Trovare - Italian. verb meaning to find, encounter, discover
"You and I will be lost and found a thousand times along the cobbled road of us." - Atticus
It isn't the first time he has found her waiting for him.
At a quarter to six this morning, in the bitter December darkness, he found her standing on the sidewalk, ready and willing to come.
With him.
Across state lines at an ungodly hour to try and help.
The truck rolls to a stop at a red light and he closes his eyes for an instant.
The day has been long, too long. He glances down at the clock on the dashboard to see that it's just after one in the afternoon. He has been going strong for too many hours and his adrenaline is starting to wear off.
His son is safe, that much he can process. He knows his phone will chime shortly with Ayana's message that the charges have been dropped and he can pick his son up at Bergen General.
Minutes ago, Olivia's voice was in his ear before he left Jet's desk as he explained, expounded, exposed.
"I'm headin' back to Fort Lee," he told her.
"Not without me."
He tried to reason with her. He is taking her from her son, all while she fights for his.
"Noah is fine. He's at school for another two hours."
She has been with him since before the sun rose in the sky. She answered her phone on the first ring at five thirty, so he knows that neither of them have gotten any sleep. His missing child had kept her awake as if Eli were her own. Yesterday never truly ended, it simply bled uncontrollably into today.
He thinks back to yesterday, less than twenty-four hours ago.
The trial, the verdict, his daughter's words.
He hasn't had a moment to put together everything Kathleen confronted him with, but he knows he is going to have to collect the pieces and examine them.
Sooner than later.
Despite all her simmering frustration with him, his child compartmentalized last night in admirable ways he can't begin to understand. She worked to temper and to triage their family while he tried to collect as much information as he could from his son's faint voice on the other end of the line.
His child took control in the late hours of the night, the early hours of this morning. She sent his inconsolable mother to bed and Lizzie into the guestroom to sit with their grandmother until she fell asleep.
She stood at the door and waited with his coat in her hands while he and Dickie searched the apartment for his hastily discarded wallet and his keys. The only evidence of her losing her carefully crafted control came at the last possible second before she closed the door behind him. He felt her hands shaking against his shoulders as she helped him into his coat. He reached for her, grasping her hand in his and pulled her close.
Her forehead bumped his chin as she shook her head against him.
"I'm so sorry, Dad," she whispered, but he'd shushed her quietly, urgently. He recognized every second spent was precious, but he wasn't about to leave one child to save another.
"You got nothin' to be sorry for," he rasped sincerely into the quiet. She let him go and he wonders if she understands just how much he meant it.
His child has done nothing except make him face brutal essential truths. If anyone has to atone for their sins, it is him.
He turns the corner onto her street, her new street. He isn't sure how long it's been since she moved and he wants to ask her, because it's new to him. It's all new to him, except that she is still here waiting for him.
And he can't begin to fathom why.
He pulls right up to the curb where she waits.
His partner.
The perfect strands of her dark hair are pulled back from her face in a ponytail as though she had hastily tied it back in the hour since he has seen her last.
He can see that her hands are full, so he leans across the truck to push the heavy door open for her.
"Thanks," she says softly.
She climbs into the passenger seat beside him and presses a carefully wrapped package into his open palm. He watches her as she situates herself next to him and unwraps her identical parcel in her lap.
A peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. Homemade.
"Noah's favorite," she tells him. She gives the slightest shy shrug as if she is apologizing for the meagerness of the meal, when he hasn't remembered to feed either one of them.
He wonders if she recalls their early years together when he would bring this very sandwich for lunch because it was easier to make five of the same. She'd joked about his schoolboy lunch enough times that he had taken to making her an extra, just in case. There is something about the way she is watching him that makes him think she does.
He can't take his eyes off of her and all at once, he knows. His daughter is right. This woman beside him is the most familiar stranger he has ever known.
"You have to eat something," she pushes, taking a bite of her own sandwich as if to remind him how. Her velvet voice is colored with a maternal tint, and he wonders if this is the same knowing tone she uses to remind Noah to eat his vegetables.
"Always knew you'd be a great mom," he whispers. The words fall from his mouth unbidden because she may be a stranger in every conceivable way, but this he knows with all his heart.
More than a decade ago, he thinks she chalked up her desire for a baby to an impossible dream and yet…Ten years gone and she is a mother to the luckiest little boy. She packs his lunches and drops him off at school as often as she can. She lights up when she talks about him as if he is the one true love of her life and it makes him wonder where Noah's dad went wrong. No man in their right mind would ever leave her.
He counts himself among them.
"You're a great dad," she replies earnestly. She makes him laugh, a quiet mirthless sigh. He bites down hard on his bottom lip and shakes his head.
If he were, they wouldn't be here.
She has always both sought and seen the good in him, while all he can recognize are his trespasses. He wonders which one of them has a more accurate view.
Not for the first time today, she reaches for him, for his hand, and this time he isn't letting go.
He wants to bring her hand to his mouth and kiss her fingers. There is the faintest hint of peanut butter on her skin as though her sandwich has more than his does and he wonders if he would taste it on his lips.
She is watching him closely, cautiously as if she is going to ask him if he has lost what precious little is left of his mind and whether a madman like himself should be behind the wheel.
He settles for squeezing her hand gently with his own.
One, two, three times.
His daughters have a silent shorthand he wonders if she knows.
She leans across to hold the steering wheel steady while he unwraps his own sandwich with his free hand and takes a bite. She has fed him, nourished him. The man who left her starving…
He shakes his head at the thought and he feels the press of her palm against his shoulder.
Her wordless check in.
He is fine and he tells her so. His voice is a low rumble in his throat because he isn't sure he is telling her the truth. She settles back into her seat, but he can feel her gaze on his face as if she is afraid he will disappear if she looks away.
The streets are busier than they were in the moments before dawn and traffic back to Jersey is heavy with the lunchtime rush. He grips the steering wheel tightly with both hands at ten and two. It's quiet between them, save for the hum of the heater, but he doesn't feel the need to make small talk. He doesn't think either one of them ever has.
God, how he has missed this particular kind of calm.
He glances across the front seat to take her in. Her eyes are closed now and her perfect sooty lashes sweep against her cheeks. She is leaning, tilting her head back in her seat and he wonders if she is falling asleep.
He remembers the longest nights on stakeouts in the sedan and how she would assert that she wasn't tired at all before fighting her exhaustion all the way to sleep. He would watch her head bob out of the corner of his eye and smirk at her until she lowered the back of her seat just for a minute. He felt most like her partner in those moments, when she would let her guard down and let him take the watch.
He wonders how she feels now.
With her eyes closed, the glances he usually has to steal are free.
He wants to categorize the new. Her voice is soothingly familiar and startlingly different all at once. Her eyes are darker, deeper as though she has discovered depths his daughter alluded to and come back simultaneously haunted and whole. She touches him easily, while he has no right to reach for her. His hands are stained with blood and bodies and no matter how many times he has washed, he can't cleanse himself of the stain.
She is even more breathtakingly beautiful than he remembers and he thinks that is saying something because he hasn't forgotten her, not for a moment. What died on the old squadroom floor that day, more than a decade ago, didn't stay dead. He resurrected their partnership, and she has lived, safe and sound, in his head every moment he hasn't spent by her side.
According to his daughter, according to Olivia, what he remembers is no longer the reality.
He grips the steering wheel tighter until his knuckles start to ache.
It's unfathomable.
Ten years ago, he left as her greatest liability. She, his Hercules and his Achilles heel.
In an instant, across the body-strewn linoleum, he made up his mind. He would lose everything, so that she wouldn't have to. The whispers that he was a wrecking ball and a loose cannon had grown in volume to shouts and he had put her job, her well-being, and her life in jeopardy for the last time.
He had surprised IAB when they hadn't had to do much convincing because he was already gone. He had given up. He wasn't about to jump through hoops, paperwork, psych evals, and therapy.
Even for her.
His mistakes were grave, his sins were mortal, and they had caught up with him one last time.
Tearing himself from her side was the hardest thing he has ever had to do. He convinced himself automatically that it had to be a clean break, a complete annihilation of them. To this day, he knows, without a doubt, if he had heard her voice one last time, he never would have been able to leave.
There wasn't anything left of himself to salvage.
So, he ran.
The aftermath was an exorcism of an angel and he traveled to the holiest city in all of the Catholic world for help. He confessed his transgressions to more priests than he can count, but he stopped begging for forgiveness when he realized he has never and will never be sorry for loving her.
Kathy wanted it, them, buried deep underground.
Instead, he kept her alive inside his head.
She became his own personal mythology, his sacred history, his guardian angel, his imaginary everything.
According to his daughter, according to Olivia, he is a coward and up until now, he has proven them right. He has been afraid. He has been selfish. He hasn't asked Olivia one damn thing about her life because asking leads to telling and hearing and listening and shattering the precious illusion he holds in his hands.
In his head, she has been safe. In his head, she has been whole. In his head, she has been loved…by him for all this time and forever. Finding all of this contradictory will shake him to his core, but he has to know.
His daughter has begun to lift the veil, giving him his first glimpse into something that is teasing the edges of his anxious mind like the beginning of a nightmare. There is something he doesn't know, but he can sense it's deep and dark and monstrous. It is a particular brand of utter unknown that terrifies him completely. He replays Olivia's voice in his head despite the fact that she is beside him…
"You have not asked me one question about what has happened to me since you left."
Something happened and she is right.
He has worshiped a memory, an idea, a ghost without letting her let him into her reality.
For a decade, he has preserved an untouchable idol of the woman he loves most in the world without truly knowing, loving, holding her.
He has to be a man, the man she deserves [that fucking letter], the man she believes him to be.
She told him he has let her down. He has frightened her, upset her, thrown her world off its axis with his own. He has barged back into her life, with all the tact of a fucking bull in a China shop, sure that she is still his partner in every conceivable way.
For his wife, his mother, his children, his job, his health, his heart, his son…she has been nothing but help. He has whirled in the brutality of the reality of changes to his life since he returned to Manhattan. He has consciously guarded her with his life, keeping her pristine picture in his mind intact while she stood alive before him with open aching hands, waiting for him.
Now he understands, he has to ask.
He has to ask her who and how she was, is, and wants to be. He has to swallow his pride and ask her openly and honestly what she wants, needs, and if there is still room for him, for them, in her life.
He is afraid of her answers, but if he doesn't ask, he knows with certainty that he will lose her once and for all. That will never be an option.
He told her didn't know how to begin.
Now, he does.
Bergen General Hospital's parking lot is busy, and his phone hasn't yet resounded with news of his son, so he has to sit tight. As tempting as it is, he can't go inside and throw his weight around.
He checks his phone once more and he turns off the engine of the truck as quietly as he can. He clutches his keys in his hand so that they don't jingle loudly as he slips them into the pocket of his coat.
He leans his head back against the seat and exhales, slow and controlled, before he loses his breath completely.
He lets his gaze travel across the truck toward the passenger seat.
Olivia.
She is sound asleep, content or exhausted, he isn't sure which, but wonders if he is simultaneously responsible for both. He momentarily debates letting her sleep, leaving the engine running to keep her warm, and running in to pick Eli up by himself, but something holds him back.
Today alone, she has both soothed and saved him. She has kept him from drowning on dry land. He doesn't underestimate how much he needs her. He can't do this without her. He has tried.
He leans across the center console because he wants to wake her as gently as possible. He is afraid she might be disoriented and he doesn't want to frighten her.
"Liv," he whispers her name into the quiet and she stirs ever so slightly. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks and she takes a deep sleepy breath.
"Hmm?" She hums softly. He almost wants to laugh until she leans toward the sound of his voice, then slowly and suddenly she is against his shoulder. She unconsciously shifts in her seat and angles her body toward his own and before he can think, she is moving closer, snuggling into the space where his collarbone meets his chest. His jacket is unzipped and she moves her right hand beneath the fabric to rest against his abdomen.
His heart is pounding in his ears, but he tries hard not to breathe. If he could, he would shake his head at the improbability of this moment. If someone had told him eleven months ago that come Christmastime, he would be home, he would have called them insane. Home is snuggled against him.
Home, horror, and hope all at once.
His daughter is right and he is nearly numb with the realization he has kept at bay for more than two decades of his life.
He is terrified of what, of who he holds in his hands. His greatest fear is tangible; this living, breathing woman who smells faintly of peanut butter, spearmint gum, and fragrant shampoo.
She is everything he has ever wanted in his life, and he wonders what kind of man that makes him, to covet a woman he has never had divine right to, except the claim he made the moment he met her. He has always been possessive of what he prays could become his.
She is a gift. She is the most precious thing he knows and the strongest woman he has ever met. She doesn't know it, but she holds all the cards. He thinks she always has. She has all the power in the world. The power to build him up and the power to cut him down both reside within her. The way he loves her, needs her, wants her surpasses every desire he has ever known. He has never understood it, their immediate inexplicable connection that has always felt like a blessing and a curse because they didn't belong to each other, at least not in any way that anyone else would understand.
She terrifies him with the way she might not need him, might not want him, might not love him.
Anymore.
He wonders if she ever has.
He knows he doesn't deserve her, but the thought he might not be enough for her nearly suffocates him. He wants to give her everything she has ever wanted. If she wants him, she has him. She always has. He wonders if she knows.
Her forehead is warm against his neck and he slips his arm around her shoulders so that he can hold her, support her, cradle her against himself. Her eyelashes flutter against his skin and he knows he only has a moment before she comes to. He knows he should wake her up, but she has unconsciously drifted toward him like the moon on the tide. He wonders if somehow she knows instinctively that he is holding her just as she has always held him.
The invisible ache of a decade without her is suddenly nearly too much and the reality sets in. There is an absolute innocence in this moment. She is asleep in his truck, in his space, in his arms. He closes his eyes against the wave of emotion he feels threatening to engulf him and he presses his mouth to her forehead.
She leans closer, unconsciously lets her perfect weight fall into him more fully and inhales. Her breasts brush against his chest with the rise and the fall of her breathing.
She mumbles something into the collar of his sweater and he swallows hard at the sound. He is getting old and he knows his hearing is going, but he swears she just muttered his name.
"You okay, Liv?" He whispers and to his surprise, she replies, an adorable muffled yet unmistakable sigh of the sound of his name.
She knows. She knows he is holding her. She knows she is holding onto him.
His phone chimes in his pocket and at once he curses and praises the heralding sound before he painstakingly extricates himself from her to answer it.
She helps.
She lifts her head from his shoulder, slips her hand from his chest beneath his coat. She ducks her head and he watches the softest blush appear on her cheeks as she sits up, fighting to straighten her coat from her seated position beside him. The dark strands of her hair are falling from their ponytail and she pulls her scrunchie out to let the waves fall over her shoulders. She brushes an errant piece behind her ear and someday he wants to do that for her, if she'll let him.
He lifts his phone to his ear, and she looks up at him, her eyes are dark and serious. He knows she is listening to Ayanna's updates in his ear and before he can speak, she has her door open. The cold air shakes him, wakes him, brings him back, and reminds him.
Then she is right there beside him, falling into step.
Up four floors, an elevator and a set of stairs, their footfalls match and he doesn't have to look around to know that she is right behind him. He holds the door for the psych ward open and she slips in at his side.
"I'm here to pick up Eli Stabler. I was told he is being released." He announces to no one in particular.
"You want the Psych Attending. That would be Dr. Stutz," a nurse tells him off-handedly as though his son is a number, a statistic, a patient file.
"No, Miss. Miss, I want my son," he asserts. He doesn't want to talk to a physician or a shrink. He wants his child, who has been through hell and back over the last twelve hours, within an arm's reach.
The woman gives him a look and he realizes he is in trouble before Olivia rescues him once more. She sidles up beside him at the desk and leans intently forward. Her tone is efficient and calm with all the finesse he lacks.
"Marisol, hi," she says, reading the woman's name tag. She greets the nurse as though they are old friends and she has just stopped by for a chat. She has a way of making people feel safe and comfortable, while he is all power and protection.
"We would be so grateful if you could call Dr. Stutz for us." He steps away because his anxiety is creeping over his skin again. He hears a pregnant pause and he can feel the nurse's eyes on him as though she is trying to make sense of him.
Good luck.
"Please?" Olivia adds for good measure and the woman gives in.
"Sure."
"Thank you."
He is sure her phone call is the longest fifteen seconds of his life.
"Dr. Stutz, I have the parent of Eli Stabler…" She is quiet and he listens. She hangs up the phone and speaks once more, relaying a message from the physician himself. "He wants to speak to you before you see Eli."
He watches Olivia nod. "Thank you," she says once more as though the child she held first is her own.
Marisol directs them to a small quiet waiting room down the hall where they can sit. The space is decorated for Christmas and he thinks it feels incongruent with the chaos of the day. Olivia takes off her coat and drapes it across one of the chairs. He keeps his on because he can't warm up, no matter how hard he tries.
There is a coffee pot on a small beverage cart. Its brew is probably hours old, but he pours two cups anyway because it gives him something to do with his hands. Marisol told them not to worry, that Dr. Stutz is so busy that it could be nearly half an hour and so he has time to kill.
Fears, too.
He sets one of the cups down on the surface of the round table as he settles himself into the nearest chair. He watches her silently while she is occupied with her phone, with the other things that fill her life…things he knows nothing about.
He has to ask. If she wants to tell him, she will. It's a loss of an illusion of control so profound that he can't quite catch his breath despite sitting still.
He has to ask. He needs to know. He wants to. This won't ever be a one-way street ever again.
"Can I talk to you?" The words fall unbidden, but he figures they are decent ones to start with. He almost wants to wince at how childlike they sound, but this is the way it has to be. His voice is so low it barely rasps against his sore throat and yet she looks up at the sound.
She slips her phone into the pocket of her coat and perches herself lightly on the edge of a chair as if she is poised for flight. He can't blame her, but he will do anything to help her to stay.
He thinks back to two nights ago, how she confronted him about Angela and so much more. He'd expected her to be frustrated with him. He knew how to handle that, how to deflect, but she hadn't come at him swinging. Instead, her dark eyes had held an expression that terrified him, one of resigned and discouraged exhaustion.
She looked at him as though she had given up. As if she had finally grown tired of him, of them, of the roles they slip into every single time without fail, repeating the same behavior over and over while expecting a different result.
His daughter calls it insanity.
It's the only dance he has ever done with her that he wishes would end.
Now, she is gazing at him with such a wary mixture of expectation and delicate curiosity that if he were close enough, he would grasp her hand. She sits just out of reach and he thinks somehow, it's fitting…across their desks, across the sedan, across the Atlantic.
"I wanna know," he rumbles. It's a plea, a prayer, and a promise all at once.
"Sorry?" Olivia inquires, leaning closer. She hasn't heard him properly. She settles back into her chair and slips her arms around her own waist. He wishes he could hold her like that.
"I wanna know," he repeats slowly. "I wanna know 'bout your life, what you've been through, the things I've missed."
There is an invisible gaping wound he bears on his chest, like the one from the lance thrust into the Lord's side. It's the hole where he has kept her whole for the last decade. He is about to learn the truth, if she'll tell him. He wonders if what she tells him will bind the wound or if he is about to begin to bleed.
"The other night you said I hadn't asked you anything 'bout what happened after I left you…" His throat is already too tight. "And you're right and I'm sorry, but I'm askin' now. I wanna know."
His hands have begun shaking ever so slightly. The coffee cup isn't a safe resting place for his trembling fingers anymore, so he folds his hands in his lap.
If you wanna tell me…" he trails off, swallowing hard.
He has to give her the option to tell him to go to hell. She has to know she has the right to remain silent, all the while he prays she won't.
Olivia gives him the briefest hint of a smile. He wonders if she is going to ask him what took so long, tell him to take that trip to hell, tell him that this isn't the time or the place, but she doesn't.
"That's a lot of ground to cover," she says lightly, and he realizes what he has tasked her with. Putting together her side of the ten-thousand-piece puzzle that is the last decade, so that in the end they can both see a clear picture.
He wants to tell her that they have time, but he doesn't want to push her. He has no right to ask anything of her, except that she asked him. If they want to move forward to face the music, take a step in one direction or the other, they have to talk.
He has to know. So does she.
"Where do you want me to start?" She asks. He can tell from the expression playing across her beautiful face that she is going slow, approaching with the same brand of caution he is using with her.
She knows him too well, but he is hoping against hope that this time, he can prove her wrong. Whatever she has to say, whatever he hears, he isn't leaving ever again.
This tentative nature goes against everything he is. He wants the kid gloves gone so that the truth can come out to fight for itself, but he knows there is merit in this gradual gentleness. It's giving them both time to acclimate and despite her pause, her question is open and accepting and he thinks he could just about cry.
He shakes his head. "Anywhere you want."
It's a journey of more than four thousand miles. A journey of more than three thousand days apart.
It's not an easy task.
Olivia tilts her head and presses her lips together as though she is trying not to smile at the ridiculousness of his response.
She stands before him; straightens that gorgeous blazer she wears and steps to her right. She seems to be deep in thought, considering her options, pondering where to begin…
He watches her. The late afternoon sun is turning the room golden behind her. The light plays with the richness of her dark locks, crowning her with a halo.
"I missed you," she says softly, and he closes his eyes because God, if she hasn't said everything in those three little words. He realizes he hasn't told her. He hasn't told her anything. He hasn't told her about the burn of missing her, the constant ache of the last ten years. He squeezes his right hand with his left, unconsciously mirroring the way he used to pretend he could feel her fingers intertwined with his own. She reaches for him now. She has held his hand twice today alone, but he wonders if she knows he held hers all the way to Rome and back.
He fixes his gaze on the floor beneath her feet. She has only just begun with the simplest of the truths and he is already falling apart. He can tell she isn't going to be pulling any punches and he deserves every single blow.
"I missed you," he replies solemnly, and she shivers where she stands, as if his identical sentiment has caught her by surprise. He prays he hasn't blindsided her with something so fucking simple. It's such a given, if she doesn't know this in her bones, everything else will be far more startling.
She watches him for a moment until she seemingly can't anymore. Her dark eyes are too full from this alone and he realizes what she is silently confirming.
It's a revelation to her that he missed her.
God.
What has he done?
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
"I missed you for a long time," she continues. Her voice sounds far away now, and he shakes his head to pull himself back across ten years of trespasses to sit before her and listen.
"I think I went through all the stages of grief," she says, shaking her head. She fixes him with her dark stare for a moment and he wonders if she is trying to convince herself that he really is here.
"I was so angry with you."
There is a breathy anguish to her tone that makes his chest crack. He nods. He knows that he deserves the embers of her fury and so much more. He thinks she must be doing the same thing inside her own head, reliving moments that remain all too vivid while fighting to remain present.
Here.
With him.
Now.
She takes a breath and tucks an errant wave of her hair behind her ear before she continues once more. She slowly begins her pacing again. The movement must help her to collect her thoughts, numb the ache he feels all too acutely. He wants to stand, but he holds himself still. He has the sense he needs to sit and stay.
"After a while, I came to the conclusion that you weren't coming back and I had to move on."
She says this casually as if he hadn't waged a bloody decade-long war within himself over their separation and he needs her to know, but now is not the time. He can hear his daughter's voice resounding in his ears that this isn't his time.
It is Olivia's.
He swallows hard because he also knows she is easing him in. It will only get harder from here, but he has to hear. He has to know. He wants to.
"I went to work every day and I came home and I tried to live."
It is her use of the word that so often doubles as her name, as his ceaseless mantra every moment away, as his dying wish for her the day he left that breaks him. His chair scrapes loudly against the shiny Limonium of the floor and he leans forward, heavily pressing his elbows into his thighs.
"You lived," he whispers before he can stop himself. It's a plea to the heavens. He has no right to assert this, she thinks he doesn't know anything about her, but he does. He knows. He may not know the specifics, but he has to believe that he knows her still.
If he doesn't know her, he doesn't know anything.
He knows that she is a warrior and a worrier and a hero. She is the singular protagonist of a decade worth of daydreams he has had in his head. She is a woman, a lover, and a mother.
Most importantly, he needs to know that she has lived because without her, he hasn't.
One of them had to make it out alive.
"I did," she says quietly. He hears the lilt of her inhale and it reminds him to breathe.
"You met Noah's dad," he whispers, watching the floor beneath her feet. He needs something, some sliver of something so that he can begin to put the pieces together. He needs to know that she was safe, and she was loved and someone looked out for her the way he always had, has, always will.
He hears her give the softest laugh and he looks up at the curious sound. There is a shy smile tugging at her lips that makes him want to kiss her. She tilts her head and her hair tumbles over her shoulder.
"I didn't," she says simply. He watches her closely and furrows his brow. He may be old, but he is fairly sure he still knows where babies come from. He doesn't think that's changed since he had his fifth. He shakes his own head because he doesn't understand and he watches her smile unfurl completely.
There is a hint of teasing in her dark eyes and it makes the knot inside of his chest feel as though it's loosening ever so slightly. He is sure his expression must be betraying him because suddenly she is laughing that perfect sweet soft laugh again.
"Noah is adopted," she tells him slowly, as though she understands he is experiencing difficulty comprehending simple sentences.
"What?" She asks mildly. He shakes his head because he can't believe it. He has spent the last nine months believing…
"Nothin'," he says.
"Not nothin'," she repeats. Her eyes are alight with amusement. He is glad at least someone is getting a kick out of all this.
"Tell me."
He presses his fingertips into the back of his aching neck and gives her an embarrassed grin.
"Fin told me you'd been in a relationship. A solid one," he quotes, remembering back eight, nine months to when he had no business asking…in truth, he never has.
Olivia rolls her eyes in what he can tell is her affectionate exasperation.
"Fin likes to rile you up," she tells him. He gives half of a quiet laugh and nods in understanding. He can't forget Fin's years of playful badgering with a ceaselessly protective undertone. He is grateful the man still watches her back.
"I got promoted," she continues as if she is listing momentous occasions in her life as casually as writing a grocery list. He knows she is giving him the CliffsNotes version, but he'll take anything.
He tosses her a barely there smirk. "Promoted is an understatement, Cap," he replies proudly, and she ducks her head in modesty.
She never has known how to accept praise for all that she is, but he hopes someone celebrated her when he couldn't. He missed it, her moment, her advancement. He regrets this and so much more. He knows she won't let him laud her, but his admiration of her, his devotion has never and will never wane. He hopes to God she knows.
"Olivia."
His voice is too low, but he knows she heard him because she changes the subject back to her son.
"Noah is smart and funny…" She details. "And he's a good kid."
"Of course, he is," he interjects sincerely. "He's yours."
She tosses a thankful look over her shoulder as she resumes her pacing before him.
"I was so worried about that," she admits. He doesn't understand what she means so he remains silent, trusting she will elaborate, and she does.
"Him becoming a good kid, I mean."
He watches her back, the rise and fall of her shoulders as she faces away from him. For the first time in this conversation, he feels like he can see the road ahead of them.
It's unfathomable.
The monsters she fights for her own self-worth five precious decades into her life are the same ones he does battle with daily. His father beat the hell out of him, his mother is mentally ill, and he remembers…
Half my genes are drunk and the other half are violent and cruel.
"Look how great you turned out," he rumbles into the quiet. She inhales sharply and turns to look at him with her full dark eyes. He wonders if she knows how much he meant it then and just how much he means it now.
"It's not all about the genes…" she whispers haltingly. "All you can do is love your kids."
She breaks him in the way only she can. She holds his heart, his hope, and his history in her outstretched hands. He bows his head and folds inward, pressing his elbows hard into his denim clad thighs as he tries to remember how to breathe.
He senses her more than hears her and then the soft press of her palm is resting against his back.
She has fought both hell and highwater for him, for his son, for her own. There is nothing he can ever do to repay her as long as he lives.
"I owe you," he rasps. His voice grates painfully against his sore throat. He raises his welling eyes to meet hers and she shakes her head. He isn't sure if she is silently asking him what he means, or negating his words with the motion, but either way he is going to elaborate. He is going to explain.
"I owe you, Liv," he repeats. The sentiment is sincere, but all at once, he is overwhelmed with the realization that the list of things for which he is beholden to here is more than two decades long.
He owes her for her time, her strength, her patience.
He owes her his own.
He owes her for his children, for his wife, for his family. He owes her for his sanity, his stability, his life. He owes her apologies and explanations and everything in between.
If she wants to hear them.
More than anything else, he owes her the truth, two decades too late, but maybe better than never.
If he is honest, he owes her everything.
He tells her so. He tells her more.
She perches lightly on the chair opposite him and leans forward. He assumes on the pretense of hearing him, considering he can't seem to find his voice. Her knee bumps his own while she stays still and silent. It reminds him of the last time they sat bruised and broken in a hospital waiting room and breathed confessions to each other no priest has ever heard.
"I owe you an 'pology," he rumbles. She mirrors his posture, pressing her elbows into her thighs and holding herself as though she is her own armor.
She has always been his.
He hears Kathleen's disgusted disappointment in him inside his head and it urges him on. He has to make this right.
"The other night when you asked me 'bout Angela Wheatley." He watches her eyes grow wide for the briefest instant at the mention of her name.
"I turned it 'round on you and I got defensive. I had no right to do that and I'm sorry."
Olivia shakes her head and presses her palms to her thighs as though she is going to make a move to stand. He prays she stays.
"Why are you protecting her?" She asks wearily.
All pretense is gone. She is asking. She needs to know.
"I'm not protecting her. I'm protectin' myself." The words slip from his mouth before he can overthink. They are the truest ones he can find. This vulnerability is a tangible, physical thing that goes against everything he is, everything he tries to be, and he thinks she knows because her knee bumps his once more. It's a tap, the lightest touch, but it's enough.
She doesn't understand. "It's just me."
"Just you," he repeats with a light scoff. The pair of words find themselves contradictory. She has never been just anything to him.
He shakes his head at the floor. He has to keep going.
"I'm sorry I let you sit through her testimony." He can hear his daughter's revulsion and he winces at the memory.
"Let me?" she interrupts pointedly. He looks up to catch her frowning at him and he nearly smiles. They both know he has never kept her from doing anything she has ever wanted to do. He lapses into silence. He doesn't know where to go from here. The rest of what he has to say will spill out like an undammed river if he isn't careful and he is trying his best to tread in the choppy water.
"Elliot, where's all this coming from?" She inquires. She doesn't know about the reservoir. She doesn't know anything. He wonders if she'll go silent on him if he doesn't answer.
Instead…she whispers the loudest question he has ever heard.
"Why haven't you asked me any of this before?" The million-dollar inquiry. The woman will be the death of him, this he knows.
"I was afraid," he whispers the only answer he has. His voice is too low, and he tries to clear his throat, but he can't. The ache is too much.
"Of what?" Olivia breathes. He looks up to meet her gaze and she must see something in his eyes because suddenly her eyes are filling once more.
"El," She whispers his nickname in the perfect velvet of her voice and he closes his eyes at the sound.
He nods because he can't speak and she gives him a moment, then two. She is grace personified and she waits. He knows her and he knows that it is taking everything she has not to hightail it the hell outta here while he fights in vain for an ounce of control.
He swallows through the tightness in his throat and his breath catches in his chest as he inhales. This is a fragility he has never felt in his life.
He doesn't think he has any strength left. He nods again and fights for one more breath before he tries to make some sense of what he has just placed into her hands.
"I talked to Leen," he tells her, as if she should understand that the mere mention of his most perceptive child's name can serve as answer enough.
"I was afraid to let you go, so I didn't. If I'd heard your voice…" he trails off and he knows by the look on Olivia's face that she remembers.
"I kept you safe in my head and I came back expecting nothin' to be different. I came back into your life–" He shivers the same way he did in the cold rain on the night of her awards ceremony.
The fucking gall he must have had to think that he could ever just show up, smile and shake her hand and then walk away for the rest of their lives…
"Like a bull in a China shop?" She interrupts quietly, using his idiom while he ignores her.
"I expected nothin' to be different and I was so fuckin' selfish. It's all different now," he says. He looks across the chasm between them, the inches separating their knees.
"It's all different now," he repeats, "'cept you still scare the hell outta me." His voice is sandpaper against his throat, but he isn't sure he can stop now that he has begun.
"Why?" She whispers. Her eyes are imploring as though she is mining his for answers. He wonders if she can see them the same way his late wife always could.
He tries to remember his daughter's words. His child is far more eloquent than he will ever be.
"'Cause I love you and in the war zone in my mind I didn't know what to do with that."
His stomach rolls with the terrifying thought that he is a coward. He sees all the mistakes he has made when it comes to her, to them.
More than twenty years too late, the time has come for the truth.
He presses his palms hard against his knees and pushes himself up to stand. His anxiety is crawling over his skin and he has to move while he attempts to help her understand. He rubs his smarting forehead with the heel of his hand. He tries to remember their past while the only future he wants sits before him, so utterly present.
He thinks back to Rome and the blaring silences, the warring clashes he and Kathy had amidst the city, as though the archaic place knew they weren't destined for ancient history.
"I let Kathy write that fucking letter and I signed it because I didn't know what to do and it was something to hand to you, something to get us started. I didn't think 'bout what she wrote 'cause I meant what I did."
Olivia had it memorized, this he remembers. He was high as a kite, but he remembers the sound of her voice repeating every hateful Godforsaken word. He wonders what she thought when she read the last ones for the first time, the ones that contradict every other written. He wonders if she can ever forgive him for making her wait so long, for letting her think for an instant of her precious existence that she doesn't mean everything to him…
In a parallel universe,
"I kissed Angela because I wasn't brave enough to kiss you," he manages.
She winces at the sound of his admission as though his revelation has physically hurt her, and he wants to run and reach for her all at once. He wants to dive in and hold her hand and find out why.
If she loves him, God, if she loves him…
He should have gone to her, this time and the last one, too. More than fourteen years ago. He knows. He has always known…
"It should've been you."
It will always be
"It should have been us, but I wasn't brave enough," he whispers, half to himself and half to her. If she is still listening. He is ranting and raving and rambling now, but he means every word. He is barely treading water.
you and I.
He wonders if he is making any sense, if she can hear him at all. He swallows hard and tries again. He has more to say if she'll stay.
"I love you," he tells her again [and again and again and again because something loosens in his chest every time he does.] She doesn't flinch when he says these words.
"But I was afraid 'cause you and me? What we got, Liv? The way I love you? God, it's not average. It's never been."
He doesn't know what it is. He has never had words for it, this inexplicable magnetic pull, the draw like the moon on the tide, the invisible string.
The incomprehensible that kept her close for so long and brought him back to her now.
He is assuming. He is surmising, he is presuming and pleading and praying all at once and he needs some kind of confirmation.
If she wants him, if she needs him, if she loves him…
He watches the slightest bob of her head, the dip of her chin.
Olivia nods.
It's the last thing he knows. He closes his welling eyes against the wave of emotion and suddenly she is there. Her soft hands are insistent against his chest, and he doesn't understand until he feels her push. She is trying to get him to sit. He feels unsteady on his feet and he sinks into a chair against the wall, but she doesn't let him go. His hands find their purchase against the perfect curve of her waist, and he wants to reach for her, to pull her closer.
She stands perfectly framed in the space between his thighs and he looks up at her. She looks tired and tearful and tender. Her blouse and blazer are wrinkled from sleeping in the car. Her hair cascades over her shoulders and tickles his neck when she leans forward.
"You're all there is for me," he rumbles. He reaches up to brush the silky stands behind her ear. He wonders if she can feel the way his fingers are trembling. She leans ever so slightly into his touch and he wonders if she realizes she is doing so. It's nearly too much and he can't help the way he sends his sharp exhale toward the floor.
"If you want me, you got me, you got all of me forever." He swears, he promises. He has never wanted anything more in his life.
"For better or worse?" She whispers the vow, and he nods.
"Gonna be better," he asserts, and he doesn't miss the way her lips lilt in the smallest smile.
"It's going to take a while, El," she says.
He knows. He nods. He doesn't expect anything overnight. She nearly makes him want to laugh because after all this time, she is the pragmatist and he is romantic in this.
"We got time," he says. He prays he is correct now that he isn't biding it anymore. Her smile unfurls fully this time at what he knows she considers his protective predictability.
He wants to protect her. He hopes she knows. "I wanna take care of you," he tells her, and Olivia sinks ever so slightly in her stance. As if she can see the day in and day out reality of the sentiment behind his words. He has never meant anything more. She is brave and bold and brazen, but she needs someone to take care of her. She needs someone to…He remembers.
There is something left…something that he doesn't know, and his anxiety is gripping him again at the thought.
"I wanna do this right," he swears. "I wanna listen and I wanna talk." She nods. She lets him know this is what she wants, too. He has to ask.
"There's something else," he says quietly. "Something happened to you." He has her in his hands and yet he can barely breathe. The images his wild imagination has conjured haven't left him and he needs to know.
If she will tell him.
Olivia leans closer. She presses her hands against his shoulders and he can feel her finally starting to fade. The day isn't over, and they still have battles to fight, but at this moment she is strangely soft. She fixes him with her dark gaze and shakes her head slowly.
"Not now," she whispers.
He swallows hard as he tries in vain to bite back the tangle of anger, regret, fear, and confusion brawling inside of him. She has asked for time. He has to give it to her, and he can. He will. He must.
He knows she can feel the way his hands have automatically tightened their grip on her waist as if holding her closer will help her to reconsider. He closes his eyes as she leans close and presses a kiss to his temple.
He fights for a breath and does she.
"I wanna take care of you," he asserts once more because it's a desperate, clawing thing now and he needs her to understand.
"I know you do," she says. It's a stunning accepting acknowledgement from the woman he loves the most in the world. "I promise, I'll tell you. Just not tonight."
He nods because he knows she is right. They are waiting on his child, and he needs to be wholly present when the doctor arrives. She has always possessed the thoughtful kind of foresight he lacks.
He can feel the lightest press of her fingertips tracing his shoulder blades through the heavy fabric of his coat. She isn't stepping back or moving into her own space, and he doesn't mind at all. His space is hers, if she wants it. She seems to be contemplating something he doesn't understand. He holds his own hands ruthlessly still against her waist beneath the material of her blazer.
"I just need you to know that I'm all right." She announces this wildly bewildering proclamation quietly and he nearly stands because why wouldn't she be? If she weren't, he wouldn't be here.
"Livia." He can't help the way he growls.
She presses her hands to his chest once more, holding him in his seat.
"I need you to listen to me because what happened…what happened to me isn't your fault."
She leans over him and he frantically searches her eyes for some telltale sign to help him understand. She is just as fiercely protective of him as he is of her, and he knows he won't learn anything tonight. He knows…his gaze falls to the deep v-neck of her collar. Her black blouse has shifted in their push and pull, and something catches his eye. Her proximity registers with her gasp at the same moment his understanding does and then she is standing up, giving him space, backing away. He only caught a glimpse but it's enough to tell that there is a scar, a wound, a blemish to the gorgeous golden skin of her chest.
"Liv." Her name is the only sound he can make. He stands and she lets him and then he is reaching for her. His eyes are fixed on the exposed skin of her chest. He slips his shaking fingers beneath the collar of her shirt and she grasps his hand.
"Elliot, not here," she whispers, squeezing his fingers with her own. If it weren't so serious, he thinks it might be laughable because he is trying to undress her in a psych ward holding room while they wait for news of his son.
She slips closer to him and ducks her head, forcing him to adjust his gaze.
"Look at me," she whispers and he does. He will do anything she asks.
"I promise, I'll tell you everything you need to know. Just not now." She is imploring him. He steps closer to her, crowding her in a way that is so blessedly familiar for a decade apart. She doesn't move. She simply leans into his chest.
"Remember, I'm all right," she whispers. Her dark eyes tell him that she isn't lying.
"You're all right," he replies, repeats. It's a reverent mantra he will hold onto in the rare moments he won't be able to hold onto her.
"We're all right," she says. Her hands slip up his back beneath his jacket and it's a divine assurance. He believes her. When she says it, he believes it. He believes they will be; their children will be and he will do everything he can to help make it so. He steps impossibly closer and presses his lips to her forehead, kissing her there until he hears the soft knock on the door behind him.
Author's note: Thank you for waiting for this. References Organized Crime's "The Christmas Episode." There will be one final part after this one. Any Taylor Swift references are her own. Not mine. xoxo