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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Well here we are! Another Wednesday update. This one is a long one (13 pages) but I promise a lot of really fun and funny stuff is going to happen! Don't forget to leave a review, and let me know if the announcement was what you thought it was going to be! Hope you guys have a happy holiday and see you guys in the New Year!

Chapter 434

That night, after he got Con to agree to find the trim tab and he convinced his wife to go to the doctor, Steve had not gone back to work.

There weren't any more leads to follow that day, no one for him to chase down, so he had stayed with his wife. He had held her close, kissed her all over and then made dinner so she could rest. And when it was time to go to bed that night she rewarded him.

That morning he had to wear a dark Navy blue shirt to hide that his back was still bleeding in some places from her nails, but he was in a great mood. Or well… he was until he realized that Wo Fat had never gotten back to him.

So he had called him, but the man had ignored his call which, Steve wanted to say was typical, but it wasn't. At all.

He was in the process of leaving the man a message when he walked into his office. He noted as he did that there was something on his desk, he didn't know what but something was waiting for him.

"… I haven't heard from you, and normally you're pretty good at this, so uh… is something going on? Are you punishing me for something? Cause… I talked to Ro and…" He paused realizing that the object on his desk with the missing trim tab. Oh yeah, he'd deal with Wo Fat later. "Uh… just call me back please."

He hung the phone and checked to see if he had any messages. None. None at all. So that meant that Con had lied and he did not text him when he got what he was after.

He carefully picked up the trim tab and turned it over in his hands. It still had the NTSB ticket on it. So yeah… this was the trim tab for Jason's plane.

"Tani can you come here for a minute?" he called.

There was a brief moment before she opened the door to his office and came in. She clocked the hunk of smooth metal in his hand and gasped.

"Oh my god is that the Trim tab?"

"It is, do you know how it got here?" he asked.

"No? Why would I?"

"You didn't happen to see Con did you?"

"No? Why, did you send your brother-in-law to steal it?"

Steve held her gaze, knowing he was going to have to lie to her. Though he had a feeling she knew that he had in fact done just that. "Uh… no."

"Right well. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?"

"Right, well uh, can you take this down to the crime lab please? Tell them to look it over."

"Alright."

He handed it off to her and wasn't the least bit surprised when less than an hour later the crime lab had done what all of them expected it to. It found evidence that it the trim tab had, in fact, been tampered with.

Jason's plane really had been sabotaged.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Now that Steve had proof that the plane had been sabotaged the first thing he did was go straight to Agent Callaghan and arrest him for covering this crime up.

Because there was no way he saw that trim tab and came up with the idea that this was pilot error. He was covering for someone and Steve had had his team try and figure out who.

He also finally heard back from Wo Fat, who very happily told him that the CIA were ecstatic to be helping him with this case, because, they had for a very long time assumed the same thing that Steve had just proven.

By the time they had Callaghan in a cell, Steve had the answer. So he took Tani down to the cells with him to confront the oddly still very smug looking Callaghan.

"You tried to cover up what really happened. That's a… that's a serious offense, you understand that?" Steve asked and Callaghan sighed and shook his head at Steve like all of this was amusing.

"We have a difference of opinion over what happened. You say it was sabotage, I don't agree. That's hardly a cover-up."

"Okay, Tani, would you tell him what we know?"

"Sure. So we looked into Hammerade's financials. And it turns out that they were paying a lot of money to an anonymous shell company in the Virgin Islands. That same shell also controlled a trust in Bermuda, a trust that linked back to you. And so those payments, they started back in the fall of 2010. Which was the same time that the NTSB assigned you to oversee Hammerade's races."

"So what's the deal?" Steve asked. "Hammerade keeps you on a retainer and in turn, you squash anything that comes up as bad for the brand, is that right?"

"Like, for example, a pilot's sabotaged plane going down during a practice run?" Tani finished for him.

"Why are you smiling?" Steve snarled. Because ew, what the fuck was wrong with this guy? "You, you should be proud of yourself, you just tried to screw over a widow and her child to save a multimillion dollar company a PR headache. Well done."

"There are a lot of people involved in this who are guilty of something, Commander."

"Okay?"

"Someone sabotaged Jason Sachs' plane. Isaiah Phillips failed to catch it. I covered it up. But let's not forget about you."

"Me?"

"Or more aptly your wife."

"My wife?" Steve asked. "Are you threating my wife? Why did my wife even come up? What does she have to do with this?"

"You're in possession of one trim tab, a piece of evidence in a federal investigation. Evidence that was illegally seized from a federal facility and everyone knows your wife is a thief."

Steve was absolutely floored by that. "Excuse me?"

"Oh come on now. Everyone knows about Rowan Pierce and her brothers. Simply called a few friends and they came right back with a little story about you and how you use your wife's criminal ties to get your way with your cases. So maybe she didn't do it herself, but she could have easily told one of her brothers to get it, and that makes her an accomplice at the very least."

"Okay, she's Rowan McGarrett now, thank you," Steve snapped. "And I don't think either of her brothers would appreciate this smear campaign on her name. They're the criminals not her, my wife writes songs. Well, actually that's not true, one of them is not that criminal anymore."

"Yes, because the right authorities are going to care about that," he said. "See if you try to take me down and I'll make sure our agency holds every member of Five-0 accountable for interfering with a government inquiry… especially your wife."

Steve just smiles. "Yeah, you're not listening. It's clear you're aware of what her brothers do for a living, but do you know that one of them has had a job change?"

"What does that mean?"

"Means one of her brother's in with the CIA and they were very happy when I called about this case. See, apparently, they've been onto to Hammerade for a while. Heard some suspicious rumours. So when I called them yesterday to tell them you were being difficult about giving me the footage they jumped at a chance to shut you guys down. And, guess what? Now that we have the money trail… and you… they are so very excited that they're willing to basically ignore anything I or anyone that works with me may or may not have done so long as I had over all credit for your arrest. My guess is they're going to throw the book at you."

"The… CIA," he said weakly and Steve nodded.

"Yep, according to my very criminal brother-in-law, they're sending someone down ASAP, should be here soon to pick you up," he said. "But uh… I'm sure he'd love to hear all about how you threatened to take his favourite sibling down with you."

"But… the CIA… if he's working for them…"

"Oh… you mean… the CIA should have some sort of control over him?" he asked guessing where Callaghan was going and the man nodded. "Yeah… he's not really on anyone's leash. The only one he kinda listens to is my wife… not sure she's going to want to help you though… especially after I tell her all you said."

Grover had opened the door, Steve had half glanced to him when he did, but he was too busy putting the fear of Wo Fat into Callaghan. Kind of maliciously.

It was one thing to threaten him and his team, it was something else entirely to threaten his wife. It was never wise to threaten his wife.

"If you're done traumatizing the man, we need you outside," Grover said and Steve nodded waiting for him. He flashed Steve a CIA badge.

"Wow you guys got here fast," he said.

The man nodded. "Yes well… we've been waiting for this break for a while. Uh… did he really threaten Rowan?"

Steve opened his mouth to basically lie because he wasn't actually going to let Wo Fat know what he did. "I guess it doesn't matter. He'll have to be in protective custody no matter what anyway… I just won't leave him alone with Wo Fat…"

"Right… well… he's in there, have fun," he said as he shut the door on him and the CIA agent. He turned to Grover. "What did you find?"

"Was it really necessary to scare him like that?" Tani asked.

"He threatened my wife," Steve growled to her and then turned back to Grover.

"Yeah, never goes well when people do that," Grover said. "Does the assassin know?"

"No and we're not going to tell him," Steve snapped. "Now, what did you find?"

"Right… our guy Jason, isn't Jason Sachs. Jason Sachs died 6 years ago. Freak accident. Our Jason Sachs is Luke Nixon, and we're guessing this has everything to do with the DEA."

Steve had no idea how that meant it had something to do with the DEA, but he was about to find out.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

From there it was basically a straight shot to figuring out what is happening.

Luke Nixon had been nabbed by the DEA, he had been caught running drugs for a cartel, and they gave him the option of going to prison or turning informant. He chose to snitch.

Everything was going well, he got in with the Cartel boss, Juan Camillo, like real close, like considered family close. He was doing well, getting the information they wanted but then 18 months later he's begging to be let go.

Obviously the DEA says no and what does this man do? He disappeared. But he didn't run off into the sunset on his own, he took something… or rather someone with him. Camillo's only daughter.

And guess who she was?

That's right Jason Sachs' widow.

This wasn't about a race, or prize money, or a faulty trim tab, this was about getting Camillo's daughter and grandson back.

Steve called the police in Mexico and they told him that Juan Camillo had placed a few calls in the 808 area code, Steve tracked those numbers, found the wife and the grandson and got them to safety.

The hardest part would have to come the next day. When he told Ronnie all of this. But he wasn't going to do that until he was sure the NTSB would recant their statement.

So he went home to his wife. Found out that her appointment as set for tomorrow. He promised her he'd go with her. He told her that there was nothing to worry about, she was going to be fine and even if she wasn't he was going to be there with her.

He spent the rest of the evening cuddling with her, and then the next morning he went to do what he had to do.

He called Ronnie into his office to break the news to him.

Before he left he had promised Rowan he'd be back in time for that late afternoon appointment, he just had to tell Ronnie what happened and he'd be back.

So he had Danny meet him there, to get help keeping the story all straight, and to help answer questions and then unloaded everything he had uncovered. When he was done, he let Ronnie digest what had happened.

"Hard to believe he could hide that kind of history all those years," he said softly. "Thank you for looking into the crash and finding out the truth."

"You're welcome," Steve said offering him a hand to shake that he took right away.

"I know the rest of his crew is grateful."

"NTSB is gonna issue a new statement, just so you know, stating that the cause of the crash was malicious tampering."

"And when that happens, Elena should get the full insurance payout, right?" Danny asked.

"My guess is she's gonna have to fight for it," Ronnie said. "Jason… Luke had that policy under Jason Sachs. Insurance company is probably gonna say its fraud and use that as an excuse to avoid paying."

"What about Hammerade? I mean, they got to give the family something, right?"

"Not according to the contract. Those guys got their asses covered. If we don't race, they don't pay. We got a backup plane, but without a pilot we'll have to pull out."

"You got another plane?"

"Yeah?"

"Wait a minute. All you got to do is get that plane in the air?"

"And Elena and Tomas will get a little something. Won't be a huge payout, but it'll definitely help."

Steve glanced down to his watch and then shot a glance to Danny.

"No… no don't do it… she'll…" he paused and turned to Ronnie. He couldn't say what he wanted to say. That Rowan had been dreaming about a plane crash and he was now thinking about getting into a plane. "She'll kill you Steve… besides she has that… that appointment."

Steve glanced to his watch again. "I got time," he said. "Right?"

Ronnie looked like a deer in the headlights but it didn't matter, Steve had made up his mind. He'd want someone to do this for him if the roles were reversed, and besides he didn't have to fly fast, he just had to fly.

He could totally avoid a pylon.

And if he got it done before her appointment, Rowan wouldn't have to know.

It was the perfect plan.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

He got the plane in the air a little later than he thought he would but he could still make it to Rowan's appointment. He had texted her to tell her he'd meet her there and then he was up in the air.

He could do this. He could make the appointment, he just had to fly faster.

And he was doing well. He was pushing speed, and he hadn't hit anything… yet…

He checked in with Danny, asking how he was doing but before Danny could answer his cockiness got him in shit.

He hit that fucking pylon.

It was happening, he was going down. He was losing to control and nose diving towards the ocean. No, this could not be happening, Rowan could not be right.

Danny's voice was crying out to him from the ear piece, and then there was a pinch his chest. A void kind of pinch, which couldn't be good. Not to the electronics in the plane. But none of his electronics were fizzling out so he figured himself to be good… you know except for the fact that he was still pointed down.

He managed to pull out of the nose dive he was stuck in and then got back on course. Right away he had Danny in ear talking about how worried he was, but not about Steve dying, no he was worried about having to tell Rowan that Steve died in the plane crash she had been dreaming about. You know have her continuously promised he wouldn't even be in a plane crash again, let get in a plane in the first with.

Steve ignored him and landed the plane back at the hangar.

When he got out his team was all there. His pit crew included Danny, Jerry, Tani, Junior, Grover and Ronnie. They had had to drive over to where he was, which was good because he was going to have to get Danny to drive him to Rowan's appointment.

"Your phone's gone wild," Danny said. "And uh… I unno if you checked the time but you missed that appointment."

Fuck.

"Right… I'll uh… I'll pick up a couple new books for her before I head home then…" he said.

"You forget that I have your phone. She called more than twenty times and I didn't even count the text messages. You're gonna need a whole bookshelf my friend," Danny muttered but Steve ignored him. It was just scare tactics anyway.

"Hey, how'd I do?"

"Uh, you know, not too bad. Very respectable," Jerry said.

"Cool. How respectable?"

"You came in twelfth," Grover said like that was a good thing.

"Twelfth?" he echoed, cause that was not a good number and he didn't know why they'd say it like that. "Out of how many?"

"Twelve," Tani said.

So he was last?

"Victory is in the effort," Junior said, but that did not make him feel better.

"Wait a minute. Twelfth out of twelve?" he asked and they all nodded. "What about, what about... what about with the… I almost crashed!"

"Yes and when Rowan finds out, she's going to kill you and then me for letting that happen," Danny said.

"Yeah, we're not going to tell her that, cause uh… if I really missed that appointment, she's gonna be pretty pissy when I get home," he said. He sort of wanted his phone from Danny but he also didn't want to see all the messages she had sent.

"Why would I lie to you about missing it?" Danny asked but Steve was still ignoring him.

"Did you take the crash out of the time? Did you do that math?"

"Yeah, but it's still twelfth though," Grover said.

Fuck really?

"Chin up baby," Ronnie said. "You got this bad boy up in the air. That's all we needed."

But Steve was still stuck on the dead last thing. He couldn't believe that he had come in dead last, he had thought that he was doing well.

There came a screech of tires on pavement and purple GTO appeared behind Grover's SUV and Danny's Camaro.

"Oh shit," Steve said. "Uh… someone…"

But no, no all of them just stepped away, which allowed Rowan to get out of that GTO and storm over to him.

"Did you fly the fucking plane?" Rowan shouted and Steve flinched. The flight suit was a dead giveaway so he couldn't quite lie to her, but it also meant she was giving him the option to do so which was throwing him off and a little underhanded of her.

"Well… I uh… I had to… uh… I had to…"

"Did you clip a pylon?" "Okay… now before you freak out…" "DID YOU CLIP A FUCKING PYLON SHOWING OFF?!"

Steve's eyes went wide in shock. God she was just flying off the fucking handle. What was her problem? "Okay… just calm down…"

"DON'T TELL ME TO BE CALM!"

"Uh… he did… he did hit a pylon, and he did almost go down but he did also pull himself up and as you can see he's fine. The dream didn't come true…" Danny said and her wild eyes turned on him. That look alone was enough to send Danny skittering back clearly not willing to take on Rowan himself and leaving Steve to deal with what he was assuming was a crazy mood swing, all on his own. But before he could try to calm his wife down she was shaking her head and taking a step back and away from him.

"I had to SPEED HERE to FIX IT!" she shouted and Steve winced, he had felt a bit of a pulse in his chest, guess that had been her. He glanced to the others, not all of them knew about her powers. He needed to make sure she didn't out herself to them.

"Well that was… uh… that was very nice of you… but why did you ask me if I flew the plane if you knew I flew the plane?"

"Oh my god, you're not even sorry," she said almost incredulously and Steve winced again. Rowan backed away from him, shaking her head. "I can't do this."

"Do what?"

"That's it," she growled. "That's it, we're done. I'm divorcing you."

All eyes turned to Steve whose heart stopped in his chest. What the fuck had she just say? "Whoa, wait a second, hold on, what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you! You promised me you wouldn't get in that plane. You promised me you'd come with me today," she said suddenly crying and Steve stared at her. Okay, so he really had missed the appointment, he had really hoped that Danny was just trying to rile him up about that. He couldn't have been in the air that long right? It hadn't felt like it was that long.

"Aw Ro… I'm sorry, don't cry," he said, but she was moving away from him not letting him grab her as she swiped away her tears, she was definitely frazzled and that was worrying him.

"Is it bad news? Is that it? Is it what I have?" he asked fear climbing up his throat. He wasn't sure he could handle her being sick but he couldn't say that, he'd need to be strong for her if that was the case. And it that was the only reason he could think of that would have her that upset right now. "Whatever it is we'll get through it, just tell me what it is, okay?"

Rowan went into her purse and pulled out a paper. "I'm positive," she said handing it to him.

"Positive? Positive for what?" Steve asked, she handed him the paper but his panicked mind couldn't digest what the words were saying, it was basically all in doctorese, with weird numbers and graphs. He didn't know what any of that meant. "Rowan what were you tested for? What's positive? Is it… is it contagious?"

"I can't do this. Stay at Danny's, I don't want to see you ever again," she cried storming away from him.

Steve called her name, kept calling after her asking what she was positive for and as he did Danny ripped the paper out of his hands. He looked it over for two seconds and then sighed and looked back at Steven.

"What the hell just happened… is she like…is she leaving me? What does she have? Do you know what that says?" he asked starting to get more panicked by the moment.

Danny nodded and Steve groaned. He had begun to pace in his panic, a few steps towards Rowan and then back towards Danny. The urge to bolt after her was strong, but he needed to know what was wrong with her first. He didn't think he could get her to talk to him, she was so mad at him.

"Then what, what is it?"

"Okay, I've been trying to get this through your thick head, but let's try again, see if you get it this time. She's got crazy mood swings, she's got strange cravings and she's been sick," Danny said while Steve nodded.

"Yes I know, I know, I've been with her every morning as she throws up, this is why I wanted her at the doctor! What does any of that mean?!"

"Steven. Mood swings. Cravings. Morning sickness," Danny snapped clapping his hands with each symptom as if the clapping would get it through his head. All around him he saw everyone else getting it, like those words clicked in their heads. What wasn't he getting? When Steve just stared at him Danny added: "She's just tested positive…"

He knew all of that already. But that didn't help him because he didn't know what test someone who was having mood swings cravings and morning sickness would do except for…

A pregnancy test.

"She's… she's…" "Pregnant, yes. Just like I've been telling you for the last three months," Danny interrupted. Shock knocked Steve a few steps back from Danny as he took that in. Steve found himself running his hands through his hair as the dots all connected in his head and the reality of the situation sunk into his brain.

"Oh my god, she's pregnant."

"Well don't just stand there," Danny cried, and Steve glanced back to where Rowan had been storming away to go to her car.

He glanced back to them as if needed permission but all his friends shouted the exact same thing to him, or some version of: "Go after her!" and then Steven was sprinting to get to her before she could drive away. He slid to a stop by the driver's side door, and struggled to get the door open. Once he had it open he half yanked her out of the car to look at her. He gripped her by the shoulders to look her over looking for any sign that she was different but she still looked like the same old Rowan to him.

"You're pregnant?" he asked her even though he knew she was. She half nodded to him a weepy smile growing on her face and Steve held her a little more tightly. "You're pregnant!" she nodded again and he suddenly broke out in a giant grin and hugged her tightly.

Dear fucking god. She was pregnant.

She pushed out of his crushing hug and put her hand to her belly, Steve followed the motion placing a hand to her stomach as if he would be able to feel his child inside her. "I'm barely even showing, but he's in there, they say he's healthy but small…"

"Wait he? He? How do you know… is it a vision…"

"Oh, no that would be the other thing," Rowan said, going for her purse and rooting through it. "I'm uh… I'm about four and a half months into this whole pregnancy thing. Literally just hit my second trimester…"

And she was that skinny?! Steve had so many questions, like how either of them had missed the signs for that long, but then Rowan distracted him by handing him a picture. A print out of an ultrasound. A print out of their baby.

"They uh… they can tell he's a boy, see, right there," she said pointing to a smudgy bit. She then leant back. "He uhm… he has your nose."

Steve couldn't help it he started to laugh and then tears of happiness started fall. He was going to have a son. A son. Another son.

"Are you okay?"

Steve nodded taking a hold of her and pulling her to his chest. Fuck, he had never been so happy in his life. Behind him his friends were cheering and clapping and honestly he felt like he might burst into tears then and there.

"I'm still very fucking mad at you Steven," she said into the hug and he sighed.

Yeah.

But he could fix that later.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Con was already not in a good mood when Tani hit him with a: "No, I'm busy," that morning.

Rowan had dropped the bomb on him that she was pregnant… with Steve's kid… and that was kicking up some kind of feeling in his chest that he wasn't ready to feel. That he wasn't comfortable admitting was there.

Tani had told him she had some case stuff but Con knew that the case was done because Steve was home with Rowan.

Honestly she had been acting weird since he pulled off that heist. Like she completely forgot what it was he did for a living… which was pretty much any crime he could get paid for.

Though he did that specific heist because he was bored.

But since Rowan had announced the pregnancy… which was last night, he had been uneasy. He was a ball of nervous jittery jealousy that he had no right to feel. So he decided, when Tani blew him off for lunch that he was going to confront her about why she was being weird about that heist.

He did something he wasn't quite proud of… he followed her.

He was thinking he'd wait for her to stop at the Palace and confront her in the parking lot.

Problem was she didn't go to the Palace.

She went to Kamekona's shrimp truck.

For a minute he thought that maybe case stuff was code for a staff social, but no, the only person there was Junior and he was not on Five-0 yet.

Con had sat there in the Audi he had borrowed from Wo watching them sit down to chat and eat. Well… now he definitely had something to be mad about.

It wouldn't be good to confront her now though, because Junior was sure to try and defend her. Con wasn't allowed to kill Steve's ward, he knew that Rowan probably wouldn't care but he also didn't want to deal with the kind of bitching Steve would unleash if he did.

So Con drove home and then just sat on his couch stewing.

How had this become his life?

How had he become this domesticated assassin? He used to do what he wanted, when he wanted. When things got too hard, he could drink it away or just up and leave. He had an anchor now though. He had people he cared about, people he was afraid to leave, people he was afraid would get hurt if he wasn't there to help them.

He suddenly found himself drowning, that anchor tied around his neck, taking him down a very dark spiral.

Closer to the afternoon he got a text from Tani asking if he was available to hang out later. He was in a pretty shit mood so he really shouldn't have… but he ended up agreeing.

He invited her for dinner, ordered their favourite meals, plated them nicely and then began to plan what he wanted to say, how he wanted to confront her.

But then she showed up and he didn't.

He just sat their stewing, silently eating. She was doing the same. It was starting to get awkward.

"Are you okay?" she asked him after a while.

Well, they were going to get into now.

"Yeah… I unno…" he said. "You gonna tell me why you're mad at me?"

"Mad at you? Why would you think that?"

"I unno… the fact that you're avoiding me…" "—how am I avoiding you, I came here for dinner?" "… or that you've been acting really weird since the heist."

At that Tani kinda grimaced. Right so she was going to admit that she did… in fact… have an issue. Right, well he was ready to shoot that problem right out of the sky or to at least turn the tables on her with her outright lies.

"You committed a crime, Con," she said. "You know my job, you have to know that I wouldn't be okay with that."

"Okay… like… but you know what I do for a living…"

"Yeah but I thought you were going to stop. You've slowed down…"

"I haven't slowed down, I'm just taking a break cause I have to sit on Rowan, that's all," he said. "And besides… it was just a little theft for the greater good."

"It was still a crime."

"Oh but it's fine if you do it?" Con asked. "Or your brother?"

Tani straightened. Con had literally just saved his brother from a raid. He gave Tani the heads up that Koa's hang out was about to get hit and she went to get him. He didn't have to do that, and he wasn't going to do it again.

"That was a low blow."

"I'm a criminal," Con said. "Why are we surprised?"

"Okay what is your problem?"

"Okay, my problem? My problem is that you've got some pretty shitty double standards. And on top of that you're a liar."

"A liar?"

"Yep."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means you'll tell me you're busy with a case when you're really out for lunch with the bum living on my sister's couch," he cried. "And… and I don't even know why you lied about that? Like… what did you think I was going to say?"

"Okay… okay…" she said. "I… I didn't want you to tease him."

"Tease him?"

"He's having some… family issues…" she admitted. "And, I wanted to check if he was good… and… you…"

"You thought I'd throw that in his face?" Con asked and then shrugged. "Actually… yeah… that makes sense. But you could have told me ya'll were going to lunch I wouldn't have cared."

"Okay… but why do you care now then? We're not official. I'm this big huge secret… and I have friends…"

"I care cause you lied when you didn't have to," Con snapped. "And besides, you're the one that wanted to keep this a secret."

"Yes but I wanted to come clean…"

"No, you wanted to throw our relationship in my sister's face. Quite maliciously," Con said. "And besides, I said I just wanted to hold off confirming our relationship with my sister until I figure out why she doesn't like you."

"Confirm?"

"Oh she knows we're dating," Con said with a scoff. "She's… yeah… Ro just knows…"

"Because she's psychic."

"Hey! You can be a non-believer but she is."

For a moment the two sat there staring at one another and eventually she said: "Maybe that's why she's mad. Because you haven't told her and she knows we're dating."

"I think she doesn't want you to take up my time," Con said. "She's a little possessive of me and Wo… I've noticed it with Jian too…"

Yes except she wasn't really as bad with Jian. She liked Jian, she was nice to Jian, but she liked to flex the fact that she was Wo Fat's number 1 girl.

"Maybe… maybe we tell her together."

"Tell her what? That we're seeing one another?"

"That I'm your girlfriend," Tani said and Con had to bite back the smile that threatened to stretch across his lips.

"Thought you were fighting me on that."

"Well I'd like to stop fighting you on it… if you want to stop fighting me on it…"

That feeling in his chest fired up again. Memories of Marisol threatening to push through, the memory of feelings for a girl that was getting farther and farther out of his reach though she had never been an option before.

He couldn't keep holding onto people that were gone, that were never his to begin with.

"I'd like that a lot, actually," he said hoping that if he tried hard enough, if he really believed in it, it would become true.

Now all he had to do was break the news to his sister.