Disclaimer: I do not own Lie to Me or any of the characters in this story.
Thanks for the new reviews- good encouragement to keep going :) Another chapter, but a shorter one this time.
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Cal wasn't sure he could handle this. Gill had tried for a baby for years with Alec, but with him she wasn't even willing to consider it. The fact that he really wanted another child- one that he had with Gillian- aside, her refusing to entertain the thought brought a lot of insecurities to the surface.
Why was Gill willing to try with Alec and not with him? Cal had done drugs in the past, but that was in his late teens and early twenties, and he'd never been an addict. He had a stable income- a good one, if he was completely honest- and was more than capable of providing for a child. For all of them, really. He'd never expect her to, but if she wanted to stay home with the baby he could easily manage to keep them comfortable. His family....
Was Alec really better father material than him? That thought brought a knot to his stomach. Gill knew what he was like with Emily. Maybe he really was the terrible father he feared he'd become. That sort of judgment from Gill would really hit him where it hurt the most. He worked a lot, but at the end of the day Emily was his life. She was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that's why he'd wanted so badly to share that with Gill. He loved her, and he wanted to share that love with another child. Adopted or biological, he'd love and protect that little person, and he knew that Gill would nurture it and give it all of the affection it would ever need. She wouldn't even try. That's what was getting to him. If they tried and failed at least they'd have been able to look back and say it just wasn't meant to be.
"Cal?" Gill said uncertainly. He'd been silent for several minutes now, and it worried her. It wasn't the usual comfortable silence they enjoyed, it was almost suffocating... or maybe that was the fact that she hadn't realised she was holding her breath. She'd never seen him like this before. Even reviewing footage of his mother's interview he'd still talk to her, acknowledge her somehow.
"Cal?" she repeated his name, and this time it was obvious she was scared. Not of Cal, of course, but of how this was affecting him. She swallowed nervously. "Please don't shut me out. Say something. Anything."
Cal looked into blue eyes, and even while his own heart was breaking he couldn't bear to see her hurting. "I should check in with work," he said, managing to get himself together enough to pull on that mask he'd spent so many years crafting. The one that Gillian herself admitted even people with deception training had a hard time seeing through. The one that would have fooled her had she not known that just seconds before he was anything but calm.
"It's almost 11pm in D.C," she reminded him.
"What better way to see if they're really coping?" he asked, forcing the smirk that usually came so easily to him. He moved away from her to pick up the phone, and a tiny part of her wondered if he'd ever move back. It was stupid to call now, but she let him do it.
"They've gone home," he reported when no one answered.
She looked at him, 'I told you so,' written all over her face, and it got to him.
"Hey, I have to be able to care about something I've nurtured with you. God knows it's the only thing I'll have a chance to," he said defensively.
The look on her face the second he'd said it made him wish those words had never left his mouth.
