The first aid kit was in the bathroom, right where she'd said it would be, in the cabinet under the sink where she kept the cleaning supplies and a shocking array of bath products he was willing to bet she never actually used. He gathered up the clear plastic box and carried it back into the bedroom, and nearly froze in his tracks at the sight that waited for him there.

The sight of Olivia, naked. Sitting on the end of her pristinely made bed - on top of a towel, a towel he'd brought to her when she made a face and told him she couldn't just sit on top of her clean blankets like this, still a little sweaty with his cum slowly leaking out of her, and the thought electrified him still, and probably always would, the thought of him inside her - all soft breasts and soft belly, her hair wild and unruly around her angel's face. Olivia, naked, beautiful; Olivia, bare in a way he had never seen her before tonight, a way he probably would never see again.

Nearly froze, but caught himself, knowing he had a job to do and knowing she probably wouldn't appreciate it if he stared, though he'd never encountered anything in his life more worth staring at than the masterpiece artwork of her.

"Bring it here," she said, holding out her injured hand like she meant to tend to her wound herself. It was her right hand she'd hurt, though, and he had no intention of leaving her to clean up the mess alone.

"I'll do it," he said, and went to her, knelt there at her feet, wanting very much to bow his head and kiss her skin, hesitating because he did not know how such a gesture would be received now. Now that the fog of their combined arousal had lifted, now that their desire had been sated and a subdued kind of melancholy had descended upon them both.

It was quiet there in the stillness of her bedroom in the small hours of the morning. He'd pulled on his briefs for the trip upstairs, not wanting to go jaunting through her house completely naked while her son slept just down the hall, but he was still mostly bare, her blood dying brown and flaky on his skin, and feeling flayed open and delicate, liable to shatter at the slight pressure. Feeling vulnerable, somehow, as vulnerable as she looked, sitting there on her bed, her eyes big and dark and sad in the dim glow of the lamp

Sad; she looked sad, lost, did not look joyous or playful, did not appear to feel any of the contentment a man might hope his lover would after sex. Was she now, he wondered, his lover, his, as he wanted her to be, as she always had been, or would she try once more to insist that it meant nothing, that there was nothing between them at all, nothing worth fighting for?

"Let me see," he said, reaching for her hand. She let him, compliant as a child, let him turn her palm face up and for the first time get a good look at the gash in her skin.

"I don't think you need stitches," he murmured, rummaging in the first aid kit for the alcohol wipes to clean it.

"I'll be fine," she said. She always was.

"This is gonna hurt," he warned her. It always did.

Very slowly, very gently, he began to clean her hand. She hissed, once, when he started, an involuntary reaction to the sudden sting of the alcohol, and then her breathing deepened deliberately as she focused all of herself on ignoring the pain.

She's good at that, he thought. Good at ignoring how much it hurt. Better at it than he'd ever be.

"We have to talk about this, Liv," he said, very quietly.

"What is there to say?"

Nothing at all, he thought. There was nothing to say they did not know already. He loved Olivia; he was married to someone else. He loved Kathy; their life together was killing them both. He wanted to protect his family; he could not abandon Olivia.

The only way to break free was to break, to pick a piece of his heart, his life, to shatter. To make a decision, to choose, for once, to choose for himself, not to be led by duty or the expectations of others, not to follow the path that had been laid down for him by fate but to choose. Pack up Kathy and Eli and return to New York and love his wife and never see Olivia again; tell Kathy the truth and let her take Eli away and pursue Olivia without the bitter taste of infidelity in his mouth. The time had come for him to choose, and while neither choice felt good, while neither choice was without consequences, at least whatever he chose would be his.

"Things could be different," he began slowly. It felt like a sin even to admit it. To acknowledge the possibility that while he was married now he did not have to remain that way, to give voice to the truth that his marriage was only ever a series of choices he had made, and that he had the power to choose against it. Possibility loomed large in the shadows of the room, terrifying and hopeful both at once; things could be different, and that difference could bring calamity or it could bring unbridled joy. He wanted to know. Good or ill, he wanted to choose, and see the difference for himself, and know, once and for all, if the life he could make with Olivia was a life worth living.

"You can't leave her, Elliot," Olivia said heavily.

He'd finished cleaning her wound, was now pressing a clean pad of gauze against it as he prepared to wrap it up. The cut was actually a series of cuts, all along the curve of her palm, and a bandaid wouldn't have done the job, and wouldn't have stuck, anyway.

"Olivia-"

"Promise me, Elliot. Promise me you won't do that to her."

For a moment he rocked back on his heels, holding the gauze to her hand and staring up at her in utter bewilderment.

Shouldn't she be happy? He wondered. Now that she had held him, claimed him, now that he knelt at her feet, pledging his devotion to her and demonstrating his willingness to choose her above all others, shouldn't she have been happy? What would it take, he asked himself; what would it take to make her happy?

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked her earnestly, sincerely, casting about in desperate search of guidance. He was trying to choose Olivia, but she would not let him; what was he supposed to do?

"Go back to New York," she said, tears gathering in the corners of her glorious eyes. "Forget this ever happened. Forget about me."

He'd sooner forget how to breathe.

"I can't do that."

Once more he focused himself on bandaging her wound, needing some occupation for his hands, some outlet for the anger that had begun to bubble up in his belly; resentment and terror were gathering there, too, but it was anger he felt more than anything else, anger directed at her fears, their circumstances, his own stupid choices. If he'd done things differently years ago, if he'd just chosen when he had the chance, then maybe…

A maybe didn't count for much, did it?

"You have to," Olivia implored him as he tied off her bandage. "You have to forget."

Something in him snapped, then; he reached for her, his hand snaking around the back of her neck, pulling her to him, needing the closeness of her, needing her to feel it, the electricity that cracked and sparked between them every time their skin touched, the undeniable truth of their connection to one another burning away every obstacle in its path.

"I'm not leaving," he breathed, his lips brushing against the corner of her mouth. "I'm not walking away from you again."

"You can't leave her," Olivia told him, even as she lifted her own hands, cradle his head between them, fingers gentle his skin, holding him to her. "You can't do that to her. You can't do that to me."

The worst part, he thought, was that he understood. He understood why she refused to budge, why the thought of him leaving his wife hurt her. He understood; he knew her, better than anyone, knew the strength of her convictions, the dogged determination of her beliefs, knew she could not, would not ever want to, be the reason a family broke in two. He understood, and yet he could not do as she asked him. He could not forget, could not forget the taste of her, the heat of them together, the rightness of it, could not bear to abandon her a second time, would not survive it.

"I love you," he told her. Said it outright, for once, without obfuscation, as plain and clear as it was possible to be; said it, for once, because yeah, she knew it already, but she needed to hear it, too. She needed to hear it, and he needed to say it.

"It's not enough," she said, sadly.

It could've been, he thought. It could've been enough.

The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon when he came stumbling home. Came stumbling home with the smell of Olivia under his fingernails, the sound of her voice still echoing in his ears. Despite all her protests she'd let him make love to her a second time, quiet in her bed, softer and sadder but no less profound than the first time downstairs, and then she'd dozed under the covers while he rinsed himself off in her shower. When he left she was sleeping; he did not wake her but kissed her forehead as he left, locked the door behind himself on his way out, dragged himself home feeling empty, somehow, without her.

He'd have a proper shower at home, he decided. Go up and use the en suite in the master, come out smelling like his own soap and not like Liv. The family would be asleep, still; he could make a start on breakfast, and maybe by the time they woke he'd be feeling more himself, less fragile, less shattered. The time was a gift, really; he needed time, time to get his thoughts in order, to school his features, to rein in his wild and reckless heart, to become once more the man they needed him to be, the man Olivia expected him to be.

Apparently it wasn't in the cards, his plan for a quiet morning; he slipped silently into the house, up the stairs without rousing a soul, but as he eased into the master he found Kathy awake, staring at him from their bed.

"Where have you been?" She asked him quietly, struggling to pull herself upright.

"Don't hurt yourself," he said, rushing to help her, fluffing the pillows behind her back while she stared distrustfully up at him.

"There's blood on your neck," she said suddenly, reaching for him.

On reflex he pulled away, covering the mark of Olivia's blood on his skin with his hand, too late to hide it and trying anyway. How had he missed that? Maybe he'd been too busy scrubbing the blood from his chest to remember his neck.

"It's fine, baby."

"When are you gonna start telling me the truth, Elliot?" It might not have hurt so much, her accusation, if she hadn't sounded so sad. "You told me you're working at the courthouse. Last time I checked the courthouse is closed at night. Now you're coming home bloody and I'm scared."

It was too much to hope for, he thought. That Kathy would just swallow his lies, that he'd be able to juggle the two halves of his life. This was always gonna happen, he thought. It was always gonna end.

"Kath -"

"And when were you gonna tell me Olivia died?"