A/N: My apologies for yet another long wait. I know some of you have been waiting for this chapter forever. In my defense, my life has become incredibly busy. I started college in March. It's extra occupational, part-time distance learning and I'm still working a very demanding full-time job. I'm still trying to adjust to that major change in my life and something has to give. Don't worry, though. Even though updates will be slow I am intent on finishing this story.
Thanks to the lovely Dubigail for bearing with me and for the endless support.
Present
Nell Jones moved gracefully through Eric's apartment, looking around the living room area with curiosity as she waited for the tech to emerge from the bathroom. She had been to his place a few times before but made a habit of scanning it for new additions every time she got the chance.
Most people imagined him to live in a typical bachelor pad, with touches added here and there that indicated his love for surfing and technology. They expected a computer set-up that took up most of the living room, gadgets, computer magazines and his collection of action figures as well as his beloved surfboard hanging on the wall, furthermore empty cans of energy drinks, candy wrappers and dirty dishes strewn around the apartment. The Intelligence Analyst prided herself in the fact that she knew the man a little bit better than the average person, but even she had been surprised when she had set foot into his sanctuary for the first time. Of course, some of it was there, the action figures neatly put in a row on a shelf on the wall. But his place was always immaculately clean, even on unannounced visits, and there wasn't nearly as much technical equipment as expected.
But one thing had bugged the redheaded woman from the very beginning. There were no personal items displayed, no pictures hanging on the walls and no objects that held memories from his childhood. Nell surmised that some people just didn't like the clutter, but somehow Eric didn't seem the kind of guy to be embarrassed about awkward family portraits. Which let her to believe that maybe he didn't have all that many happy memories that he wanted to show those who visited his apartment. She didn't know why but with her partner's strange behavior the previous days she felt like maybe that was connected to her observations in his apartment. It seemed a little far-fetched but it was a gut feeling that she couldn't shake.
Upon closer investigation something on the desk caught Nell's attention. It was a single framed photograph, lying flat with the picture showing up. She frowned and chewed her lip in concentration as she picked it up. It showed a woman in her mid-thirties, with a child standing on either side. On the left was a girl with curly light blonde hair. She was no older than three. The boy on the left looked to be seven or eight. His hair was shorter but had the same color, and his face was decorated with thick-framed glasses that seemed way too big for his small face. It was unmistakably Eric. And judging by the close resemblance the three people in the picture had Nell concluded that the woman was his mother and the girl his sister.
The analyst noticed a small, barely visible tear in one corner of the picture that was carefully taped together with scotch tape. The colors of the photograph were faded, probably bleached by the sun, and it looked worn like it was picked up and looked at too many times already. Nell didn't know why, but she felt deeply touched.
A shiver ran down her spine as she placed the frame back where she had found it. It felt like she was intruding her coworker's privacy here, so she retreated back to the kitchen, her mind running a mile a minute. The sudden appearance of the family portrait and its weird placement on the desk gave her a strange sense of foreboding, as if this photo was related to Eric's strange behavior. Nell didn't know how close she was in her assessment.
Sitting down on one of the barstools by the breakfast bar, one foot pulled up while leaving the other dangling in the air, Nell pulled out her iPhone. She started typing with swift movements and then hit send. Turning off the screen and placing the phone on the tabletop she braced her head on one hand while drumming away with the other. Moments later the device buzzed, alerting a message. She picked it up and read the short text only to be interrupted by the bathroom door creaking open. Nell hastily shoved the iPhone in the pocket of her cardigan and looked up, just in time to see her favorite Technical Operator appear in the doorway.
She scanned him up and down and noticed that Eric looked much better, freshly shaven and showered and dressed in a clean shirt and shorts. His hair was still damp and the shadows under his eyes still betrayed his general lack of sleep, but the change was still significant. Locking eyes with her partner Nell smiled. "How are you feeling now?"
Eric returned the smile. "Better, thanks." His voice sounded a lot calmer too, not as much on edge. The shower had obviously soothed his nerves quite a bit. Standing awkwardly in the hallway as if he felt uncomfortable in his own walls he waited for Nell to take the lead.
"That's good to know," the redhead replied and moved closer to the lanky blonde, hooking her arm on his, glancing up at him expectantly. "Shall we head out then?"
Squaring his shoulders to appear just a tad taller than he already was, the tech nodded, a nervous yet confident grin spread on his lips as he tilted his head to her. "Yes, my Lady. Let's go."
The sun was glaring down relentlessly despite the early morning hour and produced enough warmth already that Nell had taken off her cardigan and wrapped it around her midsection. It was flailing in the gentle ocean breeze as she and Eric strolled along the shore in companionable silence. The blonde had directed them to a small coffee shop earlier to pick up breakfast, but he had suggested they take a walk and eat somewhere else where they could talk in private. She had agreed easily and chosen a breakfast burrito and a coffee to go, both of which she was holding in either hand now. Eric had merely opted for a pinkish looking smoothie instead of a nourishing meal, claiming he didn't have much of an appetite anyway. The redhead had wanted to comment on his poor eating habits but decided against it. She assumed whatever burden he was carrying around with him must weigh heavily on his mind.
Dragging her feet through the almost white sand the small woman let her eyes roam over the scenery. They had reached an alcove in the rock formations that were lined up along the shore, the rather narrow beach strip becoming a lot wider here. It was a nice and quiet hideout place, Nell noted, an old fallen tree stump offered a place to sit and watch the waves crashing down on the shore.
"It's beautiful out here," she stated and halted her steps. She took a spin around, taking it all in and then rested her eyes on the reflections of the sun on the water. Bringing the Styrofoam cup to her lips she took a sip of the still burning hot liquid.
"Huh?" Eric, who had been deep in thought for the past few minutes, snapped out of his daze and turned his head in her direction. As her words registered he cleared his throat and added, "Yeah. The path is completely covered at high tide. No way in and no way out," he explained knowingly.
Nell turned around and raised her eyebrows at him, wondering how often her partner had been here to know this and if he had gotten himself stuck in the alcove before. "Oh?"
Mistaking her exclamation as concern that they might be stuck here, he offered a lopsided smile. "Don't worry. We have low tide right now. We have about four or five hours until the water puts us at risk of being stuck," he reassured her.
The redhead nodded her head once in acceptance and faced the ocean again. "You come here often, I take it?" she asked nonchalantly, more to keep the conversation light than out of actual interest. She'd rather he started revealing his deep dark secrets, but figured it wasn't all that bad to ease the tension with a little small talk at first.
"Not as often as I would like," he admitted quietly. "I mostly come here with my sister, but our schedules overlap in the most inconvenient ways, so we don't go surfing together all that much." He thought back to the last failed attempt two days ago, when the weather had thwarted their plans to keep the tradition up.
Alerted by both Eric's solemn voice and the mentioning of his sister the redhead turned around. She chewed her bottom lip nervously as she saw the expression on his face, head lowered to the ground, eyes sad and tired, and his cheeks sucked in. "The little girl in the picture… was that your sister?"
Whirling his head around in dizzying speed the Technical Operator regarded her with confusion all written over his facial features. "Uh…? What picture?" he stammered, clearly alarmed.
Taking a deep breath she confessed her previous findings. "I saw the photo on your desk." There was no point in pussyfooting around the fact that she had been snooping around in his apartment. Getting it straight out into the open was the honest and, in Nell's opinion, right way to go about this.
"Oh…" the blonde interjected unintelligibly and shuffled his feet, filling the foot bed of his flip flops with wet sand. "Yes, that's Emma," he confirmed her assumptions.
"The woman must be your mother then," Nell surmised, more confident with Eric's mostly calm reaction. But she hadn't expected the reaction that followed. The tech all but jerked away and walked over to the tree stump in the alcove as if trying to put some distance between them. He sat down briefly, only to get up again and pull his wallet out of the back pocket of his shorts. The redhead slowly approached, watching as he opened the leather case and stared at something that was inside. When she was merely two feet away she caught a glimpse of the same picture she had seen earlier, the one he was holding clearly a copy. "This is the same photo," she stated unnecessarily and cautiously sat down next to him.
Eric nodded slowly as he gathered his thoughts, his lips curled in a melancholic smile. "It's the last family portrait that was taken before…" he stopped in his tracks and turned his head away from her. His throat constricted painfully and he felt the pressure of oncoming tears behind his eyelids. He blinked them away and pressed his lips together.
The redhead sensed his discomfort. She felt bad that she kept pushing him for answers, but she was also well aware that if she let it go she'd never find out why her best friend was struggling so hard to keep it all together lately. Schooling her voice, she tried to make it sound as gentle and compassionate as she could. "Before what?"
Feeling unsettled, the tech shifted nervously and cleared his throat. "Before everything went downhill." He offered cryptically, sounding almost casual as if he wasn't talking about a personal matter, but Nell didn't miss the strain of forcefully suppressed agony in his voice. She stayed silent this time, allowing him some time to gather his thoughts. This was his story to tell and since she already took away his freedom of doing it on his own terms she would at least give him the liberty of doing it at his own pace.
Fidgeting nervously with his hands, Eric spoke quietly into his lap, the words muffled but the analyst could still make them out. "I guess this is where I tell you what's been going on," he asked. He turned his head sideways and glanced at her, waiting for her confirmation. She nodded. "Figured as much," he muttered and laughed nervously. "Okay," he drew the word out just a bit longer than necessary, both to bide himself more time and to ease the tension. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Wherever you think is a good place to start," she offered, giving him a choice to decide on his own.
A bitter chuckle escaped the surfer's mouth, followed by a frustrated huff. "Well… the thing is, there is no good place to start." His shoulders slumped in defeat, eyebrows drawn into a line of concentration as he struggled for the right words. "I honestly don't know where to start," he admitted dejectedly, "but the beginning seems as good a place as any. It all started when…" He paused again, shook his head as he realized that he didn't even know the answer to that himself. He inhaled deeply and blew the air out through his mouth and tried again. "Actually I can't even tell you that, because I can't remember." He ran his hand through his hair in exasperation and pulled at them angrily.
Nell reached out and took a firm hold on his wrists. "Stop that," she demanded and steered his hands to rest on his lap again. Biting his lips he regarded her with a guilty expression. "If you don't know when it started, how about you start with what you were doing the other day?" she suggested.
Eric drew his eyebrows together in a tight line, contemplated her advice and finally nodded. "I visited my mother's grave."
Resisting the urge to gasp at his unexpected revelation, the redhead held her breath and released it slowly, all the while staring at her partner with widened eyes. She was unaware of doing it until he turned to look at her again. Throat suddenly dry, Nell couldn't get her speech center working. She wanted to ask what had happened to his mother, but couldn't come up with the appropriate words. So she just took a few sips of her coffee instead and waited him out.
"My mom… she succumbed to Alzheimer's seven years ago," Eric continued hesitantly. "It would have been her birthday two days ago," he offered, hands fisted in his pants legs. His hands felt cold, in spite of the warm summer breeze, and so did the rest of his body, all the way to its core.
Nell found her voice again. "I… Eric, I'm so sorry." Her words were full of compassion and sympathy. However, there was no evidence of pity in her tone and the tech was incredibly grateful for that. Saying it out loud was hard enough for him, he didn't need the added stress of feigned condolence. He nodded, almost imperceptive and swallowed, his Adam's apple moving with the notion. "I didn't know."
He directed a fleeting tight-lipped smile at her, not yet able to continue. He sucked in another shaky lungful of air, then picked up where he had left off. "Seven years ago my mom would have been fifty. We, my sister and I, had planned to celebrate regardless of the state she was in at the time." He stopped and Nell sensed that what he was about to say next wasn't a pleasant memory. "It never came to that. I received the call on my graduation day, four days before her birthday. So I ended up organizing a funeral instead of a birthday party."
The bitterness in his voice caused the redhead to wince sympathetically. She frowned, his choice in words not lost on her. "I as in you alone?" she wondered out loud.
Eric glanced at her briefly and nodded. "Yeah. My sister was in San Diego at the time. Kathy as well," he added, suddenly being glad that her name had come up the previous night, because he felt too emotionally drained to have that discussion right now. "It was my responsibility anyway."
Confused about that small added information Nell sat up straighter, her mind on high alert all of a sudden. "It was your responsibility? Why? Where was your dad? Why didn't he help you with that?" she rattled off and while being in her element of analyzing things she almost missed his reaction.
The laugh, when it escaped his mouth, was bitter and devoid of emotion and the small woman realized that never before had she heard such a guttural tone from her best friend. "My father wasn't around. The bastard didn't even show up for the funeral."
Nell was taken aback by the hate oozing from those words. At the same time she was infuriated by their meaning and found herself angry at the man even though she had never met him. "What?" she exclaimed, exasperated. "This is a joke, right?"
The tech tilted his head and arched one eyebrow. "Do I look like I'm joking?" he quizzed her wearily. She refrained from answering and just shook her head at him, her ponytail flailing mockingly. Eric directed his gaze straight ahead, mesmerized by the waves as they came crashing down on the shore. It calmed him just enough that some of the anger left his voice. "He abandoned us a long time ago. And by that I mean he left even before Emma was born. I didn't see him for years, and then he showed up with the worst possible timing ten years later. Created a lot of chaos and destruction and left again for good. Haven't seen or heard from him ever since." He paused for a moment, lowered his gaze and started playing with the hem of his shirt.
Swallowing her own rage, Nell shook her head in disbelief. Being a family person herself she had a hard time understanding how someone could turn their back on their loved ones. Her parents and siblings were the most important people in her life, the most valuable good there was. It made her angry, but it also made her sad. "I'm sorry."
He shook his head. "It's fine. There was a time when I still cared about him, but frankly, I don't give a damn about him anymore," he explained, the neutral tone to his voice attesting to that.
Nell bit her lip, realizing that she should count herself lucky that she was blessed with a harmonic and most importantly intact family life. Not wanting to rub it in her partners face, she decided to just move the conversation along. "So, if she died seven years ago, you were how old?" She did the math in her head. "Twenty-three?"
The blonde gulped. "Twenty-two," he confirmed.
An uncomfortable silence fell over them. The Intelligence Analyst's thoughts wandered to her own parents. While they lived far away she at least knew they were out there. She spoke to them frequently and she could always rely on them to be merely a phone or video call away if she needed their advice on something or simply needed someone to listen. She couldn't imagine a life without them and she didn't want to either. Her partner didn't have that support anymore and apparently didn't have it for a long time even before his mother had died. It made her wonder just for how long he had had to fend for himself.
"Eric," she began, dragging his name out, hesitant to voice the burning question on her mind. "How old were you, when your mother was diagnosed?" Nell sounded alarmed and she had to admit to herself that she was almost afraid to find out. But she tried to bury that feeling and focused on her friend instead.
The surfer winced and, still avoiding eye contact, answered quietly, his voice no more than a whisper. "Eleven." He covered his mouth with his right fist and coughed twice to get rid of the lump in his throat that was ever present these days. Another stretch of silence followed but once it was obvious that the redhead wasn't going to break it this time Eric plucked up the courage to elaborate. "She presented first signs of Alzheimer's earlier than that," he explained, still quiet but his voice became just a tad stronger. "She would displace things here and there or forget to pick us up from school. There were some unfortunate events when I was nine. Most of the time it would be small things but it took a turn for the worse just after my twelfth birthday." He stopped and wiped a hand over his face.
"What happened?" Nell encouraged, watching him with a concerned frown.
"The symptoms became more and more obvious and she couldn't hide them at work anymore. I don't know exactly what happened but apparently she had missed deadlines and forgot to put very important facts into her paperwork. It led to a chain of events that caused almost irreparable damage, she had to explain to her boss and he found out about the diagnosis, resulting in her being released from her duties."
"They fired her," Nell translated.
"Not exactly fired. She was declared unfit for work, so she was forced to retire," the young man corrected her. "Her memory took even more of a tumble after that." He winced in remembrance, lowered his gaze to his lap again where he started fidgeting with his hands again.
The redhead worried her lip. She had read a thing or two about Alzheimer's and recalled that giving Alzheimer patients a task could slow the illness down, whereas taking their responsibilities away had the opposite effect. But it was doubtful that Eric's mother would have been able to work for much longer than she already did so this couldn't have been avoided. "What happened then?"
Eric looked up again, tilting his head enough to lock eyes with her for a brief second and catch the sympathetic expression on her face. He averted his gaze and once again returned to watching the waves. The water had risen quite a bit since they had gotten here but it was still far enough away to not worry him. "Nothing happened. She became a housewife basically. Cleaning, grocery shopping, gardening… It kept her somewhat busy I guess, but there was only so much she could do and sometimes the housekeeping ended in her causing more chaos than order, when she was looking for something that was supposedly missing. The house would be a mess then." He chuckled lightly.
"I can only imagine," Nell threw in understandingly. "How often did that happen?"
Scratching his head the blonde tried to remember. "Didn't happen very often at first, once a month maybe?" He glanced at her again. "It happened more often as time passed, sometimes two or three times a week. Cleaning up afterwards was a pain. Especially when she was trying to find whatever it was that she was looking for. It screwed my efforts to get things organized again. She would get angry at me occasionally for putting things back in their spot, claiming Iwas the one making a mess of everything." It hadn't been funny back then and frankly, it wasn't now either, but Eric couldn't help giggling at the memory.
The Intelligence Analyst thought back to her own great grandmother. She herself had still been in kindergarten and they hadn't visited her much as she lived rather far away so she didn't remember much about her, but what she did remember was that her place had always been utter confusion. It was years after the old woman had died that Nell's parents told her that she had been suffering from Alzheimer's. Her great grandmother had been living a nursing home so there had always been someone around to help her. Eric's mother didn't which brought her to a pressing question. "Who took care of her?"
The giggling ebbed away as Eric sobered up. "I did," he answered voice clear and steady as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Nell regarded him with a look of doubt. "You did what?"
Rotating his upper body towards his friend and regarding her with confusion Eric repeated himself. "I took care of my mother." Red strands of hair flew from one side to the other, almost in slow motion, as Nell shook her head in disbelief. The young man frowned in return. "What?" he asked alarmed and suddenly worried.
"What about your sister?" The Intelligence Agent continued, ignoring his question. "Who took care of her?"
Licking his lips nervously the blonde briefly contemplated not answering, suddenly unsure if he had made the right call in revealing anything to his partner, but discarded the idea as he was sure she would drag the truth out of him anyway. "She stayed with our father for a little over a year but like I said he wasn't parent material so she ended up moving back in with mom and me. So technically, I took care of her," he blurted out breathily.
Eyes opened wide and jaw dropped, Nell was embarrassed to find herself at a loss for words. "To be honest with you," she started slowly, deliberately, "this is very hard to believe." She glanced up at him with innocent eyes, still shaking her head ever so slightly. But she wasn't prepared for what happened next.
Eric snapped. He jumped up from the fallen tree, desperate to put as much distance between Nell and himself as he possibly could with the rising tide. He walked right to the water's edge and a few steps further into the water, stumbling and almost taking a dive as the rubber sole of his left flip flop caught on something partially hidden beneath the sand. The surfer stopped, catching his balance. But his mind was still running a mile a minute, sending him mixed signals, fight or flight, confront or shut down. He tried to ignore the voice in his head but failed to do so as one thought kept repeating itself: Nell didn't believe him.
Nell shook off the initial shock of her partner's sudden outburst. Confused and worried at the same time the redhead straightened her back and leaned forward, staring at the man's rigid back. The stiffness in his shoulders, the fisted hands, the straightened knees – his whole posture screamed to be left alone. She wondered what had happened to cause the obvious signs of anger. "What's wrong, Eric?" the woman asked carefully.
The man in question turned around abruptly, almost tying his knees in a knot in the process. His hands clenched and unclenched dangerously. "I can't believe you actually have to ask that!" he exclaimed strongly, incredulously.
Taken aback by the sheer fury in his voice the redhead flinched away from the words. Her partner rarely ever reacted that way and he had never appeared threatening before. This was the closest Nell had ever come to experiencing the usually calm and collected tech and she didn't like it. She didn't like it at all. Pushing the uneasy to the back of her mind the Intelligence Analyst cleared her throat. "Eric, I'm not sure I can follow…" But she was interrupted before she could finish the sentence.
"I don't know what I was thinking, but I never should've told you anything. This is exactly why I don't go and tell people about this: because they don't believe I would be capable of doing any of this."
"Eric," Nell interjected, but he ignored her.
"But guess what? I was telling you the truth the whole time. Not a single word I said was a lie. I didn't make any of this up. I was hoping that you of all people would actually believe me but apparently I was wrong." The blonde ranted, body shaking with rage, exhaustion and disappointment. He was pacing back and forth but eventually came to a stop as he became tired of extracting his feet from the wet sand with every step. "How could I have been so stupid?" Eric ran a trembling hand through his hair and let out a strangled sound that could have been a failed attempt at an angry roar or it could have been a sob.
"Eric, stop it! You're overreacting." The redhead pushed herself off the tree stump and took a few steps towards him.
"Excuse me? I am overreacting?" he was nearly shouting now. A bitter laugh escaped his mouth. "I can't believe you!" He threw his hands up in the air in frustration just as Nell came within his arm's length. She avoided being accidently hit by his movements but realized that maybe she should have stayed just a few feet further away from him. While she knew that Eric wasn't a violent person and would never intentionally hurt her sometimes people did unpredictable things when they were this worked up.
"Beale!" she cut through his words, her voice a deafening roar that would have made Hetty proud. She grabbed Eric's arms midair and forced them down straight against his sides, holding them steady there with an almost bruising grip. The surfer froze, partially from her harsh voice and the steely glare, and partially from her forceful hold on his forearms. He closes his mouth and tightly pressed his lips together, waiting and watching her with a mix of shock and fear. Satisfied that she had finally gotten his attention Nell deemed it safe to continue. "Eric, I do believe you. I never said I didn't," she emphasized her words with urgency, all the while holding his gaze.
The anger in his eyes was momentarily overcast by confusion but it soon resurfaced again but attenuated quite a bit. "You said you didn't believe me just minutes ago, Nell," he gritted out suspiciously. He struggled to get free of her death grip but she didn't ease up. Small as she was she was a lot stronger than people gave her credit for.
Red bangs flew across her face as she shook her head. "No, Eric. I said this is hard to believe, not that I don't believe it. That's a big difference," she stated firmly, trying to keep her cool. She watched him closely, holding eye contact until he couldn't stand her scrutinizing anymore and looked away. The tension left his body and the Intelligence Analyst could feel his muscles relax beneath her fingers. Considering it safe to release her hold on him Nell followed his sluggish movements with her eyes as he dropped down onto the wet sand without grace.
Oblivious to the fact that she was still watching him, Eric dragged a shaky hand through his hair. He still felt jittery, but at the same time a bone-tired weariness crept into every fiber of his body. His arms and legs felt like lead and even though he wanted to move he found himself rooted to the spot, the dampness of the ground seeping into his shorts. The familiar sting of unshed tears in his eyes was expected, but the tech couldn't allow letting them fall. Not now, not in front of his partner. He pressed a trembling thumb and index finger to the tear ducts in an attempt to quell the sign of emotion while sucking quivering lips into his mouth, sinking his teeth into them painfully. But it was in vain. A single tear rolled down his cheek, leaving a hot wet trail behind that burned his skin. He raised a hand to wipe it away angrily, but a gentle touch stopped him.
"Don't."
Eric tilted his head to the side, just enough to realized that Nell had moved and was now kneeling beside him in the wet sand. Keeping his head low he was mesmerized by the water as it touched the hem of the small woman's dress whenever a wave was strong enough to make it all the way to them. It was a tactic to avoid eye contact, to hide his face from her observant eyes, but she had other plans. Delicate fingers reached out, brushed against his chin and tapped it in order to get him to lift his head. He didn't offer much resistance and eventually allowed her a glimpse.
It pained her to see the anguished expression on his face and she wished nothing more than to go back in time and give him the happy childhood he deserved. But she couldn't give him that. What she could do was to be there for him. It had taken a lot of encouragement to get Eric to talk to her about what was going on and she had noticed how much of a struggle it had been for him to agree to it. The fact that he felt safe enough to let his guard down spoke volumes about how much trust he had in her. She felt burdened and honored at the same time and she was determined not to betray his faith in her.
With one hand still holding up his chin she searched for one of his hands, keeping her eyes locked on his. When she found the still trembling limb she intertwined hers with his, squeezing tightly. "I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for you to take care of your sick mother. No-one should have to do that alone, especially not a child," Nell stated, shaking her head in sadness, forehead creasing. "Geez, Eric… I always thought Callen had a difficult childhood being passed around from one foster home to another, but this, what you had to go through, I think this is much, much worse. Having your mother there with you and slowly seeing her soul slip away and leave behind an empty shell…" Her voice cracked and she couldn't help tear up herself. "No-one should have to experience this. You didn't deserve this." She shook her head and took a calming breath. "How did you even manage to do this on your own?" she wondered aloud, not expecting an answer.
Upon hearing her say the words Eric's breath hitched and he whimpered, realizing that he didn't have an answer for that. Another tear escaped and rolled down his cheek but this time he didn't try to wipe it away. A heartbreaking sob escaped his mouth, followed by another and then a third. The sound was gut-wrenching and it tore Nell to shreds. More tears started falling, creating powerful streams of salty liquid on his freshly shaven face, stinging the irritated skin but the tech couldn't care less. Body racked with rhythmic tremors it felt like he was losing control over his body. He felt lightheaded and the edges of his already blurry vision started to grey. Unable to tell right from left and up from down the young man submitted to gravity and allowed his body to fall, a thought of gratitude that he was already sitting crossing his mind. At the same time he realized that he wasn't afraid anymore to let down his guard as the only person he trusted to break his fall was right there with him, ready to catch and hold him.
She didn't disappoint. Wrapping her arms around him at the first sign of him slipping she held him tight, acting as an anchor, a life jacket, keeping him from drowning. "It's okay, Eric," she whispered to him soothingly as a mother would to her child. "It's okay to cry. Just let it out. I got you."
And so he did.
With the cat out of the bag, I would really like to know your thoughts on this chapter. Reviews would be awesome.