At first this was one chapter .. but then it got too long, so I had to split it. And now that I split it … I can juice it up. So here's part one.
Horrible 3
Saturday morning and the skies were gray. The mood was as sleepy and dreary as the weather outside. Addison sat quietly on the couch while the rain beat on the windows. A seventies tune played on the stereo in the background. It never rains in California, but girl don't they warn ya, it pours, man it pours. She ran her hand over her forehead and closed her eyes.
"Yeah, it pours alright," she said aloud. "Stirs up all the mud and gunk and leaves it in the gutter."
"Oh, come on now," Kevin called to her from the kitchen. He walked over to the couch and handed her a cup of coffee and then sat down across from her in the chair. "It's not that bad," he added.
"Kevin you found me sitting in a tub full of water after I drank a bottle of wine. If you hadn't come over, who knows what would have happened," she rambled stopping only to take a sip of the coffee.
"Eventually you would have gone to bed," Kevin informed her.
"You don't know that," Addison argued.
"Have you ever had a suicidal thought before? And I'm not talking about a casual inkling, I mean, a planned out … I'm going to kill myself tonight thought," Kevin asked her.
Addison didn't answer for a second, tilting her head in thought. "No," she said finally. "I guess not."
"So then, last night, you would have gotten out of the tub on your own and gone to bed," Kevin said sitting back on the chair.
"Alone and cold," she stated setting the cup down.
"Yeah, well, there is that," he agreed with a smile. He watched her stare sightless at the cup of coffee on the table. She's thinking again, he surmised not making any further comment. He toyed with the idea of sitting next to her. But today doesn't feel like a cuddle day, he noticed as he watched her … without being so obvious. Addison picked at the cup and held it like a pacifier, holding it like the warmth from the liquid was the thing providing her any comfort. I want to be providing that comfort, but today she needs to ask for it, he decided. Today, I need to feel needed.
"Kev, I'm ready to talk about things," she said setting the cup down on the coffee table.
Kevin nodded and said nothing. His training had taught him to be an observer and a listener. If Addison was ready to talk, he wasn't going to do anything to stop took a sip of his coffee and shifted in the chair. As much as he wanted to hear this, he wasn't really sure if he wanted to hear this. The outcome of such a conversation could mean a hundred different things for their relationship. I could come out of this alone, or just as a friend or still in a relationship with this red head that I'm crazy for, he thought as he watched her fidget on the couch. She's freaked, she may even back out, he considered just before she started to talk.
…!...
His training taught him not to judge. Sure he had opinions and with enough evidence he could come to a conclusion about a thing or two but he never judged … or at least he didn't verbalize it. He never put his opinions on paper because they would never hold up in a court of law. And right at this moment, they were both on trial. After hours of trying to convince her that she wasn't that bad of person, he felt mentally beat. Thank god I know how to baffle a person with bullshit, he thought after surviving the first round of the inquisition.
First it was Addison spilling her guts about everything she had done that was wrong, rehashing the Noah story and then reminding him about the Wyatt kiss, which completely steamed his butt. Then she detailed the whole sleep in the on-call room with the interns and her ex husband's best friend incident … er incidents that completely stunned him since he never took her for one to just sleep around. Then she went on and on about how she met Derek in college and bla bla bla. He found out a lot of things about Addison he never really wanted to know and some that completely intrigued him. In the end, none of it changed the way he felt about her and in some ways made him fall in love with her all over again.
Then it was his turn to 'fess up about his past life which, other his one affair, was a lot more uneventful. In fact, Kevin didn't have much to talk about. He lived a normal life for the past thirty some years. Had a handful of girlfriends, had his heart broken a couple of time and slept with his co-workers wife. The last relationship he had been in before Addison was over a year ago and while he had been on a few dates here and there, he hadn't found anyone that twisted his heart in a knot in a very long time. He admitted that to her freely and then sat back and waited for the repercussions.
"Twist your heart in a knot?" Addison repeated with a stunned look on her face. "I twist your heart in a knot? Is that good or bad?" she asked brushing her red hair off her face.
Kevin leaned back against the chair and rested his arms out of over the back. "Considering that I may get dumped in the next five minutes," Kevin said exhaling loudly. "This thing between us … since that first day I met you …it consumes me in a way that just makes me happy and shit, I've never been in a relationship that made me happy so unconditionally."
"Even when you think I'm cheating?" Addison asked rhetorically.
Kevin sat forward in the chair and leaned his arms on his thighs. "You told me that you laughed at Noah's wife because she didn't know what was happening under her nose. After my affair, I wondered if Tandy's husband ever even knew what his wife was up too on all those nights. Maybe that's why he got shot. Maybe he didn't know how to size up a situation. Addison I wouldn't be good at what I do if I didn't notice a difference in my girlfriend. I've never been that guy that was so out of touch I missed the small stuff. I know when you want to talk about things or when work has stressed you out so much that conversation is just the wrong thing. I know when you want to cuddle naked in bed and when you'd rather just have the blanket wrapped around you. I know that look in your eye when you're distracted and want me to leave and when you wished I'd walk into your office and bang you on top of your desk with the blinds open," he informed her solemnly. "If you need something else in your life then that's not me … but my impression is that you need someone like that in your life. You want someone like that in your life because too many of the men from your past didn't know you very well."
The expression on Addison's face was priceless and Kevin wished he had a camera to capture it, although it would forever been seared into his memory. In many ways she was like a suspect that he had just cracked. That lost look in her eyes slowly melted into an understanding of sorts. And then on cue … she got a little angry.
"You're not the only one that has noticed things you know," she said as her cheeks grew hotter by the minute. "You like to be in control and wave your authority around. You want to tell me what to do … and I'll fight you on it Kevin, even when I know you're right because I don't need to you rescue me all the time. You always want to play the devil's advocate which drives me crazy. You keep secrets from me about your work, even though I tell you nearly everything," she spouted off. She was trying to match wits with him, even though she was barely on the same level. "You don't really like wine, but you'll drink it because you think it will make you fit in better with me. And despite that you carry a gun for a living, you're intimidated by a powerful woman with a trust fund and my brother who has no business trying to pick my boyfriends for me." Addison jumped up from the couch and paced around behind it with a ticked off look in her eye. She waved her index finger in the air.
"I'm a strong woman and I work in a field that has been dominated for years by men. I need to be assertive. I need to be able to compartmentalize my feelings and not get emotionally involved because I'm dealing with people's lives. I've lost patients and its hurt me, but I can't let it get to me because there is another patient just waiting down the hall. Waiting for me to save their life," she ranted. Somehow during her tirade she walked all the way around the couch and ended up standing right in front of him.
"And sometimes when I come home from all of that, I just want to be normal, and do normal things," she said softly. She dropped down to her knees in front of him. "I want to come home and know that my guy is going to pick up the slack for me," she added gently running her hands up the sides of his thighs.
Kevin held her gaze and tangled his fingers in her hair. "I like wine," he replied quietly. "I just prefer an ice cold beer sometimes. And I am intimidated by your trust fund."
"It put me through med school, bought my car and this house. But it doesn't give foot rubs or grill a steak. And it can make me happy for a short time, but in the end leaves me cold and alone," she said reaching out for his hand.
"So you're not dumping me?" Kevin asked.
"What?" Addison guffawed. "No, I'm not," she shook her head. "I want this."
"Okay, then we need to set some ground rules," Kevin said motioning her to move back. He pushed out of the chair and sat in front of her on the floor, straddling her knees. He watched as she unfolded them over his and pulled her closer to him. "I love your place, but I have my own house and space. So until we decide to consolidate, we need to split our time between the two. Obviously, my place isn't as nice and you don't like the neighborho…."
"You have a pool," Addison interrupted.
"You have the ocean."
"And I can't swim in it all year round."
"I didn't … know that you swam," Kevin said with a perplexed look on his face.
"I don't, sort of. At least I don't swim in water I can see the bottom of," Addison explained. "I do much better in a small area where I can just splash around a bit."
"Well, you can do that in your bathtub," Kevin remarked.
"Not quite the same effect," she said with a smirk.
He smiled at her and said nothing for a second and then leaned in to brush his lips across hers. "No lies Addison. I'm serious. You're not very good at it," Kevin whispered when he pulled back. "You can distract me with sex all you want, but that only gets you so far. If we can't have a conversation then we shouldn't be together. I think we've proved the past few weeks that we can have a conversation."
"Then you need to tell me about your work so I understand and not be such a tough guy all the time," Addison countered.
"I dough…"
"When you got shot, you said you didn't want me at the hospital," she reminded him. "And then you tried to break up with me because of something Archer said."
Kevin signed. "Addie, I wanted you there, I begged Leslie to call you before they transported me to the hospital. But when I was in the ambulance I thought I was going to die and I ah … I was trying to protect you from getting hurt," he said. "It's a dangerous job and psycho creeps try to kill us sometimes." He paused and took her hand. "And your brother tried to warn me off."
"By saying what?"
"That I was out of your league."
"Ha," Addison grunted. "He just likes it when I'm unattached and miserable like him. He hated Derek too."
"But Derek was more your type," Kevin countered just to call her bluff.
"Why? Because he was a doctor? Derek was no different than you … he grew up middle class. His father was murdered by a serial killer and his mother was an army nurse," Addison laughed. "Derek was just a normal guy that I really loved and blew it with."
"So what makes you think you won't blow it with me?" Kevin asked her point blank. She already had one attempt in the books. He needed to know if this was a cycle she was going to continue or not.
"I don't know that Kevin, I mean I almost did once … but when I couldn't breathe anymore you were there to rescue me," Addison said slowly. "I want this relationship. I don't want to be Noah's wife …I don't want to be the cheater that married the cheater only to cheat again and I don't want to be the one that gets cheated on."
"And that takes us back to the ground rules," Kevin said nodding his head. "I know you're not that person, you told me as much the night you followed me … when you had that patient with the two wives. We just need to keep the communication lines open. We're in fields that people are really attracted too. Women love a guy in uniform and a gun belt and men have fantasies about playing doctor," he replied. "We need to trust each other and...."
"No lies. I got it," Addison commented staring deep into his eyes. Sitting there, that close to him was turning her on. She could feel his heat and it was affecting her in a good way. Just like it had affected her last night when he rubbed her down and then respected that she was too mentally spent to do anything about it. "What was the rule about distracting you with sex?" she asked running her hands up the inside of his thigh.
"I said you could distract me all you wanted but I was going to see right through you," he commented. He stared at her with dark hooded eyes. She was teasing him and he could sense by her husky voice and body language that she wanted it that way. Which is good, because if I have to wait another day to have sex with her, I'll wear the skin off my palm, Kevin thought forcing himself to wait for her to make the move.
"What do you see right now?" she asked licking her lips seductively. She could barely wait to touch him and ran her hands lightly up his thighs to rest right next to his heat.
"I see someone that needs some attention," Kevin replied giving in to his urge to kiss her.
TBC
