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He’d driven to Olivia’s apartment as though on autopilot.
He sat outside watching her lights, collecting his thoughts and his courage. He had to see her, but the prospect terrified him. He was afraid he’d misread her; he was afraid he hadn’t.
With a breath, he opened the car door, and stepped into the cold. Nothing was going to be resolved by sitting in his car.
He pressed her buzzer, and she opened her door almost immediately as if she knew it was him. “Elliot,” she acknowledged him and he felt as though he could accomplish anything.
“Can I come in?” He dared to ask.
“Of course!” She stood aside. “Please.” He could feel her eyes on him, watching him, her brows knit in deep concern. “Elliot, what is it?” She gestured to her couch. “Sit down. Can I get you something to drink?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m fine.” He was still standing. His impulse was to pace, and it came out in his hands, fisting and unfitting them as he spoke. “I’ve been thinking all afternoon,” he said. “Playing over everything in my head. Everyone was willing to write me off, believe the worst, assume that I’d killed Ryan. Everyone but you. You stuck by me, you fought for me. Why is that?”
She shrugged as though it wasn’t nearly as big a deal as it had been. “Because I know who you are, and you’re not a killer.” She smiled. “And because you’re my partner—for better or for worse, right?”
Hearing his words from so many years ago repeated back to him–in her voice–in her apartment was enough to knock him off his feet. For better or for worse he’d made a similar commitment to Kathy, but had since signed papers dissolving that bond.
“I’d hoped for a bit more better than worse,” he said, somewhat grimly, and then changed the subject. “There’ve been a lot of changes lately.”
“There have,” she agreed, still watching him with those damned, deep, inscrutable eyes. He’d give anything to know what was going on behind them.
He licked his lips and worked his hands again. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking—about what matters, and . . . it led me to us.”
“Us . . .” she repeated and took a step closer.
The words were out, and he was no longer afraid of them. “Us. You. Me,” he said, simply. “If things had gone south and I’d had to leave the force, If I’d lost you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t talk that way.” She was now the one who seemed to be struggling for words. She looked away briefly, and then back at him. “You’d never lose me,” she finally said, “not unless you wanted to.”
And there it was, the confirmation he’d been both hoping for and fearing. She hadn’t just been fighting for his job, or even for him, she’d been fighting for them.
“You know—“ He took another step closer they were breathing the same air now. “If we do this nothing is going to be the same.”
She put her both of her hands flat on his biceps, and he would swear in the years to come that for about ten seconds he died. “Some changes can be good.”
There was a hair’s breadth of space between them and then there wasn’t.
The kiss was as intense as it was inevitable.She tasted like chamomile tea and smelled like lavender. He gripped her rear, and she sighed, leaning back to look at him. “Elliot . . .” She breathed his name like a prayer, and he reached out to trace the line of her jaw in response.
“Yeah,” he said in response. “Yeah . . .” he repeated, unwilling to let her go. “I’m right here.”
“You sure you don’t want anything to drink?”
He shook his head in confusion. “No.” He was thirsty, but not for anything from her tap.
“How about breakfast then?” she asked, her eyes glinting deliberately.
End