As much as he wanted to question his own sanity, he knew that she was indeed there and that she was real. No matter how badly he screwed up, no matter how badly he hurt her, she always came for him. He hung his head in shame. If only he could say the same. He never showed up for her in the way she deserved. Never.
For what felt like an eternity, they just sat, watching the sky transition from fiery pinks to muted purples. Her cheek remained pressed to the back of his shoulder, and her eyes stayed focused on the blue wash of his jeans. He hated himself for making her come to this place. He could feel the torment eking out of her chest with every shaky breath she took. He knew she would stay here as long as he did, fighting the darkness of her own personal demons.
The setting of the sun brought with it a cold breeze, and he felt her body shiver next to him. Without a thought, he shifted his weight and put an arm around her, gathering her closer to the heat of his own body. "We don't have to stay. I…I need to get back. We have this case, and I can't... "
Her murderous glare shut him up immediately.
"After all this." She shook her head and pushed him away. When she initially approached him, she brought her ever-present empathy with her, but it seemed like anger was planning on taking the wheel. "You're such an asshole." She pushed herself off the floor and dusted the dirt off her pants.
He was caught off guard by his feelings of relief. They knew how to fight. That was something they had always done well. Fight and forgive. Fight and move on.
He felt too exhausted to fall into the familiar. She was gearing up for a fight, but he felt like whatever fight he might have still possessed had been emptied from his soul and into the box laying in the front seat of his car.
He dropped his head. "I know."
His response must have surprised her because it halted what he thought was going to be an explosive tirade. A tirade he deserved.
She kicked the dirt and swore. "Do you want to die? The past few years you've seen hellbent on joining Kathy in the great beyond, and I can't decide if it's because you love her and miss her or if you can't live with the guilt of her death, but I swear to God Elliot, I'm not watching you die. I'm not watching you burn your life to the ground. If that is where this is going, I'm out.
A surprising flash of red clouded his vision. None of this was about Kathy. It almost never was, and now she was standing above him, yelling at him for his postmortem guilt, acting like she had no clue as to why he felt the need to throw himself into every firefight. "I don't want to die," he insisted. He pushed himself to his feet. "And none of this has anything to do with Kathy. It's the job, and... "
She didn't let him finish his thoughts. "That's bullshit, and you know it." She threw her hands up in the air. "I gotta get out of here," she said as she spun towards the stairs.
"Liv, wait!" He called. He knew it wasn't fair, keeping her in the place of her worst nightmares, but they had never been this close to the truth, and if he let her go now, he knew they would continue dancing around it. "It's not about Kathy." He groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. "It never has been. None of it. My leaving. Her death. It's never been about her." He hated it, but oftentimes the raw truth wasn't pretty. His actions after Kathy's death had been driven by guilt, not love.
Her hands tightened into fists, and she looked like she might actually punch him in the face.
He hurried along with his explanation. "It was always you."
Her face flushed with surprise as she remained motionless, waiting for further explanation.
He shook his head. "It was always you, and it was always going to be you." His heart was filled with the familiar heat of shame that always accompanied the knowledge that he loved another woman more than his wife. No matter what he did, no matter how much space he put between them, he couldn't stop himself from loving her. Wanting her.
The one true love of his life.
Those words had struck a nerve, playing on his ever present guilt. It stung because it was true, and the more they ran from the truth, the more it hunted them down.
"I didn't call you back then," he swallowed the nervous feeling building in his chest, "and I don't call back now for the same reasons."
His eyes lifted. Olivia looked like a deer caught in the hunter's crosshairs. Eyes wide and ready to bolt, but paralyzed by the fear. He hoped to God that she was not afraid of him. He could handle her being afraid of the possibility of them, but he couldn't bear it if she was afraid of him.
He reached for her hand and tugged her gently in his direction. Her body remained stiff, but her feet complied as she stepped a little closer.
"And?" Her voice trembled. "What, um, why?"
He pulled on her hand, and she took a couple more steps, finally closing the distance enough for him to grab hold of her hips.
His heart pounded at the feeling of her warm body beneath his fingers. Her breath quickened at the contact, and that little encouragement made him a little more brave. "Back then, I couldn't face what you had become for me." He groaned a little, not feeling like he was explaining himself clearly. "You were more than my partner, Liv." He could feel his heart beating in his throat as he began to admit things he swore to keep buried forever. "If I talked to you, I would have stayed; I can't, I couldn't," he stumbled over his words. "I would have weighed you down and now. God, now that I'm back, don't you see it? I'm always falling apart for you to pick me up and put me together. I'm always creating messes for you to clean up, and now?" His voice rose in pitch as his emotions heightened. "I see how much I failed you. How much I continue to screw up, and I know taking those boxes was stupid, and I know you deserved better from me, but I'm glad I took them because now I get why you can't take this chance with me... and maybe if I give it some time, I'll be able to let you go because God knows you deserve much more than me."
He honestly didn't expect the echoing smack and the sting of pain that accompanied her hand meeting the side of his face. His hand instinctively rose to his own cheek, and he was taken aback by the overall rage exuding from her.
"You think that this?" she motioned to their surroundings. "Is why..." she dropped her head into her hands and groaned.
Of course, that's what he thought, but her tone made him pause.
"Elliot," she said his name firmly. "None of this is your fault." She amended her statement, "except for dragging me here right now... I guess that's kind of your fault." Her tone lightened slightly, but he knew she was just trying to alleviate some tension.
His voice came out in a raspy whisper. "All this shit wouldn't have happened. If I was here." He shook his head and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath through his nose. "If I were here, none of this, God, none of this would have happened."
"I don't think that's true."
He shook his head adamantly. "Stop trying to make me feel better!" He stepped towards her, and she showed no signs of retreating. He had crowded into her space when he admitted the thoughts that had taken root in his mind over the last day and a half. "I deserve to burn for this, for you, and nothing you say will change my mind. This is my fault. I'm the asshole who left you. I always had your back, and I left. And then the one time you needed me," he swallowed deeply, "really needed me... I abandoned you. I left you with this monster. So yeah, I deserve whatever personal hell comes my way, and even then, it won't ever atone for what I did."
She pushed against his shoulders but didn't make any real attempt to move away. "What did YOU do, Elliot? Maybe I'm confused, but I'm certain YOU didn't burn me. YOU didn't beat me. YOU didn't drug me and starve me. You didn't do anything. So I'm asking, What do you think you did that was so unforgivable?"
She watched his chest rise and fall, and he answered with a combination of anger and despair. "I left. I didn't come for you." He choked on his words. "I let this happen."
She felt an inexplicable surge of anger. "You somehow control the universe? Last time I checked, you weren't God, Elliot." When he didn't respond, she continued. "Shit happens. Hell. Shit happens to me all the time, but it doesn't make you magically responsible."
He shook his head. "If I were here..."
"But you weren't. You made a choice, and you left. That's the choice you made, but your leaving didn't make this happen."
"I get what you're saying, Liv. I do, but you can't tell me you never thought that things would have been different if I had been here." His anger was evident.
"Maybe, but honest to God, Elliot, I don't blame you for this! I wish to God that you never left, but this wasn't your fault!" She was standing in his space, gripping at his shirt.
"I don't know if... God, I just want to change things." His hand brushed her cheek, and her heart pounded for a completely different reason. "I can't handle that this happened to you. I just want it gone. Erased. I don't want this to have happened to you!"
She held his hand to her cheek. "But it did. Neither of us can change that, no matter how much we want to." She held his blue eyes with intensity. "I never blamed you. In fact," she felt nervous, and not because of the setting. She felt nervous because she was terrified to admit what she knew she was about to say. "When he had me the first time, he asked me about the one person I would want to see again before I died. He gave all the normal suggestions, like family and boyfriends, but those people weren't the ones I wanted to see. I wanted to see you. Before I died, I wanted to see my partner. My best friend." She brushed away a stray tear from his cheek, "and that's when I decided that the bastard wasn't gonna beat me. I decided that I would get out of that alive because I wanted" She swallowed back her fear. "I wanted to see you again."
"I never came for you," his eyes dropped to his feet.
She placed both hands on the sides of his face and lifted his gaze back to her face. "You came back to me, Elliot. It may not have been the time that either of us wanted, but you came back." She tugged on his shirt, and he leaned into her. She wrapped her arms around him, and she felt his come around her. She felt all the emotions. All the fear, pain, and loss that happened inside that room and out crashed down on them as they held each other.
Her phone chirped in her pocket, and she knew the message was probably from an anxious Ayanna still sitting in the front seat of her car.
"Come back with me," she whispered. "We can figure all this out, but please get me out of this place."
"Okay," he whispered with emotion. "Let's go."