Author's Note:

Thank you to all who left a review! You guys are amazing as always. Again, some material that you recognize in the chapter is directly taken from the show including dialogue, cases, and situations. I own nothing and make no profit from the story. Thank you again to all who left a review!

ALL ERRORS ARE MY OWN! I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE!

Thanks,

H4TH

15x7, 15x8

Part IX

"…God knows I live
God knows I died
God knows I begged
Begged, borrowed and cried
God knows I loved
God knows I lied
God knows I lost
God gave me life
And God knows I tried…"

~ "God Knows I Tried" – Lana Del Rey

February 22, 2015…

Barba snuck a glance at Elia as she reread the case that he'd placed together for a former professor at Harvard. The Professor had contacted him out of the blue six months prior and asked if Barba could come up with a mock court case. The man had also asked him to include at least ten different, but obscure strategies that the prosecution could use to win the case. The students would receive the assignment soon and the professor would let Barba know if it was too hard. He didn't expect any of the professor's students to figure out any of the strategies. If they did, he'd wager it would be a lucky guess. He'd given the case to his three interns to figure out and each one had come back with comments and suggestions on wording and such, but Elia reading it made him far more nervous than anyone else reading it.

She continued to read each page and he examined her. Reading glasses that she hadn't needed when they'd first gotten married were perched on her nose. Her hair was pulled back into a bun at the base of her neck and she wore a plain cotton night gown beneath the plain cotton grey and white robe that matched. A quilt covered her legs and Charlie, the fat tabby cat, was perched in her lap. The damn thing looked comfortable and Barba was jealous. He freely admitted that fact to himself as she set aside the last page of the thirty page case he'd constructed.

"It's fine," she pronounced, capping her pen and running a hand over Charlie's soft fur. "I just made a few notes about tenses between words. If your interns vetted it for content for the actual law part, you'll have to trust their judgment."

"That's not something I trust. I let them read it and try to solve it on their own first," he said, taking the papers from her when she offered the stack to him. "They said it was difficult, but it wasn't too bad."

Elia nodded and returned her hands to petting a purring Charlie. Silence engulfed the space between them and Barba sighed as he sat down on the ottoman that Elia had bought to replace the coffee table that she had deemed 'shabby' a week before. It had finally been delivered that afternoon and he'd come home to find that she'd had the delivery men move the furniture around for a hefty tip.

"Are we going to talk about this?" he asked softly.

Her eyes never met his as she looked down at Charlie. She was clearly unhappy with what he was eluding to, but they needed to talk about the afternoon two days prior. Burying it wouldn't fix the situation. It would only create anger that would turn into resentment. The last thing Barba wanted was for Elia to resent him. He could easily imagine that she'd start thinking that his fear and silence had cost her years of her life. It pained him to even think about what their lives could be like.

"Talk about what?" she murmured softly.

"The other day, Elia. I know that you're still angry with me and we never got to finish the conversation."

The expression on her face changed and she was tense. Her shoulders weren't relaxed like they were minutes ago and the soft expression she'd worn on her face was gone. Slipping the reading glasses off her face, Elia pushed a stray strand of blonde hair away from her face and looked at him with anger evident in her eyes.

"Can we please not talk about this? I don't want to fight with you. We had a nice evening with Abuelita and I don't want to ruin it."

"A nice evening?" Barba echoed, trying to hold back his sarcasm. "We didn't even talk at dinner. Abuelita did all the talking. It's like we took one step forward and went three steps back."

"Rafael, don't," Elia warned as she pushed the blanket off of her and stood.

From the look in her eye, Barba could tell that she was itching for a fight with him. She was angry now that the shock from what he'd told her had worn off. Sex had been able to repress it for a little while. Their time on the couch had suppressed her intial anger, but the moment that she'd left the office, she'd changed. Something had happened and he was desperate to talk about it. He didn't care where they started, he just wanted to talk about what was happening between them because he'd broke his own promise to himself of not having sex with her until he was certain that she wasn't having pelvic pain. They'd been doing so well and his poorly time confession had derailed everything.

Hell, he shouldn't have let her kiss him.

Neither of them were capable of thinking clearly and he imagined that she still hadn't reconciled herself to the fact that they'd had sex, multiple times, over a period of a week before she suddenly pulled back from him. He couldn't explain what had happened, but he wanted to know. One moment he'd been making love to her on the couch in his home office and the next, she was changing into running clothing and giving him the cold shoulder. The one hundred and eighty degree change made no sense to him, but Barba had given up years before on trying to understand anything. In the past, he'd leave her alone, but experience had taught him that it wasn't the right approach. Maybe he should just approach the whole situation like Elia did? Head on…

"Why'd you kiss me?" he blurted out as she walked away. Elia froze in the archway between the living room and the foyer. She turned and faced him with a tired expression on her face.

"What?"

"Why'd you kiss me the night I confronted Alex?" he repeated. "Why'd you do it?"

"Why would it matter if I did tell you?"

"Because I don't think that you kissed me because you felt sorry for me," Barba explained. "We've never had pity sex before and that night…we didn't have pity sex. I can't even call it sex because it wasn't that. It was something different and I know that you felt it too."

"I kissed you because it just felt right," she said in a broken voice. "You seemed broken about what had happened and it just…I couldn't imagine leaving you alone. I didn't think that the rest would happen, but you are right about one thing. I don't regret it and it wasn't a mistake, Rafael. I realize, I just wanted to feel some sort of connection to you. I feel like I don't know how to have that connection with you if I'm not having sex with you. If I'm not kissing you, I'm mad as hell at you. I'm so mad I don't even make sense to myself."

"I know you're angry. We haven't actually spoken in two days since I told you the truth. Can talk about it?"

"Fine," she snarled. "I'm angry at you for not saying anything about your doubts because I kept telling myself for years that having a child with you would make me feel a connectedness with you and after all this time, I don't think it will and that terrifies me."

"We're not talking about having a child right now. We're talking about you being angry at me."

"No, we're talking about whether or not I can trust you to be honest with me in the future," Elia continued as she hugged herself. "I don't know how to even begin explaining to you how I feel, Rafael. You didn't say anything to me and I understand that you were afraid. I do understand and accept that, but how can I trust that this won't happen again? I feel like you looked at our relationship and decided that it was better to lie and build a life on a lie than tell the truth. God, do you really think so little of me that you couldn't even share with me something like that? Something so fundamental to our relationship and not trust in our marriage enough to tell me how you feel?"

"I didn't lie, Elia," he murmured. "That wasn't my intention."

"What do you call what you did then?" she shouted angrily. "You lied about how you felt! First, you wanted kids with me and you couldn't wait and then you change your mind and now, you changed it back. Here I am, I tell you everything. I told you about every guy I ever dated, every bad thing that I've experienced. You didn't even mention Yelena Muñoz and you were supposedly with her for two years. That's a real confidence boost in your ability to be honest with me and our relationship. Tell me, how can I trust you? How do I do that?"

"Don't act like you don't keep secrets from me," Barba snarled back. "Don't do that, Elia."

"I freely admit that I have secrets from you. It involves things that you don't need to know about because they don't involve you. I have never lied about something that involves the both of us. I never lied about having children or not wanting children or anything major like that. You didn't even give us a chance to talk about any of it. You just took the decision from us both and swept it under the rug like it didn't matter. You don't care that hearing you say that you didn't want children with me broke my heart."

"Elia, tell me that you wouldn't have left before. If I had told you that I didn't want children before all this, you would have walked out the door and never looked back. Don't tell me that you wouldn't have left."

"You don't know that," she snapped. "You don't! You never gave me a chance to decide because you took that away. You lied to keep me with you. Don't act like it was unselfish acts or something like that. You did it because you're selfish and you didn't want me to leave or even give me the opportunity to decide."

"You would have left, Elia. You would have left and my head would have been spinning on an axis from how fast you would have packed your bags."

"You don't see my point, Rafael! None of the hypothetical matters and it never did! You didn't tell the truth, you covered it up! I don't know how to forgive you for lying to me for seven years and move on," she shouted back. "I don't know how to do that. Three months ago, I was reconciling myself to the fact that maybe I wasn't meant to be a mother. Maybe that's why I have fibroids. It's not meant to be my calling or whatever the hell you want to call it. Two days ago, you spin around on what you said and you're asking me to be okay with something like that. Just do what you do, right? Sweep it under the rug like it never happened."

"I'm not asking you to be okay. I'm asking to talk about it."

"I don't understand why we're having this conversation. There's no point. We're going around in circles and we have nothing to talk about because the bottom line is that I don't trust you and I don't know how to move past this."

"Elia," Barba argued as he felt her closing down. "You left the study. I hoped that we could talk about things and you returned looking like you'd seen a ghost or something. Explain that and tell me what the hell I'm supposed to think of that, Elia? You told me that you don't feel connected with me outside of sex. Elia, talk to me, because something happened two days ago. If you wanna build closeness, this is our chance. You know it. I know it. Don't lie and tell me that I'm not involved with what's happening. Being connected, we have to learn how to open up and share with each other and it's a growing pain that we have to go through. Please, I don't want to fight, I want to talk."

"I can't talk to you anymore," she snapped. "I just can't. You don't understand and I can't talk about this anymore. We're on two separate pages. You want to talk about one little moment when you don't see the big picture."

She turned on her heel and left the room. He heard her move up the stairs and the house became silent. Sitting down on the couch, Barba leaned back as far as he could and looked up at the ceiling and the light fixture with the fan spinning above him. He groaned because the conversation had gone south so quickly. In truth, he hadn't anticipated how angry she was with him. Anger, he could understand, but he'd been trying so hard not to break the trust that he was attempting to build with her. Despite all his caution, he had broken her trust and he understood that she probably felt the same way that he felt about Alex's betrayal. It hurt and he didn't know how to get around the pain.

God, he wanted a drink, but he couldn't bring himself to stand up. He'd screwed up and having to pass the mirror in the hallway was distasteful. Looking at himself, he'd be forced to admit that while he didn't lie outright, he'd spent a significant amount of time omitting the truth to her. She had every reason to doubt his trust and he didn't blame her if she was having second thoughts about having a family with him. At every step, he'd proved to her that she couldn't trust him.

But he couldn't trust her either, could he?

Elia had plenty of secrets of her own. She'd proven that just by her actions on Sunday. Something had spooked her at the door and she had hid it. The happy, loving woman had been replaced by a jumpy, unsettled woman and his heart dropped to his stomach as he thought about the one conclusion that his mind had drawn up.

Elia hadn't met someone else, had she? He covered his eyes with a hand for a moment before dropping it down to the couch. If she had, Barba wasn't sure he'd be able to withstand that kind of situation. Despite all their ups and downs, he was confident that she'd always been faithful. He'd always been faithful to her, but what if she had met another man? Someone who hadn't put her through hell like he had? Would she still stay with him? Would love be enough for her?

He shook the thoughts out of his head and he felt guilty for even thinking that Elia would have an affair. She wouldn't and it was so far out of character that he had no basis for his accusations. He may have been an absent husband, but he wasn't a stupid one. Elia was devoted to their vows, she didn't take her rings off like he had. She just wouldn't do that and he felt guilty for even questioning her integrity in such away, but she was questioning his and it hurt.

Barba understood perfectly what she was saying. She didn't trust him, but how could she? He'd built part of their life by omitting the truth about his fears. Their problem went deeper than his fears. In her mind, he fractured their relationship by not telling her. Elia had always been honest and up front with him since they'd started seeing each other, even before that. By not telling her something so monumentally important, he'd betrayed the trust she had in him. Yelena wouldn't have been such an issue if she hadn't already been dealing with the rest and he still hadn't told her about the forced kiss.

Closing his eyes, Barba propped his feet up on the ottoman. He didn't know how to fix his marriage. No amount of laundry, calling her in the middle of the day, or kiss her cheek would change her mind. He hadn't prayed to God outside of Church in a long time, but he silently sent up a prayer in that moment that God would give some guidance…anything that would fix what he'd royally screwed up.

March 6, 2015…

Sitting on the edge of the tub, Elia didn't know if she was being reasonable or unreasonable. They'd gone back to sleeping in separate bedrooms and even though they were still sharing a closet, they weren't talking. It was like contest between them to see who'd cave first and talk. Rubbing lotion into her skin, she tried to reconcile just what the hell she was going to do. She had two options. Stay with Rafael, or continue with the divorce. Neither option was simple and she was so tired of going back and forth. Elia told herself that she needed to pick one route and stay on it. Going back and forth was cruel to the both of them. She'd told him that sex between them wasn't a mistake, and it wasn't. Sex between them was an absolute cluster fuck that was making her emotional and feeling vulnerable.

Sex did not fix anything. It felt good, but it wasn't going to change what had happened between them and she was sick to death telling herself that. She needed to pick what she was going to do because her indecisiveness was driving her crazy. She either needed to find a way to forgive him and move on from what had happened and learn from it or walk away. For someone who helped others for a living, Elia had no ideas on how to help herself. Putting the lotion away, she stood up and left the bathroom. Barba was already half dressed when she walked into the closet. Setting her phone down, she placed the pearl stud earrings that she'd carried with her from the bathroom in each ear.

Grabbing the loose gray dress that she planned to wear for the day and a pair of black tights, Elia sat down on the ottoman in the closet and slipped the tights on as gracefully as she could. She could feel his eyes on her every so often and she couldn't deny that she'd look over her shoulder at him when he wasn't looking. The tension between them was thick enough that it could be cut with a knife. It was obvious that he wanted to say something to her, but he didn't and she couldn't blame him. She wasn't exactly in the mood to talk with him and as Lucille had said in the past, she had a good resting bitch face when she tried hard enough.

Zipping her dress up, Elia paused when she heard her phone ding. Sighing, she grabbed it, already wondering which one her clients had chosen to overdose or drink themselves into oblivion because their spouse had been caught by some gossip columnist cheating. Whatever was happening, Elia had never felt such a keen dislike of her job before. When she looked down at the screen, it wasn't an SOS text message from her assistant trying to book an emergency appointment. It wasn't her boss begging for her to come in early.

It wasn't actually from anyone.

It was a reminder from her period tracker app.

Opening it, Elia felt her blood go cold as she stared down at the words. The app was reminding her to log information about the period that should have ended a week ago.

A period that she'd never gotten.

"Fuck," Elia said loudly as she looked at the calendar. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Barba looked over his shoulder at her with a raised eyebrow as he tucked his blue and white stripped dress shirt in his black dress pants. Elia ignored him as she stared at the screen of her phone. Unable to believe what she was actually reading, she let out a shaky breath. Throwing the phone on the shelf, she felt suddenly dizzy as she closed her eyes and leaned against wall.

"Please, tell me that we weren't stupid."

"What are you talking about?" Barba asked as he moved to stand out in the bedroom, in front of the mirror to tie his yellow tie. Elia nearly darted out of the room and moved like a cat on a hot tin roof as she went to the en-suite bathroom and crouching down to look in the bottom of one of the cabinets. They kept a various assortment of items in the one of the drawers including razor blades, shaving cream, and spare tooth brushes. Beneath spare wash cloths, she kept an emergency pregnancy test.

Moving the contents around the drawer, Elia hissed in frustration when she couldn't find the purple and white box that she needed. Standing up from her crouched position, she quickly went back to the closet and grabbed her phone. Barba was buttoning his waistcoat, watching her and she ignored him. Back in the bathroom, she quickly dialed her assistant and wedge the phone between her ear and shoulder.

"What's wrong?" he asked, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, a frown on his face.

"Nothing," she snapped at him as she moved to a different drawer, trying to figure out what she'd done with the stupid EPT that she purposefully kept in the bathroom. The phone rang twice, and she heard her assistant, Jenny, over the phone.

"Can you do me a favor?" Elia asked without preamble. "There's a card in my top desk drawer for Amelia Rossi. Call her office and get the first available appointment. Just clear any of my appointments that you have to, Jenny. If people give you a hard time, just tell them to call me."

Her assistant was quick to agree and Elia ended the call, leaving the phone on the counter as she searched through a third drawer.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she mumbled to herself as she covered her face with her hands. She'd forgotten that Barba was still in the door way until she heard his voice. He was watching her with a worried look in his eyes and she desperately wanted to ignore him, but he made it impossible to do.

"You want to tell me what has you searching through the bathroom like a frantic madwoman? What do you need? Maybe I can pick it up from the store for you today?"

"You know, it's not your problem. I can deal with it," she snapped, feeling like a panic attack was about to seize her. "I have to go to the grocery store today. I will grab what I need there and everything will be fine."

She made to move past him, but he caught her by the upper arms. He looked down at her with concern and Elia ignored the feelings that his touch brought. She wanted to move past him and gather her bag and leave. She had an appointment with her first client in an hour and she needed to figure out how the hell she was going to push away her own problems and to deal with other people's problems. It was the buzzing of her phone that saved her in the end. It buzzed so violently that it fell into the empty sink basin. Barba let go of her and she crossed the bathroom to grabbed it. When she went to move away, he let her pass this time. Elia felt unsteady as she walked to the closet and grabbed a pair of boots to wear.

Barba sat still and tried his best to focus on the paperwork that he needed to complete for Amelia Albers' case. He'd prepped the woman and he admired her spirit and determination to proceed to trial, but a part of him wanted to go home and find out what exactly had freaked Elia out to the point of swearing earlier that morning. It had probably been years since he'd actually heard her say the word 'fuck' aloud. She'd had a panicked looked in her eyes and he hadn't been able to explain it. It made him feel as if he should have been panicking in some way with her.

There was knock on his door and Barba forced himself to look up as Olivia walked in looking as tired as he felt. He dropped his pen on his desk and leaned back in the office chair. She'd been counseling Amelia and her family through the judicial process because God only knew that he wasn't the warm, friendly prosecutor that most people imagined.

It was easier to seem emotionally unattached to everything. It made dealing with victims and cases easier for him because there were times when he simply couldn't do anything. The law tied his hands and he'd seen Elia bring work home with her. Despite being caring and loving, Elia had very little sympathy left in her for patients. She'd grow frustrated with them for staying in abusive relationships or unhappily married simply for money and only using her to complain about their situation. He'd heard her on the phone actually telling her assistant to let some patients go because they weren't making progress and for her sanity, she couldn't listen to them complain any longer. He wondered silently if she'd taught him over the years to emotionally distance himself from cases. He cared, but he didn't bring his emotions with him to the table like Elia and Olivia did on occasion.

"You look tired," Olivia commented as she sat down in the chair across from him. "You should go home. Trial starts in twelve hours. I just came from visiting Amelia and she was ready for bed."

"I don't sleep well the night before a trial begins," Barba admitted as he leaned back further in his chair and propped his feet up. "Elia used to tell me to either walk off the extra energy until I'm tired or go sleep in the guestroom. She's always been a light sleeper. In Massachusetts, the person who lived above us used to pace at night and make noise. It'd drive her crazy when we were first married. I actually went and bought wax plugs one night so that she could sleep."

Olivia looked surprised by his admission, "What would she tell you to do tonight?"

"Considering that she and I aren't even sleeping in the same bed? Nothing," Barba said with bitter smile. "She's probably just getting home from work. Mondays are usually her busy nights and she and Abuelita will both be asleep by the time that I get home."

Olivia nodded and they were both quiet. Barba didn't want to reveal more, but Olivia was a kind person who anyone could easily speak to. She and Elia had that in common. It was a gift, really. A gift that not many people had and he watched as Olivia crossed her legs.

"I'm sorry about your marriage," she told him. "I, uh, I've never been married. I can't imagine how difficult it must be for you to go through a divorce and try and separate yourself out from all of it. How are you holding up?"

Barba shook his head and gave her a second bitter smile, "I blew it. That's what happened. I, uh, I told her the truth and it was just too little, too late. I asked her to withdraw the divorce petition, but I don't think that she will. There's just too much that's happened to really ever be able to fix our relationship. Every time that I think we're taking a step forward, we take three steps back."

"I'm sorry," Olivia murmured again.

"Why? It's not your fault. I did this and no one is responsible."

"I know, but you're hurting and I'm sorry for that."

Barba gave her a forced, small smile and nodded. He didn't say anything and neither did Olivia. Sitting together in his office, he remembered the text message that he'd see pop up on Elia's phone the week before and he cleared his throat.

"How was your run with Elia?"

Olivia smiled, "Keeping tabs on us?"

"She was in the shower and her phone pinged that there was a new message," Barba explained. "She and I sometimes glance over to make sure that it's not an emergency call or text from work. I just saw your name and something about running."

"Elia sets a hard pace," she grinned. "I have my exam coming up and that also means a physical. I was hoping to cut down on my running time for the test and Elia pushes a grueling pace. I've been aching for days."

"She ran cross country for Harvard. She made nationals and placed tenth in the conference," Barba said with a smile of his own. "I remember George being excited for her and her mother asking why she was beat by ten other women."

"You ever go running with her?"

"I jog two miles in the morning before anyone else gets up. Elia runs upwards of fifty miles a week. I'm not a masochist like she can be. I love her, but I'm not a hard core runner like she's always been."

Olivia nodded and stood she moved to the door and stopped. Her hand was on the door knob when she turned and looked at him, "I, uh, heard what you told Amelia when you were down in the courtroom prepping her the other day. You told her that you'd be there for her and that you were in her corner. You should go home, Barba. Let Elia know that you're in her corner and that you're gonna be there for her. Sometimes, that's all we need to hear."

Elia was lying awake in bed when he turned the nightstand lamp on.

She was staring up at the ceiling, lost in her own world, but she eventually turned and looked at him when he lay down next to her in his pajamas. She was lying more towards the center to the bed, the down comforter pulled just under her breasts. No protest came from her and he felt himself relax next to her as much as he could. She scooted over until there was a few inches between their shoulders. Turning his head, he looked at her profile as she stared up at the ceiling. He realized that he could see a few lines just at the corner of her eyes…smile lines. That's what his mother had called them. Elia had smile lines just like he was getting frown lines.

"How was your day?" he asked softly, hoping that she'd open up and tell him just why she looked like she was fighting the urge to flee from the bed. Her expression hadn't changed since he'd entered the room and he felt relieved that he probably wasn't the source of her anxiety.

"Horrible," she murmured softly as she sighed. "I don't want to talk about it. It was just…exhausting. I'm tired of everyone fighting around me. I'm tired of fighting."

There was a silence between them for a few minutes and just when Barba began to think that she'd fallen asleep, she turned her head and looked at him.

"How's your trial?" she asked. "Fin said that it starts tomorrow."

Talking about the gang rape of a young coast guard officer wasn't his first choice of topics to talk about with Elia, but he couldn't over look the fact that she was talking to him. She'd given him a chance to have a meaningful conversation with her and he knew that Olivia's advice had been spot on. The only way to get passed what was happening was to show Elia that all the changes he was trying to make in his relationship with her weren't just to keep her.

"I…I don't know how it will go. It's a variable he said, she said. The victim's memory is spotty. Her details have been inconsistent."

"You're get your ass handed to you. Cue reasonable doubt aqquittal, but you wouldn't take the case unless you were half certain that you'd win it," Elia murmured. "So, I'm assuming that the evidence of what actually happened is overwhelming. I don't envy having to look at photographs and reports like you have to."

Barba let out a long sigh as Elia turned onto her side and faced him. She fixed the pillow under her head before looking over her shoulder at the alarm clock on her nightstand.

"Abuelita will probably want to interrogate you in the morning," she sighed looking back at him. "I'll distract her and take her to breakfast while you're in the shower. You can leave and not worry about running into her."

"What would she interrogate me about?" Barba asked with a confused expression on his face as he looked at her.

"Our fight last Wednesday and she's been badgering me about it since Friday and today is Monday. Apprently, she heard it all and wants to help us work out or problems. She was actually getting ready to call Father Matthew and invite him over for dinner."

"Oh God," Barba groaned, covering his face with his hand for a second. "What'd you tell her?"

"That it wasn't any of her business," Elia sighed, rolling back over to stare up at the ceiling. "I appreciated her concern, but it wasn't her problem and we'd fight quietly next time."

Barba sighed again, "You don't have to distract her. About this morning…is everything alright?"

"Yeah," she said, shifting in the bed. "I, uh, got what I needed from the store."

"Will you tell me what your swearing fit was all about?"

Elia looked back at him and blue eyes met green ones. She held his gaze for a moment before her gaze shifted to the hand resting on his chest and the silver band on his finger.

"Not today. Tell me about Yelena," she countered. "If we're gonna get past all this, start by telling about Yelena."

Her reluctance to share her problem didn't surprise him. Barba knew that she was hiding things from him, but he also knew that if he pushed Elia, she wouldn't tell him anything. She was like a deer in the woods and he needed to move slowly and make no more sudden movement. Her words were his second chance and he wasn't sure how many more he was going to get, if any.

"It was a horrible relationship," he told her. "I figured out early on that she loved the fact that Alex wanted political office and had ambitions. She doesn't love people. She loves what they can offer her. I didn't tell you about her because it just didn't even register in my mind to tell you about the most selfish person I've ever met. Why talk about a woman like her when I'd rather talk with you? How could you or I possibly benefit from talking about Yelena? I didn't see a point. I didn't talk about her because I wanted to hide her from you. It wasn't my intention and it came across that way."

She was quiet a moment before she turned her head and looked at him, "Thank you for telling me."

Lying next to each other, Barba didn't know what to say as she lay still. He wasn't sure what he'd expected from her, but he recognized that she wasn't up for actually having a serious conversation and he wasn't either. He'd said what he felt like he needed to say and he felt better. A weight had been lifted from his chest and he felt like he could breathe a little easier. Her eyes told him the story of how exhausted she was and he turned the nightstand lamp off.

March 7, 2015…

Elia had anxiously bitten all her fingernails off. It was a horrible habit that she'd broken at the age of ten when her mother threatened to hit her if she continued, but staring at the three pregnancy tests on the counter made it impossible not to feel anxious. This wasn't happening, she told herself silently, this wasn't happening to her. Sure, they'd been completely reckless. She couldn't even remember if they'd even used protection in the short week that they'd been having sex. God only knew that they'd done it enough times and it only took one second for things to happen.

Resisting the urge to pace, Elia told herself that she was over reacting.

There was no way that she was pregnant. The doctor had been insisted that there was no way that she'd ever be able to get pregnant with the uterine fibroids. The whole point of the surgery that she would be having would be to remove them so she had a better opportunity to conceive. Besides, she had no symptoms. Most of the women she knew talked about morning sickness and how they'd taken a pregnancy test after feeling sick, but Elia silently told herself that morning sickness usually didn't start until the sixth week of pregnancy.

If she was pregnant, she wouldn't be that far along.

Pregnancy was considered two weeks at conception and if her math was right, she was barely five weeks…if she was even pregnant. Taking a shuddering breath, Elia forced herself to breathe in and out. There was still two minutes left on the timer. She would not get ahead of herself, but a little voice in the back of her head asked her if she'd even keep the baby. Everything was so wrong and this wasn't what she wanted. If she was pregnant, this was not what was supposed to happen. She hadn't planned for it to happen this way.

Unable to stand still a moment longer, Elia glanced at the clock and breathed out a sigh of relief. One more minute and she'd have an idea. Either way, she'd already called her doctor's office about the missed period. Doctor Rossi had asked to be notified of any changes in her cycle and this, well, this was a change. Either she would need to have surgery sooner or she was pregnant. Both she viewed as serious problems and she didn't know what to think about either. She had her stalker problem to deal with, patients, and Rafael was a headache and a heartache that she didn't even want to think about and she groaned loudly.

What would he say about this?

She couldn't keep this a secret, not when she was angry at him for keeping secrets.

She wanted to be angry at him, but he was right that having a connection outside of sex meant talking about real issues between them. They couldn't keep having meaningless conversations. Their marriage couldn't be sustained with meaningless words. Thinking of the manila envelopes still in the dresser drawer in the guest bedroom, she felt more guilt. Between this and everything else, she was in no position to be angry with him about the past when she was clearly doing the same thing that he'd done. She wasn't intentionally lying to him, she was simply hiding facts that she wasn't comfortable sharing with him in the present moment.

Wasn't that was he'd done?

She knew that she was a hypocrite for yelling at him for concealing his feelings when she was hiding the fact that she had a patient sending her threatening notes and the situation was escalating.

God, how had everything become such a mess?

Hearing her phone beep, she silenced it and glanced at the tests.

Staring at them, Elia burst into tears. She wasn't sure what to think, but she reached for her phone. She had two calls to make.

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We are about 1/3 of the way through, but I am a fan of long chapters so there is still plenty of story to be told. As always, reviews keep me motivated and I do love getting feedback about each chapter. It helps me to craft a better story. There are quite a few of you out there reading, so please, leave a review! I will do my best to reply. Plus, you get a little bonus sneak peak of next chapter if you do:)

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