Hey! I am sorry about the lack of a new chapter on Thursday. Friday was my birthday and it has been a kind of crazy week. Sticking to an update schedule for this story has been kind of difficult, so from here on out, I will be updating as I write. That may be once a week, or it may be more or it may be less. Throw this story on alert of you want to make sure to keep up to date. Anyway, I hope that you enjoy the chapter! Leave a review, yeah? Thanks!
Tess huffed out a sigh as she filed through yet another stack of paperwork. The office at Teller Morrow was not spacious and comfortable, and every flat surface was covered with stacks of paperwork that hadn't even been looked through in what appeared to be weeks. There did not seem to be any real rhyme or reason to the so called filing system, and the computer dated back to approximately 1988. It was nearly enough to make her want to scream. Opie had warned her that the job would be a bit old school, but this was nearly prehistoric. Honestly, it was like a bunch of motherless children had been left in charge of the office, and now it was up to her to work it out.
It was only her first day of work and she very nearly threw in the towel when trying to read an invoice that looked as if it had been handwritten by a drunk toddler. She tossed the paper work down to the desk and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and reminding herself of the reasons she was glad she took this job. They paid well, for one. There wasn't a single job she had looked at in the past few months that paid $20 an hour for such easy work. Opie had explained that she would be allowed the freedom to pick her own hours. They didn't care when she came in or when she left, just as long as she got her work done. Charming was a nice town and the rent was cheap, so she would be able to live comfortably between her paycheck and her savings. Last but not least, the guys had all been very welcoming and were treating her well. Overall, she was adjusting well and really, she didn't have anything to complain about.
"Hey, Tess," came Opie's voice from the doorway. "Do you have the invoice for the Mazda? The red one? DogBoy is done with it."
"Yes sir, it's somewhere in this pile, hang on," she said as she dug through a stack on the desk. "Here it is. I'm really sorry about this mess. It's getting better in here, I swear. It just doesn't look like it."
She handed the paper work over and Opie took it, glad that it wasn't him digging through the stack. She smiled wearily as she handed it over. "Thanks Tess, and don't call me sir."
"Ha, yeah, okay," she replied with a blush. "I'm sorry, I forgot."
"It happens," he said with a small smile. "Have you taken a lunch yet?"
"Oh, no, I haven't. There is a ton of stuff to do here, and I'm not really hungry anyway," she told him with a shrug.
Opie sighed, and pointed to the posted OSHA guidelines by the door. "The law is the law Tess, and around here, we ALWAYS follow the law. Take a break. Shit, go get a beer, look around a bit, I don't care. You've been sitting in that chair too long."
She rolled her eyes and looked at him, doing her very best to convince him that she was fine. He stared back at her, not budging even a little. Tess knew that she shouldn't be challenging her boss, but this was definitely a light hearted exchange, and she and Opie got along relatively well. They continued the stare down until the phone rang, and she raised her eyebrows.
"Please excuse me, sir," she said with a grin. "I have to get that."
She picked up the phone and in an overly polite tone said, "Thank you for calling Teller-Morrow. How may I help you?"
"Christ, this must be Tess! Nobody else would be so damned polite," she heard a thick brogue from the other end of the line.
"Oh, hi. This is Chibs, right?" she asked, slightly embarrassed now.
"Of course it is," he replied. "How's the job treating you? Everybody being nice?"
"The job is a mess, but everybody is being great," she told him. He responded with a laugh, and she couldn't help but smile herself. "How is Ireland?"
"It's cold, but bloody fantastic," he replied, a grin in his voice.
"That's good," she replied, glad to hear that he was having a good time on his trip. "I suppose that you didn't call here to talk to me."
"No, I didn't, though it was nice," he replied, showing his charm. "Is Op around?"
"Yeah, he's right here," she told him. "Have a fun trip and stay warm!"
She handed the phone over to Opie, who pointed out the door, once again indicating that she was supposed to take a break now. She smiled and grabbed her purse before heading out, not really sure where she was going. She truly wasn't hungry and she didn't have any place she needed to go. She noticed an empty picnic table over on the other side of the garage that looked welcoming. She pulled the paperback book from her purse and headed over, figuring that if she couldn't work, at least she could read for a while. She made herself comfortable at the table and opened the book, eager to delve further into the romance between a tough as nails lady cop and an innocent until proven guilty possible criminal.
Tess had made it through nearly an entire chapter when a hand fell on her shoulder, causing her to jump halfway to the moon and swing her purse around as hard and as fast as possible, connecting solidly with whoever was behind her.
"What the fuck?!" she heard a strangled male voice from behind her. "Jesus, Tessie. Can't a guy come have a smoke next to you without getting his nuts caved in?"
She turned quickly to find Kozik behind her, bent over in pain, cigarette hanging from his lips. Tess immediately jumped up from her seat at the picnic table, praying to God that she wouldn't be fired for physically assaulting one of her bosses.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed, fretting over the blonde man in front of her. "I'm so sorry! I was reading and I was just really engrossed and distracted and I had no idea it was you! You just surprised me!"
"Yeah," he said, his voice still strained, "I get that."
"Okay, well what can I do?" she asked. "Do you want me to get you some ice?"
"For my dick? No thanks. I just need to sit for a minute," he told her, terrified at the thought of putting an ice pack anywhere south of his belt.
"Yeah, come on, sit down," Tess urged him, moving her stuff off the bench and letting the man sit. "I'm really sorry."
"I'll bet you are," he said, managing a small smile. "Do you hit all the boys who try to sit by you in the crotch, or am I just special?"
"Well, you certainly are special," she replied dryly. "If I had known it was you, I would have swung harder."
He laughed and nodded, taking a drag from his smoke. "I think you swung hard enough, really."
"Yeah, I guess so," she agreed. "Are you okay though? Really?"
"Of course I am, I've been hit harder than that before. I will live," he smiled from next to her, bumping her lightly in the shoulder. "You know that you do owe me, though."
"Oh, do I?" she asked, already skeptical about where this conversation was headed. "And what exactly do I owe you?"
"I figure that you nearly annihilated my dick, so the least you could do is kiss it and make it better,"Kozik said with a completely straight face.
Tess tried really hard to maintain her composure, but she couldn't help it when her mouth dropped open. Had she really just been sexually harassed at her new place of employment by a man she barely knew? Well, she sure as hell was not in Kansas anymore.
"Well…you…and me…that…" she stuttered for a moment. "NO!"
His straight face just couldn't hold up and his laughter exploded. She supposed that the look on her face was pretty ridiculous, but was his level of laughter really necessary? Probably not. As much as she possibly liked this man, as much as she was sorry for hitting him, she certainly did not like to be laughed at. Her shocked expression must have become haughty very quickly, because he soon stopped laughing and threw an arm around her shoulder.
"I was kidding, calm down," he told her, squeezing her shoulder once before getting up from the table. "I will come to collect on that favor, though, when you least expect it."
As he walked away, Tess tried to stop herself from staring at his ass, but she couldn't. When he disappeared from view, she buried her head in her hands and groaned. So much for her great first day.
"I'll call you after the meet brother," Chibs said into the phone as his eyes followed his wife around the room. "Give the guys my best."
As Opie assured him that his greetings would be passed on, Chibs said goodbye and hung up the phone, turning his full attention back to the woman in front of him. She stood behind the wooden chair, a pair of scissors in hand, and nodded at him, pointing to the chair. He smiled at her, taking her obvious hint to sit down. It had been a long time, but he remembered this well.
"Shirt off," she demanded, tugging lightly at the offending fabric. She may have pretended that it was completely necessary to the haircutting process, but Chibs was almost sure she just wanted him topless. He leaned forward and pulled the shirt over his head and quickly tossed it aside, before leaning back again and smiling up at her.
"Better?" he asked.
"Much," she replied. Her hands dropped lightly on his shoulders and her fingers traced the skin there. He leaned back against her stomach and rested his head, enjoying the sensation. He was comfortable in this old memory. She allowed it for a moment before running her hands through his too long hair. "Sit up now. We don't want to make this any more traumatic than it has to be."
"Traumatic? You haven't lost your touch with those scissors, have you Fi?" he asked as he quickly adjusted himself in the chair.
"I'm not sure, Love," she said with what he hoped was a lighthearted tone. "It's been ages since I've done this. Kerrianne hasn't let me trim her hair since age seven, and Jimmy always preferred to have a gay fellow uptown trim his."
Her scissors started working, and he fell silent. This was the first time she had brought up Jimmy at all in the past day or so since he arrived. On one hand, he was glad of it. She seemed to have gotten past that shit and was doing well. It did him good to see the light in her eyes again, to see her smile freely without the burden of Jimmy hanging over her. On the other hand, Chibs hadn't wanted to be the one to bring it up, and he wanted, needed, to tell her what had happened. She wasn't making that task any easier by not bringing it up.
"You didn't dream last night," he told her, figuring that it was at least an opening.
She hummed in response and continued snipping away as she replied, "I did, actually, but my dreams were much more vivid and pleasurable in nature."
He chuckled softly. Leave it to his wife to put his mind on sex in the middle of a haircut. The pieces of his hair fell to the floor all around him as she continued to work, and he was quiet once again. He was gathering his thoughts, collecting the words in his mind and working up the courage to say what needed to be said. It wouldn't be an easy conversation, but it was a necessary one.
Fiona surprised him by speaking up and immediately distracting him from his thoughts. "You know, I haven't heard a single word from him or about him. Since you and your boys left, there hasn't even been a whisper of Jimmy. "
"Did you expect there to be?" he asked, because he was honestly curious.
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "I didn't think he would ever stop. You know what he's like; what he's capable of. I always expected him to try to come back for us."
He sighed heavily. There was no denying the opening right here in front of him, and he couldn't let it pass. He had to tell her and he had to do it now.
"Fi, put the scissors down for a moment, Love," he said and he stood and turned to face her.
"What is it, Filip?" she asked, looking at him with genuine curiosity, not at all sure what he was about to say.
He walked over and took the scissors from her, gently leading her to sit in his recently vacated chair. He knelt down in front of her and rested his hands on her thighs, staring at her eye to eye, because he really needed to see her head on. She was beautiful as she looked at him, brown eyes wide and concerned. She trusted him completely, and he hoped that what he was about to tell her wouldn't shake that trust.
"He's dead, Fiona," he told her, his voice barely above a whisper. "Weeks ago, just after we got back to Charming, we tracked him down in California, before he was able to make the jump out of country, and I made sure that he would never come after you or our daughter ever again. He's dead, Fi, and he's never coming back. You're safe."
For a moment there was no expression at all, and he didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She leaned back in her chair, but her eyes stayed on him, and he really wished that she would react; that she would give him some sort of indication of what she was thinking or feeling. He knew her well, knew that it could take her some time to process thing, but he needed something, anything from her.
She didn't disappoint. When she spoke, her voice was a breathy whisper. "Dead?" she asked.
He didn't answer her with words, but nodded instead. She was quiet for another moment before she spoke again, her words more firm this time. "Tell me that he wouldn't have stopped. Tell me that if he was alive, he would have hurt us and that there was no other way to keep our family safe," she asked him.
"You know he would have come for you, Fi. There was no way he would have just left well enough alone and let us be. He would have been back for you and for Kerri, and I just couldn't let that happen," he told her, begging her to understand.
She continued to stare, but her eyes were changing now. They were softer, and full of understanding. She nodded and slowly leaned forward wrapping her arms around his bare shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Thank you for keeping us safe, Filip," she whispered as she hugged him close.
His arms found themselves around her as held her against him, glad to finally have the truth out in the open. There was nothing left separating them anymore, and he was glad; glad that she knew him inside out and still wanted to be here, holding him in her kitchen.
Of course their embrace was short lived as the door flew open to reveal Kerrianne standing there, looking at them in confusion from behind a black eye and a split lip. The family stood immobile for a moment, two adults surrounded by hair and wrapped up in one another, and one teenager not quite sure what she was walking into. None of them could quite process what was happening.
Kerrianne was the first to break out of the trance. "Da, what the hell happened to your hair?" she asked.
"Kerrianne, what the hell happened to your eye?" Fiona shot back without missing a beat.
Both Kerrianne and Chibs spoke at the same moment, saying "It's a long story."
Chibs rolled his eyes and allowed himself to laugh along with his wife and daughter, knowing that regardless of the difficult conversations that needed to happen, there was nowhere in the entire world that he would rather be than right here.
"Come here, Love," he said, not managing to hide his happiness. "You need some ice for your face, and then you need to explain that long story."