Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He sees her for the first time when he and Kojo are on their way back home from a hike.

It’s kinda hard not to notice the giant moving truck parked in front of the house next door to his, but he’s also not a nosy neighbor, or a social one at that, so he only keeps to casually looking over when he lets Kojo outside or checks the mailbox…or suddenly finds himself peeking through the living room window blinds.

It’s also really hard not to notice her either.

He pictures himself memorizing every inch of her soft, golden skin, and her hair is the color of chocolate and it makes him want to run his fingers through it all day long, and her smile, it’s like the literal sun.

He must’ve been staring too long because she’s walking down the sidewalk towards him with her sun smile and he gets an odd feeling in his chest like his heart might explode right out of it.

“Hi, I’m Lucy.”

Lucy.

She’s still smiling but her brows furrow and he realizes he’s still staring at her.

“Uh–Tim.” He says once he eventually stumbles upon coherent words again, shaking her outstretched hand, “I’m Tim, Tim Bradford.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tim Bradford.” She replies softly, and her voice sounds like honey, “Sorry about the huge truck. I’ll have it gone by tonight hopefully.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He assures her, “I would ask if you need some help moving it, but you looked pretty badass doing most of it yourself.”

She giggles, and it makes the butterflies in his stomach brush off their cobwebs.

“I got most of it, but thank you anyway.”

“Where are you moving from?” He asks, but he wishes he just bit his tongue because the split second of fear that flashes through her dark eyes sends a chill up his spine.

“Sorry, none of my business—”

“No, no, it’s okay. We’re coming from Redding, but I grew up here in LA. It’s just me and my two daughters.”

“Well, welcome to Mid-Wilshire.”

She smiles again and he wants a framed picture of her on his bedside table.

“Thank you. We needed a change and this seems like the perfect place for one while also still being familiar,” She tells him before looking down to see Kojo, who’s obviously been not so patiently waiting for attention judging by how fast his tail is wagging, “And who’s this handsome guy?”

He reaches for Kojo’s collar in a quick motion, but his anticipation for a stranger danger attack from the canine isn’t needed because the only thing he’s doing is licking her nearly to death and he hears more of her laughter, and he thinks maybe it’s true that dogs are the best judges of characters.

“Kojo, let her breathe, man.”

“Yeah, you are the best boy aren’t you?” She gushes as she scratches his sweet spot behind his ear, “It’s nice to meet you, Kojo. I’m so glad you’re my new neighbor!”

“Mom!”

She whips around from where she’s kneeling in front of the dog so fast, he’s surprised her head didn’t fall off her shoulders, but they slump in relief at the sight of the teenager (and his head is spinning because Lucy doesn’t even look old enough to have a teenage daughter and yet, he’s more enamored with her because of it) standing at the end of her driveway and she whispers a goodbye to Kojo before she stands again.

“I’ll be there in a second, baby.” She calls back, turning to Tim once more, “It was good meeting you, Tim. See you around.”

“Yeah—yeah, see you around.” He stutters with a gentle wave.

She disappears inside the house and he already misses her. He thinks he might be one of those weird neighbors they talk about in true crime documentaries.

He also thinks he might only be that way for Lucy.

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He sees her for the second time at roll-call on Monday morning.

He nearly chokes on his coffee when she’s introduced as Detective Lucy Chen, and one of California’s best undercover agents, and he’s not sure how much more incredible she can get.

“Small world, huh?” She greets him with that familiar beaming grin once they’re dismissed by Sergeant Grey, “Neighbors and coworkers.”

“Don’t tell Kojo. He might get jealous,” He jokes.

“Then maybe I shouldn’t tell you that he’s my favorite neighbor.”

He squints his eyes with a feigned gasp and holds his hand to his heart, “I am hurt, Detective. Truly wounded.”

She shrugs with a playful smirk, “He’s got a way with his words.”

Her humor grants her a fast friendship with his best friend, Angela Lopez, and her new partner, Nyla Harper. They work well together out in the field and he’s certain that Lucy is a perfect fit within their tight circle. 

She brings a light to the station. He watches her communicate with the families of victims and make their worst day a little easier just by being in it, he bites back a grin when he sees her throw her head back laughing like a little kid at the stupid and secretly funny jokes John Nolan tells, he doesn’t bother hiding his grin when she tells him stories about her kids and he doesn’t even have to wonder what kind of mother she is because he just knows.

He’s not sure how he’s lived his life without Lucy in it.

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this is me praying that this was the very first page, not where the story line ends

Chapter Text

She dotes on her girls.

Tamara’s fifteen, full of just the right amount of spunk and attitude for a teenager, but she’s also wise beyond her years.

Emmy is a week shy of six months old and a carbon copy of her mother with her infectious grin and chocolate eyes. 

Too bad he hasn’t actually met them yet. It’s not that he hasn’t tried, but Lucy doesn’t give him much of a chance.

He’s only seen or heard them in passing, baby giggles and back-talk, or from the many stories Lucy tells him during their lunch break, and even then it’s only for a few seconds that he sees them because she’s quick to usher them in and out the front door with a glance over her shoulder. 

It makes him curious as to why she’s hiding them, or who she’s hiding them from.

Whoever it is must be who instilled her killer instincts. She’s first to find hidden evidence at scenes, she pulls confessions out of suspects in a matter of minutes, she’s got razor-sharp reflexes and a kindness for victims he’s never seen in any other cop.

He’s never met anyone like her.

Knowing that, he probably shouldn’t run her off by snooping, but she’d darted off from her desk in a hurry without any explanation, and being only a few feet away, he couldn’t help but notice her face turn the faintest shade of green with sickness. 

An open file lays on her desk, pictures of black and blue bruises and deep, bloody gashes mottling skin, and x-rays of broken and fractured bones, a sinking feeling in his gut making him feel like he needed to make a break for the bathroom, too.

There’s a mugshot and a 61 behind the emergency room reports, and the smirk on the bastard’s face gives him chills while also making him want to feed the guy a bullet from his service weapon. 

But it’s the name on the report that nearly stops his heart.

Chen, Lucy M.

He hasn't known her for very long at all, but the thought of someone putting their hands on Lucy is just one image he never wants in his head. 

He’s so distraught by the images of her beaten body that he doesn’t hear her come up behind him.

“His name is Caleb Wright.”

He jumps out of his skin even though her voice is quiet, and he can feel the heat in his cheeks like a kid caught with a cookie jar.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”

“It’s okay,” She says, nodding her head to the empty chair beside her desk for him to sit as she does the same. She straightens the papers within the folder up and shoves it underneath the pile stacked in the top drawer before sliding it closed and returning her eyes back to him.

“He’s my husband.” She continues, and his heart wants to plummet into his gut, but judging by the way she cringes at her own statement, he’s pretty sure the solemn feeling of her being married to someone else is mutual, “He’s about to be my ex once the final papers go through.” 

She glances at the picture, a grinning Tamara holding a newborn Emmy, sitting in a frame by her computer, the only insight to her life outside of Mid-Wilshire station, and he sees a sliver of a smile grace her lips, “One thing I didn’t think I’d ever wanted was to be a mom, but Tamara changed my mind the moment I met her. She was five at the time and just the happiest little girl I’ve ever known, despite who her father was.”

Her fingers absentmindedly graze over the skin of her neck as she speaks and his heart plummets into his gut, “I met him when I was a rookie. He was charming, funny. He checked pretty much every box all women have on their lists. I should’ve seen it coming when he asked me to marry him two months into dating, but I was so head-over-heels for him, I wore my rose-colored glasses with overwhelming ignorance to all the signs telling me to run.” She scoffs, letting her head fall, “We didn’t even make it a week after our courthouse wedding before he hit me for the first time.”

He sees the years worth of pain water in her eyes, and he wants to reach out for her, but he doesn’t want to keep her from working through the fog in her head, so he keeps his hands twisting his in lap with the imaginary head of Caleb being crushed between them.

“He’s a cop, so he knew how to get away with it every time, and the times he went too far, he knew what stories to tell to make the busted lips and black eyes come off as accidents.” She’s choking on her words, “I tried to file charges on him multiple times, but he was too well-respected and I was just a rookie crying wolf.”

“Still, I took it all so Tamara wouldn’t have to.” She declares as she quickly wipes away a stray tear from her cheek as she struggles to blink away the rest and stop her chin from trembling, “As she got older, she wanted to defend me, but I knew what he was capable of. I knew what he would do if she pissed him off at the wrong moment. I taught her what to do if he ever knocked me out, I showed her how to use my gun to protect herself, I wanted her to have every advantage possible to keep him from hurting her. I didn’t care what happened to me just as long as she was protected.”

“It took me ten years to get out,” She turns away from him to bury her mouth into her hand and conceal the sob that rips from her chest, taking a good minute in an ill attempt to compose herself before facing him again and clearing her throat, “I still don’t know why he’d been so angry that day, or why after so long of hiding who he really was that he decided he just didn’t care enough to hide anymore, but I was eight months pregnant with Emmy when he grabbed me by the neck and slammed my head into the window of a car in front of our station house.”

His breath hitches and it makes his stomach churn violently at the thought of someone putting their hands on her, a woman with a heart too big for her chest and a passion for being the light in a world of overwhelming darkness. 

His body is moving quicker than his brain because she’s in his embrace before he can stop himself, but she doesn’t tense or make any movements to pull away. She just…relaxes, like some of the tension she’s held in her body for a decade has finally found its release.

He glares at their fellow officers walking by who stare a little too long at them because although they’re sitting in the bullpen, it’s still a vulnerable moment for her and he wants nothing more than to make it a little easier on her. 

“I’m sorry.” She mumbles when she eventually tugs herself away out of his arms and hurriedly wipes away the salty tears that had slipped down her cheeks, “We hardly know each other and I’m already running you off with my life story. I just haven’t had the guts to look at these photos until now and I guess it all kind of came spilling out.”

“Don’t apologize,” He replies with no hesitation at all, letting his hand fall to her knee, “Whatever you need, I’m here. You don’t have to be worried about running me off.”

She eyes him curiously, “It would take hours to explain the rest of it.”

“I’d listen to you for hours.” He counters, and she gives him the softest grin he’s ever seen in return.

It’s true, he would listen to her talk for hours, and he does.

Their front doors are fifty feet away from each other, but he finds listening to her on the other end of the phone and being able to tell when she’s smiling without actually seeing her to be fascinating. He likes hearing her breaths even out after she insists she’s not tired. He learns his favorite sound is the tune of Dream a Little Dream of Me that she hums to Tamara when she wakes from a bad dream and ends up in Lucy’s bed with Emmy curled up in between them. 

He catches her singing it most mornings while she waits for the coffee maker to brew a fresh pot, or when she can’t decide on a snack inside the vending machine, or when she’s only a few files into the mountain of paperwork on her desk.

The way she sounds and speaks, it makes him want to know anything she has to say about everything, really.

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'cause all I know is we said, "hello"
and your eyes look like comin' home

Chapter Text

Her laughter dances around in the air of his favorite cafe as he walks through the door bright and early on a Wednesday morning, and he thinks for a second that maybe he’s just wishing it’s her, but Kojo’s tail is pounding against his leg and he’s bouncing on his paws, and the canine’s excitement only confirms that it is her as he looks to his left, his eyes catching hers as the sun shining through the windows flickers off the spots of gold in them.

She’s waving him over with that grin he thinks about more often than he’d care to admit and Kojo’s practically dragging him across the floor to her, her sunshine energy matching the dog’s exhilaration.

“Is that my most favorite neighbor?” She asks as she scratches the sweet spot behind Kojo’s ear before peeking up through her eyelashes, “And hello to you too, Tim.”

“Very funny.” He feigns, but he can’t help the smirk tugging on his lips, “You know, I tend to avoid the people I work with on my days off considering we see each other every second of the day.”

She holds a hand to her chest and shrugs, “But I’m the exception, I know.” 

She is, but he won’t tell her that.

“If you two are done flirting, I’d like to eat my breakfast in peace.”

It seems he’s not the only one that forgot they aren’t alone until they tear their attention from each other to the teenager sitting across the table from Lucy, and if he didn’t already know she doesn’t biologically belong to the detective, their uncanny resemblance would be hard to deny.

“Tim, this is my daughter, Tamara. Tamara, this is Tim. We work together.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tamara,” He greets, holding out his hand to the skeptical teen, “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you.”

She purses her lips and stares at him for a good while, and he’s suddenly feeling like he’s back in high school under the scrutinizing watch of a date’s father with the threat of bodily harm if he so much as looks at her the wrong way. 

He has no doubt Tamara would turn that threat into a promise.

“You’re cool.” She eventually speaks, and Lucy laughs, which causes him to release the breath he hadn’t realized he’s been holding in.

“The seal of approval,” Lucy hums, “Never thought I’d see the day.”

That puts him at ease even though Tamara is still burning holes through his forehead, until a soft cry echoes from the chair beside Lucy, the tiny girl he’s only ever seen in pictures on her desk or in passing, interrupting the awkward yet strangely familial moment.

He listens as her cries instantly fade as her mother softly whispers to her, pressing kiss after kiss on her skin and bouncing her gently in her arms. He feels almost like an intrusion on the intimate moment between Lucy and her baby, but the woman quickly turns her body towards him and picks up the little girl’s hand to wave at him.

“Emmy, meet Tim. Tim, meet Emmy.” She beams at him, “She’s not as strict as her sister.”

He holds out a finger and Emmy is quick to grip it tight as he shakes it gently up and down, and the baby is much more delicate with her curious stare at him before her lips turn into a wide, toothless grin, which makes him wonder if she’s what Lucy used to look like as an infant.

“Hi, Emmy.” He smiles back at her, “I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

Emmy’s got the same giggle as her mom, as if the universe copy and pasted Lucy thirty years in the future, and after she invites him and Kojo to eat breakfast with them, he hopes for more Wednesdays like this.

He doesn’t even realize he’s sitting at the same table he used to sit at with his ex-wife until it’s time to leave, but it's a good realization. 

He’s walking them back to their car on the next block over, and Tamara is talking his ear off about her new friends at school and the talent show she’s auditioning for, and Emmy is mercilessly babbling as she nestles herself in the crook of her mom’s elbow to get a better view of Kojo at their feet, and Lucy is grinning so brightly at him that he begs his mind to take a snapshot of it because she’s too beautiful to not think about every second of the day, and for the first time, finally , what’s past is past.

He’s spent the last two years thinking all that love is meant to do is break, burn, and end, but with every brush against her hand and every stolen glance he gets, he watches it begin again.

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Chapter Text

and I don't know how it gets better than this
you take my hand and drag me head first, fearless

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“You like her.”

It’s obvious to everyone, he knows that, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to give in that easily.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Pretty sure my five-year-old would’ve put up a better argument.” Angela scoffs, “Admit it, Bradford. You have the hots for the new lady cop and by the looks of it, she’s got it bad for you, too.”

“We’re just friends, Ang.” He plays it off, but he’s also not stupid enough to think she’ll actually take that for a good answer judging by the way she’s raising her eyebrow as if to say call me an idiot, I dare you, “Okay, fine. Yes, I like her, but it’s not gonna go anywhere because we can’t date in-house—”

“Woah, we just can’t date partners . They never said anything about in-house relationships. Mr. Rulebook should know that by now…”

He’s not really paying attention to any of what she’s saying as he catches sight of Lucy over her shoulder, laughing at yet another one of Nolan’s pointless jokes. 

She must feel his eyes on her because she waves at him and it instantly takes him back to that very first day.

Angela notices, too, because she elbows him in the gut and he curls into himself with a groan, whipping his head to the side to glare at her and speak through a gasping breath, “What the hell is your problem?”

“Grow a pair and ask her out already, would ya?”

“I can’t,” He says once the ache in his stomach fades away, returning his gaze to Lucy once more, “Her focus is where it needs to be, on her girls. She doesn’t need anyone coming in and messing it up.”

“You are clueless, Bradford.” She scoffs, staring at her very stupid best friend in disbelief, “Truly clueless.”

Maybe he is. Maybe he is clueless, maybe Lucy is feeling the same feelings in her gut, too, but she’s too… good, and she’s too good for him. She’s trying to start over and he’d be a fool to keep her from doing that.

So, his jaw nearly hits the floor when she asks him on a date.

“Would you, um, would you maybe want to get dinner sometime?”

She’s fiddling with her hands, the Lucy that wears her confidence proudly now resembling a timid child, and her deep brown eyes are looking everywhere but in his own.

“I know we work together and it’s kinda frowned upon by pretty much everyone to date your co-worker—not that we’re dating or anything, just that—”

His hand on her arm stops her rambling and the way she adorably bites the inside of her cheek gives him goosebumps.

“I’d love to have dinner with you.” He grins, and so does she, that bright sunshine that only radiates off of Lucy Chen sending the butterflies that his stomach only feels around her into a tailspin.

Hours later, she’s radiant in her dress, her hair in soft curls around her shoulders and the red on her lips pairing perfectly with the rosiness in her cheeks.

He must’ve figured right that her favorite flowers are daisies because she buries her nose in them and breathes them in, much like what he wishes he could do with her.

“They’re beautiful, Tim.” She says.

“They’re nothing compared to you.” He replies before he can stop himself, but her little hitch of breath and briefest of emotion in her eyes prove just how very little she’s heard someone sing her praises.

She loves Italian food, he learns. Red wine and baked ziti with garlic breadsticks, specifically. 

Time passes quicker than he’d like because he wants to listen to her until he’s old and deaf, but it’s past closing at the restaurant and as much as he wants to be a selfish asshole and stay with Lucy a little while longer, he’s caught her hiding a yawn here and there and decides that it’s a good excuse to ask her on another date.

“Thank you for tonight,” She mumbles, laying her head against his shoulder as they walk down the block to his truck, “I haven’t been on a real date since Caleb and— actually, you don’t want to hear about that. Nevermind—”

He stops walking and pulls her with him, tilting her chin up from where she’s staring at the ground to look at him, “He never deserved you and you never deserved the way he treated you. You deserve someone who will take you out and tell you how stunning you look in that dress and show you that you deserve every bit of good this world can give you.”

He watches the grin spread across her face and he wants so badly to wait and kiss her goodnight when he walks her up to her front door, but she’s on her tiptoes and her lips are on his within a second and his heart skips a few beats much like it had when he saw her for the very first time.

When she does pull back, she giggles at what he knows is probably the dumbest look he’s ever had on his face because Lucy Chen just kissed him and he has no idea how he’s gone this long without her.

“God, you’re incredible.”

His hands find her cheeks and hers rest on his chest as he leans down to kiss her again, and he can taste her sweet smile and the merlot on her lips and he doesn’t know how it can get any better than this.

“…it would be you, and always you…”

They’re walking hand in hand when he notices there’s a glow on the pavement from the streetlight that illuminates her features so perfectly and he wonders if she knows how hard he’s trying not make a fool of himself right in the middle of the downtown, but she’s singing softly to the song echoing out of the bar on the corner and he just can’t help it any longer.

“Dance with me.”

She looks at him incredulously and around at the nearly empty street, “Here?”

“Why not?” He shrugs, “I’ve heard you say once or twice that you’ve always wanted a High School Musical rain moment.”

The love gods are in his favor because the volume of the music gets just loud enough at the right moment for her to take his outstretched hand and let him spin her right into his chest, eliciting laughs from both of them.

“…and when the lights go out, we’ll just keep on dancing in the dark…”

He doesn’t hear the roll of thunder course through the sky or feel the beginning of the rain from the California clouds as the drops hit their skin because he’s so enamored with her that he’s not sure even a storm could stop them.

“…cause if the world has got to end, you might as well just end up in my arms…”

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and I don't know why but with you i'd dance in a storm

Chapter Text

pauses, then says, you're my best friend
and you knew what it was

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He’s falling for her.

Scratch that, he’s fallen for her.

It’s been four weeks of stealing glances across the bullpen and flirty texts and Italian food dinner dates, and he just can’t get enough of her. (Tamara and Emmy, too.)

His idea of a family slowly died the more distance that Isabel put between them, but making blueberry pancakes and bacon for Tamara because she loves breakfast for dinner on the nights when Lucy has to work late, and listening to Emmy babble along to the songs on the radio when he picks her up from day-care, it’s the closest he’s ever felt to his dream.

He wonders if he’s always been waiting for Lucy.

His heart plummets into his stomach when she barrels through and nearly breaks down the front door, hysterically sobbing and clinging to a wide-eyed Emmy.

“Tamara, she—she’s not answering her phone and—she knows—what if she’s hurt and alone—”

He takes her by the shoulders and steadies her on her feet, which seems to be what she needs to calm down enough for him to understand her, “Tamara said she was going over to a friend’s house after school and she promised to be home by eight because it’s a school night and she’s never once stayed out past curfew,” She rambles out in once breath, “but her phone is going straight to voicemail and I don’t have her friend’s parent’s numbers because I haven’t had time to meet any other parents at her school—”

“Lu, breathe.” He commands as he pulls her in, only minding enough space to not crush Emmy, and Lucy sobs out a shaking breath until she’s hysterical once again.

He knows what’s racing through her mind because it’s racing through his own — Caleb. They’ve been so careful, she’s been so careful in protecting Tamara and sharing their past as they both know what could happen if Caleb ever finds out where his ex-wife and children are, but he also knows that the Lucy he’s in love with — he’s totally, completely, unapologetically in love with her — is not the same Lucy he met that day she moved in. She’s happier, and her smile is brighter, and she’s watching over her shoulder a little less, and she’s not trying as hard to hide the scars Caleb left on her skin.

But the fear in her eyes, it’s the same kind he saw in his own mother’s eyes.

He grabs his keys and her hand and tells Kojo to be a good boy, that they’ll be back later, and buckles both Lucy and Emmy into his truck before nearly burning the rubber off of his tires as he backs out of the driveway. 

He keeps his hand on her bouncing thigh as he taps the first name on his favorites list in his phone and waits for the greeting on the other end after the first ring.

“Hey, can I call you back? I’m almost finished with—”

“Ang.” He says, and it’s all he has to say for her to understand.

“What do you need?” 

“Can you give me the last location of Tamara’s cell? It’s going straight to voicemail.”

He hears the faint sound of a keyboard in the background before she speaks again, “It looks like the signal dropped off at the corner of Echo Park Avenue and West Sunset.”

“What the hell is she doing in Echo Park?” Lucy mutters from beside him.

“Can you have a patrol unit meet us there? We’re about twenty minutes out.”

It’s the longest twenty minutes of his life, but time stops and so does his heart when he sees the flashing lights from down the block.

Lucy’s flying out of the passenger seat before the truck is even in park as the raven hair and loud sass he knows belongs to Tamara sticks out like a sore thumb in the crowd.

He sees red when he notices the handcuffs around her wrists behind her back and the tears on her cheeks as she argues with the officer that looks like he hasn’t even hit puberty yet.

“…and instead of interrogating me, you should be arresting the douche that put his hands on that girl!”

He’s got Emmy in his arms, and he should be thankful for that, but when Lucy and the superhuman strength she pulls out of nowhere grabs the rookie by the collar of his uniform and lifts him off the ground in a pure, unfaltering rage, he wishes his hands were free.

“I don’t know what kind of stupid possessed you when you thought it would be okay to put handcuffs on my fifteen-year-old child, but I’d think real hard about the explanation that’s about to come out of your mouth.” She bites out, her grip tightening dangerously. 

He sees out of the corner of his eye the rookie’s partner step forward, but she has those instincts that turn him on and she whips her head around with a look that would probably scare the devil, “Take another step and not only will I have your badge, I’ll have your castrated balls in my back pocket.”

God, she’s hot when she’s angry.

“Ma’am, unless you want handcuffs on your own wrists, I’d suggest you let me go.”

He’d give him props for attempting to not sound like a complete dumbass, but the tools on his duty belt are clattering with how hard he’s trembling.

“Threatening a detective?” She tilts her head to the side with a click of her tongue, “Not your best move, Boot.”

“As I was trying to explain,” Tamara speaks up, and for a moment he forgot she’s there, “I wasn’t assaulting him for no reason. I broke the bottle over his head because he had his hands wrapped around a woman’s throat and no one was doing anything!”

“That’s my girl!” Tim pumps his fist in the air at the same time Lucy growls, “You did what?”

He’s been shot a time or two in the line of duty, and the look his girlfriend gives him feels pretty much the same.

She whips her head back to the officer shaking in her grip and sets him back down on his feet before grabbing the handcuff key hanging from his jacket pocket, “I’ll be sure to let your boss know when he gets here that you questioned a minor without her guardian or an attorney present and we’ll be helping the woman you failed to defend press charges on her attacker. When the witness statements corroborate my daughter’s account of what happened, you better pray to whatever god you worship that you don’t get stuck playing crossing guard.”

She uncuffs Tamara and rubs her thumbs over the reddening skin of her wrists, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I’m not hurt.”

“Oh, good, because grounding you for two weeks would seem a bit harsh if you were.”

“What?” Tamara cries, “You can’t ground me! I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Lucy lifts a brow, “You stayed out past curfew, you didn’t call to tell me you’d be late, you’re not even supposed to be on this side of town, and you risked your safety by injuring someone three times your size. Tell me how that doesn’t constitute grounding?”

“I was just trying to help and you’re punishing me for it?”

There’s tears in Tamara’s eyes and Tim can tell by the way she’s biting her lip that she’s close to letting her tears fall, and when they do finally slip out, Lucy’s thumbs catch them before they can streak down her cheeks.

“My love, I am not punishing you for helping that woman. You’ve always stood up for the ones who can’t fight back, and you are the bravest girl I’ll ever know, which proves time and time again that you are exactly who I raised you to be. I know you were just trying to help and you did that, but tonight could’ve turned out completely different. Do you have any idea what it would be like if I lost you?”

“But you didn’t—”

“But I could have, Tamara. That piece of shit could’ve killed you with no hesitation.” Lucy tells the girl bluntly, and it seems to do the trick from how quickly the teenager lets her emotions take over, “Nothing else matters more to me than you and Emmy. And if grounding you gives me peace of mind for two weeks, then you bet I’m gonna do it.”

She nudges Tamara into Tim’s side and gives him a defeated look, “Tim is going to take you and Emmy home, and I will be there once I get all of this cleared up. We can talk more about this in the morning.”

He catches the flash of pain on her face when she reaches for her daughter and Tamara pulls away, her dark brown eyes avoiding sight of the identical ones of her mother, and it nearly tears him in two to see them hurting.

“You should’ve just left me with my dad.”

A sharp gasp sears from Lucy’s chest at the teenager’s words and for a moment, he thinks she’s frozen in time with how still she becomes. 

Nevertheless, she chokes back her own tears and swallows the lump he can see in her throat, “I’m sorry I’ve made you feel that way. I hope you can understand better once we talk about what happened tonight. I will see you at home.”

She kisses Emmy on the cheek, and him too, before leading the officers away from her family without another look at her oldest child.

The ride home is silent with Emmy asleep in her car-seat and Tamara pouting in the front seat. Pouting is definitely what she’s doing, he’s decided, because every couple minutes she huffs under her breath and shifts in her seat. Brooding might be a good word for it, too.

“Say whatever it is you want to say, Tim,” She speaks up, startling him, “I can feel your eyes burning a hole in the side of my head.”

He sighs, unsure whether or not to spill the words that have been sitting on the tip of his tongue for the past ten minutes as they drive back into Mid-Wilshire. It doesn’t feel like it’s his place to get in the middle, but he can’t help but feed the urge to defend the girl he loves.

“It’s not my place to say anything.” He shakes his head, glancing a look to the mirror attached to the backseat headrest, a soft smile finding his lips at Emmy’s squished cheek against the straps of the car seat, “I’m just supposed to drive you home.”

“Well, you’re obviously angry with me, so spill your guts.”

“I’m not angry with you, Tamara,” He tells her, “I’m angry for you. I understand why you did what you did tonight — in your eyes, you were defending your mom.” His eyes are burning with emotion, “You saw your father in that guy and you saw Lucy in the woman being hurt. You were a little girl when your dad started abusing your mom and because she never let him do to you what he was doing to her, all those years of watching her get hurt, your instincts took over. I know because I did the same thing.”

She looks at him with a questioning look, urging him to continue, “My dad was like yours. He was an abusive, drunk bastard and the very first time I responded to a domestic disturbance call as a rookie, a guy was beating on his wife with a tire iron. I wish I could say I kept my cool, but I didn’t. I took the butt of my gun and hit the back of his head with it, knocking him out. I felt this relief because I finally got the chance to do what he’d been doing to me and my mom my whole life. My captain knew me growing up so she knew why I did it and she vouched for me so I could live to see another day as a cop.”

Tamara’s crying silently, her lip stuck between her teeth as she fights with her mind on what to say, “My father once threw her into our glass coffee table. It shattered everywhere into impossibly tiny pieces, and he made her crawl through the glass and then scrub her blood out of the carpet, but she wasn’t going fast enough for him, so he picked her by her neck and squeezed until the blood vessels in her eyes popped.”

She’s sobbing through her words now, and he has to hold back to keep from crying right along with her.

His Lucy, his stunning, inconceivably brilliant, fearless, extraordinary Lucy. His stomach churns at the thought of someone trying to burn out the light in her eyes. 

“She went through it all because of me.” Tamara cries, “She took all of the pain my father put her through just so I wouldn’t have to feel anything other than the love she gave me. My biological mother was a piece of garbage, no better than my father. She chose drugs over me; she left me behind, but Lucy gave me everything she had from day one. She sold her old Datsun for four thousand less than what it was worth to buy me my first guitar and a couple of music lessons. She came to every ‘Muffins with Mom’, every school play, every talent show. She did my hair every single morning for school even when I could tell she was in pain and just needed to sleep, she worked extra shifts and security jobs to buy me new school clothes so that other kids wouldn’t pick on me because my father refused to buy me anything. She sacrificed her happiness for me and my sister because that’s who she is.”

“When I saw that lady tonight trying to push her boyfriend, or whoever he was, away, I saw her. I saw my father’s hands around her throat. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.” 

She wipes her tears on her sleeve and clears her throat, “My dad gave her every reason to leave, but she stayed with him to protect me. It’s my job to protect her this time.”

“But it’s not, Tamara.” Tim sighs, and he pulls the truck over to the side of the road, turning his body in his seat to face her, “You were just a kid, and so was she. She loves you more than I’ve ever seen a mother love her child. She got you out of that horrific situation to keep you safe, but putting yourself in danger like this because you feel like it’s your life mission to erase all the hurt she went through or pay her back for it all, it’s not okay. It’s not your job to save her.”

“But she saved me.” 

Her voice is quiet, and childlike, and Tim imagines her sitting at the top of the stairs listening to her father beat the only mother she’s ever known and wondering if it will be the last time she ever sees Lucy again.

“She did,” He agrees, shifting back in his seat to take the truck back out on the road, “And that means she has full grounding power, so you may want to just shut up while you still can.”

Tamara laughs, and it sounds identical to her mother’s.

“You think she’ll let me stay home from school, too?”

“Not a chance, but nice try.”

The air turns quiet again for a while, with the occasional sigh from Emmy in the backseat, before the streets feel like home and he parks the truck in Lucy’s driveway. Tamara gets out and gets Emmy out, too, at her insistence that she likes putting the baby to bed when she gets the chance, and he follows them inside the house, making sure all the doors and windows are locked before settling down on the couch while the girls make their way to the nursery.

Just got the girls inside. Are you okay?

I’m finishing up here, so I’ll be home soon. How is she? Is she still mad at me?

I don’t think so. I’ll let her talk to you about it, but I think she’s having a harder time than she’s letting on.

Does it make me a shitty mother that I haven’t pushed her hard enough to make her open up about it?

You could never be a shitty mother. She’s old enough to know by now that you’re there when she needs you. It’s on her if she wants to fight her battles by herself.

I just love her so much

She knows that too

Do you want us to come get you?

Angela’s here and said she’ll bring me home. We’ll be there in about half an hour

Be safe

He types without thinking an ‘I love you’ at the end, and his thumb hovers over the send button, but he can already feel the throbbing in his head from Angela’s hand smacking him for confessing his affection for Lucy through a text message.

He knows he does. He’s known it for a while, but he’s not really sure when it set in. 

See you soon

He hangs out on the couch and waits for the sound of the lock turning in the front door. Her eyes are reddened and swollen when she walks through it, and the dried tear tracks on her cheeks break his heart. 

Her face scrunches up when she sees him and a wet sob echoes through the silence between them, and he scoops her up in his arms as she lets out what he thinks is years worth of heartache and the fear that had consumed her only hours earlier.

“I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”

He hears a bedroom door creak and footsteps on the hardwood, Tamara’s raven hair catching his attention out of the corner of his eye.

“Mom?” She whimpers, her own wide eyes shining with tears, “I’m sorry.”

Lucy turns into his bicep and exhales a heavy breath before wiping her face clean, a chilling tremble radiating through her body onto his.

“I know.” Lucy tells her, “And I’m sorry that I made you feel like you didn’t do the right thing for that girl.”

She looks up at him and he understands, “I’m gonna go check on Kojo.”

He bends down to press a kiss against her wet cheek before leaving the two girls to what he knows will be a long but much needed talk.

Kojo’s waiting and watching (im)patiently through the back door for him when he enters through the gate, his tail wagging ferociously and his nose pressed up against the glass.

“Hi, boy. You were so good waiting for me, huh?” He kneels and scratches the sweet spots behind the dog’s ears, “You want to go see Lucy tonight? I bet she’d love to see her second favorite boy.”

Kojo tilts his head to the side, and Tim rolls his eyes, “Okay, first favorite boy.”

Time passes slowly as he feeds Kojo and tosses the ball around the backyard awhile, in hopes to wear him out, until Lucy peeks through the gate.

She’s got the baby monitor in her hand and two coffee cups impressively balanced in the other with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and her eyes are more swollen than they were before, but the stress in her features isn’t as noticeable and the smile tugging on the corners of her lips eases the ache in his chest a little. 

She reaches a hand out for him once she sets the cups on the side table and he helps her settle against his side and he’s noticed a time or two that she resembles an octopus when she cuddles because she wraps her arms around his waist and rests her legs over his thighs.

“Thank you.” She whispers, laying her head on his shoulder as she breathes him in and takes a long sip from her mug.

“For what?”

“For being the best man I know.”

Kojo barks, and Tim rolls his eyes again as she laughs into the crook of his neck, “Sorry, bubs. Second best guy.”

Her giggles are drowned out by the stillness of the night as he focuses on the beat of her heart and the soft white noise echoing from the speakers on the monitor until she pulls out of his embrace and sits up, setting her mug on the table and turning to face him.

More tears well in her dark, beautiful eyes and he’s quick to follow her lead, his hand coming up to rest on her cheek, “What’s the matter, baby?”

“I love you.” She whispers, vulnerability seeping through the three words he’s longed to be shared between them, but she refuses to meet his eyes as she sniffles, “I’ve loved you for awhile, I think, but I was unsure it was love until tonight.”

She struggles to swallow her sobs, and she fails, but he gives her the space she’s silently asking for to work through the racing thoughts in her mind.

“With Caleb, it was…it was a want. A want for his attention, his affection,” She chokes on her words, “I was made to think that love was supposed to be something you chase after and have to beg for.”

She unconsciously lifts a hand to her neck as if somehow to reveal the bruises that used to paint her skin, “It was like an addiction I couldn’t get away from. I stayed with him because I had nothing else. He’d ripped me away from my friends, he brainwashed my family into believing that I was the bad guy, he took everything from me and I stayed with him.”

“It wasn’t your fault, baby.”

“I know that now. I know that I need to love you like I need air to breathe. I know that you gave me back the parts of my heart he ripped out of me. I know that I didn’t deserve everything he did to me. I know what love is supposed to be now because of you.”

She finally looks up at him and he understands now why people have lost their minds and spent their whole lives trying to put it into words. 

He smiles and pulls her back into him, his lips finding hers. He kisses her for a long moment, pouring every ounce of adoration and respect he has for her into it. He buries his face into the crook of her neck when they eventually pull away, and he breathes her in desperately, like she’s the air his lungs crave and the blood pumping through his veins.

“I love you too, Lu.”

She pulls back to meet his eyes, and his heart breaks a bit when he sees the tears clinging stubbornly to her lashes. He stares at her in the glow of the porch light as the shadows dance across her face, and he realizes that he would give up everything just to keep her here beside him.

──────────────────

you are in love, true love

Chapter Text

i've been having a hard time adjusting
i had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting

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He learns a little more each day about Lucy.

She’s got major depressive disorder and PTSD. She doesn’t talk about it much, or tell him what the orange pill bottles are for in the medicine cabinet, but they tumble out in his hands one morning when he’s looking for a bandaid.

Sertraline he recognizes because he’s got a bottle just like it in his own bathroom. It was a literal life-saver when he failed to find his footing after returning home from Afghanistan, in the sense that he didn’t want to eat his gun nearly as much as he used to. 

“What are you doing with those?”

The bottles fly out of his hands and scatter all over the counter and the floor as he jumps out of his skin at the sound of her voice. 

“Geez, Luce. Scare a guy to death, why don’t ya?”

She doesn’t acknowledge him or talk back. She just steps around him and gathers the pills, shoving them back into the cabinet silently.

“Babe, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He says, and by the look on her face, he’d read her mind, “If medication helps you feel better, it’s okay.”

“Just please leave them alone.” She mumbles quietly, keeping her head down as she walks back out of the bathroom.

He learns a little bit more the following days why she needs medication.

He’s noticed things here and there since the night they confessed their love for each other, but he’d brushed it off as stress from their job.

He should’ve figured out that she wasn’t taking her pills at the first sign of her smile not quite reaching her eyes. 

But instead, it takes finding her still in bed and staring at the ceiling on a Monday morning an hour after the station reported to roll-call. 

Emmy’s screaming echoes through the monitor, but it’s one less thing he has to worry about when he hears Angela, who insisted (threatened bodily harm if he didn’t let her) on coming with him, begin to comfort her.

Tamara’s backpack is gone from the rack, and he wonders how she got to school. He’s hoping to hear complaints about riding the bus when she returns and not that she walked the mile-and-a-half distance to her campus. 

It scares the absolute fuck out of him when he steps into the bedroom because she’s lying so still that she looks dead and he thinks his heart might stop until he catches onto the rise and fall of her chest.

Her eyes are surrounded by the faintest sign of purple and it’s quite obvious she didn’t sleep at all the night before. 

“Baby?” He whispers as he kneels next to the bed and brushes a hand over her hair, smiling softly as she turns toward the sound of his voice, “Hi, my love.”

Tears catch on her lashes, her chin trembles and the sobs sitting so patiently in her chest finally escape, loud and vicious.

He wastes no time in wrapping her up in his arms to comfort her as her body shakes and jolts from her cries. He doesn’t understand how it got to this point so quickly when only days before, she’d been happier than he’d ever seen her.

Nearly an hour goes by before she stops crying and her grip on him begins to slack, and he lets out a sigh of relief when he realizes she's finally fallen asleep. 

As swiftly and silently as he can, he untangles himself from her arms and covers her up with the blanket at the foot of the bed that he knows is her favorite, and gives her one last lingering look before quietly shutting the door behind him.

“What the hell is going on, Tim?”

Angela’s waiting in the hallway just as he expects her to, but he doesn’t even know what’s going on, so he tries his best to explain what he does know.

“Lucy’s ex, Tamara and Emmy’s father, used to beat her.” He begins, and then he can’t stop because he’s overwhelmed and one of the two people who can help him work through the harrowing thoughts in his head is standing right in front of him, “That’s why she moved here, to get away from him. He’s a cop up in Redding and he abused her almost the entire time they were together.”

He has to take a second to swallow the vomit rising in his throat before he can speak again, “He used to force her to have sex with him. She didn’t tell me exactly, but it’s not hard to read between the lines when she flinches almost every time I touch her.”

Angela’s breath hitches, but he can’t stop because he needs someone to understand why he’s more than willing to take a bullet for Lucy if it ever comes to it, “She stayed for Tamara to protect her.”

“That’s why she hardly lets Tamara out of her sight and why she panicked when she hadn’t heard from her.” Angela concludes, and Tim nods, “He was arrested for hurting her when she was pregnant, but he’s got connections we can’t even dream of and got out pretty quickly after with a clean record.”

Angela eyes him suspiciously for a few moments and he knows he’s been caught when she points an accusing finger at him.

“Do you have a tail on him?”

He looks at her sheepishly before bracing his shoulders, preparing for the hellfire he’s brought upon himself, “My buddy, Rex, has a guy.”

“Oh, ‘he has a guy’.” She mocks him, “You have no idea what you’re doing, Bradford. Domestic violence situations are almost always deadly. If he finds out his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is watching him, who has any idea what he’ll do?”

“And if I don’t know his every move, how am I supposed to protect her?” He snaps with more bite than he probably should’ve, but he can’t get through a single day without picturing her bruised and bloody body at the hands of someone who vowed to love her, “No one is thinking about her in this—”

“That’s not true and you know it!” Angela barks back, “She’s my friend and it makes me sick that she had to go through that alone, but she’s not alone anymore! She has an entire police force watching her back, so don’t you dare say no one is thinking about her.”

He slumps into a barstool and rests his head in his hands, defeated and exhausted, and he feels her arms wrap around him much like he did for Lucy.

“I know this is personal for you. You see your mom and sister in her and you think the universe is giving you another chance to do what you didn’t do when you were a kid, but it’s not. It’s not your job to save her.”

He laughs, and she scoffs, but he hurries to reassure her that he’s not laughing at her, “It’s funny. I said the exact same thing to Tamara when she bashed a dude over the head with a beer bottle because he was choking his girlfriend out.”

“Well, maybe you should take your own advice.”

Silence settles between them again when the overwhelming emotions wash over him, “I love her, Ang, so much. I can't lose her.”

“I know, but nothing is gonna happen to her. We’ll make sure of it.”

“She’s not taking her pills.” He confesses, because he remembers reading the date Lucy’s prescriptions were filled and the bottles looked like they hadn’t been touched since then.

“Then, we’ll get her some help, but you know how this goes. She has to want it.”

“I do.” 

Lucy’s voice startles them despite it being barely above a whisper as she emerges from her bedroom, dried tears on her cheeks and the ends of her sleeves bunched up in her hands.

“I thought I was getting better.” She admits, and she meets his eyes after a moment, “I’m happier than I’ve ever been, so I thought it would be okay to stop taking my medication, but I can see now I was wrong.”

“Do you understand how dangerous it is to go cold turkey on drugs that powerful?”

His question isn’t accusatory, and by the look on her face, she knows that.

“I just wanted to know what it felt like to be happy without them.” She whimpers, letting out a soft sob, “You make me happier than I could have ever imagined and I thought you were what I needed to stop needing to take them.”

His heart breaks for her.

“I don’t want to be sick anymore.”

And that’s the part that twists the knife.

“I know, baby. We’re gonna get you some help.”

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She confesses she hasn’t been to therapy since before she got pregnant with Emmy and even then, it was only a few times until Caleb found out and split her lip for ‘blabbing about him to a stranger’, and she never went back.

He takes the day off and Angela takes Emmy to her mom’s with a promise from him that he would let her know how Lucy is, and he calls in a favor to get her into his psychiatrist. Her hands shake violently as they sit in the small, empty waiting room and wait for Dr. Quinn, but she gives him a gentle smile when he tells her he’ll be here waiting for her. 

Progress, he thinks to himself as he settles himself back in his chair for the next hour.

He’s aimlessly scrolling through social media and his email, occasionally checking in with Angela’s mom about Emmy, when Dr. Quinn steps out and asks for him urgently.

Lucy’s hyperventilating on the couch and she’s trying so hard to calm herself down, but it’s no use. Her hair is a mess, like she’s been yanking at the roots, and the sleeves of her sweatshirt are dark, soaked in her tears, and she’s crying out for him.

“I’m right here, sweetheart.” He kneels in front of her, placing his hands on her thighs and giving them a gentle squeeze so she knows his voice is not her mind playing tricks on her, “You’re safe, baby. You’re safe. Just look at me, Lu.”

She does, and crumbles into him, earth-shattering sobs ripping through her violently.

“Just let it out, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”

Dr. Quinn tells him how they’d gotten to this point — Lucy makes it halfway through telling her about Caleb when she freezes mid-sentence, like she’s reliving it in her head, and then she stops breathing for nearly a minute because her mind is out to protect itself and working through her trauma isn’t at all what it wants to do — and then steps out of her office in search for a nurse.

“Why did this happen to me?” She howls against his chest, “I just wanted him to love me.”

“He wasn’t capable of loving you, Luce. You’re just too kind and too incredible and your heart is much too big for someone like that. He didn’t know how to treat you the way you should’ve been.”

“I’m just so tired, Tim.” 

“I know, sweetheart.”

A nurse checks her over and clears her to leave, and by then, she’s stopped crying and Tim is talking to Dr. Quinn in the corner as Lucy stares numbly at the wall.

“I’m concerned for her safety.” Dr. Quinn tells him.

“I’ll make sure she’s safe from him.” Tim reassures her, but the look on the doctor’s face, he knows that’s not what she means, “She wouldn’t do that. She loves her girls too much to leave them.”

“You know it’s not that simple, Tim. This is bigger than that, bigger than what you can handle. I know you want to be the one to help her through, but I’m recommending a five-day hold at Empower Recovery Center. I have a colleague there who has lived through a similar experience as Lucy.”

“You want to lock her up?”

“I don’t want to be responsible for her death certificate if she kills herself and we did nothing.” 

Tim’s breath hitches, and it feels awfully like his heart collapses in his chest. He’s not prepared for this, he’s not prepared to let go and let someone else help his girl. 

But he loves her too much to keep her from a better life, one not plagued with pills and nightmares and a mind fighting against her.

He nods and gets a gentle shoulder squeeze in return as Dr. Quinn hands him a thin folder, “They said they have a bed for her when she’s ready. I suggest preparing her as quickly as possible to get her in tonight. Do you want to tell her, or should I?”

“I’ll do it.” He says, and takes the paperwork from her with a quiet ‘thank you’ as she leaves the room to finalize the stay with the mental health facility. Lucy’s still staring at the wall when he walks over to the couch and sits down, still stuck in her jumbled thoughts.

“Lucy, look at me.” He sighs, brushing a hand over her face to get her attention, and she turns to look at him with her wet, brown eyes full of confusion and anguish.

“I need you to tell me if you’re really listening to me because this is important.” He says softly, but firmly, and she nods, “Okay, good. We’re done here with Dr. Quinn, so we’re gonna go home and pack a bag for you to go to a treatment center for a couple of days.”

Her brows furrow, and she starts to shake her head, “What? No, no. I’m fine, Tim. I’m okay. I didn’t hurt myself and I didn’t hurt the girls. I’m fine.”

“You’re not, baby, and that’s okay. This isn’t a punishment or judgment towards you. She wouldn’t recommend this if she wasn’t seriously concerned.”

She pushes his hands away from her and scrambles off the couch on wobbly legs, the anger slowly building in her, “No, I’m not going. I’m not leaving Tamara and Emmy. I won’t do it.”

“They will be fine without you for a few days. Angela and I will take care of them while you’re gone and I’ll bring them to see you every day—”

“I said no! I’m not crazy! I’m not letting them lock me up!”

“You’re not crazy, Lu, and they’re not locking you up. You have a mental illness. You have PTSD that was never treated and you need to get help, serious help, before it gets worse.”

She rushes to him and grips the fabric of his shirt in her hands, an anxious laugh falling from her lips, “But I’m okay! I’m just having a bad day, alright? I don’t need to go to treatment. I just need to sleep it off for a while—”

“Damn it, Lucy! I don’t want to have to bury you!” He roars at her, harsher than he’d intended and it hurts like a ton of bricks to watch her back away from him in fear.

He reaches for her and for a split second she wants to reach for him too, but she steps far enough back to put distance between them that might as well be hundreds of miles.

“I thought you loved me.” She whimpers, avoiding his eyes.

“I do love you, Lucy. That’s why I’m doing this. I love you too much to let you end up like—,” He stops himself because he’s just not ready to go there yet, “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone and I want you to get better so that you can be the happy Lucy I know.”

“What if I never get better?” She confesses, “What if the me that you know, the one that needs anti-depressants just to make it through the day, isn’t the Lucy you’ll want forever?”

She looks smaller than he’s ever seen her as she finally lays her fears out, and she stifles a cry as she stares at the floor, too embarrassed to meet his gaze. 

He takes what might be his only chance and closes the distance between them, and it doesn’t take long before she’s sobbing, loud and messy and guttural, as she collapses into his embrace. He’s warm, and sturdy, the strength she needs.

“I’ll always want you, Lucy.” He whispers as he kisses her hair, “You are the love of my life and I will support you every step of the way through this. You’re not alone anymore.”

She’s not okay, and he’s not sure how long it will take for her to be okay, but one day he’ll vow to care for her in health, and today, he's vowing to care for her in sickness, and he’ll be damned if he goes another day letting her fight the battle with her mind by herself.

──────────────────

“But…but I don’t want you to go.”

Tamara’s got Lucy in a vice as Tim loads her things in his truck and Angela rocks a whining Emmy reaching for her mom.

“I don’t want to go either,” Lucy sniffles, rubbing her hand up and down her daughter’s back, “But you deserve a good mom—”

“You’re the best mom—”

“You deserve a good mom who puts you and your sister before herself, and I failed to do that. I have to do this for you.”

The rest of their goodbye is as painful as it could possibly be and it takes everything in her to not give in to Emmy’s screams for her with anything other than a tearful kiss on the cheek and a promise to see her soon, and he pretty much had to drag her away from Kojo the second he started to whimper for her. 

The ride to the recovery center is short and it provides a sliver of relief for him that he’s less than ten minutes away from her — not that he’ll be able to sleep until she’s home, but that’s a problem he’ll have to deal with on his own.

Lucy’s trembling violently in the passenger seat when he puts the truck in park and it takes him holding most of her body weight up to get her legs steady enough to stand.

He’s got her duffle bag on one shoulder and his other arm wrapped around her waist as they walk inside together where Dr. Quinn is waiting for them.

“Hi, Lucy. I’m glad you’re here.”

“I didn’t really have much of a choice,” She mumbles with a shrug, “I just want to get this over with so I can go home to my kids.”

“I promise I wouldn’t have recommended you for this program if you didn’t need it. It’s okay to need help sometimes.”

They take her to her room and introduce her to the staff assigned to her case before leaving her to settle in and say her goodbyes to Tim.

He unpacks her bag and puts her clothes away in the small dresser next to the window, and he sets three framed pictures on the nightstand — her favorite picture of Emmy and Tamara, a picture of Lucy and Kojo, and a picture of him and her at a Dodgers game, his favorite. 

He knows she’s angry with him, but still, she lets him pull her in and hug her tight, burying his nose into the softness of her strawberry-scented hair. 

“I’ll bring the girls to see you every day after Tamara gets out of school.” He assures her, “And I’m taking the week off to keep Emmy.”

“Tim, you can’t throw away that many sick days. Angela’s mom—”

“—told me that she’ll come and check on us, and take Emmy if Grey calls me in. I promise the girls will be fine. They’re the most important things to you. I won’t let anything happen to them.”

“Thank you.” She whispers, pulling away but keeping her arms wrapped around him as she looks up at him, “I know you think I’m angry with you…”

He wonders sometimes how she reads his mind so well.

“…but I’m not. I mean, I was angry. I know I need help, I just wasn’t ready to leave everything familiar to get it and it felt like I was being forced instead of encouraged.”

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way, baby. We should’ve given you more time.”

“No, no—I…I was spiraling. You did what you had to do and if you hadn’t…I—I just need you to know that I’m grateful.” She stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to his cheek before letting her nose nuzzle into the crook of his neck as her arms snake around his shoulders, “I want to be the best mom to the girls and the best person for you, and I can’t do that if I’m sick. I promise I’ll do everything I can here to be a Lucy you can love.”

“And I promise I’ll love every version of you, forever. There’s no one else, Lu. You’re it for me.”

She is. It’s the reason why he’s got a ring hiding in his desk drawer at work. 

“I love you.” She whispers.

“I love you ‘til the end, baby.” He replies.

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“My little love!” 

Lucy’s smile is big and bright, and it stirs up the butterflies in his stomach. She’s been in treatment for four days and he can physically see the progress she’s made and how hard she’s working to get better, and he’s never been prouder.

Every day, he brings Emmy first thing in the morning and both girls after Tamara gets out of school and they stay until it’s lights out because the girls wouldn’t dare sleep when they could be with Lucy instead. 

“Oh, my baby, I missed you so much!” 

She’s peppering kisses all over Emmy’s cheeks and the infant is giggling mercilessly and he can’t help but snap a few pictures on his phone.

“Did you have a good sleep, sweetheart? Mommy just couldn’t hardly sleep last night because she couldn’t wait to see you.” She gushes, “I just love you so much.”

“Mamamamamama.”

“Yeah, baby. Mama loves you.” She laughs, bouncing the baby in her arms, “Yes, I do. I love you taller than a giraffe, and bigger than a whale, and all the way to the moon and all the way back times a million.”

There’s a knock at the door and it’s Dr. Benson, who Lucy’s taken to quite fondly, and he’s thankful that she has someone who knows what she’s been through and how to keep her from falling through the cracks.

“Lucy, are you ready for our session? You can bring Tim and Emmy in with you if you’d like.”

She doesn’t hesitate to say yes. He’s certain she wants to tell him how much better she’s doing, but she doesn’t even have to tell him. He can see it in the way she’s finding the light in her beautiful eyes again.

“You’ve been here for four days, Lucy, and you’ve done wonderfully. Out of all my patients, you’re the one I’ve seen come the farthest.” Dr. Benson praises her, “But now it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room.”

“Caleb.” Lucy says curtly.

“I know the basis of your relationship with him, but I want to know what got you to this point. What happened to you?”

Lucy’s bouncing Emmy on her knee as the girl stares adoringly back at her, and she does her best to keep her tears at bay.

“My ex-husband, Caleb, physically, emotionally, mentally, and sexually abused me the entirety of our ten-year marriage. I met him as a rookie and we got married a few months after we started dating. He had a five-year-old daughter, Tamara, when we met. She’s not mine biologically, but I was given sole custody of her when he was arrested, and I had Emmy a couple weeks later.”

“Is he in prison?”

“He was released on bail and the charges were dismissed with the exception of a restraining order and the custody arrangement. It wasn’t my choice, but my attorney didn’t think we had a big chance at winning, so I took what I could get. I packed us up and moved us here almost six months ago.”

“Tell me more about the abuse.”

She hesitates with a glance at him, but he rests his hand on her thigh with a gentle squeeze, urging her to keep going.

“It started with a slap here and there, followed by apologies and gifts, but it got more frequent and violent until I was missing weeks of work to let the wounds heal. It was never for any real reason — I got home two minutes late, or Tamara wouldn’t stop crying, or I didn’t have dinner ready on time — he took any chance he could to put his hands on me. It turned sexually violent on our one-year anniversary. He’d given me a concussion a couple of days earlier and I didn’t want to have sex when I could barely hold my head up,” She scoffs, “He got so angry with me. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him so angry.”

She’s choking on her words, and can hardly pull air back into her lungs, but Emmy lays her head on her mom’s chest and steadies her enough to continue, “For Mother’s Day that year, Tamara saved up all of her tooth fairy and birthday and Christmas money to buy me this dress we’d seen in the window of a boutique. It was this beautiful emerald green color with a little bow around the waist, and she convinced her friend’s mom to take her to get it. When she came home that day with this box almost as big as she was and this smile,” Lucy grins with a giggle as she thinks back to the memory, “This smile as bright as the sun, I was beside myself that she remembered how much I liked it. She said, ‘Mommy, look! I got you the princess dress!’ and when I put it on, she put on one of her dresses and we danced around the living room for hours.”

Her smile falters and he knows whatever she’s about to say will make him sick to his stomach, “I wore it the night of our anniversary because I wanted him to tell me I was pretty. It sounds stupid now that I’m saying it out loud.”

“It’s not stupid, Lucy. It’s okay to want affection from your husband. What did he do to you that night?”

“He…he accused me of seeing someone else. I told him it was a gift from Tamara, but he didn’t believe me. He was so mad. I tried to not make it worse, but it didn’t matter. He grabbed my arm when I tried to walk away and he yanked me back so hard, he pulled my shoulder out of its socket. I yelled at him to stop, to let me go, but it just made him angrier. He punched me and knocked me to the floor. He broke my nose and—and there was blood everywhere and then he picked me up by my hair and threw me on the bed.”

She’s rocking back and forth, more so to soothe herself than Emmy’s whimpering, and tears are slipping down her cheeks like a flowing river, and she’s ripping his heart apart piece by piece with every word.

“I tried so hard to fight him off, but the room was spinning from how hard he hit me and I couldn’t breathe because he was practically sitting on top of me to hold me still and he—”

“What did he do, Lucy? What happened to you?”

“I can’t—”

“This is a safe place, Lucy. He cannot hurt you here.”

She shakes her head as she holds Emmy closer to her and curls herself deeper into his side, but Dr. Benson leans forward in his chair because Lucy is so close to finally breaking free from the hold Caleb has over her, even now, ten years later and hundreds of miles away from him.

And then, she breaks.

“He used his knees to p—pin my hands by my side so that I couldn’t push him off of me, and then he—he tore my dress off of me and rip—ripped it into pieces.” She stumbles over her words as she tries to speak, “I just kept begging him to stop, but he just laughed and said that he didn’t have to stop, that I was finally getting what I deserved. I asked him to give me a break, just a second to breathe,” Her words come out in a sob as she closes her eyes and lets her tears cling to her lashes, “He was brutal, like some kind of animal. It felt like he was tearing me apart. It was hours before he finally let me go, and I just laid there.”

“Was this the only time he raped you?”

She shakes her head with a bitter scoff, “It was just the first. It went on until I left him. It’s how I got pregnant with Emmy and the two babies before her.”

“You have more children?”

“He said he didn’t want any more bastard children, so he beat them out of me.”

He wants to vomit. He wants to murder Caleb in cold blood, with no hesitation or remorse. He wants to turn back time to stop him and the pain from ever having the nerve to touch her. He wants to save the one who puts the sun in the sky every day for him.

He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until she rests her hand on his cheek and catches his tears with her thumb, her head resting on his shoulder and her fingers brushing through Emmy’s restless curls.

“What about Emmy?” Dr. Benson asks, and he wonders, too.

Lucy simply shrugs, “I don't know really. I guess she just knew how much I needed her.”

She smiles for the first time in days and the aching of his heart hurts a little less, “She just kept fighting and it made me want to fight for her that much more. When he put me in the hospital a few weeks away from giving birth, I knew that was it. I had to do something before he killed me or my girls. I don’t know why it took me ten years to leave — or ten years for him to show who he really was to people other than me — but the ER doctor on call at the time convinced me, despite my fear, that it would never stop until I was lying in the morgue. She helped me find a family law attorney, pack up mine and the girls’ things, and move to a shelter for battered women until I could get here. She sat with me through the court proceedings and delivered Emmy a couple of days after they gave me full custody. She helped me find solid ground for the first time in a decade.”

“Did she help get you here to LA?”

“I was given a final protection order against him, but he knew too many people and had already made me a leper pretty much everywhere. He got them to believe that I was the abuser and a liar and took his kids away using a battered wife sob story. The proof I had to refute his claims didn’t matter. I was blackballed by my station and the detectives I was training under didn’t want their reputations tarnished just for working with me, so I was given the option to leave quietly or ruin my career before it even began.”

“What about your work undercover? How were you able to do that while being married to him?”

“He had no control over the UC unit despite how hard he tried to gain some. I didn’t take as many assignments as I could have because I didn’t want to leave Tamara for longer than a day with him, but I closed a lot of cases in single days for them that would’ve taken months, years even, so they didn’t push their luck by getting rid of me. It was good money, and I needed as much as I could get if I ever decided to leave him, so I saved up as much as I could and kept it in a private account he didn't know about.”

“And then you got your golden ticket.”

“I single-handedly took down a state-wide sex trafficking ring by myself. I was asked where I wanted to go with my future and I didn’t even hesitate in asking for another go at being a Detective. I got my shield and closed a couple dozen more cases, and here we are.”

Dr. Benson closes her journal that she’s been scribbling in for the duration of their session and leans forward in her chair, reaching to rest her hand on Lucy’s knee with a soft smile, “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been doing this a long time, longer than you’ve been alive, but I’ve never seen a patient as brave as you are.”

“Brave?” Lucy furrows her brows as if the doctor has grown another head on her shoulders, “I let a man beat me for a decade and didn’t leave until he almost killed me.”

“I think it's brave that you get up in the morning when your heart aches and life is messy and you don’t feel like being soft for the world. You continue to love and express and open your soul, despite the way you were treated in the past. I think it’s brave that you keep going, that you keep believing in something more, something bigger, even when you may not know what you are hoping for.” She tells Lucy, and he sees the tears flood in both of their eyes through the blurriness of his own, “I want you to remember how far you've come and how strong you've become. You should be proud of yourself for still standing, for still smiling, for never giving up. Your unwavering spirit and resilience are truly admirable and a testament to your character and the woman you’ll forever be. It’s beautiful the way you show up in this world, unguarded and willing to try again, even after all of the ways it’s tried to defeat you. The way you tuck courage into yourself each morning, the way you refuse to be anything but hopeful in this world, in spite of the struggles you’ve experienced for so long. So, yes, I think you're brave — the way you twist your losses into lessons, the way you fight even when you feel weak. There is a resounding level of courage to be found in being the person who continues to heal, even when it hurts. There is a level of bravery to be found in being the person who believes in the light, even when they cannot see it.”

Lucy sniffles and glances down at Emmy slowly drifting off against her chest, “Where do I go from here?”

“You’re going to pack your things tomorrow morning and let Tim take you home, and start your new life together. You’re gonna let go of everything Caleb put you through. You made it out. You survived. You won. This is your second chance at happiness. Don’t waste it living in fear.”

Lucy turns to him with the gentlest grin and the sparkle in her eyes he thought was gone forever, and he sees his future play on a film reel in his mind.

“I won’t.”

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(and maybe I don't quite know what to say)
i just wanted you to know, that this is me trying

Chapter Text

your past and mine are parallel lines,
stars all aligned and they intertwined

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Isabel shows up on his doorstep the morning of Emmy’s first birthday party. 

He’s quite literally walking out the front door with a rowdy Kojo in hopes to get some of the canine’s energy out before he faces a house full of kids high on sugar in a few hours. 

He wonders how long she’d been standing there looking like a ghost from his past with her long blonde hair and blue eyes that aren’t sunken into her face like the last time he saw her.

“Hi, Tim. It’s good to see you.”

He can’t say the same.

Her face drops and he thinks he might’ve said that out loud.

“I’m sorry to show up like this, but we need to talk.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Isabel—"

“Please, hear me out.”

He gives her a good stare down before his shoulders droop and he lets out a heavy sigh as he opens the door wide enough for her to come in, hissing a ‘heel’ at the growling Kojo at his feet.

She wanders into the living room, eyeing the pictures of him and Lucy and a few of the girls that he just couldn’t resist hanging on the wall and the heels and sandals strewn out by the coat rack that obviously don’t belong to him, and sits down on the couch, wringing her hands together in her lap.

She’s looking at him, waiting for him to sit, but he’d rather stand as far away from her as he possibly can.

“What are you doing here, Isabel?”

“We’re still married.”

He’s not sure if it’s the leash falling out of his hand or his jaw dropping that makes the ‘thud’ on the floor.

“Huh?”

Her cheeks flush red as she pulls a familiar worn, yellow envelope out of her bag and hands it to him, “I never actually sent them in. I thought maybe you’d change your mind eventually.”

“Change my mind about what?” He barks, “Leaving you after finding you in our bed with another man? Or leaving you because you’d rather be high as a kite than come home to your husband?”

It stings, bringing up the past, but most everything painful is necessary.

“I will never change my mind, Isabel. I’m thankful you chose your addictions over me because it gave me the ability to see you for who you really are.”

“You don’t mean that, Tim.” She shakes her head, and if it were anyone else, he’d feel bad about the tears in their eyes, but he doesn’t and she’s not just anyone.

“I do mean it. I don’t want you here.”

“No, I’m not leaving until you give me another chance. I’m sober; have been for almost a year and you’re the reason. I know we can work this out because I still love you and that has to mean something.”

Her lips are on his before he has any idea what’s happening and her arms are around his neck like a vice, keeping him from pulling away sooner than she wants him to.

It’s nothing compared to kissing Lucy.

Lucy. 

“No!” He shouts, nearly throwing her to the ground to get her off of him as he wipes any taste of her from his mouth, “I told you, Isabel, that there is nothing left between us. You made your bed and now you get to lie in it. I’m happy, I’m in love, and I’m better than I’ve ever been, no thanks to you.”

He grabs the pen she set on the side table and rips open the envelope, flipping through the pages until he finds his faded signature at the bottom next to an empty space where hers should be.

“Do what you should’ve done a long time ago and sign the damn papers.”

She’s sobbing, her shoulders shaking and makeup running, but he feels no regret. He feels nothing for her.

“Pl—please, Tim—“

“Sign them, Isabel. Let me move on and give me back what I lost waiting for you.”

She does, reluctantly, and she leaves him with the envelope and an apology, and he watches her walk out of his front door for what he’s sure will be the last time and it finally feels like the end.

It also feels like he has eyes on him. 

He knows he’s absolutely fucked when he turns to find Tamara staring at him through the sliding glass door, her jaw clenching tightly and her dusty blues darkening like a thunderstorm.

She’s gone as quickly as she came, back through the gate connecting their backyards, and if he wasn’t absolutely terrified of losing the three best things to ever happen to him, he’d be impressed by how fast she can run.

“Tamara!” He shouts after her as he follows her trail into the quiet house and through the obstacle course that is the living room full of party decorations waiting to be put up, but her bedroom door slams in his face before he can take a chance to explain.

“T, it’s not what you think.” He sighs, leaning his head against the wood, “Please hear me out.”

He nearly falls to the floor when she swings open the door, but he braces himself on the doorframe just in time to catch himself, “Tamara, I promise I would never—

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” She barks, but the emotion in her voice gets in the way of the venom she wants to drip from her tongue, “My dad ran around on my mom for years. She’d go on assignment and he’d bring sluts home from the bar where he drank his dinner most nights. I never told her about it, but I won’t make that same mistake again. I won’t let you hurt her, too.”

“I would never hurt your mom, and you know that—

“What I know,” She cuts him off, “is that you were too good to be true. I kept telling myself to let you in, to see what Mom sees, and I did.”

She’s got tears dripping from her chin and it guts him, “But you’re just like him.”

“I am nothing like him!” He roars, harsher than he means to, but he has to make her understand that he will never be another Caleb, “That was my ex-wife, Isabel. She found me after two years and told me that we’re still married even though I filed for divorce the day I found her in bed with another man and signed them the day she got locked up because of her heroin addiction. She kissed me and told me she still loves me, but I pushed her away and then she left. I told her that she means nothing to me anymore because I love your mom, okay? I love your mom more than I’ve ever loved anyone and I would die before I even thought about doing something to hurt her. She is the love of my life and once those papers are filed, for real this time, I’m going to ask her to marry me—

“You are?”

Fuck. 

His eyes go wide as Tamara looks sheepishly over his shoulder at her mom, a sleepy Emmy strapped to her chest and arms full of grocery bags filled to the brim with more party things. 

“Tim?”

He sighs a heavy breath and turns on his feet to face her, a sense of relief coursing through him at the gentle smile on her lips. He closes the few feet of distance in between them, grabbing the bags out of her hands and setting them on the counter before carefully but successfully untying the wrap holding Emmy and settling her in the pack-n-play.

He faces Lucy once again and reaches for her hands, pulling her close, “I would never cheat on you.”

She furrows her brows and looks back and forth between him and Tamara, “I know that. Why are you telling me, though?”

“Tamara saw me with Isabel, my ex-wife— well, sort of. She showed up out of nowhere and told me that she never signed our divorce papers and since we decided to do it without lawyers, no one told me that we’re still married. She kissed me and told me she still loves me, but I swear, she doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I love you, Lucy.”

She stands on her tiptoes and snakes her arms around his neck, pressing a soft kiss to his lips, “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Tim. I know what kind of person cheats on their partner, and you are nothing like that. You’re a good man and I’m so lucky she let you go.”

He’s positive he’s grinning like an idiot, but he just can’t resist because she’s like the damn sun masqueraded by her beautiful, tiny body and he buries his nose in the tickle spot behind her ear, her quiet giggle making his heart flutter in his chest.

He’s startled by a body against his back until he hears Tamara’s voice whisper into his shirt, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, kiddo. I know what you saw was confusing and brought back a lot of memories.”

“What memories?” Lucy asks, peeking around him at her daughter, and Tamara avoids her eyes with a shrug, “It was nothing.”

“Sweetheart, whatever it is, you can tell me. I won’t be upset.”

“Caleb used to cheat on you. He would bring home women and lock me in my bedroom so I wouldn’t disturb them. I didn’t want to tell you because I liked seeing you as happy as you could be in the hell that we lived in and telling you would’ve screwed that up.”

Lucy gives him a questioning look and he understands, so he pries Tamara’s arms from around him and steps out from between them, letting Lucy grab her daughter before she could make a run for it. 

“I never want you to worry about being honest with me.” Lucy says as she hugs Tamara tight, “No matter what it is, or how difficult it might be to take, your happiness and well-being is the most important thing to me. No secret is worth risking that.”

Tamara pulls back and eyes her mom curiously, “You knew, didn’t you?”

Lucy gives her a sad smile and Tim hurts for her, “Yeah, I did. I caught him with another girl in our bed one night, but they were asleep and I didn’t want to start a fight, so I just laid down with you for the night.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I’m not. Of all that I lost being with him, he gave me two of the very best gifts I’ll ever ask for.” Lucy kisses her head, holding Tamara’s cheeks in his hands, “I love you so much, baby.”

“I love you, too.”

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Hours later, their friends arrive and gather around the backyard.

Angela is chatting with Nyla as a breathless Wesley and James chase their children around the swingset, the effects of an overload of sugar kicking in nicely, and Nolan’s got his arms around Bailey while Grey and Luna talk about school with Tamara — something about trying out for the school talent show.

He’s got Emmy in his lap, babbling on and on about absolutely nothing and he thinks it’s the most adorable thing ever.

He guesses that Lucy notices because he hears the shutter of her phone camera and a soft curse under her breath for disturbing the moment. 

Six months ago, he was sitting in his own backyard with a six-pack of beer and his dog, wondering what the point of his life was. 

He catches Lucy’s gaze, and knows he doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

She checks the time on her watch and disappears inside the house, returning moments later with a heart-shaped, chocolate cake with pink and purple icing, and a single candle on top waiting patiently to be lit.

He reluctantly sets her in her high chair and steps back beside Angela, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as they all sing their wishes for the birthday girl. 

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Emmy, happy birthday to you.”

Squeals erupt from the newly year-old infant as her Mid-Wilshire family bathes her in affection and attention, her gleeful and toothless smile lighting up the entire world. 

“Blow out the candle, baby. Like this,” Lucy tells her softly, showing her how to put out the flame, but all they get is the baby blowing raspberries and collapsing into a fit of giggles, which brings her party guests to laughter, too.

“Happy birthday, my sweet girl.”

Once the cake is served alongside the steaks on the grill, the sun is setting over the fence and Lucy lifts Emmy up on her hip, pressing a gentle kiss into her head of curls before turning to their friends with a smile of gratitude.

“I just wanted to thank you all for coming to celebrate Emmy with us and for these past six months.” She expresses, looking around at the people she’s given the title of family to, “I wasn’t sure I’d ever make it here — seeing my girls happy, finding friends who don’t even hesitate when I call, being loved by a good man.”

She reaches for his hand and he intertwines their fingers with a kiss to her knuckles, “I wasn’t raised with people who loved their child unconditionally. I wasn’t taught how you’re supposed to be treated by those around you. But because of you, I’m learning. I’m breaking generational curses to give my daughters what I never had and I wouldn’t be able to without all of you. So, thank you, for everything.”

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“I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my life.” Lucy groans as she trudges into the bedroom with heavy eyes and tousled hair, and even her being minutes away from her passing out from exhaustion, no makeup and only his t-shirt on, he can’t picture anyone more beautiful.

He grabs ahold of the hand she’s reaching out and helps her crawl over him, letting her get comfortable as she nuzzles her entire body into his side and soaks up his warmth from being under the covers.

“But maybe we should do birthday parties more than once a year because I’ve never had it so easy getting both girls to bed.” She jokes, tracing her finger mindlessly over his bare chest with a soft and tired sigh, “Plus, it felt good to have so many people shower them with so much love. It’s what they deserve.”

“They weren’t just doing that for the girls, Lu.” He tells her, “They came because they love you. They came because you’re the best part of our family at Mid-Wilshire and surviving all that you have, they wanted to celebrate you.”

He hears her quietly sniffle and a tear drips onto his chest before she can catch it, and he pulls her in tighter, adjusting both himself and her so that he can see her face clearly.

“Don’t cry, baby.” He whispers, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you—

“No, no, it’s— you didn’t.” She shakes her head, leaning forward to kiss him deeply, “It’s just overwhelming, in a good way. I’ve never felt this kind of love before.”

“I know, and I wish I could go back in time and change that.”

“I don’t.” She shrugs, and he furrows his brows, but she’s got that smile on her face that moves mountains and puts the sun in the sky every day and he can’t help but let it put one on his face, too.

“Sometimes, the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that we’ll ever find.” She explains, “If I had never met Caleb, I wouldn’t have Tamara or Emmy. If he hadn’t destroyed my reputation at my old station, I wouldn’t have made the transfer to Mid-Wilshire. I wouldn’t have moved in next to you, or met you, or fallen in love with you.”

She rests her arms on his chest and her chin on her arms, and she stares up at him with those brown eyes that he can see his entire future in.

“If Isabel didn’t do the things she did, hurt you the way she did, I might still be pining after the handsome boy next door.” She says, and playfully smirks, “I don’t know about his owner, though. The jury’s still out on that.”

He squints his eyes, his hand disappearing under the duvet to find the tickle spot right on her ribs as she giggles and squirms away from him.

“I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” She laughs, “What I’m trying to say is that if we had done one thing differently, we wouldn’t be here right now. Without Caleb, and Isabel, and the houses we grew up in, the lives we’ve lived, we would’ve never been able to love each other the way we do. It makes me sick to picture Isabel hurting you so deeply, but with that hurt came the dead-end street that led you straight to me and I’ll be damned if I’m not thankful for all of the girls you loved before me.”

The conviction in her words threatens to send him into a downward spiral because he’s just so in love with her, but he leans in for another kiss instead, one they both make sure to let last a little longer this time. 

She settles against him, the exhaustion once again creeping up on both of them, and he feels her breath start to even out just before she speaks once more, “Tim?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“When you ask me to marry you, I’ll say yes.”

──────────────────

i'm so thankful for all of the girls you loved before, but I love you more

Chapter Text

my heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue
all's well that ends well to end up with you

──────────────────

It takes exactly six weeks for the courts to file the divorce papers and five for the jeweler to finish Lucy’s ring.

Tamara asked to come with him and he’s thankful she did because shopping for an engagement ring the second time around was overwhelming to say the least.

With Isabel, she wore his mom’s wedding band most of the time because they couldn’t wear diamonds on duty anyway, but he’d saved up what little he could to buy her something to wear on off-days. It was love, but it wasn’t forever.

With Lucy, it is. 

He had an idea of what he wanted for her, but the fear that it wouldn’t be something she loved terrified him. 

He wants this time around for both of them to be different, new, good. 

Staring at the round cut stone perched on a solid gold band in the velvet box, he knows it will be.

“What do you think, Mr. Bradford?” The jeweler asks him, “Is it what you pictured for her?”

“And then some.” He replies softly, brushing his thumb back and forth over the edge of the box, “It’s perfect.”

He takes it home and shoves it in the back of a dresser drawer. He then takes it out because Lucy sometimes puts away his laundry. 

He makes the move to leave it in the cabinet under the sink and then remembers that she’s kind of (definitely) a clean freak and will for sure find the box hiding with the cleaning supplies.

He obviously can’t put it in the pantry, or the bathroom linen closet, or anywhere in either of their houses.

He picks up his phone off the coffee table and dials the only other contact in his favorites list under Lucy’s.

“Do you need bail money?”

He furrows his brows, “No?”

“Are you drunk?”

He rolls his eyes, “No, Angela.”

“Do you have a better reason as to why you’re calling me at 7:00 a.m. on my first day off in a week?”

“I bought a ring for Lucy, but I can’t hide it here so I need you to hold onto it for me.”

The line goes silent for a good minute and if it weren’t for the rustling on the other end and the muffled sound of squeals of excitement, he would’ve thought she’d hung up on him.

She clears her throat and he can hear her try and fail to hide her smile through the phone, “I think I can help with that.”

She’s at his house in less than ten minutes (impressively, because the drive is at least fifteen), and with a promise not to tell Wesley because he’s arguably the worst secret keeper on planet earth, he lets her take the ring and swears to let her in on planning the details of the proposal since she’s grown almost as close to Lucy as he has and knows what she likes.

The day finally arrives.

The waiting, the wondering if she’ll say yes despite her previous promise, the death glares from Angela when he asks if she still has the ring — it’ll all be worth it at the end of the night.

The sun isn’t even up yet, but both he and Lucy are on overtime for the next two weeks to make up for taking off a few days for their impending Christmas vacation, with it being their first together and with Emmy being actually old enough to enjoy opening gifts since she was practically a newborn for her first. 

Tamara’s on Christmas break from school and practically begged Lucy to let her watch Emmy instead of sending her to daycare — he’s never met a teenager so eager to take care of a baby — so while the girls sleep in, he enjoys the fleeting time he has alone with Lucy. 

“Let’s go out tonight, hmm?” He suggests to her as he kneels in front of the bench by the front door she’s sitting on, reaching for the laces on her boots to tie them, “Just you and me. We haven’t had a date in awhile.”

“Just you and me, huh?” She muses, giving his shoulders a squeeze as she clicks her tongue, “Sounds tempting, but How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is on tonight and I just can’t pass that up.”

He squints his eyes playfully at her as he finishes lacing up her shoes, pinching gently at the pressure point on her knee and drawing out a merciless belly laugh from her, “Too bad. I was planning on taking you to that little bakery you love so much—”

“The one with the macaroons?” She gasps with a bright grin, “And the chocolate-covered strawberries?”

“And the strawberry ice cream with the waffle cones,” He continues, and shrugs, “But I guess I’ll just have to see if Angela’s free—”

“No!” She cuts him off before clearing her throat, “I mean—I don’t think Matthew McConaughey will mind waiting on me.”

He hums, pressing his lips to hers in a sweet, gentle kiss as he stands and pulls her up from the bench, wrapping his arms around her tightly, “It’s a date, then.”

“It’s a date.”

With that, they gather their things and say goodbye to the girls before getting into his truck and starting their day.

It’s like the universe is finally on his side because he clocks out at the time he’d hoped for and she’s waiting for him at the doors leading to the parking garage.

“Hi, my love.” She greets him, intertwining their fingers and laying a soft peck on his cheek, “How was your day?”

“Surprisingly uneventful. A couple domestics and warrant checks, but that’s it.”

“I guess that means our date will just have to be extra special.”

He heaves a pleasant sigh and tries desperately to keep the velvet box Angela returned to him this morning in his pocket and not ask her in the middle of a very unromantic garage full of vehicles.

“I guess so.”

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“—and you can’t forget the ring because if you forget the ring, you’ll look like an idiot and my good name and all of my hard work pulling this together for you can’t be tarnished because you forgot the ring—”

“I won’t forget the ring, Ang.” He mumbles into the phone with a glance over his shoulder to make sure Lucy hasn’t come out of the bathroom yet, “If you’ve got any advice on how to not get stage fright when I’m actually down on one knee, though, that would be much appreciated.”

“Haven’t you done this before? The second time should be a piece of cake.”

“Isabel and I got married in Vegas on a whim because we wanted the joint benefits. There was no big proposal with her.” He confesses, “I want this to be different. Lucy deserves better.”

“Just tell her how much you love her, Tim. Tell her what you’ve told me — the things you love about her, the way she makes you feel — she’ll probably be too busy crying to even pay attention to anything but that gigantic rock you bought her anyway.”

“Ang.”

“I know you’re nervous, but you’re gonna be great. I see the way she lights up when you’re around. She’ll say yes, no matter what.”

“Anything else?”

“Just that I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m so happy you’ve found your person.”

He smiles, the anxiety fading just a little bit, “You’re my person, Ang.”

“And don’t you forget it. Call me later and don’t forget the ring!”

He rolls his eyes, “Goodbye, Angela.”

He hangs up just in time as Lucy steps into the bedroom, her hair in perfect curls and a rosy blush in her cheeks.

“I’m almost ready, baby. I just can’t decide what to wear.” She tells him, looking flustered, “I don’t really have anything that fits right now. My new medication has curved my appetite, so I’ve lost a few pounds.”

“I think I can do something about that.” He replies with a wink, disappearing into the closet and returning with a white box wrapped up by a delicate, red bow, “Call it an early Christmas present from me and the girls.”

The week she’d come home from inpatient treatment, he couldn’t get the image of Caleb destroying a happy memory for Lucy so viciously apart. That dress meant so much to her because of who it came from, and as much as he wishes he could go back in time and change what happened, he’ll have to settle for creating a new memory instead.

Her breath catches in her throat as she reveals the emerald green fabric folded up so neatly inside, her trembling fingers brushing over the velvet material.

She’s looking back and forth between him and the dress with wide, wet eyes, practically begging for some kind of explanation.

“I know how much that dress meant to you. I just wanted you to remember the good that came before the bad.”

Her embrace knocks the wind out of him, nearly sending them both to the floor, but he catches himself before it happens and wraps his arms around her waist, rubbing a hand up and down her back as she struggles to keep her emotions inside.

It takes her nearly five minutes for her tears to stop soaking through his shirt, but when she does, her radiant smile lights up the dimly lit room as she holds the dress to her chest and disappears into the closet, returning only a minute later clothed in green.

“Wow.” He breathes out, and her grin grows wider as she does a little spin, the velvet material fanning out at her feet.

He loves it and he knows she does, too.

He’s hoping she loves it enough to get engaged in it.

He plays it cool through dinner, and through dessert at the bakery, but he feels the hives creeping up under his shirt as they approach the courtyard of the hotel. 

When she came over to get the ring from him, Angela had asked him where he wanted to propose and he had absolutely no fucking clue, and realized how little thought he’d actually put into what would be a life-changing moment. 

“Leave it to me.” She’d said, and didn’t speak of it again, only sending him the location during dinner so he didn’t have time to object — not that he would have because if he knows anything, she doesn’t do anything half-assed.

“Tim, oh my goodness! It’s so beautiful.” Lucy gushes, bringing him out of his daze. She looks stunning under the glow of the Christmas tree and cascading lights, and if there was ever a better sign—

“Hi! Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you, but my name is Emily and I’m a photography student at UCLA, and I was wondering if I could take some pictures of you for my portfolio?”

Emily. He’s guessing she’s the same Emily that Angela mentioned would be documenting the proposal and to avoid giving her his resting bitch face like he does to most strangers. 

“Of course!” Lucy beams, tugging gently on his suit jacket, “I know you don’t like pictures…”

He feigns hesitation just to play along, but he couldn’t resist her pleading puppy-dog eyes even if he tried, and so he sighs and offers his hand out for her with a gentle smile, “Only for you, babe.”

Emily guides them effortlessly through the photos, all while never giving away who she really is.

“Okay, I think I’ve got most of what I need for my assignment, but I want to do one more — Lucy, I want you to turn around and face the tree. When Tim says your name, I want you to look over your left shoulder and turn around.”

She does as she’s instructed and the aching in his gut turns into butterflies as he finds his courage and gets down on one knee.

“Lucy, baby.”

The smile on her face falters into a look of pure shock, a surprised gasp escaping her lips at the sight of him, which is exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for. 

She’d told him that she’d say ‘yes’ whenever the day came, but he wanted her to also have no idea it would be happening when it did. He wants her to feel as special as she is to him and know that he will give her the entire world on a silver platter as long as she’ll let him. 

He wants her to know he’ll never make her feel like Caleb made her feel.

“I remember the day we met so perfectly,” He begins, trying desperately to swallow the emotion rising in his throat, “I had no idea it would be the day my whole world would change.”

Tears are flooding in her eyes as she stifles a sob behind the palm of her hand, and she lets him take her other in a soft squeeze.

All the hurt, all the pain at that time in their lives, he wants to believe that if anything had been different, had they not met when they did, they might not have ever gotten to this day, but he knows better.

“We were always meant to find each other, Lu.” He murmurs only loud enough for her to hear, referring to their late-night conversation the day Isabel showed up at his door, “There’s just something about you, something so familiar, like—like I loved you in a past life. Being with you is like finding heaven after living so long in hell.”

He chokes on his words as he rubs the back of her hand with his thumb, forcing himself to take deep, steadying breaths as she closes her eyes and lets her tears fall, “I want to go where you go, and be this close with you forever, and if you’ll save all of your dirtiest jokes for me,” He proposes with a wink, and she laughs through her tears, “I’ll save you a seat at every table for the rest of our life together.”

She’s the missing piece he’s always needed, and he feels their blue and borrowed hearts become brand new every second he’s with her.

“I learned how to be alone, and I liked it for awhile because it was easier,” He shakes his head and wipes his wet eyes on the sleeve of his jacket before turning his attention back to her, “But I had this feeling that you were different because for the first time, I wanted someone else’s company more than my own.”

He speaks with so much conviction in his confession of love to her, the tears he’d been holding back finally falling as he reaches into his pocket, another choked sob escaping her as he opens the velvet box and reveals the ring he and Tamara designed just for her.

She’s trying to blink away her tears enough to see the diamond, but she just can’t take her eyes off of him.

Time feels like it’s standing still between them as her smile once again returns, brightly and heavenly, and all he wants to do is take her home and start their future together. 

Their emotions finally get the best of them both, but he clears his throat because he’s still got one thing left he has to say.

“Marry me, Lucy.”

He barely gets the words out before she’s nodding profusely, tears flowing like a rapid river and happy sobs echoing into the air, her reaction making him feel like he’s dreaming as he’s sure he’s never seen her this happy. 

“Yes, baby. Yes, I’ll marry you.” She whimpers, his watery gaze moving from her down to the ring and carefully pulling it from the box because he doesn’t want to go another second with it on her finger.

His hands are shaking from the adrenaline coursing so quickly through him, but he slips the ring on her hand and within a second, she’s reaching for him and helping him off the ground, and her lips are on his in an intense, passionate kiss as her arms snake around his shoulders and their tears mix together against their skin.

They only break apart when they eventually need to breathe, but he doesn’t let her get far at all as he soaks up every ounce of this moment as he can. 

He never thought he’d get this chance again after Isabel. To find someone who replaces the pieces of himself that she destroyed, to find the one who would be his confidant, his steady hand, his best friend, for as long as they live.

Lucy is the best part of him, and he’ll work until his last breath to be hers. 

──────────────────

you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me
and at every table, I'll save you a seat, lover

Chapter Text

and now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts

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Her car slows to a stop at the curb just as her phone rings, Angela’s contact picture popping up on the screen.

It’s been an eerily quiet day, dare she say it, so she decided to catch up on paperwork and open cases, one being a few calls about suspicious activity in a typically quiet suburban neighborhood. 

“Hey, I got caught up interviewing a witness at the station, but I should be there in about a half hour. Do you want me to call Harper for a shadow?”

“No, no. I’m good. I’ll let dispatch know to send me a patrol car.” She replies, “I should be back in about an hour, but if I’m not, can you ask Tim to pick up the girls from school and daycare?”

“You got it, lady.”

“Thanks, Ang.” 

She slips her phone back in jacket pocket before reaching for the radio on her hip, “Dispatch, this is Detective Lucy Chen. Show me responding to a 10-96 at 1148 Keniston Ave. Start me a cover car at my location.”

“Copy, Detective. All nearby units in the area are occupied. Closest available unit is twenty minutes away. I’ll send them your way.”

“Copy, dispatch.”

She turns off the car and steps onto the pavement, furrowing her eyebrows as she takes in her surroundings, a wave of trepidation washing over her as she looks around and wonders why it seems so familiar.

She takes a few deep breaths as she walks up the sidewalk to the porch, her steps slowing as she notices the front door is cracked open. 

Her gut and heart and head tell her to make a run for it because something just doesn’t feel right, but she pulls her gun from her hip, clicking the switch to the flashlight attached to the barrel, and uses it to push the door open enough for her to step inside.

“LAPD,” She calls into the empty house, her eyes following the glow of the flashlight around the dark room, “Anyone here?”

She comes up empty as she searches for anyone who might need help, but a quiet thump comes from the small hallway to the right of her, the detective squaring her shoulders, “LAPD, come out with your hands—”

She doesn’t get the chance to speak anymore as she moves towards the hallway because there’s a sharp pain in the back of her head and her gun clatters to the floor just before her body does, an overwhelming rush of pain thundering through her.

Her body goes numb for a good minute, her mind in a haze as a groan escapes her lips and she lays unmoving on the hard floor until a pair of burly, calloused hands grab her by the shoulders and roll her on her back, her breath getting caught in her throat as she recognizes through blurred vision the one person she’d hoped she’d never have to see again.

“Hello, Lucy.”

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He almost causes a pile-up on the freeway when he gets the call.

She’s a fighter, Harper tells him.

He’s got no doubt, but judging from the pool of blood and the obvious signs of a struggle at her last known location, he’ll bet that she’s not in her prime fighting shape.

“We’ve got her cell pinged, we’ve got patrol out on the street, we’re talking to our CI’s. Grey’s on with the FBI.” She informs him and he’s thankful at least one of them is keeping a clear head, “We’ll find her, Tim.”

“It’s Caleb.”

She sighs on the other end of the line, and he’s pretty sure he’s not going to like what she has to say, “We know. He’s gone off the grid and no one seems to want to give him up.”

“And they’re not going to,” He says, his knuckles white from his grip on the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking, “That bastard has everyone deep in his pockets. If they know where he took Lucy, they’re not gonna tell us without a threat of jail time or bodily harm.”

“I’ve got time.” 

──────────────────

Tamara doesn’t even give him a second to breathe when she sees it’s him picking her up from school and not her mom. She’s asking so many questions, begging him to tell her what’s going on, but he just can’t hardly think straight, so all he can do is guide her out of her school and get her into his truck. 

“What happened to my mom?”

He bites the inside of his cheek and draws in a deep breath as he pulls out of the parking lot and heads in the direction of Emmy’s daycare, “Your father took her. He called in a lot of favors and had all nearby patrol cars rerouted to petty crimes that he orchestrated. She went into a house previously reported for suspicious activity and—”

“Alone?” She asks, her voice much softer than before, the pain and worry she’s feeling written across her face, “Why didn’t she wait for backup?”

“I don’t know, T.” He sighs, finally taking a look at her when they come to a stop at a red light, “But I promise you, I will do everything I have to do to get her back.”

She sniffles and wipes her face on the sleeve of her sweatshirt, her shoulders slumping with a ragged breath, “I can’t do this without her. If she dies, I—”

“I won’t let her die—”

“You can’t promise that!” She shouts, scaring the both of them at the shrill in her voice, “You can’t promise that he won’t kill her, just like you can’t promise you’ll bring her back.”

“Maybe not, but I can promise that she will fight until her very last breath to come home to you.”

──────────────────

A guy at a rest stop off Interstate 5 recognizes Lucy from the Amber Alert, and a man matching Caleb’s description.

Harper leads the interview and makes him watch through the glass, despite his protests. 

“It’s a pretty desolate rest stop, so I don’t think he was expecting anyone to be there.”

“Were you able to hear them? Did they say anything to each other?” 

“He didn’t really give her a chance to talk. He was in her face, just yelling at her,” He tells Harper, “There wasn’t a lot I could make out, but I heard him say “You thought I wouldn’t come for you? You’re still my wife and I’ll be damned if anyone else gets to have you.”

His chest hurts as the man speaks, his urgency and anger morphing into worry as the adrenaline racing through his veins begins to slow down. He can hear his heart beating in ears, trying to drown out the guilt of not being there to protect her. 

“He didn’t see me, but she did.” 

He snaps his head up and turns the knob to raise the volume on the speaker as the man continues describing his encounter with Lucy and Caleb, “He was talking to someone on the phone and she was sitting on the curb.”

“She saw me watching and mouthed something at me, but I was too far away to understand her,” He explains, reaching into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out a wadded up napkin, “But when he wasn’t looking, she left this where she was sitting before he dragged her back to the car.”

His eyes catch sight of the diamond ring on the table, and Angela catches him as his legs go out. 

“She also had a really large gash on her head and there was blood all over her shirt,” He says when Harper asks if Lucy looked like she’d been injured, “I didn’t notice anything else other than that. He did have a gun in the waistband of his jeans, so I don’t think she could’ve gotten away if she tried.”

“Thank you for your time, sir,” Harper shakes his hand and shoves her notepad back into her jacket, “If we have any more questions, we’ll give you a call.”

He sits on the floor with his head in his hands for at least another hour with ringing ears and a nauseous stomach. 

He should’ve been there with her, he vowed to be her backup the second he put the ring on her finger and yet, he’s failed her. He can’t get the image of her scared, hurt, out of his mind, no matter how hard he tries to fight it.

“Tim?”

Tamara’s voice startles him as he looks up from his lap to her red and swollen eyes, and he scrambles up from the floor, taking the few strides to close the gap between them.

She doesn’t speak; she just sobs into his shirt, the fear of losing her mother, the only parent she’s ever truly had, becoming too much for the teenager.

“I swear to you, I’m gonna do everything I can to get her home.”

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The owner of a gas station in Modesto, the halfway point between Los Angeles and Redding, calls the tip line to report a sighting of Caleb and Lucy.

“Why would he go from here, stop at the Westley rest area, turn back around and get off I-5 to get on 99 and stop in Modesto? If he’s going up to Redding, it adds an extra hour to his time.” Angela shakes her head as she stares at the colored pushpins on the map of California, “And why is he not trying to hide his identity? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe he’s going to see whoever he called. The witness did say he took a phone call at the rest stop,” Nolan offers, “And maybe he thinks we’ve stopped looking for her.”

“We’ve broadcasted her Amber Alert on every news channel, every radio station. There’s no way he hasn’t come across it. He’s not gonna risk crossing state lines because we’ve got officers at the border watching for him,” She says, biting the tip of her pen, “But if he wanted to kill her, he could’ve done it by now and still had time to hop on a private jet out of the country.”

“Maybe it’s not about killing her. It’s always been about control to him,” Wesley chimes in as he scrambles through Lucy’s file and history with Caleb, “It’s a game to him. Her fear, it’s the ultimate prize…”

“And he’ll do anything to get it.” Angela finishes for him, the unsettling feeling in her gut now almost debilitating.

──────────────────

“Wakey, wakey, my darling.”

Her heavy eyes crack open at the sound of his gruff voice, and it still makes her skin crawl as much as it did the day she left him.

He’s staring at her with a delighted grin, just waiting for her to start squirming within the confinement of the restraints around her wrists and ankles that are binding her to the rotted, wooden chair, but she knows better. 

Fighting him will only make it worse.

“Now, I’m sorry I had to tie you up, but as we both know, you like to run away from me,” He chuckles as he kneels in front of her, his calloused finger moving to rest under her chin and lift her head up, “and I just can’t have that happen again, can I?”

“What do you want from me, Caleb?” She chokes out, and the hoarseness of her voice betrays her at the worst moment. 

He doesn’t answer, but instead, stands and saunters over to the workbench in the corner of what looks to be like someone’s garage, digging through a black duffle to find what she knows to be his service weapon when she sees the dim light bounce off the metal in his hand.

“What I want?” He asks once he’s back at her side as he runs the barrel of the gun through her tousled hair, “What I want is for you and me to be together again. I want it to be like it was before—”

“Before when you used to beat me nearly to death and then expect me to play the happy housewife to all your friends?” She chuckles harshly, the anguish inside of her quickly burning into fury, “You’re pathetic!”

She wishes for a split second that she’d bitten her tongue and kept her mouth shut as he hurls his fist into jaw, a sickening crunch echoing throughout the small room, and lifts his foot to her chest, sending her crashing to the concrete floor as the chair tips backward and her breath is knocked from her lungs, gasps and coughs sputtering from her lips as she struggles desperately to catch her breath. 

She can’t hardly keep her eyes open anymore, and every inch of her body feels like she’s on fire, and his face is the last thing she sees when she succumbs to the darkness once again as he whispers a promise to her.

“I’m never letting you go again.”

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The station is packed wall to wall with LAPD officers and federal agents working Lucy’s case, but the pounding in his head is enough to drown out the chaos. 

Angela keeps glancing over at him every couple of minutes just to make sure he’s not gonna fly off the handle, and Harper hasn’t stopped barking at the Chief of Detectives to let them follow the leads they’ve chased down. He reminds himself to thank them both when — if — they get his girl back.

He wonders if she’s in pain, if she’s lost hope that he’s coming for her, if she’s dead. 

It’s a hard pill to swallow to think that his life with her is over before it’s even started, and yet, he sees Tamara bouncing Emmy in her arms with a smile despite the thought of losing her mother might be a reality, and he realizes he has to face the facts that it’s not just about him anymore.

But god, it will destroy him if he has to bury her. 

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She wakes again with a familiar ache in her gut and wonders how long she’s been passed out, and then she hears the clinking of his belt buckle and the sound of the zipper on his jeans and fails to keep her tears at bay.

She’s tied to a bed this time, her ankles and wrists bound tightly to the metal rods on the headboard and footboard, and her mouth is stuffed with a wadded piece of fabric, the same fabric keeping her eyes from seeing anything but a dull glow from the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

His hands ravish her body as he feeds his growing hunger despite her muffled cries for him to stop, to just leave her be.

His lips leave marks on her soft, tan skin as if to say she’ll never belong to anyone else.

His grunts of pleasure echo with every thrust into her as he pushes deeper and deeper until every single one of her nerves go numb from the searing pain.

Her screams fall on deaf ears as he rips her apart and howls his pleasure at her body writhing in pain, desperate to escape from underneath him.

She wonders what she did for the universe to punish her so greatly.

──────────────────

and now that i know, i wish you’d left me wondering

Chapter Text

i replay my footsteps on each stepping stone
trying to find the one where I went wrong

──────────────────

He’s running on black coffee and half of a turkey and swiss sandwich Angela insisted — ordered — he eat because she eventually gave up on begging him to get some sleep.

It’s been three days.

3 days, 74 hours, 4,480 minutes, and 268,800 seconds to be exact.

3 days of missing her, longing for her presence.

3 days of Emmy calling for her mom and Tamara doing what she can to be what her sister needs.

She tries to hide her wet, rosy cheeks and the purple bags under her eyes, but she hasn’t stopped crying and she won’t until she sees her mother alive. She won’t leave the station either, no matter his protests that at least one of them should be rested, so she has an air mattress set up in his office next to a pack-n-play for Emmy.

“Going home hurts too much.” She says, and he understands, so he lays on the couch next to her air mattress, stares at the ceiling, and waits.

Another day goes by before Caleb’s childhood best friend walks into the station and confesses his part in Lucy’s kidnapping.

“He asked if he could use my basement.” He tells them as Tim resists storming into the interview room and choking the life out of the man, “He said he had business to take care of and he gave me five grand to clear out for a couple weeks.”

“We need the address of your residence and any weapons that might be located there.” Harper orders as she slides a notepad and pen across the table, “You understand that by speaking with us and waiving your right to an attorney, you can be charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted murder on an officer of the law, correct?”

“You just can’t tell him I told you anything.” He practically begs, “Caleb is crazy, I knew that growing up on the same street as him, but when he feels cornered, he won’t hesitate to take anyone out that gets in his way.”

“Did you know what he was planning to do when he asked to use your basement?”

The guy fidgets in his seat, and Angela grips his bicep a little tighter to keep his anger at bay as the lowlife speaks again, “I had taken a pair of my work boots out of my truck and left them in the basement, so I went back to get them and—and—”

“And what?” Harper slaps her hand down on the table, startling them all, “We don’t have time for you to jerk us around. A woman’s life is at stake and so is yours if you don’t tell me what I need to know!”

“Okay, okay! I went down to the basement when he wasn’t there and I saw her tied to a chair. The chair was turned over onto the floor and I went to check if she was still alive and she was. I got out of there as fast as I could—”

“Why didn’t you call the police? Why did you just leave her there?”

“Because that man is insane! He killed his first wife and kidnapped his second! I’m not sticking around to see what he would do to me!”

Nyla’s breath caught in her throat, “What do you mean he killed his first wife?”

“Annabel Colins, he told me she ran away and was hooked on drugs and left him with their kid, but she loved that girl and I knew she wouldn’t leave without Tamara.”

“Do you have proof that he murdered her?”

“Nothing solid, but nobody ever heard from her again and I eventually put two and two together.” He shrugs as he begins to write.

Harper glances over her shoulder and knows he’s watching, his body shaking with both fury and fear, as the man scribbles down his address.

“Lucy’s been in LA the entire time?” Tim speaks through gritted teeth, ripping his arm from Angela’s grip, “We’ve been sitting in this station answering calls from the tip line and she’s been less than a half hour away the entire time?”

“None of us figured he would come back, Tim.” She tries, “We were expecting him to take her back to their home in Redding.”

“Her home is here.” He barks as he storms through the door, only to run into Bailey and a screaming Emmy.

“Tim! I’m sorry, I know you guys are with a suspect. It’s just that she won’t stop crying and Tamara said she went to go get her some more milk for Emmy.”

“She left?” His brows furrow, “We’ve got an entire week’s worth in the break room fridge—”

He has to grab the wall to keep himself standing as his eyes go wide, and then he takes off running, not bothering to slow for the footsteps running after him.

He skids to a stop in front of his office door and sees the safe to one of his many personal weapons wide open. 

“She’s going to get Lucy.”

──────────────────

Danny, her father’s childhood best friend.

She curses herself for not putting the pieces together sooner. Caleb used to bring her with him to Danny’s house all the time when she was little.

She knew where her mom was being held the second he walked into the precinct, and she also knew that being a cop’s kid, she could get what she needed and walk right out of it.

Her body feels like it’s on autopilot as she parks the truck far enough away from the house to hopefully not be noticed and slips the hood of her black jacket over her head.

The lights are off to the outside world, but the tiny window at the foundation of the home glows in the night and she praises herself for trusting her instincts just as her mother has taught her.

Her heart is pounding in her chest as she tiptoes up the back porch steps and pushes the door open just far enough for her to step inside, her hand pulling Tim’s pistol from the waistband of her jeans.

A buzz on her hip startles her for a moment, and then another one follows, and three more accompany it. Tim, probably Angela, maybe Harper.

But she doesn’t have time to be distracted by texts pleading for her to stand down. She needs to find her mom, one way or another.

She steps around the hardwood planks that creak and navigates around the furniture in the dark until she reaches the door to the basement and finds the padlock keeping the door locked. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” She whispers as she twists and turns the numbers on the lock with no luck at all, “Okay, Tamara. Think. How idiotic is your father?”

Her birthday. Nope.

Her mom’s birthday. Negative.

His birthday. Of course not. 

The current year? Click.

“Dumbass.” She scoffs quietly as she pulls the lock off and shoves it in her pocket, taking a deep but shaky breath when the door opens on the hinges, “I’m comin’, Mom.”

She braces herself down the steps and nearly falls to the floor in tears the moment she catches sight of her best friend wearing what’s left of her tattered clothes and huddled underneath a ratty blanket, her bruised face covered in tears and blood and defeat.

“Please, Caleb. I can’t take anymore—”

“Mom.”

All that breaks the silence is a hitched breath and a harrowing sob as the detective rolls her aching body over and sees her daughter standing in the dim light of the dingy basement.

Tamara drops to her knees next to the bed and reaches out a shaking hand, Lucy immediately grabbing it with her own and pulling her tightly to her chest, ignoring every ounce of pain flooding her battered being.

“I—I missed y—you,” The teenager chokes on her tears and the emotion in her throat as it all becomes too much to keep inside, “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry, baby.” Lucy tells her, rubbing her hand up and down her back, “I’m okay.”

“Well, isn’t this just a sweet sight?”

She has no idea how she musters up the strength to do it, but she’s off the bed in a matter of seconds and shielding Tamara from Caleb with her body, despite the screaming and aching right down to her bones.

“Now, I’ve got both of my girls back.” Caleb chuckles grimly, “I just didn’t expect it to be this easy.”

“Caleb, just let Tamara go and I promise she won’t say anything to anyone. Right, sweetie?” 

“What— no, I’m not leaving you—”

She squeezes Tamara’s hand, “Yes, you are, as long as it’s okay with your father.”

“It’s not.” He says as the smile falls from his face and he takes a few steps towards them, raising the gun neither of them had seemed to notice and laying the chilled metal against Lucy’s forehead, “The only way you’re leaving here is cut up in tiny little pieces inside a trash bag.”

She’s angry. She’s not sure why it’s taken her three days to get angry again, but she’s pissed. 

Holding a gun to her head is one thing, because he’s done it plenty of times before, but threatening to kill her daughter is where she draws the fine line.

“I can’t believe I ever married you.”

He grits his teeth and tilts his head to the side, “Well, you were really naive back then—”

“You were nothing special, you know?” She shrugs, “You were average, mediocre for a better word. You weren’t wealthy, you were weak when it came to fitness, you couldn’t get promoted because of your temper and terrible policing skills—”

“Shut up.”

“I think I was lazy back then when it came to relationships. God knows you would never be my first choice. You were just…there, I guess. You filled the time, made me feel good about myself because I was and still am out of your league—”

“Shut. Up.”

“And don’t even get me started on the sex, or lack thereof I should say. You couldn’t even get it up most of the time unless I was asleep or icing one of the many black eyes you gave me—”

His hand fits around her throat like a glove, but she can’t stop now. She’ll break him one way or another if it’s the last thing she ever does.

“But th—thank you for gi—giving me s—something to compare it to,” She squeaks out through the pressure around her neck, “Tim is ev—everything you’ll never be.”

“I said shut up!”

His fist hits her face like a solid brick and blood spurts from her lip and the fresh cut on her cheek as she hunches over, but she shakes it off and takes the only chance she’ll ever get for this very moment she’s pictured in her head a thousand times.

She pushes Tamara out from behind her and then hurls her elbow into Caleb’s jaw as she rises back up, stunning him long enough to release his grip on the gun aimed at them, the metal piece crashing to the floor.

She’s stronger than him, they both know it, but she’s running out of strength the longer she fights him and she’s too focused on protecting Tamara more than anything else.

He gets her pinned once he gains back his advantage and his entire body is on top of her as he brings them both down to the concrete and grabs the gun once more, shoving it so deep into her mouth that she begins to choke on it.

“I’m weak, Lucy?! Tell me I’m weak again! Come on, tell me!”

She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe.

“You will never escape me!”

A pop echoes and her ears start to ring and the grip on her neck disappears as the blood from Caleb’s drips down onto her.

It’s exactly like the scenes you see on TV. His eyes are wide and watery, his mouth is stained crimson as it pools out of his lips, he tries to speak and nothing but sputters come out.

She heaves for her breath and pushes him off of her as he succumbs to his fate, the monster of her past now just a ghost.

The rattling of metal pushes past the ringing in her ears and she turns to find Tamara, arms raised and holding a smoking pistol, with a look she’ll never be able to get out of her head.

“Baby, you can put the gun down now.” She tells her quietly as not to scare her any further, “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

“He was gonna kill you.”

Tamara’s eyes are glassy, and wide, as she realizes she’d just murdered someone, “He was gonna kill you.”

“I know, and you stopped him. You stopped it all.” Lucy takes a step towards her, “Give me the gun, Tamara.”

“LAPD! We have a search warrant!”

It’s all a blur as the sound of a door cracking open and half the Mid-Wilshire precinct floods the basement just as she rips the weapon from her daughter’s hand and yanks her into her chest, holding her with a crushing strength and no intention of ever letting her go.

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He breaks every traffic law known to man to get to the hospital.

They’re alive, he repeats over and over in his head, They’re alive.

Emmy’s flush against his chest, her little fists clutching tightly to his Henley, as he bursts through the sliding doors of the emergency bay.

“Angela, where are they?”

He runs right into her as he stumbles over his feet, but she steadies him easily and guides him down the hallway, “107C. She’s tired, and she’s in a lot of pain, but she didn’t want to sleep without seeing you first.”

They pass a private waiting room and he finds the few familiar faces of their friends offering him gentle and relieved smiles, and he wants to smile back, but his head hasn’t yet figured out that his girl is in a room less than ten feet away and breathing, and he has to see it for it be real.

“Mamamamama!”

He lets out a wet laugh, his throat thick with welling emotion, at Emmy’s shouts for her mother through the glass window of the hospital room, the baby’s eyes bright and wide as she bounces in his arms with pure excitement.

He steps through the hospital room door and he can’t contain himself anymore when he sees Lucy, breathing and beautiful and alive. 

She is alive, and she’s still just as beautiful as the last time he saw her when her face wasn’t colored black and blue with hints of red scattered on her soft skin.

His sobs outweigh his laughter of relief and just as Angela takes Emmy from his hands, Lucy is in his arms, her tears just as thick as his.

“I’m okay, baby.” She whispers into his shoulder, her hands rubbing up and down his back with comfort even though he should be the one comforting her, “I’m okay.”

“Mamamamamamamama,”

Lucy throws her head back with a giggle and it’s arguably the best sound he’s ever heard as he reluctantly lets her go while keeping a hand on her back because he’s just not ready to let go yet.

“Hi, my sweet girl,” Lucy murmurs softly as she peppers Emmy with kisses, “Do you know how much I missed you?”

He feels someone watching him out of the corner of his eye and finds Tamara with a silent apology written on her face as it’s soaked with tears.

He pulls her to him, tightly and reassuringly, and whispers just between the two of them, “You saved her. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I should’ve told you where I was going—”

“It doesn’t matter now,” He shushes her, “You told me all those months ago that you thought it was your job to save her from your father, and that’s exactly what you did. There’s no doubt in my mind that it happened this way for a reason.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Mad at you for sneaking off with a loaded gun? Oh, yes, and you’re absolutely grounded. Mad at you for bringing her back to us? Not a chance.”

“No more loaded guns and no more secrets. I swear.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

Lucy’s watching them, her chin trembling and her eyes full of pride, and he reaches out his hand for her.

He feels the long road ahead of them in her touch, but it’s not nearly as long as the road it took to get to her.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” He speaks softly as he slips his hand into his pocket in search for the velvet box he’s carried with him everywhere in high hopes that he’ll put the jewelry back on her finger when this was all over, “I believe this belongs to you.”

A wet laugh of relief escapes her as she sees the ring glimmer even in the terrible lighting of the hospital room and he slides it onto her finger.

She wraps her arms around him once more and holds him as close as she possibly can, and he hugs her back, her arms more comforting than anything else could ever be. 

“I love you so much.” She says.

Her words bring a smile to his face and melts away all the stress and debilitating worry he’s felt over the past couple of days as he focuses on her body in his embrace, the couple realizing just how much they’ve always needed each other, both content to have it last as long as they could.

“I love you, too.” He replies.

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Her side of the bed is cold when he wakes in the middle of the night a few days after he brings Lucy home from the hospital. 

He squints his eyes at the bright light of his phone next to him on the bedside table and reads the bright white numbers of 3:26 a.m. hovering over a picture of a cuddling and grinning Lucy and Kojo.

He remembers her scrambling out of bed quicker than she should at the sound of Tamara’s nightmare screams, despite the broken ribs she’s healing from, but he can’t recall her ever coming back to bed.

She still won’t talk about it. ‘I’m fine’ is all she’ll give when anyone asks. He knows what happened — Nyla slipped him a copy of the police report because she knows better than to leave someone with that kind of trauma and history without a confidant — but in typical Lucy fashion, she won’t let anyone know how much pain she’s really in. 

He knows Caleb has set her back years. She whimpers when she sits down, and tries to hide the blood spots in her underwear because of the healing vaginal tear. Her skin has been rubbed red and raw because she tries to scrub him off of her under the scalding hot water of the shower. She curls up in the fetal position whenever she can because the cramping in her stomach is as excruciating as the blade of a steak knife.

There’s no taking her ache away, no matter how hard he tries to, and yet, he’s never seen anyone stronger.

She’s laying on the hallway floor in front of Tamara’s bedroom with closed eyes and wet, rosy cheeks and Kojo at her feet with a dejected expression on his snout, and he understands now why she believes Kojo feels everything that they feel. 

“You takin’ good care of mama, aren’t you, boy?” He whispers as he scratches him behind his ears, “She’ll be alright, won’t she?”

She stirs at the hushed sound of his voice with a whimper and a gasp as her ribs rattle painfully, a look of panic crossing her features for a split second before she recognizes where she’s at.

“Lu, baby.” He speaks softly and helps her sit up against the wall, “Come back to bed.”

“No, no, I—I’m okay.” She shakes her head, pushing him gently away from her, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep out here.”

“Why are you out here?”

She drops her head into her hands for a moment as she draws in a deep, shaky breath before she looks up at him again as her dark eyes fill with tears, “My child almost died trying to save me and she had to murder her own father to do it. What kind of mother am I to let that happen?”

“Hey, hey, it’s not your fault,” He assures her, although it has no effect on her at all. He moves to the space next to her and sits back against the wall, reaching for her hand to hold in his, “You survived. That’s all that you were supposed to do. Whatever choice Tamara made to rescue you, that was on her. It speaks more to what kind of mom you are that your daughter risked her life and shot a pathetic excuse for a man just to keep him from killing you.”

“I’ve spent the last decade trying to shield her from something like this,” She cries, “I never wanted her to have to be like me.”

“I think she’d be lucky if she became half the woman that you are.” He frowns, because she just doesn’t understand how truly incredible that she is, “A kind, empathetic, headstrong woman who would give the shirt off her back to anyone in need, who loves so wholly and fiercely that those around her can’t even begin to comprehend it. You’re what every woman should be.”

She leans against his shoulder and cries in silence as he holds her with an occasional sniffle until her breaths are minutes from evening out once again, giving in with only a little resistance as he scoops her up in his arms like a feather and makes the trek back to the bedroom with Kojo on their heels. 

She lets him cover her up and he lets her lay on the edge of his pillow until he buries himself underneath the covers, too, where she then tucks her nose into the crook of his neck and breathes in the scent of him for comfort. 

“You don’t have to live in fear anymore, Lucy.”

His words seem to undo something in her and her sniffles turn into sobs, both the kind of consolation for a future of learning how to love herself again and of grief for all the pieces of who she was that she lost because of Caleb. 

She’s dreamt, for longer than she can remember, of some epiphany, a single glimpse of relief to make sense of everything she’s been through.

And now, with her daughters sleeping in warm beds down the hall, and a dog who sticks by her side no matter what, and lying in the arms of the best man she’s ever known, she’s sure that she’s found it.

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i had a feeling so peculiar, this pain wouldn't be for evermore

Chapter Text

and i can still see it all in my mind

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She spent eighteen hours in labor and pushed out a seven pound baby, and yet, she’s positive she’s never been more exhausted in her life. 

They’re on dress number twenty — no, twenty-one. Twenty-two? All the white and lace just started to blur together after the fifth — and nothing that she’s tried on has given her that feeling. 

She got married to Caleb in a courthouse because he didn’t want a wedding, and she never really thought much of it, of how she got cheated out of a dream she didn’t really think she ever wanted. 

But this time, she wanted to do it right. 

Tim is everything. He’s given her more than she’ll ever need and it’s the beginning of the rest of their lives. She wants the pretty dress and the flowers and the veil and the vows, and at the end of the night, she wants him to carry her over the threshold and leave their pasts at the door.

The only problem? They’re two months away and she still doesn’t have a dress. 

The night of their engagement, after all of their friends had gone home after the amazing, surprise engagement party, they sat in bed and talked for hours about what they want their wedding to be like, and then they set a date for next year.

But after everything that happened, nearly losing her life and the life of her daughter at the hands of her ex-husband, she just couldn’t imagine waiting that long to say ‘I do’ to Tim.

It’s been a little over three months since, and while they are still healing and fighting their fears every day, she’s found her smile again, the one only meant for Tim and her daughters.

Her ribs are good as new, the scar on her cheekbone isn’t hardly visible, and she doesn’t cry out in pain anymore when she has sex with Tim.

She just can’t believe she’s finally made it to the point in her life that all she has to worry about is what jewelry she wants to wear with her wedding dress. If she finds one, that is.

She definitely would’ve quit after five dresses if it weren’t for Lacey, the consultant at the hole-in-the-wall bridal boutique on Sunset that Angela found. 

“So, I know you’re kinda over this, but I want you to try on one more.” Lacey tells her as she unzips the garment bag and hangs it up on the hook, “One of your wonderful girls out there pulled it for you and I have to say I think that it might be more of what you’re wanting.” She continues, but Lucy’s stops listening as her eyes rake over the ivory, lace and beaded material in front of her.

When they arrived at the store, she had a vague idea of what she wanted for her dress: simple.

This dress is by no means simple, and yet, it seems to be exactly what she came for.

Its sheer bodice and textured lace add just the right amount of drama to the form-fitting dress and the open back melts effortlessly into the sheer, eye-catching train. It’s not at all what she pictured as her dress, but she can picture herself in it as she walks down the aisle to the man of her wildest dreams.

“It’s beautiful.” 

It’s all she can say, and Lacey takes that and her wide grin as a win. It takes a few minutes to get the dress on and secured in place, and the second Lacey steps back, it’s like something shifts within her, her breath catching in her throat as she traces the outline of her body in the mirror.

It fits her like a glove, bathing every curve in lace and tiny pearls, like it was made just for her.

“What do you think?” Lacey speaks up, Lucy drawing in a deep breath as she continues to look over herself in the mirror, turning her body side to side to take in every stunning detail of the dress, “I know the last couple of dresses weren’t anything you wanted to show everyone, but do you think this one might be?”

“I love it,” She chuckles weakly, still not taking her eyes off of herself in the mirror, “I think they will, too.”

Lacey offers her a smile in return and leads her out of the dressing room back to where Angela, Harper, Bailey, Tamara, and Emmy are waiting. 

She can already feel the tears well in her eyes at how comfortable she feels, how right it feels, and the audible gasps from four people she loves more than anything makes the feeling set in stone.

She steps onto the podium in front of the full body mirror and tries desperately not to make any eye contact with her girls because she will more than likely collapse into a sobbing mess, but Nyla’s clearing her throat and Angela has a wadded-up tissue in her hand and Bailey is grinning so widely and Emmy’s squealing for her and Tamara is sobbing. 

“You look so beautiful, Mom.” She says through her tears, the teenager completely captivated by the sight of her mother. 

“You do, Lucy.” Harper chimes in with a clear look of pride on her face as her hands come together in front of her mouth, “You are the most stunning bride I’ve ever seen.”

“You think so?” She asks almost timidly, her shoulders turning back and forth to give her a better view of the back and sides of her dress. Her dress, she’s so sure it is.

She can feel herself fall more in love with it with every second that goes by. 

“I think if you love it, we love it, too.”

She does. She can’t imagine finding any other dress that she would love this much. 

“Would you close your eyes for a minute, Lucy? I have something I would like to put on you while I ask you a question.” Lacey tells her, and Lucy nods and closes her eyes in response, feeling a gentle tug on her hair a moment later, “What do you see when you close your eyes?”

“Tim.” She says without hesitation, “I see Tim waiting for me.”

“And how do you feel wearing this dress?” 

“I feel…new. Like I’m not broken anymore. Like it’s the first time I’ve ever been loved.” Lucy furrows her brows, “Does that sound stupid to say about a wedding dress?”

Lacey shakes her head as she squeezes Lucy’s biceps softly, “You’re getting a do-over on a moment that was taken from you. It’s not stupid at all. You can open your eyes now.”

Her hair is pinned up and a veil is cascading down her back as the dainty diamond necklace around her neck and the engagement ring on her finger catch the gleam of the lights above her, and it’s then that she can’t hold in her emotions anymore.

She doesn’t have to speak for the women she’d brought with her to know what she wants to say. 

She’s found the dress she’ll marry the love of her life in, and it feels awfully like a full circle moment.

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They’re pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Bradford on a breezy and bright Sunday afternoon, surrounded by their closest and chosen family. 

Tamara and Emmy stand by her side and Angela’s stands by Tim’s as they kiss for the first time as husband and wife, their friends erupting into cheers the second their lips touch.

It lasts for what she happily feels like is forever until they both have to breathe and let out the laughter of excitement they’ve been holding in since the early morning, but they don’t at all move to let go of each other as they look around at all the people who got them to this moment. 

They soak it in for a bit more until the pre-chorus to Paper Rings comes around and Tim does just as Taylor Swift says, pressing his lips to hers once again, and then for a second time, and for a third time, too, because they have waited their whole lives for this. 

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“I’m going to try to get through this without crying,” Tamara begins as she stands from her chair and unfolds a piece of paper with her Maid of Honor speech written on it, her voice timid and full of emotion, “To know my mom is to love exactly who she is. She radiates kindness and compassion, and she’s got a soul so pure, a smile so magnetic, a heart so good, it’s impossible not to admire her.”

She makes the mistake of looking at Lucy, who is utterly a mess already, and she too follows her mother into tears.

Still, she pushes forward because she’s waited so long for the chance to tell her mom how she truly sees her.

“She’s never been given a fair hand, or an easy road to wander, but she’s never let it change her. She’s never let it stop her from loving people so fiercely and freely, and it’s the one thing no one ever questions about her. Nobody else can make you feel so strong and vulnerable, while just as safe and equally as humble. Her very existence is enough to brighten the darkest of days.”

She can hardly hold it together, but neither can the rest of the people in the room.

“She heals hearts she didn’t break, and wipes tears she didn’t cause.” She chokes out a sob and follows it with a sniffle, “She gives everything and takes nothing, and she makes life worth living.”

“No, she didn’t carry me inside of her body for nine months, but she did make me the woman I am today. She took on a role that she never expected, a role that demands strength, endurance, resilience, a willingness to serve and sacrifice, and she exceeded those expectations far better than anyone else ever could have.” She feels her mom rest a hand on her back, and it steadies her, just as it always has, “She sacrificed her happiness just to keep me safe, and took all the hurt just so I wouldn’t have to. I can’t name a single person in the entire world who’s as lucky as I am. She gave me a future, the best little sister I could ever ask for, and a new meaning to the word ‘family’.”

A grin appears on her face, the dimples in her cheeks catching her cascading tears, as she looks to Tim on the other side of Lucy and finds his dusty blue eyes wet and red. 

“My sister and I don’t have Bradford genes or the last name, and we don’t look like him at all, but Tim is our dad in every other way.”

Tim clears his throat and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand that isn’t holding Lucy’s tightly as she continues on, “Any guy can make a child and stick his name on the birth certificate, but it takes a real man to step up and care for children that aren’t his own. I had no idea that our new neighbor and his cute dog would become the missing pieces of our family, but because they did, I can shout from the rooftops how the universe finally got it right.”

Lucy sobs softly into his shoulder, and he holds her tighter than he was before, and Tamara knows her words ring true, “I’ve only known you for a short time, but the unconditional love you’ve given to me and Emmy makes me feel like we were always meant to be your daughters, and the depth of respect and kindness that you give to our mom is what we should desire for ourselves when our own wedding days come around. Thank you for always being there when I call and for giving us a love we once thought we’d never have. I hope you enjoy growing old with my mom as much as I enjoyed growing up with her.”

She folds up her paper and shoves it into the pocket on her dress (she’s still thankful her mom is who she is and let her have a dress with pockets), and raises her champagne glass full of sparkling soda (her mom is who she is) toward her parents and sister, who’s babbling endlessly in Angela’s lap, “To the best parents I get to call mine, I love you, I’m so happy you found each other, and here’s to forever.”

The room echoes her cheers as she’s wrapped up in between them so tight she can hardly breathe, but she remembers a time where she didn’t have this at all, so she’ll go blue before she ever lets them go.

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“I once believed love would be burning red…”

“I can’t believe we’re finally married.” She whispers against his shoulder as they sway back and forth in the middle of the dance floor, “Is it possible that I’m dreaming?”

“If we’re dreaming, don’t pinch me.” He replies, rubbing his thumb over the skin of her warm back, “I wish we could just do this day over and over again.”

“As long as we’re together, we’ll have a million more days just like it.”

”…but it’s golden, like daylight…”

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all of you, all of me, intertwined

Chapter Text

i had the time of my life fighting dragons with you

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“That’s the last box.”

They’re all a sweaty mess because New York is surprisingly hotter in the summertime than they thought it would be, and surrounded by cardboard boxes and plastic tubs piled high in Tamara’s new dorm room.

Columbia University is embroidered across the eighteen-year-old’s chest, and she’s filled to the brim with anxiety and excitement and anticipation for what awaits her.

She’s got a full-ride scholarship because an essay about growing up with an abusive, murderous father and not turning out like him only because he married the one woman who fought to protect her, who gave her everything so she’d want for nothing, while also maintaining a 4.2 grade point average and taking enough college level courses to earn her associate degree as a Junior seemed to impress the admissions committee. 

They’ve spent the last six days driving a u-haul truck across  the 2,804-mile distance separating Mid-Wilshire and New York, NY and soaking up the last moments that they’ll be together as a family for a long, unknown, while.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay another day?” Lucy asks with a timid and wet voice as she brushes a curl out of the teenager’s face, “We have plenty of vacation days saved—”

“Mom, I’m gonna be alright.”

Lucy heaves a heavy, shaky breath and pulls Tamara into her as closely as she can with her growing belly in the way.

Her due date is in a month with the newest Bradford boy, but despite her obstetrician urging her to refrain from traveling long distances like across the country, she wasn’t going to miss a single moment of this, of what they’ve both worked so hard for.

“I know you are.”

Her mom moves to let go, but by instinct, Tamara holds on tighter.

“But is it okay that I’m a little scared?”

She feels Lucy sigh and grip onto the fabric of her sweatshirt, giving her the kind of comfort they only find in each other, “Of course it is, baby. You’re on your own now, it’s terrifying and pessimistic. It’s just been you and me for so long, but the cool news is that you’re on your own now. So, you’re gonna unpack your boxes, sleep in this big and busy city, and you’re gonna face this fear because you’ve survived more than what any kid should ever have to and you’ve got no reason to be afraid.”

Lucy lets go because her silent tears begin to soak through Tamara’s sweatshirt and she presses a kiss to the teenager’s cheek before reaching for Tim’s hand. 

They say another goodbye and the couple makes their way to the door, only stopping when Tamara calls for them again. She’s got tears in her eyes, and her shoulders sag, and she looks awfully like the little five-year-old girl Lucy met all those years ago.

“And is it okay if I miss you guys already?”

Lucy smiles, and so does Tim, and they hold out their arms as Tamara closes the gap between them all one last time, breathing in the familiar scent of the two very best people she’ll ever know.

She lets them leave eventually and then she’s alone for the first time, and it feels…good.

The sun sets outside her window, and she puts on her new pajamas her mom bought for her, and she tucks herself into bed after plugging in her purple flower nightlight and whispering a ‘goodnight’ to the picture of her family on her bedside table, the sound of the Big Apple lulling her softly to sleep. 

you're on your own, kid
you always have been

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They make it home just before midnight in complete exhaustion. 

Kojo greets them with his nose pressed up against the glass front door and his tail thumping against the hardwood in the entryway as Tim guides her inside, letting her lean into him on the way to the bedroom.

They move around in comfortable silence as they get ready for what will probably be the best night’s sleep they’ve had in awhile, an occasional kiss here and there while he helps her take off her sneakers and leggings and slips one of his pairs of boxers on her in their place with an old army t-shirt. 

It’s not until they’re laying in the dark, moments away from drifting off to sleep, that he speaks quietly, “I hope you know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She turns herself over and into his side, their bodies fitting together like missing pieces of a puzzle, and lays her head on his chest with their intertwined hands just beneath her chin as she counts every beat of his heart, her tired mind giving her just enough energy to whisper back in the dark.

“Ditto.”

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long story short, i survived

fin.