5

Andy had learned early on in his career that being tired and being exhausted were two entirely different things. Being exhausted meant crashing after a prolonged adrenaline high. Being exhausted didn't mean that you went to sleep easily. Being exhausted meant tossing and turning and your mind going places you didn't want it to go. Being exhausted meant passing out and waking up with a dry mouth. Being tired was feeling relaxed. Being tired meant lounging on the couch and feeling your limbs go heavy and your mind go slack. Being tired was peaceful and pleasant.

The previous night, Andy had been exhausted. Now he felt closer to tired. When darkness had fallen around his house, he stood in the master bathroom and was feeling bewildered. He looked around furtively as he was brushing his teeth. The bathroom didn't look the way he remembered it. It had been remodeled in earthy colors, looking like something out of Architectural Digest. Where he was used to a clutter of items on a lopsided wooden cabinet, there was now order. Everything seemed arranged according to a system he did not understand. Where he remembered damp towels caressly dropped onto cracked tiles, there was now the smooth surface of an expensive flooring, all towels neatly arranged on matching holders.

He could not say that he did not like it, but it was odd, like so many things. He eyed all the female toiletry items he was not used to having around, his fingers lingering just short of a perfume bottle, a tube of lipstick and a hairbrush. He finally picked up a bottle of lotion at random and opened it. The scent almost knocked him off his feet. It wasn't particularly strong, but it was eerily familiar, making his heart feel heavy all of a sudden. He quickly replaced the bottle, his heart racing. It seemed that his nose remembered what the rest of him did not and as he relished control of his thoughts for a moment, he realized that something about the scent represented something that mattered to him, something so fleeting that he couldn't catch ahold of it.

Walking back into the bedroom, he found Sharon Raydor in white silk pajamas and bare feet on what he presumed must be her side of the bed. She held up a cell phone charger and smiled ruefully.

"Sorry. I forgot this."

He knitted his brow when he realized that she was not going to spend the night in the bedroom with him.

"You're sleeping in the guestroom?" he asked, the memory of the scent from back in the bathroom still prominent in his mind. He imagined that she smelled just like it and even though the woman still technically made his skin crawl, he felt the sudden urge to burrow his nose in her neck. He shuddered inwardly with disgust.

She nodded hesitantly. "Just like last night."

He didn't remember much from the previous night except falling into his bed and passing out. As he took in the sight of Sharon Raydor - or maybe Sharon Flynn, now that she was his wife - it struck him how different she looked away from the office. Her soft curves were more visible through the light silk pajamas and she looked shorter without her heels. Her face looked different, too, without her dark-rimmed glasses. Her make-up was off and her hair had been brushed out for the night. He could now see dark circles under her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping well either.

"Well," he said, feeling a little guilty for feeling so relieved that she was about to leave. "Good night then."

She gave him a little smile that couldn't quite hide her sadness. "Good night, Andy." For a moment she looked as if she was going to come towards him to kiss or hug him goodnight, but then she didn't. Andy was grateful for it. She had almost reached the door to the landing when footsteps could be heard in the hallway. A moment later, a sleepy Paddy appeared in the doorway. He was wearing different pajamas than the previous night and his hair was tousled from sleep. He was rubbing his eyes, looking upset, as if he was about to start crying.

"Mommy, Daddy," he whispered, apparently terrified. "Had a bad dream."

He looked pitiful standing there like this, his arms hanging at his sides and his eyes swimming with tears. Sharon gave Andy an apologetic look and bent down to pick Paddy up. The boy rested his head against her shoulder and held on to her tightly.

"Sleep in Mommy's bed?" Paddy mumbled. He spoke very well for his young age, but his speech patterns were a little muffled sometimes as was normal with kids of his age. Andy found it adorable. After all, the little one was not responsible for who his mother was. Sharon swayed lightly from side to side to calm her child.

"Let's go over to the other room and sleep there, okay honey?" As soft as her voice was when she said the words, Andy saw what she could not: The kid's face changed from mild distress to terror. "Daddy!" he called out, reaching out a hand for Andy. Sharon, who had started to walk towards the hallway stopped and stroked Paddy's head, unsure what to do.

"It's going to be alright, baby. We'll-"

"No!" Paddy exclaimed in terror.

"Come on, you two," Andy heard himself say before the kid could worry itself into a frenzy. "Off to bed." He stepped towards Sharon and took the child from her, feeling the little arms coming around his neck as his son held on tightly. He probably knew that something had changed. Maybe that was even what had caused his bad dream and his desperate need to have both parents in the same place at the same time. Sharon lingered in the doorway, looking lost herself but Andy waved her over, trying his most winning smile on her even though he wasn't quite sure why.

It took her a moment to overcome her hesitance, but then she walked to the other side of the bed and got under the covers, edging closer to Paddy who grabbed a fistful of her pajama top and snuggled into her chest immediately. It looked like something they did often. Andy ran his hand down his son's back and felt him relax as his eyes fluttered closed. Sharon kissed his forehead and righted the lock of hair that had gotten stuck to it. She looked warm and maternal and that was a strange sight to behold, so at odds with how he knew her.

"Thank you," she said softly. "He has bad dreams from time to time and we let him sleep in our bed when he does."

Andy studied the boy's profile and smiled when he recognized Sharon in him. "He's beautiful," he said. Sharon smiled proudly, stroking the fist that was still firmly closed around the fabric of her pajamas. Somehow Andy was sure that even in sleep he was not about to let go any time soon.

"You're saying that because he is taking after you," she teased in a warm voice that he had never heard her use before. She sounded almost flirty there.

"You think?" Andy shifted to find a more comfortable position in the bed. The pounding in his head had lessened, but it was still very present. He pulled Sharon's covers up around the little boy to which he hummed softly in his sleep.

"He is definitely taking after you in some regards, too," he said, finding her eyes over their child between them. He was usually annoyed by all that humming she did, had been convinced so far that she did it purely to annoy him, but she hummed differently at home.

"Sometimes when he is asleep, I still see the fragile little baby," Sharon said, her voice wavering. "He was critical when he was born, so they wouldn't even let me hold him."

"Was I there to be with you through that?" he asked her, suddenly aching to find out more about that fateful night that still shook Sharon to the core two years later. He watched her pull the sleeping child against her, fussing with the blankets to avoid looking at him while tears were gathering in her eyes. He wasn't sure whether they were caused by the memories or by the current situation. Maybe it was a bit of both.

"We couldn't reach you," she said after a long while. "I had him on my own. Patrice had to step out for an hour. Something about the dosage the hospital was giving her granddaughter."

Lost in the memory, Sharon had obviously forgotten that he didn't know anything about Patrice's granddaughter, but he decided to file the thought away for later, if at all. Instead he gently put his hand over Sharon's.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It wasn't your fault." She smiled self-consciously. "I'm sorry. This whole situation is making me emotional. I guess I need some sleep." She reached behind her and switched off her bedside lamp, leaving only his to illuminate the room. "Good night," she murmured when she settled down and closed her eyes, her face close to the top of Paddy's head. It was hard to reconcile the barely human nuisance he had made Sharon Raydor out to be with this woman in front of him. For the first time it occurred to him how difficult it had to be for her to find her husband replaced with the guy he had been years ago. The guy who detested her.

He switched his beside lamp off as well and turned onto his back, barely suppressing a groan at the pain that flared back up again immediately. He stared at the ceiling where the light of the street lamps outside drew crazy patterns as it filtered through the curtains. Sharon shifted in her sleep, her breathing now in sync with Paddy's. Andy felt oddly left out of a family he had no recollection of starting. He wanted to sleep too, but sleep wouldn't come in this house that was his and wasn't.

His body was tired and his joints were aching, but his mind was wide awake, so he reached for his cell phone that had been quietly charging on the beside table all day. Maybe the gadget could give him a clue as to who he was nowadays. Maybe it would jog his memory. He was pleased to find that he still used his birth date as a code. Once he had unlocked the screen, Sharon and Paddy were looking back at him. The picture was older, maybe from about a year ago, and Paddy was a happily grinning, chubby-cheeked baby, arms raised in excitement as Sharon smiled and kissed his cheek, holding him steady. So far it looked as if Andy actually was the besotted father and husband Provenza had made him out to be. It felt strange when the closest thing to a relationship that he remembered as recent had been three dates with the same blond thirty-something.

He clicked through a few snapshots, most of them of Paddy and Sharon, but some of them showing Nicole as well. He had seen so many photos today, he thought, his heart sinking. If they hadn't made him remember, why would these? Instead he went for the text messages. The most recent conversation was between him and Provenza, Provenza asking him to come to the precinct tomorrow to give his statement on what had happened. I have no fucking idea what even happened, he wanted to tell him. That is why I am in this mess. He glanced over at Sharon and Paddy, but they didn't seem bothered by the light coming from the screen, both out cold.

He opened the second conversation and scrolled through it. A text from the early evening of the night he had been attacked, asking him when he would be home. He sneered at the fact that she signed all of her texts "XOXO, Sharon". It seemed too childish, somehow. He had replied that he would be late since Major Crimes was busy with a case. Frowning, he went back to Provenza's latest text message and scrolled up. And sure as hell there it was, Provenza telling him to "get out of that office" and go to a bar for a beer slash cranberry and soda. And then there was his own reply, telling Provenza that he couldn't make it because he had to make it home in time for dinner with Sharon. He checked the messages again. Both had been sent only minutes apart from each other on that fateful night. But if he had told Sharon that they were working a case, which they obviously hadn't been, and he had told Provenza that he needed to be home – where had he been?

For a moment, that familiar panic that came with a blackout flared up, making his palms go sweaty and his cheeks burn. Then he calmed down. This was not something he had done in a drunken stupor. This was something he had planned and executed at his full mental capacity. Or so he hoped. Looking for clues, he went back and found a series of texts that had been exchanged with a number that wasn't saved in the phone's memory. Intrigued, he scrolled through the few messages.

"What about tonight?" The message had been sent two days ago at 4:56 p.m. He had replied instantly: "I said no texting. Meet me at 8 p.m. The usual place." The reply came swiftly: "Can't wait." A sudden epiphany made him check his caller logs and he found that he had spoken on the phone with the person the number belonged to several times over the past two weeks. The calls had all been brief, mostly two or three minutes long, all of them having occurred during the day.

When he was away from his wife? He read through the messages again, but they were innocuous enough except for the "no texting"-part. Still, he couldn't help but wonder whether he had had an affair. Why else would he have lied to both Sharon and Provenza about the meeting with this person? He looked over at Sharon who was sleeping soundly with their child cradled to her. He shouldn't have felt guilty. He hardly even knew who Sharon Raydor was while the kid was a complete stranger to him. But then he had never been unfaithful to his ex-wife even during his worst times as an alcoholic. He had always been at bars, had always picked fights, had even driven his car while he had been drunk – even though that had been only once. He had flirted with countless women because it had made him feel good about himself, but he had never had sex with any of them. Why was he throwing away a life that had obviously made this version of him happy?

The lights of a passing car briefly illuminated the room, his gaze landing on the picture of them in front of the Eiffel tower. They looked happy. They had only gotten married a few years ago. They had had another child at their age. The pictures on the laptop downstairs had looked as if they were happy, close. Or was there something nobody was telling him? Was Sharon Raydor as bossy and cold at home as she was at work? Did she just appear placid and pleasant now because she had been worried about him? Had the kid put a strain on their relationship? Was Sharon still shutting him out because she couldn't forgive that he had not been there for her when she had given birth to Paddy? She had said otherwise, but he could imagine the pain that would come with giving birth all alone, not even close to term. She must have known that the baby's chances of survival were slim, must have been so afraid. He locked the screen and tossed the phone aside. Traumatic events like that could easily put a strain on a marriage. He had seen couples drift apart because of less.

Were they only together because of the kid? Paddy had seemed devastated at the prospect of spending the night with only one parent. Maybe the circumstances surrounding his birth caused them to make sacrifices for him that would have been otherwise unthinkable. With how he saw Sharon, it was easy to believe that their marriage was a sham, all the happy pictures just a facade they presented to the world. Maybe that was all that Raydor had wanted: A husband and a kid to show the world how successful she was not only professionally but also in her private life. You didn't climb the ranks of the LAPD if people couldn't relate to you. Especially as a woman. She had and she still was.

He looked at her in the semi-darkness of the bedroom, her face half in shadow. He had no idea whether she was any of the things he had made her out to be. Maybe all the snappiness was just a facade to hide a big heart. He turned onto his side and caught her scent. She smelled of the lotion he had found in the bathroom, but her natural scent blended into it, making it feel whole. He closed his eyes, inhaling it deeply. And finally it came to him. This scent, her scent, was home. That was why it had made his heart swell back in the bathroom, why it had made him want to wrap her up in his arms and cradle her to him even though his mind was telling her that he despised her.

There was no way that that Andy, the person he had been for the past few years, hadn't loved her. His body remembered even though he didn't.

And something else suddenly became clear to him, weighing on his mind and his conscience like a rock: Maybe he had been on his way to destroy all this before he had lost his memory. Maybe the guy who had hit him over the head had actually done him a favor.

Or maybe it was already too late and it was only a matter of time until it all came out.

A/N: Sorry for the long wait! First I was busy, then my laptop broke. Pesky little things those windows upgrades...