So I'm having the kind of day today where I keep falling asleep at my desk. And since I needed to do something to wake myself up, I thought I'd post early today.

I have to give a really big thanks to Tracy here, for helping me with the ending of this story. I think this is the fourth ending that we tried :) I was tempted to leave it with the last chapter, but, alas…I am still a babe.

So here we go…

…

He stood and looked down at her. For a moment, the intensity in his eyes made her waver. Almost. She held his gaze as long as she could, until pain and regret made her look away. She cleared her throat and shifted Livy. His hands, at eye level with her, were clenching into fists and unclenching. Slowly she raised her gaze back to his.

His face was expressionless, his eyes blank. "Okay," he said. He turned and walked out.

It was dead silent in the house. As if, for that moment, everything was frozen. Paused. Then she heard Ranger's truck start in the driveway. Bob barked. Livy hiccupped and let out a little sigh against her shoulder.

Steph squeezed her eyes shut tight. She had done the right thing. She was sure she had done the right thing. Over and over again, she told herself that. She couldn't stay with a man she couldn't trust - no one could.

Letting out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding only intensified the pain. Had she done the right thing? She tightened her arms around Livy and waited for the world to right itself.

It didn't work.

Joe walked back into the living room and sat down beside her. "You okay?"

She nodded her head, fast, frantic. "I'm fine. Good. It had to be done."

"What are you going to do?"

She looked at him. "Do?"

"Where are you going to live?"

She stared at him with wide-eyes for a moment. That hadn't even crossed her mind. "My apartment, I guess."

"Can you take care of Livy alone yet?"

"Of course I can. I don't need him. I can do it myself."

He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and gave her a small smile. "I know you can, Cupcake. But I was kind of hoping you needed me. Why don't you both stay here for a while. You don't want to rush into anything."

"That's not fair to you, Joe."

He met her eyes. "Do it anyway."

A lifeline. Grabbing at it, she said, "Okay. She cries a lot, are you okay with that?"

He nodded.

"It wouldn't be for long. I just--"

"It's okay to need help sometimes, you know."

She nodded and stared down at Livy for a moment before looking back up at Joe. "Do you think I did the right thing?" She hated how thin and scared her voice sounded, and the tears that pushed at her eyelids.

"I don't know, Steph."

She nodded again and blinked, willing herself not to cry. Joe wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her towards him. Sighing, she shifted Livy so she could settle against him, her face pressed into his neck.

…

Ranger drove back to his office an autopilot. Without making a conscious decision to do so, he had dropped into lock-down mode: his breathing was steady and shallow, his eyes scanning everything, all of his senses hyper-vigilant, ready for the first hint of danger.

Everything else was numb, which was a blessing, because thinking about anything would have been disastrous.

He walked into his office and shut the door behind him. The divorce papers were sitting on the edge of his desk, where they had been since Steph handed them to him over a month ago. He stared at them for a moment before sitting down and opening them. Without re-reading, he marked the changes he wanted and faxed them to his lawyer.

He absently focused on the damn fax machine, watching each page get sucked in, hearing the beep as each was successful. Every beep seemed to get a little louder, a little more final.

He rubbed his hands over his face. There was work that needed to be done. He couldn't just sit here staring at a fax machine all day. A stack of paperwork was on his desk - he had been putting it off to spend more time helping with the baby. He reached for it before he noticed that his hand was shaking. Dropping his hand, he took a few deep breaths, trying to regulate his heartbeat before reaching again for the paperwork.

It didn't matter, he told himself. None of it mattered. He'd told Steph she could have a divorce, and he'd meant it.

He stared at the papers in front of him, trying to force the numbers on the page into focus. He'd been divorced before; this wasn't any different. Same paperwork, same custody and support decisions. It was just a different name on the papers; that was all.

It certainly wasn't the kind of thing that made him unable to work.

His fax machine beeped, startling him. It was the papers from the lawyer's office, with the changes made. Reaching for them, he glanced at the clock. It had been an hour - he was losing time.

He flipped through the revised papers, signing at all the marked spots. He didn't know why he had thought Steph would do anything different. She had been right - she sure as hell couldn't trust him after everything he'd done to her. He'd left her with one option: walking away.

For once, she hadn't given in.

He couldn't help being a little proud of her. After all, she shouldn't trust him. Which raised the question of how exactly one went about regaining someone's trust. He cursed under his breath and signed the last form. There was nothing to win, no plans to be made.

He had told her she could walk away, free and clear. He had meant it, even if it killed him.

A knock sounded on the door and Lester stuck his head in. "Hey, where's Steph? I have something for the baby, but when I went upstairs, she wasn't there."

"She left."

"Well, when's she coming back?"

"She's not." The words were harder to say than he expected.

Lester held his eyes for a moment before nodding once and leaving.

The worst part, he thought as the finished making sure all the paperwork was complete, was that for years he had been keeping Steph as a distance because he was convinced she made him weak. When it was too late, when he was forced to walk away from her, he finally figured out that it wasn't true.

He fed the papers into the fax machine and left the office. He couldn't stand to hear the damn thing beep.

…

Steph was nursing Livy when Joe came in. He'd been called out late for a crime scene an hour after Ranger left, and Steph had spent the evening trying not to think.

"How'd it go?" she said.

He shut the front door, trying to keep out the frigid air and stomped the snow off his boots. "Okay. Looks like an overdose." He nodded his head toward Livy. "Have you gotten any sleep?"

She shook her head. It was after 3 am, and she hadn't lay down yet. Even if the baby hadn't kept her up, there was no way she could have slept. Every time she closed her eyes, her mind filled with the image of Ranger's face as he left, trying to read any emotion, figure out what he had been thinking. What he wanted.

Joe laid a stack of papers on the coffee table. "These were faxed to the TPD."

"What is it?"

"You're divorce."

Her breath caught. It was what she wanted, she reminded herself. What she needed. "That was fast."

"If nothing else, he's a man of his word, I guess."

Her heart flipped over. "Yeah." She stared at the papers. Livy wiggled, drawing her attention. Steph lifted her to her shoulder to burp before looking back up at Joe. "I guess I just have to sign them and send them back."

"Do you need a lawyer?"

She shook her head. "He's giving me everything I want. More, actually. I'll let his lawyers deal with it."

"Isn't there a waiting period in Jersey?"

She nodded. "Eighteen months unless you can prove adultery. I got my divorce from Dickie in days."

"That's a long wait."

"You're telling me." She was the one who had to stay married to him for that long. So much for getting control of her life back.

"Want me to look over it all for you, just in case?" He was eyeing the papers, cop mode. He was being overprotective, but that was okay.

"Sure, thanks," she said.

He took the papers into the kitchen - a light clicked on, spilling into the dim living room. She re-settled Livy at her breast and resumed rocking, hoping the repetitive motion would stop her frantic thoughts. She hadn't really expected Ranger to give her the divorce, and certainly not at this speed. Not after he had been fighting her for weeks. Why now?

"Uh, Steph?" Joe said from the kitchen. "There's a lot of money here."

She sighed. "I told him I didn't want it."

He appeared in the doorway, holding the papers. "It's all for Livy, but it's a lot. And there's a house too."

She had forgotten about that. "I thought he was kidding about the house."

"I knew he had money, but--" Joe looked back down at the paper. "But because this is all for Livy, a judge isn't going to let you turn it down."

"That's what he said too."

"Don't you want a settlement?"

"And give him one more way to control me? No thanks."

Joe set the papers on the coffee table. "Well, regardless, you're certainly not getting screwed. I'm actually kind of surprised how generous it is. But then again, he's been good with Livy since he showed up."

Steph closed her eyes. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure. It's just--the house may be a good idea. It's a nice part of town, and it's yours, free and clear. I mean, you could sell it, but--"

She nodded, praying the conversation was over. She didn't want to talk about Ranger. She didn't want to talk about divorcing Ranger. She just wanted to stop thinking about him. But given the way she missed him already, only hours after he had left, the chances of that happening seemed slim.

…

One monotonous day followed another.

"Don't you want to look through these papers?" Joe said.

She shook her head. "Not yet." She couldn't handle it yet. In the three days since Ranger walked out, she hadn't been unable to get a handle on anything. The papers sat where Joe had dropped them on the coffee table. She refused to touch them. Instead, they mocked her. Every time she sat in the living room with Joe or Livy, she stared at those papers. When she walked away, she thought about them.

Joe had shuffled Livy to Ranger on two of the evenings, letting Steph hide. But the hours where she hadn't had a baby as a distraction had been worse. Then those papers were the only thing she could think about.

What she couldn't figure out was why, after weeks of being a bastard, he had given in. Not at any point in the past six months had he cared about her opinion, or what his demands were costing her. Now, all of a sudden, he was willing to give her everything she wanted?

"I thought you wanted a divorce. Wasn't that what all this was about?" Joe said.

"Yes!" She signed and rubbed a hand over her forehead. "Yes, I want the divorce."

"All you have to do is sign the papers and send them to his lawyers."

"I know. I'll do it today." Of course, she had said that yesterday. And the day before that.

Joe stared at her for a minute. "You don't have to do this, you know. I mean, if you want to be with him--"

"I don't."

Joe shrugged. "Okay." He kissed her on the forehead and set Livy down on the couch beside her. She was lying on her back, little hands and feet waving in the air. "I'm headed to work. Call me if you need anything. Otherwise I'll bring home Pino's for dinner."

She nodded, but she still couldn't tear her eyes away from the damn stack of papers. "I have to run some errands today. Do you need anything?"

"Yeah, get more coffee." He gave her another quick kiss, blew bubbles on Livy's tummy, and walked out.

Steph grabbed a rattle, handing it to Livy, and tickled her, making her laugh, focusing on the baby rather than her inability to deal with Ranger. But when Livy fell asleep, she forced herself. She grabbed the papers, marched to the kitchen, and sat down at the table with a pen. She didn't bother to read the child support amounts - it would only piss her off. She opened to the first place that need her signature and poised the pen over it.

"Sign it," she said aloud. "Just sign it."

Her hand was trembling so badly she could barely hold the pen against the paper. "Fuck!" She threw the pen down in disgust. This was ridiculous. She wanted a divorce. She needed the divorce. Hell, she was even willing to use the house when it came right down to it.

Then why couldn't she sign the damn papers?

She leaned down to fish the pen out from under the table, and gave the retractable end a firm punch. She flipped to the second page that needed her signature, thinking that a fresh page would help.

She couldn't do it.

She had to do it. She sure as hell couldn't stay married to him. Not when she couldn't trust him. But why had he sent the papers at all?

Her phone rang - the batman theme song. It had been so long since he'd called her from his cell that it took her a second to place the tune. Since before he found out she was pregnant, that's for sure. Something about it made her breath catch. When he had called her from Miami, it had always been from his office phone. And when she'd lived with him at RangeMan, he'd called the apartment line rather than her cell.

The phone was sitting on the coffee table, still ringing. She walked into the living room and stared at it, unable to move to either answer it or turn it off. It was the tune, she realized, that was bothering her. Before it had always made her smile. Some deep knowledge that she could trust him to rescue her from whatever happened. She should have changed the ring-tone when she first realized that that was no longer true.

It stopped ringing.

…

She finished running her errands and got back to Joe's an hour before he was due home. She tried to clean up a bit, feeling bad that they had taken over his entire house. She had to find somewhere else for her and Livy to live - this wasn't fair to Joe. She was finishing folding the laundry when he walked in.

"Hey," he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek and picking up Livy from her blanket on the floor. "Wow, you were busy."

"Yeah, I got some groceries, and I threw your clothes in the wash while I was doing it."

Joe grinned. "See? You can be a good housewife after all."

"Right." She flicked him with the towel she was folding. "There's no way I'm keeping this up. My maternity leave is over next week, and I have every intention of going back."

He grabbed the bag of food he had set down when he walked in and headed for the kitchen, still carrying Livy. "These papers are still unsigned," he said. "Ranger will be here for them any minute."

"What?" she said, rushing into the kitchen. "What?"

Joe was unpacking the food with one hand and holding Livy against his chest with the other. "He said he called you. He's coming over to see Livy and get the papers. Didn't he call?"

"No he didn't call! Do you think I'd still be here if I knew he was coming?" The realization that he had called came a moment too late. She hadn't checked her messages. "What time did he say he was coming?"

"Six." He kept calmly setting food on the table.

She ran for her phone in the living room. Her hands were shaking so badly that it took her two tires to punch in the code for the voicemail, but a second later, his deep voice was filling her senses.

"I'm stopping by to see Livy around six, and I'll pick up the papers then. And just a head's up, babe--" He paused and his voice lowered even farther. "This isn't over."

Steph tried to take a keep breath but couldn't. What the hell did that mean? What wasn't over? He had sent the damn divorce papers. And he was going to be here for them any minute. She had to have them signed before he arrived. Sinking back into the chair at the kitchen table, she looked at the papers. The pen she had been using earlier was gone. "Where's my pen?"

"What?"

"The pen!" She was getting frantic. She had to sign the papers before he got there. "I need a pen!"

Joe stared at her like she had lost her mind. Maybe she had. At the moment, it was a distinct possibility. A car door slammed outside.

"Get me a pen!"

Joe opened the junk drawer, grabbed a pen, and tossed it to her. A knock sounded at the front door.

"Stall him," she said. She flipped the first page she needed to sign.

Nothing happened.

She heard the front door open, and muffled voices. She heard footsteps.

Sign, damnit!

"Babe."

His low, rumbling voice froze her. Her pen had yet to make the slightest mark on the paper, no matter how many times her mind screamed for her hand to write.

His fingers settled on her shoulder, making her flinch. "Did you get my message?"

She shook her head. "No, I was out. I was running errands with Livy. I had to buy coffee."

His grip on her shoulder tightened as he stepped to the side of her. Slowly, she raised her gaze to him. Her heart flipped over in her chest, making her wish she hadn't looked at him. He had Livy now, tucked on his chest, her little face nestled into his neck. She was making happy noises.

When she focused on Ranger, the look on his face was infinitely tender, his gaze searching her eyes and face, moving over her hair, drinking her in like it had been weeks since he had seen her instead of only days.

It occurred to her then that maybe he did love her enough, the way she needed him to love her. "Why did you send the papers?" she said. Her voice was hoarse.

His lips tilted up, almost smiling. "Because I finally figured it out."

She stared at him, but he didn't explain the cryptic remark any further. She turned back to the papers, tightening her grip on the pen. She had to sign them. No way was she sitting here in front of him, not able to to do this.

"You were right, you know."

"About what?" she said, not looking back up at him.

"You would have been an idiot to trust me."

"That hasn't changed."

When he didn't reply, she chanced another glance at him. This time he was smiling. She gave him a peevish look. "Has it?"

"Like I said, I figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

He moved his hand from her shoulder and grabbed her left hand. She was still wearing the ring. She had meant to take it off. But she hadn't been able to that any more than she could sign the papers in front of her.

He spun the ring around, rubbing his fingers over the metal. "Do you need more time?"

She glared. "More time for what?"

He motioned with his head. "To sign the papers."

She was all turned around. She couldn't follow anything that he was saying, and why the fuck did he look so smug? She jerked her hand away from him. "I still don't understand why you're doing this."

"Because if this is what it takes to get you to trust me again, than this is what I'll do."

She stared at him, wide-eyed.

"This isn't over, babe. If you need time, that's fine, but don't think for a second that this is it." His gaze pinned her and his voice dropped. "This isn't over"

Anger burst through her. Once again, he thought he could walk in here and make her decisions for her. Fuck that. "This is over! See - here's the papers right here that say it's all over. Finished. We're done."

"Papers you didn't sign."

She saw red. He wasn't doing this to her again. She made the decisions now. Her chest heaved as she tried to breathe. She grabbed the first sheet and his time, when she tried to sign her name, it worked. The second sheet, then the third... "You can't control me, Ranger," she said as she kept going through the forms. "Not anymore."

"I'm not controlling anything, babe. Do what you need to do. Make whatever decisions you need to make. Just don't think I'm going to fade into the background."

"Well think again." She signed the last form, grabbed all the papers together and shoved them at him. She pulled the ring off her finger and shoved that at him too. "Here. We're divorced. Congratulations."

His lips tilted up and he slipped the ring into his pocket. "I'll get these filed right away. I can get the waiting period waived. By noon tomorrow, you'll be a free woman."

"Thank god."

He handed Livy back to her, who started screaming the second he let go of her. She sat at the table, staring blankly ahead, rubbing Livy's back to calm her.

It only took the sound of the front door closing for her to realize what a colossal mistake she had just made.

…