A/N: Thank you so, so, so much for your kind words after the last chapter. It really warmed my heart.

Excited to move things a long, and without spoiling anything: A nice surprise awaits you in chapter 34.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of TW to put on this, but I'm adding implied PTSD and mentions of sexual assault, to be safe.

CHAPTER 33 - FEBRUARY 2022

"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?"

How can one keep warm alone.

If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.

Amanda closes her eyes and hugs Billie tighter as she listens to the words of the priest.

Except for a few trips to the local grocery store, and the visit to her childhood home, it's her first real outing since arriving in Loganville almost eight weeks ago.

"Have you thought about what we talked about? Getting out more to avoid isolating yourself completely?" Dr. Hanover had asked last Tuesday, stirring up one of the few things that still gave Amanda anxiety. Not going out per se, but anywhere public where someone could recognize her. Either as "Mandy from Loganville" or "Missing detective, Amanda Rollins".

"I know it's scary, Amanda. I also know that you've done some really important work already, and that you're ready for this."

"Church. I can take the girls to church."

And so here they are, Billie safely planted on her lap, Jesse sitting next to her, being surprisingly well behaved, and Sienna who unexpectedly had asked if she could join.

If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. The words plays on repeat in her head, and her mind is flooded by memories and images of one person and one person only. And sitting here now, picturing her smile, hearing her laugh, imagining her cry, Amanda realizes that the feeling of missing her has changed dramatically lately.

What used to be a feeling of longing she could mostly accept and live with, has at some point turned into this physical need that she wakes up with every morning and falls asleep with every night.

How can one keep warm alone.

She's been checking plane tickets from Atlanta to New York every single day for nearly two weeks, but for some reason she can't quite understand, she's unable to actually make the decision to go back. Amanda just isn't ready yet, and what bothers her most is that she has absolutely no idea when she'll ever be.

But dear god, literally, she wants her. She wants the smell of her hair, the touch of her hand, the way she looks in the morning. All of it. She just doesn't know how, or when.

"Well, if it isn't Amanda Rollins!"

The slightly familiar voice makes Amanda spin around in the middle of the aisle on their way out. "Mrs. Rosa?"

"I thought I recognized you a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn't sure. What brings you back here? Your parents haven't moved back, have they?"

"No… No. I'm just taking some time off. Showing the girls where I grew up, you know."

"Aw, how nice." Mrs. Rosa smiles while looking from Billie to Jesse who are both getting a little restless. "Must be good to get out of that busy city, huh?"

She comes to the conclusion that her old high school teacher doesn't know what happened to her back in New York, and even if she does know, she at least isn't showing it. It makes Amanda breathe a little easier.

"Mhm." She nods before she turns to Sienna. "Do you mind taking the girls outside? I'll be there in a minute."

"You must've heard what happened, then?"

Amanda has her eyes trained on her girls disappearing through the big doors when Mrs. Rosa's voice forces her to look away. "Huh?"

"With your old boss, chief Patton."

You know I don't take no for an answer.

Suddenly the church is unbearably hot, like she's wearing a thick, wool sweater in the middle of a hot summer day. Without thinking, she restlessly rolls up the sleeves on her thin cotton shirt, only to pull them back down again when she remembers her scars. They're few and far apart, most of them faded to the point of almost being impossible to notice. But she knows they are there, and that's enough.

"No… No, I didn't hear." She says, wrapping her arms around herself, like she's expecting her former boss, her rapist, to suddenly appear out of nowhere.

"He passed away, right after Christmas. Cancer."

Relief? Is that what I'm feeling? Numb? Nauseous, I think that's it.

"Oh."

"Happened so fast, one minute he was fine, and then suddenly… Gone."

Gone. Can't hurt anyone else. Can't hurt me. Gone. Dead. Buried.

"His wife moved to Florida after his funeral, think they have some kids down there. How she stood by him after what happened up in New York, I will never understand. But you were there, right? You know what happened to that poor detective."

"Yeah… Yeah. I was there."

Being haunted and ripped to pieces, but you don't need to know that.

Before her old teacher can get in another word, she nods towards the door. "I should get going, my girls are waiting."

"Sure, sure." The woman smiles. "It was good to see you, Amanda."

"You, too, Mrs. Rosa."

Her mind is racing and her heart is pounding when she steps outside and searches the area outside the church to spot her kids. And in the fifteen steps it takes to close the distance between them, she has somehow made up her mind.

"Sienna, could you bring the girls home?"

"Of course, going somewhere?"

"Yeah… uh, yeah. I won't be long, though." She stumbles over her words a little while fishing the car keys out of her purse. "A few hours maybe."

"Take all the time you need." Her nanny smiles as she grabs the keys from Amanda's hand. "See you back at the house."

"Be good, girls!" She silently prays that her internal chaos doesn't match her forced calm facade as she waves them off and turns around to walk in the opposite direction.

A lifetime ago, when she had just started working for him, Patton had invited her to his church, followed by a Sunday lunch with his family. Looking back at it now, she realizes that he was basically grooming her and it takes her a solid fifteen minutes to silence the part of her brain that tells her she should've known.

It wasn't my fault. He was my boss. I was vulnerable and he took advantage of that. It wasn't my fault.

It feels like one of the first days of early spring, and she uses that as a reason for why she decides to walk. Knowing full well that it has little to do with the nice weather and everything to do with the fact that getting in a car alone with a stranger is something she will probably never do again.

The closer she gets to the church, the more she questions her decision to do this, but something is pulling her forward, something that feels a lot like rage, and so she doesn't allow herself to stop.

The cemetery is annoyingly pretty, well-kept and filled with different flowers and trees. It doesn't really match with her intentions, and for a moment she wishes that the sky above her was dark grey, and that there were no flowers at all.

But that's when she spots it. And suddenly the comfortable weather, and all the different colors that surrounds her, turn into a beautiful and ironic contrast. Because in the shadows of a tree, without a single flower to show that anyone ever cared about him, she finds his grave.

Amanda looks around a few times, just to make sure that she's alone, before she walks over to the small gravestone marked with only his name, the date he was born and the date he died. Nothing else. No heartfelt words to bless his memory.

After three deep breaths, and with her arms folded, she steadies herself right in front of the stone.

"Always dreaded the day I might run into you again. Turns out, this isn't that bad." She's surprised to find her voice firm and confident.

"You know… I used to think that justice was all about the arrests, the courtrooms, the testimonies, the verdicts. And if you didn't get that, you were kinda screwed." She shrugs, as if she's talking to someone who can actually see her. "Then I started to think that justice could also be the simple act of someone telling you that they believe you."

Amanda walks around in a circle a few times, kicking into the dirt under her shoe, before she continues. "And I got both. I mean, not really. You were never convicted for what you did to me. But at least you had to suffer some sort of consequence. And I got to talk about what happened, without being slut shamed and doubted in return." She clears her throat when she feels that familiar sense of her chest tightening. "It still wasn't enough, though."

When the tears come, she lets them fall freely, simply because she needs them to. "It wasn't enough because I didn't believe me own story and so I didn't believe that I deserved justice. And you know what the worst thing was? It wasn't you, in that motel room, grinding on top of me, hurting me and holding me down."

Her voice is getting louder by every single word now and she finds that she couldn't care less if anyone hears her. Let them hear it. Let them know. It's not my shame to carry. "It was the fact that you must've known how broken I was. How desperate I was. And you were my boss. You were supposed to protect me."

You were supposed to protect me. The realization of how many people in her life this applies to makes her cry openly and without restraint, and she turns around for a short moment just to calm herself down enough to make sure that her voice is steady enough for the last words that she will ever utter to her rapist.

"I might not get to see you rot in a prison cell." Amanda says while turning back around to face the stone. "But at least I can tell myself that you would've deserved it. And I can believe my own story now, and know that what you did was truly messed up. And while you're down there, buried in the ground, mourned by no one. I'm here, alive, free to live my life the way I want to, with people who loves me."

"And that kind of justice," she spits down on the ground, right in front of his name, "tastes pretty fucking sweet."

Amanda knows that the adrenaline currently pumping through her veins is temporary, that there will still be days where she's flooded by memories or haunted by nightmares, but something still feels genuinely different when she walks away from the graveyard. It's as physical as it is emotional and she tries to identify exactly what it is, just out of curiosity, because the feeling is so foreign to her.

Empowered. Pretty sure that's it. Can't be sure, but pretty sure that's it.

You did good, kid.

"Patton died." Her mouth is still full with the apple she just bit off a large chunk from and it makes the news sound oddly mundane. Like your rapist dying is something that happens on the daily.

"What?" Olivia asks, her mouth falling open.

Amanda shrugs before taking another bite. "Cancer, a couple of months ago."

The brunette leans in a little closer, like she wants to reach through the screen. "How do you feel about that?"

"I went to see his grave. Today, after I found out."

"You did what?"

Maybe it's because she already had her emotional outburst earlier in the day, or maybe she's just over tired, but when she says it out loud like that she's actually struggling to take this seriously. "We had a little chat. Gave him a piece of my mind."

"Amanda… You're…"

"What?" She asks as she puts the half-eaten apple down on her bedside table.

"I'm just… A little blown away, honestly."

"By what?"

"You!" Olivia exclaims, almost laughs. "The work you're doing. I'm so incredibly proud of you."

So maybe she wasn't completely done with her feelings today after all, because Olivia is looking at her like that, radiating love.

If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.

"I wish you were here."

They have told each other "I miss you" countless of times. But they have never said that. It's been like this unspoken rule between them, because "I wish you were here" implies that something is expected or needed, and they just haven't been ready. Expecting or needing anything from each other, at least not that, at least not up until now.

"I-" Olivia starts, clearly caught off guard by Amanda's blunt admission.

"I do, Liv. I miss you, I miss Noah. I'm not ready to go back yet, but I do miss you. All the time. You know that, right?"

"I know. I miss you, too. So much."

She's not about to ask Olivia to drop everything and fly down to Georgia, and for some reason, she needs more time here, so she decides to leave it at that. Silently accepting the things she cannot change. She's been doing a lot of that lately.

"How's things at work?" She asks, swiftly changing the subject.

"Pretty much the same. As busy ever, unfortunately. Hence why I'm calling you from the office late at night."

There's something about the look on Olivia's face, or maybe the way she shrugs or talks a little too fast, that tells Amanda the other woman is keeping something from her. "What?"

"Nothing. It's not important." The brunette says quickly, failing to hide how she looks just a little uncomfortable.

"Come on. Tell me."

Olivia falls back against her pillows and lets out a deflated sigh, clearly realizing that Amanda won't give up. "We hired a new detective. And I've agonized over it, but Garland left me no choice. I still feel terr-"

"Liv, it's fine." The blonde interrupts, hoping that her reassuring words resonates with the other woman even though she's nine hundred miles away. "You've been understaffed for months. It was necessary."

"You know we're not pushing you out, right? That's not what this is."

"I know." Amanda smiles. "And either way, I'm not there yet. There's no room in my brain for that."

"You know him."

"Hm?" She asks while stretching her legs out on the bed, tired after her unexpected Sunday walk.

"The new detective."

"Oh?"

"It's Khaldun."

"Really?" Amanda says with a surprised look on her face. "Liv, that's amazing."

"It's a good fit." Olivia nods. "He gets along with everyone, he's a great asset."

"I know he is. I liked working with him. Thought he was kinda cute actually."

The brunette raises an eyebrow then. "Are you trying to make me jealous?"

"Is it working?" She grins with her head tilted.

"A little."

"Good. Jealous Liv is my favorite."

"I'm not that jealous."

"Sure you are." Amanda teases. "I bought something today, wanna see?"

"Always."

"Ok, let me just-" She gets up from the bed and walks over to the dresser where she carefully leans the phone against the wall, making sure that Olivia can see her. "Are you alone? Is your door closed?"

"Yeah, why?"

Without answering, she slowly lifts the white T-shirt she's wearing over her head. The sports bra underneath doesn't really work into her little impromptu strip tease, but it's enough to trigger a visible reaction from the woman staring at her.

"Amanda…"

"What? See something you like?" The blonde smirks while wiggling her way out of her jeans.

"No." Olivia shakes her head a little before tilting it. "I see something I love."

"Cheesy." Amanda rolls her eyes playfully. "Hold on." She steps away then and swiftly throws on the yellow dress before she comes back into view, holding her arms out for a quick ta-da-like gesture. "There's a whole story behind this dress, but I'm saving that for later. But I thought you might approve."

She can't be sure, but it almost looks like Olivia is tearing up. "Do you even know how beautiful you are?"

"No. But keep telling me. You might actually convince me one day." She leans her arms on the dresser, wishing she could lean in to kiss her. "Not tonight, though, I'm helping Sienna with a paper."

"Say hi to her from me."

"I will." Amanda smiles. "Oh, don't hang up yet." She pulls the side zipper down and lets the dress fall to the floor and pool around her feet. "One last show."

Olivia is clearly blushing now, eventually lifting a hand to cover her face. "I'm at work."

Amanda snickers while reaching for the discarded T-shirt before she grabs the phone. "Bye, Liv."

A/N: TBC