Author's Note: Two chapters in a week, what a wild woman! Who am I?
I fibbed. There is one chapter left after this one...I owe so many of you thanks from the bottom of my heart.
When she climbs into the sedan beside Olivia, she isn't surprised to hear her father's oldies station playing on the radio.
She fleetingly wonders whether it was his first, or if it was hers, and he adopted it years ago as his go-to for listening. She tries to focus on the way Brian Wilson is crooning about the Sloop John B, but the anxiety she has managed to keep at bay all morning is finally getting the best of her.
She has an appointment this afternoon with her new therapist, with Olivia's therapist.
It's Tuesday and her sister had been right. There was a cancellation, a last-minute opening and she has an appointment. It is both too soon and not soon enough for her liking.
Her bouncing knee collides with the armrest on the car door exactly three times before Olivia mercifully gives her something to do.
"Leen," Olivia says her name quietly over the soft hum of the radio. "Will you look in the back seat and make sure I put that white folder back there?"
She never takes her eyes off the road in front of them, but somehow Olivia knows that she needs an outlet for her fidgeting.
Kathleen adjusts her seat belt and twists in the passenger seat so that she can survey the back of the car. She is sure Olivia is certain about the folder's whereabouts, but she is asking her anyway. She is giving her something to do. She is trying to help. She is always trying to help.
The white folder rests on the seat beside an empty water bottle and some discarded napkins. She reaches for the folder, shifting it along the seat toward her when her gaze falls on something that has been lying hidden beneath it. It's a book, a book with a pretty painted cover in that unmistakable hue of blue.
The blue of Van Gogh's Starry Night.
She reaches further, stretching her arm and her fingertips brush the top of the cover before the soft sound of Olivia's turn signal reminds her what she is supposed to be looking for and she shifts back around in her seat bringing the white folder with her. She realizes that Olivia has brought paperwork to do while she waits.
While she waits for her. For her partner's daughter to go to therapy.
She exhales sharply into the quiet of the space and catches the glance Olivia tosses her way.
"It's okay," she says, giving voice to everything Kathleen isn't saying. "It's new. It's always nerve-wracking."
Kathleen watches Olivia's profile. Her dark eyes are pensive as if she remembers when this was new for her too, before she shifts forward in her own seat to check her mirrors. Kathleen settles back against the headrest and closes her eyes for a moment while Olivia expertly navigates the sedan into a tight parallel parking spot.
She can't help the way her right knee starts to bounce with jittery nerves again and this time neither she nor Olivia do anything to stop it. They are exactly seventeen minutes early and Kathleen isn't sure she is still going to be alive in seventeen minutes, let alone able to get herself out of the car to go inside.
Her mouth is dry. Her heart is pounding uncomfortably fast inside of her chest and she wonders if you can die from anxiety-induced tachycardia. The urge to cry is welling up inside of her and she simultaneously wants to run away and to rest.
Here.
Beside her father's partner.
She opens her eyes when she feels Olivia press something into her hand. She looks down gratefully at the piece of spearmint gum before she unwraps it and pops into her mouth. It gives her something to chew, something to do, something to keep her mind here rather than there.
There. Therapy.
She struggles for another deep breath before she turns to look at Olivia, but Olivia isn't watching her, she is watching the rain. The steady downpour that began this morning and hasn't relented since, as if there is still something left to be washed clean.
A sudden thought hits her and she realizes she should use some of the next fifteen minutes to try to talk to Olivia. The talking will be good practice because she has barely used her voice at all today.
"Can I ask you something?" Kathleen fiddles with the gum wrapper in her fingers. The shaky sound of her own voice surprises her, but it doesn't seem to trouble Olivia.
"Of course," Olivia nods, brushing her dark hair behind her ear as she looks over at her. Kathleen worries the inside of her cheek before she speaks again.
"It's personal," she prefaces, giving Olivia time to contemplate, to reconsider. Her father's partner nods as if she has expected nothing less.
"That's okay."
Kathleen takes a breath, the spearmint on her tongue helps with her nausea. She has been wanting to ask her since the moment she slid the business card across the table at the restaurant three days ago.
Has it really only been three days?
She is curious and caught up in the idea that someone as poised, as professional, as put-together as Olivia could possibly need the same kind of help that she does.
"Can you tell me why you go to therapy?"
Olivia's look changes so quickly that Kathleen thinks if she blinked she would have missed it.
Her expression now is guarded, cautious. Kathleen sees the briefest shuttering of her dark eyes before she meets her gaze once more.
All at once, Kathleen feels apprehensive for reasons that have nothing to do with her own issues. She has asked the wrong question, pried too deep...
"I'm so sorry, Liv. You don't have to-" She starts desperately, but Olivia shakes her head.
"No, I-" Olivia starts. She reaches across the front seat and wordlessly touches Kathleen's arm as if she is trying to impress upon her something unspeakable.
"Later, Leen," she says quietly. "I promise. I'll tell you later."
Kathleen swallows hard and almost bites her tongue.
How come?" she asks, the childish question falling from her lips before she can stop herself. Her father's partner, the woman with the venerable patience, bears with her again. Olivia smiles ever so slightly as if her questioning reminds her of someone else…
"I want you to focus on you," Olivia tells her, unbuckling her seat belt and reaching into the back seat for the umbrella.
Kathleen nods gratefully.
Now she understands. Olivia isn't blowing her off. She isn't treating her like a child or a stranger. She is letting her know that while now is not the time to discuss, it is the time to go.
She can't go by herself and somehow Olivia knows. She tucks the white folder beneath her left arm and Kathleen beneath her right as they make the wet dash across the sidewalk to the office.
Olivia stays beside her while she signs in, sits with her in the empty of the waiting room. Only when her name is quietly called, signaling her appointment time, does Olivia give her a gentle push to move her forward and walk in alone.
An hour later the rain has picked up, the wind is stronger, and Olivia's umbrella is rendered useless. They are both soaked to the skin and freezing by the time they reach the car and Olivia turns the heater on full blast.
Kathleen almost wants to laugh at the way her teeth are chattering from the combination of the chill and her acute exhaustion.
Now that her nervous energy is gone, fatigue is creeping in. She hunches over in the passenger seat and hugs herself, trying to get as close to the warm air flow from the heater as possible. She watches water drip steadily from her black parka to the floor mat below her dark green Hunter boot-clad feet. She rubs her chilled hands together before tucking them into her dry pockets for warmth.
Olivia doesn't move to start maneuvering the car from the parking space. She simply sits cradling herself the same way Kathleen is and if they weren't so cold, Kathleen thinks they just might be able to find this whole thing comedic.
She meets Olivia's gaze to find she is shaking her head with the same this is fucking ridiculous look she knows she is wearing and she lets herself laugh.
Kathleen settles herself back in the seat as she slowly starts to warm up.
Olivia hasn't asked her any questions about her session beyond checking on her with a quiet are you okay? before they'd made their mad run for the car. Truthfully, Kathleen isn't sure what she would tell her if she did ask, because she doesn't quite remember.
It's all a blur.
She knows her therapist's name is Elizabeth, which bodes well to begin with. Elizabeth is kind and helpful and she doesn't make Kathleen feel as though she is being judged. She knows her insurance will cover her sessions and she has another appointment on Thursday. Twice each week until...Until what she isn't sure, but it's a start. She knows she didn't say much and she cried a little, but she doesn't feel ashamed about her first appointment.
She feels hopeful about going back.
The pelting rain is starting to let up now that they are ready to leave. She twists in her seat and helps Olivia to navigate their way out of the parallel parking spot.
A thought has occurred to her and she wants Olivia's opinion.
"Do you think more people should be in therapy?" Kathleen asks and the sound of Olivia's soft laugh makes her smile.
"Yes," she says mildly, amusement tinting her tone.
"Then why is there such a stigma?" She wonders aloud. It's a rhetorical question. One she doesn't expect Olivia to answer, but she does.
She shakes her head so that the damp waves of her dark hair brush her shoulders.
"It's a good question, Leen. It's been this way forever, but I'd sooner accept the stigma and get the help I need than suffer in silence without it."
Kathleen nods and presses on.
"Nobody ever talks about needing help though," she continues. She realizes she is getting to the heart of something that has been bothering her. Something she hasn't had words for until now...
"Everybody always pretends like everything is fine." She thinks back to being in school and how everyone in her classes seemed to have it all together except for her. She sat in her classes concurrently overwhelmed and underwhelmed with the prospect of the sheer amount of work before her.
The looming anticipation of an obscure future. The expectations she had been terrified to ruin, so she hadn't tried at all. She'd been eighteen and struggling, now nineteen and stronger, but still…
She has always felt ill-prepared, more apprehensive about growing up than her peers. She has half-jokingly wondered if she missed something, some training session she was supposed to attend to help her to understand how it all works, How to Become A Grown-Up 101.
At Hudson, she heard talk of "five year plans" when she'd barely been able to hold onto the murky next five minutes of her own life.
She doesn't have any friends anymore, at least not anyone around her age, and she doesn't talk about how desperately lost she feels with her siblings.
Maureen is settled and secure as she has always been. Lizzie is smart and studious with an undeniable brightness beyond her years. Her brother earns good grades and Eli already knows half of his ABC's. She has never felt pressure because her brothers and sisters play their roles well.
She'd been the middle child for eighteen years and slipping beneath the radar a talent she had honed to second nature.
Until now…
"Everybody always pretends like everything is fine," she repeats, scrunching her nose and making a face. She hates the sound of that f-word.
"It makes me feel alone. Like I'm the only one who screws up like this. Like there's something wrong with me, you know?" She sweeps her damp hair away from her neck so it tumbles over her right shoulder as she confesses to Olivia.
Olivia slows the car to a stop as they happen upon construction on the road before she shifts in her seat to glance over at her.
"Leen, there's nothing wrong with you," she assures. Kathleen is certain Olivia must read the skeptical expression on her face though because she elaborates.
"Life is hard and once you figure that out, it takes a lot of courage to keep on living. You're braver than you know."
Kathleen ducks her head and fiddles with her fingers in her lap. She hadn't expected Olivia's faith in her. She is just about to tell Olivia that she doesn't feel brave when she speaks again.
"You have a big heart and a good conscience, just like your Dad."
Kathleen's eyes fill at the mention of her father, the comparison to the man they both share.
"You're trying, Leen and that's brave. That's all that counts."
Kathleen wipes her wet cheeks on the sleeve of her parka before Olivia wordlessly slips a tissue into her hand and drives the car forward a few feet before stopping again.
Construction.
In the safety of the sedan with the silent support of her father's partner, she has an epiphany.
"I know nobody talks about the bad stuff," Kathleen says quietly, "but maybe we should." She looks to Olivia for feedback, for guidance. "It's honest. It might help."
Olivia puts the car into park and settles back in her seat. She watches a few raindrops chase each other down the glass of the window before she speaks again.
"Do you want to hear about why I go to see Elizabeth?"
Kathleen blinks. She'd nearly forgotten in the midst of all of her own restlessness.
"Only if you want to tell me, Liv. Don't feel like you have to," she prefaces and Olivia reaches across the space to touch her arm.
"I know," Olivia reassures her gently.
Kathleen feels her heart rate begin to rise again, but she can't understand why. She has a sense that she is standing on the precipice of something and once she finds out what it is, she won't ever be able go back to who she is in this minute.
Now.
Olivia is speaking and she has to listen.
"Last year, a few months after your brother was born, your Dad and I worked a case. I went undercover in a women's prison. We were investigating a guard we suspected was responsible for hurting some women."
Kathleen shivers involuntarily.
She tries to envision Olivia locked away behind bars like she was, but she can't conjure the image. She remembers how cold the cells were; hard, sterile, concrete. She remembers the sound of the bars clanging loudly as the cell doors closed. She can't imagine Olivia trapped in such a place with a man capable of harming her.
"Detective Tutuola was undercover with me, but apart from him no one there knew I was on the job and I was...," Olivia hesitates for an instant and Kathleen has the foolish urge to cover her own ears. She is afraid to hear of what is to come.
"I was sexually assaulted."
Kathleen turns her head so quickly that she hurts her neck.
"What?" She breathes incredulously, leaning forward and pressing her hand to Olivia's arm. She can just make out Olivia's nod before her tears well again.
"I was," Olivia says quietly. "I didn't tell anyone and I didn't ask for help. I thought I could handle it on my own, but I couldn't."
Kathleen freezes.
"What happened? When did you know?"
"I realized that I had PTSD and it started to interfere with my job. I needed help to get myself back, just like you."
Kathleen knows Olivia can feel her hand trembling against her arm, but she can't let her go. Her mind is spinning and her nausea is rapidly returning. She doesn't know which question to ask first or if she can ask at all.
"Does Dad know?" is the one that falls from her lips before she can help it.
She can just make out Olivia's nod through her stinging eyes.
"Yes," Olivia answers simply, grasping Kathleen's hand with her own and squeezing gently.
Kathleen reaches for her then, leaning close and hugging Olivia as tightly as she can. She squeezes her eyes closed tightly because she can't cry.
She can't.
She can't let herself cry, let herself fall apart, in front of this woman...this woman who has been through hell and back and lived to tell the tale.
This woman who gives and gives of herself without ever expecting anything in return. This woman who has saved Kathleen's life and yet who has spent moments of her own precious time making amends for her very existence. The woman whose family history is tainted, but who has nearly given everything to keep the Stabler family together.
Kathleen's own mother admitted it only forty-eight hours ago.
This woman whose ghosts lead her to believe herself to be inherently unlovable and her father - the man who loves her.
"I'm okay, Leen," she says soothingly, when Kathleen wants to be the one to comfort Olivia.
"I'm working through it, the same way you are. Some days are better than others, but I'm okay."
Olivia pauses to take a breath.
"I wasn't raped, but I work with women who are and I thought how can I help them if I couldn't help myself? I wasn't raped, so why did it affect me so much?"
Kathleen shakes her head because she doesn't have any answers. All she knows is that Olivia is the strongest woman she has ever met.
"It took me a long time to learn how to stop blaming myself and comparing myself because that's not healthy, Leen. What happened to me wasn't my fault and what happened to you isn't yours."
Olivia is comparing them, making them equals and Kathleen can't accept it. What she has been through has been all her own design, what Olivia has lived through was forced upon her, cards she'd been dealt from a brutal terrifying hand.
As if Olivia knows what she is thinking she reaches for Kathleen's arm and gently pushes, forcing her to look up at her.
"Everybody's trauma, everybody's baggage, everybody's hard stuff looks different, Leen. It doesn't make it any less important."
"It's what we do with it that counts and how we come through the storm on the other side. You're right." Olivia's dark eyes fill with something Kathleen can't define, but it looks like pride. She can't imagine why Olivia would be proud of her, but then she tells her.
"You're right. We should be more honest about our stories because we never know who's listening."
Kathleen nods vehemently.
She is listening.
She is hanging on Olivia's every word. She gives her hope. She gives her a hand to hold. A confidant, a friend, a mentor. She makes her feel less-
"I'm telling you all this so you know that you're not alone. You have your Mom and your Dad, your sister…"
"I have you," Kathleen whispers and Olivia's dark eyes fill for an instant before she looks away. Kathleen knows Olivia isn't used to being included in anything and she is going to fight to make sure that she is.
"You have me," Olivia promises, leaning over and pressing a kiss to the top of Kathleen's head. She wants to tell Olivia their friendship is a two way street, but suddenly the traffic is moving. Olivia puts the car into drive and the wheels roll on, moving them forward.
She silently vows to have Olivia's back the same way that her father does.
She is quiet on the ride home.
She can feel her father's concerned gaze on her, but she can't bring herself to speak. She leans back against the seat and tilts her face toward the window. Her cheek catching the residual rays of light as the sun goes down.
She can't speak because if she opens her mouth she isn't sure what will come out and her father doesn't deserve the storm that is brewing inside of her. She wants to get home, to avoid her sister's well-meaning questions, her mother's reaction. She wants a hot shower so that when she finally lets herself sob, no one will hear her. She wants her favorite blue sweatshirt and a grilled cheese sandwich in her room and to be left alone so she can detonate and decompress from all that's happened today without hurting anyone.
"Leen."
Her father speaks into the silence between them. He calls her by her nickname, the one Olivia gave to her two weeks ago. He has never used it before, but it means they talk about her and it makes the wave of emotion inside of her rise.
She owes her father an explanation.
He and his partner have gone above and beyond today to get her to her appointment, to keep her off the figurative ledge, to help her. She should give him something, anything other than her hard-fought impassiveness that is slipping from her grasp by the moment. She wants to protect him, to keep this to herself. She is afraid of the gale, the howl of the winds, the dangerous undercurrent that could suck them both under if she isn't careful.
If she isn't wary.
"How was today?" He asks gently. He is reaching out, but he doesn't realize he is pushing her further under. She knows her silence is killing him and she has to speak soon.
For his sake. For her own.
"Do you know why Olivia goes to therapy?" She asks abruptly. Her voice quakes with ill-disguised emotion.
She sees the way her father's hands grip the steering wheel tighter at their positions of ten and two. She watches his profile, the brief shuttering of his ocean eyes before he forces his attention back to the task of driving.
She hears his heavy swallow before he answers.
"I do."
"Were you there?" She asks. She knows Detective Tutuola was, but she can't fathom where in God's name her father would have been.
He bites down hard on his bottom lip and shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the road before them.
"No, but I should've been," he tells her. More than a year later and she can hear the way his remorse still courses through his tone. "I never should've let her-"
She wants to reach for her Dad, to comfort him, but she can't shake the insidious feeling that he is right.
He should have been there.
She doesn't yet know about the circumstances that kept him away, but she can't shake the terrifying thought that if he had been there, this never would have happened. He would have had Olivia's back. He would have known their guy was gunning for her and he never would have left her alone for long enough to let it happen…..
"I went undercover in the prison before Liv did." Her father is speaking, explaining as though he understands that she needs this. She needs to know what happened and why.
"I went in as a lawyer to try to talk to one of the female inmates and I ended up blowing my cover." He takes a deep breath and in the pause Kathleen starts to put the missing pieces together.
"They sent Fin in with her and -" Her father shakes his own head at the memory she knows eats at him.
"There was an outbreak of tuberculosis while Liv was inside and I did everything I could to get her out, but it wasn't 'nough."
Her father couldn't go in so they gave the next best person. Kathleen shakes her head because it's such a fucking freak set of circumstances, such a perfectly twisted storm that led to Olivia's assault.
She knows her father struggles every single day with his guilt, his anger, his pain. She knows he carries Olivia's assault with him as though he is the one responsible.
He wears it on his face as clear as day.
She has to absolve him. She has to help him to see it's not his fault…but suddenly she remembers. She remembers...
Last year. A Saturday in late February. The night was freezing.
She'd snuck home tipsy and high from an off-campus party for a quick shower and some food before crashing into her own bed. She still has nightmares about how she could've killed someone driving so impaired. She doesn't remember driving home that night, but she remembers that her car was in the driveway when she saw the the car coming down the street.
She'd been wearing Lizzie's old robe she found hanging on the bathroom door, sobering up, while she munched on a bowl of Cheerios when it caught her eye.
Headlights in the driveway.
She glanced up at the digital clock on the oven, 2:37am. The house was silent and sleeping, but her father was just getting home.
She stole to the hallway with her bowl, trying to creep upstairs to her bedroom before her father could come inside and catch her, but he didn't.
He didn't come in.
Curiosity got the better of her and she waited, perched on the edge of the couch, and waited for minutes on end.
She remembers wondering what could possibly be keeping him when she heard it.
The crash that nearly made her drop her cereal bowl. She'd frozen in the middle of the living room, fearing the whole family would come running, but no one did. Her exhausted mother had been dead to the world and her brothers and sister must have been too, because no one appeared.
No one else had heard.
She set her bowl into the sink and ran frantically to the door leading out to the garage. She opened it just a sliver in case she'd been wrong and it wasn't her father but a thief or a murderer or a psychopath...
She thinks any of those alternatives would have been better than what she saw.
Her father sat hunched on the stairs below her. An open case file at his side, the pages strewn across the concrete floor of the garage. His dress shirt was wrinkled, his right hand covered in bright red blood, and a gaping hole across from him in the drywall.
She'd gasped aloud, closed the door as quietly as possible, and run to her bedroom. She remembers shaking uncontrollably beneath her covers until she heard her father's heavy footsteps in the hall. They stopped once, outside of her brother's room, twice, outside of Lizzie's, and once more at her own. She tried desperately to control her frantic heart, her erratic breathing until she heard him close her door again satisfied she was safely asleep.
She briefly let herself wonder what the hell had happened to upset him so. Her father's temper was legendary, but to physically act on his anger was something entirely different from what she was used to. Minutes later, the shower turned on in the bathroom and she'd finally let herself drift to the soothing sound of the water.
When she left the house in the morning, pissed off, late for class, and running as usual; she'd barely given the night's events a second thought. As she started her car, she remembers noticing how the heavy shelves in the garage had been shifted a foot to the right and the hole had disappeared, for the time being.
A bandaid, a temporary fix...
"That night," Kathleen whispers, understanding coming quickly. "In the garage."
Her father doesn't ask how she knows, he simply nods. His knuckles have healed, but the wound is still gaping.
"Have you ever talked to her about it?" She asks. She is starting to believe nearly everything in life can be helped by simply being honest.
He doesn't respond, but clenches his jaw and she gleans his answer in the silence while the storm rages inside of her.
The waves crash and suddenly she is frantic. She is drowning. She is angry. She is confused and hurt as hell for all of them. She is beside herself.
"How can you let her go, Dad?" She asks, her voice raising uncontrollably. She catches the way he passes their street and continues to drive. She doesn't know where he is taking them, she just knows they can't go home until she calms down, until they work this out, until she can breathe again...
She hates herself for this.
She isn't trying to yell at him, to take out her frustration, her panic, her seething at the absolute unfairness of it all, but he is beside her now and he is taking the brunt. He is her punching bag.
Her father is merciful with her.
"I have to trust my partner, Leen," he tells her. She thinks he is dissociating, distancing himself so he surprises her when he continues.
"If I can't trust Liv, I can't trust anybody."
The car rolls to a stop and Kathleen looks around in the light of early evening. He has taken her to the park where he used to bring the three of them when they were little. Maureen was always too old and too cool, but she and Lizzie spent hours on the swings and Dickie loved the monkey bars.
She wants to open the door and run away at the same time she desperately wants to stay. She wants answers, she wants to know, she wants to understand…
"But Liv's not just your partner," she reasons hotly. "She's part of you. You're part of her. She's-"
"Kathleen." His voice is low in warning. He doesn't look at her, but stares straight ahead out the windshield.
"Dad please," she begs. "Just tell me the truth."
"Leen."
He thinks she is asking about an affair, but she knows. She knows that has never happened. She is asking about something much more important. She has to know. She has to hear him say it because somehow she is certain it will help her to heal, too.
"Tell me you love her, Dad," she pleads and he shocks her when he nods in immediate answer.
"I do, 'course I do. She's my best friend in the world and-" He isn't listening. He is placating her and she hates it. She needs the answer. She needs…
"If Eli wasn't..." she starts recklessly.
"Kathleen Louise," her father growls her full name and cuts her off, effectively ending the conversation right then and there.
She knows she is out of line. She is being dramatic, and wild, and disrespectful. She is being everything she is trying to prove that she isn't, but at this moment she doesn't care.
She unbuckles her seatbelt at the same time her father does and reaches for the door handle as he pushes his open.
"I need some air."
She doesn't know who has spoken aloud; one of them, or both, but they need the same thing.
The sky is pink, peach, and purple. The colors are bright tonight despite the dull backdrop of the earlier rain.
Kathleen breathes deeply of the cool air, trying to calm herself the way she learned in therapy. She doesn't glance over her shoulder to look for her father so she doesn't know if he is near or far away.
She needs a moment and so does he.
The fight is draining out of her. She is sorry. She is spent. She is ready to go home.
She turns around to look for her Dad, but she doesn't see him and for an instant she is four years old and momentarily lost at an amusement park.
She finds him then, standing near the same swings she spent so much time on as a little girl. His navy dress shirt looks almost black in the dusk.
"Kathleen," he starts, his voice a rumble in his chest.
"I'm sorry," she says, shaking her head. She is so tired. She wants to ask him to hold her, but she isn't sure he wants to so she holds her ground.
She shakes her head again and meets her father's blue eyes in the last visages of light.
"I'm so sorry, Dad. I was out of line and crazy. I shouldn't have-"
He reaches for her, pulling her in and holding her close to his chest.
"Need you to listen to me," he rasps into her hair. "I love you more than anything and nothing you do is ever gonna change that. I love your brothers and your sisters and your Mom the same way."
She listens closely to the rumble of her father's voice and his heartbeat against her ear.
She wants to ask him if it's different with Liv, but she won't push her luck.
"You were dragged into something on Sunday morning that's got nothin' to do with you or Liv. It's between me and your Mom."
Kathleen nods her head against his chest. He holds her for endless minutes before...
"You're not crazy," he whispers, cradling the back of her head. He pulls back, forcing her to look up at him and meet his light gaze in the growing darkness. He searches her face as if he is looking for something. He must find it because he continues.
"There's things I can't talk 'bout," he mutters. "Doesn't mean they don't matter."