When Rick showed up to take the hospital shift, Roarke left and went straight for Hanna’s apartment. He didn’t even really mean to drive in that direction, but once he realized where he was heading, he didn’t want to stop. He needed to grow a pair and get it over with. Whatever the truth was, he needed to hear it, and she deserved to know the full story, instead of the one Isabelle spun for her that scared her enough that she was now turning on the people she trusted. That wasn’t her, he knew that much.
The night air was thick and dark, dawn was far away but he felt more awake than ever. His sleep schedule had been completely destroyed but it was serving a good purpose now as he moved through the streets and headed in the direction of her apartment. This was something he had to do, something he had to fix. He’d never felt like this before. He didn’t grovel, he didn’t ask forgiveness. Hell, he’d never been with a woman long enough to care if she forgave him for jack shit. But here he was, in the middle of the night, losing his mind because one woman was angry at him, might be leaving him. He’d actually gotten close enough to someone to push them away.
If she left, if she took that child with her, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to breath. And that was an uncomfortable feeling for him too.
He pulled into the parking lot, killed the engine, and took the steps two at a time as he rushed up and banged his fist against her front door. He didn’t mean for it to be so aggressive, but he also couldn’t contain all the nervous energy inside him, like waiting to see if you won the lottery or your final grades in a class you were sure you were going to fail. He banged his fist on the door again, keeping it up until it opened just enough for a sliver of her face to appear, the chain still on the latch.
“That’s a good way to get yourself shot,” she hissed.
“You were always the questions first type,” he said. “Can I come in?”
She glared. “Why?”
“We need to talk. We both know that.”
“Have you come to grovel?”
“Among other things.” That seemed to take her back.
He watched her debate, run the calculations in her head, decide how dangerous it was for her emotions, her mentality, to let him in and start this all over again for them both. He wasn’t going to quit though. He’d stand out there all night and wait for her to leave in the morning if he had to. She’d call the police or get a restraining order or forbid him from ever seeing his child but he had to try and talk to her. He wasn’t going to let her slip away so easy over a misunderstanding and him acting like an idiot for a few days.
“Please,” he said, a little softer. “I want to talk. Actually talk. No yelling, no arguing, no avoiding eye contact and huffing so the other one knows we’re pissed. Just talk. We both know this has been a really fucked way of getting our issues out there. We need to talk stuff out. For real. Yeah?”
She shut the door long enough to remove the chain and pin and open it the whole way. In the hand that had been behind the door her gun was there waiting, safety off. She wasn’t messing around. Something had her spooked. He couldn’t blame her and he wouldn’t want her any other why while she was carrying something so precious to them both inside her. He was glad it was women who carried the babies because men would be awful at it.
He wasn’t sure where to start. He’d never done something like this. Did he start with his questions? Did he start with what he knew? Maybe he should just start out with an apology. She wasn’t totally innocent either but he knew he was more at fault than her. He was man enough to admit that. The trick, of course, was admitting that out loud to her as well. The swallowing of pride, the realizing that some things were more important than ego and keeping face.
It wasn’t about facing himself in the mirror. The guys always said they’d never be able to drink with their fellow men if they let some woman castrate them to the point of groveling apologies but he could never sit with himself if he let her go for pride that didn’t matter. Nobody was here, nobody knew what was happening in their world. It was doing this to protect no one but himself. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let her go for something so stupid.
“I talked to James, I guess you did too,” he said. “He knows about the baby.”
It wasn’t the best start, but it was probably the most pressing and neutral issue. James knew she was pregnant, he knew that Roarke was the father. That was something they had to get on the table too because it had been their shared secret until now. This made it very real. Not that the doctor’s visits and the sex and the pregnancy tests made it not real. But someone outside their world knowing meant that it was really going to happen, someone else was involved now.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It wasn’t bad, he knew that much. If anything, it was probably excitement. But it was buried underneath all the guilt and confusion, hard to find in the muddle of his emotions that didn’t seem to want to sort themselves out or make sense of them.
She didn’t look guilty or apologetic and he couldn’t blame her. It was her body. She could tell whoever she wanted about it. He wasn’t going to get angry about that, in fact it gave him kind of a selfish glee to be able to claim fatherhood over the child, let others know the extent of their relationship, even if it was turbulent at the moment.
She told James. That much was obvious. He wasn’t sure if the man found out some other way or coaxed it out of her. But it was clear now she’d told him willingly, and without coercion. She stood firm on that. He wondered who James really was to her. He was not just some police station contact, as she’d claimed. Had that even been real? Did she have police station contacts? Everything was in flux and his doubt for every word she said about herself. But he remembered what James had said: trust her choices and actions. And those choices and actions told him that James was someone very important to her, he’d have to be if she told him about the baby.
“Anything else?” she asked.
She was short, snappy. He couldn’t blame her. He took a breath and thought some more. What was the most pressing issue? The lack of trust. That much was obvious. The small talk over James hadn’t lasted as long as he hoped. It didn’t really last any amount of time at all. She was forcing this along. He wondered if it was because she was truly frustrated with him, done with his antics, or if she was trying to protect herself from falling back in too deep with him. She got him at arm’s length, she would try to keep him there if it meant that she protected her inner world.
The problem was what she thought she knew about him. She assumed a great deal now about him before she even met him. He was sure of that in the way that she had acted when they first met, the coldness there, the aloofness. Now she was assuming even more awful things about him. She was spun tales that, while not necessarily not true, were probably painted in a light that made everything look far more awful than it truly was.
“He told me Isabelle whispered in your ear about some pretty awful things. I want to tell you my version,” he said, feeling bare. He was completely at her mercy. No matter what he said, the ball was always in her court, she was driving. He was learning to be okay with not being in control when it came to her, however.
“It’s been my experience that the man’s version of things like this is always very far from the truth,” she said.
“Your experience?”
She waited. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Tell me about Isabelle, about growing up.”
So there it was. Truth was waiting there, she was offering him exactly what he wanted since the day they met: answers. She came into his life like whirlwind. She came from nowhere with a shaky story at best and he trusted her far sooner than he should have. But he did now. He trusted her enough to be the woman who carried his child. He trusted her enough to be sitting with her now. They’d come so far, completely turned their own worlds inside out and upside down. She had to feel it too. He didn’t know who she was before they met but he knew whoever that was didn’t matter anymore.
He dropped down to sit on her couch, watching her do the same in the loveseat across the room. The air between them was a no man’s land, waiting to light up with landmines or be the place where they brokered a truce, depending on how the next few minutes went. He needed to choose his words carefully, mind his tone. He could not blame her for however she felt about things after all this was over. If she still wanted to leave him, then that would be that. He wouldn’t fight harder, against her will.
So now it was down to where to begin. He once told her about the sob story of his upbringing, the way he learned to hate everything that wasn’t the Pharaohs because that was his escape, his way to freedom in his own mind. It was a home for him. She understood that, it seemed. She hadn’t judged him, she’d looked at him with pity. He hoped she remembered that, the story of the sad, scared boy before he became the muscular, bulky man.
“You know my dad was a fuck-hole, that’s not news,” he said, letting out a sigh and a breath he didn’t realize he was holding until his lungs relaxed. “And he was the main reason Isabelle had a shitty childhood. I’m not saying what she does or doesn’t remember is invalid. Because she’s hurting and I get that now. I’m trying to let go of my anger and think of ways I can help. But my dad was the one who forced this on all of us, expected us to do the work, put the time in, be loyal to the family. It’s not that hard to mix us up since, in a lot of ways I don’t like to admit, I ended up a lot like him.
“But I wanted the best for her. You have to know that. Or at least I hope you believe me. No one ever realizes that people want what’s best for them, you know? It’s how we are with our parents when we don’t get why they made us join band or do chores or stuff. Nothing good ever came from easy stuff. I thought he best chance was with us, with the family. I realize now, obviously, I was wrong. I can admit that. But I swear, I never wanted to hurt her. I never tried to turn her into something I didn’t think was for her best interests.”
She looked at him, waiting for more. She wasn’t going to let her guard down for him easy at all. She wasn't going to make this enjoyable or bearable. Again, he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t expect anything less. She was fierce and powerful and all the things that drew him to her were the reasons she wasn’t going to let this conversation go easy or quick. That’s what they needed, he realized. Sometimes shit had to be dirty and gritty and unbearable for it to work out in the end.
So maybe there was more there. What else was he guilty for? What else made him feel like shit when he thought about it? He needed to grow a pair, stop being such a child, not with her. She was the mother of his legacy and future. To be the best man he could be for her, he had to try harder to be brave in a way he never had before. This wasn’t about guns or riding off into the night and feeling like a big man when people quaked as he walked past. This was the moment when he had to be courageous in a completely different way. It would take a lot more strength.
“I didn’t help the situation,” he sighed and dropped the last of his defenses. “I knew she was unhappy, I think. But it was just the way we all were right? Nobody likes growing up and nobody does it super smoothly or anything like that. I didn’t think it would turn her into...this.”
That’s all he had to say. He wouldn’t take credit for what became of Isabelle because her choices were her own. He had a hand in it, they all did, but at the end of the day you choose how you want to make your world work for you, and she chose an incredibly destructive path. She threw away all that promise for the sake of revenge. Maybe the pair of them had more in common than he realized.
She waited to see if he would say anything else. She wasn’t daring him to speak more or trying to force it out of him. She was just waiting to say if he’d say anything more. Her face was unreadable, but possibly because she didn’t want to be his judge and jury as she had been in the past few months. Perhaps this was a place of no judgement, or at least they both hoped that it could be.
“I’m an undercover cop.”
He felt the floor fall out from underneath him. It was like the world’s worst case of vertigo. He blinked, rapidly, like the fluttering of his eyelashes might somehow make what she said disappear, not real, or the image of her altogether would vanish and he would awake to find it all had been a lengthy dream. His mouth and throat went dry.
“What?” he coughed out.
He was pretty sure a part of him knew. How could that thought not have crossed his mind, even in the subconscious or in dreams? It was the perfect answer to why she was acting so strange. Why he had an inherent mistrust of her, why he felt on edge whenever she was near. Some part of him knew or guessed or feared it all along. And now here they were, cards on the table.
He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to throw the coffee table through the wall and ask how she could do this to him, how she could lead him to trust her for so long, enter into a relationship with him, decide to carry his child, and not tell him this. What was her real name? He wanted to ask. He wanted to scream it at her, get in her face and shake her until she told him every last bit of truth. She’d lied to him. She lied every single time they were together, every single time they were alone. She was carrying a child that had been conceived under entirely false pretenses.
He could kill her for all this.
But then he thought of those nights together, the soft and slow ones where they weren’t trying to rush to orgasm or tease each other as much as possible. Those nights had been about the two of them and their eyes watching each other as their faces and muscles said things they never said out loud to other people. She had been so honest then and he didn’t care what she called herself, in those quiet dim moments. That same woman was sitting here now. That same woman wanted to help still, cared for a child growing inside her, cared enough about him to be angry with him.
His anger left.
“Okay,” he said.
And for the first time since they met, he felt like he knew her completely. He was looking at her eyes without a filter, without a shield. He realized now, that’s what he had trouble trusting in her. He could sense the guard that she constantly had up, the way she was always ready to strike and protect herself. This was why. Could he blame her for it? She was doing her job, her job was originally to spy on him, cause him harm. But he didn’t even need to ask if she had been reporting on him, if it had been a lie. He knew her better than that already, he had his answer.
She dropped her anger, she dropped her hard stare. She was looking at him with sadness, with apology. Her eyes were glassy and soft.
“Okay,” he repeated, with more sureness. “Okay.”