2: Men Hands

If one day Erin Lindsay was asked to name the one thing she couldn't stand in this world, she'd probably answer that she hated men hands and how they never felt gentle on her skin. And although she knew that Hank would never physically hurt her, she couldn't help but hate his too; hate his hands, hate his touch -even in this moment, when all he was doing was grabbing her arm to stop her from leaving.

Erin turned around and quietly stared at his hand on her forearm, slowly remembering Charlie's touch and the many blue marks he left there in the past four years. She closed her eyes for a short moment, trying to stop the memories from coming playing around her mind. But it was unbearable.

Forcing herself to look up and truly letting her tired eyes meet his for the first of the night, Erin started apologizing over and over again as a couple of tears were rolling down her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Hank. I'm so sorry, okay? You weren't showing up, you weren't answering my calls and then Hayley texted me that a cop was shot in your neighborhood… I freaked out. I thought you were dead and I needed to know you weren't. I'm not trying to make excuses for myself, I know I shouldn't have called you earlier and that I shouldn't even be here right now. And I'll be out of here in a second, I swear. You won't ever have to see me again. I won't be a problem for you anymore. I promise. Just let me go, alright? Let my arm go. Please, Hank."

Recalling now she couldn't stand skin contact, he immediately let Erin's arm go.

"Thank you," She quietly whispered before turning around to finally run as far away from here as possible.

But of course, after the first step she took, Hank's rough voice echoed in her ears again. "Where are you going to go?"

"Home."

"To what? To that asshole? So he can beat you up some more?" Erin swallowed hard as Hank kept talking. "What was it this time, Erin? What happened? You didn't sell enough drugs for him this week? You didn't bring home enough money following your after-hours?" She ended up stopping walking, each of his words hitting her like a ton of bricks. "Because it's always your fault when shit happens, right? At least that's what you tell me when I usually ask. So tell me what you did to explain the bruises all over your face. Come on."

Hank seemed to be so pissed that he couldn't even calculate the weight of his own words on Erin. She knew she deserved the yelling and that's why she was working hard on herself to keep her mouth shut - but it was complicated, especially for someone like her.

He shook his head as she remained silent. "He is killing you slowly and you're letting him."

She was now as pissed as him. After a lot of experiences with cops and their stupid ways, Erin was able to tell when Voight was trying to play detective on her. And, obviously, she knew he was currently trying to provoke her to get her talking, to know what he wanted to know.

"You want to know what happened?!" Erin angrily shouted, walking the few steps that separated them. "When I woke up this morning, the whole life has so much more to offer to someone like you shit you gave me yesterday was all I could think about! I couldn't get it out of my head. I started believing there was something else for me…" She shook her head and started laughing ironically at her words. "I was seeing myself somewhere that wasn't in this shitty house. I imagined doing something that I enjoy and earning money that I actually earned and deserved. So when he came home tonight, pissed and drunk as fuck, I was supposed to be okay with opening my legs for him and making him feel better about his day because that's how it works, you know?! He puts food on the table and I give him whatever the fuck he asks for as a thank you."

"Erin," He whispered coldly as a warming to remind her of the presence of his family behind him.

"Just wait for it," She cut him off. "I said no! For the first time, I refused to do it. I told him I wasn't going to get into his bed because I believed I deserved better. Don't worry, I'm going keep the details to myself since I still have a little of self-respect but he obviously didn't like it and shit happened. But I fought it, or I really tried to. So next time you want to give me a lesson or want to get information, don't try to give me crap about Charlie. I deserve a lot of things for the things I have done but I don't deserve this."

What Erin didn't understand was that the gun wasn't the only reason why Hank was so pissed off. He was also mad at himself for letting this happen again. It wasn't easy for a man like him to let a person he loves like his own daughter getting hurt and not being able to do shit about it. He hated this.

Hank was about to open his mouth to try to explain it to her when he heard his wife's sweet voice behind him, "Erin?"

Erin mechanically took a few steps back as Camille was walking toward them.

"I am Hank's wife; my name is Camille," She told her as she was now standing next to her husband. "You might not remember but we met once when you were younger."

"I remember," Erin quietly whispered.

"I always tell my children that every bad day should end with lasagna for dinner - and after what happened, we were just about to head home and make some," Camille explained as she offered Erin the warmest smile ever. "I was thinking maybe you could join us? Will and Natalie could take a look at those little bruises and then you could come home with us and forget for a little while about the hell that today was."

Her eyes immediately meet Hank's as if she needed his blessing to accept the invitation.

"I think I'm talking for Hank and the entire family when I say that we'd love to have you at our table," Camille immediately reassured her.

One hour and 20 stitches later, Erin entered one of the most beautiful houses she had ever seen alongside Will and Natalie. The first thing that she noticed was how good it smelled. It felt like family. It felt right. It felt safe. And she liked that.

"How did it go?" Hank immediately asked as soon as they walked through the door. He had no idea how she was because he and Camille had driven home earlier with their second son to be able to make dinner.

Will laughed. "No contusion. She just needed stitches."

And that was how Erin ended up at Hank Voight's table for the first time; threatening his family to find out how he was. She couldn't believe it. She felt uncomfortable, but in a good way.

"Can I use the bathroom?" She quietly whispered to him as Jay sat across her — and so next to his father.

"Are you okay?" The Sergeant asked her, evidently concerned about every moves she makes.

"Yeah, I just need to pee," She answered with a little smile. "I'm fine. Really."

"The first door to your right in the hallway," He told her, offering her a grin in return.

Since Natalie and Will were helping Camille with the lasagna in the kitchen, Erin left him alone with Jay. He was quiet, which most likely meant he was upset about something - and Hank knew why. He didn't like the idea of Erin being here for dinner.

"What's going on with you?" Hank asked him anyway - as the rest of the family finally sat around the table, the lasagna ready to be eaten at the center of it.

"Not much," Jason stared at his empty plate for a second before looking up to meet his father's eyes. "I'm just trying to figure out why you're letting someone who was literally threatening to kill Natalie and I not even two hours ago eat under our roof."

"Jason," Hank breathed as everyone immediately stopped talking.

"No," His son loudly cut him before he could say another word, openly not giving a crap about who was hearing him or not. "After what happened to you today, you can't ask me or any of us to sit here with someone that owns a gun and was holding it to our faces because she wanted to know where the fuck you were."

"Do you seriously think I would've brought her into our house if I wasn't 100% sure she wasn't a danger for us?"

"I don't know! Why didn't you answer when I asked you who the hell she was if she really isn't then?! And when I asked how she even knows you?! Or when I asked how the fuck you two ended up meeting?!" He stopped talking for a second, realizing he was literally screaming at the face of his father. "That's why I'm worried. Your silence got me worried. I don't know shit beside the fact that she could be the person that got you shot in front of our house earlier… And I won't sit here and pretend that she is family if I'm not 100% sure that she actually really is. I won't do it."

Hank opened his mouth to say something but ended up keeping it shut as Erin entered the room again. Everyone could easily tell that she heard every word that Jason screamed just by looking at her - but she didn't say anything and just sat back at her place, an awkward silence now surrounding the room.

"What was your first question?" She simply asked after two long minutes of nothing but quiet. "Who am I, right?"

"We don't have any questions," Camille firmly said as she was giving her son an angry glare. "You don't have to do this. You actually don't have to do anything besides share a dinner with us. Jason might not know it yet but you are family and we're happy to have you here."

Erin turned her head to meet Camille's eyes and gave her an honest 'I appreciate it' smile, before turning back and opening her mouth to answer Jason's first question anyway. "My name is Erin, Erin Lindsay. I turned eighteen last month. I was born in Chicago and I've lived in that 'famous but good for nothing' neighborhood Englewood for my entire life. It's not the greatest place to grow up but - well, I learned to accept the fact it was where I belonged."

"It's not," She heard Hank whispering that as if he was miles away from where she was sitting. The truth was, she was so focused on choosing the right words to answer his questions that it felt like it was just Jason and her in the room. Because even though he was just that some guy she didn't know shit about, all that Erin wanted in that moment was to prove him wrong and make him understand that she wasn't the kind of person he was thinking she was. She wanted him to know that she was the total opposite of that person who was holding a gun to his face earlier. She needed him to know that.

So she ignored Hank and kept going. "About the second one, I don't really know. I guess the reason why I ended up meeting Hank is because I have shitty parents that never gave a crap about me in the first place? My mom is a junkie addicted to heroin and my dad got locked up when I wasn't even 4 for drugs trafficking. It makes sense, doesn't it? Someone like me was meant to meet cops at some point."

Jason was listening to each of her words, embarrassed but interested. A part of him truly wanted to stop her from talking - because he could see how hard it was for her to talk in front of people and because he wasn't that heartless. But he also couldn't shut down that other part of him that wanted to know literally everything. As much as he wanted to, he still couldn't trust her. He needed more.

"I was eight years old when I first met him," She stated, waking him up from his thoughts. "I had grown up as an only child and, well, home could easily get boring - especially because my mom was always too high or too busy not caring to realize I would've liked to have someone to actually care about me. Thankfully, I always managed to keep myself busy - mostly with my 'imaginary' sister: Madame Cuddles, a teddy bear that my grandmother gave me when I was a baby. She became my ultimate best friend. I took her everywhere with me, even to school."

She smiled, quickly remembering all those hours she spent talking to a simple teddy bear - even though she was nothing like simple to Erin's heart. It actually was the best part of those long years.

"Anyway," Erin whispered quietly, shaking her head to focus on her explanation again. "One day, at school actually, my teacher found cocaine in the backpack of Madame Cuddles. The cops showed up, some dumb officer asked me stupid questions I didn't answer because I had that never answer a cop question unless you have a damn good lawyer sitting next to you education and also because there was no way I was going to tell them that it was without a doubt my mom's drugs. So I just kept my mouth shut until Hank popped out of nowhere to tell this dumb officer that he had to take away my Madame Cuddles - then I got pissed."

Laughs were filling the room as Erin's voice was slowly vanishing away the awkward silence.

"I remember telling myself that I had to start screaming and crying as loud as I could - and that's what I did. After a few minutes, Hank got sick of hearing me and told that same dumb officer he was going to take care of me and asked him to leave the room. He managed to sound kind, which was weird since his voice sounds nothing like kind. Then he talked to me for about half an hour. We talked about me and about what I liked to do when I wasn't in school, which obviously always involved my Madame Cuddles. He ended up asking me why she was so special to me and I remember answering that she was my only friend when we were outside the house and my sister when we were home. God, that was so cheesy."

"It was," Hank stated, smiling as he was remembering this day at the same time as she was.

Erin rolled her eyes and laughed, making everyone laugh along with her. After a second, she continued: "I guess pity got the best of him since he promised me to bring it back to me personally the next day, which he did. And since no one ever kept a promise made to me before that, I guess that's when I started liking him," She turned her head to meet Hank's eyes. "Ever since then, he began checking in on me every Monday - at school at first and then to wherever I was hanging at. Now he just texts me a place and a time and I join him there. We eat burgers in his car and we talk. It might sound creepy and weird but it's always the highlight of my week. Always."

Her eyes left Hank's to meet Jason's again.

"That's why knowing he was alive was so important to me," She whispered. "But I know the way I reacted wasn't right and I will be sorry about that for the rest of my life, sincerely."

Much love.