AN: Thank you every one for the lovely reviews! This is the last chapter. I hope you guys like the ending!
"I should have known you were sleeping with her."
He stopped walking and looked at me. The lake and the desert slipped away; I was caught in his hard eyes. The odd mixture of anger and grief made his gaze look dull, lifeless.
He makes me sick, I thought, but I still love him. God, that's worse.
Greg stuffed his hands into his pockets and shook his head slowly. He clenched his jaw and walked ahead without me, because really, could he deny it? I'd seen them flirting; I'd seen the chemistry… Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but what I kept imagining was the two of them having a child together.
I know him; I know him harsh and sweaty. So, I guess I could picture him fucking her. It made me mad, it turned me on. More than that, it made me ashamed.
I walked behind him, maintaining my distance. He reminded me of some sort of forlorn Johnny Cash walking alone in the moonlight—
Alone.
I sped up and put my hand on his shoulder. He didn't stop. Before I could speak, he said: "You're upset."
"You lost a child. You're upset."
He stared at me. "Don't say it like that. That's not how it was," and a few minutes later, "Anyway, it was three years ago."
The long years hit me quite hard then. "I didn't notice anything was wrong," I said.
He put his arm around me, and said kindly, "I didn't want you to."
I put my hand on his chest. He stopped walking, and really looked at me. "Did you really not want me to?" I asked.
He was quiet. "I don't know," he said at last. "I didn't want to talk about it." He shrugged, and walked on. "How can you ever really know what you want?"
Well, that's a way to put it, I thought.
"Why didn't you want me to know?" I asked, trying, and failing, to sound nonchalant. I still didn't know, not really. Not the details. I knew he probably wouldn't tell me.
He stopped me this time, and said harshly. "If you went out with your coworker and she skipped town three weeks later, would you want everyone to know?"
My chest felt tight with rage. "I'm not everyone, Greg. I'm…"
"You weren't my boyfriend then!" he exclaimed when I didn't go on.
"But I was your friend."
He rolled his eyes and walked ahead. I didn't follow. I was more than his friend. I was more than a goddamn friend.
"I have a lot of friends, Nick," he said over his shoulder. It hurt, even though I knew he didn't mean it.
"You were happy to just go it alone then?" I called out to him.
"I wasn't happy about any of it."
"Could you just stop walking and look at me?"
He turned around. We faced one another from a few yards away, like we were about to fight a duel. We already were fighting one, I guess.
"Was it bad?" I asked.
"What?"
"When you heard about the baby."
"It wasn't really a baby yet," he muttered. He knew that wasn't what I meant. After a beat he said. "It made me think about things I hadn't thought about before." He paused, and crossed his arms over his chest. "I guess it was pretty bad."
I walked up to him in three, long strides and hugged him. He didn't hug me back; his arms were crushed awkwardly between us. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry that you lost her, and that you lost her baby."
He pressed his face into my shoulder. "I guess part of me wanted it," he muttered. "I guess once the baby's there, and you start thinking about it, a part of you will always want it."
I put my hand in his hair.
Greg was leaning against my car. I stood in front of him. Instead of looking at him, I looked at his reflection in the car door. He patted my shoulder real quick to get my attention.
He was still wet; that was probably the most beautiful thing about him.
We were alone again. We reached the scene about fifteen minutes ago; the last of the police officers had just left, so it was just the two of us. All we could do now was sit in our cars and drive away, but I missed walking.
"Do you suppose there's any way to fix this?" Greg said. He looked at me like a problem that needed to be solved.
"I'm sure there is."
He looked away and scowled. He tossed his head back against the car, and said: "Can I kiss you properly just once?"
"Fuck you."
He looked at me for a long time with a strange expression on his face. He shouldered past me, and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked up and blinked. When I realized he was close to tears, I was shocked, because I'd never seen him cry and I'd never made him cry.
We were both quiet for a long time during which he composed himself. He didn't actually cry; I was grateful. During the stretch of silence I rationalized it: grief had made him sensitive. But I didn't believe it could happen to him because of her.
"Did you love her?" I asked
"I wish she wasn't dead."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing."
He started slow and thought over every word before he said it: "I know how you're feeling," he said, which made me fucking angry, but he didn't let me interrupt. "I know you don't want to admit it, 'cause you you've already made yourself vulnerable, and, and I haven't said a word about how I'm feeling, so," he chuckled, "So I have the advantage, you know, what I mean is… I'm sorry that I was—unfaithful to you."
He paused and breathed hard. My chest ached with his words; I never thought he'd have to say them to me.
He wrapped his arms around his chest, looked at the ground and muttered. "We had a-a silent agreement that we were interested in each other. We were," he let out a harsh breath, "about to get somewhere and I…" he tightened his jaw and then said. "I shouldn't have done it, I guess."
I could sense he had something else on his mind. "What is it you're not saying?"
He shrugged. "It doesn't matter."
"Greg."
"Look," he gestured jerkily with his hands. "If you want to stop fighting than just let it be."
"That's not how it works."
"I said it wasn't important," he said. He sounded so timid now that I felt a surge of apprehension.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Please. I won't get mad."
He closed his eyes, and when I asked him once more, he said. "I'm just trying to think of a kind way to say it."
Anxiety stirred deep inside of me.
With his eyes still closed, he said shakily, "I waited for you, Nicky, for a long, long time before I slept with her."
I exhaled loudly. "Is that why you did it?"
He shook his head, and covered his eyes with one hand. "It's because she was the first woman whom I was attracted to, in, uh, in a very, very long time."
Then, in a flash I visualized it again: Greg and Riley with a baby. A family… happy. I knew then that he would have made a great father, that he would have fallen in love with her, and they'd have been happy.
But he'd fallen in love with me.
In a moment my anger slipped away, and I looked at him standing there, hiding his eyes. He was so different now from the cold, distant man whom I saw swimming in the lake. Then, he'd been beautiful, daring, bold—but his nonchalance, his composure had burned me. Now, we were equally vulnerable, both of us stripped of dignity and defense.
I was surprised that I felt lighter now, no longer angry. I realized that it was enough for me that he'd said sorry and told me the truth. That is all I needed from him, I thought, but I still had to fight for it. I smiled.
I moved his hand off his face, and said. "Would you like to kiss me properly now?"
"Please," he said and kissed me with that same sad look on his face.
I leant back against the car. He had his hands on my face, and he moved with me. I felt his weight against me, his leg between mine, his hard shoulders pressed against me. He tasted like I remembered him to taste, and his waist was still that perfect size.
As he pulled away I realized that his kisses were just the same, even though I now knew he had kissed her. He was not a different Greg just because he had fucked Riley Adams.
I placed my hands into his back pockets. "Still that perfect little ass," I said.
He laughed with his head tossed back. I thought, he's no different from whom I know; not even for having loved her.
But he'd loved her, and now she was dead. That could change a person; even him.
"Every time I start to feel a little better, I think how she was younger than both of us, and I start to feel bad again," I said.
"I feel sick about it even when I don't think," Greg said.
I looked away because I was almost crying. "What I hate is that nothing in Vegas has changed because she's dead," I said. "The days you were gone, you should have seen it, Greg, even you wouldn't be able to tell the difference… if I didn't think about it, it was like it had never happened."
"Nothing ever changes," Greg said. He looked out across the lake. "Everything's like the desert: flat. Nothing changes enough to make a difference."
"I hate it when you talk like that," I said.
"So do I. I'm sorry." He paused. "We should go."
He stepped away from me, but I asked him to hold on for a second. Then I asked him if she believed in God.
"I never asked," he said.
It was somehow easier with Warrick, knowing that he believed he was going to a better place.
"Do you believe?" I asked him. I knew he believed in ghosts.
"Sometimes," he said.
"I do."
He thought about that for a moment. "I guess I do too."
He kissed me on the forehead.
"How long will you be at work?" he asked.
"A while."
"Come over after, okay?" He sort of smiled.
I sort of smiled too. "If you're asleep?"
"Spare key," he said. "Under the—"
"Neighbour's doormat, I know."
Greg nodded. "Apartment three zero—"
"Nine. I know," I said.
"Okay." He smiled. "You do know."
We got into our cars; now that we were separated by iron and steel, I felt more alone. I followed his taillights down the highway, and didn't think. He took the exit that led to his part of town. I drove alone in the dark down the highway. Half a mile later, I stopped the car, and got out. I looked out across the expanse of sand and rock. The moonlight made me feel strange. The moon disappeared behind the clouds. I got into the car and drove.
THE END.