Eevee and Joel smiled like loved-up teenagers when they parted.To Joel’s credit, his smile didn’t falter even when he looked at Baz.It never did.Accepting the weird little brother had always been a part of their soulmate package deal.
Eevee led the way to the table in the back corner.Long shelves and cat beds decorated the walls; an orange tabby was curled up in a see-through orb just above Eevee’s head, his paw beans pressing against the plastic.And, of course, Lucipurr was on his heels.She cowered under the table next to them, her bright yellow eyes unblinkingly focused on Baz.Stalker.
“So.”Baz folded his hands on the table.“What’s up?”
Eevee’s shoulders hitched up to her chin.“Uh.Nothing.Just wanted to hear how you’re feeling after your big win.”She peered at the door, waited until it fell shut behind the ladies Joel saw out.Her fidgeting fingers intertwined into a tight ball she hid in her lap.
Baz frowned.“What’s going on?”
“Maybe we should have dinner first,” she said.Deflecting.But why?
“What’s the matter, Eve?”
Eevee sighed out a long breath.“I spoke to Dad.”
A knife rammed into Baz’s chest and tore him apart.He waited for the punch line, anything that saidI’m kidding it’s nothingthatbad, but Eevee stared at him with these guilt-ridden, wide eyes.
No.
“Are you serious?”His voice came out husky.
Eevee nodded slowly.
But… What… Why?How?The words raced through Baz’s mind, desperate to find their matching pieces to form a sentence.His ajar mouth dried out.
And Eevee was still as silent as the grave their mother rested in.
“Why would you do that?”Baz pressed out.
“I don’t know.He kept calling, and I thought maybe something had happened.”
“And that would be badwhyexactly?”
“I felt sorry for him!It’s been fifteen years since Mom died, and he’s been alone—”
“You felt sorry forhim?“ Baz was on his feet before he knew it.The chair fell backward and crashed into the floor, sending three cats scattering.“He is the one who should be sorry after all he put us through!Especially you!Don’t you remember when he caught you in Mom’s heels and threatened you with eternal damnation?”
Baz sure as fuck did.He remembered it all.
Eevee tearfully coming out to him.Her euphoria when Baz told her that he believed her when she said she was a girl, that it made no difference to him.They had spent hours going through magazines to find her style, testing out names until she found the one she resonated with.When he called her Eevee for the first time, she was the happiest he had ever seen her, glowing with an inner light like the angel she was—and all that changed the day Jack came home early and caught Eevee in their mother’s clothes.
The shock in his cold eyes had been the harbinger of the rage that exploded out of him, like lava out of a volcano.In his police uniform, with his hand looming over the holstered gun, he had yelled at them to never touch Mom’s stuff again.He all but ripped the top off Eevee and declared that “no son of his would be seen like this.”
Eevee’s sob-riddled declaration that she wasn’t his son had been met with Jack’s backhand across her face.Thesmackstill haunted Baz’s nightmares.
Eevee had refused to step foot outside her room for days afterward.Skipped school, only ate what Joel brought her.All they clung on to was the dream of finally getting away from Jack for good.
Two years, they persevered.The day Eevee turned eighteen, they had packed their things, left that backward suburb to move with Joel into an apartment in Hyde Park, far away from Jack’s precinct, and never looked back.
He couldn’t fathom a single good reason why the hell she was now allowing Jack back into their lives.
“Of course I remember,” Eevee said.“But it’s been thirteen years.”
“And that makes how he treated us okay?”
“I’m not saying that—”
“Eevee, he is using you!Who knows what he needs that’s got him reaching out after all these years!”
