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Eddie stared at the Bible that had been placed in his hands and repeated the words. Words which felt heavy on his tongue.
“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.”
The phrase landed wrong. Not because he didn’t believe in God — he did, in the quiet, complicated way he believed in most things — but because the truth had never been simple for him. It had never been a single, clean line you could swear to and be done with.
He loosened his grip on the cover, the leather worn smooth by hands that had come before him. People who had sworn oaths and meant them. People who had believed the words would protect them.
Eddie wasn’t so sure.
The courtroom smelled faintly of polish and paper. Someone coughed behind him. A chair scraped. Life going on, ordinary and indifferent, while he stood there thinking about locked doors and prayers spoken too loudly, about the way help could be twisted into something that hurt.
He lifted his eyes when instructed, jaw set, shoulders squared — the posture of a man who had testified before, who knew how to keep his voice even.
This time, though, the truth felt closer to the surface than he liked.
The defense’s questions were standard. Medical. Easy.
Eddie almost let himself relax. Almost.
Dates. Symptoms. He answered without hesitation, muscle memory taking over. This was familiar ground — assessments, checklists, the comfort of facts that could be lined up and verified.
He kept his gaze level, voice steady. He didn’t think about locked doors or raised voices. He didn’t think about the word sick being used as an explanation instead of a diagnosis.
For a few minutes, the truth stayed where it belonged: contained. Clinical. Safe.
Then the questions shifted.
Not abruptly. Not obviously.
Just enough.
“Mr Diaz, can you describe the room where Abigail was detained?”
Eddie would never be able to forget that room.
The darkness.
The chains.
The metal bed.
All of it in the so-called name of healing.
He swallowed once before answering.
“It was windowless,” he said. His voice didn’t waver, though his grip tightened on the edge of the stand. “Concrete walls. A single overhead light. There was a bed frame bolted to the floor.”
A pause.
“Restraints,” he added, because avoiding the word wouldn’t make it untrue.
The courtroom was quiet now. Not the attentive quiet of interest, but the heavier kind — the kind that followed when people realised the story wasn’t going where they’d expected.
“And was Abigail restrained against her will?”
“Yes.”
"Why was she held there?”
The words sat between them, waiting.
Eddie lifted his eyes. For the first time since taking the stand, he looked directly at the jury.
“Because her parents believed something about her needed to be fixed.”
He didn’t say what.
He didn’t have to.
The truth, once spoken, had a way of filling in its own blanks.
“Mr. Diaz, were you aware that Abigail was in a same-sex relationship before this period of restraint began?”
Eddie felt his blood turn to ice.
He looked at Abigail then. Really looked at her. The set of her shoulders. The careful stillness. The way she’d learned, somewhere along the line, how not to take up space.
And suddenly everything fell into place like some twisted jigsaw puzzle.
Her parents.
The pretense.
The word sick used where different should have been.
The locked door wasn’t about protection.
The prayers weren’t about healing.
And neither, he realised with a dull, familiar ache, had the rules he’d grown up with been.
The things he’d folded up and put away as a boy — questions, instincts, feelings — not because they were wrong, but because he’d learned there were consequences for wanting the wrong things. For being the wrong way.
“Mr. Diaz?”
He forced his gaze back to the stand.
“No,” he said. “I was not.” A beat. Then, quieter but no less steady, “But why would Abigail’s relationship status be relevant?”
The lawyer didn’t answer right away. Just inclined their head slightly.
“Why indeed.”
The words echoed longer than they should have.
Eddie sat back, pulse loud in his ears, understanding something he hadn’t when he’d sworn the oath — that the truth wasn’t only about what had been done to Abigail.
It was about why.
And about how easily a room like that could have been meant for anyone who failed to fit the right shape.
Including him.
“Do you believe Abigail’s sexuality posed a danger to herself or others?”
Eddie didn’t hesitate.
“No.”
The word rang out clearer than anything he’d said all day.
“And do you believe restraint was an appropriate response to who she loved?”
His jaw tightened. Not in anger — in resolve.
“No,” he said again. “I do not.”
Silence followed. Heavy. Intentional.
Eddie became acutely aware of his own breathing, of the way his hands had gone still. Of the fact that he had just said, in open court, what had never been said out loud where he grew up.
That there was nothing dangerous about loving the wrong person.
That there was nothing broken about being the wrong thing.
The lawyer nodded once, as if that had been the only answer they’d ever expected.
“No further questions.”
Eddie sat back slowly, heart hammering now, not with fear but with something steadier. Something earned.
He had sworn to tell the truth.
And for the first time, he understood that sometimes the truth didn’t ask for forgiveness — or permission — or even God’s help.
It just asked to be spoken.
The prosecution rose slowly.
“Mr. Diaz,” they said, voice even, “you’ve been very clear in your testimony that you do not believe Abigail was ill.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve also been clear that you believe what was done to her was wrong.”
“Yes.”
The prosecutor nodded, flipping a page.
“May I ask — are you a religious man?”
The question felt different. Not hostile. Curious.
Eddie exhaled through his nose once. “I was raised Catholic.”
“Was.”
A pause.
“I still have faith,” Eddie said carefully. “It’s… complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
Eddie considered the room, the oath still echoing in the back of his mind.
“I believe faith is meant to help people,” he said. “Not control them.”
A murmur rippled through the gallery before the judge silenced it.
The prosecutor continued. “Do you attend church regularly?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because it had taught him what silence could cost.
Because it had taught him which questions not to ask.
Instead, he said, “Because my faith isn’t something I practice in public.”
The prosecutor nodded again. Calm. Methodical.
“Let’s talk about your behaviour the night Abigail’s parents were arrested.”
Eddie stiffened.
“You were present?”
“Yes.”
“And you were visibly upset.”
“Yes.”
“Angry?”
Eddie didn’t dodge it. “Yes.”
“How did you express that anger, Mr. Diaz?”
Images flashed — raised voices, clenched fists, the taste of copper where he’d bitten down too hard on his own restraint.
“I told them to step back,” he said. “I raised my voice.”
“Did you threaten them?”
“No.”
“Did you attempt to harm them?”
“No.” "I stood between them and someone they had already hurt."
The prosecutor studied him for a long moment.
“So your anger,” they said, “wasn’t directed at their faith.”
“No.”
“It was directed at their actions.”
“Yes.”
“And specifically,” the prosecutor pressed, “actions taken in the name of that faith.”
Eddie lifted his eyes again.
“Yes.”
Another silence. Different from before. Less heavy. More… resolved.
The prosecutor closed their folder.
“No further questions.”
*
The hallway outside the courtroom was colder than Eddie expected. Too much air-conditioning, too much space after being held so tightly in place for hours.
He stood there for a second longer than necessary, hands flexing like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them now that no one was asking him questions.
“Hey.”
Hen’s voice was low. Careful.
He turned. She was leaning against the wall a few feet away, jacket still on, eyes sharp but kind. She hadn’t come closer yet. She always waited — gave people room to decide.
“You okay?” she asked.
Eddie huffed out a breath. “I don’t know.”
Hen nodded. “Fair.”
They stood there in silence for a moment. People moved around them — lawyers, clerks, families — but no one interrupted. Hen had a way of making space feel intentional.
“You were solid in there,” she said finally.
Eddie shook his head. “I was angry.”
“Yes,” Hen agreed. No hesitation. “You were.”
He glanced at her, surprised.
“I thought they were going to use that against me,” he admitted. “Like it meant I couldn’t be objective.”
Hen pushed off the wall, folding her arms. “Anger doesn’t cancel truth, Eddie. Sometimes it points straight at it.”
He swallowed.
“They kept asking about faith,” he said. “Like if I believed the wrong thing, it explained everything.”
“And?”
“And I realised I’ve been carrying this idea that if I ever said the wrong thing out loud, I’d lose something.” His voice dropped. “Respect. Belonging. God.”
Hen’s expression softened — not pity. Recognition.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s how they keep people quiet.”
Eddie leaned back against the wall now, staring at the floor. “When they said why Abigail was locked in that room… it was like—” He stopped, searching. “Like I could see the path. How it happens. How it keeps happening.”
Hen didn’t rush him.
“You didn’t let it,” she said.
He looked up.
“You didn’t excuse it. You didn’t soften it. You said no.” She held his gaze. “That matters.”
Eddie let that sink in.
“I don’t know what that makes me,” he said quietly.
Hen smiled — small, steady. “It makes you someone who told the truth when it was hard.”
She stepped closer then, just enough to be felt.
“And for what it’s worth?” she added. “You didn’t sound angry in there. You sounded clear.”
Eddie breathed out slowly. Some of the tightness in his chest eased.
“Thanks,” he said.
Hen nodded once. “Anytime.”
They walked down the hall together — not fixed, not finished — but no longer alone with it.
They walked in silence for a few steps.
Then Eddie stopped.
Hen noticed immediately. She always did.
“This part just caught up to you,” she said gently.
He let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. Almost.
“I kept saying no,” he said. “Over and over. Like if I said it clearly enough, it would only apply to her.”
Hen waited.
“I said there was nothing dangerous about who she loved,” Eddie continued. His voice was steady, but something in his eyes wasn’t. “That it didn’t need fixing. That faith didn’t give anyone the right to decide that.”
He swallowed.
“And I realised I wasn’t just talking about Abigail.”
Hen didn’t smile. Didn’t soften it. She just nodded, once. Confirmation, not surprise.
“Yeah,” she said. “I figured.”
Eddie looked at her then. “It didn’t scare me. Not like I thought it would.”
“No,” Hen agreed. “It wouldn’t.”
What scared him — he realised — was how obvious it suddenly felt.
Because Buck wasn’t a secret he’d been hiding.
Buck was the thing that had never required hiding at all.
The constant.
The trust.
The way Christopher’s life already bent naturally around him.
The way Eddie’s did too.
“I didn’t survive what she went through because I was braver,” Eddie said quietly. “I survived because I stayed quiet.”
Hen’s voice was kind, but firm. “And today?”
“Today I didn’t.”
They stood there, the courthouse humming around them, and Eddie felt something shift — not crack, not break. Just… align.
He hadn’t come out on a stand.
He hadn’t said Buck’s name.
But he’d gone on record saying:
this is not sickness
this is not sin
this is not something that deserves punishment
And once you say that out loud, under oath, you don’t really get to pretend it doesn’t apply to you too.
Hen nudged his shoulder lightly. “You gonna be okay?”
Eddie nodded. “Yeah.”
He meant it.
Because Buck wasn’t a question anymore.
He was an answer Eddie had been living with for years. And now — finally — one he was ready to stop arguing against.
Eddie hadn’t said Buck’s name in court.
He didn’t need to. The truth already knew where to find him.