There was no way for Red to prepare himself for this conversation, no way to guess where it would lead. It was as paralyzing as it was exhilarating. A chill ran through him from head to toe, as if his entire body had been doused with icy water. It stole his breath, sent his mind reeling in a dizzy tailspin, and raised goosebumps on the back of his neck.
Lizzy had never acknowledged Red's connection to Agnes out loud—it had usually been 'my baby' or 'my daughter' or something just as paradoxically pointed and vague. Most of the time she didn't even bother hiding behind the facade that Agnes was Tom's around Red, and when she did, it was only when she was particularly upset with him. She'd been every bit a woman resentful of and estranged from her former lover. Sometimes it surprised him that no one ever caught on.
He didn't expect her to acknowledge his connection to Agnes now, not when everything was finally said and done. He didn't expect it to ever happen; it was easier to leave it unspoken, especially at this point.
Red had never spoken of their connection either, of course. He and Lizzy spent her entire pregnancy skirting around the truth rather than confronting it. Neither of them had even wanted to think about dealing with the reality head on, let alone face it plainly enough to have any kind of frank discussion. The kind of discussion Lizzy was obviously interested in having now.
Red worked his jaw, but no words would come, no sound at all. He was at a loss the likes of which he had rarely experienced in his life. Lizzy had turned her attention away from his shell-shocked face almost as soon as she'd spoken and focused on the carvings on the coffee table instead, still rubbing at her scar.
"She rolled over on her own for the first time the other day," she said. "She laughs all the time, smiles all the time. You should… you should be there to see it. You and I… we're the only family she has."
Red cleared his throat, and when he finally managed to speak, his voice was hoarse. "You didn't want me to be there before."
"You didn't want to be there," she shot back.
"That's not true—"
"Well, you sure as hell made it seem like it was true."
Red frowned. "I don't understand."
"The day I told you I was pregnant. Your knee-jerk reaction, you… you implied I shouldn't have the baby. I know you'd do anything for her now, I know you love her, but that day… Tell me, Red—how else was I supposed to take it?
"You knew as well as I did there was a chance this would happen when we…" Her gaze stayed fixed on the table between them and she swallowed hard. "You're a grown man. You know where babies come from. But you still said—"
"I… The things I said to you that day weren't… appropriate. I tried to apologize—"
"You did. And I appreciate that. I do. I said a lot of things I never should have said to you either. And it's no excuse, but I want you to understand that I was terrified. I had no idea what to do once I didn't have you anymore."
"You always had me."
"Not the way I wanted," she said, ruefully. "I thought… after everything we'd been through… that once I was exonerated, you and I would at least try to—"
"Lizzy," he interrupted. She pressed her lips together in a thin line; her chin trembled a bit, betraying her best efforts to appear composed.
Her voice trembled, too, when she said, "I fell in love with you when we were on the run. Did you realize that?"
Red's heart clenched. "No," he answered, barely more than an exhalation. "I didn't."
He had turned those fateful words over and over in his head—her last words to him before she died—and tried to justify them, to explain them away as anything other than what they appeared to be. Somehow, it was easier to wrap his mind around the idea that she would tell him she cared for him, nothing more. She'd done so before, after all. The alternative was simply inconceivable.
"Of course. Of course you didn't," she said, wiping furiously at the tears that had spilled down her cheeks, agitated and annoyed.
"I'm not the only one who doubted…"
"What on earth did you think I…"
They both trailed off into silence, having spoken at the same time. She shook her head.
"You pushed me away when we got back, Red. You acted like everything was business as usual, no time to breathe, to settle down, just right back to the way things were; I couldn't do that, not after we… And then that asshole jumped me in the parking lot and the goddamn doctor all but lectured me about being more careful for the baby's sake. Like being attacked was my choice. I've never felt so alone in my entire life.
"I didn't even know for sure that I was pregnant until that night. Hell of a way to find out, huh?" She met Red's eyes for a moment and clenched her jaw before looking away again. "You were the first person I told about the baby, did you know that?"
"You didn't tell me she was mine," he said, helpless, not confirming, not denying.
"I wanted to! I tried to! You didn't want to hear it—you grabbed onto the possibility that she was Tom's like it was some kind of lifeline, like you wanted no part of her at all."
"That wasn't the reason. Please tell me you knew that wasn't the reason."
"Then what was?"
Red took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his mouth. "Lizzy, you… you weren't the only one who was terrified. You and I were on the run together for months. My associates already doubted me; once you were exonerated, it only got worse. Can you imagine how they would've reacted if rumors got out that you were pregnant right after you were free? If they started looking into it too closely and realized the dates didn't quite add up? Or rather, that they did?
"You saw what happened with Kirk. It would've been a thousand times more dangerous for you, for Agnes, if anyone suspected your daughter was also mine. Especially Kirk. Good Lord. He would've gutted me no matter what I tried to tell him."
"You didn't care about any of that when we were on the run."
"Of course I cared. I worried about it all the time. It was always in the back of my mind."
"It didn't stop us though, did it?"
"No. No, it didn't."
Lizzy reached out for her glass, the scar on her wrist an angry red from her nervous rubbing; Red winced at the sight. She took a calming sip of the liquor and leaned back on the couch for the first time that evening.
"So you did know she was yours, even in the beginning."
"Yes. But you made your choice," he said, his voice measured. "I tried to accept it."
"It wasn't the choice I wanted to make."
"Then why did you?"
Her eyes snapped up to meet his. "What was I supposed to do, just sit around and wait for you to pull your head out of your ass?"
"No, of course not. But Tom?" Red never did quite get the hang of saying the man's name in a way that didn't sound like he was talking about a piece of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Lizzy usually didn't take kindly to his tone, but this time all she did was give a soft snort of a laugh. It made him all the more curious about what drove them apart.
Unfortunately, her amusement faded quickly and she side-stepped Red's question the same way she had been doing since the day Tom Keen walked out of her life.
"Why couldn't you have just explained it to me like this then, instead of trying to keep me at arm's length? Do you know how foolish you made me feel, for letting my guard down? For falling for you?"
"I was afraid," he said, haltingly, "that if I tried to explain my reasoning, you would talk me out of it."
Lizzy's eyes widened and her breathing sped up, like she was racing headlong towards a panic attack. She put her glass back on the coffee table, her hand shaking as she did so. "You would've… Would you have let me talk you out of it?"
Red's frown deepened, the corners of his lips pulling down in that way he couldn't fight, the way that meant he was a razor's edge away from breaking down.
"More likely than not," he said, miserably.
