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They pull back from the kiss feeling lighter than they have in days, connected around the moment, around honesty and love. Nothing concrete in place but the foundations they’ve been building feel steady again.
It’s enough.
The newfound ease between them settles. It lingers there like a summer breeze, cooling the raw emotions. Their smiles drift off and they sit in contented silence, feet immersed in ice water and the memories of the day flitting around them.
Carina breathes out slowly. Soft with it, watching her wife relax, relief on both their faces leading to tender honesty.
“He reminded me of you.” She says quietly, not wanting to cause Maya pain but needing to say it. To admit it out loud to herself as much as Maya. “I think it made me - ah -” she struggles with it, “- overprotective.”
“He?
“Davey”
Maya doesn't freeze up as Carina feared she might. Instead her fingers smooth a sedating path over Carina's hand, stroke at the pulse in her wrist where it dances rapidly.
“I can see that.” Maya says quietly, she'd seen it too, tried not to admit it, pushed it aside hard and fast to concentrate on work. Compartmentalizing. She frowns at herself, she’s too good at that. But her wife? With her beautiful and tender heart, hot Italian temper, of course she would see it. Of course she would call it out.
Surprised, Carina replies “You could?”
“Yeah. Wanting to please his Dad. The way they were all willing to lie and pretend it was okay.” Maya shrugs like it’s simple. It’s not. But it is the truth.
Carina nods, “Everything you’ve told me about your Dad pushing you. Relentlessly. No matter the pain it caused. It felt the same.” She breathes out hard. Angry again, “The way he spoke to his own child. To us when we tried to help him.”
Maya squeezes her hand, waits her out.
“It reminded me of my Dad too.” Carina admits, feeling the weight lift from her chest as she says it. “It made me so angry.”
“I’m sorry.”
She closes her eyes, “Me too.” Carina agrees, knowing the torment they’ve both experienced at the hands of their fathers is different yet somehow the same. Something else they share now. Something she’s so determined they will leave behind them. Breaking the cycle. Just the two of them, or with children one day, it will end with them.
“I let it get the better of me,” She says, voice soft. “I was already mad because we were -” she blinks, sighs, doesn't want to take them backwards now they’re here, “- and watching him lie to protect himself, even when I told him his son could die. Berating the other child for standing up to him? Threatening him?”
Carina shakes her head, curses under her breath.
Maya finds no words and no need for them. Her fingers cling and she feels Carina’s do the same.
“I thought to myself-” Carina's voice cracks around the truth of it, “-it could have been you.” She grimaces, hates saying it out loud, hates to even think about it. Her eyes shine, “It could have easily been your dad pushing you to that extreme.”
“He did,” Maya agrees. “More than once.” It’s still a struggle to admit the faults she forced herself to be blind to for so many years, but this one comes easier than she expects. Eye’s forward still haunting her.
“You are very strong.” Carina ignores the rush of color to her wife's cheeks, the way she fidgets around the compliment. “You are brave and -” Carina puffs away the emotion, shakes her head.
She knows it's the heat, making things simmer. Bubble to the surface. Knows too that it's the emotion of the last few days, the fear and sadness that had set them apart. Being at odds with her wife so soon in their marriage like a knife to the heart that they carried with them everywhere they went. Now she wants to say so much more, to push every doubt her father ever instilled from Maya’s head. To remind her over and over again that she’s worthy of kindness, of love. Unconditionally.
Carina can't wish away the pain of youth, brush trauma under the rug. Instead she does the one thing she can.
“I love you.”
“I know and I love you too,” Maya answers immediately, offering a barely there smile. “Every day. Even when you're mad at me.”
Carina huffs, narrows her eyes but smiles. Knowing she has a temper, not really ashamed of it.
Maya grins, teases a little. Needing not to think about it anymore. “I'm pretty sure everyone here is terrified of pissing you off. Maybe even more than Bailey.”
“Stop it.” Carina laughs.
“Sullivan -”
“He deserved it.” Carina states. Maya makes a face and Carina sighs, gives in a little, “He deserved most of it.”
Maya laughs but doesn't disagree, “He apologized.” When she sees the look on her wife's face Maya reaches out again, takes both hands in hers. “I’m not saying he’s forgiven. But it goes a long way, saying sorry. And we need to be a team.”
Carina watches their combined hands, the way the light dances over the ring she never thought she’d want to wear. The ring she can't imagine being without.
“He saved my life.” Maya offers, knowing given all they do it’s the least anyone would expect, but it's still true. Still valid.
“Then he gets to live another day.” Carina smirks, and leans forward, mouth an open invitation for a kiss. “That’s the best I can do right now.”
“Okay.” Maya laughs, kissing Carina softly. “You’re a very scary woman, Doctor Deluca.”
“Deluca-Bishop.”
Kissing her again Maya laughs but doesn't argue, no point really she kinda likes the sound of it.