reason Hen didn’t say anything against them was because she didn’t want you to cut contact with her as well, because she feared what would happen to you then. I know that part of all of that was the strain my own struggles in the months before had put on you, but that’s not all of it.”

“I had to find you!”

Maddie shook her head. Chimney was caught up in the same circle, repeating his argument over and over again, and nothing seemed to penetrate his thoughts. She didn’t know how to break him out of that. They couldn’t move forward as long as he was stuck in that circle, but they needed to move forward. If Chimney was unable to do it, Maddie would eventually need to move forward on her own, and it hurt to think about what that would mean for Jee-Yun.

“You should have prioritized Jee-Yun over me,” Maddie said softly. “You should have put her first. Even if I had hit rock bottom and tried to find an end, Jee-Yun should have always been your priority.”

Chimney shook his head. “There won’t be a day when I won’t prioritize you!”

Maddie sucked in a breath and took a step back. “Really?”

“Of course!” Chimney’s face softened as he smiled and took two steps in her direction. He cocked his head to the side and his hands relaxed at his side. “I love you, Maddie. You will always be my first priority.”

Maddie stared, lost for words for the moment. She felt her heart break at the same time bile rose in her throat. That wasn’t something she would ever want to hear from a man who had a child, and especially not from the father of her own child. If that really was how Chimney thought and felt, maybe Josh and Buck were right in cautioning her to be prepared to cut him out of her life completely.

“I took great care of Jee-Yun while we were searching for you,” Chimney continued. “I wanted to reunite the two of you as soon as possible. It wasn’t right that you were separated. I know that the therapy at the clinic helped you, but I also know that the separation from Jee didn’t help at all! We would have reached this same point if you had stayed!”

“The point where you hit my brother because he wouldn’t tell you things I had trusted him with in confidence?” Maddie asked coldly. “And I told you already where I see myself now if I hadn’t gone to the clinic. Why do you think you know better than me whether anything else could have helped me in the same way?”

“Because I know you and I know what you need!”

“Better than I know what I need?” Maddie raised her hand. “Don’t answer that. You admitting to that kind of thought might just be the breaking point, and I don’t want to test that. I will not let any person ever again dictate to me what is best for me.”

Chimney frowned.

“And if you try that ever again, I will take Jee-Yun and leave, and you won’t see her again until she is 18 and legally allowed to decide for herself.”

Chimney’s face went slack for a moment before he rushed forward and braced his hands on the kitchen island between them. “You can’t do that!”

“I can and I will,” Maddie said.

She had to fight not to flinch away from him, but the last thing she wanted to do was show him any kind of weakness. Her heart beat painfully hard in her chest and every muscle in her body had tensed when Chimney had rushed at her, but a part of her was proud that she hadn’t even so much as leaned away from him. He couldn’t reach her with the kitchen island between them, and she wouldn’t let him come to the same side she was on.

“She is my daughter as well!” Chimney growled. “You have no right to keep her from me!”

“I have every right to protect my daughter,” Maddie said. “And you just said yourself that she isn’t your first priority. For me, that means there will be situations in which I might need to protect her from you.”

“That’s bullshit!”

Maddie shook her head. “The separation from Jee-Yun was needed for me to get over my PPD. I knew that instinctively long before I left, and I told you about that. But you ignored her needs as well as mine because they didn’t fit into your picture of what your family should be like!”

“Jee needs both of us!” Chimney said angrily. “She needs a family, one that is whole and happy. And that is what we both should be working towards instead of the bullshit you have been sprouting ever since Buck poisoned you against me!”

Maddie drew her shoulders back and raised her chin. “Leave.”

Chimney blinked, mouth hanging open. “What?”

“I want you to leave. There is no point in talking to you as long as you turn everything around to somehow make it Buck’s fault. Get your fucking head detached from your ass. I honestly have no idea right now how much patience I can have with you.”

“You are kidding,” Chimney said. “This is my apartment as well, I will not … Hey!”

Maddie ignored him as she walked to the bedroom and carefully lifted Jee-Yun out of her crib. Thankfully their argument hadn’t woken Jee-Yun and she barely roused now, even when Maddie leaned down to grab the diaper bag. Chimney had followed her into the bedroom and then back to the living room, luckily not trapping her or blocking her way, his mouth hanging open the whole time.

“What are you doing?” Chimney hissed.

Maddie dropped the diaper bag into the stroller and grabbed her purse. “I asked you to leave and you didn’t. So, I’m leaving. Because once again you’re not accepting or respecting my boundaries. And I’m done with that, Chimney. I’m very nearly done with you!”

Chimney reached out with one hand, but Maddie pulled away before he could grab her.

“Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Me!” Maddie hissed.

Chimney reared back, and Maddie thought it was the first time that he recognized he had crossed a line.

“Don’t follow me, don’t call me,” Maddie said. “This is your apartment? Fine. Jee-Yun and I will find a place to stay where I can have my privacy if I ask for it. Do not call me or try to contact me as long as I haven’t reached out to you first! You need to accept a boundary I set for once, because you won’t like the consequences if you don’t!”

Chimney stared at her, his hand hanging in the air between them. Maddie didn’t give him time to react before she pushed the stroller out the door, glad that Jee-Yun had snuggled against her shoulder without waking. All that Maddie wanted at that moment was to get herself and her daughter someplace far away from Chimney.

***

Maddie didn’t know exactly why she had driven to the Lees, but she didn’t allow herself to think about it as she transferred Jee-Yun from her car seat to the stroller. She hoped Chimney wouldn’t show up any time soon, but she knew that as long as Anne or John were here, he would at least be respectful of the space she demanded. There wasn’t anyone else Maddie felt comfortable coming to after the most recent turmoil Chimney had created for her.

Anne was sitting on the couch and reading when Maddie came into the living room, but she hurriedly put the book aside and came over to Maddie as she saw her. “Honey, what happened?”

Maddie bit her lip and shrugged. She wondered how horrible she looked. At one point she had stopped in a parking lot so that she could cry, and Maddie suspected she had sat there for at least half an hour. She had only continued on her way when Jee-Yun had woken up, but she hadn’t dared to look into any mirrors afterward when she had continued her way here.

“Let me take care of Jee-Yun and you sit down. I’ll make us tea.”

Maddie didn’t protest and let Anne push her to the couch. She watched impassively as Anne settled Jee-Yun in the playpen the Lees had built in their living room. Maddie remembered how she had frowned over it in the beginning, but as soon as Jee-Yun had started to crawl she had seen the benefits, especially for a couple of elderly people who couldn’t dare take their eyes away from Jee-Yun for even a second otherwise. Jee-Yun was fast when crawling, and soon enough she would be good enough at walking to be even faster.

Maddie stared at her daughter, who was happy to play by herself with the toys in the playpen for the moment, and startled a little when Anne returned with a tray in her hands. Anne was silent as she filled the two cups with tea and pushed one of them right into Maddie’s hands. The warmth spreading out from it was enough all on its own to calm Maddie down significantly.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Anne asked softly, sitting down right beside Maddie.

Maddie sighed deeply. “I had a fight with Chimney. A big one. So big, in fact, that I felt it necessary to threaten him with taking Jee-Yun away until she was an adult to make him finally accept my boundaries.”

Anne sighed into her tea. “I see.”

“Do you?”

“Howie has been very stubborn and unreasonable,” Anne said. “John and I have both tried to warn him of the consequences and to caution him that his behavior needs to change or it won’t lead to anything good. I would not fault you if you went through with that threat.”

“I don’t want to take her father away from her,” Maddie whispered. “And I don’t … I don’t want to take you away from her either, or the other way around, take her from you. But I’m not sure if I cut contact with Chimney if I could keep contact with you.”

“We would be perfectly capable of keeping those two parts of our life separate,” Anne said with raised brows. “If you asked us to, we would not tell Howie anything about you or Jee-Yun if this situation came to pass.”

“I … that would be a terrible strain on your relationship with Chimney,” Maddie said crestfallen.

“It would be,” Anne agreed. “But you needn’t fear that it would destroy our relationship with Howie. We have gone through many hardships over the years with him, the worst of all losing Kevin, of course, and our relationship survived. Howie might be angry at us for a while, but I know he will come around eventually. And if he takes too long to come around for you to bear it, that’s his problem to deal with, not yours.”

Maddie sucked in a deep breath, her tears returning in force. She had been sure she had cried all she could for the day earlier in the car, but evidently she had been wrong. “I hate what my PPD did to all of us.”

Anne smiled sadly. “May I hug you?”

Maddie nodded, and after Anne had put first her own cup and then Maddie’s on the table she fell into the older woman’s arms with quiet sobs. She felt devasted over some of the things she had said to Chimney. None of it had been a lie, but she hadn’t ever wanted to share those thoughts with him. She knew it wasn’t fair to compare him to Doug, but that was something she couldn’t help herself with.

“Do you want to tell me what he did?” Anne asked softly, rubbing a hand over Maddie’s back.

Maddie bit her lip. There were things she didn’t want to share with Anne, didn’t want to burden her with. Anne didn’t need to know about how low Maddie had feared her depression would eventually lead her, or that she had been at that point before.

“I asked him to leave,” Maddie said eventually, her voice breaking with every other word. She cleared her throat. “He said it was his apartment as well and he had every right to stay. So I took Jee-Yun and left myself, told him he could keep the apartment and I would find someplace to stay where he couldn’t…”

“Where he couldn’t violate the boundaries you set with him,” Anne finished when Maddie wasn’t able to continue.

Maddie nodded silently.

Anne sighed. “I am very glad you are able to stand up to him. I wish I knew what was going on with him, what is wrong with him right now, and what I could do or say to make him see reason. He was such a sweet boy, and a fine young man once.”

“Buck thinks Chimney has PPD as well,” Maddie whispered. “And he isn’t getting any treatment for that. The anger management he is forced to go to would just be treating the symptoms but not the cause if Buck is right.”

“Do you think your brother is right?” Anne asked.

“I want to believe he is right,” Maddie admitted. “Because if he isn’t, I don’t know how I could … You know about Doug.”

“Yes.”

There wasn’t any kind of judgment in Anne’s voice, and neither was there pity. There never had been the few times this topic had come up in the past, and that startled Maddie every time. She didn’t know anyone else aside from Anne who didn’t judge her either way about her marriage.

Maddie hated how sad it made Buck every time Doug or her years with him were mentioned, and she hated even more the kind of aloof judgment and disappointment over her own failings she had been confronted with by her parents. Those were the two extremes of the scale, and everyone she had ever mentioned her past to had fallen somewhere in between in their reactions.

Not so Anne, who somehow managed every time to keep calm and neutral, and as always that reaction made Maddie want to unload everything that was in her head about it, because it made her feel safe in a way she couldn’t remember ever feeling before.

“I told Chimney I would for the rest of my life judge every man who came into my life by Doug’s standard,” Maddie said quietly. “By the man Doug was when I met him. I know that’s not fair, but…”

“It’s no one’s business to tell you what you are or aren’t allowed to do to feel safe,” Anne said.

“People try to tell me all the time about that,” Maddie sighed. “Not just Chimney. People judge my past, and they judge my reaction to it now, and I feel I’m failing their expectations all the time.”

“Do they say that to you?” Anne asked. “Or are you inferring their thoughts from little comments or gestures or even just looks?”

Maddie bit her lip and shrugged. It wasn’t as if she talked about her past all the time. To tell the truth, her parents and Chimney had probably been the only ones to ever outright say anything about it, but that didn’t mean that other people’s reactions weren’t telling even if they didn’t use their words. She knew that Buck thought she had fallen into a new relationship too quickly after Doug, for example, but he had never said as much to her.

“Because if they haven’t said it to your face, it could very well be that you are projecting your own fears and doubts onto other people.”

Maddie huffed and shook her head.

“You probably have a lot of those, don’t you?”

Maddie closed her eyes and tried to sit up, but Anne didn’t let go of her, and Maddie didn’t have enough fight in her to leave the embrace that felt so much more caring and motherly than anything she had ever experienced from her own mother.

“Do you have another place to stay with Jee-Yun until you can find an apartment of your own?” Anne said.

“No,” Maddie whispered. “I don’t have any friends I can impose on for weeks on end, especially not with a toddler in tow. And I didn’t even take anything with me aside from the necessities for Jee-Yun when I left.”

Anne hummed. “I will send John over to collect Howie, and we will get his keys to the apartment from him when John brings him home. I think it is best if Howie continues to stay here with us, if only so that he isn’t alone and spiraling even more. Hopefully, if he doesn’t have keys to let himself into the apartment, he won’t disturb you there anymore.”

“He’s not wrong when he says it’s his apartment too,” Maddie whispered.

“He is wrong,” Anne said resolutely. “The apartment should be your and Jee-Yun’s sanctuary, even from Howie. Right now, probably especially from Howie. You have broken up and he needs to learn to respect your privacy again. He has no right to your time or space, the same as you don’t have a right to his time and space. You have so far always accepted not coming over here or to staying for longer than it takes to drop Jee-Yun off when Howie asked for time and space.”

“Not that he has done that often,” Maddie muttered.

“But the handful of times he did, you accepted that without protest, even if it was inconvenient for you. He should have done the same when dropping Jee-Yun off today,” Anne said. “I never asked before, but how is the legal situation with Jee-Yun’s custody?”

“I’m her only legal parent, so by default I still have sole custody,” Maddie said quietly. “The whole thing was just a complete mess with everything that happened when Jee-Yun was born. For some reason, we hadn’t even considered that Chimney wouldn’t automatically be recognized as her legal father. I only learned about that when I had finally decided on a name and had the hospital fill out the birth certificate.”

Maddie shook her head and closed her eyes tightly. The chaos of those days was still overwhelming. “Chimney was taking care of Albert when I took care of the birth certificate, so I asked where we could fill out these VDOP forms later on and thought we’d take care of it soon, you know?”

“VDOP?” Anne asked curiously.

“Voluntary Declaration of Parentage,” Maddie said. “I have a list of places where we could fill it out and then we’d need to file it with the Department of Child Support. But … We talked about it, of course, not too long after Jee-Yun and I came home from the hospital. And made plans to take care of it. But between Covid and taking care of our newborn and Albert at the same time … it just never happened.

“We put it off over and over. Getting an appointment just never seemed to work out. Then my PPD hit and everything … We did fill out some temporary paperwork to give Chimney as many rights as possible until we could take care of this and I’m glad it was enough for the authorities to give Jee-Yun back to Chimney after he got arrested in Boston. I would have hated for Jee-Yun to be stuck in foster care for any amount of time.”

Or worse, if anyone had contacted Maddie’s parents. She hadn’t told them about her PPD. In fact, the last time she had spoken to them had been weeks before the blackout. It was par for the course that Margaret and Phillip weren’t the ones to keep in contact with Maddie, it had always been her who had needed to reach out since the moment she had left her parents’ house for college. In that regard, it hadn’t been difficult for Doug to restrict the contact between Maddie and her parents because he hadn’t needed to worry about them calling or coming by their house. In the same way, it hadn’t been difficult to fall out of contact again now.

Maddie wondered sometimes how her parents would have reacted if Child Protective Service in Boston had contacted them to tell them their daughter was missing, the father of their grandchild was in police custody, and someone needed to take care of their granddaughter. She wasn’t sure if her parents would have even taken Jee-Yun, but she knew without a doubt that if they had taken her in, it would have been a fight to get Jee-Yun back. She was glad it had never come to that, and that they had never learned about her struggles over the past months.

Maddie would heed Albert’s advice to invite her parents to Jee-Yun’s first birthday, though she was dreading that call a little and had been pushing it back so far. They would decline, Maddie was sure of that, and it would probably be the last time she spoke to either of her parents. This last year had proven that even having a granddaughter had not changed their attitude, and Maddie had lost all patience and hope regarding her parents basically the moment she had held Jee-Yun for the first time.

The instant connection she had felt to her daughter had been overwhelming, but it had also made her recognize that this connection had never been there between Margaret and any of her three children. Maddie couldn’t imagine how that could be if there wasn’t something very wrong with her mother.

“Have you talked about it since you came home from the hospital?” Anne asked soft.

Maddie sighed and shrugged. “No. Chimney hasn’t brought it up and I’m not sure with how frantic he is if he even remembers that we still need to take care of this. And I … I don’t know. It feels like just another point of conflict, and part of me … fears he’ll make an argument out of it, or will refuse to sign. Maybe try to use it as some kind of leverage.”

“If Howie comes around eventually do you want to finish that process?” Anne asked.

“I … it’s only fair, isn’t it?” Maddie asked.

“This is not about what is fair,” Anne said. “Life is not fair as a rule. In this case, we have to weigh the right choice for you against what is the right choice for Howie and against what is the right choice for Jee-Yun. There might not be a solution where none of you loses, and also not where all of you win. Howie might not be able to see it right now, but he has been hurting you for weeks. And until Jee-Yun is much older, hurting you also always means hurting her.”

“I can’t turn Jee-Yun into a bargaining chip. And he could just sue me, demand a DNA test. The courts would support him.”

Anne sighed. “Using Jee-Yun as leverage is not what I’m talking about. Do you still see yourself as willing and able to co-parent with Howie after everything that has been going on? Do you trust him to be your co-parent?”

Maddie shrugged. It was what she desperately wanted, but that dream had been moving farther away with every day that went by, with every time Chimney refused to respect her boundaries. The last thing she wanted was to raise Jee-Yun on her own, or to have a custody battle with Chimney, but if she couldn’t trust Chimney with her own boundaries, how could she trust him with her daughter? It was a lingering thought that she had tried to push away for a long time.

“I want us to be a family,” Maddie said quietly. She turned a little, settling more comfortably against Anne’s chest and pulling her legs onto the couch. “I want to keep believing that we can manage that somehow. But I don’t know … I don’t know how long I’ll be strong enough to keep going the way we are right now. At some point I’ll need to make a decision, and I’m so afraid of reaching that point.” She blew out a breath. “I can’t keep fighting for that dream alone indefinitely.”

Chapter 09

Chimney sat on the couch brooding, just staring at the dark TV screen with a deep scowl, when he was pulled out of his thoughts by a knock on the door. He had collapsed onto the couch after Maddie had left and hadn’t moved since.

He had watched Maddie leave earlier, stunned by the vitriol with which she had met him in the end and at a complete loss for why everything seemed to have gone wrong again. He didn’t know why she felt she needed to threaten him again with taking Jee-Yun away, or why she thought he would just let her do that. Someone had to have put that kind of bug in her ear, and Chimney was sure it was Buck, but he didn’t know what he thought he could achieve with that. He also didn’t know why Maddie was following that lead, or what he could do or say to make her see reason.

Chimney groaned and stood after a second knock. When he opened the door, he was surprised to find John waiting in front of it, his hands buried in the pockets of his pants and watching Chimney with a carefully neutral expression.

“Hey,” Chimney blinked, confused. “What are you doing here?”

“I think we need to have a very frank discussion, Howard.”

Chimney shrugged and stepped aside to let him in. “Do you want a beer?”

John hadn’t taken that kind of tone with him in a very long time, and Chimney did his best to hide his worry about it. After his mother’s death, when the Lees had become his de facto foster parents—even if, as far as Chimney knew, there hadn’t ever been an official arrangement about it because his father hadn’t bothered to care—he had heard that kind of tone more than once. It had always stung to have John talk to him in that way. Disappointing John was a much bigger burden than disappointing his father who had never much cared for him anyway.

“No.” John sent him a look that made Chimney shiver. “And you won’t have alcohol either. Sit down and tell me what happened between you and Maddie earlier.”

“Wow,” Chimney huffed, surprised.

Once upon a time, he had been jealous sometimes of Kevin when he had gotten a lecture while Chimney hadn’t when he should have since they had both been neck-deep in whatever had happened. All because there had always been an invisible wall between Chimney and the Lees after they had taken him in. There had been this line they had never dared to cross, that had always made him feel like he wasn’t really part of their family as much as he might wish he was. At some point during the last year or two they had finally crossed that line, but Chimney had thought he was too old to still be subjected to a lecture from John.

Chimney frowned while John herded him to the couch. “What’s going on here? Maddie and I just had an argument. That’s been pretty common since she has come home. How do you know about that anyway?”

“I know about it because Maddie has been at our house very distraught the whole afternoon.” John pointed at the couch and Chimney followed the unspoken order to sit down, sighing and rolling his eyes. John himself sat down on the table, facing Chimney. “Anne and I have watched the both of you struggle long enough now. We hoped you would be able to figure things out by yourself, but we were obviously mistaken.”

“I have no idea what’s going on with Maddie,” Chimney said. “She has changed since she came back home. It’s as if I can’t talk to her anymore, and I have no idea where it’s coming from!”

John straightened his back and raised his chin, looking down at Chimney over his nose. “I know your mother and later Anne and I taught you better than this. We taught you to respect other people, especially your partners.”

Chimney frowned. “I do.”

“Did you or did you not ignore Maddie’s request earlier to leave?” John asked.

Chimney rolled his eyes. “This is my apartment as much as hers.”

“But you aren’t in a relationship anymore,” John said. “You don’t live here right now. And even if you did, I would expect you to give her the space she asks for when she asks for it.”

“Maddie can’t keep running away. We will never figure this out otherwise,” Chimney said. “Did she also tell you that she kept comparing me to Doug and that she basically accused me of being at fault that she left in October?”

John sighed. “What did she say about October to you?”

“She said I had held her back, that I had been the problem all along.” Chimney fisted his hands in his pants, but the way John stared at him kept him seated where he was. “Which is utter bullshit! I did everything I could to help her, to support her! And now she has somehow started to believe I held her back from the help she needed?”

“Had she talked to you before about the clinic she went to?”

Chimney huffed. “Do you think I would have driven across the whole country with my daughter if I had known to look for Maddie in Burbank?”

John sighed. “That is not an answer to my question.”

Chimney glared and gritted his teeth. “I did not know about the clinic in Burbank! We talked about in-patient treatment once and agreed that any separation from Jee was a bad idea for Maddie.”

“But apparently Maddie changed her mind about that at one point,” John said softly. “Sometimes we do all we can think of to help the people we love, and sometimes it is still not enough, or not the right way to help them. I don’t doubt that you gave everything you could, and I also don’t doubt that Maddie is aware of that.

“But if Maddie says it wasn’t enough or it wasn’t the right thing then you need to accept that. And it might not have been an accusation at all, but rather a statement of fact for her. Isn’t the important thing that in the end Maddie found a way to get the help she needed, the kind of help that let her finally overcome her sickness?”

“There was no doubt that she was accusing me of holding her back,” Chimney growled.

John inclined his head. “Then you might need to take a step back and figure out why she feels that way.”

“She feels that way because her brother has some kind of vendetta against me and is poisoning her mind against me!”

John leaned back and blinked. “I see.”

“Do you?” Chimney asked. “Because no one else seems to see it! He’s even managed to turn Hen’s thoughts around the axle.”

“Or maybe you have lost the ability to reflect on your own actions regarding Maddie.”

Chimney felt floored. He stared at John, lost for words.

“You complained earlier that Maddie compared you to her ex,” John said. “I don’t know much about her situation in the past, but I know enough that I wonder why you wouldn’t have expected her to compare you to him.”

Chimney reared back. “I’m nothing like Doug!”

“And you think that is all such a comparison could be about?” John asked.

“What else should it be about?”

“About the differences instead of the similarities,” John said softly. “About the relief of not seeing patterns of behaviors she had to deal with for nearly two decades. That man kept her hostage for half her life, even if she might not have seen it that way in the beginning. He might be dead, but that doesn’t mean she can just shake off the experiences she had with him and live as if they didn’t happen.

“For better or worse, that man shaped the woman Maddie is today, and no one—not even the father of her child—has a right to tell her how to deal with that. You have no right, Howard, to expect anything from her regarding the boundaries she set for herself and for you. And yet, as far as I know, you have ignored those boundaries over and over again since she has come home.”

“I don’t ignore—”

“She asked you to leave her alone here earlier, to leave her home, her safe place. Instead, you are sitting here while Maddie and Anne are cooking up a storm that will probably feed half the neighborhood for the rest of the week to distract her.”

Chimney flinched. The way John said it sounded horrible, but that wasn’t how it had happened. He wasn’t pushing Maddie because he ignored her boundaries, but because she was running away from finding a solution to their problems.

“Another boundary which you have not yet accepted is the end of your relationship,” John said.

“She just needs to—”

“She doesn’t need to do anything!” John interrupted him harshly.

Chimney stared at him wide-eyed. He could count on one hand the number of times John had raised his voice, and he had never expected to be on the receiving end of such an outburst.

“She made a decision for her personal life, for her comfort and wellbeing, and you have to accept that,” John continued, leaning forward. “You have no right to any person’s personal space or time. And this is what I meant when I said earlier that your mother, Anne, and I had raised you better than you have shown over the past weeks. A relationship of any kind always requires the consent of both people involved. It doesn’t matter what one wants if the other person doesn’t want it. And Maddie has made it very clear that she does not want to continue the relationship you had so far, that all she wants from you now is to be your co-parent. You have no other choice than to accept that, Howard!”

“I have every right to fight for the love of my life!” Chimney said angrily, and even John’s hard stare couldn’t hold him back from jumping out of his seat anymore. He started to pace the length of the room. “Don’t you get that it’s not really Maddie who has made any of these decisions? She is confused and her brother is telling her all kinds of strange things about me!”

John sighed deeply. “Why should he do that?”

“I have no idea!” Chimney threw his arms in the air. “And I really don’t care. What I care about is that he is using Maddie’s situation to ruin her life!”

“Because you are the only good thing in her life?”

“Yes!”

John stared at him silently, and it was that reaction that made Chimney pause. He turned to John, who looked at him with a deep frown and his lips pursed. Chimney groaned and rubbed his hands over his face.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it!” Chimney said desperately. “Maddie and I were happy! And we could still be that if Buck had just kept his mouth shut instead of dragging our argument out into public!”

“So you would have lied to Maddie about violating a boundary she had set before you had even started dating her?” John asked.

“It was a mistake. One tiny mistake!” Chimney said. “I was angry and hurt and desperate! I shouldn’t be judged for that! Not the way everyone is doing it!”

“No one is judging you for your emotions at that time,” John said. “What people are judging you for, what Maddie is judging you for, is your reaction to those emotions. No one made you punch Buck. That was your decision. And you knew the consequences of that type of action before that.”

“Do you judge me?” Chimney spat.

“I’m disappointed,” John said softly. “I am even more disappointed that ever since then you have been unable to accept responsibility for your actions. I don’t understand any of what you have been doing. I didn’t understand why you left town with your daughter. Anne and I would have happily taken care of her if you felt so strongly that you needed to search for Maddie. I don’t understand why you lied to several people about your actions, especially not why you lied to Maddie. And I don’t understand why you keep blaming Maddie’s brother for everything.”

“He shouldn’t have filed charges against me!”

John inclined his head. “Maybe so. But he didn’t make you punch him. And in the end, that’s what all of this comes back to. Maddie told you a long time ago that she would draw a hard line with every man in her life who showed an inclination to violence. One mistake is all it takes to show such an inclination. That’s how she decided to deal with her past, and the only thing you can do and should do is accept that.”

“I’m not Doug!”

“You are pretty close to becoming a man very similar to Doug,” John said darkly.

Chimney reared back. He felt like he had been slapped in the face and punched in the gut at the same time.

“Doug didn’t respect Maddie’s boundaries,” John continued relentlessly. “He alienated her from her family. He made her feel unsafe and fearful in the one place she should never feel either of those things. And you have done the same today.”

Chimney sucked in a breath, lost for words.

“What we will do now is that you will give me the key to this apartment and promise me that you have no other copies of it. Then we will pack what is left of your things here and we will leave. You won’t disturb Maddie here anymore unless she invites you herself.”

“But—”

“Do not argue with me about this, Howard Han,” John snapped. “It doesn’t matter that your name is still on the lease for this apartment as well. You agreed in December that it was best for Maddie to stay here and for you to stay with us until you found a new apartment. That means you effectively gave up your rights to this apartment. As you can’t honor that decision on your own, I will make you honor it.”

John stood and inhaled deeply. “I love you, son. And one day, hopefully soon, you will recognize that I’m saving you from yourself right now.”

***

Chimney had arrived early at the bar where he planned to meet Tommy. Tommy still hadn’t arrived, but Chimney was already well into his second beer, staring darkly at the table in front of him without a care about what was going on around him. It had been a little over twenty-four hours since John had basically evicted him from his own apartment.

He didn’t know if he was angry or disappointed or sad. Some of the things John had said to him stung in a way he couldn’t shake off as much as he tried. It wasn’t even things others hadn’t told him before, but he had always been able to laugh them off previously. But something in the way John had said them had made it all stick in Chimney’s head, even though he was still convinced everyone else was just misunderstanding the situation.

He loved Maddie, and that was the only reason why he pushed her. It wasn’t about disrespect or ignoring her words or boundaries, it was about worrying about her, and knowing that some of the things she had been saying since returning home weren’t like her at all. They loved each other, and they had fought worse together than her struggle with PPD and come out on top of it happier than before. It would be the same this time around.

“Wow.” Tommy sat down with an incredulous chuckle. “You look like the world just ended!”

“I feel like it did,” Chimney agreed. “Please tell me you got me a new beer as well!”

“I’m not sure if you need another beer,” Tommy said. “How many did you have already? I invited a surprise guest to join us, can’t have you black out from too much alcohol while we have a guest.”

“Guest?” Chimney frowned unhappily. “If I wanted to get drunk, I’d have started with tequila.”

“An old friend visiting us from Boston,” Tommy said, grinning brightly. “You’ll probably forget all your sorrows once you see him.”

Chimney blinked and stared at his beer, wondering if he might be drunker than he thought. “I can’t remember knowing anyone in Boston.”

“Yeah, if you remembered I had moved to Boston you’d have probably come to visit me. At least I hope so.”

Chimney looked up in surprise and then he hurriedly stood to greet Eli with a hug. “You never once told me you were settling down in Boston!”

Eli laughed and patted Chimney’s back. They both sat down before Eli said, “I hear you are a dad now yourself, so you probably know all about hectic chaos overtaking your life with a baby in your home suddenly.”

“Because that comes so unexpectedly after you’ve had nine months to prepare,” Tommy said, rolling his eyes.

Eli laughed. “Do you want us to reminisce about the months before and after your oldest was born? I very clearly remember all the nights on shift you were thankful for not being at home when she was teething, because you had never considered that would happen to your own child, just to begin with.”

Tommy glared and Chimney laughed. “What are you doing here, Eli?”

“Family obligation.” Eli rolled his eyes. “My uncle’s birthday, and as I didn’t manage to come to any family celebrations over the last two years, my mother was very insistent that I finally come for a visit even if neither my wife nor my children could accompany me. I can only tell my mother No so often. But at least she graciously allows me to spend half the evenings I’m here with friends instead of helping with the preparations for the party. Ninety has to be celebrated big, but of course it’s the younger generation who have to prepare everything.”

“So you took a week’s vacation but all you are doing is working for your family?” Chimney asked amused.

“More or less. It’s good to see everyone again, though. And it’s really good to have a chance to see you guys again,” Eli said. “I know I’m horrible at keeping in contact with people outside the place I live at. I just never remember to text or call in a moment when I actually have time to do so.”

“I think that’s a problem all three of us share,” Tommy said.

Chimney nodded. “Agreed.”

“So, all the better I’m here for a visit, and maybe we can work on that in the future,” Eli grinned. “I still can’t believe I missed your visit to Boston, Chimney!”

Chimney made a face and shook his head. “There wasn’t anything to miss. And I wasn’t there long anyway.” He turned to Tommy with a frown. “How much have you told him already?”

Tommy raised his hands defensively. “Your secrets are safe with me, buddy. If you want to tell him what’s going on, that’s your decision.”

Chimney sighed. “Might not be the best conversation to be had when you want to enjoy an evening free of family drama. How long will you be here, and what are your plans for the times you can sneak away from your family?”

Eli was happy to answer, and for a while their conversation was all about his family and his plans, before it transitioned into all three of them sharing tales about the years since Eli had left LA. It was a relaxed and happy conversation, and for the most part, it made Chimney forget for a while all that was going wrong in his life. Being able to shove all of it to the side for a while and instead laugh about the oddest calls each of them had encountered over the past few years was a relief.

But of course, neither Tommy nor Eli was so easy to distract, and eventually, after they had insisted all three of them switch to non-alcoholic drinks, Tommy turned to Chimney with his brows raised.

“Ready yet to tell us what storm clouds were brewing over your head when we arrived?”

“And if the answer is no?” Chimney asked darkly.

Eli sighed. “Come on, we are your friends. And Tommy mentioned you can use all the friends you have right now.”

“You’re probably the only friends I have left.”

Tommy choked on his drink and Eli laughed surprised. “I don’t believe there is anything that can do much if any damage to your friendship with Hen. Unless something very fundamental about both of you has changed since I left! I wasn’t even with the 118 anymore and I still know all about your epic friendship.”

“Maybe it did,” Chimney said darkly. “She at least hasn’t been very supportive of my situation or my worries lately. The whole situation is just completely fucked up.”

Eli blew out a breath. “I guess you need to tell me first what’s going on. Like Tommy said earlier, he hasn’t let slip a single word about what’s going on with you, except that you are going through a rough time.”

Chimney blew out a breath. “It all started with Maddie, my girlfriend, having a really hard time after she gave birth. It probably took us too long to even suspect she could be suffering from PPD, and then getting help wasn’t easy either.”

Eli listened attentively while Chimney talked about everything that had happened since Jee-Yun had been born. He didn’t interrupt with questions even once, only nodding from time to time when Chimney trailed off for a little while. It was more difficult to talk about it than Chimney had expected, and somewhere in the midst of his explanation he realized that this was the first time he had ever talked about all of it at once. Even when he had first told Tommy about it he hadn’t gone into as much detail as he was now.

Eli blew out a breath as Chimney finished with the most recent reaction of the Lees. “That’s a tough situation. And I understand how frustrating it has to be to feel like no one is listening to you.”

“Yeah.” Chimney shrugged and stared at the table.

“I know it might hurt, but taking a step back and waiting until Maddie comes back to you might be the best thing you can do right now,” Eli said softly.

Chimney jerked his head up and stared at his friend incredulously.

“There’s this proverb. Something about letting the person you love go, and if the love is real and true, they will come back to you,” Eli said. “I know it probably hurts even just thinking about it, but chasing after her might just not be the right thing. You mentioned she had a difficult ex and that she compared you to him during your last argument. If you push too much you might just push her away altogether.”

“And if I take a step back, she’ll eventually believe I gave up on her,” Chimney said darkly.

“Then make sure she knows you love her without pushing her,” Eli said. “Make sure she knows that you are here for her no matter what, no matter when she needs it. You have a child together, so you’ll have ample opportunity to see her regularly and show her that all those things are still true even if she isn’t a daily part of your life for the moment.”

Chimney curled his hands around his glass tightly, gritting his teeth. “So you say I should just give up?”

Eli sighed. “It’s not giving up I’m talking about, Howie.”

“No one calls him that anymore,” Tommy muttered with a low chuckle and Chimney was thankful for the distraction.

“No?” Eli asked with raised brows. “What’re they calling you then?”

“Chimney.”

Eli snorted. “That has to be an interesting story.”

Chimney grinned. “I don’t think this is the place to tell that story.”

“Oh no!” Eli leaned forward. “Don’t think you’re getting out of telling me how you got that name! Did you get stuck in a chimney during a rescue?”

Tommy snorted. “He wishes that’s what happened!”

“I did rescue half a dozen women during that huge mudslide by getting into a building through a chimney! That’s a much better origin story, and I really should just use that in the future.”

Tommy laughed. “No way are we letting you get away with that! You just want a less embarrassing story than what really…” He trailed off with a frown and leaned out of the booth they were sitting in.

Chimney and Eli both turned around as well, curious about what had distracted their friend. Before Chimney found what Tommy was looking at, both Eli and Tommy jumped out of their seats. They weren’t fast enough, though, as just two tables away from them a young woman turned away from a man holding one of her wrists in a tight grip, and the man reacted by shoving her in the direction of the table beside him.

Tommy and Eli both grabbed the man by the shoulders, but the woman fell over the table and glass shattered loudly. Chimney left Tommy and Eli to handle the guy and hurried to the woman, who rolled to the side away from the table, her shoulders hunched over and her gaze erratically searching for her attacker.

“Hey,” Chimney said softly, staying far enough away not to startle her. “My friends will take care of that asshole, and I hope someone else is calling 9-1-1. I’m a firefighter and a paramedic with the LAFD, do you mind if I take a look at you?”

She turned to him wide-eyed. “I’m good.”

Chimney smiled and gently shook his head. “I don’t think so. Please don’t freak out, but take a look at your arms.”

She followed his instructions and gasped loudly. Chimney rushed forward as she grabbed for the glass shard embedded in her left arm. He pushed her right hand away, careful not to grab her wrist or do anything else that might make her feel restricted.

“That would be a very bad idea, Miss,” Chimney said softly. “We aren’t exactly equipped here to stop any significant bleeding, even if someone can bring a first aid kit. Policy is to leave any objects inside a wound until the patient arrives at the hospital. They’re much better prepared to treat you there.”

She sucked in a breath.

“I’m Chimney. Let’s sit down over here at the other table without all the broken glass.”

She nodded slowly. “I’m Linsey. This is so embarrassing! I can’t believe he just showed up like this!”

Chimney smiled reassuringly and nodded in thanks to the barman who brought over a first aid kit and informed them that police and paramedics were on the way. The barman left Linsey in Chimney’s care after Chimney told him he was an off-duty paramedic himself, as were his two friends who were still busy subduing Linsey’s attacker.

“You know him?” Chimney asked as he kneeled down in front of Linsey and inspected the arm.

“We were friends for a while,” Linsey muttered, watching what was going on in the bar over Chimney’s shoulder. “Then we went on a couple of dates and … yeah, that didn’t go all too well. But he doesn’t agree with me about that.”

Chimney made a face. “I’m sorry you have to deal with something like that. Do you have any known allergies? Did you ever react badly to any medication? Do you take any medication currently? Have you taken any drugs and how much alcohol have you had tonight? And be prepared to answer those questions again later once my colleagues arrive.”

Linsey shook her head and finally looked at Chimney. “I’m halfway through my second cocktail. Does birth control count as medication?”

Chimney smiled. “Yes. What’s his name?”

“Jonathan.” Linsey sighed. “I’m really sorry for the mess I made. I never should have let it come this far.”

“This is not your fault,” Chimney said. He took the gauze and dressing out of the first aid kit and started to wrap it around Linsey’s arm and the glass shard in such a way that it wouldn’t move.

“It totally is. I saw the fucking warning signs even when we were friends, and I chose to ignore them because … I was lonely, I guess. Worst decision of my life to agree to a date with him just because I thought he was hot and probably a pretty good lay despite his weird opinions in some cases.”

“Still not your fault,” Chimney repeated.

“I shouldn’t have ignored the red flags,” Linsey muttered. “I know better. I fucking know better than to ignore my gut about guys. I ignored it, and of course, I’m regretting that again.”

Chimney frowned and froze for a moment. He couldn’t ignore how similar that sounded to something Maddie had said the day before, and he suddenly felt nauseous. He knew Linsey wasn’t comparing him to the guy who had attacked her, but he still felt compared to him for a moment, much like he had felt compared to Doug by Maddie.

Chimney shook his head to clear those thoughts. “Do you know how he found you here?”

Linsey sighed. “I guess a mutual friend told him. If that’s the case, that’s one less friend I have. Most of our mutual friends think we would be such a great couple together. They tried to make us date for a long time already, and he has told them all how great our dates were and that I just need to get over my phobia about commitment.”

“Those who will still say that after this aren’t true friends for you,” Chimney said darkly. He secured the dressing and let his hands drop into his lap. “Would you mind letting me look at your back to see if you fell into any shards?”

Linsey shrugged and turned.

Chimney sighed, relieved to see that the fabric of her top wasn’t torn anywhere and that he didn’t see any blood seeping through it. Everything else could be looked into when they had Linsey in the ambulance. “Thank you. It doesn’t look like there is anything I need to take care of right away.”

When Linsey turned back, tears were running down her face. “Why do I always find guys like this? It’s like I’m cursed! I trust a guy and he turns out to be just the same kind of asshole that everyone else has always been.”

Chimney shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“I tell myself I won’t make the same mistake the next time. I promise myself to look out for certain behaviors, not to accept a certain behavior, and then I still do it because I fear being left alone in the end. Or I want to hope this time it won’t be the warning sign it was every time before.”

Chimney frowned, bit his tongue, and turned his head to the side. He suddenly remembered something Maddie had told him a long time ago when they had first talked about the possibility of there being more between them than friendship. He felt like a bucket of ice water had been emptied over his head.

Linsey sighed deeply. “I just need to learn to fucking stick to the boundaries I set for myself. But I just might need to move away and start a new life, with new friends, to accomplish that. All the ones here seem to ignore my boundaries. Hey, are you alright?”

Chimney cleared his throat. “Yeah. You just reminded me of something … a friend told me recently. About boundaries and all that. I’m sorry, it’s unprofessional to get distracted like that.”

Linsey laughed wetly. “You aren’t even working right now, you are just a run-off-the-mill civilian taking care of a girl in need. Nothing unprofessional about being distracted. What did your friend tell you about boundaries?”

“That she can’t afford to overlook her boundaries for anyone if she doesn’t want to lose her trust in herself, and that this trust in herself is in the end the only thing she has left,” Chimney whispered, not meeting her gaze. He couldn’t believe he had forgotten those words recently. They had broken his heart when Maddie had first said them to him all these years ago.

“I’m starting to believe I should do that, too,” Linsey said. “I … I have friends who went through pretty similar things, falling in love with the wrong guys. And they keep telling me I can’t let that define how I interact with men. They … one of them set boundaries for herself, in the beginning, to avoid certain things in men, but then she met the guy she is married to now, and she just gave up on pretty much all those boundaries. And for her, that seemed to have worked out, at least as far as I can see. And another one just has no boundaries at all. And they keep saying…”

“Not every person deals with trauma in the same way, even if it is similar trauma,” Chimney said softly, though the words stung in a deeply personal way. “The important thing is that you find a way to deal with it and find a way to feel safe. Don’t let your friends tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. Do what is right for you, not what worked out for your friends.”

Linsey smiled shakily. “Thank you.”

Chapter 10

Albert was surprised when he followed Captain Mehta into the bar they had been called to and found Chimney kneeling in front of a young woman who had a dressing wrapped around her left arm that was clearly also covering some object. They had been called to a bar brawl that was reported to be under control but with several injuries, and aside from Chimney, Albert saw two other men he thought he recognized from some pictures Hen and Chimney had shared. Albert couldn’t put a name to either of the two men who were clearly keeping back a small group of other men from approaching Chimney and his patient, but judging from the murmuring of his colleagues, others recognized them as well.

Mehta ordered Albert and Arya Chander, one of the paramedics of the 133, to Chimney before turning to the other group with the rest of their team. Albert followed Arya, though he wasn’t sure it was the best idea to send him to Chimney. Captain Mehta, of course, wouldn’t know anything about their difficult family situation at the moment since Albert was very careful how much he talked about any of it while at work, so Albert couldn’t fault the Captain for assuming that Chimney would be happy to see him.

“Are you missing work so much, Chimney?” Albert asked in a teasing tone as they approached the pair.

Chimney turned, and Albert hesitated mid-step because the heat in his brother’s glare stood in strange contrast to his red-rimmed eyes and pale face. “I can’t wait to finally go back to work next week, but meeting Linsey was a complete accident. Did you suddenly decide to become a paramedic after all?”

Arya laughed. “He didn’t, and I honestly wouldn’t recommend it for him, no offense, Albert. But I guess Cap is confident that between you and me, we can handle the situation just fine.”

Chimney turned his head to the other side to look at the group Mehta was in a heated discussion with now and sighed. “Yeah, I see why he would want to have every person available over there.” He turned back to their patient. “Linsey, this is paramedic Arya Chander. You’ll be in the best hands while she transports you to the hospital in a little while.”

Linsey sent a shaky smile in their direction. “Hi.”

“Linsey here was thrown over a table and ended up smashing some glasses and a bottle or two,” Chimney said, turning half to Arya, but not looking away from Linsey. “Got a shard of broken glass stuck in her arm. As long as it doesn’t move you shouldn’t have to deal with any complications.”

Arya nodded and patted his shoulder. “As much as I’d love to just take over as if we were on a shared call, you know the drill. You’re off duty, so I’ll have to go through all the usual questions with Linsey on my own.”

Linsey grinned. “Chimney already warned me I’d have to answer all the questions again.”

Chimney stood to give Arya space, and Albert stepped up beside him. “You alright?”

Chimney shrugged and turned to look at the scene at the other end of the bar again. “I’m not the one who jumped into a brawl with Linsey’s ex after he attacked her.”

“Looked to me as if they had the situation under control when we arrived,” Albert said. “Those two were once at the 118, right?”

“Yeah. One is my new captain at the 217, and the other moved to Boston years ago and is here to visit family. This isn’t what any of us thought we’d be doing when we agreed to meet for a beer.”

Albert chuckled. “I can imagine. So, you weren’t part of the brawl?”

“Someone had to save Linsey from making her injury worse than it was,” Chimney said. “People always want to pull out the objects they stabbed themselves with.”

Before Albert could say anything to that, Arya interrupted them, “Okay, Han!”

Albert and Chimney both turned to her. “Yes?”

Arya raised her brows unimpressed. “My Han, of course. Could you escort Linsey out to the ambulance? We’ll give her a lift to the hospital as soon as I’ve extracted Dominic from that situation over there.” She pointed at Chimney. “You’ll need to stay. Police should have been here before us, but apparently they’ve been held up somewhere.”

“LA traffic is the worst,” Chimney said grinning. “I’ll just sit down here with my abandoned drink and wait, shall I?”

Arya patted him on the shoulder and Albert gave him a short grin before he turned to Linsey and carefully shielded her with his body, although since everyone was watching the ongoing discussion at the other end of the bar there wasn’t any real danger of anyone bumping into them and making her injury worse.

Albert unlocked the ambulance, helped Linsey to climb into the back, and told her to sit down on the stretcher. “You okay?” he asked as he sat down on the bench to the side. She hadn’t seemed to hesitate to answer all of Arya’s questions earlier, and she seemed to have had an easy-going conversation with Chimney before that, but she hadn’t said a single word to Albert yet.

Linsey shrugged and grinned halfheartedly, not quite meeting his gaze. “Just really embarrassed it came to this. Any relation between Chimney and you? I mean, with the same last name and all?”

Albert laughed. “Chimney’s my brother.”

“Oh!” Linsey looked at him with big eyes. “So, firefighting is family business?”

Albert snorted and had to clear his throat. “No. Our father’s not happy at all that I followed Chimney into firefighting, or that Chimney chose that path for himself in the first place. If it had been his decision, we would both be preparing to take over the company from him sooner rather than later. Though, he doesn’t have anything to complain about. Our cousin is all too happy to step into the void we left.”

Linsey blew out a breath. “I’m glad your brother and his friends were here.”

Albert smiled softly. “I’m glad for your sake that they were as well.”

Linsey bit her lip. “But I think it brought up some bad memories for your brother. I was babbling a little bit, probably oversharing a lot, because I just do that when I’m nervous or anxious. And this is…” She waved with her hand at the bandage on her other arm. “I feel I shouldn’t have let it come to this. So, I babbled on about all the bad decisions I keep making with the guys I date, and suddenly he just lost all color. So, maybe you should check in on him again as soon as you aren’t required to babysit me anymore.”

“It’s not babysitting,” Albert said softly. “It was about getting you out of a situation that was clearly dangerous for you and not as resolved as we all would have wished it to be.” He was distracted for a moment when a police cruiser stopped right behind the ambulance. He waved at the two officers getting out of the car and pointed at the bar, calling out to them that the rest of his team was still trying to defuse the situation inside.

Linsey sighed deeply. “I should probably just stop dating altogether.”

“I assure you, there are great guys out there,” Albert said. “Not all of us are assholes.”

“Chimney said something about a friend who had told him she needed to hold onto her boundaries if she didn’t want to lose trust in herself,” Linsey muttered, staring down at her hands. “Do you know that friend? Does she really manage to stick to those boundaries?”

Albert swallowed, suddenly understanding a lot better why Chimney had looked as if he had seen a ghost. “I guess. It’s not easy for her, but I believe it’s getting better every day. I only met her after she had decided on those boundaries for herself, and I haven’t seen her break them yet. Sometimes it hurts, I think, but the important part is that holding onto those boundaries makes her feel safe.”

Linsey sucked in a breath and bit her lip. “My friends always make me feel as if I’m pointlessly making things harder on myself until I throw out all the resolutions I’ve made.”

Albert frowned. “Sounds to me as if you might need to find new friends. And I know that’s not easy, believe me. I moved from Seoul to LA three years ago, and I still barely have any friends I didn’t meet through my brother. But it might be worth it to think about it if your friends already don’t accept your boundaries. Honest, true friends should support you in holding onto the boundaries you set for yourself. Especially concerning romantic partners.”

“Is that what you are doing for your friend?” Linsey asked.

Albert smiled and shrugged. “I’m trying, at least. She was in a bad place a while ago, and is still healing from that. I think that’s also the reason the topic rattled Chimney so much. But I’ll look after him as soon as you are on your way. Thank you for telling me.”

Linsey smiled shakily. “He and his friends probably saved me from a lot worse. Before Jonathan showed up here today, I only thought he was a nuisance, but something in the way he behaved tonight, even before he shoved me …” She sighed. “I don’t know. For the first time I was frightened by him.”

“An officer will talk with you at some point,” Albert said. “Either here before you are brought to the hospital, or while you are at the hospital. I know it can be difficult to talk about any of this, but I can only advise you to be as open about what this Jonathan has already done as possible. Even things that seem unimportant can be very important. And there are places that can help you. Ask Arya or someone at the hospital for a recommendation, okay? You don’t need to do any of this alone, even if you don’t have friends who support you.”

Linsey nodded silently.

Albert let the silence stretch for a while before he asked Linsey about hobbies and other things she liked to do. He hoped that talking about those things would eventually leave her with the idea that she could try to find new places to do those things and find new friends through that.

It was a recurring theme with Maddie whenever he saw her. She had first mentioned how difficult it was to find new friends, to connect to new people she met at all while Albert had helped her when she had started to practice Hangul. He had understood her struggle with that, but the only thing he had been able to do was reassure her, though it had come up that she might search out some hobby-based groups. For the moment Maddie had opted out of taking up old hobbies again, but Albert knew it was something she was planning to do later on once she had settled back more into a routine in her life again.

A little more than twenty minutes later another ambulance arrived, and then Arya and Dominic came out of the bar to bring Linsey to the hospital. Albert went back into the bar and straight to Chimney, who was sitting in a booth with an empty glass in front of him.

Albert sat down on the other side of the table and watched Chimney, his head cocked to the side. “Linsey is on the way to the hospital. She asked me to talk to you after I told her we are brothers. She believes she pulled up some bad memories with something she said, or maybe even the situation in general, and was worried about you.”

Chimney frowned. “I’m fine.”

Albert leaned back and stared at Chimney silently, his brows raised.

“What do you want?” Chimney asked with a growl. “Talking to you is probably not a good idea anyway.”

Albert sighed. “And why is that?”

“It’s clear that you already picked your side, and any familial connections between us weren’t part of your decision-making process!”

Albert frowned and leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table. “What sides? There are no sides here, Chimney!”

“Aren’t there?”

“You think I took Maddie’s side?”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “You aren’t the only one. John and Anne made their decision very clear when John practically evicted me out of my own apartment the other day.”

Albert sucked in a breath, wondering just for a moment when everything had started to go so terribly wrong with Chimney. It had been difficult to balance the support between Maddie and Chimney, Albert had recognized that from the very beginning—long before Maddie had come home from the clinic even—but he hadn’t ever suspected Chimney thought all of them would work against him.

“There honestly are no sides,” Albert said quietly. “Maddie, Jee-Yun, and you; you are all three family to me, and to Anne and John. And no matter what will still happen between Maddie and you, that won’t change, all of you will still be our family. And we’ll support you equally.”

Chimney huffed.

Albert continued undeterred, “Even if Maddie decides to cut all contact with you, Anne, John, and I will still continue to support both of you equally. The logistics will be hell, of course, but we’ll deal.” He paused and inhaled deeply. “Even making sure you can’t return to your apartment without Maddie inviting you is part of supporting you. It’s protecting you, even if you can’t see that right now.”

“Protecting me?” Chimney asked incredulously.

“Protecting you from your own stupid and stubborn behavior, yeah.” Albert crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Chimney. “I know you don’t recognize that you need that right now, but I really hope you’ll wake up soon.” He pursed his lips and held Chimney’s gaze for a long moment silently. “When I arrived, you looked as if you had seen a ghost. And Linsey said she had talked about needing to maintain her own boundaries better.”

“So?”

Albert sighed. “Maddie has been trying to maintain her boundaries with you for weeks, and you have been fighting her every step of the way.” He turned his head and saw that the new paramedics who had arrived were currently taking care of Chimney’s friends, and the other men who had been arguing with them were nowhere to be seen anymore. “At least we can be reasonably sure you wouldn’t ever bring Maddie into the kind of situation Linsey was in today, huh?”

Chimney made a disgusted face but didn’t say anything.

“What did Linsey say that made you so uncomfortable that even in her current state of mind she noticed it?” Albert asked.

“You are really not the person I want to talk to about any of this,” Chimney said darkly. “You say there are no sides, but your whole behavior the last couple months says different.”

Albert shook his head sadly. “I can see how it might feel that way for you, but I promise you it’s not true. Not for me, nor for Anne and John. All three of us are terribly worried about you, and there just doesn’t seem to be any way to help you that you don’t perceive as an attack. Because not agreeing with you seems to equal exactly that for you. But that’s really not true. We are here to help you, but at one point you’ll need to finally accept that helping you doesn’t include making Maddie change her mind about your relationship. That part is a done deal, exactly because of those personal boundaries you just told Linsey she needs to guard for herself.”

Chimney huffed and turned his head away, which Albert took as a sign that he considered their conversation to be over.

***

Chimney looked out over the ocean, lost in thought. Eli had brought him here after they had finally been allowed to leave the bar. Tommy had left them, needing to return home, but Chimney was glad he still had the company of at least one friend. His conversation with Linsey had rattled him more than he could explain—and much more than he could understand—and Albert’s lecture hadn’t helped any.

“So, you have a brother,” Eli said. He was sitting beside Chimney in the sand and had been quiet ever since he had suggested this place to sit down. It was late in the evening and they were the only people on this part of the beach. “I didn’t expect that. Especially not that he would be a firefighter here in LA as well.”

Chimney snorted. “I’m not sure he’ll stick with it. I’m not even sure he’ll stay here for many more years rather than return to Korea. But I could also be completely mistaken. We don’t know each other very well. I only knew about him until he showed up … three years ago. Wow. Time flies.”

“You never mentioned you had a brother.”

Chimney shrugged. “He’s nineteen years younger than me, and like I said, we had never even talked to each other before he showed up at my front door. Most of the time I still don’t understand why he came over here looking for me at all. Other than to make our father mad, of course.”

Eli laughed. “And was he successful with that part?”

“I guess. I haven’t talked with my father in a while. But I can’t imagine that he is happy about Albert making a life for himself here now. I think the last time I talked to him was when he berated me for not stopping Albert from becoming a firefighter as well. He didn’t want his son in such a dangerous job. Son, singular.”

Thinking about that conversation still hurt, even though Chimney had been sure for years that there wasn’t anything his father could do anymore that would still hurt him. He hadn’t tried to call his father since then, and his father hadn’t reached out to him either. For the most part, Chimney was content with that arrangement. He had been much happier once he had stopped expecting anything from his father.

“But you get along with your brother?” Eli asked.

“Most of the time,” Chimney said. “I … I’m glad he came here, and that we have a chance to get to know each other. Of course, he can be a giant pain in the ass as well.”

“That’s just what siblings are there for,” Eli said amused. “You’ll get used to it. Mostly.”

Chimney huffed.

“I had a little talk with your brother while the officers were taking your statement,” Eli said hesitantly.

Chimney groaned and dropped his head down. “Oh god, what did he do?”

“Nothing horrible, I promise,” Eli said softly. “He seemed worried about you, and you looked a little worse for wear when you weren’t even the one who had to calm down three guys intent on getting into a fistfight.”

Chimney made a face. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to stay with Linsey instead of keeping the guy who had attacked her at bay, but in retrospect he was glad he had made that decision. Eli and Tommy had been drawn into a short, violent encounter with Linsey’s attacker and two of his friends, though they had easily been able to subdue all three of them with the help of the bartender. Chimney suspected that even under these circumstances an incident like this wouldn’t have helped at all to finally get out of the therapy the court and the department had ordered him to attend.

“He told me there is a video of the incident between you and your ex’s brother,” Eli said.

“Maddie isn’t my ex,” Chimney muttered.

Eli ignored him. “And your brother was nice enough to send me a copy of that video.”

Chimney’s head whirled around to look at his friend incredulously. “What?”

“I haven’t watched it,” Eli said hurriedly. “Have you ever watched it?”

Chimney huffed. “I know what happened, I don’t need to be reminded by watching crap that has probably been tampered with anyway.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because Buck’s ex, who recorded this, is a reporter. And in my experience she likes to manipulate her so-called sources,” Chimney said darkly.

“Maybe we should watch it together?” Eli suggested.

Chimney scowled. “What did Albert tell you?”

“About this incident? Nothing.” Eli shrugged and raised a brow. “He was also very reluctant for a while to give me access to the video at all.”

“Not reluctant enough, apparently,” Chimney muttered darkly.

Eli chuckled. “He recognized my name when I introduced myself. I was pretty surprised by that, but whatever you told him about me seems to have built some kind of trust. He made me promise not to use it for anything else but to watch it with you. Your brother is worried about you, and from what he said, everyone else around you is worried about you, too.”

Chimney huffed. “Sure.”

“You don’t think they are worried about you?” Eli asked.

“If they are worried, they have a very strange way of showing it,” Chimney said aggravated. It didn’t feel as if anyone was worried about him, but he didn’t know how to describe that feeling.

“I really think you should watch this video,” Eli said.

“Why? I know what happened! And like I said, it’s probably manipulated anyway.”

“Even if it is, your brother said Maddie has seen it, so shouldn’t you know what lie she believes?” Eli asked. “And I’m not so sure about you knowing what happened.”

Chimney flinched back. “What?”

“I know you, Howie,” Eli said softly. “And some things about people just never change. You are stubborn and you tend to twist things around in your head in order to feel comfortable with them. Sometimes that’s a good thing. I know you used that to cope with the first couple of months, heck, probably your whole first year at the 118. But sometimes it’s not a good thing and it only makes the situation worse.”

Chimney frowned, but any protest he could come up with stuck in his throat.

“So, let’s watch this video.”

Chimney clenched his teeth, but after a moment he rolled his eyes in defeat. “Fine. But I’m telling you now, it’s bullshit.”

Eli smiled sadly as he pulled out his phone. “I’ll delete it after we’ve watched it, okay?”

“I don’t even know why Albert had it.”

“He didn’t,” Eli said. “He had to reach out to someone first to get a copy. I don’t know who he called, and it took him a while to convince that person to send him a copy.”

Chimney huffed. “Probably Buck. And that continued friendship is just one more reason why I can’t really believe Albert is in any way worried about me. He’s even living in Buck’s apartment now.”

Eli watched him with raised brows without saying anything. Chimney fisted his hands, trying to hold back his anger. Eli didn’t have anything to do with the situation, and he didn’t know anything about any of the people involved in it. Chimney knew that it was unfair to be angry at Eli, but he couldn’t help it at that moment. Especially because Eli didn’t have any knowledge of anyone else in this situation, he should be on Chimney’s side instead of listening to the arguments everyone else had been battering Chimney with.

Eli pulled up the video on his phone and Chimney stared at the still of the first image with a frown. “I still can’t believe I missed that Taylor was upstairs. I should have seen her!”

“You said you were agitated about finding out your daughter had been in the ER,” Eli said. “You tend to get very single-minded when you’re upset. I’m honestly not surprised that you would have ignored everyone else in that situation.”

Chimney huffed and shrugged.

Eli sighed. “Ready to start?”

“I’d prefer not to at all, but yeah, sure.”

Eli started the video and Chimney instantly felt angry at Buck again for keeping the secret of Maddie’s call and for not telling him Jee-Yun had seen a doctor. Seeing again how Buck didn’t react at all to that news just reinforced Chimney’s conviction that Buck had known more than Maddie and he would admit to even now.

Chimney flinched when he threw the punch in the video. He didn’t remember it coming so out of the blue: he had been convinced that there had been more provocation from Buck before, that Buck had tried to use his height to intimidate him, to make him back away, and that that had just spectacularly backfired on Buck.

The video ended and left them in silence. Without asking, Chimney took Eli’s phone and went back to the seconds right before he punched Buck to watch it again, looking for any sign that something had been cut out of the video. He knew there wouldn’t be anything to find, that even though Buck hadn’t provoked him as much as he remembered, the video only showed what had happened. There was a weird disconnect between what he thought to be true and what he now had to recognize had happened, and a part of him tried to convince himself that he could still find evidence of tampering.

“Is it tampered with?” Eli asked in a carefully neutral tone.

Chimney started the video again, then even a fourth time. In the end, he barely refrained from throwing the phone into the sand in frustration. For a long moment he contemplated lying, but then he blew out a long breath. Eli would most likely just see right through him anyway.

“No,” Chimney finally murmured.

Eli hummed and took his phone back.

Chimney wrapped his arms around himself and stared out over the ocean, angry at everyone, including himself. It burned in his chest as it had been for weeks, but for once he didn’t know where to aim that anger.

“There wasn’t really anything Buckley did to provoke the reaction he got from you,” Eli said after a while. “I can see how your ex could have a problem with this, even without taking her history into consideration.”

“I’m not abusive,” Chimney spat.

“I know you aren’t. And I know that it’s terribly unfair to be judged based on one bad decision. Especially in a moment like that. I know you, Howie. And I barely recognize the man I just saw in that video. When exactly did that happen?”

“A week after Maddie had left.” Chimney closed his eyes tightly and blew out a breath. “Like I said in the video, eight days of lies from him.”

“Eight days of worry and uncertainty for you. Probably not much sleep, either.” Eli paused for a moment. “It’s really obvious that you were a little crazy at that moment.”

“It wasn’t even about finding Maddie,” Chimney whispered. No one had ever asked him about that, no one had ever wanted to listen to his side of the story, they had all already judged him by the time he had been brought back from Boston. Eli hadn’t asked either, but he also hadn’t outright condemned him as everyone else had done.

Chimney blew out a breath as he continued, “I’m sure that if Buck would have had even the slightest idea where Maddie was, he would have gone after her himself. I knew that even then.”

He remembered how much he had resented Buck in those days for not losing his mind the same way Chimney had felt he was losing his; for not helping him enough to search for Maddie; for not looking for Maddie himself. And that betrayal had doubled at the moment he had understood that Buck had had contact with Maddie, as brief as that contact might have been. It had only been proof for Chimney that either Buck knew exactly where Maddie was or that he was the only one honestly worried for Maddie, and he hadn’t been able to deal with either option.

“So, what was it about?” Eli prodded after the silence had stretched on between them for a while.

Chimney inhaled. “I’d spent eight days convinced Maddie had killed herself. And that it was my fault because I had prioritized work over my family during the blackout even though I had known they needed me. To learn that she had called Buck at some point during that time, and he hadn’t told me she was alive…”

Eli put a hand on Chimney’s shoulder and squeezed. It was the most grounded Chimney had felt in a long time, probably since his daughter had been born.

“And it was also a little bit about Jee-Yun. Because I thought he knew what had happened to her and hadn’t told me. Even if she was fine when Maddie brought her to the doctor, that kind of water accident can still have consequences later on, and I should have known to watch for the signs.”

“You thought?” Eli asked.

Chimney shrugged. “Maddie said she didn’t tell him any details, only that she had seen a doctor with Jee. Not sure how much of that I believe, though, or if she is just trying to protect him. She does that. She practically raised him because their parents suck even more than my father, which says a lot, right? Sometimes Maddie doesn’t know how to step out of that protective role with her brother.”

“Then I hope they live far away and you won’t have to deal with them too often.”

“Hershey, PA. And they don’t seem to have much interest in coming by for a visit, thankfully.” Chimney also thought Maddie had lost any interest in inviting them into her life again after their last visit.

Eli snorted. “That should hopefully be far enough.”

“Why can you see I wasn’t in my right mind but no one else sees it?”

Eli was silent for a long time before he said, “I don’t think anyone else missed your state of mind, but the thing is, that’s no excuse. And it also doesn’t change how others feel about that moment.”

Chimney frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maddie wasn’t in her right mind when she left, was she?” Eli asked.

“You know she wasn’t,” Chimney muttered unhappily.

“But that she left still hurt you,” Eli said. “Can you honestly say you still trust her the way you did before all of this? That you don’t wonder sometimes if it’s the right decision to leave her alone with your daughter?”

Chimney swallowed. He would like to answer that with a resolute yes, but it would be a lie. The first time he had left Jee-Yun with Maddie overnight—the day before New Year’s Eve—he had barely been able to keep his doubts to himself. Chimney had tried to convince himself that those doubts had only been there because he knew Buck was spending the night with Maddie, but he had always been aware that that was only half the truth.

“Maddie might have made the right decision for herself, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have consequences, for good or ill.” Eli pulled his hand back from Chimney’s shoulder and it left him shivering in the cold for a moment. “And the same goes for your own actions. They were ill-considered and made in a moment of so much desperation, but you can’t take them back and can’t dictate how anyone else feels about it. Especially not Maddie.”

Chimney gritted his teeth.

“You are right, you aren’t an abuser. One instance of punching someone in a fit of anger and desperation doesn’t make you abusive. And I’m pretty sure Maddie knows that as well. But that doesn’t change the fact that she sees that potential in you now, which seems to be just enough for her to keep her distance. You can’t take it back, you can’t make her unsee it or forget it. Nothing you say or do can accomplish that. That’s unfair, I know, but in this case, that’s just life.”

“So what do you suggest I do?” Chimney growled.

He wanted to dismiss what Eli was telling him, the same way he had done with everyone else who had brought up this same exact argument. It had been so easy with everyone else because he had been able to convince himself they had been swayed by Buck. But that didn’t work with Eli, and he also kept going back over his conversation with Linsey about holding firmly to her boundaries earlier this evening.

“Respect her and her decisions, no matter how much they hurt you,” Eli said quietly. “Sometimes love is about letting the other person go. Fighting to keep her by your side has only made it worse so far, judging by everything you have told me.”

Chimney huffed. He wanted to say that he loved Maddie and that they were meant to be together. But he suspected that would only prompt Eli to repeat his words. ‘Sometimes love is about letting go’, those words felt as if they were burning a hole in his chest. Every fiber of his being protested against the idea of letting Maddie go.

Eli sighed. “You said Maddie was diagnosed with PPD before she left.”

“Months before she left,” Chimney agreed. “Up until the blackout, I thought we were getting a handle on it. It was slow going, but there was progress.”

“Did you see a therapist because of that as well?”

Chimney reared back and scoffed. “Why should I have? Dealing with Maddie’s therapy and the rest of our schedule was already difficult enough.”

Eli was quiet for some time before he turned to face Chimney. “That’s your reaction, really? Did you talk with anyone else about your situation in that time, at least? Have you sought out counseling for yourself in the meantime?”

“Maddie didn’t want anyone to know about it, and I wouldn’t ever go behind her back like that!” Chimney said agitatedly. “And I’m fine. I don’t need counseling or therapy. The damn anger management thing is already too much, if anyone’d ask me. But no one does that, of course.”

Eli hummed and watched him with raised brows.

“What?” Chimney spat.

“I think you are far from fine,” Eli said softly. “And have probably been far from it for a long time. Were you at any point tested for PPD yourself?”

Chimney huffed. “Why should I have been?”

Eli sighed deeply and stared at Chimney with a frown. “I would assume you know just as well as I do that fathers can suffer from PPD as well. And that doesn’t even take into account the stress caused by taking care of both your infant daughter and your sick girlfriend. And the mental breakdown or whatever you suffered when she left and you thought for at least a week, but honestly probably much longer, that she might have killed herself. I don’t think anger is your problem at all, Howie, and therefore anger management won’t solve your problem.”

“What do you think my problem is?” Chimney asked with a growl.

“I already told you.” Eli shook his head. “And I think I’m not the only one. You just need to start listening to what people tell you, instead of hearing what you believe they are saying. The last year seems to have been hell for you, even more so than for everyone else while being stuck in a pandemic. And in the last four months, it seems to have become progressively worse. So much worse, that you struck someone I’m pretty sure you considered a friend before all of this.”

Chimney made a face and shrugged. He wasn’t sure anymore if Buck and he had ever really been friends. The last couple of months had made him question a lot, especially his relationship with Buck.

“I think what you need, Howie, is to take a step back from everything else and take care of yourself,” Eli said. “Go to therapy and take it seriously, put in the work that is required for therapy to be successful.”

---