"I feel like we should flip a coin or something. You know, to decide who should go first?" Elliot suggested.

"Yeah right. Like I could trust you not to lie your ass off," she teased.

"I can't lie to you and you know it. You would know the minute I opened my mouth that I was lying."

He was right. Even with ten years of growth and change, there were a few things that always stayed the same. "Fine," she conceded. "Flip a coin."

"Heads or tails, Benson?"

"Heads," she replied easily.

"Knew it," he laughed under his breath..

"What? What was that?" She asked.

"You always pick heads!" He exclaimed.

"No I don't!" She insisted adamently.

"Uh yeah you do." He laughed.

She let out an exaggerated groan. "Fine. Tails then."

"God Liv, just roll over would ya?" He teased.

"Oh my God Elliot, just flip the damn coin!"

There was a moment of silence, and he chuckled. "Heads."

"Damn it! Are you serious!?" Of course he made her change her mind only to lose.

"As a heart attack," he teased.

"Fine, fine." She laughed, and tried to figure out where she wanted to start. She had a pretty good idea of what story should come next, especially since she was deliberately avoiding that one story. "When Noah was younger his maternal grandmother swooped in and tried to kidnap him. So that was…awful."

"No kidding. Do I get details or are we leaving it at that?" He asked seriously and she appreciated his attempts to let her control her narrative.

"Yeah. I just hate it. In the end I felt stupid for not following my gut, and even stupider for wanting," she hesitated, realizing she felt nervous about admitting what she was about to admit.

"Wanting what?" He asked gently.

She hesitated a bit more before admitting, "I guess I wanted Noah to have …family, I guess."

"Liv," his voice softened, "blood doesn't make family. You know that."

"Sure I do, but I guess I wanted him to have more than I had." For most of her life she struggled with that feeling. The feeling of being totally alone in the world.

"Can I tell you something? Something I haven't talked to anyone about?"

She felt her heart pound nervously. "Sure."

"Want to know how I know blood doesn't make family?"

"Um, yeah. You can tell me."

"There's a chance that…" it was his turn to hesitate when nervously revealing an insecurity of his own. "Eli might not be mine, I mean biologically mine. He's mine in every way that matters."

Olivia was speechless. She literally had no idea what to say. All she managed was a stammering, "What?"

He spoke quietly and she knew that it was a tender topic for him. She could imagine why. He and Kathy were almost divorced when Eli came along. Kathy assured him that the child was his. For the love of God, they even named the kid after him…she couldn't wrap her brain around it all.

"Uh yeah. I mean, it was something I worried about, you know, right before he was born. Kathy said he was mine, and I think I wanted to accept that."

"But?"

"There was a small part of me that always wondered. He was always so different from my other kids. You've seen my kids…"

"They look like they were all cut from the same cookie cutter," she finished.

"Exactly, but Eli…"

She conjured the memory of the last time she saw Eli. His dark hair and dark eyes definitely looked out of place in a family of blonde haired blue eyed Stablers. "He doesn't match," she said quietly.

"Yeah." He confirmed.

She felt a sudden irrational flash of anger. Not at Elliot, but Kathy. She knew it was irrational, the woman was dead and gone, but she wanted to scream. Olivia knew Elliot went back to her because of Eli. She felt that she and Elliot were on the verge of something when Kathy's pregnancy obliterated any chance they might have had. It was hard not to hate her for stealing the life Olivia desperately wanted for herself. It hurt.

She tried holding back her angry tears. She really wanted to stay quiet. She didn't want to answer any probing questions. Especially ones she wasn't ready for.

But Elliot knew her too well. He didn't need to hear her cry, the silence was almost more telling.

"Liv," his voice was soothing somehow, knocking back the anger that was burning her soul.

"I'm okay," her voice felt heavy.

"No you're not," he challenged.

"Okay I'm not," they promised each other the truth. They promised they'd talk about the hard stuff. Well here they were digging into pain, and she wasn't sure she was able to take it.

She felt his hesitation over the line, like he knew he needed to say something, but couldn't find the words. Her name seemed to be the only thing he could manage. "Liv." He tried again.

She swallowed her emotion and tried speaking, her voice cracked. "Um. When did you find out? You know," she almost couldn't say the words. "That he might not be yours." The tears stung the corners of her eyes and she was grateful he wasn't there to watch her mild breakdown.

"Um, right around the time I took the job in Europe."

A memory of last week's conversation paraded through her mind. And that's when my marriage went to shit again. It wasn't about the transatlantic move. It was about Eli and his paternity. She didn't dare ask how he found out. He told her anyway.

"We were getting everything together, and sorting things. Stuff in storage, stuff to pack." She could almost see him with his eyes closed laying on his bed, reliving the memory. "A guy came to our house. I was playing with Eli in the backyard, when he came to the door. I could hear Kathy talking with someone, but I wasn't really focused on it until she started to sound angry. I brought Eli into the house so I could see what was going on." He sighed and Olivia felt her heart shredding for him. "Kathy had almost got him down the front sidewalk, but the guy moved his head enough to catch a glimpse of Eli."

Olivia pinched her eyes shut. She almost knew what happened next. "He looked at Eli and back at Kathy, and then at me. That's when he asked her straight to her face if the kid was his." He let out a long slow breath. "She told him no and to get the hell out of there, but there was a second of hesitation, and I knew my wife, you know. Her insistence sounded…wrong."

Olivia was still speechless. She felt like she should say something so he at least knew she was still listening, but there were no words. She couldn't find anything to say.

"Later that night I asked her point blank if Eli was mine. I hadn't asked the question in years. Not since the day he was born. She told me he was mine, but God, the look on her face. I just knew that she wasn't completely sure."

"Oh my God, El…" words still evaded her and she couldn't decide if she was more mad, hurt, or devastated. She felt like she was floating between all three emotions.

He chuckled a little, a nervous chuckle, as he tried to lighten the mood. "Questioning the paternity of your child doesn't really foster good feelings in a marriage."

"I wouldn't imagine so…" Olivia agreed.

"But that's not the point I was trying to get at. I mean not really. I planned on telling you some of this story tonight, but what I want you to realize is that blood doesn't mean a damn thing. I struggled for way too long over whether or not my son carried my DNA. And you know what?" She heard him clear his throat a little in an attempt to fight back his rising emotion.

"What?" She asked quietly.

"One day I realized that it didn't matter. Whatever DNA that kid had was irrelevant, because no matter what he was my son."

She felt herself almost choking on the lump in her throat. He was right of course. Family was more than shared DNA. She wished he could have been there at that time to remind her, in this powerful way, that she was enough for her son. Shared blood or not. He was her child, and they were a family.

-000-

He wasn't planning on telling her all of this. At least not in one night, but once the story tumbled from his lips he couldn't stop it. It was like a slow bleeding wound that no amount of pressure could hold back.

"There's nothing wrong with the wanting, Liv. We all want a place where we belong, but…" he hesitated. He wasn't sure if she would be open to hearing what he was about to say.

"But what?" She asked with hope.

"You have a place where you belong." He whispered almost reverently, "You were always my family, and that never had anything to do with blood."

He was met with silence on the other end and he thought maybe he said too much, pushed too hard. Then her voice came out so soft he could barely make out the words. "You were always family to me."

An, I love you rested on the tip of his tongue, but he held back. Not yet. She wasn't ready yet, he reminded himself over and over.

How many times had he looked over his shoulder desperate to admit what he had always felt? He reminded himself to be patient with her. He knew she loved him too. He knew it, but she wasn't ready. She wasn't there yet, and he had to remind himself that it was okay. They would get there…when she was ready.

He figured they needed to circle back to what she actually started to talk about. It was obviously an important event that she wanted him to know about. "Tell me what happened," he prodded.

He heard her deep cleansing breath. "It all started with a child protective services report."

"Against you?" He asked dubiously.

"Uh yeah. Noah started to walk into the street, and I yanked him back as a taxi drove past. I was distracted, but I caught him just in time."

"Thank God," Elliot muttered.

"Yeah. It bruised his arm. His teacher misunderstood what he told her as an explanation so she filed a report."

"Fantastic," he said sarcastically.

"Yeah. It ran its course and it was fine, but after that, uh," her voice changed. The memory obviously took its toll. "Around that time, Sheila Porter showed up."

"The grandmother," he clarified.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "She showed up to contest the adoption, saying she wasn't informed or given the opportunity to adopt Noah."

Elliot felt a flash of anger. Who was this woman who wanted to steal away something, someone, away from Olivia. Something she had always dreamed of. Something she wanted so badly. It wasn't fair. No wonder Olivia second guessed any good event in her life. Everything came with the possibility, the likelihood, of failure.

"We fought over custody for a while, but eventually she told me she just wanted to be a part of his life. We kind of became friends. I trusted her, you know? We both loved him. I thought the more people loved him the better." She sighed. "One day she took him shopping and he went missing…" A parent's worst nightmare. "It took us a minute, but we eventually figured out she was behind it. By then she had already taken off."

"God. I'm sorry." There wasn't really anything else to say. The whole thing was just so…awful.

"We found him. Sheila is still in jail. The worst part was trying to explain why he couldn't see her anymore. He loved her too."

"That's just…" there weren't words for what that was.

"Yeah. But we survived and we moved on." And she locked her heart up even tighter, never wanting to risk it again.

He could only think of one thing to say. Something true. Something he wished he could have said the minute he returned home. "I wish I'd been there." His voice cracked. He knew this would be painful. He knew he missed so much, and he'd do anything to rewind his life. Make a better choice. But he couldn't.

He heard her take a soft, but shaky breath. "I wish you had been there too."

Happy Birthday writerofloveandangst27! Because of popular demand...this gets to graduate to a full story. I think there is a lot of potential here, so I'm going to let it run its course!

Watch out for the full story! It should post in the next day or two!