A/N: As much as I love the show… the first like 5 - 10 episodes make me appreciate the rest of the show so much more! Writing this reminded me of why I hate starting fics from the beginning of shows lol
Maybe I'm paranoid… maybe I'm not and I hope I'm not, but I had Blake begin a confidential investigation on Nadine today. I'm slowly learning that while I trust my team to do their jobs and they are incredible at their jobs… just because Marsh found them acceptable, doesn't mean I will.
I'm not putting a target on Nadine necessarily… I just know something had to be going on. I don't know what that thing is or if it has any impact on the layers of things I'm going through, but I still need to know.
I told Henry about what George told me. I had to. George was killed in a car accident last week… but I know deep down it wasn't an accident. There's not many other people I can tell that to, leaving Henry to step into a support role I'm not sure he's ready for.
There was never a moment of doubt from him. When I told him what happened and that I knew something seemed off about it, there was no judgement, no doubt, just him believing me. Max always "believed" me when I would bring up some crazy idea about something that just didn't feel right but he would express after time past that he didn't believe certain parts or couldn't understand why I would believe what I did… Henry doesn't do that.
These are the times that remind me why Max and I weren't meant to last long term. I don't believe that we're limited to just one soulmate in life, I think we can have multiple soulmates and that it's ok if they change over time. Each major aspect of your life will require different things and it's ok if the people who are in those aspects are different. Max was the soulmate that I needed at the time, but he's not who I need now and I think fate knew that I would be in this situation long before I ever did.
Henry was ready to jump right in to investigating what happened to George and ultimately what happened to Marsh and how they could be connected. I needed this from someone for so long and I didn't realize it. Henry is a lot of things I didn't realize I needed, but I already knew that.
I don't think he realizes that he was exactly what Ali and Jase needed too. Max is an amazing father, there's no doubt about that but there's some crazy, missing piece that Henry fills. There's a different light in my kids, it's new, and it's not a bad thing that it wasn't there before, it's just new and different. They needed an adult that didn't feel like they were coddling them as Max and I can be very guilty of doing; they needed an adult that felt like a parent but obviously wasn't, almost like a grandparent… ones they never really got.
Henry's mother passed away a few years ago and he isn't very close to his dad or his siblings, there's a lot to their relationship. Max was close to his parents but they didn't have many chances to see Ali and Jase growing up and I think it put a strain on their relationship now that they're older.
I was also never the wife my ex mother in law thought her precious son would settle down with. I was driven, I challenged him, and I could care less about bake sales to support the PTA. My ex mother in law is very traditional in that sense, she wanted Max to marry a girl who he had grown up with, live in the same area for most of his life, settle down with her and have babies. He did a lot of those things but she wanted that girl to be the dutiful stay at home wife and mother that she was… and I was never the 'stay at home' type.
I came from my own privileged background, I'm not afraid to admit that, but I didn't come from old, southern money like Max did. I think that's a lot of the reasons why we were perfect for each other for so long. Max likes strong women, I am a strong woman, and he would have never found me if he didn't break all the traditions that his old, southern money told him he should have followed. It worked out for the best anyway.
There's no expectations with Henry to be something I'm not. Max never had those expectations for me but his family had unspoken ones. I never have to worry about that with Henry. Maybe it's because we're older, maybe it's because he probably already experienced some of that with Michaela, either way I'm glad that's not my reality.
I do have an unspoken expectation of Henry… it's only unspoken because I'm not really sure how to bring it up and I think even without one of us saying something we're on the same page. I wasn't sure I would ever want to get married again, then along came Henry. I want to marry that man more than I could ever put into words. I don't want to put a timeline on things, but I would love to be married by this time next year.
Sometimes I feel like I'm in some sort of puppy love with him. It feels like it's the first time I've ever felt love and I'm hooked from the first hit. If he came to me tomorrow with a ring pop and said he wanted to marry me in our living room, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
If there's one thing that the last two months have taught me it's that everything we hold dear can be gone tomorrow. We're not getting any younger, I don't want to waste any more time. I'm so ready to spend the rest of my life with this man.
