The Way I Loved...Love You

Jeff's Apartment – Boylston Street

February 27th, 1996


Lily stood to the side of the doorway in the hall, watching as Jeff hurried with the key and turned the knob. He glanced over to offer her the right of way and she could only stare back for a moment, thinking hard about what she was doing and what he would be un-doing just to make sure that she remained his. She hadn't wanted it to be this way again; she had wanted to end the pain finally. But somehow he had been right when he said that it was never going to be over. Not with the two of them.

"Don't even think about running now." He smiled and continued to hold the door wide for her. "You know I'll chase you clear across the state."

Her eyes went from the darkened, inside of his apartment to the doorframe and his equally blackened eyes peering down into her.

"I don't think this is a good idea."

He stood tall again, not liking where she was going, and softly took hold of her hand, leading her inside. He didn't bother with turning on lights, and instead walked her around to the middle of the large, studio living room, stopping to look at her in the darkness.

"I wish you'd give me a chance. I really do want you to know how sorry I am."

"Jeff, I know you're sorry. But you're always sorry." She tore her hand away from his and flew down onto the leather couch. "I don't want 'sorry' anymore. I want you to make promises and mean them."

He threw his head back to look at the high ceiling, and then fell down to his knees on the floor in front of her at the couch, his hands on her legs as he looked up at her.

"I promise I love you."

Lily only looked down at him silently; convinced nothing would change her mind.

"I promise I'll always take care of you and I'll give you everything you need."

She rolled her eyes, "Except you."

"I'll give you all of me, I swear. You can have anything of me you want. It's yours."

Her gaze softened when she caught his again to see the seriousness in his deep eyes.

"I can't lose you, and I'm not just saying that. I'll die without you."

"You have a funny way of showing it lately."

He nodded, accepting that she was speaking only truth. "I know, I've managed to really screw up the last few months and I know it wasn't fair to you. But I didn't want to get you involved in all this stuff. And Tom feels the same way. It's not good for you or your mother."

Lily understood this part of their job, the part that put anyone they cared about at risk, but she still thought it was ridiculous that they just ignored her for so long, as though she never existed. But she knew how she felt about him, and knew it would probably never change or fade, even if she ran from him for a million years.

Quietly she spoke the last words, "I would rather be in danger with you, Sheldon…than safe with anyone else."

After this was said, they both remained quiet for a long time, Jeff sitting below her, looking out of the large glass wall of his apartment, contemplating how best to continue. And Lily sat above him, her legs curled onto his couch with his hands soft atop them, as she tried to hold back tears and her own wicked lust at the same time. Eventually though, when she least expected it in fact, it all became too much for her and she found herself moving from the couch and out into his kitchen. He didn't interrupt her, since it was as much her place as it was him most days, and simply listened to the clanking of glassware and bottles through the cupboards.

He stood up slowly when he saw her making her way back to the living room with a single glass of wine for herself. She stopped in the middle of the room and rug again, staring at him intently as she gulped deeply and wildly at the red liquid swirling about in the glass. He smirked, not knowing where to begin to stop staring and loving her.

When he felt sure she was going to finish off the wine and attempt another exit, he watched her turn around at the stereo system to switch it on. Nirvana hissed out, the CD she had bought him for him at Christmas; it poured out from the place he had left it paused at. She smiled, standing before him in the silent darkness of early evening, with the rain coming down all around their heads outside the brick building, and the tragic sound of Kurt Cobain's melody flowing through their ears and senses. Lily bit her lip once and then slowly began unbuttoning her coat. Her wet boots came off and her coat slid down to follow it into the start of a pile.

Jeff watched her, not saying a word until she finally did. Looking up at him with readied eyes, she crookedly whispered out of her mouth, "I want you to make love to me like I'm a stranger; like you've never known me before." He didn't know how to react and so only moved slowly toward her as the music picked up in the black air, listening in as she went on softly. "I want to remember what we used to be like. Will you?"

He breathed deep, biting his tongue as he saw her motion toward her own body, and then came across to completely consume her with his arms as he pushed her back swiftly to the nearest wall of the living room.

In her ear, as he kissed and nibbled below it, he growled, "You don't even have to ask."

Lily felt her heart suddenly race against his chest as he pressed her into the wall, his fingers working quickly on all unnecessary buttons and zippers between them. When he had managed to get her into only her bra and panties, and himself into nothing more than the thin cotton of his pleading boxers, he lifted her up and laid her down on the couch again, falling between her tight legs.

If he had really wanted to keep track, he imagined they had broken the couch in a good 300 fucks ago, but he didn't want to worry about it, it was better just knowing how cherished it had become. And as the years passed him by from then on, he would sit on the couch from time to time and ponder it all, sometimes even attempt to bring women back to his place and re-christen the old, worn brown leather. But somehow he never could do it. Because every time he tried, he always thought of the last girl he had taken across it's cushions, the last time he had taken that girl in his life, and it made him weak to even bother covering her memory up that way.

So the couch remained only hers.

Lily pulled at his shoulders and wrung her fingers throughout his messy, wet hair, inhaling the scent of the rain as it draped over her nose and face. He left kisses from the tip of her chin, down across every inch of her stomach and chest, and finished off on both sides with the tops of her feet. His fingers ignited a spark in her at every new pore they touched, and when he came back up to rest between her legs wrapped around his back, he knew in the back of his mind there was no way he could ever need anything more than he needed her.

He didn't even bother taking off his boxers or her bra, and instead gave into every glorified urge to screw her mad on that couch and on that night. He pulled his swollen, hungry cock out and let it rest on her lower stomach as the very tips of his fingers teased the aching bud at her wet center. He watched in the darkness as her eyes shifted back and forth within her head every time he came closer to ripping through her with fingers or otherwise and it made him feel better than ever.

"I lied. I can't fuck you like some stranger in a bar." He whispered above her as she cleared her mind of his ministrations enough to catch his eyes high overhead. "I know you too well. You have to let me do this for real and not pretend it's something else."

She just stared at him as she felt him slide the tender head of his shaft along and through her soaked folds.

"I'm Jeff…and you're Lily. And that's the way it's always gonna be--" He cut himself off with a pulsating thrust inside of her body, as they slid against the leather together, both moaning out.

Lily's fingertips held his shoulders with pleads of agony, not having ever expected the afternoon to come to this at all. Her head reeled, her heart ached, and only in good, honest ways. When she felt Jeff's mouth cover the hot and clammy skin between her breasts and across her chest, she shivered, knowing just how spot on his promise had been at Quincy Market. He was going to ravish her until she forgave him, and then he was going to ravish her until she took him back.

Her inner thoughts had veiled all that was truly going on, and in a sweet flash, she felt a bursting jolt inside of her as Jeff pounded into her body even harder, grunting out whispers of this and that, each of them about her.

"God, Lily…" she steadied his grinding heart with a single, shaking hand over his chest as he continued to thrust deep inside of her, "…I love you…" he shifted her weight in his hands so that her hips rose higher and her legs wrapped tighter around his back, giving him wider prospects of the heat consuming him, "…I love you so much--"

Again, he pushed down within every bit of her he could get, never loosening or slowing in desperation as she cried out his name, over and over again. The room grew even darker, the sticky heat between them damper with each move they made together, and the music's drumming solo followed the strangled beat their hearts had tapped into.

Jeff felt Lily's body cinch over the sensitivity of his length as it throbbed for his last bit of attention. He drew out in ease, letting the back of his hand brush across her cheek and jaw as he straddled her high above for an added moment, and then in a final sweep, like that of any good Sox game, he delivered all of himself, thick and knowing into the rich cavern he'd grown so addicted to.

His eyes gripped themselves shut as he clenched his jaw and heard the heavenly cry of his name mixed with erotic screams. Lily hands on his back and arms fell limp as he released himself within her, and he counted the seconds and the waves rushing over her as his own energy subsided, allowing him to carefully drape himself across her wet skin. He could only murmur out slightly.

"Please, don't make me stop loving you..."

Lily held onto him and watched the ceiling spin forever with his words; never thinking that despite the beauty of it, and despite her will to forgive him completely, that something might have been terribly forgotten in their haste.


3:16 AM – Cactus Road Motel


The pills weren't working. The alcohol wasn't helping. She was still wide awake, eyes watered down and staring at the cracks in the ceiling of her room. Lily was at wits end with herself and she was finally starting to understand just why it was that Jeff induced himself so rigidly with toxins.

If nothing else, it sedated the pain into very little but a pin prick or two.

'You kissed Carter, stupid. You tried to sleep with him to get rid of Jeff. How pointless?'

She moaned in frustration and turned over on her side, hands gripping the worn sheets, face plunged deep into her pillow, and eyes focused at the on and off flashing of the motel sign behind the yellow curtain.

'Crying over nothing but your own foolishness, as usual. You left him. Why should you expect him to come crawling right back and confessing to the love you stomped out? Idiot.'

Lily took a deep breath as she felt a wave of tears crashing against her bare arm and the pillow under it. She couldn't stop now; it was too good and it felt too raw and starved to pass up. So she let it run dry, everything, twenty years or more. She let her dad's death wash out, met then by her brother's death, by a pregnancy that wasn't supposed to be, and the loss of the only perfect thing she'd ever known despite its imperfect argument to exist. Jeff came into her life when it was broken, he healed it, they healed each other, and then her obsession with self inflicted pain pushed him away.

He was right; she was a primal example of fine masochism.

When the flash of the red sign outside got to be too much for her senses, she flipped to her back again.

'If this thing ever ends in survival, you should just let him go his own way. Don't follow him and don't take any of his offers. Give him a fighting chance to survive you for once.'

She punched her fists into her sides on the mattress and growled out another fluttering waves of tears. Her lip trembled and her heart weakened the deeper the whiskey swam through her blood stream. She had walked across the street to the small all night liquor store after Carter left her for his own room. On her way back, with her twenty dollar, brown bagged Jack Daniel's bottle, she had wondered for half a second, what exactly it would feel like if she just kept walking into the desert. She wondered how long the whiskey would keep her alive out there, how long she would survive with nothing but her own thoughts.

Her conclusion though, stone death within the hour, brought her right back to the room. Lily wasn't suicidal, she just didn't know how to proceed anymore, and so she had begun to weigh her best options. It was the psychologist in her battling the still scared little girl.

'This would be so much easier if I wasn't in love with him. I could pretend he didn't exist anymore and jump on the next plane back to Washington…or better yet, Boston. Yeah…'

She soothed herself with the righteous thought of it, of returning to her childhood and past, of the only place that had ever given her a reason to dream and be who she was. She could go home to Chatham, bank in with the CIA on her practice in D.C, buy her dream house on the Cape, and spend the rest of her days sailing and reading books and playing guitar and…

'…thinking about him. No thank you, I'd rather just settle this right here and n—'

Before her thoughts completed themselves in clear meaning, she was startled in her crying and debate by a thick knock on the door of her room. Lily bolted up in bed and pulled the sheets to her, trying to squint through the curtains for a shadow of someone who might be familiar, but she saw nothing. She figured it might be Carter, but then wouldn't he announce himself? She thought it might be someone at the wrong room, a drunken party-goer maybe? Or maybe it was Tuzla, come to finish off her agony?

She slid out of the bed carefully, tiptoeing with the bed sheet around her 'much too revealing' nightgown for it to end up being a stranger. Another knock came, swifter and softer, and she stepped toward the door with her hand on the knob, contemplating her fate should it be someone who knew just who she was and what she was doing here.

Lily prayed once quietly before finally twisting the knob and pulling back the door to reveal a nightmare far beyond all of the other options she had come up with.

He stood tall and sinister looking behind his shades, trying to catch his breath in the heat of the night outside, one hand in his jeans pocket and another holding him steady against the door panel. She had to wipe away the rest of her tears with a sniffle or two just to collect the bearings that had been ultimately torn down by first the thought of him, and now the truth of him in her doorway.

"Jeff?"

He could tell she had been crying and still was.

"What are you doing here? How did you--?"

Before she could finish, he interrupted. "Me."

Lily gulped back a new wave of tears in confusion.

"What?"

"I thought about it." He replied solemnly, leaning into the room further. "And the answer is me."

"That's great, but what are you talking about? And how in the hell did you get here on your own?"

He waved his hands about to ignore the question and stepped in toward her voice, her breath, her scent.

"At the hotel earlier, you asked me who was supposed to protect you, and who was supposed to worry about you."

She was silent as he came nearer to her with a limp, consuming her with his rich nightly scent.

"Well I knew what to say but I didn't. I had to take some time and think about it, and I was right all along. The answer is me, I'm the one who's supposed to be protecting you and caring for you."

He didn't quite touch her, but his body heat was all over her like fingertips brushing scared skin. Sands rambled on and on as she felt herself growing dizzy with words she'd waited so long to hear.

"I'm a moron, first class and fucked to a pulp with the insensitivity of my job, at least the one I used to have. I don't have the ease of 'expressing myself' like you do." His hands made exaggerated quotes inches from her face and she tried not to stifle a laugh past all of the seriousness of tears. "You're a doctor, you study this shit for a living. I kill people. Sort of the opposite there, sweets…"

"Opposites attract."

He grinned a little at her simple point and moved further inside, hearing Lily shut the door behind him. He was in; she was letting him in to stay a while. That was a good sign.

"I think we're more like a battery to tell you the truth."

And she was lost again, but ready to give him a chance. Lily held his arm and helped him to sit down on the closer of the two beds in the room, then sat down next to him. He said thanks, which in too many ways broke her heart, and then kept explaining himself.

"Look you're the positive side, obviously, and I'm without a doubt the negative side. And just like in a battery, when the negative side transfers all the crazy little electrons over to the positive side and wears it out too fast, I keep laying all my shit on you and I think I'm wearing you out."

His point was good, but she knew there was more to it than just that. Lily was asking for his burdens.

"But I'm the person who's supposed to be helping you with all that bad stuff. It's my job."

"Not to the point of killing you, though."

"Maybe not…"

She watched as he moved his hand from the mattress between them to search out and slide against her bared thigh from under her nightgown. He sighed deeply and turned his face low and up at her.

"There are a lot of things I should have said to you a hell of a long time ago, and I've had to think about them every day for eight years. I've replayed that day at the funeral consecutively, forever."

"Yeah, I ruined a lot of things that day," she whispered back quietly.

But he stopped her. "No. No, it wasn't your damn fault. It kills me to think you've blamed yourself all this time for that."

"It's my fault I walked away from you, Jeff."

"Yeah," his hand grew softer on her knees as he pulled her legs onto his lap, "But I'm the fucking genius who let you keep walking. I watched you go. And then Christ, I did it again two years later."

"So what, you were tired of it all."

"I wasn't though. I wasn't tired of anything and I'm nowhere near worn out this time either."

"No?"

He shook his head at her as she watched the reflection of her glossy eyes in his tinted Ray Bans.

"You said you loved me."

"Yeah. I do."

"Even though I'm blind now?"

Lily twisted her brow toward him angrily, hating that he even thought that way, but understanding all the same.

"Yes. Blind, deaf and dumb I would still want you."

He laughed a little and caressed her legs. "You're determined. I like that."

"Just now becoming convinced of this?"

"No. Just now ready to accept it."

"Ah."

Jeff grabbed hold of her hips and very quickly, very swiftly lifted her from the bed where she sat and onto his lap, without breaking a sweat or bone. Lily wrapped her arms and legs around him completely as he held onto her from falling to the ground off the mattress.

"You're always telling me I'm a pain in the ass."

"You are."

"I know, but how long can you really deal with that? Because I have no plans of becoming Mr. Brady."

Lily traced over his lips, smiling.

"I don't want Mr. Brady."

"So you're just attracted to the Al Bundy in me then? Or is it the Clark Griswold side you're after?

She laughed and grabbed his face, pulling his mouth toward hers.

"I don't care who you channel, I'm happy just having you."

He pulled her against him harder and tickled her lips with his as he spoke fast.

"And where do you want to live? Do you still want kids? House in the suburbs for the kids, that's usually how that works, isn't it? Minivan? Soccer practice and ballet classes? Get used to never seeing each other except for across the dinner table? Never have wild sex anymore? Do you really want--"

Before he could go on, she pressed her mouth onto his and kissed him roughly. He succumbed easily and let her melt him a hundred times over until they fell further down to the bed. Lily straddled him and refused to let him breathe for a second. All she could do was kiss him with everything in her.

Sands felt her tongue burn him and wanted to cry out at the sensation, at the way he'd come to the point of just letting all the goodness of such a thing filter out of him again. He was in no position to deny it anymore and especially no position to ask for less of Lily. With a soft nudge underneath her, he grabbed her waist and turned them over until he was planted firmly between her thighs and in control of the kisses.

He softened the movements like she didn't know he was capable of, leaving a fiery trail from the corner of her mouth right down into the valley of her breasts. And then he stopped to come back to her mouth, not kissing, but trying to form words.

"Okay listen to me…"

"Listening," she whispered with a smile.

"Cause' God help me, my heart is on the line here again. Right next to yours." He took a deep breath and felt around until he found her cheeks and held them softly in his hands, brushing through her hair. "If I knew what I was doing, I would have done it a long time ago, hell I'd be doing it better right now…but this is what you're getting."

"Okay."

Lily leaned up on her elbows under him.

"I could be the best goddamn poet you've ever seen, if I really wanted to waste time. Silver fucking words strung out of my mouth for you, baby."

She couldn't help but to laugh at the difficulty he was having just breathing, knowing this was his way.

"My words aren't going to be magic, Lil, but they're gonna cut straight to the truth of this thing."

He sat up and pulled her with him. Lily sat on the edge of the bed again as she watched him slide off and feel his way down to the floor in front of her, both hands on her legs, his face turned up. She didn't know what the hell to think, but just told herself that breathing was good, even if his inability to manage it was causing her the same stress.

"Jesus, I haven't had to grovel in front of you in a long time…"

She laughed away the nervousness and ran her fingers through his hair.

"Here it is. I want this, all of this. You and the commitment and the trust and the house, the kids, the golden retriever, the whatever…" he threw his hands about as she giggled back tears, "…I can't not be greedy about it. That's how I lost it all the first time."

"Then by all means, be greedy Jeff."

"Oh I will be. I'm taking all of you, Lily Hanson. I'm chaining you to me and swallowing the only key. I gotta have you right here, right next to me or I'll lose my fucking mind."

"I'm here." She stroked his cheek as he rested his chin onto her knee.

"How long will you stay with me? Until the odds are upped with some other guy?"

"No. Why would you even say that?"

"Hey, I'm just weighing the possibilities of my getting screwed over here."

She sighed in her own frustration, "Do you really think I would do that? Honestly…"

"Fine. Forget it, doesn't matter. I need you too bad to let it matter."

"I thought you said you didn't need anyone."

"So I lied. I'm a hypocrite."

Lily smiled and let him collect himself.

"I've lied about a lot of things. About you getting on the plane, and about you getting involved in the case, and about caring. I do care. I care so much that it makes me sick to my stomach every time I hear anything remotely resembling the sound of a gun or a scream, anywhere. I have to know you're safe, that's why I'm here now. Well…part of the reason."

"And what's the other part?"

He smiled a little, coughed a little more, and then sucked in enough air to breathe out the words.

"You're the sweet to my mean, Lily. You're the good to my disgusting, the brave to my weak…the heart to my burning hell. You're everything I have to have anymore. I don't care about the job or the kill. I have to be right here, all the time, kissing you and holding you and telling you that you've been so wrong for the last 20 hours."

She bit her lip in confusion, sobbed and then he finished.

"Don't wait around for an otherwise, honey. There isn't an otherwise here."

"What do you--?"

Like a lightning bolt, he cut through her, "I love you."

She had to shut her eyes to hold back the welling ducts of all that had been hidden from him.

"Three words…and I'll say them as much as you want me to now. I'm not chicken shit anymore. Tell me and I'll yell it out."

Lily laughed and cried and choked herself into a fit as she watched him throw his hands about and scream.

"I love you, Lily…I love you…I love you…I love you so fucking much…"

She reached out and pulled on his shirt until he fell on top of her on the bed again, both of them laughing, Lily crying like crazy, and Sands brushing away every tear he heard rolling off her cheeks.

"I'm ready to come back home. You've always been my home, Lily. And baby, I'm in…"

"You are, really?"

"Swear to God. This is it now."

She breathed past all the tears and let him kiss her quick, softly, purely.

"I've missed you. I've missed all the screaming and fighting and cursing and crazy kissing in the middle of the rain…" he kissed her harder and lingered before concluding in a whisper, "…I miss being so in love with you that I go insane from it, instead of losing my mind other ways. I miss the roller coaster you strap me into and throw me off of…"

Lily couldn't stop laughing or letting him kiss her between words and makeshift syllables.

"That's how I loved you, like a goddamn maniac. You remember that?"

"I remember that."

"Good. 'Cause we're breaking the curse and rounding home this time, kid."

Lily reached for the buckle of his belt and tugged it off.

"I'm ready…"

He planted wild, wet kisses all along her jaw as he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and broke lips from skin to speak.

"There's one more thing."

Lily paused to catch the sight of his fist moving up close to her face and when he turned it over to reveal what lay beneath the knuckles and harshness, she swore she felt her heart jump through her mouth.

"We're in Vegas and the cab driver assured me that there's a chapel around this town somewhere…"

She couldn't contain herself and sat up halfway under his arms, just staring at the velvet box in his hands and trying to let the laughter come at his words.

"I mean technically, we've been engaged for eight years now. Seems long enough to me, what do you think?"

He heard nothing in response except a tiny gasp for air somewhere in the silence that made him smile.

"You can't be serious."

"Well this is only the second one of these I've given out. And you, sweet thing," he pinched her hip where he held onto her and she giggled out a little through the anxious tears, "Seem to be the only one collecting them…"

"You really want to marry me? Now? Here?"

"Yeah, tonight." He kissed her nose where he felt it near his lips. "I'm tired of waiting around for the sky to fall and kill me. I know it will eventually, but right now, I want to do something I've wanted to do for a long time. I've gotta know you're mine, kid."

Lily sighed and Sands only grew more nervous over her inability to reply.

"At least open the thing and assure me it's as nice as the guy swindled me for."

She laughed and took the small box from him, lifting it open to produce what couldn't have been a more simplistically beautiful diamond. It was twice as nice of a stone as the one before it, but no more meaningful than the other had always been for that matter.

"Well?"

"It's perfect."

He nodded and very quietly, with his face turned down low, whispered, "Try it on."

"Jeff."

"Come on. Let's get hitched already."

"It's permanent you know."

"Uh yeah, Hanson," he laughed, reaching out to take her chin in his hand, "That's sort of why I'm here."

Lily wanted time to think about it again; months maybe, years, not minutes between kisses and laughter. She wanted to know that he wasn't just forcing himself to do this, or to take her back, or to place claim on her for the sole purpose of keeping her from the other men in the world.

She placed the ring on her finger and watched it dazzle in the faint light of the hotel room glow for a moment, before she felt lips like silk mesh with the warm skin of her cheek and entrap her, consume her beyond comprehension. And because she was out of her head, drifting from her body with the very touch of him, so genuine, so knowing and trusting and loving and real, she could only find room to ask one thing.

"Do I have to wear white?"

He laughed darkly against her cheek and moved his mouth down to where he could feel her hot breath sliding from between her lips. There, at the one place he felt most comfortable and welcome in the whole black world around him, he murmured a fair response.

"All your secrets are safe with me if you do, babe."