A/N: Look at all the fabulous feedback! You reader/reviewer types make me so giddy! And yes, I know, you're all very happy that Eliot & Parker are finally headed in the right direction. Maybe this time we'll have no turning back from that. Buckle up, kids, here we go again...

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 14

Eliot didn't let himself drift very often. In his line of work it was staying alert that kept you alive. He had to be in charge, it was just his way, and yet today he had relinquished a little of that control to the last woman most would ever let take the reins of a situation. Parker was crazy, that was as true today as it had been the first time he met her, but Eliot had learnt to understand that kind of crazy now. He knew Parker, better than he ever thought he could know anybody anymore, and he had learnt to care about her, love her even. Her crazy ways were endearing and they made her who she was, this amazing person who could accept him for what he was and what he had been.

It was still hard for Eliot to make sense of how Parker could care about him at all after everything he had told her. She knew the truth of him and his past, the same past that made him hate himself in no small way. She couldn't be mad at him or see the monster he believed himself to be. All she wanted to do was hold him, kiss him, love him in her own way. It was baffling and amazing and terrifying all at once, but Eliot didn't want to lose it. If Parker could have this much faith in him to be a changed man, maybe it was possible. Maybe miracles did happen.

Time and distance had started to have no meaning not long after they set off driving again. With Parker at the wheel, Eliot had no particular reason to keep his concentration fixed or even his eyes open. The fields and trees blurred into one great mass of gold and green, the little towns they passed through whizzed by as if they were nothing.

Hours went by and miles were travelled, with Eliot barely aware of where they were anymore. He trusted Parker to follow the route he'd mapped out, and only started to wonder if his trust had been misplaced when he awoke from a brief and blurry dream to the sight and smell of way too many trees.

The much quoted line from the Wizard of Oz came to Eliot's mind unbidden, though it wasn't true. In fact he was pretty sure they were in Kansas right now, and that had not been part of the route he had planned. Glancing over at Parker he was only mildly surprised to see her smiling. Despite everything - their fighting, the angry marks at her neck that he caused, the fact she'd had no one to talk to these last couple of hours he'd been asleep - she just kept on grinning like she was happy as a clam. He loved that about her too.

"Parker, where the hell are we?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and pushing his hair back off his face.

"Shawnee National Park," she told him easily, glancing his way a moment. "Kansas," she confirmed, just in case he didn't know.

Eliot took it as a good sign that she at least knew she'd taken a wrong turning, though questioning her as to why was the next thing on his mind. The hitter opened his mouth to speak but the words died on his tongue. He didn't need to ask why they were here as a road sign that couldn't've been better placed if it tried told him the answer he was looking for.

"This is where you're from," he said, a statement not a question, though Parker answered as if it had been.

"Nope, not exactly," she told him, checking the road was as clear as it seemed before she pulled over.

The engine shut off and the surrounding area was almost completely silent. Her pause seemed unusually long before she finally explained.

"This is where I'm from," she said, confusing Eliot at first until she turned some in the driver's seat to look right at him in the fading light of the day coming through the canopy of trees. "The Parker part of me, the person I am now," she tried to explain but knew she was doing so badly. "This was where I ran to, and when I was found and they asked my name, I said Parker," she smiled at the memory that had both its happy and painful sides. "It kinda stuck."

Eliot didn't know what to say then. He had always been a little cagey about telling the team the details of his own past, and yet Parker had got his childhood tales out of him pretty easily and on more than one occasion. The parts in between a pretty happy time back home with Momma and Daddy and the present day were dark and unpleasant, but even sharing those hadn't scared Parker away. Here she was, having found out all she could about him, straight from the horses mouth, still not wanting to bolt. Instead she had started sharing her own tales, things he knew she probably never told anybody else her whole life. The fact her name had been chosen from a road sign in the middle of Kansas, a little out of the way place named Parker.

"How old were you?" he asked curiously, almost afraid of the answer.

"Seven, I think," she confirmed with a sad kind of a smile as she met his eyes. "I wasn't a thief then, well, not until then," she sighed. "Not that I was exactly a normal kid but on that ranch, I was... I remember being happy."

Eliot listened intently to her words as she described the life she remembered in curious detail up to the age of seven or so. She had lived on a ranch in Kansas, fostered by a much older woman who she called Aunt Katy. It seemed that same woman had fostered a lot of kids but when Parker was there she was the only one, the last one. She didn't know the details, she had been too little to understand, but men in suits came a lot and told Aunt Katy that she wasn't allowed to take on any more children. She could keep this one for now because she was settled and wouldn't be there long anyway, but Parker hadn't known why then.

"I guess she was too old," she said with a sniffle that proved she could still be emotional about it even now. "And she might've been sick, I don't know," she shook her head. "All I knew was she loved me, and I... I loved her," she explained, one hand moving up to wipe under her eye before a tear had a chance to fall.

Eliot already knew, before Parker ever got any further with her tale, how this was going to end. It could only be tragically, with the death of poor old Aunt Katy, and Parker bolting for fear of where she'd be taken next if she didn't. Lo and behold, she told the story just the way his brain knew it would go, and Eliot's heart broke for her all over again.

"I'm sorry, Parker," he said, reaching for her hand then thinking better of it. "I'm sorry things had to be that way for you."

"It's not your fault," she shrugged, forcing a smile. "I got a good life up to seven, and things aren't so bad now either," she told him with a look.

Eliot couldn't hold her gaze and looked away fast. She was just so convinced they were in this happy little situation. He couldn't see it himself. Maybe he should be glad and grateful that she could accept him, warts and all for want of a better phrase, but he couldn't. Eliot felt the need to keep on punishing himself, no matter what.

"It's true what I said before," she told him out of the blue, catching his full attention, be it deliberate or not. "I did see a horse kill a clown once, but before that... I rode horses with Aunt Katy when I was little. The first time she put me up there alone, I felt so grown up and so free. I loved the wind blowing through my hair and feeling like I could just fly away," she smiled.

"Like jumping off a high rise, huh?" he asked with a hint of a smirk that didn't quite happen.

"Better, in some ways," she admitted. "Until the day Aunt Katy died," she explained then, her eyes darkening as she stared at a spot in the middle of nothing beyond the windshield. "She was watching me ride and when I saw her fall down, I panicked. I scared the horse and it threw me, almost trampled me before I could get up," she shuddered as she recalled the scene all too clearly.

With her eyes tight shut and her body rigid, Eliot wasn't sure he should dare to touch her, but he had nothing else to do.

"Hey, it's okay," he promised, putting the gentlest of hands to her shoulder. "I guess that would shake you up pretty bad, between the fall and... and what happened to her."

Parker slowly let the tension go out of her body and nodded her head, instinctively leaning into his touch. It always felt better when Eliot was touching her, comforting her, holding her. She was never afraid and felt she never would be, not even after the things he told her. He'd been a bad man, that she had always known, but sometimes that was just the position life put you in. Sometimes you made a lousy choice and then there was no running from the consequences. Parker knew that. She had tried running that first day and hadn't really stopped since, not until the team, not until Eliot and his arms that always caught her when she needed them to.

"I wish you'd been there," she sighed, leaning over the controls between them and setting her head on his shoulder.

Eliot let his arm go around her back, holding her gently. It still terrified him how he had hurt her before, but that wasn't ever going to happen again, no matter what. Eliot didn't care if he had to sleep with his arms bound from now on, he was never letting himself do such a thing to her again, not ever.

"Can you imagine us two running around together as kids?" he almost laughed at the idea as a picture formed in his mind.

A little girl of seven with blonde pigtails and a dirty face, chasing around with an older boy of maybe eleven or so, with unruly hair and no shoes on his feet. They'd've been quite the pair of tearaways, creating havoc wherever they went, but it might've been nice too.

Parker sighed in the silence and nestled closer into Eliot's side. It ought to be an awkward position with the gear shift between them and all. Instead it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be sat here like this. Without thinking, he kissed the top of her head and let his fingers trace random patterns on her shoulder.

"I wish we really had met when we were younger," she said, her voice almost too soft to be her own. "Then you could've taken care of me, and we could've gone to school together, and... and you could've been my first kiss," she smiled genuinely as she picked her head up off his shoulder and stared at him then.

Eliot so wanted her in that moment. Kissing her might've been enough to sate his thirst for this woman, he thought, but immediately called himself a liar. He wanted more than that, he loved her too much to just let her slip through his fingers, and yet he couldn't deserve what she was offering. Still, with her face right up close and her lips just a hair's breadth from his own, it was hard not to let it happen.

"It was different, when you kissed me before," she told him, though Eliot felt her words more than he heard them. "I never thought it meant anything. Kissing and sex and everything, but..."

She didn't get any further with whatever she might've said. Eliot only had so much self control and he'd just about come to the end of it after the past few days and all their trials and tribulations. The two of them kissing seemed to be becoming a trend on this trip. Parker talked about him being so different, about her own feelings being different where he was concerned. Eliot wasn't dumb, he knew that she could never properly explain herself at the best of times, not when it came to emotions and most of all when it came to interacting with people. Not that he could explain this undeniable connection they had either, but he had an idea what he really wanted to do about it right now.

Mindful of how he so easily hurt her before, Eliot held her closely but carefully, as if she were made of glass. It wasn't quite what she wanted apparently, since Parker had her seatbelt off already and was making fast work of climbing into his lap. She wanted more, closer and intense, and Eliot didn't know how to argue the point anymore. It felt too good to give in, so easy to let it happen. They both wanted it, he was running out of reasons why it was wrong. She deserved better than him, he knew that and always had, but if she didn't care, if she truly would rather be with him than any other better man that came along, it had to be her choice.

It was right around the point of this revelation, that Eliot's mind quit working right at all. Parker may not be the most experienced of women, but damn she knew how to kiss a man in such a way as to lose himself. Of course, one thought managed to stay afloat even as the hitter started to drown in this passionate moment. Parker may not be a virgin, but sex for her hadn't meant much before. The whole two times it happened it'd been entirely forgettable. That was not going to be the case a third time.

She moaned in protest when he broke contact, more so when she realised she'd been duped. Parker realised too late that her butt was in the passenger seat and Eliot was sliding into the driver's side, his lips leaving her own and his arms no longer holding her. When he looked to her face, he saw pain that he shared, but it was a small price to pay in the end.

"It's okay," he promised her. "We're not done yet, but this ain't the place, darlin'," he told her, putting his seat belt on and encouraging her to do the same.

Parker was vaguely confused, not least because the lack of oxygen to her brain was making her head spin. Her skin still tingled every place Eliot's hands had been, even through her clothes, and something had stirred in her the like of which she never knew could. She wanted him, she needed him, she might even say she loved him if she truly understood what that meant. Right now being even two feet away in the next seat felt like a mile or more, and it hurt in all kinds of ways.

It only started to occur to Parker as Eliot turned the truck around and drove at high speed, that he was taking them some place better where they could continue what she had started here. She remembered what he said about how sex should be special and with a grin on her face Parker realised this was really happening; Eliot wasn't going to cast her aside this time. Maybe at last he was starting to believe that he was the Prince Charming she was supposed to be with, if not forever and happily ever after, then certainly for now and for a good long while to come.

The hotel came into sight but Parker barely noticed anything. She didn't wonder about what alias Eliot gave at the desk or what kind of room he got them. The wallpaper could've been any colour of the rainbow and the view from the window of anything at all. Parker didn't see and she didn't care. She was curious all right but not about her surroundings, not when Eliot stood before her with that intense look in his eyes that could glue any person to the spot without hardly trying. She loved that look, especially when he was using it on her.

For Eliot himself, this was all such a weird experience. Good, in every way he could think of, but nothing short of weird as well. Not since the first time he laid down with Aimee had he felt this nervous about sleeping with a woman. Of course he knew part of that was because Parker was so inexperienced, but when it came to truly making love, so was he. All those women he had taken to bed, thrilled to the dizzying heights of passion and all, he didn't love them. He remembered their names, because that was important, but that was just about all. Parker was so different, and though it would be wrong to compare her to his first love, he did know she was that type of special, just amplified a hundred fold after the way she acted on this trip.

Parker had seen the deepest darkest depths of his soul, and she was still here. She was stood before him, wearing a slightly nervous smile, and waiting for the first time in her life for a man to make the first move on her, without thinking about stabbing or running. It was an honour for Eliot to know he was this man, that she would put such faith in, would love somehow despite the flaws he knew were bigger than the state they stood in. She was still here, and so much more than he deserved, but damn if he wasn't going to try from tonight on.

Eliot's fingers slid into Parker's hair, and then to the back of her head as he pulled her forward and put his lips to hers once again. What started in the truck reignited fast the most they touched again, and Parker hadn't a doubt that this was going to a whole new experience. The first two times she had sex, it didn't seem like much. Today, Eliot had proven that with the right person, just a kiss could set a person on fire. She hardly dare wonder on how it was going to feel when things went further, but it was clear she was about to find out.

"You sure?" he checked, the softest whisper in her ear but it made her smile all the same.

"Oh yeah," she told him breathlessly, pulling his head around for another kiss.

Parker had no regrets and not a hint of fear in her whole body as she felt herself tip back onto the bed with Eliot all but on top of her. This was how it was supposed to be, and she'd never been more sure about anything in her whole life.

To Be Continued...