After dinner, the kids worked on their homework. Beau paced restlessly around the living room, trying to decide what he should do. It was still a little weird to be in the house when he wasn’t interacting directly with Connor. And it looked like there wouldn’t be any ‘direct interaction’ tonight for sure.

He didn’t know what had changed, why all of sudden he was uncomfortable. Dinner had gone great. Beyond great. Beau couldn’t remember a more pleasant dinner. He’d caught Connor’s eye at one point across the table, and the way the man was looking at him made Beau lose his train of thought.

Then Connor had shoveled his dinner into his stomach like someone was coming to take his plate away and ran from the table.

Beau could almost understand what he was running from. He should; he was the expert in running. Something about this whole setup had felt so good, so right, that it made him nervous in a way he hadn’t felt before. Maybe he should take a long walk. It was a nice night.

In the kitchen, Connor was up to his elbows in soapy water, giving the dirty dishes his full concentration. Beau resisted pointing out the brand-new dishwasher one foot to his right. “Can I help with anything?” he asked.

Connor’s shoulders tensed, and Beau could practically see him forcing himself to relax. Connor exhaled and dropped his shoulders, rolling his head around on his neck. “No. I’m good.”

“Okay.” Beau leaned against the door frame, watching Connor and listening to the sounds of a lived-in house. The television played low in the living room. Every now and then, one of the girls said something to her sister. Benji hummed to himself, swinging his feet against the rungs of the kitchen chair as he colored at the table with the same intensity Connor was directing to the dishes.

Beau prodded the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he let himself study Connor. He was slimmer than Beau but strong. His skin soft and his muscles hard under Beau’s hands. His shoulders and back were nicely muscled. From the too few chances Beau had had to see Connor shirtless, he knew the valley of his spine led to two perfect dimples and a tight ass. Beau wanted to explore the Marines insignia tattooed on the curves of his bicep with his tongue.

He groaned internally with frustration, adjusting himself in his jeans. Thinking about all the things he’d like to do to Connor, but couldn’t, wasn’t helping his mood any.

He almost wished he had a game tonight, even though his ribs ached from where he’d been checked into the boards last night, and he was still limping thanks to a slap shot he’d accidentally blocked with the one unprotected spot between the top of his skate and bottom of his shin pad.

He should leave if Connor and the kids didn’t need him.

Song lyrics about freedom and having nothing to lose floated through his head. Maybe he hadn’t been running from things his entire life, but towards something he was only beginning to get a glimpse of. Something he hadn’t thought was real. He wondered if he’d ever had anything to lose in the first place.

“There is one thing you could do,” Connor said, yanking Beau out of his spiral into self-pity. “Could you go upstairs and make sure Sean is doing his homework?”

“Yeah, sure.” That was one thing he could do.

Upstairs, Sean’s door was open and he was laughing and talking loudly like someone who couldn’t quite hear himself. “Oh, fuck you, McNabb,” he was saying.

Now Beau was no expert, but that did not sound like homework. Beau stuck his head into the room.

Sean sat on his bed facing a small monitor and holding a video game controller. On the small television, a gun sight swung right to left in some first-person shooter. Those had never been Beau’s favorite kinds of video games, so he didn’t know which one of the murder-death-kill titles it was.

The giant gamer headset Sean wore explained the one-sided conversation.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Sean frowned and yanked his controller to the left as if it would make the character move faster. “Well, better use some tongue because that’s all the action you’re ever gonna get. Damn it!”

The picture on the screen swung wildly, red explosions flashing and numbers and letters that meant nothing to Beau popping up and disappearing faster than he could follow. It was starting to give him vertigo. He walked into the room where Sean could see him.

“Hold on, McNabb,” Sean said, his face tinted red from the onscreen explosion. “Hey. ‘Sup?” he asked Beau.

“Connor asked me to make sure you were doing your homework.” He looked pointedly at the screen.

Sean rolled his eyes and started the action again. “Nothing,” he said into the microphone. “My brother sent his friend to check on me.” The person on the other end must have said something because a light pink flush crawled up Sean’s neck. “Screw you.” Pause. “You wish. And look who’s talking. Yeah? I got video of your drunk ass playing an all-Chris round of fuck, marry, kill.”

Beau didn’t need to hear the other side of that conversation. He felt like he should somehow try to get Sean to work on his homework, or at least suggest that he think about it.

“Not even, dude,” Sean said with a quiet curse at something happening on screen. “He’s fucking Captain America. Fuck!”

“Sean,” Beau said, waving his hand in front of Sean’s face. Grudgingly, he stopped playing.

“What?”

“Watch your language, dude. The door’s open, and the kids could hear you.” Except for that one time he’d been talking about when he’d almost died, Beau had barely heard Connor curse. It was a huge change from Beau’s usual setting, most of the guys on the team cursed constantly, on and off the ice. He’d had to watch himself carefully.

Sean threw a guilty look at the door. “Sorry. I thought I’d closed it.” He held up the controller to Beau. “Wanna play?”

Beau stepped closer to the television to see if he could make heads or tails of what was going on. “I don’t know. I’ve never played whatever this is.”

“Call of Duty,” Sean said, as if that explained everything. “It’s easy. Give it a shot. Hold on, McNabb,” he said into the mic. “Tell him to fu— freakin’ chill for a sec. He can jerk off to pictures of your mother.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Sean flinched. Sorry, he mouthed.

Beau bit back a laugh. It was kind of reassuring to hear Sean talking more like the kids he knew. He had been starting to think they were some kind of freakishly polite family. But really, they were just all still on their best behavior with each other, trying to figure out the new family dynamics.

Sean leaned forward and bent down between his legs, digging under the bed. With that kind of flexibility, he could have been a goalie. He sat back up, holding a second headset and controller. “Come on, have some fun.”

“Yeah, why not.” Might actually help. Shooting something might settle down this buzzing in his veins. Even virtual violence was the next best thing to a good, solid check.

He settled himself on the bed next to Sean, noticing the boy’s cheeks flushing pink again. He made sure not to touch any part of their bodies together.

“My dad used to play with me,” Sean said. “I don’t get to play much anymore ‘cause of sharing a room with Benji.” He gestured to the death and destruction on the screen. “Not really appropriate for a six-year-old, y’know? Mostly, we play racing games.”

“Does Connor play with you?”

“Nah. I haven’t asked. Why? You think I should? Think he’d want to?”

“Won’t know until you ask.”

Through the headphones, Beau heard several different voices overlapping, shouting general insults and curses at each other and the game in general. “I don’t really know how to play,” he admitted.

“S’okay. We’re almost done anyway. Hey, guys, be cool. I’m putting Beau on the line now.”

“The guy with the blue hair?” a voice asked. Beau couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Mostly, the speaker sounded young.

“The hot hockey player?” Another person asked, this one definitely male. “Shit, dude. Is he sitting on your—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Sean yelled, yanking Beau’s headset cord out of the box. He couldn’t make eye contact.

“Don’t worry, kid. I hear worse every day on the ice. I’ll ignore them if you will.”

Sean twirled the audio jack between his fingers.

“Come on. Show me how to play. I feel like killing something tonight.” Beau smiled at him.

“You, too?” Sean asked with a wry twist to his mouth. “Okay, you douchebags,” he said into the mic. “Pretend to be human for ten minutes, and I won’t go all friendly-fire on your asses.” He plugged Beau’s headset back in.

He tried to listen to what Sean was saying and follow the action at the same time but eventually, he gave up. He pretended to play, taking the opportunity to watch Sean and listen to him talking to his friends.

Sean flashed him a smile at some particularly smooth move.

“Nice!” Beau said, echoing the voices in his ear.

“I know people talk shit about these games. But I like them, you know?” Sean said. “I feel like it’s like the real thing.”

“I heard the fucking military like made it so they could you know teach people to kill. Recruit people and all,” the voice Sean called McNabb said.

“You’re a moron,” Sean said, face displaying every emotion as he twisted his body as if it could change the action on the screen. It was the most animated Beau had seen him yet.

“I’m thinking of joining up after high school,” Sean said. “Like Connor.” He shot Beau a glance to see what impact his words had.

Beau gave up any pretense of playing. “What about college?”

“I’ll give ‘em my four years and get my school paid for. That way Connor don’t have to worry about it. I looked up some of the stuff he did, used to follow his unit.”

“Send him over, I’ll kick his ass, too,” McNabb said over the headset.

“Bite me, McNabb. My brother is a thousand times cooler than you’ll ever be. He was a Marine. I bet he’s killed lots of people. You can’t even hit Osier and he sucks, you fuckin’ pussy.”

Sean did something and bullets and flames flew from his screen. Judging from the cursing over the headset, he’d killed someone, or several someones. “Eat a dick, Blane, you pussy. That’s how you do it. Damn, imagine how good that feels in real life!”

He turned to give Beau a high-five and his headset was yanked from his head. Both he and Beau jumped.

Connor stood behind them, eyes ablaze.

“You think killing people is funny?” he demanded.

Beau had never seen him this angry.

“It’s just a game,” Sean said, sounding unsure and backing up from Connor’s rigid anger. “Don’t mean nothing.”

“You think killing people is a good fucking game? Something you wanna do on your spare time and laugh about it? You think this—” he searched for the word, “this game is anything like the real thing?”

Sean shook his head with a scowl. “C’mon. No, they’re not real. But, I mean, you did it, right? For real?”

For the first time, Beau realized that Connor may have actually killed people.

“Those games should have some kinda way to make it really feel real. You know what it feels like to get shot?”

“No,” Sean said.

Connor turned to Beau.

“Only by a twenty-two,” Beau answered quickly. “My cousin grazed me on my arm when we were kids.”

“It feels like you were hit by a truck. Even through the body armor. Then you feel nauseous, and your brain gets all foggy. Every time you move, something hurts, sometimes everything. Do you know what a bullet does when it gets inside, starts bouncing around your organs?”

To Beau’s disbelief, Sean rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m not saying it doesn’t suck. But it must be pretty cool to take down the bad guys. To know you’re doing good. Plus, it’s not like you were being shot at for nine years. I bet half the time you were sitting at a desk, or scrubbing floors or something.”

Connor shook his head. “You have no fucking idea what I do, I mean did, do you?”

Sean stood up, face to face with Connor. “No. I don’t. And whose fault is that? You left when I was like Benji’s age. And when you did come home, you didn’t say shit to me. I followed you around like a fucking puppy, looking for anything. A scrap of conversation, ten minutes of time. Anything. I thought you were hot shit.”

“Yeah? Well, I guess now you know better. I’m just a grunt who got lucky and didn’t get his ass killed. Way better men than me weren’t so lucky.” Connor pointed at the screen, where bullets kept flying.

“You know what else I did, that they don’t show on this fucking game? I had to call my buddies’ parents, parents of men in my squad, and tell them their son is dead. Tell them what a great guy he was and how he died in service to his country. When I was in the State, I had to do it in person. Even off-duty. I did it. I talked to every fucking family I could find because they deserved that!”

Beau wasn’t sure that Connor was really all the way with them right now. The way his eyes were focused on some spot over Sean’s shoulder made Beau wonder if he was seeing something different than they were. “Hey, Con—” He tripped over the headphone cord, ripping it out from the console.

The sounds of gunfire, explosion and the robotic male voices of the video game characters yelling at each other blasted into the room.

Connor flinched hard, reaching out to Sean and pulling him behind his body. “Get down!”

Beau searched frantically for the power switch on the monitor.

“Fuck yeah!” one of Sean’s friends yelled. “Kill the bastards!”

With a curse, Beau yanked the power cord to the console out of the wall. The silence was deafening.

Connor straightened up slowly, his eyes hard. “Stay here,” Connor ordered both of them. He stomped away and up the stairs to his room.

“What should we do?” Sean asked, collapsing back onto the bed.

“I think we should stay here.” There was more going on here than Connor being angry with Sean.

“What’s going on?” Fiona asked from the hallway. “We heard Connor yelling.”

“He’s pissed at me,” Sean answered. “Because he doesn’t like my game.”

Connor came storming back down the hallway clutching a shotgun. “Is that what you think it is?” He didn’t even seem to see his little sister. “Get up,” he snapped at Sean.

“Why?”

“Get the fuck up!” Connor yelled, yanking Sean up by the front of his shirt. As Connor frog-marched him down the stairs, Fiona flattened herself against the wall to avoid getting knocked over.

“Beau?” she asked, voice quavering.

“It’s okay,” he said, not having any idea if it was okay at all. They heard the back door slam. He had to get out there and do something. “Fiona, I need your help, okay?”

She nodded.

“Keep Micah and Benji inside. Give them some ice cream, find something they want to watch on TV. Whatever you have to do.”

“Do it!” Connor’s yell came in through the open window.

“And make sure the doors and windows are shut, got it?”

She nodded again.

Beau bent down to look her in the eye, his hands on her shoulders. “I know you can do it, Fee. They look up to you. I’ll go fix this.” How he was going to fix this, he had no idea. The mental laughter in his head had a definite edge. His heart pounded. “You go down first. Hurry.”

She ran down the stairs, Beau right behind her. He tried to act casual as he passed by the door to the living room.