Chapter 112

Going over to Abby's house for dinner reminded Bellamy of the first time he'd gone over there as a senior in high school. He'd been nervous then, but tried to hide it, and he was nervous now, and still trying to hide it. He and Clarke had decided to wait until Sunday night to venture over, mostly because he'd wanted to give himself ample time to adjust to things back home before facing his mother-in-law. Despite the fact that she was loaning him money to pay off his various expenses, he was bracing himself for . . . disdain. Judgment. Hatred, even. This was, after all, the same woman who had once tried to forbid him from dating her daughter.

However, when he got over there, Bellamy didn't feel any of those negative things from her. She hugged him and told him she was glad to see him again, and she was just . . . nice. Perhaps becoming a grandmother had softened her. Whatever the reason for her compassion, he wasn't complaining. It made it easy to sit down to dinner and not be so tense.

Kane and Abby didn't ask him about his stint in rehab, even though they probably wanted to. Instead, Kane talked about his annual carnival and how he was going to have to find someone else to work the kissing booth this year. Abby told them about a new wing that was going to be added to the hospital, but Clarke must have not been interested in that, because she kept asking wedding questions. Eventually, Abby got so into answering them that she just stopped talking about anything else altogether.

"So anyway, to make a long story short," she said after they'd all finished what was on their plates, "it'll probably be next June."

"Or July," Kane said, "depending on if we can get the venue."

"Yes," Abby agreed. "It's a bit of a long engagement, but that's alright."

"Yeah, Lexa reminded me that a wedding's more symbolic than anything else," Clarke said. "You guys are basically already married."

"Was Lexa back?" Bellamy asked her. Weird as it was to say, he kind of liked her ex, would've loved to hang out with her.

"Yeah, for my birthday," she said. "I'll have to let her know you came home. She was wishing you well."

"Seems like a lot of people were." He felt like he had a lot of people to thank for everything they'd done for him, even if it was something as simple as just keeping him in their thoughts. He'd had a good talk with Miller already, told him he was proud of him for keeping the team going, and touched base with all his other friends to thank them for being there for Clarke. But he couldn't ignore the money stuff any longer, so as awkward as it was, he transitioned into it.

"Hey, uh, I just wanted to let you guys know how grateful I am for all the support lately," he told Abby and Kane. "I mean, financially, I wouldn't be able to do any of this without you, so . . ." He didn't need to go into detail about how expensive a DUI charge and rehab was. They knew. "It just really means a lot." Not having to worry about coming up with all that money right now was a load of stress off his shoulders.

"Well, you mean a lot to us," Abby said.

"Last year at this time, you still didn't even like me," he pointed out.

"I know, I resisted."

Even though they were joking about it, the turnaround in her thinking was a huge fucking blessing to him. "For real, though, Abby, thank you."

She waved it off as it if were no big deal and said, "Don't mention it."

"No, I have to mention it, 'cause it's a lot of money," he said. "so I promise I'm gonna pay you back someday. As soon as I can."

"You don't have to do that," Abby insisted.

"Mom," Clarke said. "Just let him do it. He wants to."

"Well . . . whatever you want," Abby said before changing the subject. "So what're we thinking, wait a little before dessert?"

"Yeah, I need to feed Avery," Clarke said. "Or at least try. Mom, can you come with me, see if I'm doing anything wrong?"

"Sure, of course," Abby said. "But honey, you know I didn't breastfeed."

"But you're a doctor. You still know stuff."

Abby folded up her napkin, put it on the table next to her empty plate, and got up. "Alright, let's go up to your room," she said. "Marcus, clear the table for me?"

"Will do," he said. He started doing that while she and Clarke went upstairs with Avery.

"Here, I'll help you out," Bellamy said, getting off his ass to clear his and Clarke's plates.

"You don't have to," Kane said.

"Least I can do." He brought things over to the counter and started to scrape the scraps and pieces of food still on the plates into the trashcan.

"Bellamy," Kane said, popping open the dishwasher, "you don't have to feel indebted to us. You're family. All that matters to us is that you're doing better."

That was all that seemed to matter to anyone. They hadn't changed their opinion of him; they didn't think he was a loser now. But they could've. He'd given them plenty of reason to. "Actually, it's kinda funny you mention that, 'cause lately I've been thinking about family a lot," he said. "It's one of the main things my therapist and I talked about." He didn't want to reveal too much, because some of those conversations had been intensely emotional, but he didn't want to forget about the breakthroughs he'd had because of them, either. "Right in between the accident and rehab, I found out some stuff about my dad," he told Kane. "Or my sperm donor, I guess you could call him, because he was never anything else to me. I still don't know what his name was or what he looked like, but my mom told me . . ." He swallowed hard, finding it difficult to say the words. "He died. In a car accident. And apparently he had an alcohol problem, so . . ." Something in his gut just told him that alcohol had been involved. He didn't need proof, because he just knew.

"Wow," Kane said.

"Yeah. So I don't wanna be like him." It was kind of weird that there was this whole other half of his family that he just didn't know at all. Maybe he still had another grandfather out there, or even a great grandfather. And for all he knew, maybe they had drinking problems, too, so he didn't feel particularly inclined to search for them, not when he already had plenty of people in his life who were way better. "Anyway," he said, "I just wanted to say it's been really good to have you and Jake in my life. I never really had a father before, and now I have two, so . . ." He had to look away, because opening up like that to anyone who wasn't his wife, his mom, or his sister always made him feel a little weird.

"Well," Kane said, patting him on the back, as though he were proud of him, "I've kind of enjoyed having a son."

...

Having to go in front of a judge and own up to his DUI charges was fucking humiliating for Bellamy. Clarke was able to go in there with him, but she wasn't able to even stand by his side. He had to stand in front of that judge with a lawyer he barely knew—one of Pike's associates—next to him. The lawyer told him to just answer honestly to everything, and sadly, the honest answer was always yes.

"Were you intoxicated on the night of September 1st?"

"Yes."

"Did you know you were intoxicated when you drove on the night of September 1st?"

"Yes."

"When you crashed your car on September 1st, was that the result of your alcohol intoxication?"

"Yes."

By the time it was all over and he'd publicly acknowledged blowing a .18, his lawyer presented the judge with documented proof of his time in rehab. The judge must have seen a lot of that in his day, because he looked it over in barely no time at all and handed out the consequences just as swiftly. Nothing caught Bellamy off guard or alarmed him. Every punishment checked out with the research he and Clarke had done and with what the lawyer had told him to expect. Still . . . his heart was racing the entire time he was standing there, and it was only after he and Clarke walked out of the courtroom that he felt like he could breathe again.

"I feel alright about that," he said.

"Me, too." She walked with her hand in his, not ashamed to be seen with him even after every stupid thing he'd just admitted to. "It all went exactly the way we thought it would. Pay the fine, take the class, install the device, get the special license."

He hoped there wasn't a catch, something that would come up down the line, but damn, his anxiety made it hard not to worry. "You don't think we're about to get the rug pulled out from under us, do you?" he asked her.

"No. I just hope . . ." She paused for a moment before finishing, "I hope everything goes in our favor the next time we're back here."

He knew she was referring to Avery's impending adoption, which honestly still had him feeling more nervous than this DUI hearing had. "Any idea when that's gonna be?" he asked her.

"No. Haven't heard from Finn," she said. "And Pike doesn't want us to make the first move. He says, the longer we can draw this out right now, the better."

"To prove that I'm sober," he understood.

"Right." As they walked out of the courthouse, she seemed to second guess her choice to even bring it up when she asked, "Should we not talk about this? Does it stress you out too much?"

"Well, yeah, it stresses me, but we have to talk about it sooner or later." He motioned to an empty bench next to a really bad statue of some local historical figure and asked, "You wanna sit down?"

"Sure."

They sat together, falling into a few seconds of silence, and then he said, "Alright, you can tell me the truth. You don't have to worry about sending me on some downward spiral. I can take it."

She thought about that for a moment, then nodded and said, "Okay. What do you wanna know?"

He realized it wasn't like she'd have the answers to everything, but he felt like he needed to get caught up on any developments. "Do you think he's gonna get partial custody?" he asked her.

To her credit, she gave an honest answer, just like the answers he'd given to the judge. "I don't know. It's possible. Maybe not even custody. Maybe just visitation rights?"

Visitation rights. He didn't like the sound of that, either, because it sounded really similar to what they'd already tried. "Does he have anything on his record?" he wondered. If there was just something there, even if it was more of a minor offense than his DUI was . . .

"No," Clarke replied. "I mean, he's gotten drunk and gotten high and done plenty of things that wouldn't look the best in a court of law, but . . . no, nothing on his record."

Great, Bellamy thought. Even if Finn did have skeletons in his closet, they wouldn't be visible to a judge. To a judge, he'd have a clean slate. And although the DUI had been Bellamy's first run-in with the law, he didn't feel like he'd had a truly clean slate in a long time.

...

Now that his last final exam was done, Bellamy was wasting no time getting his dorm room packed up. "I can't wait to be outta here," he told Gabriel. "This place has really fucked me up, man." The only good thing about second semester was that they'd decided to live together. Gabriel had been a much better roommate than his last one had been.

"But you're not going home, huh?" Gabriel said. He was lying on his bed, still studying for his last final.

"No."

"Why not?"

Bellamy shoved some more clothes into his suitcase and said, "Because I don't want people there asking why I'm back and trying to figure out what happened." He'd rather have people in Arkadia think he was a quitter than have them know the truth about what had happened down here, about what he'd let happen to that girl. Whoever she was. He still didn't even know.

"So just stay then," Gabriel suggested.

"Nah, I'm done," he declared. His mind had been made up weeks ago when, at the spring game, UCF had decided to give Brady some special award and let him talk about how excited he was for his final year on the team. Bellamy had only watched on TV, but just watching and hearing people in the crowd cheering for him and applauding him had made him feel sick. "College isn't for me," he decided. "Pretty much only stayed so I could try to track down that girl, but . . . nothing." It was getting to the point now where even he had a hard time remember exactly what she looked like. If he bumped into her on campus, he wasn't even sure he'd recognize her.

"Well, I'll keep looking," Gabriel said.

Bellamy sat down on his bed, noting the playbook on his roommate's desk. It was about the same size as last year's playbook, but it probably had some new plays in it. "What else are you gonna keep doing?" he asked Gabriel, putting him on the spot a bit. "Playing on the team? Even though you know how fucked up it is?"

Gabriel sat up, set his notes aside, and said, "I have to, man. If I don't play, I can't afford to go."

"So drop out, like me," Bellamy suggested, even though he knew it wasn't that simple.

"I don't want to. I wanna be a doctor. I can't do that if I-"

"No, I get it. Don't worry, I understand why you gotta stay," Bellamy said. Hell, his mom had been none too pleased when he'd told her his decision. And Octavia had a lot of questions, too. "But I gotta go," he said. "Somewhere else. Not home. Not college. I'm done playing football." Sure, he'd gotten a few offers from some other schools, mostly smaller ones, but his heart just wasn't in it anymore. He loved the game, but he didn't love the corruption.

"So where you gonna go then?" Gabriel asked him.

"I don't know." He hadn't actually given it much thought. "Got my new car now. Maybe I could just drive, see where I end up."

"That's very 1960s hippie of you," Gabriel remarked.

"Yeah, I know. I just need a fresh start." Wherever he ended up, nobody would know him, and nobody would have any expectations of him. He wouldn't even have any major responsibilities to uphold. That sounded like the kind of life he'd always been destined to live.

...

"You okay?"

"Yeah." He hadn't meant to space off. The thing about going to therapy and becoming more aware of your own thinking, though, was that spacing off became really easy to do. "I just wish I hadn't made this harder on us."

Clarke angled her body towards his and said, "Listen, we're still going after what we want, which is you adopting Avery. That hasn't changed. And I still think we can make it happen."

"Do you really?" If she was just trying to protect his emotions, she didn't have to.

"Yes," she said. "Now I'm not gonna lie to you and say I'm not nervous, because I am. I worry about what might happen. But I'm also really determined. And one thing I learned about myself while you were gone is that you don't wanna mess with me when I'm determined."

He smiled at her and said, "I always knew that."

"Seriously, though, after standing up in front of the whole school board like that, I kind of feel like I can do anything right now."

He was glad she had that confidence, especially since it was balancing out his insecurity. "Wish I felt that way."

"Well, how do you feel?" she asked. He noticed she was doing that a lot lately, asking lots of really open-ended questions.

"Like I can screw up anything," he admitted.

She shook her head. "That's not true. And hey, maybe I'm just overestimating my powers."

"Well, Octavia told me you were pretty much a badass while I was away," he said.

"Really?" Clarke smirked. "Nice. 'cause, you know, some people would look at her and say she's traditionally badass, so for her to say that about me . . ."

"Yeah, she said, 'Your wife's a badass.' Exact words. So I think you can do anything, too."

Looking proud of herself, she leaned in and whispered, "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure," he whispered back.

She looked down at her stomach, then laughed as she said, "I've felt pretty badass ever since I squeezed Avery out."

He laughed, too, nodding in agreement. "Yeah, that's for sure." Every day, Clarke amazed him. But he doubted she'd really ever understand just how incredible she was, no matter how often he told her or how many of his journal entries he read.

...

Bellamy felt a mix of emotions about his first therapy session with Dr. Dante Wallace. He just hoped he gelled with him and that they'd have the same type of vibe he'd had with his therapist in Baltimore. Dr. Wallace was . . . old. And the pictures of him online definitely weren't recent, because when Bellamy first saw him, he was actually shocked by how old he was. He hoped that wouldn't mean he was out of touch. At least he had a lot of experience.

His first session with Dr. Wallace was a long one, about an hour long. It felt like it was going fast, though, because he was talking a lot about his family, and he could lose track of time talking about them. There was a lot to say.

"Sounds like your wife has been your rock through all of this," Dr. Wallace remarked after Bellamy had gotten done explaining everything she was doing for him.

"She has. I married an incredible woman." Every morning, she still sprung out of bed to go get his medicine, and then she came back and meditated with him. She was still driving him everywhere, because a technician wasn't going to be able to come install his ignition interlock device until the end of the week, and just last night, he'd had another anxiety attack that she'd had to help bring him down from. And she hadn't even complained.

"Can I ask you an uncomfortable question?" Dr. Wallace inquired.

"Sure." One thing he'd learned about therapy was that it wasn't always comfortable.

"What if she hadn't stood by you?" Dr. Wallace asked. "Would you be sitting in this office right now?"

Thinking about his answer to that question was . . . unsettling, to say the least. "To tell you the truth, doc," he said, "I might be lying in a ditch right now." Everything had just started happening really quickly for him. Looking back now, he felt like he'd been on the brink of something really, really bad. "I wanna get to the point where I can be my own rock," he said. "And I feel like I will eventually get there. But for right now, yeah, I definitely rely on her and my daughter for motivation."

"And there's nothing wrong with that," Dr. Wallace assured him. "The people we love can be great motivators for self-improvement."

"Yeah, I just wanna be the best husband and father I can be, you know?" He felt like, as long as he was doing that, then he'd also be able to fulfill all the other responsibilities in his life, like being a good son, a good brother, a good friend, and a good coach.

"Do you think that desire ever turns into . . . pressure?"

"No." That word didn't ring true to him. At least not completely. "Or if it does," he amended, "it's just pressure I put on myself."

"And why do you think you do that?"

They were venturing into a territory of self-reflection that he and his therapist in rehab hadn't quite gotten, too. It was kind of daunting, kind of intriguing. "Well, growing up, it was just me and my mom and my sister," he reminded the doctor. "I didn't have a dad, and my mom didn't have a husband. I always say I never needed another parent, but she didn't deserve to have to do all that alone." The parallels between his father and Finn were pretty obvious, which maybe explained why he'd never been able to stand the guy. "When Clarke told me she was pregnant, even though it wasn't mine . . ." He still remembered the fear he'd seen in her eyes when she'd told him and the ache he'd felt in his heart to help her. "It always just kind of seemed like the right thing to do, to be there for her," he said. "So I wanna be there, not in rehab or . . . worse." Again, he pictured a ditch and himself just lying in it. Not a good mental imagine. Not one he was willing to risk becoming real.

"And again, there's nothing wrong with that," Dr. Wallace assured him. "If anything, it's very admirable to step up and raise a child that isn't yours."

Bellamy couldn't help but bristle at that.

"Biologically," Dr. Wallace made sure to add. "Not many men would be willing to assume such enormous responsibility for a child that isn't biologically their own. But I wonder if you ever truly had a method in mind to cope with things when you failed. Because failure's inevitable, Bellamy, for any parent. For any spouse. You always mess up at some point; you can't be perfect."

That was definitely part of the problem then, wasn't it? He'd never fixated on failing as a parent or a husband, because he'd just been so damn excited about it, and for a while there, it'd been going so well. "So you think . . . you think I was so focused on doing right by them that I didn't know how to handle it when I did something wrong?" he summarized.

"It's just a theory," Dr. Wallace said. "What do you think?"

"I think . . ." Damn. This guy was good. He'd never thought of it like that before. "You could be right. I probably did pressure myself a little too much," he admitted. "What am I supposed to do about that, though? It's not like I can mess up and just not care."

"Of course you should care. It's good that you do," Dr. Wallace said. "It's that desire to be the best man you can be that's motivating you to do better. Whether it's driven by the people you love or something else you feel inside, you shouldn't stop caring. But when you do make your next mistake, either as a husband or a father, because that's bound to happen . . . try to allow yourself that space and that forgiveness to not be perfect. Even if you'd like to be."

For some reason, he had a momentary flashback in his mind of the state final football game, blowing it on the most pivotal play when everyone had been counting on him. Hell, that was just a game, and to this day, it still bothered him. That awful feeling he'd had that night of letting people down . . . it was like a scaled back version of what he'd felt the night he crashed his car, the watered down version of what he'd felt when he'd been sitting in jail.

"Is your wife perfect?" Dr. Wallace asked him suddenly.

"Yeah," he blurted, but in all reality . . . "No." He could still think she was amazing while acknowledging that she had her faults, too.

"Have you ever had to forgive her for something she's done?"

Dr. Wallace had no idea just how deeply that question resonated. Or maybe he'd heard some of the gossip last spring and he knew exactly what he was asking. Either way, it gave Bellamy something to think about. He nodded mutely, not willing to get into all that yet. Maybe during his second or third session.

"And yet, you still love her anyway," Dr. Wallace stated, allowing himself a smile. "Isn't it interesting how some things never change?"

Bellamy smiled, too, liking the sound of that.

That night, as he and Clarke lay in bed together, getting ready to go to bed, she turned onto her side, and he turned onto his, and they just made eye contact and gazed at each other happily for a few seconds. Then she leaned in, and at the same time, he leaned in, and their lips meant. Another simple but spectacular kiss. He was able to steal a second one this time, too.