Lucky Thirteen! I hope you think so too...

Chapter Thirteen – Strong Enough

"I have a face I cannot show, I make the rules up as I go. Just try and love me if you can. Are you strong enough to be my man? When I've shown you that I just don't care, When I'm throwing punches in the air, When I'm broken down and I can't stand, Are you man enough to be my man?" ~ Sheryl Crowe

Five-0 Headquarters...

"He had you transferred to Virginia?" Danny asked, blinking rapidly in surprise as Steve filled him in on the most recent turn of events, "And you went?"

Sighing heavily and glancing back over his shoulder to where Harper and her father were hashing it out in his office, Steve reasoned, "I know it all looks black and white to you, but it's more complicated than you think."

Danny opened his mouth to respond, then thought for a moment and closed it again. He cocked his head to one side and regarded his partner, the look on his face, and the story he was telling him. And then, it seemed as if he accepted Steve's explanation because he simply asked, "Who is this guy…the Godfather? How the hell does he have the United States Navy at his beck and call."

"My promotion was coming down the pike anyway," Steve admitted, "and Mickey just made a few phone calls to his old college football buddy, Rear Admiral Winters, and hurried it along a little bit. Apparently, the Admiral owed him a favor. A big one."

Shaking his head, Danny mused, "I've always heard about the rumored corruption in the Chicago PD…I just never knew it was going on in the Superintendent's own house."

"You don't get to be the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department without knowing a few important people," his partner reasoned, "Mickey James has as many friends as he does enemies."

"And it looks like he just made a new enemy," the Jersey detective replied, pointing into Steve's office where Harper had just tearfully turned off the big screen with her father's image on it, "His daughter."

Both men watched as the redhead wandered aimlessly around the small office until she finally collapsed in Steve's desk chair and let out a long breath. She looked completely exhausted and defeated, but Steve was unsure of his next move. Should he give her a few moments to herself before suiting up to do battle with him or should he…?

"Get in there, pinhead," Danny interrupted his thoughts, giving Steve a shove and making the decision for him, "She needs you."

Steve nodded and moved slowly toward his office door while Danny headed in the opposite direction, saying, "I think Kono and Chin and I are done for the evening so you guys can have a little privacy. But if she kills you, make sure the blood spatter is contained in your office so that it's a smaller crime scene…"

The Commander shot a dirty look in his partner's direction as he pushed open the door to his office. Inside, he found that Harper had discarded her gray pinstriped suit jacket and the baby blue of the camisole she wore underneath had always been one of his favorite colors on her. Steve stood silently and watched her as she sat in his chair and busied herself by opening all of the drawers in his desk.

"Looking for something?" he finally asked with a smirk as she approached her.

"Chocolate," she answered, leaning down to open his bottom desk drawer.

"I don't keep chocolate in my de-…"

"This is a nice desk," Harper interrupted suddenly, switching sides and beginning to go through the drawers on that side, "Except for the lack of chocolate, of course."

"Of course."

"Do you keep your gun in this top drawer, here?"

Amused by her strange behavior, Steve asked, "Why? Are you going to shoot me?"

"I'm thinking about it."

"Then, no," he answered with a chuckle, "I don't keep it in there."

Surprising him, she returned his grin and then sat back in his chair and twirled around in a complete circle before looking back up at him and asking, "Did he pay you?"

"No," Steve said with a shake of his head, "He did not pay me."

"Ah, so he simply dangled your real true love in front of your nose like a carrot and you jumped," she deduced, crossing her arms over her chest and leveling him with her eyes.

"You were my real true love," he told her quietly.

"Obviously not, since you chose the NAVY," she reminded him pointedly.

"I didn't have a choice."

"Yes you did," she disagreed, "You just chose wrong."

Steve let out a long sigh. His moment of truth had arrived. He didn't have much of a defense, so he simply said, "You know how your father can be…"

"Yes, I do. Better than anyone," Harper interrupted, "But, despite what some people may think, he is not God. If you had wanted to stay, you would have."

"It wasn't that simple."

"Seems pretty simple to me," she argued with a defiant shake of her head.

"Yes, seven years later…I'm sure it would seem pretty simple. But it wasn't," Steve informed her in a calm voice, "You don't think I agonized over that choice? I didn't just wake up one morning and decide to leave. I waited…I waited for a sign from you. And you just kept pushing me away. The only time that I could touch you without you flinching was in the middle of the night when you were asleep…"

"So this is my fault?" Harper interrupted, fire blazing in her eyes again. That temper of hers could flare up without a moment's notice. "Well, I'm sorry that I made it impossible for you to stay with me. I'm sorry that I had trouble dealing with the deaths of those girls. I'm sorry that I…"

"That's not what I'm saying!" he shouted at her. Realizing how loud he had gotten, he got a tighter rein on his emotions and continued, "I'm not blaming you at all. I take full responsibility for it. What I'm trying to tell you is that I realized that I didn't know how to help you. I didn't know how to break through to you…"

"All you had to do was love me, Steven," the detective told him sadly, "That was all I needed from you."

"No, it wasn't," he disagreed, "Because I did love you. Every second of every day, I loved you. But you kept pushing me away. You didn't want to be touched. You pulled away when I tried to hold you, you stopped eating and sleeping, you would cry out in the middle of the night from those terrible nightmares…calling out those girls names. And when I would reach to comfort you, you would leave our bed and go down to that damn study to work on the case…"

"It was the only thing I knew how to do," Harper defended herself, wishing that he wouldn't bring up those horrible memories, "I thought that if I could solve the case then it would all just go away…"

"It wasn't going away, Jimmy," Steve told her tenderly, moving over to sit on the edge of the desk closest to her, "It was getting worse. You were getting farther away from me and I didn't know what to do."

"So you called my father?"

"In hindsight, it wasn't my brightest move," he agreed, shaking his head, "But I was desperate. He said that you needed to be back in Chicago, surrounded by the people you loved and things that were familiar. And that the worst thing for you would to be to pick up and leave San Diego to go to Virginia to start a new life there." Looking deep into those emerald eyes, Steve reasoned, "Life with me was making you miserable, Jimmy. You were a junior grade detective in a second rate police department. I was gone all the time and you worked all the time, so you hardly knew anyone and didn't have time to make friends. You hated that life."

"But I loved you!" she cried, standing up and facing him, "And I was willing to make it work. I would have given you everything! For God's sake, Steve, I gave you me! I couldn't give you more than that - I didn't know how to. I gave up everything to be with you…my family, my friends, my job. And I did it willingly. How could you not see that?"

"I did see that!" Steve argued back, standing up to face her, "And I hated it! You're right…I got everything out of our marriage. I got you and the job I loved in the city that I was established in. And all you got was me…and I wasn't there half the time! And then when you needed me the most…you were alone." He ran his hands through his short brown hair in frustration and stood up to begin pacing the room as he continued, "I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand what it was doing to you. We hardly recognized each other at the end…what was I supposed to do?"

"Stay!" Harper blurted out, coming out from behind the desk, "Stay and fight for us! Fight for our marriage! My father gave you a one way ticket out of town and you just took it. I could have gone to Virginia Beach with you, we could have…"

"It would have been more of the same."

"How do you know?" she cried desperately, "You didn't even give it a chance!"

"Because your father was right!" he shouted, stopping near the door to look at her again, "You were born for the Chicago PD, not for San Diego or Virginia Beach! Dammit Jimmy, look what you have become! I made the right choice!"

"Look what I've become?" she repeated incredulously, a look of shock washing over her beautiful features. Harper laughed a short, humorless laugh before she informed him angrily, "What I became is a stressed out, workaholic who never took time out to have kids! Jesus, Steve, when you left, I cried for a week! Like a pathetic little child, curled up in the corner of our bedroom. And then when I crawled out of that corner, I crawled straight into a bottle and drank away the pain. I became a cartoon cliché of myself."

He knew that the aftermath of his departure had been bad for her, but he hadn't realized how bad until that very moment. Harper James didn't cry…that was part of their original problem. But she had cried for him. And that tore like a dagger straight to his heart. But he had to make her understand that he had done it for her, so he reminded her quietly, "But when you crawled out of the bottle, you became the youngest woman to make Homicide Detective in the history of the Chicago Police Department. You are amazing…"

"I am not amazing," the redhead told him, sinking down on the nearby sofa, "My career may be amazing, but I am not. You know how I told you that I've moved on? Well, it 's a lie. I am a walking, talking dating disaster…"

"I find that hard to believe," he interrupted, imagining the line of men who were probably waiting to beat down her door.

"Believe it," she said, propping her elbow up on the side of the sofa and resting her tired head in her palm, "You want to know why? Because I measure every single guy who comes into my life against you. And they never measure up. Not one of them."

Steve didn't know what to say. He wanted to tell her that he had been doing the same thing, but before he got up the courage to say the words out loud, she asked, "Do you ever think about that day? The day you left?"

"I try not to," he admitted, coming over to sit down next to her on the couch.

"I do," Harper informed him sadly, "I run through that conversation all the time, word for word. Like I'm expecting it to end differently or something. But it never does." Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes as she reminded him softly, "You gave me the chance…"

"Jimmy, don't…"

"And I blew it," she continued, as if she had not even heard his quiet plea, "You basically begged me to ask you to stay. All you wanted was for me to trust you. And I didn't. So, you left. The biggest regret of my life is I didn't stop you. My heart was telling me to run after you, but my pride got in the way. Here I am spouting off about you not fighting for our marriage when the truth is that I didn't put up much of a fight either. I know that you hate me for that and…"

"I could never hate you," he told her quietly, looking over at her just in time to see a single tear fall and splash on her cheek.

"I don't have nightmares anymore," she told him, reaching up to swipe that tear away just before he did, "They stopped and they were replaced by this new dream. I still have it sometimes. I dream that we're out on a the pier at sunset and I finally get up the courage to ask you not to leave and every single time you say 'I won't.'"

Steve felt his heart breaking for the hundredth time that day as she continued, "I know that this wasn't entirely your fault. And it wasn't even entirely my dad's fault. I know that I am not the innocent victim in this and I'm sorry that I did that to us. To you. I'm sorry for what I put you through. For shutting you out and making you feel like you weren't important. And I'm sorry for not realizing how hard it must have been and how much hurt I had caused you. I know you didn't file for divorce on a whim. I know that I drove you to that place…"

The tears were flowing freely down her face and she made no move to wipe them away. She couldn't be strong anymore…she didn't want to be. Steve could sense it and he covered the distance between them on the couch as he pulled her closer to his strong body and wrapped her in his embrace. She laid her head on his chest and tried to calm her sobs. But it was no use. They were sobs of pure sorrow and regret and would not be calmed by his intimate embrace or the force of her strong will.

Steve held her for a few more moments and then she felt his hand on her chin, forcing her head up. His handsome face was so close to hers and she could feel his breath on her skin as he told her, "You have nothing to be sorry for. It was a horrible situation and we all thought we were doing the right thing at the time."

"No," she argued, shaking her head but he held her chin firmly in his grasp, "I should have reached out for you. I…I was drowning and you were dry land. And when you stopped loving me, I just went over the edge…"

Steve shook his head as her voice trailed off and he whispered, "I never stopped loving you, Harper. Never. I still love you."

Surely, somehow, he had to convince her that he loved her. Because he did love her. God, he did. With every fiber of his being. If he could just go back to that little house they shared in San Diego and make it as if the whole thing never happened, he would do it in a heartbeat. But he knew wishing that he could summon some mystical figure who could wipe those days from Harper's mind was useless. All he could do was try to make her see reason, make her see that what had happened to them had broken him, too. He had walked away from her and tried to make a new life that didn't include her, he had even halfway succeeded, but it was never what he really wanted. He just wanted her - his Jimmy - in his life. He wanted her in his world. In his bed. Only her. He wanted her back. He loved her. Dammit he did, but she was past hearing his excuses.

Now was the time for action.

Before he could stop himself, Steve's mouth came crashing down onto hers with unexpected force. Harper brought her hands up to his shoulders, intending to push his sudden intrusion away before things went too far...but somehow her arms never got the message that her brain was sending. Instead she grasped his shoulders and pulled him closer, reveling in the masculine smell and taste of Steve McGarrett. Through their kiss, he smiled at her response and the pull of his lips began teasing hers. So he deepened the kiss, tentatively bringing his tongue to her bottom lip and running it over the sensitive area where the lip met her sweet skin. An unexpected yet familiar thrill shot through Harper's body and she felt herself go limp in his embrace. Drowning in the sweetness of him and his kiss, Harper realized that it had been a long time since she had been kissed so thoroughly. And she had missed it. She had missed him.

But then, just as suddenly as it had happened...it was over.

Breathing heavily, Harper jerked away from their kiss and his embrace and they simply stared at each other for a moment. Her bright green eyes reflected a desire he had created in her so many times before, her cheeks had turned rosy, and her full red lips were still parted in response to his kiss.

"We can't do this," she protested weakly, leaning back to put some space between the two of them, "I…we…"

"Right," Steve agreed, but he made no move to put any distance between them.

"I can't do this again," she reasoned, "I can't get sucked in the way I did before…"

They locked gazes and Harper's heart tightened in her chest. The room waited silently for several extended moments while Steve wetted his lips and watched her with curious interest. They were so close that Steve could feel her breath coming hot and fast against his neck and chin. He looked into her eyes one more time, and there was no way she could have stopped herself then even if she'd wanted to…not with him so close, not when she could hear his heart pounding so hard in his chest as if urging him to do what she kept avoiding.

Harper melted. Again, she felt his hot gaze land on her mouth, and she tried fruitlessly to avoid the entire thing, but his commanding, blue orbs penetrated her resolve, causing a wave of terrifying emotions to sweep through her. She could almost feel her fingers start to tremble as the memory of his kiss swept powerfully over her, replaying in her head a million times in the span of a second. Leaning over slightly, Harper softly and gently pressed her lips against his. His arms snaked around her waist, drawing her closer and she sighed into his mouth, running her own hands up his chest and then wrapping her arms around his neck. A low moan escaped his lips as he deepened their second kiss and she began running her fingertips through the short tangles of his hair, reveling in the feeling of it's surprising softness.

Harper could feel herself sinking, into what she did not know. And she didn't know how much further she could sink without harm.

"No, no," she repeated, dragging her lips away from his again.

"Yes," Steve replied, pulling her back towards him, nipping at her soft lips.

"You have a girlfriend," Harper reminded him breathlessly, putting both hands on his chest and finally pushing him away and back to reality. Standing up on shaky legs, she turned quickly and ran out of his office, leaving Steve sitting alone in his office wondering what the hell had just happened.