Chapter 3
THREE
The loft was silent when Madoc let himself in at just past 6:00 A.M., but he’d only just hung his jacket on a hook by the door when the light thud-thud-thud of small feet reached his ears. Turning, he caught sight of Valerie clad in pajamas and a sparkly purple tutu that bounced as she ran, her dark curls coming loose from the braid she wore down her back.
Crouching slightly, Madoc opened his arms and grinned as his girl flung herself at him. His fatigue from the long overnight shift disappeared, replaced with joy as he swung her up in his arms.
“Welcome home, Daddy!”
Chuckling, Madoc cuddled Valerie close. “Thank you, my honey,” he replied. “Did you have a nice sleep?”
“Yup.” Valerie settled her cheek on his shoulder. “How was your work? Did you meet your new partner?”
“Work was good and yes, I met my new partner. His name is Gus, remember?”
“Uh-huh. Is Gus nice?”
“He’s super friendly and knows a ton of stuff,” Madoc replied. He headed into the loft, unsurprised when Valerie kept her head down. She loved to sleep and rarely got up before her alarm unless it was to greet her dad. “Gus also keeps a kitty at the station and her name is Princess Lemonade.”
“No way!”
“I swear, it’s true. I’ll take a picture of the kitty when I go in tonight.”
Madoc deposited his bag and his daughter on the kitchen counter. Just thinking about Gus—all dark eyes and expressive face, a smile in his voice when he tossed out those damned nicknames—had the back of his neck going hot. But Valerie wanted to tell Madoc all about her night and that was a terrific distraction.
“Kenny Baker and Lucie came over an’ we played cards and the Poop Bingo game with Uncle T,” she said. “And after they had to go home for dinner, Uncle T and me cooked veggie sausage and rice and we saved you some!”
“Thank you for thinking of me. Did your mom eat with you?”
Valerie shook her head. “She went out. How come you’re shiny?” she asked, one hand coming up to pat Madoc’s hair.
“Shiny?” Oh. The glitter. “Well, there was an incident.” Madoc waggled his eyebrows. “And it involved every piece of glitter in the city.”
He launched into a sanitized tale about Glitter Bomb Gabby, omitting the booze and raunchy bachelorettes, and Valerie took it all in, her expression rapt. Madoc had just handed her a pony mug of hot chocolate when she spied the brown paper bakery bag sticking out of the top of his backpack.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That’s from Gus.” Madoc plucked the bag up and handed it to her. “He sent you some bolos levedos, also known as super-tasty Portuguese muffins.”
“Ah!” Peering into the bag, Valerie smiled. “They’re breads,” she mused, “and they smell yummy! But, Daddy? What is a Pork-a-cheese muffin?”
As predicted, she went wild for the bolos, which were wonderfully fluffy and delicious with just about anything: butter and guava jelly, sliced fruit and cheese, even leftover sausage and rice.
“Yum,” Valerie mumbled around another mouthful. “I love this a lot.”
Her uncle Tarek emerged from his room then, and though he fixed himself his usual green juice smoothie, he too failed to resist the siren call of fresh bread and took up where Valerie left off when she headed to her room to get changed for hockey practice.
“I hate that you brought these into my life.” Tarek glared at the half-eaten muffin in his hand. “Are they really from a hospital bakery?”
“Yup. My partner picked them up for Val.”
“And this new partner is cool?”
Madoc nodded. “He knows his stuff and seems extremely smart. Great with the patients. He’s got fewer years on the job than me which I don’t love, but I’m sure I’ll get over it.”
“If you say so,” Tarek said around another mouthful of bread. “Anything else?”
“Not sure what you mean.”
“Well, what’s he like? Married with kids? Born and raised here or a transplant like you? What’d he do before he was an EMT?” Sitting back in his seat, Tarek leveled a knowing look at Madoc. “Most critically, is he a hockey guy or one of those nerds who watch baseball?”
“Well, I know he used to be a firefighter, but we didn’t get into sports or anything like that,” Madoc replied. “Gus and I were out the door two minutes after meeting and stayed busy all night. Like, eating dinner in the truck on the way to a shooting kind of busy. Not a ton of time for small talk, you know?”
Except that wasn’t strictly true. Gus’d come out as a gay man and amputee within the first hour of their shift, talking about both with a grace Madoc could hardly fathom. Meanwhile, Madoc had talked a little about Valerie and complained about Billy Lord, then acted like a jackass over Gus’s prosthetic because he sucked at life.
The smile he gave Tarek felt more like a grimace. “How’d it go here last night?” he asked.
“Smooth as butter. Noels had a client dinner and then a thing at the casino over in Everett, so it was just me and Val.”
“I hate that she spends time there.”
“I know.” Tarek rubbed a hand over his dark auburn hair. “But she was home before 2:00 A.M. and she’s an adult.”
“An adult with a gambling problem who blew all our money at casinos.”
“I know , Madoc.”
Guilt prickled through Madoc at the bite in Tarek’s tone but damn it, sometimes the guy acted like Madoc had moved his family across the country just for the hell of it.
Tarek sighed. “Look, I get that you have concerns and they are totally valid,” he said more gently. “But Noels has been in recovery for over a year, and we can’t watch her every second. You wouldn’t want to if you took the time to make some friends.”
“Rude.” Madoc made a face. “You know I have friends.”
“Val and I don’t count and neither do co-workers you don’t see off duty.” Tarek smiled. “I understand that you need to be here for Val, but you should also have stuff going on in your life that isn’t about work or childcare. Get out there and be social, man.”
Madoc poked at the remains of his breakfast. He knew Tarek genuinely wanted to help. But Tarek was also likely looking for something or someone to focus on that would distract him from his own troubles, namely losing the two loves of his life, ice hockey and Tim Slattery.
Hockey fans understood the game had been important to Tarek McKenna; he’d made the game his life since he could walk. But no one apart from Noelene and Madoc knew Tarek had felt the same level of passion toward his teammate and friend Tim, or that Tim’s untimely death two years ago had shattered Tarek’s carefully controlled and closeted world.
Madoc felt for his friend, who was still nursing a broken heart in secret. But he wasn’t about to offer his own personal life up as some kind of diversion.
“I don’t have a ton of bandwidth to be social,” Madoc said. “Moving out here meant restarting everything and I barely have time to breathe between the job and Val and the field work I need to complete. Honestly, I don’t mind having all that to focus on, because God knows, I’m not ready for dating. But, if it makes you happy to know that I’ll work on the making friends part, I promise I will.”
Tarek shook his head. “Work on making yourself happy, doofus, and I’ll be satisfied. Now can you please grab your kid so I can run drills with her?”
Madoc went to the room Tarek had set up for Valerie and found her by the closet, dressed in her hockey shirt and underwear with a bright purple Converse sneaker clutched in each hand and the tutu puddled on the floor.
“Are we not wearing pants today?” Madoc asked, nodding toward her bare legs.
Smiling, Valerie shook her head at him. “Of course, I’m gonna wear pants—don’t want my bum to freeze when I go to skate, Daddy! But I have to find my ladybug track suit first.”
Ah.
After the tutu, a navy velour tracksuit embroidered with ladybugs was Valerie’s favorite thing to wear. Madoc had put it in a basket of clothes that needed washing before he’d left for work the night before, however, and knew his daughter’s search would be in vain.
“It’s in the laundry back at our place,” he said, going to the closet and pulling a pair of hockey pants off a low shelf. “But I promise I will wash it while you are at practice so you can wear it when you get back.”
Valerie made duck lips with her mouth, but took the pants Madoc offered her. “M’kay,” she said. “Can you braid my hair? And remind me to tell you later I love you?”
Madoc gave her a smile. “I can do both of those things. And tell you I love you lots right now.”
“I love you lots too, Daddy.”
They got Valerie into her hockey pants and her hair braided, but as they trooped back to the kitchen, they ignored the closed door across the hall. That was Noelene’s domain, a space Madoc hadn’t stepped inside since he’d moved his stuff and the bulk of Valerie’s into a two-bedroom unit located three floors down from the loft.
Gus eased his prosthesis off with a grunt. Using it was like wearing a tightly laced shoe that started midway down his right shin, and taking it off always felt strange at first, the sensation of his short limb being ‘freed’ intense to the point of pain. The prosthesis made Gus exquisitely aware of how his stump was responding to any number of factors, too: weather and air pressures, the layers he wore to pad his skin—even the time of day and his diet affected his level of comfort.
“Hey, rock star.” Connor strolled in, long blond hair free from the tactical braid he wore while on duty and flowing halfway down his back. He sank into the seat beside Gus. “How you doin’?”
“Doin’ fine,” Gus replied. “Just gearing up for some laundry. Did I thank you already for loaning me your washer?”
Connor shrugged. “You know the invitation is always open.”
They’d eaten breakfast after shift with the crews who worked the downtown neighborhoods, then come back to Connor’s North End apartment so Gus could skip the drive out to Hyde Park.
“Hey, did you invite Walters to breakfast?” Connor asked. “I was hoping he’d be there.”
“He had a family thing.” Gus set his leg on the floor and began peeling his socks and the silicone liner from his stump, his nerves prickling as the cool air met his skin. While his amputation scar was long healed and had lost most of its color, its edges were sometimes sensitive, and Gus smoothed over the skin with his fingers. “Said he had to get home and make breakfast for his kid, so I didn’t bother asking.”
“Cute.” Connor smiled. “Ask him for next time.”
Gus made a noncommittal noise. Connor and the nightshift crews just wanted to get to know the new guy. The trouble was that Gus still wasn’t sure what to make of his new partner himself.
Moody and mouthy by turns, Walters had warmed up when he’d found his groove, as if a power source had switched on inside him. He and Gus had started to ‘click’ at that point and ended the night working as a team instead of each in their own world. Which was all fine, except Gus didn’t dig the idea of working with someone who ran hot and cold. Who maybe had a chip on his shoulder over reporting to someone junior to him. And who’d definitely been weirded out by Gus’s prosthesis.
Connor mussed Gus’s hair. “I’m gonna go pass out. You need anything?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Gus flexed and straightened his knee a few times. “I’ll crash after I get through the wash cycle.”
“Judah’s brother’s out of town, so you can take his room,” Connor said as he stood. “Just watch out for the dog, because he’ll try to get up on the mattress with you and he’s not allowed.”
Said dog appeared as if summoned, a giant Irish Wolfhound called Hank, who parked himself by Gus’s knee and did his best to look pitiful. Gus ran a hand over the dog’s big blue-gray head.
“You heard me, mutt.” Connor eyed the beast. “No beds and be nice to Gus.”
Hank kept Gus company while he tended to his short limb and cleaned his liner, a silent, furry sentinel. Gus loaded the washer with clothes, then set to work on some drawings, but he must have been more tired than he realized, because out of nowhere, he found himself on his back and blinking up at the ceiling from beneath the soft blanket that usually lay over the back of the couch.
Oops.
Sitting up, he located his crutches and Hank, who’d camped out on the floor by the couch. They made their way to the kitchen where Connor and Judah were sorting through a mound of Boston EMS browns at the kitchen table, some of which Gus knew on sight were his.
“Dudes,” he chided. “You didn’t have to do my laundry.”
Judah, bless him, just grinned. “Mornin’, Super Gus! Connor had stuff to wash too, so I figured I’d keep going instead of waiting for you zombies to rise.”
Gus fixed himself a coffee, then joined the others clearing away the laundry before they sat down to a fantastic meal of savory potato kugel and salad. When Judah’s lunch break ended, Connor walked him and the dog back downstairs to the yarn shop Judah ran with his family and a hollow feeling settled over Gus while he loaded their plates into the dishwasher.
He didn’t miss his ex, Ben; Gus was still too pissed off at the guy to feel nostalgic. But he did miss making a home with someone—the easy acts of cooking and folding laundry, or any of the dozens of commonplace chores that transformed an impersonal space into something special. He longed to have that brand of friendly chaos in his life. After he did some work on himself, obviously. Gus wasn’t exactly great boyfriend material right now, especially given he didn’t even have his own place.
Or control over his own brain either, a problem he discovered after he’d sat down at Connor’s table with more coffee and his sketchbook.
Gus didn’t always think when he drew, particularly when he was tired and it was easy to simply let the pencil move while images surfaced in his head. He had no trouble recognizing the face on the page before him though, especially the eyes which were deep set and large, framed with thick lashes and full eyebrows. Gus’s pencil had rendered the irises a light gray, but he knew they were really a cool steel blue, the exact shade of Madoc Walters’ eyes.
And that was … bad. Gus hadn’t meant to draw any part of Walters, not his eyes, nose, or charmingly imperfect teeth. And Gus could not be looking any kind of way at the straight, married guy who reported to him and thought Gus’s leg was gross.
He resolved then and there not to even think in Walters’ general direction unless they were together on shift. Which proved impossible when Connor wanted Gus’s impressions of his new partner.
“What did you think of him?” Connor braced a heavy bag against Gus’s punches as they worked out at their gym later that day. “I’m guessing he’s got skills because you’d have said by now if he was a dud.”
“Ha, that’s fair. And yeah, Walters is good. He had a career back in his home state and has worked in EMS at least as long as you have.” Gus jabbed the bag twice with his left hand, then followed with a right cross. “I think he’s smart and knows what he’s doing, which should make my life on the truck easy. Not sure we’d mesh away from work, but no one’s asking us to.”
“Uh-oh.” Connor let go of the bag and straightened. “What does that mean?”
Fuck if Gus knew. He’d felt unsettled since leaving Connor’s apartment, thoughts about the things he missed in his life chased by the knowledge he’d been sketching his new partner. But he didn’t want to talk shit about a guy he’d only just met and would have to deal with for several months.
Quelling a sigh, Gus gestured for Connor to switch places with him.
“Walters doesn’t seem like he’s one for sharing,” he said, walking around the bag. “I know he’s married and has a daughter, and that he’s looking for some autonomy on the truck, and that’s about it. Meanwhile, I outed myself as queer before we had a short, spectacularly uncomfortable conversation about my leg.”
“Oh, heck.”
“Whatever. The guy was going to find out both things at some point. My point though, is that I talked about myself while Walters went out of his way not to.”
Connor went at the bag, alternating crosses and jabs with a wicked right hook. “Maybe he feels awkward riding with you,” he said between whacks. “It’s gotta burn being stuck as a recruit again, especially if he knows he has more on-the-job experience than the guy he reports to. A guy who’s probably going to get the job Walters wants for himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Liv said he asked her about Stark’s retirement and timing around replacing him on P1.”
Gus mulled that over. Bobby Stark rode opposite nights from Gus and Connor and, at sixty, was the most seasoned member on Station 1’s crews. He made no secret of wanting to turn his annual two-week trip to the Dominican Republic into a permanent gig and a lot of people were waiting for the guy to make it official.
Gus included. A fact Walters knew because Gus had told him so during their shift.
“I can see where he might be bitter,” Gus allowed. “But the idea he’s even thinking about promotions is absurd. Walters still has to graduate and get his EMT badge, for fuck’s sake.”
Unless an exception was made for an Academy recruit who was appropriately qualified. Someone like Walters, who had years on the job and, if he were fast-tracked, could easily become eligible for paramedic spots that became available.
Gus had to assume Walters was aware of this loophole in the rules—the dude was smart and experienced and would know what questions to ask. So maybe that was why Walters had stayed quiet when Gus’d mentioned his own plans to ride on P1. Because he viewed Gus as a rival, rather than simply a partner and supervisor.
Well, fuck that noise.
Walking back around to the front of the heavy bag, Gus assumed a southpaw stance and blistered the bag with punches. If the stars somehow aligned and he and Walters became eligible for promotion to paramedic at the same time, one of them was going to have to transfer out to another station.
It wouldn’t be Gus. Station 1 was his house, and he wasn’t going anywhere.