A/N: Hope everyone enjoyed the premiere last week! Thanks so much for reading!


Half an hour later, Jake is up and dressed and on the road, having banged on Mal's door and woken the entire household. Leslie meets him at the door, her eyes red-rimmed and her face drawn, and leads him through the house and into the kitchen, pointing out a note stuck to the fridge.

"I figure the police won't believe me," she says, a tone of hopelessness in her voice. "He left a note."

Jake bends over to peer at the note, then takes a picture of it with his phone before shifting the magnet and picking up the sheet of paper. He holds it close to his face, inspecting the messy scrawl and the words it spells.

Girls,
Family emergency in Brigus. Aunt Ellie needs me. Take care of each other—I'll be back soon.

Love,
Dad

"Can you show me something else with his writing?" Jake asks, and Leslie hurries to the recycle bin, pawing through stacks of newspapers to find another note, written on a similar sheet of paper. This one is a grocery list: eggs, milk, and so on. Still rushed, still messy, but the letters are fully formed, the lines reasonably straight.

She watches him anxiously, wringing her hands. "I know something's wrong," she says, and then points behind the kitchen table at something Jake hadn't noticed, a chair tipped over on its side, a glass on the floor in a pool of water. He photographs that, too, as Leslie goes on, "He wouldn't just leave like this. It doesn't make any sense, it's not like him, I didn't know what—"

Jake finishes what he's doing, crosses to where she stands, and takes both of her hands, holding them gently and rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. "Hey. I believe you. If you say something's wrong, then something's wrong. Where's your sister?"

"She had a sleepover last night. I asked her to spend the day there—I didn't want her to see this, at least not until we have more of an idea..."

"Okay. That's good. I'm gonna take you to the office now, and my dad and Rose will come over here to see if they can find anything else. Is that okay?"

She nods, squeezing his hands and looking miserable, and he draws her into a hug.

"We're going to do everything we can," he says quietly, running his hand over the back of her head, "and we won't stop until we have something. I promise."

She takes a breath, softening briefly, and then steps back, nodding with her head down. "Thank you."

Without another word, he leads her back to the car, driving in the direction of the office. When they're almost there he says, "Are you hungry?"

"I don't know," she says absently, staring out the window. "I'm not sure I could eat."

"It's a bit early for the kitchen to be open, but I can sneak in to make some eggs, or a grilled cheese... and that's the extent of my culinary skills."

She looks over, watching his face for a minute while he pretends he doesn't notice, and then says, "I could use some coffee. And I'll try a bite or two. Since you're going to all that trouble."

There's a little teasing in her voice and he glances over to see the ghost of a smile on her lips. He grins for just a second before wiping it off his face as he finds a place to park on Water Street. Unlocking the front door to the Duke, he holds the door for her and then walks past to lead the way into the kitchen. He drags a stool out from a corner, placing it on the other side of the prep table, and motions for Leslie to sit.

Then he heads to the fridge, opening the door and sticking his head in. "So, which menu item can I interest you in this morning?"

"Hmm," she says softly. "You pick."

"Well, I can never say no to a good grilled cheese." He grabs a block of cheddar and a pound of butter from the fridge, then turns to get a loaf of bread from the shelf. He stacks everything in his arms and carries it back to the prep table, setting his pile of ingredients down and rifling around for a knife, while Leslie leans her forearms on the table and watches him.

"Do you have any idea whether your dad was tangled up in anything dangerous?" he asks as he cuts open the cheese and starts to slice it on a chopping block.

Leslie looks down, grimacing. "It's... kind of embarrassing."

Jake watches her for a second, working by feel, then looks down again before he can cut a finger off. "Well, if you'd rather just talk to my dad about it, that's fine with me. Whatever you're comfortable with."

She doesn't reply for a bit too long, and when Jake looks up curiously she's staring at him with soft eyes. "I appreciate that. But no. I... I trust you..."

He isn't sure if he should be flattered, or offended that it sounded like she was saying she eats human babies or something else unimaginably terrible. He focuses on the food.

"He's been playing poker. Spending most nights at it. He wouldn't tell me anything, but I found a few loan tickets in his pockets when I was doing the laundry. He was in pretty deep."

"Ah," Jake says as he turns around and starts to grill the sandwiches. "Yeah, we've had some dealings with those folks. It's a substantial racket for this town."

"Will... are they gonna hurt him?" she says to his back, and he presses one of the sandwiches down with a spatula.

He doesn't answer until both sandwiches are a perfect golden brown, and he slides them from the griddle onto plates, carrying them over to the table and rounding it to set one plate in front of Leslie, placing the other a few inches over and pulling another stool up to the table. He sits down facing her, their knees brushing, and he lets one of his hands fall to rest on her knee. "I don't really know," he says gently. "Some guys have gotten a bit roughed up, but we can't prove anything, obviously. Nothing... uh, nothing serious, that we know of."

Her head falls again, her eyes closing, and Jake slides forward on his stool, reaching for her and folding her in his arms. She leans in to him, her fingers twisting in the fabric of his t-shirt, and he just holds her, running one hand up and down her spine.

When she shifts against him, it's to press one hand to his chest as she raises her head, looking into his eyes from so close he stops breathing altogether. The same hand slides up to curl around behind his neck, and she closes the distance between them, pressing up into him, their lips and their chests and she's mostly in his lap and kissing him like it's the cure she needs.

His hand is slipping down over her jean-clad thigh to secure her against him when there's a throat clearing in the doorway and they break apart with a gasp. The door to the kitchen is just swinging shut when they look up, and they have a few seconds to straighten themselves out before the door is pushed open again, Mal rubbing awkwardly at his neck.

"Uh, we're here," he says. "Whenever you're ready."

"Yeah, we're right behind you," Jake replies, eyes on Leslie.

She is blushing crimson and avoiding his eyes, and when Mal is gone she mumbles, "Sorry."

Please don't apologize for the best thing that has happened to me all year. Why do we keep apologizing to each other for something we both clearly want? This is so ridiculous and now is not the time... but there will be a time.

Without a word, he picks up both plates and backs into the door, pushing it open for her to pass by, and then leading the way to the door to the office stairs. Upstairs, Mal is working on the bulletin board while Rose stands over the laptop, typing away at something.

"Hey," Jake says, putting the plates down on the table and pulling a chair out for Leslie.

Before she can sit, Rose comes over to wrap her arms around Leslie and say, "How are you holding up, sweetheart?"

"Not so great," she mumbles against Rose's shoulder as Malachy raises an eyebrow at Jake and is met with a glare.

"What you got?" Jake says.

Malachy explains what he's got on the board, and Rose tells them what she found looking into the cell phones of loan sharks they've dealt with before. There's some chatter that sounds promising, so Mal and Rose plan to visit the bar that acts as their home base. After checking that Jake and Leslie will be okay on their own, they head out, and Jake stares at the board, leaning against one side of the table while Leslie sits at the other end.

"You don't have to stay with me," she says after a minute.

"I do, actually," he says matter-of-factly, and she turns to look at him, eyeing him as she gets up and crosses the room, walking toward him and then invading his space, moving forward until their legs are interlocked and she can curl her fingers in his shirt again.

She apologizes first this time, breathing, "Sorry," on his lips before they touch.

He allows it long enough to drink her in, locking his arms around her waist so she has nowhere to go when he says, "Please stop apologizing." She frowns at him like that doesn't make any sense at all, and he asks, "What... are you apologizing for, Leslie?"

"I thought—" she starts, but stops short and shakes her head. "I... I don't know."

"You don't need to." He brings his hands up to cup her face, kissing her again and thinking that he's in so, so much trouble. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't want to."

"I just..." she murmurs, face tipped up and flushed pink, eyes closed. "It's probably a mistake."

Ouch. He drops his hands, resting them on the edge of the table behind him, but she's leaning up against him and nestled between his legs and, God, how is he supposed to function. "Not to me," he says flatly, and she blinks open her eyes, letting them meet his for the briefest instant before bouncing off and away.

Bringing her hands up, she pushes off his chest and steps back. If it is at all possible, her blush seems to deepen as she lowers her head and turns away, mumbling, "I'll be right back," and all but running to the bathroom.

When she comes out a few minutes later, she's more of a normal colour, though her eyelashes are dark and wet and her nose is still pink. She stands in the middle of the room, clasping her hands in front of her and twisting at the waist, edging away and away and then forcing herself to face him again, though she doesn't meet his eyes. "I'm upset about my dad," she says like an offering, and then delivers the next words as if she's reciting from a script, "but I don't want to give you the wrong idea. I think it's better if we stay friends."

His choices are to freeze solid or to reveal way too much and never be able to come back from it, so he freezes, his only movement his Adam's apple bobbing as he works to swallow. "Yeah," he says when he can get his lips to form words. "Sure."

She sits back at the table, head down, and Jake walks over to the window, staying there quiet and still until Mal and Rose return.

They come back with news, though it's not the best; the loan shark has sent Leslie's dad on a job in lieu of payment, driving halfway across the island and back again. He's on his way, so there's not much they can do right now, but the shark knows they're on the case and that he'll probably want to avoid any unnecessary mischief. Not as threatening as cops, but better than nothing.

Leslie's sister is able to stay with her friends, so Leslie comes home with the Doyles for the rest of the day and overnight. Tinny has been at home, finally old enough to be left alone, and she grudgingly agrees to spend time with them and help keep Leslie's mind off the situation. Card games hit a little too close to home, as does Monopoly, but Scrabble hits just the right note.

That gets them through until dinner, after which Jake drives Leslie back to her house to pack a bag. He follows her upstairs, but stays in the hallway, trying to give her space and privacy. On his way up the stairs, while he's avoiding staring at her behind, he thinks that he'll look at the pictures on the walls in the hallway. Everyone has pictures on the walls in the upper hall, right?

Not the Bennetts. Then again, they just moved in. That explains it, right?

Either way, he ends up staring at a spot on the wall, hands clasped behind his back, when he hears from the bedroom, "Hey." He moves to the door slowly, peeks inside just in case she's talking to someone else entirely. She's sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap, and she says, "You can come in."

He does, trying not to gawk as he looks around at the place where she lives. Her room is almost as plain as the hall; there are stacks of boxes in the corners, and while everything is neatly put away, the only sign of individuality is a photo on her bedside table. He leans over to pick it up, seeing a picture of a young Leslie with her sister and both parents. When he puts it back down, he faces her, and she pats the bed at her side. He sits down with a generous allotment of space between them, looking around the room again from that vantage point.

He thinks about the other parts of the house that he's seen, the living room and kitchen where everything is in its place, art on the walls and coasters on the coffee tables. It looks like the picture of a family home, but only where others might see. He almost doesn't even want to say anything about it, but when he looks at her she looks so sad and lost and he says, "You do a lot for them, don't you?"

She blinks, looking at him like he just pulled her back from somewhere far away, and shakes her head. "No, not really." Off his incredulous look, she adds, "My mom was gone, and my dad needed help. I did what anyone would."

"I don't think you give yourself enough credit," he says quietly, leaning his forearms on his thighs and staring at the floor.

After a moment, she says, "Anyway. It's just the way it is. I don't mind."

He loves her, he realizes suddenly. It's not a crush, a problem to be dealt with; it's love, and there's no getting out of it. Somehow, even though he doesn't see it ending well for him, it's a relief to realize this and to accept it. As difficult as it's been, sometimes—as difficult as he thinks it's going to get—he is so happy to love her.

He's never been in love, and at times thought he never would be (he's too young to think things like that, but it just felt true, you know?), but he knows there's value in it.

If he has to love her quiet and still—and he does, he knows that—he will find the value in it. It won't be far from the surface.

(Having realized this, he realizes also that he will tell her. Before this ends, before they part, if they do—he will tell her. He draws some small amount of strength from that. She will know—eventually.)

Clearing his throat, he looks over at Leslie just as she's turning away, and he stares at her for a second before saying, "I'll leave you to it, then."

She nods, and he walks back out into the hall, sitting down on the top step of the staircase. She appears behind him before long, and he takes her bag and waves her down the stairs.

Back at the Doyle house, the couch is made up for sleeping, and Jake sets her bag down beside it before fetching another set of blankets and a pillow, arranging his own bed on the floor. She sits near her pillow and watches him in silence.

"You don't have to do that."

He just looks at her—I do, actually—and she sighs, staring at her hands for a second before lying down on the couch with her back to him and pulling the covers up to her ear. He lies down, on the other side of the room, and stares at the ceiling until he finally manages to drop off to sleep.

When he wakes up, it's to a room full of light and a gentle presence close by. He's lying on his side, facing the front of the house and Leslie just inches away. He doesn't know how she got there, or what she meant by it, but she curves toward him like a parenthesis, fast asleep and peaceful, and he can't even lie there and appreciate it because it's killing him. He rolls to the other side, pushing up onto his knees and then his feet and fleeing to the kitchen, where he stays until the house wakes up.

They don't mention it.