Bobby POV

I dreamed about the boy.

Except in my dream, the boy wasn't always Dylan.

Sometimes he was me.

I was having a hard time distinguishing between the two of us. Which was silly, really, because while we had a comparable paternity issue, the similarity ended there.

He was being raised in the affluent neighborhood of Murdock Woods. I grew up in Canarsie.

His father-figure was a good man. He worked hard and treated Dylan well. My father, the one who was married to my mother…he was absent for the better part of my childhood, preferring gambling and womanizing to parenting.

Dylan's real father was going to jail. My real father had sat on death row before meeting his much-deserved demise.

His mother had lied. My mother had lied.

Okay, so maybe our lives were fairly parallel.

And it definitely explained why I woke up at five o'clock with my heart filled with horror, my body covered in sweat, and my father's voice in my head.

"Go ahead. You have it in you! You have it in you!"

I got out of bed and took a couple of laps around the apartment to clear my head.

I was exhausted.

Alex and I had sat at Steve-O's with Mike and Carolyn until nearly three a.m., so I hadn't been in bed asleep for much more than an hour.

I went into the kitchen and got out a glass. I turned on the faucet to fill it up, and then I ended up just sticking my whole head under the cool flow. The cold water soothed my burning skin and it seemed to kick-start my brain.

The dream was nothing new. Not the parts about my father, anyway. I'd been having them off and on since that day in the prison, although they were much more infrequent now that I'd come to terms with the truth. Alex had helped me to do that. Of course, she helped me do just about everything.

And as though thinking about her had conjured her up, I felt her hand settle on my back. I glanced to the side and saw that in her other hand she held a towel.

I shut off the water and pulled back from the faucet. I held out a hand to take the towel, but she shook her head and motioned for me to sit down at the table.

I sat down in the chair, ignoring the water that was now running in streams across my face and down my bare back and chest.

Alex stepped up close to me and began to rub my head with the towel. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation, her gentle touch doing more for me than anything else would.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked quietly. She held still for a moment, presumably waiting for my response.

"Not if it means you're going to stop doing that," I replied without opening my eyes.

I heard her chuckle lightly and then felt her lips press against my cheek before she continued to work the towel over my wet hair.

"I dreamed about Brady," I told her after another minute. "It didn't start out like that. I was dreaming about Dylan. Or maybe more just thinking about him. I guess he was on my mind as I went to sleep, and then my subconscious evolved him into me."

"I didn't ask for an analysis, Freud," she teased. She moved the towel down and began rubbing it across my chest. "Just tell me about it."

"My dad…Bill, not Brady," I clarified, although I knew Alex knew that I would never refer to Brady as my dad. "I was thinking about him. I have a few good memories of him, but mostly it was disappointment. I spent a lot of time as a kid waiting for him. Thinking he was going to show up and then he never did. Thinking he was going to take me somewhere but then he never would. At least Dylan will have good memories of his father. Of Carlos. He had ten good years of memories with him."

"You have a few good memories," she said. "I remember you telling me about the day your family spent on the river."

"You remember that?" I asked, opening my eyes to look at her.

In that moment, I was struck by her beauty. Not just her physical beauty, but the sheer exquisiteness that is Alex.

"Of course I remember," she replied with a smile. "I remember everything about that night."

"Me, too," I admitted. I reached out and grabbed a handful of the t-shirt she wore, my t-shirt, so that I could pull her closer to me. She stepped in between my legs and then went back to massaging my now-damp hair with the towel. I let my hands rest on her waist and closed my eyes again.

"I was dreaming about some of the things that Irene told us Carlos did with Dylan, and then that turned into a few of the things my dad did with me. And then I thought about Antonio."

"Which led to you thinking about Brady," she supplied when I hesitated. I hated to even bring that name into our home.

"Yeah," I said, moving my hands around to her back. I brought her up against me and turned my cheek to rest against her chest. She let the towel drop but continued to run her fingers through my hair. "I could hear his voice in my head."

"What did he say?"

"It was that day in jail, when he told me…when he said that I have it in me. To be a killer."

My mind flashed back to not even a year ago when I had pushed Alex away. I'd stepped away from her because I was afraid of that very thing. I was afraid I would hurt her. But then I'd been miserable, and apparently so had she. I still thanked my lucky stars that she'd been persistent enough to wait out my self-imposed isolation.

"I don't even have to say it though, do I?" she whispered, leaning down to kiss the top of my head. "I even heard you tell Dylan."

"What did I tell him?"

"He asked if you were like your real father. And you said that you're nothing like him. You believe that."

"I do. Thanks to you."

"Don't give me the credit. No one can make a person change the way they think. It has to come from the inside."

"What if I say that you're my inspiration?" I suggested, only halfway teasing.

Less than half, really, because the possibility of having a successful relationship with her had been my true motivation for exorcising my demons.

The truth behind my comment was not lost on her. She held my head tightly against her, laying her head against the top of mine.

"I'd say we're a good match, then," she replied. "Feeling better?"

"Much. I just needed to shake the images from my head."

"The water helped?"

"You helped."

I put my hands on her waist again and shifted her slightly so that she was sitting on my leg. She kept one hand against my back and used the other to stroke my chest.

"Tell me something else about your dad," she said, leaning her head against my shoulder. "A happy memory. I'm sure you have a few more."

"Uh…happy wasn't really in the Goren vocabulary," I joked, but at the same time, I let my mind wander down memory lane.

It was true. There were a lot of bad times. But there were definitely some good times as well.

It's rare that things are ever static – all bad or all good. Even the happiest of families had bad times, and vice versa.

"Um…he um…he taught me how to shoot."

"Really?" she asked in surprise.

"Yeah. When I was about eight. He had a .45."

"You shot a .45 when you were eight?"

"Yeah," I said, and I started to laugh at the memory. "The first time I fired it, I damn near broke my nose. It kicked back so hard it popped me right in the face."

"I would think so," she agreed, joining in my laughter. "What did your dad say?"

"He said, I told you so. And he had. He'd warned me that it would recoil, but I was so sure I could handle it…"

"That sounds like the Bobby I know," she teased.

"Yeah, some things never change, huh?"

"So were you any good?"

"I got good after awhile. He took me quite a few times."

"Did Frank go?"

"No, he wasn't interested. I wasn't really either, but I wanted to spend time with him," I told her. "It was just me and my dad."

"That sounds nice."

"It was," I agreed.

"It's too bad I can't thank him. You're still a pretty good shot."

"Not as good as you," I reminded her.

"Why is it," she began as she pulled her head away from my shoulder so that she could look me in the eyes. Her golden-brown eyes were sparkling and she had a hint of a smile on her face. "That we always seem to get into competitions?"

She kissed me gently, first on one cheek and then the other.

"Who is the luckiest…" she continued, and then moved to kiss my lips. "Who is the best shot…"

She shifted again, bringing both of her hands up to my face and then kissed me more earnestly. She pulled back after a moment and ran her fingers across the stubble on my cheeks.

"Who loves who the most…" she added.

"That's not a competition," I argued gently. "That's a fact. I love you more."

"Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that, won't we?" she asked with a grin. "Are you ready to go back to bed?"

"Yeah," I agreed readily. "I'm turning our phones off. We're not getting out of bed today."

"We're supposed to have lunch with Cathy, remember?" she asked me as we walked down the hall. "You know what? Never mind. I'll postpone."

"Are you sure?"

"I don't think I can stomach listening to her tell me about a new guy."

"She's going to be mad," I warned, although I was secretly pleased. I literally did not want to leave the bed for the next twenty-four hours.

"She'll get over it."

We climbed into bed and settled into our usual positions. Me, on my back and Alex on her side up against me. She usually threw a leg over mine and put her arm across my chest. I kept an arm around her back.

This morning was no different.

It was cool in the apartment, and it felt good to pull the heavy quilt up around us. My head was still slightly damp, but thanks to Alex's earlier ministrations, it would be dry shortly.

"So, one more week to go," she commented as her fingers resumed their exploration of my chest. "Were you surprised by Akers' offer? We really haven't talked about that."

"Yes and no. I was more surprised by Ross' admission that it was a power play. And his support of us."

"Yeah, it seems as though he's finally come around."

"He's going to catch hell from Akers tomorrow. I've heard about him. I know some people who have had dealings with him. He's a political bully."

She shifted downward in the bed and laid her head on my chest. I took the opportunity to run my fingers through her hair. I loved the feel of the silky strands. After nearly a decade of only dreaming about touching her hair, now that I actually had the green-light to do so, I did it whenever I could.

"Hmm...I don't want to talk about work," she said sleepily. "I know I started it, but I changed my mind."

"What do you want to talk about?" I asked, my voice a low rumble in the darkness. It was just before six a.m. but the sun was far from being up and I'd turned off the alarm.

"Anything else," she whispered. "Just talk."

I could tell that she was about a minute away from sleep, and I wasn't much further than that myself.

I could feel her steady heartbeat against me and her breath tickled across my chest. Her fingers trailed aimlessly from the waistband of my boxers up to my throat and then back down again.

My nerve-endings were tingling everywhere she touched. It felt so wonderful to hold her, to be held by her. I still had trouble getting over the amazement that we were finally together.

"Bobby," she murmured, reminding me that she wanted to hear my voice. I trailed my fingers along her jaw and back up behind her ear. I smiled at the way she tilted her head in encouragement.

"Remember that case I told you about – the one I finished up right before I came to the hospital after you'd had the baby?"

"About the partners," she mumbled. "Uh huh."

"That was when I figured it out. That was when I knew that I was in love with you."

I felt her smile against my chest, and I tightened my hold on her. My eyes fell closed and I was on the verge of sleep, when I heard her husky voice.

"That was when I knew, too," she told me. "You were the only person I wanted to see. I was so glad you came, and you stayed with me all night...I loved you for that."

"So it's a tie," I stated. "We've loved each other for the same amount of time."

"Yeah, okay. It's a tie," she agreed. She hated ties. She was competitive and always wanted to win, so I wasn't surprised when her last waking thought was to add, "But I love you more."

I pressed a kiss into her hair as her breathing evened out.

That was fine. I would let her think she won. This time.

TBC...