Chapter Text
May 2027
Victor walks into Reid’s house, pulling his backpack over his shoulder and closing the door, locking it behind him.
Reid lived closest to Houston, and in a real house with his family, not some hotel that NASA had arrangements with. He’d always had an open door policy with his team—it was just the kind of guy he was—so if someone was unexpectedly spending the night in Houston, they typically crashed at his house. Even now, almost a year after the Artemis II mission had been completed, Reid had stressed to them that they were family and they never needed to ask if they wanted to spend the night at his house.
He didn’t even have to be there—they knew where he kept his spare key, and he trusted them to use his guest room, clean up, and lock up.
It was a home away from home and the whole crew had various personal items in the guest room; the dresser had a designated drawer for each of their clothes, various toiletry items had been left in the bathroom over the last four years, a few books they’d finished while at his house and hadn’t bothered flying home with. It made sense for him and Jeremy, who lived entire plane rides away, but Christina kept some of her things there, too, sometimes not feeling like spending the extra thirty to forty-five minutes on the drive home to Galveston after particularly grueling days.
So when Victor had been stuck in a meeting so long that he missed his flight home, and his backup flight home was canceled, and NASA had decided to inform him at the last minute that they were changing his schedule and planning on sending him to Maryland in two days, he had known exactly where he was going.
He’d immediately texted Reid, who said he’d leave the door unlocked but would probably already be asleep by the time he got there, and had driven to Clear Lake without a second thought.
Which is why he’s surprised to find the light on in the living room as he enters just after midnight, the sounds of some laugh track from a sitcom reaching him from the front door.
He kicks off his shoes and sets his bag down, quietly walking through the foyer, towards the living room in the familiar home, noting a few updated photos of Katey and Ellie on the walls. The TV is—
He stops immediately at the sight before him.
Christina and Reid are on the couch together.
She’s sleeping on her back, facing away from the entrance to the living room, and her head is resting on the arm of the couch. Reid’s on top of her, his cheek turned to use her chest as a pillow as his legs dangle off the back of the armrest. Her hand is resting on the back of his head, loosely cradling him against her and, as he approaches, he notices their intertwined fingers hanging off the side of the couch. One of her legs is wrapped around the back of his, the other lost somewhere under him, and Victor raises an eyebrow to himself because that is certainly a new development.
They wouldn’t.
Christina’s married.
Reid’s a stand-up guy.
There’s a misunderstanding somewhere in all of this.
They both look way too comfortable cuddling up with each other, and he can tell by the steady rise and fall of their chests that they’re in a deep sleep. They’re both fully clothed, too, which is a good sign; Reid’s in a dark hoodie and tan cargo shorts, and what he can see of Christina is covered in a long sleeve white top and black leggings.
He glances around the room, not noticing anything else out of place. There’s the same blanket on the back of the couch that’s always been there and two uneaten sandwiches on the coffee table, and Victor leans forward.
He taps Reid on the back and he immediately stirs, his head lifting up and looking at him, momentarily confused but undoubtedly alert.
Christina barely moves, making a sleepy sound as her hand falls from his head, but they both know she’s a pretty deep sleeper; it takes her a while to actually fall asleep, but the moment she’s out, it’s comically difficult to wake her. The three guys of the crew were military men so they could fall asleep and wake up at a moment's notice, but Christina didn’t share that trait with them.
Victor watches Reid closely, just observing, as he glances down at Christina and then up to him, a mixture of gentle adoration, sheepishness, and worry flashing across his face as he gently untangles himself from her hold. He pulls the blanket off the back of the couch and covers her with it, tucking her in securely, brushing a few curls off her face with a lovesick tenderness that makes Victor sigh.
God, they’re a mess.
With Reid standing now, he motions to a room behind them and Victor follows without a word, both not wanting to wake Christina because he’ll give her a piece of mind tomorrow morning. Reid winds up taking them to his back porch and the moment the door slides shut, Victor rubs a hand down his face, asking tiredly, “What the hell are you doing, man?”
“Listen, it—” he presses his lips together, clearly unsure of what to say before he exhales slowly, the sad sound making Victor pause. “Obviously, you weren’t supposed to see that.”
“You’re not supposed to be doing that,” he counters disapprovingly, raising his eyebrows and Reid analyzes him for a second, crossing his arms over his chest.
“It’s—she asked Bill to separate,” he confesses after a beat and Victor feels the floor nearly give out beneath him because that is another hell of a development. He doesn’t see them for three days and suddenly Christina’s entire love life is flipped upside down? “It didn’t go well. She showed up here, just—God, I’ve never seen her like that.”
“What do you mean?” He asks, narrowing his eyes at Reid, taking in the tight tendon on his jaw, the stress in his stance, the tension in his face, and trying not to be on edge in response to it.
Something was wrong.
“She’s…going through a lot right now,” Reid answers vaguely, glancing out at nothing in particular in his backyard, the yellow glow of the porch light making him look sick with worry.
“What—is she alright?”
“He…I—she should be the one to tell you,” he says slowly, and Victor’s heart rate spikes, because that’s another bad, carefully crafted answer.
“What happened? Was she okay?” He asks, folding his arms as he tries to remember what she had looked like as she laid asleep on the couch, but he hadn’t really seen her face to be able to determine if she looked tired or stressed or anything.
Besides, the shock of the moment kept him from analyzing anything too deeply.
“She…” Reid pauses, sighing again and rubbing his jaw thoughtfully as he leans against the side paneling of his house. “Well, to put it short: no. I…when she showed up here, she was sobbing, could hardly get a word out. I don’t know how she drove all the way from Galveston like that, but she was damn near having a panic attack.”
Victor nods tensely, because that’s a horrible mental image; Tina’s a longtime friend, and an absolutely amazing person, so to imagine her in any sort of distress isn’t pleasant. She’s unashamedly emotional, readily wears her heart on her sleeve, and they’d all seen each other cry, but never how Reid’s describing her.
“She said they fought?” Victor asks, trying to provide his own background information, because he had no idea she felt so badly about her marriage that she was even seriously considering separation.
“Oh, yeah,” he confirms immediately, nodding quickly and closing his eyes for a moment, like he’s thinking about what to say as the sound of cicadas and crickets fills the empty air. The silence stretches between them for an uncomfortably long amount of time before he eventually shares quietly, “I…I think he hit her.”
“What?”
Victor’s world stops.
Christina?
His classmate—the first friend he’d made in his astronaut candidate group? His running buddy—the only one on the team that was always down for a long run, unfailingly showing up with a bomb playlist and happy smile? His daughter’s tutor—the woman who was so thoughtful and kind that his kids actually enjoyed doing math?
Not her—never her.
He had their Christmas card hung in the center of his fridge every year, he’d attended countless events with Bill, he’d been at their wedding.
Bill couldn’t do that—he wasn’t capable of it—not to her.
“I don’t know if—he may not have—but…her wrist was bruised when she showed up and she…she was crying so hard, I thought…at one point, I thought she’d pass out.”
“Her arm was bruised? He grabbed her?” He asks, the tenseness from Reid now transferring to him, because he’s naturally protective over the women in his life. He has four daughters, for Christ’s sake—if a man even looked at them the wrong way, he’d feel his skin itch.
“I…God, you can’t let her know I’m telling you this. But yeah, it’s—no question. Four fingers, clear as day around her wrist. I don’t know what he did, but she was so…shaken. She was terrified when she showed up here—she doesn’t even have a bag packed. I think she ran out of the house, it’s—”
“She ran out of the house?” Victor asks in one breath, closing his eyes and imagining her running from her home, her husband, so urgently that she didn’t even bring a change of clothes.
She’s a strong woman, but she’s still a few inches shorter than Bill and he’s sturdily-built; he could easily overpower her. Her strength is impressive when put in perspective to her own size and body weight, but any decently sized man could overtake her—and one acting out of anger could do a lot of damage.
“She only showed up in her socks,” he says solemnly, nodding with his eyes closed, swallowing thickly and taking a deep breath, his hesitation making a lot more sense now. They were all emotionally connected and protective of each other on a normal day—and all a little more so of Christina because was like a little sister to them. “And she has…she was crying so much, I wasn’t gonna continue to interrogate her, but there’s a mark. On her temple, kinda near her eye. Maybe I imagined it—I hope I imagined it, but…”
“You think he hit her,” Victor supplies, nodding curtly, wondering where Bill was now—there’s no shot in hell he’s letting Tina anywhere near him.
This was grounds for immediate divorce—no trial separation, no finding themselves, no couple’s therapy, no working things through. She wasn’t going to contribute to the daunting statistic that it typically takes a victim seven times to finally leave their abuser for good.
Today was her last day in that house.
“I…” Reid trails off before sighing shakily, the emotion evident in his eyes. “Yeah, I do. She was…I mean, it’s Christina. She’s—she’s handled failed sims with grace, but she was so…hysterical. Terrified. I can’t—I don’t know what he did to her.”
“Do you think he’d follow her here?” He asks, now switching into protector mode, because he knows that the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is when the victim tries to leave; that’s when the abuser got the most violent, the most defensive, and typically acted the most irrationally.
“I—I don’t know, maybe. I honestly didn’t even…I don’t know if she has her phone. Her car’s in the garage.”
“If he knew she was here, I don’t think he’d follow,” he reasons, nodding to himself at his own logic, because her fleeing to Reid’s house was definitely a safe decision. Bill had to know he wouldn't stand a chance against a twenty-seven year Navy veteran—especially considering Reid’s own daughters lived in the house, even if they weren’t technically home. “But she’s not going back there. Find her keys, we’ll see if she has her phone.”
“Oh, I have them, I pulled her car into the garage when I was closing up,” he says, pulling her carabiner out of his pocket, dangling them in the air.
They walk silently back through the house, both noting that she hasn’t budged on the couch, and out the garage door where Tina’s beloved Subaru is waiting for them.
“Here,” Reid presses the unlock and opens the driver’s side car door, and—sure enough—there’s her phone sitting on the passenger seat, carelessly tossed onto its back.
Victor pulls it out, his chest tightening when he sees that her wallpaper is a photo of her, Sadie, and Bill on the beach together at sunset, and he shows Reid what they’d both been wondering; 11 calls and 7 messages from Bill, 3 calls from her mom, 4 messages and a call from her brother, 5 calls and 3 messages from her dad.
“He doesn’t know where she is,” Reid says, the relief evident in his voice and Victor nods in agreement. “He wouldn’t be…he must be trying to figure out where she went from her family. He doesn’t know.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if they—she’s never mentioned that they share locations. Di and I do, but that’s mainly for the family Life360.”
“Yeah, I only share my location with the girls,” he says, leaning into the car and coming up with a bloody tissue and they share a look.
They start inspecting the car further, finding evidence of what must’ve been a pretty serious nosebleed, because there’s about ten tissues stained with red, scattered on the floor, but they remain silent, both torn between lethal anger at him and miserable sympathy for her. There’s no shoes in the passenger seat, either, so she definitely must’ve ran straight to her car before fleeing her home.
Victor walks around the side of the vehicle in Reid’s ridiculously spacious, Texas-sized garage, pausing when he sees a massive dent that hadn’t been there before on her back right door.
“Reid, over here,” he calls, because he’s rummaging through the backseat, and he pops up, joining him on the passenger side and breathing out a whistle.
“You think she hit something?” He asks, touching the dent, tracing along its line with his fingers, trying to map out what it could be from. “Mailbox?”
“Maybe, if she peeled out of there. But, actually it…usually cars—well, she couldn’t have hit something and it only dented this panel. Something hit it.”
“You think he tried to follow her in his car?” He asks, voice breathless with disbelief, and Victor blinks at the mental image of Tina in a car chase with Bill, him racing her down their quiet suburban street in Galveston.
“I—don’t know, maybe he threw something at it, what exactly did she say when she showed up?” He asks, turning to Reid and he pauses a moment, closing his eyes and obviously trying to sort through the unbelievable events of their evening before giving him the run down.
“She…well, she got here around seven and I saw her pull up and went to meet her in the driveway, but she…she was crying already pretty hard, but not hysterical. I started asking a million questions, which was probably not the right thing to do but—I mean—I couldn’t help it. And then…we got inside and she was just sobbing. I mean—Ike, she was doubling over, I had to physically hold her upright. Eventually, we sat on the couch—the whole time, she’d barely said anything, all I got was that no one died or was actively dying. After…I don’t even know, maybe an hour, she stopped crying and…at some point I noticed the bruise and asked her about it and she said she and Bill had gotten into a fight.
She told him she wanted to separate for a bit and he lost it—started throwing things, screaming, tried to grab her when she was leaving. She…I didn’t know what to do. I asked if she wanted to call the police and she nearly worked herself back into hysterics again, so I just…let it go. Didn’t suggest it again. I put on the show as a distraction and went to make some sandwiches and she…when I got back, she was laying down and asked—” he stops, his eyes running over Victor’s face, analyzing him briefly before nodding, as if he’s decided he’s worthy of whatever precious detail he’s about to reveal “—she asked if I’d hold her for a while. And of course—I mean…I couldn’t say no to her. What was I supposed to do? It’s Christina.”
They both sigh and Victor closes his eyes, nodding in something close to understanding because while it was a crazy thing to walk in on, it’s a crazy situation to be in.
“Yeah, I…I know you two are close,” Victor says carefully, because they’re closer than any married woman and unmarried man that’s undoubtedly a little in love with her should be, but it’d never necessarily been his business until he had proof, or they let it affect mission outcomes.
People are allowed to have favorites; it’s simply a fact of life that some are naturally drawn to each other, and Reid and Christina were like magnets.
“We are, I…you know, we once…” Reid trails off before suddenly shaking his head and Victor's interest piques.
“You once what?”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, I don’t want you to think less of her—”
“I’d never think less of Tina,” Victor assures, bracing himself for the confirmation that they’d been secretly having an affair.
There’s been quiet talk and murmurs in their inner circles, a few stories that didn’t quite add up, a few intimate touches that he couldn’t easily excuse, the entire internet speculating after their return from the moon. He couldn’t believe they had been sleeping together, but there were definitely those in the office who would give them sly glances, as if they knew secrets that Reid and Christina hadn’t shared with the crew. Victor’s logic had always been simple, based not on their morality or faith, but their characters; they’re two of the most honest, open books there ever were.
It’d be impossible for them to be deceitful for so long—hiding something as massive as that would require a lot more manipulation than either of them were capable of.
But, maybe, there’d been one night where they’d both been lonely on the press tour, or a stressful day after training, or a—
“I…no, it’s really not—”
“Did you have sex?” Victor asks point-blank, and the way Reid blanches proves his ‘no’ before he even has a chance to deny it, which is somehow better and worse than a ‘yes.’
If they’d had sex, it would make all those lingering touches, blatant favoritism, and suspicious interactions reasonable. Of course they’re close if they’ve had sex, of course they act suspiciously like a couple because they already know the most intimate parts of each other.
But without it, it means that they’ve either been having an emotional affair or one of them—Reid, probably—confessed to unrequited feelings.
Or, somehow an even worse, third option; they’re both idiots who don’t realize they love each other.
“God, no, oh my—Jesus, Victor,” he denies, his laugh somehow nervous and sad at the same time. “I—well, I was going to tell you that I kissed her, but that seems—”
“You kissed her?” He asks, his mouth dropping open in surprise, because his timing is absolutely awful. “She’s—Reid, that’s…she’s not in any place right now to—”
“No, no, not today. I…it was a couple months ago—”
“Months ago?” He repeats, trying to rack his brain for any memories that stood out, but they were their usual, weirdly close selves for as long he can remember.
“Yeah, when…I don’t think you were around. We were in DC for some press with the Senate Committee, and we’d gone out to dinner with the group after and…I could tell she was just off. I walked her back to her room and we talked for, like, three hours on her couch about…life. Marriage. Happiness. She barely alluded to the idea that she and Bill were hitting a rough patch and I…don’t know, it just…there’s always been—always been a…pull, with her. I can’t explain it anymore than I can explain my need to breathe. I’ve always…anyway, she was being so—she’s so mean to herself, so unfairly critical and…I…it felt right at the time, so I kissed her.”
Victor nods, trying to appear to be the chill and understanding adult—similar to the way he’d been he’d when his youngest daughter went on her first date—because this is a mess; yes, Tina’s married, but how much does morality in marriage matter when she’s married to an abuser?
If he’d gotten belligerent at just the suggestion of separating, would he be civil if she tried to divorce him? Was she safe? Did she feel loved?
He couldn’t necessarily blame her for seeking comfort outside of her own home if her home was falling apart.
“And, I mean, I was just…I didn’t have a plan when I did it. I wasn’t trying to sleep with her, I swear, I just wanted her to…see that she's so much better than the version of herself she creates in her mind, and she…not to get too detailed—but she…it was obvious they hadn’t been together in a while. I think she would’ve been willing to have sex—and she’s the married one. I didn’t let it get…too out of control.”
“What does that mean?” He asks suspiciously, the way that Reid’s avoiding his gaze meaning they definitely did more than kiss.
“Really, nothing, Ike, I swear. Not even—we didn’t even—all our clothes stayed on, we didn’t do anything sexual. I mean, we kissed for…a while—” the tips of his ears are bright red and Victor wants to laugh, because while this whole situation is so fucked up, Reid is so funnily bashful talking about anything sexual, and he always has been. “And, I…stayed the night in her room, but we slept next to each other, I swear. Fully clothed, we didn’t do anything.”
Victor sighs, wholeheartedly believing him because he’s too flustered and too defensive to be lying, but that casual intimacy is dangerous. It’s somehow worse than them having sex, because that meant feelings far beyond lust or physical desire lingered beneath the surface.
“I just…held her. She didn’t cry, we didn’t talk, she just seemed so…lonely. I think she just needed comfort, and I was there. We woke up the next day and she made me promise not to tell anyone, and we haven’t spoken about it since. I…I didn’t ask her, I just assumed she and Bill had been in a bad place for a while, longer than she was willing to admit.”
“You two are a mess,” Victor groans, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his eyes.
“I know,” he agrees quietly, glancing back at the garage door that led into the house. “I…she’s important to me.”
“We all know that, don’t worry,” he scoffs playfully because everyone knows that Reid and Christina are attached at the hip; it’s gone so far that even directors will call one or the other when someone’s not answering their phones or emails on urgent matters.
“She—if she’s been hiding an abusive relationship this whole time, I…”
Victor sighs, because his mind has already started wandering down that path, too.
Was this an isolated incident? Had he hit her before? Had he been verbally abusive? Had—
“I heard them arguing once,” Victor says, suddenly remembering the time that he and Christina had been in Florida for some event and she’d stepped out into the hallway to take a call from him. He’d found her ten minutes later and her entire demeanor had shifted. She was still on the phone and even though he wasn’t on speaker, he could hear how loud Bill was berating her for something, her face tense and eyes sad as she held the device away from her ear. “I try to stay out of other people’s business, but she…I’ve noticed her being happier when we travel. That’s never a good sign. We were in Florida together and she was so…carefree. And then Bill called and like that—” he snaps “—complete 180°. I heard him yelling at her on the phone. She hung up quick when I came out there, but she…it’s stuck with me.”
“Jeremy doesn’t like him, he won’t say what happened, but he saw something with them and…I mean, he barely says a word to Bill when he sees him.”
“What? What do you mean?” He asks, narrowing his eyes as he remembers something that he’d stored away for later contemplation, but never really thought about; at NASA’s family day last year, Bill had come up to the group and while he and Reid had shaken his hand with the typical exchanged pleasantries, Jeremy had stood there with his arms crossed, only saying hello and remaining silent through the small talk.
“Oh, yeah, he…I asked him one time, why he’s always ignoring Bill at events. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he usually doesn’t even greet the man—” Victor nods, because he has noticed that “—and all he said was that he doesn’t think Bill’s a good person, so he keeps the peace with Christina by not interacting with him.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, he just…he said he doesn’t like him. He wouldn’t tell me why, he said it was a personal thing between Christina and Bill. He had too’ve seen or heard something.”
“If he’s been like this the whole time…” Victor trails off, not sure where he’s going with that sentence because he feels utterly blindsided by the news.
He hadn’t ever outright hated Bill.
He thought he was a little uptight, and not particularly funny, but as far as colleague’s spouses go, he was pleasant.
He was an engineer, he was attentive in conversations, genuinely interested in a lot of the science and math that went into their missions, and was incredibly knowledgeable in his own field. He could keep up with them, intellectually, and he had seemed perfectly supportive of her during her historic stay on the ISS.
He and Christina made sense; both a little nerdy in an endearing way, both outdoorsy and adventurous, both extremely intelligent, both seemingly in love with each other.
Something in his chest twists when he remembers their wedding, the sight of her walking down the aisle, radiant and unable to control her ear-to-ear smile. She’d gotten married when she was still an astronaut candidate, so he—and the rest of the class—had been at the ceremony. She’d looked beautiful and undoubtedly in love, he’d shared extremely personal and emotional vows, and they’d rode off into the night with nothing certain in their future but promises of love and devotion to one another.
“I’ve been replaying every interaction they’ve ever had in front of me, over and over and over, trying to piece apart when…she loved him so much, I don’t understand how he could do that to her,” Reid says quietly, tilting his head back against the garage wall and closing his eyes, the defeat and disappointment in himself apparent.
They stand in silence together for a long time, both of their minds spiraling down a path of every little thing they could’ve done differently, and Victor leans his head on the wall with Reid, processing the events of tonight slowly.
She needed to reach out to her family and she needed to call the police; they deserved to know she was safe and proper documentation needed to be made for the legal battle that’s about to unfold. She needed to get a lawyer and file for divorce as soon as possible—probably needed to get Sadie out of the house, too. Bill might try to fight her on that, but they’d make sure Sadie wound up with her. And NASA PR needed to be notified, they deserved the heads up before news outlets got ahead of this information.
God, the whole this is such a mess.
“I don’t think it’s something we’re meant to understand—hitting women,” Victor replies eventually, sighing and checking his watch, realizing that it’s nearly 1 am now. “I…listen, we’ll deal with this in the morning—all the logistics. She’s safe right now, that’s the most important thing.”
“Yeah, I need to get to bed,” he agrees, opening his eyes and glancing at him, twirling her keys around his finger absentmindedly. “We’ll check on her and turn in?”
They nod in agreement, both leaving the garage and Reid clicks the light off as they walk through the kitchen, the TV still laughing in the background as they enter the living room.
Victor leans over the back of the couch, watching her sleep peacefully despite everything she went through today, her face free of the stress and worry that she seemed to carry more of recently. Her face is tilted towards the back, her forehead resting on the leather, and he scrutinizes her closely, unable to see any discomfort.
“That mark I was talking about—it’s…” Reid reaches over, turning her head to the other side gently and they both suck in a breath at the dark red and blue mark blooming across her temple, already spreading down into her eye. “Fuck, it wasn’t that—goddammit, you could barely see that earlier. I knew it—”
“Does she have a concussion?” He asks, immediately concerned about a head injury, trying to focus on this from a clinical aspect before he drives to Galveston himself and places a bullet in the back of Bill’s head while he sleeps.
He hit her—the bastard really did it.
“No, she wasn’t showing any symptoms. She was—well, not coherent, but she didn’t seem confused or dizzy. No nausea, no vomiting," he answers methodically, shaking his head, his eyes locked on her bruised face. “Goddammit, I knew it. She—fuck…”
“Are you sure?” Victor asks, leaning closer to inspect the pattern of the bruise. It definitely looks like the impact had been on her temple, and the bruising had gradually progressed down into her eye and up into her hairline. There isn’t much swelling, which is a good sign, and he tries to remind himself that bruising around the eye socket is typically most severe because of how many blood vessels there are.
You can get a black eye without enough trauma to the head to cause a concussion—it’s perfectly possible and normal.
“Yeah, I mean, she could walk fine. She wasn’t—I can’t give you a proper diagnosis because she was crying so hard, but she didn’t seem confused when she was talking. Just scared. I really don’t think she has a concussion, I wouldn’t have let her fall asleep if I did,” he assures, rubbing his eyes tiredly and stretching his arms out in a long yawn before reaching down and grabbing the remote to turn off the TV.
That answer is sufficient enough for Victor to drop the concussion talk, because Reid absolutely would not have let her fall asleep if he thought for a second that she had a concussion—Victor trusts his judgement there wholeheartedly.
He watches as Reid glances back down to her bruised temple, the soft, sad, tormented look on his face making him ask, “Are you okay?”
Regardless of how inappropriate their relationship was becoming, Tina’s still an important person in all of their lives. She was a beloved little sister to them—well, maybe just a sister to Jeremy and himself—and they all would move Heaven and Earth for each other.
“Yeah, I…” Reid exhales slowly, looking at her for a little while longer before meeting Victor’s eyes. “I need to get some sleep before I find my keys and do something stupid.”
Victor nods curtly, already having run through the scenario of driving to Galveston to confront Bill himself, but—like Reid—he’s a father, he has people relying on him, he has morals surrounding revenge and murder.
Bill deserves it, but he can’t justify the pain and stress his actions would cause his family if he drove to their house and killed him right now—and Reid’s girls sure as hell don’t need that, either.
“Understood, I’m with you,” he agrees, clapping Reid on the back and squeezing his shoulder, getting half a smile out of him.
“I already called out for her and I tomorrow, are you taking a day?”
He shakes his head, eyes glancing back at her sleeping face, answering, “No, I don’t have to be anywhere until Thursday.”
“Oh, that’s—yeah, you said that. That’s good,” he says, now also looking back at her and they stand there for a beat before he laughs humorlessly. “Well…welcome home, I guess. I’m gonna take her to Katey’s room.”
Reid lifts her easily off the couch, carrying her bridal style through his living room with the blanket still on her, and Victor watches him, the concerned crease between his eyebrows, the proud, military straightness in his stride, the way his eyes are gentle as he looks down at her, carefully maneuvering her head around doorframes.
“Reid?” He asks, not trying to allow any emotion to sneak into his voice, remaining dangerously neutral because his upcoming advice breaks literally every belief he’s ever had about a strong Christian marriage. “She may feel safer if she doesn’t wake up alone.”
He cautiously comes to a stop, adjusting her weight in his arms and looks at him with an incredulous face as he stands about two steps higher than him, before nodding slowly and continuing up the stairs without a word.
They walk in silence to his bedroom door, which Victor opens for him, and he takes one last glance at her sleeping form, unable to believe how the night had unfolded.
“Take care of her, Reid.”
“Always,” he promises.