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  “Yeah. Either that or just… unhealthily antiseptic. And Candace and her sister—”

  “Shelley,” Larx supplied since he had the file open on his computer.

  “Yeah. Anyway—the girls are fine. ‘Yessir. Nossir. It’s all okay, sir.’ But they’ve both got these… like, girl masks on?”

  “Makeup?” Larx said, trying to picture it.

  “No… like… face goop. Like… whatwazit? Mrs. Doubtfire stuck her face in the cake ’cause she didn’t have her makeup on?”

  It took Larx a minute to process all that. “A facial,” he said, blinking hard because the movie was that old, and the antitrans messaging had been so strong that Larx forgot he too had been part of America who’d laughed their asses off at a man in a dress with flammable boobs.

  “Yeah. That. And that shit could be hiding anything, right? Their eyes were red, but then, for all I know the facial goop did that. So I’m not sure if they’re hiding shiners or if their neighbors just got hold of some bad weed—”

  “Did you knock on their door?” Larx asked. Between him and Aaron, they really did know most of the town. “Who’s their neighbor?”

  “Couple of brothers,” Aaron said thoughtfully. “Just moved at Christmas. Youngest one goes to Colton High—”

  “Jaime Benitez,” Larx said promptly. “Junior.” He pressed the right link and there was the master schedule. “He and Candace are in some classes together.”

  Aaron grunted. “Well, the older brother had been lighting up pretty hard—but it doesn’t seem like Jaime’s the type to indulge.”

  “You didn’t bust them?” Larx asked curiously. He’d done his share of weed in college—but Aaron had been off fighting and bleeding for his country when Larx was in college. This was something they’d never talked about.

  “Hell,” Aaron muttered. “Unless they’re growing to distribute, it’s mostly legal. Not for minors, of course, but both boys were functional, polite, and their eyes were clear. Roberto—who’s twenty-one, by the way—actually produced a prescription for anxiety without being asked. I could have made a stink about it, but I couldn’t see the point.”

  “I love you so hard,” Larx breathed. “Seriously. I can’t think of a sexual favor good enough for you. I’ll have to make something up.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Larx couldn’t articulate it. It wasn’t that he’d smoke it now unless it was prescribed, and he didn’t want his kids—or his students—indulging without cause. But something about knowing Aaron, for all his law-and-order propensities, didn’t push rules just for the sake of there being rules made Larx even prouder of him.

  “Just you’re a good guy. Jaime Benitez is getting good grades. He’s part of the local service clubs, including one where he tutors eighth graders in trouble. Nice boy.”

  “In your class?” Aaron wanted to know.

  “Senior year, like Kirby. Christiana is sort of—”

  “Special,” Aaron said fondly. “Yeah. I know.”

  Well, Larx’s youngest was the girl with the flower—her brightness and sparkle was coupled with a quiet good sense. Irresistible. She was also razor-sharp, which was why she was taking Larx’s class in her junior year.

  “So what about Candace?” Aaron prompted.

  Larx sighed. “She’s… well, she was a straight-A student, but no involvement in anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  Aaron might well be surprised. It was a small school in a small town. Activity involvement wasn’t mandatory, but if a kid wanted any sort of social life, being part of a club or a sport was pretty much the only thing going on after school.

  “No—that’s odd. And that’s probably why I can’t place her. Her sister’s in grade school, so I wouldn’t know her. But Candace is just… not involved.”

  “Was,” Aaron prompted, and Larx rested his chin on his fist and looked woefully at his paperwork. Ye gods, the pile wasn’t getting any smaller.

  “Yeah. Was getting straight As. Is no longer. Is veering off into C and D territory. And I have in front of me, waiting for a signature, her very first referral for behavior.”

  He stared at it, wondering how the pieces fit.

  “What’d she do?” Aaron asked patiently.

  “Well, it says she got to class late and then ran out a few minutes after the bell rang. It was her first-period class, and when she came back—looking pale—the teacher asked if she was okay. Apparently she laughed hysterically and told the teacher to fuck off.”

  “Uh….”

  Larx sighed. “Yeah. That’s why I’m up to my eyeballs in paperwork, Aaron—so I can look for kids like this and ask them what happened. I’m on it.”

  “That’s my boy,” Aaron praised softly. “Good. Keep me in the loop, okay? I don’t know if the girls were being abused, and frankly I didn’t have enough evidence to so much as make them wash their faces. I don’t know the story behind the boys living together without parents, and I don’t know why one of them would be anxious enough to get a prescription for a ton of weed. These are things I would like to know before I go venturing in there with CPS and the DEA to make sure everything is kosher, you understand?”

  “Got it, Deputy.” Larx looked at both kids’ files again and wondered at the puzzle. “Aaron, I’m serious. You’re a good man. These kids—there’s pieces missing here. Yanking them away from their homes, dragging them into the fray—I’m not sure if that’s the best thing here.”

  Larx was starting to know Aaron’s grunts—this one was the respectful disagreement grunt. “Some stuff needs to see light, Mr. Larkin,” he chided gently. “If something’s festering in that girl’s life, it’s our job to make sure she’s okay.”

  Of course.

  “Roger that.” Larx tilted his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Have you eaten?” Aaron asked.

  “Uh….” He’d gotten a sandwich for Olivia, but he’d put off getting his own.

  “Eat, Principal. Work on your paperwork. And maybe take a nap on the couch before I get there. Save up your strength.” He gave a chuckle that was absolutely filthy. “You’re going to need it.”

  Larx whined. “But… but Olivia—”

  “If hearing us have sex gives her reason to move out, more’s the better,” Aaron intoned darkly.

  Oh shit. “She… uh… she sort of hinted… never mind.”

  “My house. Yes. We’ll move her tomorrow.”

  Larx groaned and rested his forehead on the paperwork on the table. “God. You’re the perfect man. Where’s the rub? Where’s the flaw? There’s got to be something here that makes me want to smack you—where is it?”

  “Mmm….”

  Oh yeah. That conversation they weren’t having because of all the conversations they were.

  “Understood.” Larx sighed. “I’ll see you when you get home.”

  “Eat, dammit.”

  Larx smiled, reassured. “Sure. Take care of what’s mine.”

  “Always do.”

  “Love you.”

  “Thanks for the info.”

  Aaron signed off, and Larx’s text pinged thirty seconds later.

  Love you too.

  Yup. Too good to be true.

  Larx’s worry about his daughter—and about Aaron’s input into the situation—doubled down in his chest.

  Please, Olivia—please. Don’t make me choose between you two. Please.

  TEMPERATURE DROPPING

  AARON FOUND Larx asleep at the kitchen table, a rumpled pile of referrals under his cheek as he snored.

  Kirby and Kellan were working quietly around him, chopping vegetables for a salad and tending to a stew Larx had apparently started in the Crock-Pot.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “How was Sacramento?”

  Kirby winced, his Oh, honey, you stepped in it expression so much like his mother’s that Aaron’s heart clenched a little.

  “Sucked balls,” Kellan said morosely.

  “We don’t wa
nt to talk about Sacramento,” Kirby agreed. “Olivia’s here. She’s upstairs. Crying.”

  “Excellent. Christi?”

  “Will be home in a few,” Kellan said, his face lighting up just a bit. Christi did that to people. “I didn’t tell her about Olivia.” He finished chopping the bell pepper on the board in front of him and wrinkled his nose. “I’m… uh… she brought all her stuff.”

  “Wonderful,” Aaron said brightly, just in case Larx woke up and heard him. “She’s staying in our house for… uh… the foreseeable future. It’ll be good. We won’t have to keep checking up on the place. Hell, we were going to have to furnish a nursery anyway. Maybe Tiff’s old room?”

  His eldest had shown up for Christmas ready to piss Aaron off and flounce out of his life forever. Her plan backfired, however, when her grandparents weren’t able to fly out from the Midwest and rescue her.

  Backfired.

  All over the family.

  Tiffany had been insufferable—rude to Larx, rude to his kids, bitchy to her brother and sister, and a surly, judgy nightmare to Aaron himself. By Christmas Eve, Aaron had taken pretty much enough. He’d had Kirby go fetch Maureen, his middle child, from Aaron’s house where he’d put up both girls for the holidays.

  And hadn’t told Tiffany that Kirby wasn’t coming back.

  And then he and Maureen and Kirby had blocked her on their phones.

  At three o’clock Christmas afternoon, Tiffany had knocked humbly on Larx’s back door, shivering with cold from the two-mile walk through the snow.

  Aaron hadn’t wanted to let her in at first. Larx had been the one to scowl at him until he opened the door.

  He’d had his speech planned and on the tip of his tongue even as he’d slid it open. Not one more bitchy word about Larx, not one more sly innuendo about being “suddenly gay,” and not one more demeaning put-down of her brother and sister for wanting to be part of the new family unit.

  And especially not one more goddamned word to Kellan about how he’d get over Isaiah, or to Christi about how her girlfriend Schuyler was “just a phase.”

  But as he’d opened the door, his little girl tumbled into his arms.

  “You were going to leave me alone?” she sobbed. “On Christmas?”

  “Well,” he mumbled, remorse swamping him, “you were doing a really good job of convincing us that you didn’t want any company.”

  She’d cried.

  She’d said she was sorry.

  She’d apologized to everybody in the house, even Larx’s family, who all looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  Then she’d sat docilely at the table and eaten Christmas dinner with everybody and opened her gifts, which had sat forlorn under the tree that morning while everybody else was ripping into theirs.

  Aaron wasn’t sure if her repentance had been sincere—but he’d been grateful for it anyway. God, not having his kid there for Christmas had sucked. It had been Larx’s idea to block her number, and Aaron had been grateful. Larx was right—she needed to see what life would be like if she succeeded in pushing all the people in it away.

  Aaron couldn’t imagine how bleak it had looked from the living room of the house she’d grown up in, when her family was somewhere else.

  Larx’s vision was just so clear when he was looking at kids—even his own.

  Which was why the situation with Olivia was so damned painful.

  Aaron knew very little about depression or anxiety or bipolar disorder—at least on a personal level.

  But he encountered people all the time in the course of his job.

  The guy with gin oozing from his pores was often depressed and self-medicating. Aaron had steered a lot of guys coming to in the drunk tank to the county’s spare mental health services center. He couldn’t do much—couldn’t fix their lives, couldn’t fix the world, but he could at least tell them their pain was real.

  And hopefully keep them away from guns—that was key. The kid on the violent bipolar upswing was often not dangerous—until he grabbed a spare pistol from Dad’s stash and went haring off into the woods in search of adventure.

  He was aware that a lot of the people who ended up on law enforcement radar had mental health issues—but very often he could do very little to help them.

  And he wasn’t sure what to do with his boyfriend’s daughter.

  Because Larx was right—she wasn’t doing well.

  Aaron hadn’t wanted to say anything during Christmas break. Tiffany had been damned unpleasant, and Olivia—for all her fluttery excitement about Christmas and her unplanned pregnancy and the new members of her family and the damned dog—had at least been trying to be part of the family.

  But at one point, Aaron had gotten up early to turn the thermostat on so they didn’t all freeze to death at four in the morning, and Olivia had been sitting, back to the wall in the hallway, wearing shorts and a tank top.

  Her lips had been blue, and Aaron noticed that she hadn’t washed her hair probably since she’d arrived and her teeth were a little gunky.

  And as he’d chivvied her up and made her go back into the room where Christi was sleeping, Aaron realized that all the fluttering, the shrill laughter, the puppyish excitement over all the things seemed to be masking a sadness she didn’t want the world to see.

  Aaron saw it then—and too often in his job, he saw where it ended.

  By the time she’d left for school again, she’d brushed her teeth, washed her hair, and hadn’t caught her death of cold, so Aaron had hope she’d pulled herself together. But the sight of her huddled in the hallway, without so much as a blanket to keep herself warm, had haunted him.

  He hadn’t told Larx.

  Larx loved his kids with so much of his heart—if he couldn’t see Olivia’s pain, Aaron wasn’t sure how to be the one to point it out.

  “Fine with me,” Kirby said now, pulling Aaron back into the room. “Tiff’s old room it is.”

  Aaron laughed. “Maybe Mau’s—she’ll be going off to the Peace Corps after you graduate anyway.”

  “Why not yours?” Kirby asked, laughing wickedly, but Aaron paused, thinking about it.

  “Actually, my room would make a good suite,” Aaron said thoughtfully, sitting kitty-corner to his exhausted boyfriend. “That’s not a bad idea. And it’s connected to the study, and we could convert that into a baby room.” He smiled at Kirby. “Good idea, son!”

  Kirby didn’t return the smile. “Wow, Dad. That’s… well, permanent.”

  Aaron frowned. “Well, I’m not planning on moving, you know?”

  To his surprise, Kirby thought about it. “I like it here. I don’t want to move,” he said—which he’d been saying from the very beginning, those first frantic weeks when Aaron and Larx had gotten together and come out and the kids had bonded over keeping Kellan sane after Isaiah had been wounded and forging a new family in the heat of extraordinary events. “I guess it’s just in my head—there’s your room, and it’s sort of inviolate. I mean… it wouldn’t change my life, you know? But it would feel permanent.”

  “Yeah, like they were married,” Kellan said softly. Then he brightened. “Which would be a good thing. But it would… I don’t know. It would be important.”

  Aaron scrubbed at his face with his hand. The day had been long and difficult, and dealing with Candace Furman and her religious zealot parents had scoured his nerves raw. He wasn’t sure how much they followed local news, but his and Larx’s coming out that fall had been pretty dramatic, and he’d gotten the feeling they were going to bless their threshold with chicken’s blood when he left, in order to cleanse the hated gay from their home.

  He wished his churning gut could be cleansed with a little chicken’s blood. He had plenty of the beasties outside, and frying one up for dinner to ease his mind wouldn’t bother him in the least.

  Talking about important things right now was so beyond his capabilities.

  “Well, if it’s important, we’ll give it more thought,” he told Kirby, smiling to ma
ke it positive. “But I do think helping Olivia move in and find her bearings will be our weekend project for a couple of weeks, so prepare yourselves.”

  “Fine with me,” Kellan grumbled. “Isaiah doesn’t want me there right now anyway.”

  Aaron gave him a sympathetic look. “Are you sure that’s how he feels? Or is he just being macho about not wanting you to see him suffer?”

  Kellan gave a grunt that indicated he might not have thought of that. “Men are assholes,” he muttered. “I don’t mind being gay, but I think falling in love with someone like Christi, who actually talks about her feelings, would have been so much easier.”

  Aaron hmmed, not wanting to comment. His late wife had communicated, it was true—but so did Larx. Often, if Larx wasn’t talking, it was because he hadn’t framed his thoughts for himself, and he didn’t want to bother Aaron with them until he had.

  Aaron was the one who got stopped up with feelings—need, fear, hurt—and couldn’t articulate the things in his chest, not even to Larx.

  Gently, he slid his fingers through the lock of hair falling over Larx’s forehead. “Larx? Baby? Time to wake up. The kids are setting the table.”

  But in spite of his gentleness, Larx only had one way to wake up.

  He shot up like a rocket, the kitchen chair kicking out behind his legs.

  “I’m up! I’m sorry! Why are you here? What time is it?”

  The late-afternoon gravitas shattered, and Kirby and Kellan both chuckled.

  “Gee, Larx, that was a fun trick,” Kirby snarked. “Good thing you don’t sleep with a knife under your pillow—my Dad’d be history.”

  Larx squinted at him. “Who’s teaching history?”

  Kellan and Kirby cracked up, and Aaron stood, grabbed his elbow, and steered him through the house. “You are, Larx. Tomorrow. Ready to teach history?”

  “But I’m a science major!” Larx moaned. “How do I teach history? I don’t even know where Sumeria is!”

  Aaron chuckled, some of the melancholy draining from his soul. “I think Sumer used to be in the Middle East, but don’t worry. We won’t quiz you.” Aaron continued to steer until Larx wandered up the stairs, hand gripping the rail to pull himself up. “I just want a few minutes alone with my favorite science major. Is that so bad?”