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Witnessing Elizabeth doze off in his passenger seat wasn’t an occurrence Rio thought he’d ever get used to, let alone experience twice in the same day.
The shred of sunlight that had been lingering when they had driven back at sundown has long since sunken into the inky skyline, the blanket of night overtaking the interior of the car and leaving only the light from the center console to illuminate her features. The urge to brush away the stray hair that’s fallen across her forehead is nearly overwhelming, but he steels himself as their destination comes into view against the night sky.
When he turns right onto the gravel lot, Elizabeth begins to stir next to him, making a soft noise of protest at being woken up as her eyes flutter open.
Rio does his best to suppress the memories that resurface in regards to the familiarity of it.
She takes a minute to take stock of her surroundings, her heavy-lidded eyes glazing over the front of the sleek, modern building they’re parked in front of. He watches as she curls the stray hair from her forehead to behind her ear, his gaze locked on the action, before her eyes fall on him.
He wets his lips and purses them together, diverting his gaze from her as he unbuckles his seat belt and pushes his door open. It takes her a minute to catch up with the abrupt shift in his demeanor, but when she does, she’s doing the same and meeting him halfway around the hood of his car. Rio’s fingers twitch at his side as he stops himself from lowering a hand to her back, and he opts for leading them towards the entrance as Elizabeth falls into step behind him.
The lobby of the complex is as suave as every other piece of property Rio has connections to. All but one of the walls are an understated shade of orange, the wall behind the receptionist’s desk being an opaque black with uniform golden accents. The same shade of black coats the cylindrical air ducts curving from one corner of the ceiling to the end of its diagonal counterpart, giving the interior of the lobby a hint of an industrial motif.
Rio casts a glance behind his shoulder to catch Elizabeth marveling at the sophisticated interior, her lips slightly parted in awe as her eyes scan the intricate detailing of the framed art mounted on the wall behind a section for seating. As apparent to him as it had been when he had first encroached on her home, he knows that she has as much of an affinity for design as she has a need for a break-neck level of order and organization.
They reach the elevator without incident nor conversation, Rio pressing the button for the fourth floor and falling back a step to leave ample room between him and Elizabeth. He clasps his hands together in front of him, rolling his shoulders back as the elevator doors slide closed. She seems to buzz with energy beside him, unspoken words causing the tension between them to thicken until it’s nearly tangible in the air.
By the time they’ve reached their floor and Rio has led them to a red door labeled 4B, the tension is nearly insufferable. He’s offered no conversational pieces about his ornate yet allegedly off-grid apartment unit, and Elizabeth has been uncharacteristically silent since having arrived at the complex.
He thumbs through the few keys hanging from the chain connected to his car fob before inserting one into the lock on the door, twisting the knob and pushing the broad door open. He strides in first, leaving Elizabeth to wander in after him, her wide blue eyes immediately absorbing the details of another space he’s occupied.
And as he watches her do so he thinks that maybe he’s really lost his mind for good this time, considering where revealing his other living space had landed them. Although this unit is, for the most part, untenanted, having only been used a handful of times for one-off emergency situations, revealing it to her still relinquishes a sliver of vulnerability he isn’t sure he should be sparing for her. But, then again, she did the same for him no more than two hours ago, spilling her sorrows about her trip of a husband and his manipulative bullshit, so maybe this makes them even in some way. Fifty-fifty, he thinks wryly, pocketing his keys and moving to shut the door behind her.
She continues to scan the contents of the apartment, unfazed by his movement behind her. He watches as her eyes glaze over the minimal wall décor, the form of the black leather sectional tucked into the corner beneath a sizable bay window; the open doorway connecting the bedroom to the living area.
Elizabeth’s eyes return to him, her expression reserved until she realizes that his eyes had already been on her. She’s instantaneously flushed, and Rio regards her through hooded eyes as her cheeks and neck turn an exquisite shade of rose.
His tongue darts out to wet his lips as he leans back against the granite counter, only allowing his gaze to roam from her face when her own gaze falls to his mouth. The act is achingly familiar, their attraction for one another always being shown in a push-pull sort of format, but Rio slips on a mask of indifference as soon as he catches himself.
Elizabeth herself seems to snap out of her trance at his shift in demeanor, a flash of hurt coloring her expression before it’s gone in the next instant.
“How long are we supposed to hide out here?” She asks, clearing her throat conspicuously and diverting her gaze to anywhere else but Rio.
“‘Till I know we’re in the clear. Cleanup crew is gon’ need some time,” he drawls, his statement vague enough to, in theory, give nothing away, but his words are loaded just for her.
It takes her a minute to absorb that information before she begins to nod gently, her eyes glued to a piece of art above the couch. Then, much to Rio’s stupefaction, she lets out a manic bark of a laugh.
“You know, I am so sick of almost dying.”
And Rio gets that, truly, he does, it’s just — he nearly snorts at hearing it come out of her mouth, of all people. A noise of incredulity slips past his lips despite his best efforts, and it’s enough to make her head snap back in his direction.
“Yeah?” he responds cooly, purposefully slurring the syllables and deepening his voice so that his message is simple yet loaded. “That’s the job. Safety ain’t a given.”
She bristles ever so slightly and just when he thinks she might shrivel backwards and place distance between them, she inches forward, the click of her shoe as prominent as a firecracker being set off. When she doesn’t reply, he pushes forward.
“You wanted in on the game, mama. That’s the risk you run when you decide to play ball but don’t read the waiver you signin’.” he drawls, his voice raspy and slightly teasing but there’s honesty behind every word. He returns her advancement with one of his own in what’s left of the space between them, taking a step closer so that she has to tilt her chin upwards to maintain eye contact with him. He spots that glint of defiance in her eyes that he’s found himself missing these past few weeks, the fire that was once gaudily burning between them dulled by the pain of their past.
Her defenses shoot up around her in an instant, and as much as he wants to place his hands on hers to deter her from slotting the bricks of her wall in place, he instinctively begins to do the same. Their close vicinity to one another seems incongruous with the emotional barrier forming between them, but he can’t find it in himself to place distance between them. If anything, he wants to inch closer; wants to put his hands on her, feel her skin beneath the pads of his fingers and coax out of her the impulses he knows she’s been repressing just as much as he’s been.
Rio doesn’t just believe; he knows that he could unravel her with one expertly-calculated touch, but he thinks that that fact is at least part of what drove her away. He wedged a permanent block between them when he pushed her too far over the edge, forced her hand without realizing she had already reached her limit with playing into his games.
“You’ve never told me why you let me in. Clearly if I was too stupid to see the risks I was taking, you had to have seen that I was a basket case from the start. So why did you do it?” Each sentence is said in rapid succession to the previous one, like the question had been teetering on the tip of her tongue until she couldn’t bear not knowing the answer any longer.
Truth is, he had been trying to find the answer to the same question for quite some time now.
“I saw somethin’ in you. I knew you could’a been more outside of the life you'd been livin’,” he replies, his voice soft and open in hopes of diffusing her anger with a rare presentation of honesty.
If she’s flattered by his words, she does an expert job of hiding it, her expression no less guarded than it had been two minutes ago.
“That’s what you said when you gave me the keys to the storage unit. You tried to pawn your evidence off on me with false confidence and charming words,” she practically hisses the words at him, her anger blending in with her sorrow in a way he isn’t even sure she’s aware of. He clenches his jaw, staving off the pang of regret and defensive remark that threatens to spill from his mouth at her words. She isn’t entirely wrong, after all.
She’s wrong about the confidence he instilled in her having been false. His belief in her capabilities had never been fabricated, not from the day he first met her. He hadn’t known exactly what it was he saw in her back then, but it had intrigued him. It was something worth exploring, he thought, something valuable, even if she hadn’t yet grasped that about herself.
Maybe he got some sort of sick satisfaction knowing that this jarring appearance in her life had something to do with her being able to figure that out.
“Our evidence, darlin’. Bein’ partners applies to more than a cut of the profit, you know that,” he tells her because he can’t seem to help himself, can’t seem to resist reminding her of all the ways that she asked for this, even if she had ended up with more than he knows she was bargaining for.
And this, at least, seems to relieve her of some of the sorrow that had been brought about by confronting his manipulation as her eyes spark with righteous anger. He’s always played a dirty and reckless game but that doesn’t mean he enjoys seeing her face warped in pain more than he had a few hours earlier.
“Are you ever going to admit that I was more than just work to you? You tell me I can’t have it both ways in your world, but you’ve been trying to have it both ways with me ever since…” Elizabeth trails off, the words suddenly caught in her throat as she broaches the subject of their past intimacy.
Rio can’t resist the chance to regain the upper hand as a lecherous smirk spread across his face, fully intending to take the opportunity to tease her as it presents itself.
He doesn’t get the chance to, though, because even though her cheeks have been tinted a noticeable shade of pink, she doesn’t allow him to divert the matter at hand.
“This thing between us,” she gestures loosely with one hand between them, narrowly avoiding contact with his abdomen, “wasn’t just one-sided. You told me that I’m just work to you, that I mean nothing more to you than business, that I’m expendable, but I call bull.”
Now it’s Rio’s turn to bristle, his hackles raising as an eery frost settles over him, his shoulders straightening and his expression hardening and he can’t help it when he glances away from her, licking his lips and clenching his jaw in an attempt to regain control of himself.
Everything Elizabeth has said has hit too close to the truth he’s desperately tried to stave off. She’s peeled back his skin and thrown a bucket of boiling water on the exposed flesh and suddenly he’s pissed.
If at all possible he stalks even closer to her, looming over her so that he feels some semblance of the control that he’s lost as he sneers, “You still think you somethin’ special just cause you ain’t got a bullet in your head yet? Just ‘cause you’d still be causin’ problems from six feet under? You haven’t been nothin’ but an inconvenience since the day I met you, darlin’.”
His words are like poison darts, and he forces himself to ignore the stab of remorse at the pain that flashes behind her eyes for a few moments before she’s briskly regaining her composure and returning the fire he’s spat with equal tenacity.
“You might as well throw in that you’ve been using me since the day you met me if we’re going down this road.”
“I used you?” Rio lets out an incredulous bark of laughter, his fingers clenching into fists at his side, “What d’you call wrappin’ yo’ legs ‘round me in that big ole bed o’ yours before slidin’ me cash and kickin’ me out? Wanted to keep me a secret so you could keep on playin’ Mrs. Cleaver to yo’ cradle-robbin’ husband?”
He knows exactly where plunging his blade will weaken her the most, knows that using their intimacy is the surest way to make her falter, and in that moment he just wants her to hurt, wants her to feel the pain he did when she fired off three rounds into his torso. She hadn’t just stabbed him in the back; she had looked him right in the eye as she did it. She had left him to bleed, and maybe, just maybe, that had hurt the most above all of his wounds.
He knew he hadn’t forgiven her for it, but he had thought he was past grieving it.
“That’s not how it was and you know it,” her voice reaches him through the anger clouding his thoughts, her voice an octave from breaking as she jabs an accusatory finger at his throat, “don’t act like you wouldn’t make the same choice I did if you had to choose between me and your son.”
And this is enough to give Rio pause despite the rage swirling in his chest, a beat passing where all he can hear is the exchanging of labored breaths as his tongue darts out over his lips. His brows furrow slightly, the fire in his eyes seeming to extinguish almost instantaneously as doubt begins to etch itself into his features.
“What are you talkin’ about?"
Elizabeth falters slightly at the question, genuinely shocked by his confusion. Her eyes widen when the realization dawns on her that she let something slip, and in that moment all of the fight drains out of her as she lets out a resigned sigh.
“I— I thought you knew,” she starts, stumbling over her words as she attempts to organize an explanation, “I told you he took— I guess I just assumed you—“
She huffs, frustration bubbling in her throat at her inability to articulate her point before she tries once again.
“I didn’t want to be out. At— at least, not at first. Dean, he— he took my kids and left me a note on the goddamn fridge declaring it. I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing with you without him breathing down my neck, reminding me that he would do whatever it took to protect them. I had to choose between them… and you,” she confesses, her voice thick with emotion.
Rio casts his gaze aside, overwhelmed by the information he’s giving her and infuriated with himself that he hadn’t caught onto the why of her departure all those months ago. He had been so blinded by his own pain, his own humiliation at having been lured into such a state of vulnerability only to be kicked out of her house in the hours following. That day in her bedroom had changed everything for him, had evoked such an immense degree of passion he had long since found foreign amongst the scene of casual hook-ups. He hadn’t wanted to investigate the reasoning behind her decision; he had been too caught up in the feelings her betrayal had stirred within him.
He can’t help the slight bite to his words at the reminder of those feelings when he replies, “So when he says ‘jump’, you ask ‘how high?’”
The crack of skin against skin ricochets off the walls of the apartment before his brain begins to register the stinging in his left cheek.
Elizabeth’s chest is heaving with the rapid frequency of her breaths, her hand still hovering in the space between them as she glares daggers into his skull. He gingerly raises a hand to the side of his face, dragging his fingers across the area she’s just struck as his jaw works furiously. Through her outraged expression brimming with indignation he sees a flicker of fear in her cobalt eyes, like she knows just how far over the line she’s stepped, and any instinctive retaliation that had risen within him is immediately extinguished.
He lowers his hand and levels her with a gaze that gives nothing away, scanning the features of her face like the pages of a book he’s read more times than he can keep track of. Her expression is open until it isn’t, and she’s abruptly shutting her cover the second she realizes he’s seeking out answers that she doesn’t want to provide him with.
“If I had to wash your fake cash and drop cars in drug dens to be able to afford my mortgage, do you really think I could’ve scraped up enough for a custody lawyer? For a criminal one when he turned you and me into the feds?” She hisses, her face cold and audacious, daring him to contradict her.
“Would’a just been pocket change to me,” he mumbles, his face so close to hers that his breath fans out across her forehead, ruffling her bangs slightly.
“Are you suggesting you would’ve given me money for a lawyer?” She asks, the disbelief as clear in her voice as the ingenuity as she searches his eyes, squinting up at him.
“You could’ve asked.”
“I wouldn’t have taken it.”
“I know, ma,” he mumbles with an affectionate smirk, reaching up with an outstretched pinky to brush a few strands of her hair from her forehead. She still hasn’t cut her hair, her bangs nearly reaching her hooded eyelids now. He briefly considers admitting to her that he prefers it that way.
Then, as if remembering something she had forgotten up until that moment, Elizabeth straightens, shifting her body away from his touch.
“I asked you for money when I had Turner on my back. You claimed you couldn’t give me any,” she tells him slowly, and the accusatory squint comes back full force.
There’s no hesitation nor dishonesty in his words when Rio responds, “You said it yourself, my money was cooked. ‘Tween that and losin’ the dealership, money wasn’t flowin’ like it used to.”
After a second she begins to nod slowly, her gaze less charged as it scans their surroundings.
And the words hang unspoken between them, neither wanting to bring up the variety of help he settled on providing as opposed to financial aid. Tension balloons in the space between them, the timeline of their discussion bordering on the event neither of them are equipped to discuss, let alone acknowledge.
When the friction seems to reach its suffocating quantum, Elizabeth takes a step back from where there had been half a foot of distance between them. Eyes glazing over the interior of the apartment one last time, she seems to make a decision, turning on her heel and striding through the doorway to the bedroom without another word. Rio observes her, predictably intrigued, unable to refrain from lowering his gaze as he does so.
The shutting of a door shakes him from his stupor, his gaze registering the shut bathroom door, and right, he thinks, curtly remembering where they are, what they are, and how they’ve gotten here. What they used to be, and the newfound ambits of their relationship that he simply needs to accept.
His jaw rocks for a few moments, his eyes glued to the door as numerous thoughts, prospects, and desires that will never come to fruition float through his head. In the end, he simply shakes it, huffing out a breath of irritation before moving to draw the curtains on the opposite side of the room.