*Im blown away by all of your kind comments! Thank you so much! I hope you continue to enjoy this story. This next chapter is a little emotionally destructive. Fair warning.

Talking about the second separation felt impossible. He knew there would be hard questions, and she deserved the honest answers. The problem was, she might not understand the reasons for his actions, and he was terrified she'd push him away. After all, how many times could he leave Kathy and come back, only to leave her for good. It didn't seem fair. It wasn't fair.

He showered and threw on some sweats before dropping into his bed. He leaned against the headboard with one arm behind his head. His head tilted towards the ceiling as he observed the textured swirling patterns.

He hoped she'd understand, after all, she knew him. He was faithful to a fault, and he'd promised his loyalty to his wife, to Kathy, long before he met the true love of his life. She'd understand that his sense of duty and obligation to his family made him keep going back to a woman he loved, but not as deeply as he loved someone else.

She'd understand. But it would still hurt her. She would still feel second best, even if there was a contest for his heart she would have won hands down. She was it for him. She always had been.

He glanced at the digital clock sitting in the nightstand. She usually called around the same time each week which meant his phone should ring anytime now. He wasn't looking forward to his contribution to the conversation and he felt the flood of apprehension over what she would need to tell him. He could feel her holding back. Somewhere inside of him he knew something had happened, and she was shielding him from it. And if she was shielding him…it had to be bad.

Almost right on schedule his phone buzzed, and he took a deep breath. "Hey Liv," he greeted.

"Hey," he could hear the smile in her voice. It lifted his spirits some.

"You sound happy," he observed.

"Do I? I'm more relieved than anything." She explained.

"What happened?"

"Nothing big, really. We just managed to get a break in a case I've been worrying about. It stalled out a week ago, and today we finally caught a lucky break." Her relief poured through the connection.

"That's great," he said sincerely. He knew the feeling of finally making progress on a stalled out case. It was a combo of exhilaration and relief.

"Yeah," she said with an exhale. "How 'bout you? How was your week?"

"More of the same," he admitted. He wished he could elaborate more, but he couldn't.

"So…I went first last week so….your turn?"

"Woah, woah wait. I'm pretty sure I spilled my guts first last week!"

"I lost the dubiously honest coin toss, remember?"

"First of all, that was a perfectly fair coin toss," he defended, "And second, I was the one who ended up sharing first."

"Not my fault you are easily manipulated Stabler," he could almost see her tongue in cheek expression. She was messing with him.

"Only by you," he admitted. They both knew it was true. "But I will be the bigger person here and take the lead…again."

He could hear her eyes roll. "You can be the bigger person. I'm okay with that, now spill the tea."

She was in far too good a mood for this conversation, but what was he supposed to do? She asked for the truth from the last ten years, and he wanted the same. "Okay okay," he conceded. "We talked about everything with, uh, Eli. That kind of all went down when we were getting ready for our move to Europe."

"Right," she remembered.

"Well, it's probably obvious that things kind of went to hell."

"Kinda figured," she admitted. "You mentioned that. How bad?" Her tone turned serious, and he felt like they were finally in the same headspace for the conversation.

"Pretty bad. She stayed here and I left." She probably expected that.

"I wondered. But obviously things got okay again so something had to change." He almost hated when she sounded so understanding. It just threw fuel on his fire of guilt. How could she always forgive him when he could never forgive himself.

"We stayed separated for about a year. She stayed with her parents, and Eli had some stability, you know, for at least a little while."

"Stability, without you?" Her voice indicated she didn't buy it.

"At least he wasn't moving around constantly."

"Okay, but I know for a fact he would have wanted his dad even if it meant moving all the time."

"Maybe," Elliot shrugged to himself. "At the time I just kind of figured he'd be better off without me. I didn't want the kid to feel like I resented him, and…" he felt like he was admitting some terrible sin. The kind you never allow to see the light of day. One of intense shame. He let out a nervous breath, "the truth was, I did resent him. I hate it now. I hate saying it aloud. It sounds so crappy. Like I'm the crappiest person on the planet, but I just…" he blew out another breath. "I don't know."

"El," her voice held that sense of all encompassing calm laced with empathy.

"No. I don't want you to make me feel better about it. I was a shit dad for a lot of his life." Suddenly some added pain hit him right between the eyes. "I was a deadbeat dad, and after all that," he swallowed. "After all that, I'm his surviving parent."

"You can't feel guilty for that Elliot." She said it like a fact. Like just the act of saying it would make it so.

"I do though, and that's not why I'm telling you all of this. I missed a lot of my kid's life, and none of it was about him. It was about his mother, and he's the one who got lit up in the crossfire."

"Eli knows you love him, El. He knows."

He knew she was harkening back to a not so far past Christmas where a distraught Eli almost killed himself over the pain he would potentially cause his father. Honestly, dragging up that memory didn't help him feel better. If anything, it made him feel worse. Maybe if he had been more for his kid then Eli wouldn't have felt the need to be perfect for him. He didn't want to go into it all. He didn't want to work through it. He just wanted to get the information out there and move on.

"Maybe," he dropped diplomatically. He thought about going into the reasons why he resented him. Beyond the obvious. Some of his resentment sprouted from his obligation to a son that might not be his, but most of it came because his birth effectively blocked a relationship with the woman he cared for deeply. That was one of the biggest challenges he had to grapple with, but not one he thought Olivia needed to pick apart with him.

Olivia remained quiet on the other end, probably sensing his overall discomfort with the entire situation. After a moment she finally asked, "What sent you back?"

The sound of her voice hit him like a gut punch. She was effectively asking him what sent him back…again…and she sounded…pained.

"Uh, yeah." He slid down the headboard and laid flat on his back, staring at the ceiling above him. "Like ten months into our separation Kathy called. It was a weird time at night so I already knew something was wrong. She only let Eli call when it was a normal daytime hour for me. Um," he felt himself get emotional at the memory. "He was eight or nine, I can't really remember, but he was a Cub Scout at the time. His friend's mom always took them back and forth for meetings, to help Kathy out, you know. But uh," he swallowed deeply. "On their way back to Kathy's parents place they got into a car accident," he heard Olivia's sharp intake of breath. "Yeah, uh, his friend died on impact. The mom was in really bad shape, and Eli was…miraculously okay. I mean he broke his arm, and had a bad concussion, but he was okay."

He felt himself almost shaking at the memory. Even years later, the feeling of pure dread still caused his heart to pound anxiously. He had been almost a world away and his youngest son could have died. He could have died and he was worried over whether or not the boy was his. The memory made his stomach turn.

"Oh my god, El."

Yeah. "Kinda put a lot of stuff into perspective I guess," he sighed. "I came back to the states and stayed until I could bring them both back with me." He let out a long slow breath. "I didn't want to lose any more time with my kid." His heart pounded when he admitted another truth. "I knew I could make it work with Kathy if it meant I was a part of my son's life. We decided to get along, and do what needed to be done for our son's sake."

-000-

The parallels made her dizzy. Eli. It always came down to the baby she had always wished was hers. His existence brought his parents together the first time, and apparently he's what kept them together again. Her heart pounded with the vivid memories of the car accident that rushed Eli into the world. Vivid recollections of holding a slippery newborn to her chest assaulted her. Her partner's son. His baby. The one she wished had been theirs. Eli.

She tried to push away the bitter thoughts, knowing they wouldn't get her anywhere. They wouldn't change anything. The past was already written and neither of them could change it, no matter how much they tried. He returned to Kathy again and again and she was left where she always had been, on the outside of everything she ever wanted.

She knew he expected a response and she knew she would respond how she always did. Supportive. Always supportive of every decision he ever made for the sake of his family, but for a moment she considered whether or not she really felt supportive. She considered what it might be like to tell him how she felt. How she hurt. How many times he hurt her when went back to the woman he claimed he loved. She gathered courage. Maybe it was time to finally speak her truth. It would hurt him, and maybe that's why she held it back so long. She loved him and as much as he always tried to protect her, she did the same. The only difference was she was protecting him from herself.

When the words spilled out, she wasn't convinced she was the one saying them. It was so unlike her to be so brutally honest with him…at least about this. She could happily call him an ass straight to his face, but she had never been able to gather the courage to tell him exactly how much he had hurt her.

Whether she felt ready or not the words fell from her lips, and into the universe. She couldn't take them back, and she wasn't sure she'd ever want to.

"It hurt me every goddamn time you went back to her." Her voice barely registered over a whisper. "You know that right? Every time I sent you home, every time I went home to my empty apartment I wished you'd choose me." She heard him take a breath to cut in, but she hurried along. "I felt so guilty about it. You weren't mine. You never were. You were hers, theirs…but…God El, you left me without a damn word. I needed you damn it. I needed you and you left me. You left me, and you had no intention of coming back." She wanted to hide in a hole when emotion crept into her voice. "Why didn't you ever come back for me? Time and time again you found your way back to her, but you never intended on coming back to me," her embarrassing overflow of emotion almost made her want to hang up on him and never answer again, but she couldn't seem to stop herself from emotionally vomiting all over the place. "It f-ing hurt when you left, and you know what? It still hurts. It f-ing hurts knowing that you had another opportunity to leave her, just like you left me, and you went back." She was seconds away from smothering herself with her own pillow. "It still hurts knowing that if she was still alive you would still choose her."

She was certain she'd broken him, but she was the one left stammering when he finally spoke.

"I love you Liv."

This convo is obviously to be continued...