He was staring again.

"What? Do I have something stuck on my teeth?" She asked self-consciously as she covered her mouth with her free hand.

"No, I just…." He paused.

He didn't know how to say it, how he loved to watch her, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Normally, he was stealth about it in the early days at the loft. He always made sure she never caught him doing it as she made breakfast or tended to their son in the mornings. It's why mornings had become his favourite time of the day. After a harrowing night of fighting off wesen, the sweet calm of their mornings together had worked like a balm over him, not just emotionally but in other ways as well, arousing him to distraction.

Adalind in nothing more than his shirt, her long legs that reached skyward often had him hiding behind a locked bathroom door, trying to find relief. Not any more, now he could express just what he felt and act on it without hesitation.

"I'm just thinking of how beautiful you look and how much I want to kiss you right now."

"Really, because I know I look a royal mess, my hair practically a bird's nest." She said, using her fingers to comb the knots out of her hair. A big mistake on her part as it had the opposite effect on him, reminding him of their last night together. What they did, her crying out his name in the throes of passion. He was getting aroused just thinking about it.

Nick smiled, leaned over her so their lips could brush lightly against one another before turning passionate. "I was also thinking how I can do this…and this…and this, instead of just thinking about it." He had her squirming at his touch. "Believe me, I have thought about this so much it was driving me crazy not having you here, and now that you are, I'm never letting you go." His hands began to roam freely over her naked flesh beneath his shirt.

"You know, you are gonna have to…eventually," his tickling of her released a mirthful laugh.

"Never!" he growled into the crook of her neck as he ploughed her with his hungry kisses.

"Nick…work…."

"Sshhh, forget about that. I have."

Unfortunately, for Nick, his son had other ideas. Kelly's sudden crying doused the raging flame in his pants instantly. "Is it too soon to send him to boarding school?" he asked, unimpressed by the interruption.

"Nick!" Adalind lightly punched him on the shoulder for the quip.

"Just kidding…not…no, I am…okay just a little." He said before leaving the bedroom to fetch his son in the living area.

"Buddy, you timing, it really could not be more awful." He told his huffy son, who'd turned beet red from all his crying.

"What's the matter?" Adalind asked as she joined him. Nick chided himself over his thought scrapping the gutter at the sight of her and forced his eyes to stay up top as she strode across the concrete floor towards him, barefoot. "I don't know. He doesn't appear to have hurt himself." He said pensively.

Kelly immediately sought his mother's arms the second he saw her. "I guess he wanted you.

"Oh, my baby, Mama's here. Come to Mama." She took him into her arms and rocked him back and forth until he quieted.

"I know how he feels and now I'm jealous of my own son."

Adalind gave Nick an apologetic smile and a quick but consolatory kiss on his cheek. "Don't worry; I have enough attention for both men in my life."

*/*/*

"I'm surprised you haven't gone back to work, wasn't your suspension for a week or something along those lines?"

"Renard felt it needed to be longer but as of yesterday, I'm back full time."

"So what's today, shouldn't you be at the Precinct?"

"I'm cashing in on my sick days so I can spend it with my family."

Adalind turned a pretty shade of pink at the word family.

"And he's okay with that?" she said hastily.

"No, but I don't care what he thinks."

"I'm sure he'd love to hear that." She said sarcastically. "I know I do. I'm really glad to have this time together, the three of us, I know it hasn't been easy, not with everything that's happening in in the city, I mean with all the beheadings."

"Please, no talk of work, especially mine. It's a beautiful day. Let's enjoy it while we can."

"Of course, whatever you say, Detective." She teased him.

He tsked at her, basking in her sexy but playful manner, reserved only for him.

They were having a picnic for three under the gazebo he'd recently built on their roof, enjoying the summer sun away from public scrutiny.

After months of procrastination when Adalind still lived at the loft, Nick had finally created the garden for them to enjoy only for Adalind and Kelly to end up living half a world away. Despite the hopelessness he'd felt at times, something inside of him had hoped nonetheless. If Adalind had spent months turning this cold paint factory into a home, their "fome", the least he could do was give them a garden, even if he told himself she'd never get to see it.

Now it was complete. Against all odds, he'd turned their roof space into garden for the day Kelly would grow and need space to run around and play and Adalind was there beaming at him while their son rolled about on the plush green turf.

He wasn't a landscaper by any stretch of the imagination but he did his best to smooth out the rough edges with raised hedges and tall plants for some privacy for such a time as this, to enjoy with his family without thinking about his work as cop or a Grimm or Berman and Rautbort.

"It's really beautiful out here. I don't remember it looking like this the last time I was here with Kelly."

"Let's just say, I was highly motivated and I had a lot of time on my hands recently. It's not finished, the plants aren't fully grown yet."
"It's still beautiful, like I had always imagined it would be. I've always wanted a garden." She hesitated before continuing, "I mean I had one growing up but I never got to enjoy it. I know I bought my house specifically for that, for Kelly, even though I knew it was too expensive for me…after not working for so long but I wanted it for Kelly. I want to give him the life I never had, to grow up as normal as possible."

And there it was a reality check. They'd talked about everything pertaining to their feelings and thoughts of never parting again but not the details of what that truly meant. Adalind was finally home but she still had a whole other house, a job in a company that made him uneasy.

"Is there anything truly normal about us?"

"Of course not but don't you want better for him?"

"Every freaking day but I have realised that normal is overrated. I don't want normal. I want what we have. We owe it to Kelly to live the best life possible and that means being honest with ourselves, that we are not normal and its okay more than okay."

For so long he'd lived on tenterhooks with Juliette, hiding who he was because he was afraid of rejection, of the truth coming between them. His aunt had warned him against the chaos he brought into her life but that was not what had driven them apart. His mother had told him to embrace his life with Juliette instead but she too, couldn't see the cracks beneath the surface that had ultimately destroyed them.

When Adalind took his abilities, Nick had been broken but to Juliette, she had viewed his Grimm as broken something that needed fixing, to which his "blindness" after Monroe and Rosalee's wedding was the cure. Juliette hadn't love the man he was but the man he'd ceased to be one sunny afternoon outside a coffee shop, a ring box jiggling in his pocket. No matter what Adalind had done to them in the past, Juliette's feelings were always her own and to be rejected for who he was had cut Nick deeply.

He had tried to make it work, always swimming against the current because he hated losing yet another person his life. He'd already lost too many to count but it was too late, gone was the woman he thought he'd spend the rest of his life with, replaced instead by a vicious and vengeful Juliette, whose hatred for him only grew more fierce with each passing day.

It was the darkest period of his life but also the most hopeful. He'd lost his mother but gained a son and the turnaround hadn't stopped there. Not soon after Juliette's disappearance, within weeks of Kelly's birth, Nick began to feel again. Adalind had snuck up on him, taking root in the deepest recesses of his heart, much to his surprise.

Though Juliette had taken so much from him at that stage, Nick still couldn't escape the sense of betrayal he'd felt for what was happening between him and Adalind against Juliette's memory and their time together. He'd fought and resisted those fledgling feelings for Adalind until he faced down an even bigger loss, losing the family he'd grow to love and cherish.

Had it not been for his friends who had greater insight to his own feelings and kicked him in the rear to go after what he wanted, Nick realised this separation from Adalind could have lasted longer and he would have lived a long and miserable life, unabated…shorter perhaps, if he poked enough Jägebars and lost the fight.

"Dude, you have to start living for yourself, no one would blame you if this is what you really want. And if someone has a problem with that, stuff 'em! You do you." Monroe had encouraged him only weeks ago.

Nick and Juliette had been together for years, had been through so much together yet he to discover his hands breaking into a cold sweat at the sight of Adalind turned his world upside down but how had it happened?

And now it was getting harder to see his life without the blonde Hexenbiest smack dab in the middle of it. She was in his thoughts, in his dreams, on his lips, in his heart and he wanted the world to know it.

While the secrecy of their situation had proved paramount at the time the royals had come after them, Nick realised he hated keeping what he felt for Adalind secret. There was no shame in what existed between them. Kelly was proof of that and while everyone in his life knew about the two of them, Adalind's situation at work had grown much more precarious than before. He hated the idea of needing to dodge people like Bonaparte because she worked for the slimiest law firm in all of Portland.

It grated him to think he couldn't waltz into that office and take her out to lunch, that he had to lie about who he was just to talk to her on the phone. That is not the life he wanted for either of them but he couldn't very well tell to quit. It had dawned on him before her trip to Germany, the irony of his situation. For so long he'd grown so used to the women in his life worrying about whether or not he'd come home at night. Now he must trust that what they have is strong, that there's nothing in the world to pull them apart ever again. Not their inherited abilities or her shady law firm, and certainly not faded old memories of a time long past.

"What happened in Germany?" He finally asked, curious.

Adalind explained her errand for Berman. How he wanted her to oversee the signing of a contract for one of their clients who'd been in Stuttgart at the time. It was a project for one of her colleagues but with her being in Leipzig, Berman had wanted to "kill two birds with one stone" and save a few bucks while he was at it.

"I'm sorry I had you worried. I can assure you I had about as miserable a time over there as you did here. I know how much working in that place irks you."

"It can't be worse than having Sean Renard as your boss, especially of late."

"Touché."

"I don't know what happened but it seems we're always butting heads, fighting for dominance."

"That's Royal Prince Sean Renard of the House of Kronenberg for you, he likes being on top, he loathes anyone that exerts any authority over him, let alone independence. I should know. He tolerated me as long as I was still useful and subservient to him."

Talk of Renard suddenly made Nick uncomfortable, so he stuck to steadier ground.

"So, this Baledin guy, are you sure he stopped following you after you left Monroe's uncle's shop?"

"I never said I was followed." She corrected him.

"Not in so many words but listening to you right now, I got the sense that is what you thought at the time, that you were being followed after you arrived in Leipzig. Did you get that same feeling even in Stuttgart?"

She took a moment before replying, "Honestly, I don't think I was ever followed to begin with. I was just nervous about the meeting with Felix, which went as I expected, but it would have been nice to get a heads up about your plan with Trubel."

"I am sorry about that but having another Grimm ace in my sleeve was just too impossible to ignore. I figured Bonaparte would stop digging when he found out a different Grimm got their hands on his prize, one whose connection to me remained unknown outside our small little circle. I'd do anything to make sure you and Kelly are safe."

"Let's hope it worked." She said as she chewed on a rather sweet strawberry. "Anyway, everything felt fine once I landed in Stuttgart, whatever I felt in Leipzig didn't follow me there, nor did it follow me here." She lightly stroked his hand.

He wasn't convinced but he dropped it, for her sake.

"Plus, I made a new friend something I haven't done since before Rosalee, since before I was a child to be honest. He name is Vera Fischer, I'm sure I told you about her."

"No, I'd remember, it's not like we talked much a month ago."

"Right, it must have been Rosalee that I told. I was having one of the crappy office days, I seem to have a lot of those these days, and I had taken Kelly to the park for a breather and that's where we met and clicked. She reminded me of a different time, when I had so little to worry about."

"Like me?" He said thoughtlessly.

"Yes, but now I would not change my life for anything in the world, not for power, prestige or money…nothing." She kissed him and he kissed her back. "I love you Nick Burkhardt, I always will."

"I love you too Adalind Schade." He said which made her giggle like a schoolgirl.

"Say it again."

"I love you."

"…And again." Her smile turned into a beaming, wide grin that warmed his chest.

"I love you." He smiled back.

"I'm sorry I just love hearing you say that to me."

He loved saying those words to her, "I will keep saying it, over and over because it is true. Nothing is ever going to change that."

"I hated every second away from you two but it wasn't as complete a nightmare as I imagined."

"Because of your friend?"

"Sort of. You have to understand what it was like being me, before I met you. Every relationship I ever had was through the lenses of performing some sort of transaction. I had no actual friends to speak of, just rivals or people I could manipulate for further gain and forget being in love. I didn't know the first thing about it other than that it was a big no-no according to my mother, because "it made us weak and easy to manipulate" her words. I guess that's why Sean and I got along so swimmingly at the beginning. We were using each other.

Nick, it's different with you. There's no ulterior motive, no deception, no duplicity. It feels real, I can't explain it except that I being with you…it saved me, you and this little guy here saved me and I will never be able to repay that."

"Uhm…I…I…." he was at a loss for words. What could he say after that?

Embarrassed by her confession, Adalind busied herself by looking everywhere else but him.

"Adalind, loving you has been the most thrilling and frightening thing I have ever done in my life because it was so easy to do. It is my honour to love you. I didn't know it until it happened." He lifted his hand to her chin and made her look into his eyes. "Have you ever been in a crowd and still felt alone? This was my life for the longest time. I did everything they taught me to do to stave off the loneliness, ticking off a checklist that was my life, like moving into a town and settling down after a lifetime of moving around the country with my aunt as she tried to raise and protect me from people I didn't even know were after us.

"Or moving in with my girlfriend after dating for at least a whole year because why not, it's what was expected or so I had heard."

Adalind snorted, "Hon', we moved in together because I had your baby and we didn't even like each other at the time."

"You're missing my point—wait, did you just call me 'Hon'?" his face broke into a boyish grin.

Adalind turned a very pretty shade of pink, "I didn't—"

"No, no, there are no take backs here. I heard you and it is perfect…Hon'. I like it. Hon'…." He said, rolling the word around his tongue like he was test-driving a sports car he just bought wish cash.

And without missing a beat, he continued with what he was saying, "Love, I spent my whole life planning for my life to go a certain way, call it over compensating for the past. My school psychologist called it a defence mechanism, being in control so I wouldn't feel the pain of losing something when I wasn't in control. I bought a ring after the second year with Juliette because that's what normal people did but I wasn't normal, or passed as such." He said

"A psychologist?" she said, visibly surprised, the embarrassment she felt over Nick calling her Love washed over her so naturally like it was always meant to be.

"Yeah, I had to or rather, I was forced to after my parents died. My aunt wasn't exactly equipped to deal with a young boy's trauma. I found out years later that my mom hadn't actually died, and that my aunt knew all along but that's not the point either. After so much chaos growing up, I made a point to be in control of my life as much as I could. My job, my relationships but life seems to have other ideas.

"I became a Grimm, made friends with people who, by all accounts, were my enemies…fell in love with one of them. I didn't plan for it. It just happened and I have never been happier in my life than I am right now. You make me come alive in a way that I have never known, not since before I was twelve years old when I thought my life was perfect. I know you have a certain view of things, of our lives…but know this, that with you by my side, I will never feel alone ever again."

"Nick…." her eyes began to water.

"I don't have all the answers. I don't know what tomorrow will bring for us but I am certain of one thing. I am yours and you are mine; now and always."

He kissed her softly as she melted in his arms until he lay atop of her.

After a long while, breathless, he pulled away, but not enough to lose separate as tips of their noses kissed. He inhaled deeply, taking her in. When he opened his eyes and gazed deeply into her cerulean blue eyes peppered tiny flicks of grey, perfect in her imperfection just for him, he knew it instantly what he wanted and unlike another lifetime before, he knew the woman of his dreams wanted the same. He once heard it said, [he] must be willing to let go of the life [he] planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for [him].

No more planning his, but actually living it.

With love swelling in his chest, Nick finally spoke the words that had rung loudly in his heart since she returned from Germany, "Adalind Schade, will you marry me?" He exhaled, and before he could gauge her reaction, he heard the only answer to give him unspeakable joy.

"Yes," she said, without hesitation.

*/*/*

Note:

This is not the last chapter.