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2018 - Manhattan, New York
This entire night had been a small miracle. Olivia had gotten home at a reasonable hour. Noah was in bed and asleep by 8:30. Olivia’s phone hadn’t rung with a work emergency since she’d gotten home. It was 10 p.m. and she was just about to settle in with a small glass of wine and a book she’d been meaning to start.
Everything seemed perfect. But Olivia should have known that was usually when everything went to shit.
Just as she was about to turn the first page in her book, Olivia’s phone buzzed on the bedside table. She groaned, shoving her readers up her nose by their bridge as she reached for the phone, fully expecting it to be Fin or Amanda or Dodds or somebody telling her there was some kind of problem.
But this text wasn’t something she expected at all.
“ Hey bayby!!!!! I missssssss you. Luv you sooooo munch alwayz have.”
Olivia couldn’t help but laugh at the terribly misspelled words and the overuse of exclamation points. She’d been on the wrong end of a missent text before and she wondered who the lucky person was who was supposed to get that clearly drunk message.
She was just about to plug her phone back in when an icy chill ran up her spine.
What if this wasn’t a mistake? She knew William Lewis was dead (of course, she saw it happen with her own eyes) but it would have been just like him to send her some kind of drugged-out message before he struck again.
And even if it wasn’t him, she’d put away a lot of sickos over the years. It could be any number of them.
Olivia checked the number again and it was definitely one she didn’t know. It didn’t even look American.
With shaky fingers, Olivia typed back a message of her own.
“ Who is this?”
She tried to be patient, really. She waited for at least 15 minutes before the lack of a reply made her get out of her warm bed, completely abandon her wine and book, turn on every light in her apartment, and check on Noah.
She thought maybe she should sit in her living room with her gun and guard the door. Just in case.
She’d let Lewis get the drop on her before. Whoever this was wasn’t going to get the best of her again.
2018 - Rome, Italy
To say it’d been a long night was an understatement.
Part celebration at closing their case, part mourning the death of yet another CI, and a full night of Elliot drinking himself stupid trying to forget it all.
Tia cursed under her breath, not for the first time that night, as she finally hauled her bulky partner into her apartment and shoved him down on her couch. It was just about 4 a.m. and she was bone tired. She should have taken him home to his wife, but she thought it was best that his 10-year-old son didn’t see him looking so sloppy.
After making sure Elliot wasn’t going to roll off the couch and onto the floor, Tia dropped her keys and her phone in the bowl on the coffee table before striding back to her bedroom to change out of her work clothes.
When she came back out 10 minutes later to brush her teeth and grab a bottle of water to put at her bedside, she saw her partner giggling like a fool while staring at the screen of her cell phone.
“Don’t you have one of your own?” Tia asked, walking up behind where Elliot’s head lay on the arm of her couch and snatching the phone out of his hands.
“‘S’dead,” Elliot said. “Gimme.”
“You can’t use technology when you’re sober, Elliot,” Tia said. “I’m not letting you break my phone because you’re trying to use it while drunk.”
Elliot pouted but Tia didn’t care.
She looked down at the screen to see what he’d been doing. He had her texts open and he was sending a new one.
“ Hey bayby!!!!! I missssssss you. Luv you sooooo munch alwayz have.”
She couldn’t help but chuckle not just at the message itself, but at how in love Elliot still was with Kathy after all these years.
“Texting your wife goodnight?” Tia asked. “Or maybe I should say good morning.”
“Yeah, mmm,” Elliot mumbled, rolling into the throw pillow under his head. “I love her. Loved her for years. Miss her so much.”
Although Tia had never been in what anyone would call a serious relationship, she admired the Stablers. Elliot clearly loved his wife and Kathy loved him back. She was sure Kathy would be sending a message back any second now, asking why Tia was professing her love. She’d tell Kathy that Elliot partied too hard at the bar and she’d brought him back to her place to sleep it off. Kathy would thank her for handling him and then she’d go to bed.
Her phone chimed as she was grabbing the water bottle out of the refrigerator.
Except it didn’t say what Tia expected.
“ Who is this?”
Tia knit her eyebrows together. She knew Kathy had her number. They were just texting last week.
When she opened the message she realized that the number Elliot typed in wasn’t Kathy’s. It was close, a New York number like his own, but he’d obviously tried to type her number in instead of using the contacts and he’d failed miserably. Between his lack of technology sense and his fat fingers, he didn’t stand a chance while drunk.
Tia decided it was better not to respond. She was tired and she didn’t feel the need to fix Elliot’s goof. He could just tell Kathy about it when he went home later today.
She took her phone and her water back to her room and settled down for some much-needed sleep.
2018 - Manhattan, New York
Olivia tried to be good, really. She sat in the living room with her gun for over an hour, watching the door. But nothing came. No perps, no more messages, nothing.
It was probably nothing. A wrong number. But something in Olivia’s gut just couldn’t let it go.
So she put her gun back in the safe, took a deep breath, and hit the call button for the number that texted her.
It rang four times before someone on the other end picked up.
“Ciao?” the voice on the other end of the phone said. It sounded like a woman with an Italian accent.
“Who is this?” Olivia asked.
“Who is this ?” the woman on the other end asked. “You called me.”
“It’s Olivia,” she said. “You texted me first.”
“No, I didn’t,” the woman said, starting to sound more alert. “I was asleep and you woke me up.”
“Yes you did,” Olivia insisted. “An hour ago. And I don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to pull with the ‘I love you’ stuff but you should know, I’m a highly decorated NYPD Lieutenant and I won’t stand for any kind of pranks or threats from anyone. Especially not in the middle of the night.”
2018 - Rome, Italy
Elliot texted another woman. Not just any other woman, but a highly decorated NYPD Lieutenant who woke her up just to ream her out.
Elliot was ex-NYPD. Even though Tia was a detective, it didn’t take one to realize that what Elliot did was no accident. He knew this woman, this Olivia , who wasn’t his wife and was part of the NYPD where Elliot spent so many years of his life.
Tia wondered for a moment if she should tell this woman the truth. Should she mention Elliot’s name? Should she tell this woman, this Lieutenant , the truth and see if it got a big laugh out of her?
But then Tia decided she didn’t know this woman and she didn’t owe her anything.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Tia said. “It must have been a mistake. A wrong number. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Lieutenant.”
“Just don’t let it happen again,” Olivia said before hanging up the phone without saying goodbye.
Tia smirked to herself, now knowing a secret about Elliot that he would never have told her if he was sober. He was in love with another woman, someone who still worked at the NYPD. The Stabler marriage, which Tia always looked to as the pinnacle of happy, domestic life, wasn’t as happy or domestic as she thought.
Tia wondered if Kathy knew. Did she know her husband was in love with someone else?
She thought Elliot would never be the kind to let his eye wander from his pretty, petite, blonde wife. But it obviously had. Tia couldn’t wait to confront Elliot about it when they finally awoke for the day. But when she got up a few hours later, Elliot was already gone, leaving a dirty coffee cup in her sink and nothing else behind.
Well, nothing else but his secret.
And if he’d been willing to let his eyes wander back in New York, she wondered how much of a chance she stood and if she could make him do the same in Rome.
2022 - Queens, New York
Tia popped her neck as she walked out of Elliot’s room. He was making breakfast in the kitchen and she couldn’t help but admire the way he moved around the space, sliding her Advil and coconut water for her headache.
“I’ve never had this much Grappa in my life,” he said, picking up the empty bottle and carrying it to the recycling bin.
“I’m Italian, and I’ll never drink Grappa again ever,” Tia said. “That’s how much I had.”
And it was true. They’d had a lot to drink.
“We’re celebrating,” Elliot said.
Tia nodded.
“Yeah, we had a good time, I think?” she said.
“You don’t remember?” Elliot asked.
“No, I do. I remember some things,” Tia said. “The important parts, I guess, yeah.”
“Good.”
Actually, what Tia remembered was that she made a multitude of advances on Elliot and he hadn’t noticed. In fact, he kept looking at his phone as if he was waiting for it to ring. As if he was hoping that someone else was going to give him a call.
It annoyed Tia, honestly. Kathy had been dead for over a year and Tia had seen this trip as her chance to finally win Elliot over. She’d been unsuccessful for years, despite knowing about Elliot’s little secret named Olivia .
Elliot had passed out on the couch the night before after telling some ridiculous story about the Albanian mob and a rocket launcher.
She’d dragged herself to his room and slept naked in his sheets, hoping at some point he would wake up and come join her. But he never did.
She’d never confronted him about that text message from years ago. But maybe now was the time.
“Except her name,” Tia said, watching Elliot closely.
“Whose name?” he asked, confused.
“You said there was a woman you were in love with,” Tia said.
She watched as looks of confusion and concern passed across Elliot’s face. She was hoping to see that he was lost like it couldn’t possibly be true because there wasn’t anyone in his life left to love. Not in that way.
But that wasn’t the look he gave her. Elliot was nervous, concerned that he’d said someone’s name aloud, and let a deep dark secret slip.
“I did?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.
That told Tia all she needed to know. She was never going to have a shot with Elliot. His precious Olivia was always going to hold the key to his heart and if Kathy couldn’t hold a candle to her, Tia didn’t stand a chance.
She knew what she had to do
“Love shouldn’t be complicated. Love affairs, yes. They can get messy. But love, that’s different,” she said. “I’m happy for you. I booked a flight, by the way. No reason for me to stay, is there?”
She didn’t miss how he didn’t even look sad at the idea of her leaving.
2024 - Manhattan, New York
Although Olivia had been reluctant to let Noah spend half of his Christmas break and New Year’s in Disneyland with the McCanns, she was now thanking past Olivia for saying yes.
With Noah gone, Elliot had taken up a near-permanent residence on the other side of her bed. They’d gone round after round making love whenever they felt like it and ate reheated Chinese food under her covers. Without an 11-year-old who could wander in at any moment, Olivia didn’t have to wear anything more than a pair of panties and Elliot’s discarded henley and he didn’t have to wear anything more than his boxer briefs for lounging around.
They’d considered staying naked for the whole vacation but found it too tempting to do anything other than devour each other. And as fun as that was, they were both practically 60 and breaks were good.
It also gave them time to talk.
Little by little since Elliot got back from his undercover operation earlier in the month she’d been filling him in on the things he’d missed when he was in Italy.
They started with Noah’s adoption and eventually touched on Tucker and Lewis. But now she was starting to fill in the more mundane things. The smaller things that happened on the day-to-day.
The two of them lay facing each other in her bed, heads bent together, lost in their own little world. Elliot was tracing delicate patterns on her hip, gently ghosting the scars from Ohio that now lived there.
She’d been trying to think of something else interesting to tell him.
“Oh, here’s one,” she said. “Back in 2018, I thought I had another stalker.”
“Another one?” Elliot asked. “God, what’s the cap on that for one lifetime? You’ve had plenty.”
“I got this really weird text,” she said. “It could have been a mistake. Whoever it was called me baby, said they loved me and missed me. But it was horribly misspelled like a toddler wrote it.”
“Did you ever figure out who sent it?” Elliot asked, sliding his arm around her back and cupping her ass, pulling her closer to him, as if cocooning her inside his body would protect her from a six-year-old text message.
“I called the number and some Italian woman answered,” Olivia said. “She said it was a mistake and I told her never to text me again.”
Elliot chuckled.
“Sounds like you,” he said, leaning down to place a kiss on the crown of her head. “You know, speaking of Italians, I know you said you were ready to hear more about my time in Italy. I have some videos on my phone. Lizzie helped me upload them to a private YouTube account. Want to see?”
“I’d like that,” Olivia said, snuggling up against Elliot’s chest as he pulled the phone from the bedside table and tried to navigate to YouTube. After a few missteps, he finally made it.
Olivia watched the video of Elliot narrating the views around him, paying extra attention to the Trevi fountain. Then, a short, angry-looking woman stepped into the frame. She started cussing Elliot out in Italian to quit acting like a tourist and do his damn job.
It would have been funny if it didn’t make Olivia’s entire body stiffen.
“What’s up?” Elliot asked, turning the video off and giving her his full attention. “Still too soon to hear about Italy?”
Olivia shook her head forcefully.
“El, that woman, the one cussing you out in the video, was my almost stalker,” Olivia said. “I recognize her voice from the phone call. How do you know her?”
“What are you talking about?” Elliot asked.
“When I called that number, the one that texted me that night, that woman answered,” Olivia said. “I’m sure of it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Liv,” Elliot said. “Tia doesn’t even know you. You said you got a text that said ‘I love…’”
They both went silent, realizing the one thread that all of this had in common.
“My God, Elliot, really?” Olivia asked. “It was you, wasn’t it? You sent that message.”
Elliot looked like a deer caught in headlights.
“I don’t remember doing it,” Elliot said. “I mean I must have, but I don’t have any memory… Are you sure it was like five years ago? I mean when Tia was here a little over a year ago..”
“She was here? In the United States?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah, I, uh, worked a case with her that had international ties,” Elliot said. “She spent the night…”
“Did she now?” Olivia asked, trying to slide away from him in bed. She didn’t want to talk about this.
“Not like that,” Elliot said. “I fell asleep on the couch. And woke up with a terrible headache. We drank so much Grappa I don’t even know if I can smell it again without feeling sick. And she said that when we were drinking I told her about some woman I was in love with, but she couldn’t remember her name.”
Olivia pursed her lips.
“I don’t know if you said anything the night you drank the Grappa,” Olivia said. “But I talked to her on the phone that night and told her my name. She never mentioned it? You never talked about your old partner and she never put it together.”
“I never called you by name,” Elliot said. “I was kind of an ass when anyone brought it up.”
“That makes two of us,” Olivia said. “Fin and Munch learned pretty quickly it was better not to bring you up.”
“Point being, she didn’t know Olivia from the text and my old partner were the same person,” he said. “But she could have at least told me she knew your name.”
Olivia huffed.
“Damn it, Elliot,” she said. “Drunk, drugged, PTSD. Are you ever going to tell me how you feel when you’re in your right mind?”
She felt his arms pull her close until they were practically nose-to-nose, with barely a breath of space between them.
“I love you, Olivia,” he said, looking right into her eyes and then dipping his head just slightly to capture her lips in a soft kiss.
She couldn’t help but rib him just a little when he pulled back.
“Are you sure you’re sober? No Grappa, no illicit drugs this time?” she asked. “No flashbacks, thinking you’re seeing your dead wife?”
Elliot brushed a lock of hair off her forehead.
“I’m 100% sane and sober, Captain,” he said.
She knew he was, of course. But hearing him admit it made her feel better about what she was going to say next.
“El?” Olivia said.
“Hmm?” he answered.
“I love you, too.”
She couldn’t be sure, but the grin he gave her seemed to light up the dimly lit room. But she didn’t have time to analyze it too much. Not when he was kissing her again and sliding his hands up under the henley and lifting it off of her.