SPOV:

Eric's mother was, in a word, exhausting. Not just in the speed with which the conversation jumped from one topic to another, but the woman could shop as an Olympic sport and get all the gold medals. How her feet weren't killing her in those six inch heels was beyond me.

"He's right, you know."

"About what?"

"Me. I was a rubbish mother to him, long before his father died. I was so young when I met James and when we had Eric it was wonderful, but babies don't come with instructions."

"Tell me about it," I smiled.

"I loved him and I loved his father, but Eric was always daddy's boy, and I was just silly mummy," she said, sipping her coffee. "I feel like they indulged my personality but never really understood it."

The personality I'd gotten a tiny glimpse of that day was one of mass contradictions. She was a lady, but she also had this wickedly dirty sense of humor. She had a kindness—the same kindness Eric had—that you could almost see behind the eyes. She was incredibly articulate, or perhaps it was just the posh English accent fooling me.

"I was scared of ending up alone and miserable after James died. It's why when I met Andrew it was like the light at the end of a very dark tunnel… In an ideal world I would have known how to be a better mother and a wife, but I didn't. Eric had always been very self-aware and self-reliant. Much like his father… By the time we were to move to Los Angeles, he seemed so grown up already, and I just assumed that he didn't need me."

"I'm sorry."

"For what, dear? It's not your fault," she smiled.

"I know, I just… you're obviously upset about how this all turned out, just as much as he is. It's not something anyone should feel."

She sighed. "Sometimes it felt like he was my parent, you know? That's when I knew I'd failed completely. If he hates me for our past, I'm not really sure how I can make him stop hating me. He's entitled to after everything, I suppose."

I felt stuck and horrible. I really shouldn't have rushed judgment of Eric's behavior toward his mother. Just because I never really had a chance to have a mother didn't mean all relationships had to be this ideal I had in my head.

I decided to try and steer the subject elsewhere.

"He's a wonderful father."

"I don't doubt that. He swore after the … what did he called it…? The 'cluster-fuck' of a relationship he and I had that if he was ever to have kids, they'd come first. Though I don't think he factored in just how difficult relationships can be, especially when you have children. How are you two coping?"

Were we really coping? The relationship was still extremely new.

"Well, technically, we've only been together officially for a little over a week. Before that, we were just focusing on not killing each other or losing the baby at the supermarket, or something."

She laughed, "She's a curious little thing, isn't she?" nodding to a sleeping Jessica in her stroller.

"She is. Hadley was the same. She needed to know things, or see inside things she shouldn't. Even when we were kids, she was always getting into some kind of trouble."

"My father tells me Jessica's father was Eric's best friend? I can't imagine what you two must have gone through those first few weeks. I had no idea…"

Cringe.

She had no idea because Eric didn't call her to tell her.

Olivia seemed to share Pam's philosophy for life. If you shopped, life was better. She proved this by buying an extraordinary amount of toys for Jessica—even when I objected. She told me it might be her one shot to get to spoil Jessica, depending on whether or not Eric would allow her to be around Jess.

That thought made me sad and I hoped it wouldn't come to him 'banning' her from Jessica's life. Both of us had very little in the way of actual family. The last thing we should have been doing was shutting them out.

It made me think of Jason again. He and I had our differences. He loved the bottle and a party more than his family and after Gran passed, it only got worse. I hadn't shut him out, but in not reaching out to him, it was almost as if I had. I felt that twinge of guilt again—bothering me like it did when it snuck up on me.

By the time we got back to the house it was after five, and already turning dark. I showed Olivia to the guest room at the back of the house. It was the biggest room after the master bedroom, but too far away from Jessica's room for either Eric or I to consider using it at the time we moved in. She seemed happy enough and told me she was going to lie down for a little while.

I left Jessica playing happily on her bedroom floor with her array of new toys before I tiptoed gently into Eric's room to find him sleeping half in, half out of his covers on his bed. I crawled in next to him and snuggled as close as I could as gently as I could. He took a deep breath before he kissed the top of my head.

"You're back."

"I am."

"She here?"

"Yeah, she's laying down for a while."

"Oh. You survived then?" he said, using his good arm to pull me closer to him.

"I did. I also heard a few things today that I hope you give her the chance to tell you—things that I think might help you both."

"Sookie, look, I know you mean well, but—"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Butting in, reacting the way I did before. You were right. I couldn't understand your relationship because I never had a mom to disappoint me, or to get mad at. Well, I got mad plenty, but I was a little kid, so it doesn't really count. Having Gran, it's not the same as having your own mother raise you. So you're right, I have no idea what it's like to have a parent disappoint you like she has disappointed you growing up… I don't want you doing anything here that you don't want to do to. So you want her to leave? She'll leave. You don't want her around Jessica? Then, that's up to you. She's your mom, at the end of the day, but could tell you what I think?"

"Don't you always?"

I smiled.

"Ah, you know me so well." I kissed him on the cheek. "I just think that whatever you decide, that the anger you've been holding in all this time, it's time to maybe let that go. Or try to at least."

"Is this therapy talking?"

"A little. Doctor Ellis is great. She doesn't feel like a shrink at all. She feels like a friend."

"Who you're paying a shit load of money to listen to your problems."

"Yes. That's true," I laughed. "But, unlike my biased friends who love me in life, she actually tells me the honest truth about what's going on up here," I tapped my head, "and in here," I tapped my heart. "And how sometimes one gets confused with the other and we drive ourselves nuts."

"But I've gotten so good at hating her, I'm not really sure how else to feel."

"Okay, that's… a little… scary. But, understandable I guess. I don't know, Eric. I'm not saying you fix this in a matter of hours, or days or weeks. I'm saying, take the step to want to make things … better than they were, or are."

He sighed again before looking down at me. "It's like my brain knows you're making sense, and wants to do it, but the rest of me just doesn't know how."

"And that's okay. For now, how about we just try and get through dinner?"

"Do we have to?"

"If you're a very good boy, there might be a surprise in it for you … after."

He pouted at me. "You're treating me like Jessica again."

I snaked my hand up his shirt, raking my nails up and down his chest. "Trust me, sweetie I'd never treat Jessica like this."

And he got my meaning.

"Oh. Oooh..." he said with a shy smile. "If you insist."

"I just might," I said kissing him, letting myself go completely into the kiss, just as Jessica stumbled into the bedroom like a tiny drunk person.

"Dadda! See?" she said dragging her new plush toys in behind her. One was a tiny horse, the other was a unicorn, and a princess. I had no idea the theme of these toys but they were soft and brightly colored. She loved them so far.

I lifted her up onto the bed between us so she could show us her new toys.

"Dis pwetty, see?" she said, petting the princesses long brown wool hair. She was kind of wonky looking if you asked me, but to a toddler, she was stunning.

"Do you like Nanna Livvy?" he asked her. Now if she knew what he was asking really though, was another story.

"She pwetty," she said still looking at her toys. We didn't know if she meant them or Olivia. It didn't seem to matter.

"I'm not cooking. I know it's probably not the best impression to make on …your mother, but I can't. I'm too tired. So, we can just order some dinners from that new Italian restaurant in town... Amelia and Pam ate there the other night and swore by it. She eats Italian, right?" I almost said 'future in-laws' but way to jump that gun, Sookie. You've been dating a week!

"Waiters, store staff, Italian people in general, sure," he scoffed. "I don't know, Sookie. You've spent more time with her today than I have in two years so… you'd know better than I would right now."

I sighed, not really sure what else I could say at that point. "How are you feeling anyway?"

"Fine, I guess. My head still hurts but I don't know if that's the giant drill through my skull or the mother in the other room. The meds are helping, I just... I don't like them. They make me woozy. It feels wrong, out of control."

"Yeah, they suck… but hopefully you can wean off them soon and the sick feeling will go away. In the meantime, we eat. What do you want?"

EPOV:

After Sookie, Jess and my mother left, it struck me as odd to be home alone—or home at all really. I'd let the apartment that I'd found go. I'd moved what little things I had moved out, back in again. And Sookie and I were dealing with our feelings, slowly but surely. I knew things had to change where my mother was concerned. She had tried over the years to include me I guess, but being the angry teen into my twenties and then my thirties that I was, I shunned her invites for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays. I knew she wanted to kiss ass, but I wasn't having it. I hated people who kissed ass just so they could sweep everything under the rug and pretend like nothing happened. So, I'd decline, and then get a sharply worded email from Niall asking me why I'd upset my mother. It was a vicious cycle I couldn't break. Yes, on the one hand I wanted things to be better, I always had. What kid doesn't want to have a good, solid relationship with his mother, really? But on the other, did I really want to deal with all her melodramatic Hollywood lifestyle Beverly Hills bullshit? No, I didn't. I knew Sookie was acting from a place of concern, but really, she had no idea what life was like with her as kid. It felt like I was her parent, not the other way around sometimes. Even with her husband, stick up his ass Andrew, she still relied heavily on me for emotional support… unfair as it was. I looked at it as my job to take care of her. When my dad died, I was all she had. So, I guess it stung me to know that when she found Andrew it was like she forgot about my dad and by extension, me. That's when I started to resent her, and him, and this whole mess of a life he was dragging us into. It's not that he's bad guy, because he's not. But to a teenager with a attitude? He was pretty much the devil.

I knew I wasn't that kid anymore, and Sookie was about right the anger I was holding on to. It was causing more harm than good. A lot more harm. We'd lost Alcide and Hadley in a heartbeat. So many things we'd never get to say to them again, or do with them. So many things they'd never get to do. Their life snuffed out in a second, mine could have been, too. Had Sophie been going any faster, had I been closer to the wall, I would have ended up just as dead, just as fast. What then? A lot of things went unsaid. I didn't tell my mother I loved her, or that I was angry with her for a very long time, but as someone who's been on his own for a time… to then be thrust into a family. The idea of losing that now seems nightmarish to me… did she feel that way when my dad died? Did she feel lost? Is that why she took to Andrew so quickly? Had I died, had I been left a vegetable, I'd never get the answers to those questions.

But I could now. Or I could eventually. Maybe not right now. Right now I was just trying to be civil to the woman. Knowing it was the first thing my dad ever taught me, and probably the first thing I'd forgotten as a grown man at times. Respect. And it wasn't the point that I wasn't her number one fan, the best son, had the best mother or could say I knew her all that well—the point was, she had given me a shot at life. I had to respect that as a man. I had to own up to my own mistakes like I hoped she'd own up to hers one day. I could be the bigger person here; I could be a grown up.

I would be.

Sookie had ordered enough food to feed a small army, though I was starving so I was the last to complain. Jessica sat next to me in her booster chair at the table for a change. She was getting a little big for her highchair now, so we'd have to find another way of making sure she strapped in to eat. She was a big mess within minutes. A toddler and Italian food, not the greatest of mixes. Mom and Sookie seemed to get on well—commenting on the ingredients, how it was made, where it was that this new place was situated—small talk about their shopping. Anything and everything except what they were waiting for me to talk about.

"How's the bar, Eric? Last I heard you were doing very well," mom said.

Sookie looked at me, and I could almost feel her willing me to cooperate with my mom.

"Yeah, it's good. I mean, we're good. Pam, she's a great manager and most of the time we're really busy and we're up for the best bar in Louisiana competition again this year."

"They won two years in a row," Sookie commented, and I didn't know she knew that. "What? You were my competition remember?" she smiled, before forking her food into her mouth again.

Right, how could I forget?

"Oh! Well, that's wonderful! Just wonderful, congratulations," she said with a smile that looked almost genuine.

"Uh, thanks," I said.

"I just… well, I just can't believe you're a father," she said smiling at Jessica. "I know she's not your daughter … the old fashioned way… but I can see she loves you just as if she were."

"Yeah, well, biological or not, she's my kid. Our kid. And I plan to do my best for her."

"Unlike me, right?" she said sipping her wine.

"Mom, look... It's not like I think you didn't try… it's just sometimes you… it's like you didn't try hard enough."

"It's too late, isn't it?" she asked looking straight at me.

"For what?"

"For you to forgive me."

I just closed my eyes and took a breath.

"I don't know. I just … don't know."

She nodded.

"I… I know I have no right to ask, but I'd very much like to know Jessica. I understand if it's not something that you want, but I'm asking."

"Mom—"

"I messed everything up with us, Eric. I know that. I was a shitty mother."

The word shitty and my mother's posh accent just didn't mesh.

"But I don't have to be a shitty grandmother, and I'm sorry for using that word around the baby."

She looked to Sookie who just shrugged, "Believe me, she's heard worse."

I fought the urge to chuckle. I mean, it was true.

"I'm not going to stop you seeing Jess, okay? She has a Nana and she should know who she is."

There were tears in her eyes, but she smiled.

"Thank you, son."

I looked to Sookie who made a slight "meep" noise before she got up from the table to go to the fridge.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

"I'm fine!" she said with an obvious frog in her throat. I had to laugh at my mother's concerned expression. "This is the girl that cries at Kleenex commercials," I pointed out to her and Sookie just ran her hand through my fuzzy buzzed hair.

"Not the time for mocking, Eric."

"Totally the time for mocking."

"I'm sorry, okay? You two just got very, Lifetime movie on me, that's all."

I pulled her close for a second planting a kiss on her head before letting her go.

"Sookie's special."

"She is," my mother agreed.

"I think he's mocking me again, Olivia."

I looked innocent, though I might have been mocking just a touch.

"Mocking his girlfriend, one who, might I add, has been taking care of his convalescing self for more than a week now. Taking care of his every need." She laid on the last part, real thick, with a quirk of her brow. "I mean honestly, what would he do if I stopped taking care of those, needs?"

She slid her toe up my non-screwed up leg, and I got her drift.

"I would never mock you, never, not like that, and certainly not when you've been doing such a good job."

Mom was feeding Jessica something from her dish and she just laughed.

I won't lie, after dinner all I wanted was for Jessica to magically go to bed on her own and for my mom to be deaf and in Alaska. Because all I kept thinking was 'Sookie's going to do things to me. Nice things. Naked things.' And I wanted the naked things more than I wanted stupid chit chat about remodeling the damn living room. We said goodnight to my mother after laying a zonked out Jessica with her bottle in her crib. Sookie watched as I hobbled into what I was calling 'our' room. By the time I'd been able to hop myself up onto my bed and leave my crutch by the side of it, she was standing there in nothing but a long white tank top and white cotton panties.

Jesus, how could something so simple be so hot?

"Oh, hi."

"Hi," she smirked crawling up the bed, careful to avoid my leg as she straddled me. Oh this was going to be interesting. We kissed, hard and fast for a second, her hands massaging my scalp as we did.

"Are you sure you're up for this?" she asked kissing me again. "And I don't just mean that as a pun because I can feel just HOW up for this you are… I mean, everything else is okay, right?"

"Seriously, Sookie you're half naked on top me and asking me with those sexy eyes to lay back and enjoy and you're expecting me to have thoughts right now? Other than, oh my God, she's on top of me and I'm gonna get laid? Really?"

She laughed close to my face, before her lips started in on my earlobe again. Man, that felt nice.

"Just making sure. I like you alive."

"I'm feeling more alive now than I have in days…"

"Shocking." She smirked, biting my lip softly before she began grinding into me.

Holy shit that was hot. We both stayed like that just making out and groping and trying really hard not to moan how amazingly fuck hot it felt.

"If we do this, we have got to be super silent. This needs to be like ninja sex, okay?"

"Yeah… Yeah." Seriously she could have said I'd have to do it hanging upside down and I'd have agreed right then.

"I mean it."

"You're the loud one."

"I am not!"

"You are, too!" I fake pouted before I yanked off her tank, to expose those beautiful breasts of hers. After a few more minutes or hours or days of however long it was of making out and driving each other nuts—silently might I add—she stood up on the bed and took off her panties, one leg at a time, and I honestly felt like it was Christmas.

So perfect. So wet and so... mine.

We were a panting mess just from kissing. The silent sex might not happen like I wanted. We didn't talk before she slid down my boxers and I was seeing stars as she let me inside her again. Once was not enough. Once would have never been enough.

She got reacquainted with my headboard, again using it as leverage to help buck herself up and down on top of me. Stupid injuries meant my arms were tired, my head was killing me, but everything else felt far too fucking amazing to stop. My lips got to know her over and over—neck, lips, jaw line, neck, lips, chest, breast… everywhere and anywhere I could taste, I did.

She pushed her body backwards, leaning on her hands, again careful not to touch my legs and bucked harder still. I could see her biting her lip so hard I was shocked there wasn't blood. Her face contorted into the most blissful expressions before she pulled herself up to bury her face in my neck before she fucked me harder and even faster than before. She was close, and honestly, so was I. Between using my good arm to hold her to me—my other was useless—I couldn't bring her over her edge with my fingers as well as my dick like I had so wanted to. She seemed to sense this and her impending orgasm, as well as mine, so she did it herself. The visual of her riding me like that, so careful but so carefree all at once, and to touch herself in front me like that? I was a goner, in more ways than one. Coming before she did was embarrassing for me, though she was blissfully unaware, as she carefully lay down next to me.

"I don't think we can do silent sex," she said with a giggle, as I recalled her moaning my name into my neck, but not far enough in to muffle the sound.

Oh yeah, we were definitely busted.