(Attn) Takes place around the time frame of the show now (end of Season 6), but Kathy and Elliot haven't divorced or separated, so I guess it's a bit alt. universe-ish.
I got the title and idea from a song by Mark Chesnutt called "A Hard Secret To Keep."
(Disclaimer) I tried to come up with a funny, witty way to say they're not mine, but everything's been done. So I thought I'd be a little different… Ils ne m'appartiennent pas. Oh yeah and I don't have any claim to the song by Mark Chesnutt either, so don't sue me because I have nothing.
(Note) To all my wonderful friends and betas, who, without them, this wouldn't have happened!
Jess- I don't know what I would do without you! You've given me the inspiration and the courage to do this and I can't thank you enough. I love you!
Helen- Thank you too for encouraging me to do this. You've been there to listen to me rant about my posting phobias and I appreciate it a million times over!
Katie and Vanessa- You guys have absolutely nothing to do with fan fiction, but you still read my story and told me that I didn't suck (even if I do)
A Hard Secret To Keep
I never meant for you to touch my heart.
Never meant to take one night this far.
How much longer can I live this double life I lead.
You're a hard secret to keep.
Mark Chesnutt
I pull in the driveway and glance at the clock on the radio. 3:45am. I sit in the car for a moment and try to come up with yet another lie to tell my wife. Sure, my career as a detective has worked to my advantage when it comes to explaining my absence at home during the middle of night, but my guilty conscience has me worried that all of sudden she's going to stop believing that it was "just another case". My mind plays tricks on me like that. I guess I could call it a cheater's paranoia.
That's what I am. A cheater. A catholic man, raised with good morals, a good head on my shoulders; raised to become a good husband and a good father, is nothing more than a two-timing, lying cheater. If there was one thing I always swore I'd never do, it was cheat on my wife. To me, there is nothing worse to do to a woman than that. But somehow, I got caught up in a whirlwind that I like to call Olivia and I can't seem to stop. I don't want to stop. Both Olivia and Kathy's hearts are on the line. Hell, mine is too, but I just can't bring myself to end either one of the relationships I have going on.
I sigh deeply and rub my eyes with the back of my hands and reluctantly get out of the car. I activate the alarm, walk up the back steps and quietly unlock the door. When I get into the house, I set my badge and my keys down on the kitchen counter and slowly climb the stairs to my room, already dreading being here. I'm especially not looking forward to getting into bed with my wife. I open the door and the moonlight streaming in the between the curtains is shining dimly on Kathy's face. She looks like an angel. It's moments like these that I start having second thoughts about having an affair, but then I shake the thought off as I strip down to my boxers and t shirt, grab a pillow and head downstairs, just as I do every night I come home from Olivia's. Part of me doesn't feel right for climbing into bed with my wife after I've spent the better part of the evening in Olivia's arms. That and I've never known if I talk in my sleep; I certainly wouldn't want this to be the time to find out. When Kathy asks me about being on the couch, I just tell her I didn't want to disturb her. Being the good, trusting, loyal wife that she is, she smiles, gives me a kiss and tells me that I could never disturb her. If she only knew.
I could disturb her and the whole life that she's built around me if my secret ever gets out. If I ever leave any trace of Olivia on me, make up, perfume, anything, it will be over. She'll know. So far, I've done an immaculate job of covering up any evidence and keeping up the façade of a tired, depressed detective, as to not draw any attention from my family to myself. And so far, it's worked. But there are times when Kathy does things for me that are so nice, so typical of a loving housewife that I just want to scream it out at her. When she does those things, I just feel guiltier which makes me angry. I wouldn't do that to her. I couldn't do that to her. It would mean hurting her and letting go of one of the women in my life, and right now, I don't know if I can do that.
Olivia may be a hard secret to keep, but she's my secret and I plan on keeping it that way.
I wont lie and say that the whole idea of the affair isn't enticing and exciting, because it is. It's our little secret. It's the wildest thing I've ever done, though I don't want to reduce what Olivia and I have to that. Sure, Olivia and I have hot, passionate sex that sometime lasts for hours on end, something Kathy and I never experienced, not even in the beginning. But Olivia and I, we make love too. We lay in bed sometimes after a particularly hard case and we just hold each other. Its not about the sex, its not about the words, its just about being with each other. Being able to soothe one another in a way no one else can without the need for talking.
That's how I'd venture to say it all began. Sharing something with each other than neither of us was able to get elsewhere. For me, I never wanted to bring my work life into my home, to my wife, which is why I never talked to her. For Olivia, it was always finding someone who cared enough to not run away when they found out she was packing heat and busting sex offenders for a good part of her day. So far, she hasn't found that someone, and for the past twenty years, I didn't have that someone until I found her.
Olivia and I have always been close. I would even say best friends. We've always known every little detail about each other, down to what we like for breakfast or how we like our coffee. I guess you get that after working so closely with someone for so long. After a hard day at work, it always was and still is her I want to talk to because she's right there with me throughout the whole thing. She understands and she is just as haunted by it as I am.
It was after Alex disappeared into the Witness Protection Program that the dynamics of our relationship began to change. That night after seeing Alex, we went out for dinner. Conversation wasn't something we always needed. We were comfortable to sit in silence, in part because we knew what each other was thinking anyways. As I dropped her off at her apartment, I noticed the tears in her eyes. When I asked her if she was all right, she collapsed into my arms and sobbed. I held her, contemplating what to say to make her feel better, but then I realized that holding her was all she needed. She didn't have someone to do that after a bad day. While I never talked to Kathy about what I saw at work, she was always there to hold me when she knew I needed it. Physical closeness was something Olivia and I never shared. Sure we flirted and touched each other in harmless ways, but hugging and other such things is something we never did, no matter how bad things got.
After Alex's 'funeral', I went back to her apartment with her. We were standing in the kitchen when she turned around and bumped into me. We were standing face to face, our eyes locked and that's when I knew. I saw something in her eyes that I had never seen before: love, trust, want, need, and I realized that it wasn't only in her eyes, it was reflecting out of mine. And before either of us knew what was happening, we were kissing. We kissed until I thought I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.
Sitting here on this couch in the dark living room, I shutter as I relive the memories of that first kiss and the life altering events that followed that afternoon. Although it began as just sex, it quickly escalated into something I never meant for it to be, and since then, Olivia is then only person that I want to be with. Olivia is the only person I have been with. Physically, mentally and emotionally, I now reside in her.
I can't remember the last time I made love to Kathy. I'm actually hard pressed to remember the last time I actually wanted to make love to Kathy. Olivia has been running through my veins for so long now that I haven't thought about anyone but her like that in years. Its not that I don't love Kathy, I do, I really do. She was my first everything. My first kiss, first love, first lover. I can't not have love for her. It's just not there anymore. I am not in love with her. I look at her and don't see her as anything but the mother of my children and the woman who runs my household. I feel terrible for that, but Olivia is all I see. She consumes me.
I get sick to my stomach when I think about my children and how they enter into all of this. What this will do to them when they find out. It might be in a month, it might not be for ten years, but they will eventually find out, and regardless of the timing, they're going to be hurt. Anyone who knows me, knows that I love my children above anything in this world, and there is nothing I wouldn't do for them, but to be quite honest, I don't think I can give up Olivia. I truly don't think I can. She defines me. As a person, as a cop, she is what I am made of. If names were in Webster's dictionary and you were to look up Elliot, it would say See Olivia. Of that, I am quite certain.
While in a perfect world, I could go on living my life the way it is right now, with Olivia as my secret and Kathy in the dark, I know it's going to have to come to an end soon. I know I'll have to make a decision and it's going to hurt someone. Call me a coward but I don't have the heart to leave Kathy for something so uncertain with Olivia, and I can't leave Olivia for something so fake with Kathy and my children. Which is why I've settled for both.
In the beginning, I thought having both would balance me out as a man and I would be happy, but I'm not. When I'm with Olivia, I am completely oblivious to my 'other life' and am totally happy, but when I go home, I want to be with Olivia. I guess it seems like that should make my decision, but it doesn't. I wish it were that easy. It all goes back to me being a pussy. As much as I'd love to spend the rest of my life with Olivia, I can't get up enough courage to tell Kathy that it's over. I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to hurt my children. But with the situation being what it is, I am hurting them and I'm hurting Olivia, which is something I often think about. Though I've never come out and asked her how she feels about the whole thing, I can't imagine she's ecstatic with the circumstances. What woman would be? Letting the man you've fallen in love with and spend every day with and a few nights a week with, out of your bed, your arms, so he can go back to his wife and his family, is not something that even the strongest woman could do. But like everything these days, I try not to think about it. Yeah. Right. That's why its 4:30 am and I'm sitting on the couch thinking about the things that race through my mind constantly all day, but am too busy to actually think about.
I'm procrastinating. Delaying the inevitable. I need to make a decision and I need to make it quickly. No matter which life I choose, everyone, including myself, is going to get hurt, so I should get used to that fact and just make the damned decision. But I can't. I can't. I don't know what it's going to take for me to make up my mind, but I don't want it to be something horrible like Kathy finding Olivia's makeup on my shirt, or a note she wrote to me. I want this to go relatively easy. Don't they have a book on this somewhere? Cheating On Your Wife' for Dummies. They make a book for damn near everything else in the world, why not this? Although, being as stubborn as I am, I probably wouldn't like any of their suggestions and would do it my way anyways.
Oh God, someone is coming down the stairs. I can hear the soft noise of footsteps behind me and I pray that it is one of my children. Sadly enough, it's far easier to make up an excuse to them than it is to my wife. Shit. It's Kathy. She wraps her arms around my neck and nuzzles her face into my cheek and I do my best not to stiffen in her embrace. She tells me she heard me come in a while ago and asks me what I'm doing down here on the couch, and I, of course, give her the trademark answer of getting home late and not wanting to disturb her. She moves around to sit next to me on the couch. And as predicted, she told me I could never disturb her, kisses me soundly on the mouth, and then takes my hand, gets up, and asks me to come back to bed. I sigh deeply and rub my eyes for what feels like the hundredth time tonight. I tell her to sit down and she asks me what's wrong. If something happened at work. Did I want to talk about it? All of the usual questions she asks me when she knows something is bothering me. I shake my head and take both of her hands in mine. I open my mouth to speak, which I haven't done since I told Olivia I loved her when I left her apartment over two hours ago. As I thought it would, my voice comes across as a low, crackly whisper. I tell her we need to talk and she asks me what's wrong. I take another deep breath and pause for a few moments, trying to catch a grip on reality before I take the plunge.
"I have to tell you a secret."