WORTH WORKING FOR
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kate paces in the lobby of Rick's building, her fingers clenching the handles of a canvas grocery bag, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. She's already assured Eduardo, the front desk agent, that she's fine, just restless.
Well, restless and nervous.
She hasn't felt this way about introducing a guy to her dad in...well, maybe ever. She was too rebellious to care in high school, and the only other boyfriend he met was Will, who left shortly after.
Rick isn't a boyfriend though, she reminds herself. Since their conversation on her birthday a week ago, they've only talked a couple times, and haven't revisited the subject of, well, them. She isn't sure what they are aside from expectant parents who, despite their mutual attraction, aren't in a relationship.
Whether her dad likes him or not, Rick is going to be part of their lives forever. She's a grown woman, she doesn't need her dad's approval. It's not like she can go back in time and change the situation if he doesn't like Rick. But it will be so much easier if the two men get along.
After what seems like hours, her dad walks through the door. He glances at his watch before greeting her with a quick hug.
"Am I late?" he asks as she presses the button for the elevator.
Kate shakes her head. "No, I was early." When she sees the knowing look on her dad's face, she sighs. "I'm nervous, okay?" she admits.
Jim chuckles and nudges her arm with his. "I don't think you have anything to worry about, Katie. If things go south, I'll just compliment his books. Flattery always works wonders."
They reach Rick's floor in what feels like record time, and Kate leads her dad to the door, takes a deep breath before knocking. The door opens a few seconds later, and if Kate didn't already have regular, highly inappropriate thoughts about Rick, the dark red shirt he wears would do it.
Seemingly unaware of her inner turmoil and arousal, Rick grins and steps aside, letting them in. "Hey guys, welcome. Glad you could make it." He takes the bag from Kate's hand and brushes his lips across her cheek. He leads them inside, sets the bag on the kitchen counter before turning back to them and holding his hand out towards Jim. "Mr. Beckett, it's a pleasure to meet you."
Kate relaxes a little at the amused look her dad gives her. Amused means he doesn't hate Rick. She can't tell yet if he likes him, but it means she doesn't need to be quite as on edge.
"Can I offer you something to drink?" Rick asks after the typical "Mr. Beckett was my father, call me Jim" exchange.
Kate's shoulders stiffen with anticipation, hoping Rick remembered that her dad's sober.
But Rick offers only non-alcoholic options, and she lets herself relax. She grabs water for herself, ignoring when Rick narrows his eyes, and she wanders into the kitchen, closes her eyes, and inhales the many aromas of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
Her nausea has taken a few days off, thank goodness – Rick's Thanksgiving traditions have been interrupted enough with his mother out of town and the addition of her and her dad. If her traitorous stomach had prevented one or more dishes, she would have felt awful.
She feels a warm hand on the small of her back, and she opens her eyes to find Rick's soft gaze on her. She notices that her dad is in the living room, but she doesn't move from her spot, too content with Rick's touch, a touch that she didn't realize until now how much she missed in the past week.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, leaning against the counter next to her.
She shrugs and takes a swig of water. "Pretty good." Physically, at least, she is. Mentally and emotionally, she's something else.
Her therapist had asked her point blank why she was so hesitant to open up to Rick. It's a simple question, but the answer is anything but. They'd ended yesterday's session without resolving anything, and she's still pondering over the unanswered question, trying to put her reasoning into words.
"Good. I stocked up on your tea just in case, and even grabbed some ginger on the off chance that it works again." Rick turns and lifts the lid of a giant pot on the stove, and he sticks a fork inside and nods. He bends down to the oven next, and after a few moments, straightens up and turns back to her. "We should be ready to eat soon," he announces. "Why don't you go sit down, and I'll come over in a few."
"Can I help?"
He shakes his head. "Nope. Thanks, but I got it."
Kate hovers for a few more seconds, but when Rick gives her a pointed look, she shrugs and joins her dad in the living room.
"This is a nice place," Jim observes, looking around the spacious downstairs.
"Yeah, it is. Do you want to see the nursery?"
Jim nods, and she leads him upstairs, her nerves reappearing. She hasn't seen the nursery since her first visit, when there had been nothing but furniture boxes and paint chips. They have decided to decorate the nurseries in their separate apartments with similar design and color schemes, but haven't made any other decisions or discussed it further.
She doesn't expect the nursery to look any different than it did a little over a month ago, so when she opens the door and sees the paint samples – actual squares of paint on the walls, not just the chips – she starts to tear up.
She feels a little silly for getting emotional over a seemingly small thing. Painting samples to help choose a color is very common. But it's that Rick took the effort to do that, and waited for her to help decide, when he easily could have just put the room together himself.
"We're going to do the same décor at each of our places," Rick's voice explains from behind her. He steps inside the room. "We haven't had a chance to really talk about it, but I grabbed some samples anyway to hopefully make the decision easier."
Jim nods. "And the furniture?"
"Top of the line. Only reason it isn't assembled is because it's easier to move boxes around than the furniture itself."
"Makes sense," Jim agrees. He looks around the room, his arms crossed, and he nods again. "Let me know if I can help in any way."
Kate relaxes, tension she didn't realize she was holding evaporating from her shoulders. She didn't doubt that Rick would win her dad over, but it's a relief to see that it happened.
Rick flashes a grin at her. "Great. Dinner's ready whenever we are."
She can't stop staring at him.
She's noticed over the past several weeks that Rick talks with his hands, especially when he's excited. He seems to get restless, as if his excitement simply cannot be contained inside his body, pacing and gesturing as he goes over the paint colors.
"Unless we wait until we find out the sex," he continues, "so we can have a little more direction."
She tears her gaze away from his hands and forces herself to stop thinking about those hands on her body. She better pay attention; he's been talking nonstop for several minutes, and she isn't entirely sure what he's been saying. She needs to pull him back a step.
"We don't need an ultrasound to tell us what color to paint our kid's nurseries," she points out. "Besides, I'm not even in the second trimester. We have time."
Rick finally stops pacing, and he leans against the wall and runs his fingers through his hair. "Sure, I know. I just don't want to put it off too long, and then I'm still putting together the changing table when you go into labor."
"That's not going to happen, Rick."
He sighs. "Yeah, I know, I just..." He looks up at her, meeting her gaze and giving her an embarrassed smile. "I didn't want your dad to judge me because the nursery's not done."
Kate snorts. "He'd judge you for knocking me up, not this. He didn't, by the way," she adds when she notices the deep flush on his cheeks. "Judge you. In fact, after we left, he said he was glad that you're involved. Not every guy would step up." Her cheeks flush this time. "Including most that I've dated, which he was all too happy to point out."
The corner of Rick's mouth quirks and he takes a step forward. "Is this when I get a glimpse into your sordid past?" he teases. "You tell me about the losers you dated, I tell you how lucky you are to have me?"
Kate rolls her eyes. "No, and don't change the subject. My point is, my dad liked you."
Rick's smirk turns into a full-fledged smile that sends the butterflies in her stomach fluttering again.
What she doesn't tell Rick is that her dad not only liked him, but raved about him – his personality, his humor, even his food – until they left his building and said goodnight.
Her heart swells as she remembers the light in her dad's eyes. Her mom loved the holidays, and there's such an emphasis on family and cheer, that this time of year is even harder than the rest. Not to mention, it all leads up to the anniversary of her mom's murder.
It's been a long time since she's seen her dad that happy, that carefree, especially at this time of year.
At the thought of her mom, she lifts her hand to her chest, presses the ring she wears into her skin. The weight of it sits heavy between her breasts, the constant, physical reminder of her loss.
Of her failure.
God, she misses her mom.
"You okay?"
Rick's concerned voice cuts through her thoughts, and she lifts her gaze to find him standing in front of her, barely a foot away.
She nods. "Yeah. I was just thinking."
Rick is silent; he doesn't push for her to explain further. He always lets her lead, lets her decide what she wants to share. It makes her want to tell him more.
Tell him everything.
Still, she hesitates.
She isn't wrong about Rick's interest in her: the physical interest along with the desire to know her. But wanting to know her and sticking around after he does are two different things, and she doesn't know if he'd do the latter.
Will encouraged her to be an open book, too, and then he left. Twice.
She takes a deep breath and makes her decision.
His eyes follow her movement as she trails her fingers under the chain around her neck, and draws the ring out from under her shirt. She grips the ring with two fingers, holding it up, and keeps her gaze on Rick as he bends down slightly to get closer.
"My mom's," she says in a hoarse whisper. "I've told you she's dead, but not how it happened."
She tells him everything: she and her dad at dinner, her mom's absence disappointing, but not surprising. They both knew she'd been working on something that was taking up most of her time, so they'd half-expected her to miss dinner anyway. They'd still enjoyed themselves, sharing appetizers and dessert and joking about the hard time they'd give Johanna when they got home.
"But she wasn't home," Kate manages, swallowing around the lump in her throat. She's still holding the ring, has it curled in her fist like it will disappear if she lets go. She doesn't look at Rick, can't, but she knows he's listening, hears his slow, shaky inhale.
"There were cops waiting for us," she continues after clearing her throat. She blinks, willing the tears in her eyes not to fall.
They do anyway.
Her mom had been found in an alley, she explains, stabbed, left for dead in a pile of garbage.
"Shit," Rick rasps.
She finally lifts her gaze to his, surprised when she sees his eyes watery with unshed tears.
"They never found who did it." She can hear the bitterness in her voice, even after almost thirteen years. "No cameras, no witnesses, no clues. So they said it was most likely random, possibly a gang killing, or a mugging gone wrong." She shakes her head. "Technically, it's still an open case. But nobody's touched it in years. Nobody but me."
"Nobody but you?" Rick echoes. "You've worked the case?"
She nods. "It's why I joined the force," she admits. "Spent my first three years with my nose buried in the file, looking for something, anything, that might have been missed. It consumed me, until..." She pauses.
"Did something happen?"
"Yeah," she breathes. "Almost. I don't know how it took so long to happen. I was running on fumes. When I wasn't on patrol, I was looking at the case. Barely sleeping, eating like crap. Self-care kind of went out the window. One day, my partner and I were helping a detective run down a lead, and the suspect got the drop on me." She lifts her hand and rubs the back of her head. "He knocked me pretty good. My partner took him down, and I somehow avoided getting a concussion."
"Jesus."
"It could have been bad. My captain forced me to go to therapy, but even then, it took me a year to accept that if I kept going, it was going to kill me." She lifts her gaze to his. "So I let it go."
Until her killer fell into my lap, she doesn't say. Until I had to shoot him, and then a year later, watched the lead detective get assassinated in front of me. Until I was pulled back in, and was shot for my failed efforts, and ended up with two cold cases instead of one.
"Have-" Rick clears his throat. "Have you thought about revisiting it? Maybe have someone else look too? You have more experience, or another set of eyes might see something you missed."
She starts shaking her head before he finishes talking. "I can't," she admits. "Like an alcoholic should never own a bar, I shouldn't look at the case again. I lose myself in it before I realize it's even happening."
Getting shot and almost dying had forced her to take a step back from the case – both cases, actually. She did pursue her shooting upon her return, but quickly hit a dead end. And once she had her close encounter with a gun in her first case back, and went back to therapy, she's been trying like hell to leave it be.
But when the ghosts visit her dreams, when she wakes in a cold sweat from her nightmares, when she feels wounded and raw from her failure, it's hard not to dive back in.
Maybe someday, she'll be able to put it away for good.
She sighs and tucks her ring back under her shirt. "I miss her every day, especially now. There are so many things I want to ask her, so many things to share."
"I'm so sorry," Rick rasps, his voice thick with emotion.
When she looks up at him, she expects to see what she usually sees when she tells people her mom's dead. They look upon her as someone to be pitied: poor Kate, she lost her mom so suddenly. Isn't it amazing what she's accomplished despite her loss, they always say.
But Kate isn't who she is despite losing her mother. She's who she is because of it. The tragedy has fueled her, defined her, shaped her into the woman she is today. Saying she's this person despite everything cheapens her accomplishments, and the impact that the cold January night had on her life.
Rick lifts his hand and brushes a lock of hair off her forehead, then cups her jaw, his eyes locked on hers.
Her hands move on their own, and she grips the front of his t-shirt and starts to lean forward.
"You're incredible," he husks, his other hand curling around her waist. "So many people would have let something like that destroy them. But you-" The corners of his mouth lift in a small smile. "You took a tragedy and used it to fuel your ambition. You're extraordinary, Kate."
She sees his gaze drop to her mouth, and his eyes darken with desire. He brushes his thumb across her bottom lip, tugs it gently before releasing her.
"Thank you for sharing," he whispers, his voice an impossibly low, gravelly rasp.
"Thank you for listening," she whispers.
She's about to do something stupid like kiss him when he steps back, his hands falling from her body. He clears his throat and tugs at the hem of his t-shirt. "Right. Um, so, maybe we should decide on a theme, and pick color based off that?"
Kate blinks a few times, her brain trying to catch up. Right, they were talking about how to decorate the nurseries before she changed the subject.
Before she spilled her heart to him.
She just watches as Rick glances at his phone and puts it back in his pocket. He looks up at her, then walks past her out the door and into the hallway.
"We can think about the décor while we eat lunch," he suggests, pausing at the top of the stairs. "If you're hungry?"
"Um, sure?" She follows him downstairs, wondering what the hell just happened. They were having a moment: she told him about her mom, and just when it seemed like he was going to kiss her, he fucking walked away.
She gets to the bottom of the steps and curls her arms around her waist, her palm pressed against the scar on her side. He recently told her he wanted her, but only when it was right.
Maybe sharing about her past was too much, and pushed him away.
She shakes her head at herself, at her blind optimism when it comes to him.
She shouldn't have told him that.
She won't tell him anything else.
She can't.