Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-30 15:35:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Wren and Luke
What: Post-Alex death, part 2 of 3.
Where: Turnberry.
When: Continuation of this.
Warnings/Rating: Aangst.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said, without looking up, but it was a poor objection and not at all believable. This place brought back too many old memories for him to do anything but hate it. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t pretend it was okay, or lie if he had to, though all of that was pointless now if she could tell how he really felt without him saying a word. “Stop saying that. It’s not okay, and you won’t be fine on your own.” The words came suddenly, too sharp, and he winced immediately at his tone, aware that snapping at her was only going to make things worse. “Just-- don’t pretend. I won’t if you won’t, alright?” He couldn’t take her false reassurances, or her pathetic attempts to act like everything was fine when it was the exact opposite. It would mean that he couldn’t pretend either, but he was pretty sure he was minutes away from falling apart anyway, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice in the end.
He didn’t follow her into the living room, not immediately, and when he did he remained standing rather than taking a seat on the couch alongside her. “Jack’s going to know,” he said as he paced, too keyed up to sit right then. “Even if I don’t tell him anything, he’ll know. But he won’t say anything.” As for Adam, well, Luke didn’t see the point in mentioning him, because he wouldn’t turn on him either. Maybe it wasn’t healthy, but he was the only one who might understand why he hadn’t had a choice without condemning him for it. He needed that too much to lose it. “Even if Alexander told someone, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t leave anything behind.” He shook his head, continuing his erratic pacing, back and forth, in front of the couch. “I’m not a good fucking person, I get that, but I’m not letting someone take the fall for what I’ve done if it does come to that. I’m just not,” he insisted, even if he probably should have, if only for Gus’ sake. But there was no evidence, he’d made sure of that, and he wasn’t going to jail. He wasn’t. He’d let Bruce stay in Gotham and sneak out when he could if he had to, but that was as a last resort, one he didn’t want to think about. “I know what Simon thinks, but he wouldn’t-- he used to talk about doing the same damn thing, but now he doesn’t want to know, and-- it’s not fair.” Maybe it was a childish outburst, but he felt almost betrayed; like talking about it was fine, but actually doing it changed everything, even though Alexander had nearly killed MK.
It always came back to that, to him being angry, and her pointing it out had never proven very helpful in dissipating his anger in the past. “I’m always angry, don’t you know?” His voice was bitter, bordering on self-loathing, and he watched her uneven trek to the bar before following suit and rounding around to cut her off, having enough presence of mind to realize that a drink was the last thing she needed. “What are you doing?”
"You didn't need to say anything. You can't even look at me, Luke," she said, and she motioned to the condo. "You can't look at this either. How are you ever going to stay here? And I know you don't think Gus belongs here," she added unnecessarily, wincing when he snapped, the tone sharp and unexpected after the almost-still nothing of him not talking to her. "That he doesn't belong with me." And maybe it wasn't the time for it, but her head hurt, and so did everything else, and she just wanted to scream at the world. "And I can be fine on my own. I can. I'm on my own all the time now, and I'm still in one piece." Mostly. And by then she was taking in a deep breath as she realized he wasn't going to sit down, that he was going to stay more than an arm's length away, and the ache from that was worse than the pounding in her temples and the sharp pain of the stitches that was starting to filter past the painkillers and local anesthesia. "Don't pretend," she whispered incredulously, because he didn't really want that, and she knew he didn't really want that.
She watched him pace, and she made a futile grab for his sleeve when he said he wasn't a good person. "Stop that," she whispered, but it was just that, a whisper that didn't carry over his words. She didn't say anything as she stood, as she walked to the bar, and she looked at him for a few very long, very still seconds when he cut her off. He was close enough to grab now, to touch, and yet she didn't. He'd been so careful about staying out of her reach since the hospital waiting room, since the still moments waiting for the cab. She was trembling, shaking with anger, with fear, with pain, but she still didn't reach for him. She reached around him for the bottle of whiskey that sat on the bar's edge, and she tried to keep from yelling, but it was a losing battle. "Don't pretend? Fine, you want me not to pretend? I won't," she said, fighting with the top of the bottle with fingers that shook too much to manage to pry it open. "It has nothing to do with being a good person. It isn't even about us. It's about Gus, Luke. If we get caught, it was me, and it was self-defense, and that's it. There is no other option." Her voice spiked as she continued, climbed, and her forethought went along with the increasing volume. "You weren't even there," she insisted, putting down the bottle and pulling open the bar cabinet with enough force to make the door slam back on its hinges. She almost lost her balance as she grabbed for another bottle, but she didn't care, and she wasn't paying attention to anything like that. She was beyond reason just then, and she stumbled away with the fresh bottle in her hand.
"You're not always angry, and you are a good person, and you're right about Simon. He said all kinds of things, made all kinds of threats, and now he's decided it's wrong. I don't care. What I care about is losing you to all this, losing Gus. That can't happen. I won't let that happen." She pressed her free hand to her temple, ignoring the inky dots at the corners of her consciousness. "I'm glad he's dead," she said, her voice shaking hysterically with the confession. "I'm glad. I'm so fucking glad. So-" She shook her head, forcing herself to go quiet in favor of fighting with the bottle.
Luke did try to refrain from yelling, he did, but it became progressively more difficult to respond to her with any mediocum of calmness, and at some point he just snapped. “Stop doing that, damn it!” He turned on heel to look at her, practically shaking with the effort of keeping everything coiled up inside. “Stop putting words in my mouth. You do it all the time, Wren, and it’s not fair. I’ve never said Gus doesn’t belong with you, not once. He belongs with both of us. I’ve only said it a thousand fucking times, that I want us to be a family, but you don’t believe anything I say. Is it just not what you want to hear?” He knew what wasn’t true but his anger made his tongue too loose, and despite how inappropriate the timing he couldn’t seem to stem the flow. “You know why I hate this place. It reminds me of him, and everything I fucked up as a kid. You have no idea how hard it is. Don’t you think-” He managed to stop himself then, an abrupt halt that came with a sharp gasp of air, and he made a very concentrated effort to regulate his breathing and calm down in the process. “But I’d get over it,” he said slowly. “I’d get over it, because that’s what people do, and I care more about being with you than some stupid apartment.”
How he managed to keep from touching her was questionable, but he did, and he couldn’t tell if she was shaking from fear or anger or maybe the desire to hit him. He watched her fight with the whiskey bottle, ready to intervene if she actually got it open, but then she was yelling and the mention of Gus drew his gaze upward in something like surprise. “I know it’s about Gus,” he shouted back, more frustrated than actually angry, at least with her. “I know it is, and I know he has to be top priority, but you’re asking me to let you take the fall if things go bad. Do you really think I’d just agree and not have a problem with that, Wren? Is that what you think of me? I don’t want to lose Gus,” he said, “but I don’t want to lose you either!” He would have argued that he was there, and maybe he would have pushed, but then she was slamming the cabinet doors and stumbling away with another bottle, and he bit his tongue to keep the words from coming.
While drinking everything into oblivion sounded pretty damn good just then, Luke fought the urge to find solace in a bottle and trailed after her, ignoring what she said about him not being angry, about him being a good person (he wasn’t), and even Simon. “Stop, Wren,” he said with quiet conviction, reaching out to take hold of her wrists and tug them back, away from the bottle. “Please stop.” He sucked in a shaky breath and tugged again. “I’m glad too. I am. I know how that feels.”
It was the damn it that got her to stop fighting with the bottle a moment, that got her to actually look at him. She wanted to keep screaming at him, she did, because it felt better, felt like she had some control over something, even if it was making him angry. And that might have been unhealthy, but the world hurt too much for her to realize it. When it was all said and done, no, she wasn't okay, and neither was he, but there was no one else she was willing to shatter into a million pieces around. He was the only person she trusted that way, and she didn't hold her tongue. Her voice calmed somewhat, dropped, but she didn't think before she spoke. "No, you didn't say it, but the last time I saw him you thought I was going to steal him or something, Luke," she managed, the words coming out damp with tears that weren't falling yet, but that were threatening to do just that. "It's been months, and I've seen you what, twice? Three times? I've seen Gus once? And all I could think of while I was here, while I was with clients, was that Alexander was going to do something, that he was going to do something, and there wasn't going to be any stopping it." And the segues made no sense, but then nothing did just then. And she knew, she knew why he hated the place. "I know why you hate it. I hated Thomas' place too, and I knew you would hate this, but it's mine, Luke, and for the first time in my life I haven't wondered if the power was going to be on day-to-day, or if there was going to be food in the fridge, or if the rats were going to bite me while I sleep."
She realized she'd said too much as soon as she stopped talking to catch her breath, and the whiskey bottle went still in her fingers, even as her shoulders shook with enough force to rock her entire body. The surprise on his features registered, and she stared back at him with gray eyes that brimmed over. "I know you don't," she said honestly. She knew he wasn't going to let her take the fall easily; she knew that. "I don't want to go to jail, and I don't want to be somewhere I can't see you or touch you," she went on, voice snapping and cracking at the seams. "But I want Gus to be safe, and I want him to have everything I ruined for him for the past four years, and I need to know you'll do that for me, if it comes to it." She was pleading now, plainly, blatantly pleading. It was quieter than his yelling, but somehow it still carried, that pleading.
His hands on her wrists surprised her somehow, too lost in her pleading to expect him to touch her. And he hadn't touched her yet, so why should she expect it. Her head jerked up, and the whiskey bottle fell to the ground, landing on the carpet without shattering. She didn't look at it, didn't follow the fall with her gaze. She just kept looking at him instead, and she was still and too, too silent until he admitted that he knew what it felt like to want someone dead. She tugged on his grip once, twice, testing it, not really attempting to pull herself free from his grip. Instead, she turned it around on him, and she shoved at him. There wasn't much force in it, and she was too unsteady on her feet to really even impact him. But that didn't stop her. She pushed, and she shoved, and she let her balled fists fall heavily on his chest. She wasn't aware of the sobbing starting, wasn't aware of anything but the control of her hands against his broad chest, and the way the world felt like it was in tatters. "I couldn't hang up. I didn't want to go, but I couldn't hang up, and he could tell if I wasn't moving. He could tell."
Somehow her words stung more than anything else she’d said, cut deeper, and he flinched back from the accusations he perceived lay just beneath the surface. “I didn’t think that,” he said, once he’d managed to find his voice. “I didn’t, I told you-- I explained-- you’re doing it again.” And there was hurt there, yes; she wasn’t the only one who was so very far from being okay just then. “I don’t want to keep him from you, Wren. You’re making it sound like that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m not. I-- there was the protection order, but you can see him whenever you want now. I’ve never said you can’t,” he said, almost helplessly, because he hadn’t been expecting any of this. “And with me-- you want space until I’m ready, and you don’t believe me when I say I am, and I don’t know what else to do.” His usual defensiveness came when she talked about the apartment, when she said it was hers, and he wished he’d just kept his mouth shut and played at apathy better. “I know it’s yours. I’m not saying you-- actually, forget it. Forget I said I hated it, because it doesn’t matter. Just fucking forget it.” His voice turned sharp, harsh, like shards of broken glass.
He shook his head and looked away, unable to meet her gaze, unwilling to accept the possibility that she might go to jail again. Not again, not now that Alexander was finally out of their lives. At least, though, he could promise her that he’d take care of Gus. He could do that much. “Of course I will,” he said, voice painfully tight. “I swear, if it comes to that, I will.” The little boy deserved far better than them, but Luke would still fight tooth and nail to ensure that what he could give was enough.
His grip held firm when she tugged, despite the fact that she was no longer holding the whiskey bottle. It seemed like he waited an eternity to see what she might do next, how she would react, and the sudden shove wasn’t as surprising as it should have been. Her strength was minimal, really, and he could have easily fought her, but he didn’t. He let her push, let her shove, and when her fists rained down on his chest he simply slipped his arms around her back. “I know,” he said quietly, and it didn’t matter if he did or if he didn’t, not then. “I know. It’s not your fault. I know you didn’t want to go, but it’s okay now,” he soothed, even while his voice broke and he wanted nothing more than for the world to stop and leave them be for a while. “It’s okay. You’re here, and he can’t touch you ever again.”
She knew he was right. She knew that what he was saying was true, about Gus, about Brielle, about the apartment. But that didn't make the hurt go away, or the fear, or the feeling that she was a stranger, on the outside looking in at a life she wanted so very badly, but that she didn't feel she deserved. And she knew he was angry and broken in so many ways. She didn't understand that, didn't understand why, and even like this she wasn't willing to push him about it. About the other things, yes, but not about that. "It feels like it. I know you don't mean it to, but it feels like it. It feels like I'm nothing," she said of him trying to keep Gus away, and she knew this was all just things they should have discussed before now, before everything fell apart and came to a head in a way that made it impossible to measure words and spare feelings. "And I'm scared," she added, and that wasn't about Gus. It was about trusting him again, about believing him when he said he was ready. "I'm scared to believe you." But then his voice turned to glass, sharp and pointed, and she would get used to that someday, to the language and the harshness, but not just then. No, no, she hadn't been able to get used to it five years ago either, and she took her own deep shuddering breath as he looked away.
His agreement about Gus almost made her knees buckle, those pinpoint dots of black at the edges of her vision almost overwhelming for a moment. "Okay," she said, and she repeated it again, convincing herself of it. "Okay. Okay." And she didn't think many people would ask what happened to Alexander, but if they did, at least they wouldn't contradict each other. It was terrifying, but it was how it had to be, and it made her own failure in not having the strength to end Alexander's life a little better.
She expected his grip to hold tight. It wasn't even a conscious thing, that expectation, but it was there. And it was what she needed. Someone else might have stepped away, given her space, tried to make her sit down and breathe. He didn't, and she needed that. Even after his arms slipped around her, she kept pushing, the shoved limited and nearly nothing in the strong embrace. And still, she didn't stop. The word was going darker and darker around the edges, and it felt like losing control, and the shoved turned into fingers wound tight in his shirt, pulling the fabric painfully tight. Her fingers used that fabric as ladder, and she climbed it until her arms were around his shoulders, her breathing unsteady and her heartbeat erratic. "Tell me what's wrong," she said, because she still didn't understand, and she wanted to. It was something other than her own thoughts, her own fears. "Please?" and that request was a whisper against his shoulder, enough uncertainty in it to make it clear she thought he would deny her. "I want to understand. I want to think about you, and not about me. Please?"
The last thing Luke needed right then was to hear that he made her feel like she was nothing. It was harsh, maybe, but it was the truth. He didn’t need to hear it, didn’t want to hear it, and it left him horrified that he’d managed to make her feel that way without intending to. “I don’t want it to feel that way,” he said, his voice fading to something dull and hollow. “I didn’t realize I’d done things so wrong. You’re not nothing, Wren. You’re everything. I-- I’m sorry.” God, he was so much of a failure that he couldn’t even convince the mother of his child of her own importance in said child’s life. Something roused within him, however, when she said she was scared to believe him, something defensive, which had been brewing with nowhere to go ever since she’d found out about Brielle. “I know you’re scared,” he said, “but it was a year ago, Wren. A year ago. If I still wanted her, I would’ve gone to her, and I haven’t. It’s in the past. You’re best pals with Silver, who’s in fucking love with you right now, in the present, but I’m not accusing you of having feelings for him or sneaking around with him behind my back, am I?” There was hurt there too, whether he was entitled to it or not, a sense of a double standard existing even if she hadn’t intended as much. “I’m ready. I know what I want, and it’s you. Maybe you’re not ready, not yet, but that’s okay. I’ll wait for as long as I have to. I’m not going anywhere,” he told her, and it was simple, raw honesty. Maybe it hurt like hell, but there it was; he would always be there, even if the day came when she no longer wanted him.
Secretly, he knew that the only people who’d ask about Alexander were the ones who would know what happened, know the truth, despite the story they gave, but he kept that to himself. If it reassured her to know that Gus would be given everything should she end up in jail, then let her have that. It wasn’t going to happen anyway, not if he had anything to say about it.
He expected her to keep pushing, to keep shoving, even against his embrace, and he withstood it all without faltering. When her fingers pulled his shirt taut against him, he said nothing, allowing not even a hiss of discomfort to escape his lips, because this was far more important than a little tight fabric against his skin. He found solace in the feel of her against him, reveling in being able to hold her close, even if he whimpered against the nape of her neck when she asked what was wrong. It was so jumbled up in his mind that he had no idea how to explain it, and he didn’t want to try, but her added please and the repetition made him falter. “Everything,” he whispered. “I’m not sorry I killed him, I’m not, but I feel-- I feel-- guilty. Tainted. I don’t know. Like everyone knows now, and they hate me, even though they don’t. Don’t know, I mean. I-- I’ve been numb to this for so long, Wren,” he said, clinging tighter. “I’m not used to feeling anything when I-- and now I’m feeling everything, all at once, and it’s too much.”
Her guilt at his reaction to her words was immediate. She began to shake her head, to will away what she'd said, to make it go away. And this was one of the reasons she pretended, that she wasn't honest, because she knew that how she felt would hurt him. She shook her head, as if that would cancel out his words, even though it made her head scream with pain. "You didn't- you didn't do things wrong. You're a great dad, and Gus loves you, and you were scared I'd try to take him," she said, because all that was true. It didn't change how she felt, didn't make her feel like she hadn't lost whatever tiny connection she'd made with Gus the moment she walked into jail. Nothing could change that but time, but things being different, but it didn't cancel out the good things he'd done, either. "He feels safe around you, and that's the most important thing. No matter how I feel, he's gone through a lot because of me. It just hurts, being on the outside." Because it did, at the end of the day.
She hadn't been sure that he hadn't been seeing Brielle, not until that moment, and she didn't let herself question whether or not he was lying to her about it. She knew him, knew him well enough that not telling her things he thought would upset her was just something he did, an old habit, and maybe that was all that not telling her about Brielle was. "It's not that you had a relationship with her. That's not it. It bothers me, but that's not it. I just want to believe you'd tell me if anything happened, even if you think I'll take it badly, and even if you think it's better not to tell me. Even if it's not Brielle. That's all, Luke. I want to know that." It didn't mean ahe wouldn't fall apart, but she didn't want to go back to him paranoid; she knew that would break it, them. But the comment about Silver was unexpected, and she shook her head. "I care about Silver. He's one of the only people in Las Vegas that I trusted before you came back. But I don't love him, Luke." But she understood that, too, because she worried that he'd fall back on Brielle when things got hard, and she wondered if he worried about the same thing with Silver. And it was easier, somehow, talking about these things and avoiding the elephant in the room, even if she knew they couldn't do it for long.
And so it wasn't a surprise, that whimper against the nape of her neck, and her arms slid from around his shoulders and down, until they wound around his waist and slid up around his chest as far as she could reach. If she could pull him closer, she would, but she couldn't, just like she couldn't take that pained sound away for him. It was easy to fill in the missing words, easy to concentrate on something that her own pain and fear. He wasn't used to feeling anything when he killed people. That's what she assumed he meant, and she tucked her head under his chin, even if it made the stitches scream against her scalp. "You aren't tainted, Luke." For a second, that was all she said, and then she carefully pulled back and put her fingers on his jaw, holding him there, so he couldn't look away from her. "You're a good man. You always have been. Better than anyone I know," she said, her fingers tightening on his jaw to keep him from turning away. "You were a kid, and you were hurt, and you handled it the only way you knew how, by trying to keep people from going through what we did. Liking it was wrong, but we had so little control over everything, Luke. That was control, and maybe it wasn't the best way to cope, but you went through so much-" Her voice broke then, cracked, and her fingers shook against his jaw. "It's different now. You're different now. If you weren't, this wouldn't bother you like it does." Her fingers slid down to his neck, over his throat. "I didn't give you any choice. There was no way we could have called the police after what I did. This wasn't your fault." And there, there, guilt, and so much of it that it made her sway on her feet and then look down to see where the whiskey bottle had fallen.
Maybe Luke should have known better than to let his guilt become so transparent. Usually he sought to hide it for her sake, but he was in no condition to do so now, and he assumed her hasty attempts to fix things were a result of that. She still felt the way she felt; she just felt bad about how he’d reacted to it. “I know you’d never take him,” he said. “I know that. My fear of losing Gus, it-- it wasn’t about you. Not really. Anyone else in your position would have tried to get full custody, knowing what you know, and that’s why-- but you’re not like everyone else. I know that.” All the knowledge in the world didn’t change his fear, however, and he was still scared now, of losing his son, a looming threat perpetrated by shadowy figures that had no real identity. It wasn’t the who that he feared, but rather the possibility of Gus being taken away in the first place. “None of that was your fault. It wasn’t. You’re not on the outside, Wren, and if-- if you are, I don’t want you to be.” Tell me how to fix it, was his unspoken plea, because he didn’t know how, and he so wanted to. He wanted her to feel like Gus’ mother, rather than an unwanted outsider.
The fact that some part of her thought he might do something that warranted confessing frustrated him all over again, and he sucked in a sharp breath, a failed attempt to calm himself, and ran a hand across his forehead. “Nothing is going to happen. If I didn’t want to be with you anymore, I’d tell you, and I hope you’d do the same. I would never cheat on you, never mind cheat on you and then lie about it,” he snapped, frustration bubbling over. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” Silver was not a good topic, and probably not one he should have let himself talk about just then, but it had already been dragged out into the open and he couldn’t take it back now. He didn’t like hearing that she cared about him; that much was obvious. She was entitled to having her own friends, and he would never try to tell her who she could and couldn’t associate with, and he had his own female friends he cared about, but there was a stark difference-- none of them were blatantly in love with him. “But he loves you, Wren,” he said, with an eerily calm sort of clarity. “He loves you, and he hates me, and he’ll keep waiting around for you to change your mind. You don’t think he’ll try to drive us apart if he can?” Because oh, Luke believed he would, and he thought he understood now how jealousy could tear people apart.
Despite everything, her being there made things better somehow, even if it was only a marginal difference, and his fingers clutched at the fabric of her hospital scrubs as he sought to pull her closer. Something like a choked sob wrenched free from his throat when she said he wasn’t tainted, because he wanted to believe her, he did, but he couldn’t manage to reconcile her opinion of him with how he thought of himself. He didn’t try to pull away when her fingers found his jaw, which was probably telling, and he just stared at her while she spoke. Didn’t object, didn’t argue, just looked at her, even as his breaths turned into short, painful gasps and his chest heaved with the effort. “I’m not a good man,” he said, after a long silence, and his voice was almost subdued. “I want to be, though. Do you really think I’m different? Maybe this is just... punishment, or something. Punishment for everything I’ve done.” His voice took on an almost distant, dreamy quality, but it vanished when she said she hadn’t given him a choice, that it wasn’t his fault. He shook his head, wordless denial, and slid his fingers along the underside of her jaw to tilt her head back and direct her gaze away from wherever the whiskey bottle had gone. “You listen to me,” he told her, with a surprising amount of intensity. “You’re not responsible for my choices. Don’t put this on yourself, Wren. Don’t you dare.”
"I wouldn't," she said of taking Gus, and she shook her head as she spoke. And maybe it wasn't the time for this conversation, maybe it was better to leave it until morning. Her head was spinning, and she could tell the drugs they'd given her in the hospital were having an effect, making it too easy to talk without the normal barrier that kept her from saying things she worried he might take badly. It was an old habit, measuring her words, born of his increasing temper when they were kids, and her own increasing insecurity. But that barrier was gone, and she just wound her fingers in the fabric at his shoulder, twisting it until her knuckles went white. "If I wanted to keep him from you, I would never have made sure you got him in the first place. I never put any guidelines in place when he was staying with me, and I just trusted you to come and go however you wanted, and I guess I expected the same thing in return. I would let you take him anywhere, and I would never assume you would keep him away from me," she explained, and she knew there were circumstances - the custody, the protection order, the trial. Logistics, but that didn't change how it felt. "He knows Jack and Roger more than he knows me, Luke. Even Iris. It's just hard. For years I at least got to see him every day, and now I don't have that anymore," she explained, looking at his shoulder as she spoke. "I don't want to take him away from you. I just don't want to feel like you're his father, and like I'm asking permission for everything."
She didn't raise her gaze to his until his frustration bubbled over in his snapped question about cheating. She unwound her fingers from his shirt, and she nodded. "Yes," she said, and she shrugged her shoulders slightly, the movement barely anything beneath the white fabric that covered her. "I know it isn't fair to you, how I was raised. And I know I should be able to just trust that what happened with Brielle was nothing important. I want to believe, but I've seen so many men, Luke, and some of them seemed so earnest, so in love with their wives, and they still hired me," she explained, more candor in the words than she'd managed thus far in her explanation about Brielle. "When we were kids, I- You were different than anyone I'd ever met. You couldn't even kiss me for forever," she said, a sad-fond smile gracing her lips for a moment. "Now it's harder to trust you, and I want to, I do. I don't want to be scared, and I don't want to worry, but I can't help it." She wanted him to understand, to understand that it was as much about her as it was about what had happened with Brielle. As for Silver, she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. He can try to drive us apart all he wants. Only we can do that, drive each other away. He can't. It doesn't mean he won't be waiting in the wings, just like it doesn't mean Brielle won't, but he can't do anything to us, unless we let him. I've loved you too long to cheat on you. I've never loved anyone else, which gives me an advantage in this conversation, I think."
She shook her head when he asked if this was punishment. No, she mouthed, even as he continued talking. The dreamy quality of his voice worried her, because she'd never heard it before, never heard him sound like reality was something fleeting. "You are good. You're upset about this, Luke. You're upset about what you did. That counts for something, for everything. I may not have done everything you did, but I've never felt guilty about anything I've done to anyone. Not the man I killed, not the men I marked, and not Jude. And Alexander? I didn't have to shoot him. He wasn't getting up, and he wasn't a threat, and I did it anyway." Her voice broke, cracked, shattered. "I'm not sorry. You've always been the better one of us, and that hasn't changed. No matter what's happened between New York and now, that hasn't changed. No one's punishing you. If there's a God, he knows, and he understands. If he doesn't? He can go fuck himself," she said, and she was just starting to reach for the dropped bottle when he tipped her chin. She stopped, and she let him tilt her head back, the world threatening to go entirely black with the movement. Her fingers closed around his upper arms, but she listened, and she forced herself to keep her eyes opened. "I didn't give you a choice. What were you going to do? Call the police and let them arrest me?" She knew he wouldn't do that. No matter what, she knew that.
He wished, right then, that they’d never started talking about this. Maybe it was one of his flaws, his inability to cope with what hurt too much to hear, but there was nowhere to run to now, nowhere to hide, and he had to listen. For a long, long time he had no idea what to say, no idea how to defend himself against her words which stung like knives as they fell. “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. I should’ve done things differently. I didn’t realize... I didn’t realize how hard this was for you. But it wasn’t that simple, Wren,” he added, unable to resist. “You know it wasn’t as simple as you’re making it sound. I couldn’t just let you take him whenever you wanted, not with the protection order. Things are different now, though, and there’s no reason why you can’t see him.” He made a valiant effort to keep his voice steady, rather than allowing the hurt to seep through as he had before. “You don’t have to ask permission. You’re his mother, and I’m his father, and we can do this together. That’s what I want.” It wasn’t like he was keeping Gus from her now, whatever implications she might make, and if she wanted to see him, then she could. He wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. Now that things had settled down, they could get better; they just hadn’t had that chance yet.
That yes, simple as it was, made him wince. “You know,” he said, fighting through the waves of hurt just to get words out, “it’s not just men who cheat. Women do too. Just because you saw men who cheated on their wives doesn’t mean we’re all like that. Maybe it’s easier for me, because I was never around that,” he shrugged. He hadn’t grown up thinking all men were liars, and that was just the truth. “When I was a kid, I was inexperienced. I had no idea what I was doing. Does it really change things, me being older and not as naive? I still feel the same as I did then, Wren. If anything, I feel more for you now.” As for Silver, she just didn’t seem to understand that it did matter. To him, it mattered a lot. “Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, how he feels about you, but it’s not as easy for me to just dismiss,” he told her honestly. “I’m not going to let him drive us apart, but that doesn’t mean I like him trying.” His expression changed when she said she had an advantage, and he almost stepped back, stopped only by how tightly entwined they were. “An advantage,” he repeated in disbelief. “So your love matters more than mine, is that it? How you feel about me means more than how I feel about you?” He shook his head. “No, Wren. That’s not fair. You don’t get to-- to tell me how much I feel or what it’s worth. You don’t get to say that you love me too much to cheat on me, and then turn around and say I can’t feel the same.”
He laughed when she said he was upset about it, about killing Alexander. No, no, she was wrong. She didn’t understand. “I’m not sorry I killed Alex, Wren. I’d go back and do it all over again if I had the choice. This guilt, it’s not for him, or any of the others,” he explained, because he thought she ought to know. “I don’t care that you shot him. I would’ve done worse if I’d had the time, but I didn’t. I don’t think there is a God, and if there is, he doesn’t care.” He closed his eyes and brought his forehead to hers, fingers tracing idly over her jaw. “You couldn’t kill him,” he said. “You couldn’t shoot him. I could. I’m not better than you. Thomas, he used to say we all had choices.” That came with the hint of a smile, though he couldn’t remember if it had been Thomas or Bruce who’d said as much. Maybe it was both. Sometimes the lines blurred and he couldn’t keep track. “I wanted to kill him. Don’t blame yourself for this, please? Please,” he begged. “Please don’t.”
"I know," she admitted about him not being able to let her take Gus whenever she wanted because of the protection order. "I know. I wasn't- I was just saying how I felt, not blaming you," she explained, and the shake of her head was cut short by the sheer desperation to turn this around and make him understand. But she didn't have a lot of faith in that, not when it was getting harder and harder to think with every word, harder and harder to filter what she said. "I know I did all of this. Me. It was my choice to leave New York, and I had encouragement to go to Nevada, but I could have said no. I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying I didn't expect it. I thought it would be different somehow. But I thought you'd never talk to me again once you found out, too, so I'm not doing a very good job at predicting things," she admitted, and her voice was starting to go quieter, resigned. She sighed, and it was a shaking thing, thready and uncertain. She realized she couldn't come right out and say it, that she was worried he was going to start talking about schedules and weekends and things that made her feel like he was in control. He'd only blame herself for her fears, and he was blaming himself too much already. She could feel it in the tenseness of his body, so close to hers, and it hurt almost as much as the ache in her head.
She knew women cheated. Logically, she knew. "I'm not making anything better," she said once he was done. "I can't help being scared, but saying it doesn't help. I know, and I told you that," she said mournfully. "I told you that you'd get tired of me being frightened of this." His question about being older and less naive made her drag in a deep breath. "No. It's not that you're older. That's not it. It's-" She began, but she shook her head, because saying it again wasn't going to change anything, and she was starting to realize, in her drugged haze, that she was going to ruin this all by herself if she didn't find a way to be okay with it, with him not telling her about Brielle. "I just have to learn to be okay with it, Luke, that's all," she finally managed. "You kept things from me before, when we were kids, and after meeting up here again, but none of it felt intentional like not telling me about Brielle." She put her fingers to his lips. "Don't. I know. I know why you did it, and I know you're going to say there wasn't time, but I mentioned her for at least a month before I went to prison. And that's not something you can change, and it's not something I can change, and I just need to be okay with it." She tensed, waiting for whatever the fallout from that was, because she was expecting it now, as if the reaction was going to be as tangible as a blow. "And I know I've lied to you too. I know that, and I didn't expect you to forgive me for it." Because she felt like she didn't have a right to be angry or hurt about it, not really.
His laughter dragged her back from all that, and she closed her eyes when he pressed his forehead to hers. "Who's the guilt for?" she asked, not understanding, and finally realizing just how much she didn't understand. She took a small step back, her fingers sliding from his shirt to his sleeves, and she tugged on him. "I know you're angry with me," she said, "but come lie down. We don't need to talk about Gus anymore, or about anything else that you don't want to talk about," she offered, and she sighed as she went back to the subject of Silver, of the things she'd said about not cheating on him. "I'm sorry," she added, and she shook her head and looked down at the floor between them. Somehow, she felt worse about it all than when she'd walked through the door, and she hadn't thought that was possible. "I didn't mean it like that. I didn't mean it to sound like I felt more," she said, almost a whisper, and she was having a hard time keeping her emotions off her face. She took another step away. "I'm going to-" she said, and she pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from sobbing as she turned. "A minute?" she asked, her back to him.