A/N - Thank you so much for all the reviews on the last chapter! It was really lovely to read everyone's kind words :-)
Hopefully this chapter will give a bit more insight into both Eponine and Enjolras' reasoning behind their actions.
They were only a few blocks away from Eponine's apartment when Grantaire finally spoke.
"Enjolras has been calling me non stop. Can I at least call him back and tell him that you're OK?"
"Do whatever you want," Eponine replied bluntly, continuing to stare out the window as the lights of the city flashed by.
Grantaire didn't know what he was supposed to do, he didn't know what he was supposed to say. He had already been half way to Enjolras's parents' house when Eponine called him back to say that she wasn't at the house anymore and needed him to pick her up from a cafe in the town. When he had finally found the place he saw her through the window; sitting at a table in the corner with her head in her hands and her overnight bag on her lap. She hadn't said a word when she saw him, she just stood up, grabbed her bag and walked out towards his car. They had spent the entire journey back to the city in a tense silence. Grantaire knew Eponine well enough to know when she didn't want to talk about something, but it took all his strength not to ask her what the hell had happened.
When they eventually pulled up outside Eponine's apartment building Grantaire turned off the engine and glanced over at her as she continued to stare out the passenger seat window.
"Do you want me to come in with you?" he asked.
"Can I ask you a favor?"
"Oh course Ep, anything."
"Can I stay at your place for a bit?" she asked, turning to look at him for the first time that night.
Grantaire had seen Eponine upset before: he'd been there when she struggled to loosen Montparnasse's grip on her and he'd helped her drink away the pain of her unreturned feelings for Marius, he thought he had seen her at her lowest, but when he looked into her eyes at that moment he knew that nothing she had felt before compared to whatever it was that she was feeling now.
"You can stay as long as you want to Ep, you know that."
Eponine sighed, and pushed her hair back out of her face. "Thanks."
Grantaire reached across and grabbed her hand. "Listen Ep, I don't know what has happened, and you don't need to tell me until you're ready to talk about it, but when you are ready I'll be here to listen and until then I'll be here for whatever else you need."
"You're a good guy R," Eponine replied with a weak smile. "I'm just gonna go up and get some stuff, I'll be as quick as I can."
"You want me to come up?"
Eponine shook her head. "No, it's fine, I just need a minute."
Grantaire watched as she got out of the car and made her way into the building. When he knew that she was inside he grabbed his phone from the cup holder beside him and dialed Enjolras's number. It barely even rang once before he picked up.
"Grantaire, what the fuck? I've been calling you all night. Is she with you? Is she there?" Enjolras spluttered, tripping over his words as he tried to speak.
"She's fine Enjolras, she's with me and she's fine."
"Oh thank God," Enjolras replied, the relief seeping through his voice. "I'm coming back, I'll leave now. I need to see her, I need to talk to her. Fuck, I need to fix this."
"I'm not sure that's the best idea," Grantaire replied.
"Why not?"
"She's upset, I think she maybe needs some time before she sees you."
"Is she with you now? You said she was with you."
"No, I'm in the car and she's in the apartment."
"Why is she in the apartment by herself?"
"She's getting her stuff."
"Her stuff? Why is she getting her stuff?"
"She asked if she could come and stay with me for a while," Grantaire hesitantly replied.
Enjolras didn't respond. All Grantaire could hear was his ragged breathing on the other end of the phone.
"What the hell happened tonight Enjolras?"
"I fucked up R, I've really, really fucked up."
"What did you do?" Grantaire asked, his tone becoming stern.
"She overheard a conversation between my parents and I, and shit," he sighed. "I hadn't told them about the baby."
"What the fuck Enjolras?" Grantaire yelled. "What do you mean you hadn't told them about the baby?
"I hadn't told them that it was my baby," Enjolras clarified.
"You're an absolute asshole," Grantaire hissed. "You brought her to their house and you just hadn't bothered to tell them that it's your baby she's carrying? What the fuck did you think was going to happen?"
"I don't know Grantaire, I don't know. I didn't know how to tell them, when I told my mother she was living with me and was coming with me to visit she just assumed that I had taken her in, it didn't even cross her mind that we were together."
Grantaire was furious. He couldn't believe that Enjolras hadn't had the guts to correct his mother's misconception about his relationship with Eponine; he had just gone along with it and then let her show up at their house.
"And it didn't even cross your mind to tell him that you were? To let him know that you're having a kid with her?"
"I was going to tell them at dinner, but then my dad started to ask me why I was letting the 'Thénardier girl' live with me and I just didn't know what to say. They're pissed off enough that I'm even friends with her, they always have been."
"And you care about that?" Grantaire said. "Since when have you given a shit about what your parents think Enjolras? You've stood up to them before, what made this any different?"
"My father's firm worked on her parents' trial."
"What?" Grantaire replied, shocked at Enjolras's revelation.
"My father was behind the plea deal that another member of their gang took."
Grantaire remembered Eponine telling him about her parents' trial: another member of their gang had made a plea bargain to testify against them, admitting that they were the masterminds of the home invasion and that her father had fired the shot which had ended up seriously wounding one of occupants.
"Fuck sake Enjolras, don't you think you should have mentioned this before?"
Enjolras sighed on the other end of the phone. "I didn't think it mattered to begin with, she already felt bad enough about her parents, I didn't see the need in making things any more awkward for her."
"And then as you got to know her better you didn't think she deserved to know?"
"I was in love with her Grantaire," Enjolras abruptly yelled, causing Grantaire to pull the phone away from his ear. "I fell in love with her, she was, she is, the most amazing person I've ever met, I could barely muster up the strength to talk to her half the time, never mind admit that to her. My father was furious when he found out I was friends with her, he went on and on about how there was no way she wasn't going to turn out exactly like her parents, that there was no way someone could come through a childhood like that turn out normal. I couldn't tell her because I was already so in love with her, and I was afraid if she found out that she wouldn't want to even know me, and I just didn't think I could handle that. I needed to have her in my life; I just couldn't cope with the idea of her hating me, of her not wanting to know me."
As Grantaire tried to process what Enjolras had just said he saw Eponine re-emerge from the apartment building, dragging a suitcase behind her.
"I have to go, she's coming back to the car," Grantaire said.
"Tell her that I'm sorry R, please. I need her to know that I'm so sorry and that I love her."
Grantaire had never heard Enjolras sound so desperate before, and as much as he was pissed off at him for what he had done, he couldn't help but feel sorry for him.
"I'll tell her."
"Thanks," Enjolras replied, sounding completed dejected.
"You can fix this Enjolras, you know what you have to do," Grantaire said, hanging up just as Eponine pulled open the passenger seat door.
"Can you open the trunk please?" she asked.
"Sure," Grantaire replied, popping the trunk and opening his door. "You get into the car, I'll get your case."
He walked round to Eponine's side of the car, grabbed her case and threw it into the trunk. When he got back into the car she was just sitting in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead.
"Was that him?" she asked.
"What?"
"I saw you on the phone when I was walking to the car. Were you talking to Enjolras?"
"Eh yeah," Grantaire replied, shifting awkwardly in his seat.
"Figured."
"He just wanted to know that you were OK."
"Did he tell you what happened?" she asked. "Or let me re-phrase that, did he tell you his version of what happened?"
"He told me that he hadn't told his parents about the baby."
Eponine brought her hands up to cover and face and took a deep breath. "I don't know what I'm going to do R, I don't know if I can do this by myself."
"Ep, you don't need to do anything by yourself."
"I'm such a fucking idiot for thinking this was all going to work out," she sighed.
"I think you should maybe give Enjolras a chance to explain what happened tonight-"
"It's not just tonight," Eponine interrupted. "What happened tonight just made me realize how ridiculous this whole situation is, I don't know why I thought this was ever going to work out. I should have never moved in with him, I should have never started sleeping with him and falling in love with him and I definitely shouldn't have gotten caught up in this whole happy family fantasy."
"I don't think what you two have is a fantasy Ep, I think you're great together," Grantaire replied, desperately wanting to tell Eponine what Enjolras had told him on the phone. "He knows that he majorly fucked up tonight, I really think you can try and work through this."
Eponine sat back, resting her head against the head rest. "I just think it would be much better if we stopped this whole thing now and worked out a way to be civil with each other so we can co-parent this baby when it arrives."
"Is this really what you want?"
"It doesn't matter what I want, it's what needs to happen," Eponine said, looking and sounding totally defeated. "Look at how much we've hurt each other in the past 6 months, we just keep hurting each other. I'm not going to delay the inevitable, and it's not fair to bring a child into the middle of all this."
"Do you love him Eponine?"
She turned her head. "You know that I love him Grantaire."
"Well you know me Ep, and you know that love in general isn't really my thing, but I know that Enjolras loves you, I know that he has never loved another human being the way that he loves you."
"That doesn't fix things though, that doesn't excuse the fact that he just avoided telling his parents about our baby," Eponine said, gulping hard to try and stem the tears that had been threatening to come all night. "Do you know how that made me feel? It made me feel like I was nothing, like I was worthless; I haven't felt that way in a long time, and he was the last person I ever thought would make me feel that way." She closed her eyes as she continued to speak. "The last thing in the world I want is for my baby to ever feel that way, to ever feel like it was some mistake, because I love this kid Grantaire, I mean I know it's not here yet, but I love it and I want to do the right thing by it. I don't want it to grow up messed up like me because I was a terrible parent, or because it feels like its father is embarrassed by its very existence. I refuse to let that happen, I refuse to let my baby feel the things that I have felt."
Grantaire knew how scarred Eponine was by her own childhood, he knew that she tried so hard not to let it shape her adult life, but there are some wounds that just cut too deep, and he couldn't help but be furious at Enjolras for opening those wounds back up again.
"Do you want to head back to mine?"
Eponine nodded her head. "Yes please."
As Grantaire pulled away from the front of the building he noticed Eponine opening her eyes and glancing back – as if she was taking one final look at what might have been.