Title: Love of my life

Rating : M, at least in later chapters

Pairing Natalia / Nick

Other: My take on why Natalia was still seeing Nick

ON THE MORNING BEFORE NIcK'S DEATH

Natalia smiled at her husband. Her EX-husband, she reminded herself. For all the water under the bridges, she just could not stop from thinking about him as her husband, and herself as a married woman. Strange, but true. She still missed him badly, and as horrible as he was sometimes, they'd had some wonderful times together.

Sometimes she still doubted her decision to call the police that horrible evening. But she had sincerely thought he was about to kill her, and she'd just tried to survive. From there it had been like a snowball rolling downhill, and she was more like a bystander.

Before she knew it, Nick was in jail, she was a divorced woman, and Nick's father had given her money for the downpayment on the tiny apartment in a good area as a means of making amends. She still got along well with Nick's mother, she knew her son had a volatile temper, and had wanted Natalia to come and stay with her at first.

But Natalia had wanted a new life, and had opted to accept the apartment.

And then Nick had presented himself in the Miami Dade lab that day. When she saw him, all these mixed feelings had burned through her body, anger, anxiety, want, desire, loneliness.

She'd been strong that day, and had told him NO. But slowly, slowly, with Nick behaving well and even being nice to her, her defences had worn down, and her loneliness and desire had become the dominant feelings.

He'd asked her out for a lunch date two weeks ago, to discuss some economical matter that they still needed to settle. He'd been his old, fantastic self.

He'd bought her lunch at a really nice restaurant, he'd been telling her jokes until she'd had tears in her eyes. At dessert and coffee, suddenly he'd grown serious.

"Natalia, I know you have difficulties believing me, but I don't ever want to go back to jail again. I'm trying to change and to get my temper and my anger under control, you know? It's not easy, but I'm trying, and I'm hoping you'll help me, please?"

He saw she was hesitating and continued:

"You don't actually have to do anything. I'm just hoping we can continue working on this relationship of ours, to become friends again."

Natalia was definitely melting, and he noticed that immediately.

She answered:

"Let's take it all in babysteps,, ok Nicky?

He smiled at her, his softest smile. She'd called him Nicky, this was going well. Yes, indeed.

All that that swirled through her head right now.

Nick had just called her to ask her to come over that same night, to have dinner at his place, with a glass of wine, and just to talk. No funny business. He promised.

Both Anya and Cristina were going to a party tonight, and Natalia had planned on filling her evening with boring paper work.

Before her brain could kick in, she heard herself accepting his offer:

"Ok, I'll just come over for dinner, and NO funny business, hear me?!"

She heard Nick laughing at her on the other end of the line:

"Yes, Ma'am!" His mock salute made her laugh back, and she said:

"I'll bring the wine, ok?"

And with that, she hung up.

All through the day she'd been giddy and nervous, she hoped it didn't show. She was hoping this would be a good evening, they had been talking nicely to each other at the crime scenes they worked together, and lately, Nick had brought her sandwiches twice when she'd had to work through lunch. If it wasn't for that scar on her left arm, and another one on her back, and the fact that her arm was still hurting when it rained outside, things could have been just like before.

Natalia sighed. She was lonely. Her relationship with Eric had not worked out, and they were both at fault. Sex had been great though. Natalia never thought she'd find another man who could take care of her like Nick had, but Eric was really something. Contrary to popular belief, her dinner date with Ryan had been just that, a dinner date and nothing more. They had both realised about ten minutes into the date that "friendship" was what they were aiming for. SO since that time with Eric, she'd been celibate. No fun, especially since Natalia was a very sensual being.

That night before grabbing a cab over to Nick's place, she showered, fixed her legs and all the rest, and made sure her hair was put up just like Nick liked it.

He'd always been obsessive about her hair, he hadn't liked it when they went out and she curled her hair and let it down. He had wanted it up in a nice sixties style bun, or in a pony tail. He'd always been jealous, even before he became violent.

Now of course with the support group and the shrink and so on, she knew that the writing was on the wall way before he actually raised his hand at her. Even his promises that it would never happen again where standard, but she had always believed him. Until that night when she'd thought he'd kill her, and had run out of the house in her short summer night gown, over to the neighbor's house, who'd called the police. They'd been there in 5 minutes flat, while she was still shaking and crying and from there, they had taken care of all the practical details.

But there was no way to mend her soul.

She put on a nice cream white cotton dress, with a grey inset just under her bust, and some sandals. She grabbed her purse and was out the door the second she heard the cabbie honk the horn.

When she arrived at Nick's place, she was impressed. She'd been there before, on very short visits, but today he'd cleaned the entire flat up to a T (he always was a neat freak) and had even bought some beautiful flowers.

Nick had secretly seen the flowers as an investment, since Maxine was stopping by the next day for lunch, to impress both women.

He'd been at loss of words when he'd seen Natalia walking through the door. She was so beautiful. She was his. Actually she wasn't, and he'd have to get used to it. But he still thought of her as his.

If those idiots next door hadn't called the cops, she'd still be his.

He felt a flash of anger rush through his veins, and did his best to hide it. Natalia's Nickradar was still acutely finetuned to his moods, and she'd been out of there in two seconds if she saw him getting worked up.