(37)

There was and there was not a certain degree of surprise as Casey pulled the car into the parking lot by the dock behind Battery Park. She fled the car before she even turned it off, leaving Alex to lean over the center console and switch over the engine. Pocketing the keys, Alex climbed out of the car, following Casey onto the dock where the red haired woman, her hair still done up in curls and bobby pins and make up too formal for the jean capris she was wearing, was hunched over, staring into the dirty water. A small boat was moored nearby, and it bobbed in time with the waves, marring Casey's reflection further as she stared at her murky self, her tones washed out by the general dirt of the city. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the edge of the pier so tightly that Alex feared she would cut herself.

"Honey," Alex said, approaching Casey cautiously. "Talk to me."

Shaking, Casey continued to stare at the water, no longer seeing even that much as she panted, her racing heart thudding so loud in her ears that even Alex seemed so far away. "What have I done?" she whispered. "Oh, God, forgive me. What did I do? They're going to be so mad. So mad. And Kennedy. Oh, God, Kennedy."

Alex hung back, wrapping her arms around herself as she rocked from the balls of her feet to her heels. She knew it had taken a large chunk of courage for Casey to leave her wedding. Of course, she had no idea what Casey had written in her quick letter to her parents, but she knew what the gist of it had to be. And, in knowing so much, she did not know whether or not it would be wise to touch her or if it would take just that to break her to pieces.

"They'll never talk to me again, Alex," Casey said, and the blond princess stepped nearer, crouching beside Casey, one hand out, though still not touching the ruby haired woman. "No one except Stephy. I've ousted myself from everything and everyone."

"Not everyone," Alex whispered. "You still have me."

Casey looked up at Alex, pushing the tears out of her eyes. Suddenly, she leaped at Alex, throwing her arms around the attorney's neck and holding her close. "Thank you. Thank God you're here. Thank God I met you first."

For several minutes, Alex held her sobbing friend, rocking her slowly, the sounds of the city and the sounds of water colliding around them. Once Casey quieted, her heart slowing to a normal rhythm, Alex tipped her head up to her, pushing away tears. "Do you have any idea how special you are, Casey?" she murmured, kissing the tip of the woman's nose. "I couldn't think of anyone else on this planet I would rather spend time with, no matter how I'm spending the time. Thank you for meeting me. Thank you for being here now."

"I couldn't," Casey mewled. "I couldn't marry him."

"I know," Alex whispered, planting another kiss on Casey's temple. "Let's go over to my parents' and you can rest. Maybe it's time to talk to Steph, too."

"She doesn't know about us," Casey said. "Not really. I think she thinks I like you, but she doesn't really know for sure. At least, I don't think I've said anything. We talk so rarely."

Alex nodded. "But, maybe she can help you deal with what's going on right now with the rest of your family. She was ostracized, too."

"I know," Casey murmured. "I'm just not – it's one thing that the woman I'm sleeping with knows that I love her. I've disappointed my entire family today, Ali. What if I wind up disappointing her, too?"

"What do you mean?" Alex asked, shifting Casey against her side, the red head curling up against her.

"I mean, can I talk to her tomorrow? I feel like I've taken a suicidal leap out of the proverbial closet already today. I know she won't be disappointed in my choice of woman, but," Casey shrugged. "I really just don't know if I can call up my sister and tell her 'hey, guess what, Steph? You and me have a lot more in common than you thought.'"

"Fair enough, Casey. I won't ask you to." Pressing her lips to Casey's cheek, Alex hugged the woman to her.

Casey trembled minutely under Alex's arms. "Ali?"

"Yea, hon?"

"Can I stay with you tonight?"

Alex laughed, pulling Casey even tighter against her, the red haired woman happily climbing into Alex's lap, offering her best innocent look. "Of course. I don't expect you to stay anywhere else tonight, sweetie."

Casey huddled against Alex for several more minutes, the blond picking out bobby pins, laying them to rest in Casey's open hand. There was so much product in Casey's hair that removing the pins did not seem to make much of a difference. Alex tried to comb Casey's hair out with her fingers, but it did little good, either. "You know what, let me call and make sure my parents are home, but they have an amazing Jacuzzi bath that will make you feel better and get some of this sticky mess out of your hair. Will you let me run you a bath in a nicer tub than the one at my apartment?"

Pressing her lips together, the red head hesitated for only a moment before nodding her head. "Thank you, Ali."

"Don't thank me yet. Let me make sure my parents don't mind. Sometimes, they have social things going on, and I always forget when they are." Alex pulled out her phone and dialed her parents' house number, Casey still pressed against her like she might fall off the face of the earth if she were to let go.

"Momma?" Alex said when her mother picked up.

"Alexandra," the woman exclaimed, clearly happy to hear from her daughter that she was loud enough that Casey could hear her, though her own ear was almost as close to the ear piece as Alex's. "How are you?"

"Um, I'm all right, Mom. Hey, Mom, I have a huge favor to ask. It's about Casey."

There was a momentary silence on the other end. "Uh oh. Alex, is she okay? That fiancé of hers didn't do anything, did he?"

"Physically? She's safe now. Emotionally, she's a bit of a wreck. Momma, it's a long story, but she didn't get married today as planned. Can I bring her by for some TLC?"

"Oh, Al, absolutely. Do you have your car or does Dad need to pick you two up?"

"I have the car. Thanks, Momma. I really appreciate it. We'll be there in about thirty minutes."

"I'll prepare some tea. What flavor does she like, again?"

Alex told her how Casey liked her tea prepared. Casey was familiar with Alex making tea for her and doing it right every time, but it still kind of amazed her that the blond was so attentive to her needs and her desires. As Alex hung up with her mother, Casey quickly pecked Alex's cheek. "What?"

"Thank you for caring about me the way you do," Casey whispered, her eyes watering again. "Christ, I don't think I've ever cried this much."

"It's been an eventful day. Let me take you to my parents', get you some tea and a bath at the very least. If you'll let them, get you some support. Casey, my parents adore you. So do Sam and Danae."

Casey smiled. "I've only met Sam and Danae once, Al. How do they love me?"

"They know good people when they meet them. My point is that you have whatever support you need from them whenever you need it, okay?"

Nodding, Casey kissed Alex's lips softly. "Thank you, Alex. I mean it."

Alex offered a small smile, her eyes going distant for a moment. She pulled Casey to stand with her and raked her fingers through her hair. She had taken on a new habit of her lower lip slipping into her mouth with regularity. In private, she could be the warm, flexible Alexandra that Casey knew, but in public, she had changed. She could not afford to be vulnerable, and she knew it. She did not even like exposing that side of her in public places, and it occurred to her that there was a man standing at the end of the pier, watching them, and she was suddenly very uncomfortable.

While she had no problem with the spotlight on her, she did not like not knowing who was watching her, and she had only seen the man as she stood up. Casey was still staring off over the dirty water. It was Alex whose attentions had been drawn over her shoulder.

"What?" Casey asked, turning to look where Alex had fixed her gaze. The man wore a cheap suit and looked like he had not slept in a couple of days. "Who's that?"

"He's a cop," Alex answered, taking Casey's hand and walking with her to the head of the pier. When they were close enough, she addressed the officer. "Can we help you?"

"My name's Detective Williams, NYPD." He pointed into the parking lot where a tall, skinny man in an equally cheap suit, mismatched belt, and shined shoes was standing, talking to a man with a dog. Beyond them, the two women saw a squad car in the park, lights whirling, bouncing off trees.

"I guess we were in our own little world. How can we help?"

"How long have you two been in the park today?" the man asked.

Alex glanced at her watch. "Maybe an hour or two. What happened?"

"We're investigating an assault that occurred late last night."

Shaking her head, Alex looked to Casey who looked equally befuddled. "We don't know," Casey said. "Neither of us was here last night."

"You look familiar," the detective said of Alex, as his eyes darted over her face as though trying to place her.

"Sure. You're on one of my cases."

"Beg pardon?" the man said, looking shocked on top of tired.

"I'm an ADA. I inherited a few cases from my predecessor. You're on one of them. The Henderson matter, I think."

"You're ADA Cabot?" he said. "Well, good to meet you, I guess."

"ADA Casey Novak," Alex introduced of the red head. "Sorry we couldn't be of more assistance to you."

"Thanks anyway, though."

"Yea," Casey murmured, tugging gently at Alex's hand. "If you don't mind, though, Detective."

Alex nodded. "We've gotta get going. Here." Alex pulled her wallet from her back pocket. If she were wearing a skirt, it went in her purse, but otherwise, she did like to have it close, and being that she had left the church in jeans with Casey, she had tucked the small green and blue wallet into her pocket. "My card. If you need anything, let me know."

"Thanks."

The two women hurried back to the car and climbed in. Casey hugged herself as Alex drove out of the parking lot and away from Battery Park. "An assault, huh?"

"Probably a sexual assault. Detective Williams works in SVU. The tall, skinny guy is John Munch or Minch, something like that. He was in my office last week wanting to know if the new ADA was going to take the case seriously."

"You have a rape case?"

"No. The Henderson matter is an elder abuse case. NYPD Special Victims handles that, too, but it goes on the general docket in felony at the DA's office."

"Oh," Casey murmured. She snickered. "What did you tell him?"

Alex shrugged. "To get out of my office until he could talk to me like I was an intelligent human being."

Casey laughed. "You would. What happened?"

"He left. I haven't heard from him since." Alex shrugged. "Maybe he can't talk to me like I'm intelligent, but Williams seems more down to earth. Fortunately, I think the DA's going to transfer the elder abuse cases to the SVU docket on our side of things, too, so that the detectives are dealing with the same sets of ADAs. It's too complicated for them, I guess, otherwise."

Casey chuckled. "Now who doesn't think someone's an intelligent human being?"

"I'm not saying cops aren't intelligent. They know enough to keep us in business." Alex smirked. "No, I admire police officers, but you have to admit, there has to be a certain lack of intelligence to willingly put themselves in harm's way."

"Or a certain amount of bravery to risk their lives for ours," Casey countered.

"Courage is but the fear of running away," Alex said.

Casey laughed. "Then you're the most fearful person I know." Playing with the fabric of her seatbelt, Casey sighed. "I thought you said you'd be a cop if lawyering didn't work out for you."

"I never said I was intelligent. Only that I expected to be treated under the assumption that I was intelligent. Besides, I was joking. I'd make a horrible cop. Are you kidding?"

"Well, you're a better lawyer than me, so I hope it works out for you because if it doesn't, there's no hope for me."

"Nonsense," Alex retorted. "There'd still be hope for you. You would be a great victim advocate."

"Me? More your alley, don't you think?"

"Ew. No. If I can't prosecute them, I'll shoot them. Thanks, though."

"You don't even like guns."

"Good point. I knew I picked lawyering for a good cause."

Casey rolled her eyes. "I'll teach you to shoot."

"You can shoot a gun?"

"And take most models apart and put them back together with a blind fold on in under a minute."

"Jesus. Okay, you're scary."

"Military family, Ali. I can't believe you didn't know this."

Alex sighed, stopping behind the mess of traffic. "Casey, you don't talk to me too much about your life before Harvard. I get snippets, but not a lot."

"I qualified as a sharpshooter. I competed as a kid."

Alex nodded. "Remind me not to piss you off." She inched forward with the car. "What other talents do you have that I am sorely not aware of?"

Flushing, Casey looked down. "I don't have many."

"No. You do. I know you can play softball. I was wrong to think innocent in the world meant that you didn't know how to defend yourself. You can clearly defend yourself better than I can, probably better than anyone I know can."

"Only with a firearm," Casey mumbled. "And, to be honest, I'm not actually an advocate of violence." She rubbed her wrists as though uncomfortable.

"About that. Would you do me a favor?"

"Maybe. What?" Casey asked, tilting her head.

Alex accelerated through the yellow light, fed up of waiting in traffic and utterly without the patience to wait at the red. "Start keeping your bat in your office. I'm a little worried."

"About Charlie." It was a statement. Alex was not the only woman with concerns.

"Well," Alex said, her words slow as though she were choosing them carefully, "he has been known to physically harm you. With this, I would not put it past him to show up at the office, Casey. I want you to be able to defend yourself against him. I don't want to find you dead in your office."

Casey nodded. "If it makes you feel safer, Ali, I'll keep it in my office."

"Will you use it for self-defense?" Alex asked. "Because, if you won't, then don't because it'll just give him a weapon to use against you."

"Yea, I'll use it. I doubt he'll go to the office, Al. I've humiliated him publicly, and he's going to blame you just as much as he'll blame me. He won't go anywhere you might be. He hated that I worked in the same office. He thought you would put ideas in my head."

"About leaving?"

"Yea." Casey shrugged, flushing and looking away.

Alex shrugged. "Well, oops. Looks like I did," she said with a soft smile as she dropped her hand from the steering wheel, covering Casey's on her leg. "Guess he knew my evil genius plan all along, didn't he?"

With a smile of her own, Casey wiggled her fingers between Alex's. "So, us," she started, trailing off and looking sheepishly to Alex.

"We're where you need us to be, Casey. You just let me know, and, honey, you don't have to let me know tonight. Or tomorrow. Whenever you're ready."

Curling her fingers over Alex's hand, Casey squeezed. "Thanks, Ali. I mean, I want to try this with just you, out and everything. Well, maybe not out at work just yet. But, right now, I just feel so raw and exposed. Everything right now feels like I'm touching exposed nerve endings, and it stings. I don't want to think of us that way."

"That's fair, Case," Alex said. "And, hot shot, I don't want you to think about our relationship that way, whatever our relationship might be. Give it a day or so, calm down, get some stress relief going on, and we can sit down and figure out what makes you comfortable, okay?"

Casey nodded. "Thanks, Alex."

"Well, duh," Alex chuckled. "I've already told you, I love you. I don't, that's not going to change just because I'm not your mistress anymore."

Laughing shyly, Casey said, "Really? You were my mistress?"

"By all technicalities, yes," Alex answered, chuckling.

Shaking her head, the red haired woman brought Alex's fingers to her lips, brushing them over the soft, red velvet. "Funny. I always figured it would be more likely that you would have a mistress than I would."

"Well, maybe before I met you. You kind of changed that for me," Alex said, releasing Casey's hand to lightly scan the pads of her fingers over Casey's lips, cheek, and ear, tucking her hair on her way down Casey's neck to that soft spot just to the left of her spine. Casey groaned. "I'm a one woman woman now."

"Me, too," Casey said with a mild moan as Alex's fingers worked their way over Casey's shoulders and the muscle down her back, working out some of the tension in the muscles there. "That's not fair, Ali. That feels so good."

Alex rested her hand on Casey's shoulder, earning herself a groan from the woman. "What?"

"I didn't mean stop," she mewled.

"I'll call Leslie and see if she has any openings tomorrow. If you'll let her, she'll do a massage on you. Don't worry about being worried or flinchy, either, Casey. She's worked on me for years. She remembers me flinching after Adam." Alex dutifully began working at Casey's soft skin once again as she pulled off the main road and onto some back roads leading out of Manhattan and into Queens.

Casey raised a puzzled brow at Alex. "I thought your parents had a Manhattan apartment?" she asked.

"They do. The house in Queens is where I grew up. They got the apartment to entertain business guests, but they were staying there the night we had dinner with them because the house was being repainted."

"Oh," Casey said, shaking her head. "I don't understand what you would do with so much money."

Alex shrugged. "You'd figure out something," she mused. "I'm sure it would something elegant and humanitarian."

"I'd like to think so," Casey said, a smile spreading slowly over her features as she dreamed about things she would do with what seemed like an infinite amount of money.

Pulling into her parents' drive, Alex turned off the car and hurried around to Casey's side of the car, opening the door for her before the red head had the opportunity to do so herself. "Thanks, Ali," Casey said, flushing a little as she stepped out of the convertible, taking the blonde's hand.

"Why are you suddenly so nervous, Case? They're my parents. They won't bite."

Casey nodded. "I know," she said. "But, this whole situation is foreign to me, and I don't really know how to address it myself. I don't know how to be or think or feel, and I have no idea what to do or say around your parents, Ali. I, you're you. I trust that about you. But a large part of me still wants to be sick about what I did today. I want to curl up in a hole and vanish."

"How about a bathtub with bubbles, instead?" Alex suggested. "It's the best I can do."

Smiling faintly, Casey nodded. "Alright, Ali. I trust you."

"My parents will not be disappointed in you. They know Charlie hurt you. Not to the extent that I know because I didn't tell them. They figured it out on their own watching you. So, they're just gonna be glad to hear that you left him. They'll be proud of you more than anything. It takes a lot to stand up and leave an abusive relationship, Casey. We all know that."

Casey's hand tightened in its grip on Alex's fingers. "Okay," she whispered. "Okay."

Alex knocked on the door, the wooden mass opened almost immediately by a woman in her late forties, hair pulled up into a bun, laugh lines forming around her lips and eyes. "I heard you pulling up the drive, Alexandra."

"Rosa," Alex said, releasing Casey's hand to hug the somewhat shorter woman. "Here, I thought you'd gone off to California."

The woman laughed. "I did. I miss you and Danae too much to stay."

Alex smiled. "You're a terrible liar, Rosa. Always were. But, I'm glad you're back. Rosa, this is my friend, Casey." Reaching over, Alex pulled Casey in to her. "Casey, this is Rosa. She was my nanny when I was a little girl and, when I was old enough to take care of myself, she stuck around as a housekeeper. Rosa, this is my best friend, Casey."

The smaller, Hispanic woman took Casey in her arms, giving her a warm hug that even Casey could not find any harm in. "I'm her girlfriend," Casey said with a small smile, eyes darting bashfully to Alex over Rosa's shoulder.

"Oh, I knew Alex would have fine taste in women," Rosa exclaimed. "Come in. Your parents are expecting you, Alex. And, now that I am back in New York, I will be expecting you more often."

"Absolutely, Rosa," Alex said as they stepped into the foyer. "Mom?"

"In the kitchen," Alex's mother called back. "And, don't yell. It's rude."

"Okay," Alex hollered back, wide grin on her face. To Casey, she said, "Welcome to the Cabot abode."

"It's beautiful," Casey murmured. And, it was exactly what she had come to expect for a family from old money, especially for a Cabot. The place was definitely upper class, but it was not show offy like the new money families could be. People, Casey had learned from her adventures with Alex, who had not grown up with money did not know how to spend it. They spent it all trying to show off to others how much money they had. People from old money, on the contrary, did not need to show it off. Also, Casey had learned, it seemed like people from old money were more like middle class people in how they behaved than people from new money. But, there were still some heavily marked differences.

They padded into the kitchen, having slipped off their shoes at the front door, and Alex immediately went to the sink to wash her hands, taking up station beside her mother, kneading what was looking to be fresh bread. Shrugging, Casey followed suit and grabbed the third ball of dough and sprinkled some flour onto the counter. For several minutes, the women worked together in silence, and Casey was surprised to find the tension rolling off her shoulders in what felt like waves.

It was a couple of minutes more before Casey stopped moving the dough under her hands. She just kind of froze, her body shaking as she started to cry. Alex had seen Casey freeze up and had washed her hands again, ridding them of the flour. Carefully, she stepped behind Casey and wrapped her arms around the woman's shoulders, pressing her face into her back. A moment later, Casey felt another pair of warm arms envelope her, and she moved her own hands to hold on to the two Cabot women.

"I can't believe what I did," Casey whispered. "The people I disappointed today. The people I pissed off." She paused, biting her lip. "But, at the same time, I feel so light, like someone else knows and can share in the weight. And, I'm free. He can't hurt me anymore. I don't know why, but I never thought that would happen."