Lies We Tell Ourselves Chapter Seven

Disclaimer: Not Mine

A/N – I can't believe that it has been over a year since I started this! Life got really crazy and I lost my way but I think I'm back on track. I want to send a special thank you to those that have taken the time to review and let me know that you're still reading – I sincerely appreciate your support! I hope I don't disappoint you! :)

"Today is your lucky day." Rossi said to him the minute he stepped through the doors. He grinned at Hotch mischievously. "You have another visitor waiting for you in your office."

Hotch's eyes went to the room but he had closed the blinds when Will arrived so all he could do was guess as to who his mysterious guest was. Rossi wasn't giving anything away but a smirk. Which could mean just about anything. "Great, I love visitors." He gave a long sigh and started heading in the direction of his office.

"Oh, I have a feeling you'll appreciate this visitor more than you did the last one." Morgan commented, taking pity on the man and making Hotch move a little faster. He was almost to his door when it opened suddenly and Garcia stepped out, eyes going wide at coming face to face with her boss.

Garcia winced, worried that he would be upset at her interference. "Sorry sir, I just, well, I thought she should know. I didn't expect her to race over here." She rambled. "She's in your office." She pointed at the door she'd just exited.

"It's alright, Garcia." He offered her a slight smile.

JJ was pacing the floor when he stepped into the office but she stopped as soon as he entered the room. "You're okay." She did a quick visual check from head to toe.

"I am." He confirmed, with a slightly amused grin. "Were you worried?"

She frowned and snapped, "Of course I was worried. My husband got served with divorce papers yesterday and he showed up here today. That's kind of worrisome don't you think?"

Hotch only shrugged. "He's been by the office before today. We've just never been in." Anderson had advised him of that fact when he'd informed Hotch that Will was there requesting an audience.

"Oh." She obviously hadn't considered that a possibility. "I don't understand why he would have come here." JJ looked at him in confusion.

"He's processing too, JJ. He needed to see me." He stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind him.

"Aaron my marriage to Will was fractured before I crawled in your bed." She stated with frustration.

Hotch raised a brow. "Okay."

Realizing how crass that sounded she added, "I mean, I'm not leaving him for you."

Leaving a wide berth between them he moved to his desk. "I never suggested that you were."

JJ watched him as he moved, realizing that he was keeping his distance. "I said that wrong." She moved to the chair that Will had recently occupied and dropped into it. "You're not the reason I'm leaving him."

"Okay."

"Stop saying that!" She growled.

He lifted his hands in mock surrender. "JJ, I understand that you're not leaving Will for me. I was just agreeing with you."

"Well don't." She snapped. "Don't agree with me. Be angry at me for putting you into the middle of this mess. You didn't ask for any of this. You didn't knock on my door in the middle of the night." The reminder of how brazen she'd been made her flush. "I ruined your relationship with Beth. Will is showing up at your work. You don't have time for any of this. God, now I am showing up and rambling on like a crazy woman. You don't deserve this. I'm sorry for ruining your life." She swung around to head to the door.

"JJ, stop." Hotch stood up from his desk and made his way over to where she stood. "My life is far from ruined and I'm not angry now but I will be if you walk out of that door."

Her hand trembled as it rested on the door knob, her head fell forward. "God, I've made such a mess of everything."

He hated to even ask but couldn't stop himself from doing so. "What's really going on here? Are you having regrets?"

JJ turned around and met his eyes, her own wet with unshed tears. "You need to be more specific." Then, before he could respond she shook her head. "I have a lot of regrets but coming to you isn't one of them." She let out a shuddering breath. "I just can't do this anymore."

"We need to talk."

Will opened the door to what had been their home wider for her to come in. "Who called you, Penelope or Hotch?"

"Garcia." JJ sighed. "What were you thinking?"

Will ran a hand down his face. "I just wanted to see him. I thought," He paused. "You know what, it doesn't matter what I thought."

"Did it help?" She asked tiredly.

He gave a humorless chuckle. "Nope. Not surprisingly it didn't change anything."

JJ sighed, "Will, I'm not leaving you for Hotch. I need for you to know that."

He looked at her sadly. "That's not really true though, is it? You say that you're not leaving me for him but the truth is you want to be with him. At least admit that much."

She felt her eyes well up and she straightened her spine. This was the reason she'd come after all. "Yes. I do."

"You're in love with him." He uttered numbly.

The first tear spilled over. "Yes. I am."

"I've been trying to tell myself that you went through a traumatic experience and you turned to him to help you through it but it didn't mean anything." He looked at her, still searching to make sense of what happened.

"I wish that I could go back and do things differently. I was selfish and stupid. I never intended to hurt you, Will. I just didn't think." She moved into the house that they used to share.

"I understand that you didn't deliberately set out to have an affair but the reality is it happened." He said sadly. "You probably wish you'd have never given me your card now."

JJ shook her head as tears filled her eyes, remembering how years earlier she had flirtatiously handed the detective her business card. "No, because then we wouldn't have Henry. I did love you, Will. I hope you know that. I hope you can believe that. I love the boy that we created."

"Don't you think for the sake of that boy we should remain a family?" He asked, miserably.

She shook her head sadly. "I'm in love with another man, Will."

He gave her a crooked grin. "I thought it was worth a chance." He led her over to the sofa and dropped into the recliner facing her. "So, where do we go from here, Jay?"

She gave him a small, hopeful smile. "That's up to you, Will. Hopefully as the parents of that wonderful boy that we both love we can come to an amicable agreement that benefits him. I don't want him hurt from my actions." She sighed. "I also don't want him shuffled between us by a neutral third party." Garcia had been filling that role as of late.

"I've been thinking a lot lately, trying to figure out where we went wrong." He acknowledged her surprise at his statement with a smirk. "I knew that things weren't great before you, you know, slept with Hotch. I just couldn't pinpoint when things changed."

"We're just two different people, Will. From two very different worlds." She looked at him remorsefully. "You kept hoping that one day I would have enough of DC and the BAU and agree to move back to New Orleans with you to raise out family. While I kept hoping that you'd give it a rest and be happy here. Along the way we both gave up and just started going through the motions."

He asked her one of the questions that had been plaguing him. "Why did you finally agree to marry me?"

"Because I loved you and I didn't want to lose you. I didn't want you killed in a bank robbery or blown up by a modern day Bonnie and Clyde." The irony of her answer wasn't lost on her.

He gave her a puzzled expression. "It's not just me, right? You do see the similarities?"

"Yes, of course I do. But they aren't." She argued. "I wanted to try to make it work with you. I told myself marriage was the one element that would fix everything. I thought that I had never really fully committed to the relationship and that was part of the problem. Once we were married it would change everything." She shrugged. "It didn't. You were still mad over the hours that I put in, even though your job requires just as much. You resented that I wasn't more traditional. I resented that you made me feel less because of it. Marriage didn't bring us closer or solve what was wrong in our relationship."

"No." He admitted. "But we sure had a nice party."

She smiled at him sadly. "I deeply regret that I hurt you. I wish that I would have come home and talked to you before I turned to Hotch." She didn't realize that she was crying. "I just, I was sitting in my hotel room and I couldn't stop thinking that we almost died and if I had my biggest regret was that Hotch would never know how I felt." She wiped absently at her face. "Then I went on autopilot. I don't remember making a conscious decision to go to him. I don't think I even said anything when he opened the door." Her face flushed as she recalled what happened.

"You can stop there, I don't need you to go any further." He said, hoarsely, knowing full well what occurred next.

But she didn't. "I do remember leaving in the morning feeling horrible that I had just irrevocably hurt two men that I would not for the world wish any harm."

He recalled finding her in the kitchen that morning, hurt and broken.

"I'm so sorry, Will."

Garcia spotted Hotch as he flipped the light switch in his office and closed the door. She looked at her wrist and frowned, it wasn't even 4 p.m. She watched as he slowly moved down the corridor. She had an overwhelming desire to wrap him in a hug. He looked so lost and forlorn. She hadn't seen him looking so miserable since the Reaper. "Oh no." Realization dawned as to why he might look like he did.

"What's up, Baby Girl?" Morgan heard her exclamation of distress. His eyes traveled to where hers were riveted. "Aw shit."

Rossi, who had been conversing with Reid, overheard the exchange. He turned to see what they were looking at. "Hotch?"

The other man glanced up guiltily. He was most likely hoping to get off the floor unnoticed. "I'm going to call it a day."

"Did you want to go out for a drink? I'm ready to call it a day myself." Rossi offered, wanting to be there for his friend when it was so clear that he needed a friend right now.

Hotch gave a small head shake. "I think I need to spend some quality time with Jack." He announced, inadvertently letting the team know that he was, indeed, in distress. "Good night. I'll see you all in the morning."

They waited until the doors closed behind him before Rossi turned to Garcia. "What the hell happened?"

She shrugged. "Why are you all looking at me? I don't know!"

"This is why you don't mix business and pleasure." Morgan mumbled.

"He looked so despondent." Reid said to no one in particular. "Shouldn't we do something?"

Rossi dropped into a chair. "What can we do? Poor bastard. He really thought everything was going to work out. I can't believe she blew him off."

"Wait, we don't know that." Garcia disputed. "He had a rough day, maybe…"

Derek looked at her in disbelief. "Did you see the man that walked out of here?"

"Maybe she decided to work things out with Will?" Reid mused.

"That doesn't make any sense." Garcia argued. "She's in love with Hotch. She told me so herself."

"It looks like maybe she changed her mind." Rossi stated before adding. "I sure hope Aaron kept Beth's number."

Garcia stamped her foot. "Oh that's ridiculous." She reached for her phone. "Hey Peaches, got a minute. What?" She frowned at JJ's response. "Oh, okay. I'll talk to you later." She disconnected the called and looked up to find three sets of eyes regarding her curiously. "She was at Will's." She announced dismally.

Rossi sighed, not surprised but clearly disappointed. "Well, I guess that's that."

It was late when JJ finally returned to the town house that Garcia had been kind enough to open to her and her son. Henry was passed out in her arms. She had considered leaving him with Will but after the arduous day she had she wanted the comfort of her son. She moved to the room that she was sharing with him and deposited him in the bed removing his shoes. She kissed his forehead gently before switching on the nightlight and exiting the room.

Garcia was seated at the small table with her laptop when she entered the kitchen. "Hey Pen." She said as she made her way to the stove to put the tea kettle on. "Are you still working?" She questioned.

"No."

The single word response had JJ frowning. Penelope Garcia never failed to elaborate on anything. "Is everything okay?"

"Yep."

Something was definitely up. "You'll be glad to know that Henry and I will be out of your hair soon."

"Fine."

JJ put her empty cup down on the table. "Okay, out with it, what's wrong?"

Garcia shrugged. "Nothing."

"You are clearly mad at me for some reason." JJ frowned. "Did I forget to put the milk away again this morning?"

Garcia glanced up at her. "Really JJ? The milk? You think I would be upset about the stupid milk?"

JJ shrugged, "I don't know, but you're obviously upset about something."

"What are you doing, JJ?" Garcia asked, frustrated by the whole situation. She felt torn, JJ was her best friend, but Hotch was Hotch, he was a genuinely good guy. She kind of felt he was getting the raw end of this deal and it made her angry.

JJ was honestly confused. "What do you mean?"

"Do you even care that you've hurt an incredibly sweet man?"

The accusation stung. "Of course, I do. That's why I went to see him today. We had a good conversation. I told him things that I should have said a month ago. I honestly think we'll be okay."

Garcia frowned. "He didn't look okay when he left the office."

JJ nodded. "I know. That's why I went to see him. I handled things badly and I know that I can't undo what I did, I don't want to undo it, but I want us to be able to work past it. We are forever linked though Henry. We have to find common ground."

"I'm not talking about Will." Garcia snapped.

"Wait, what? You're talking about Hotch? What's wrong with Hotch?" She thought back to what Garcia said earlier. "What do you mean he didn't look okay?"

"He looked like his heart was broken. He left the office early, said he was going home to spend time with Jack. That's code, JJ. Whenever things get to him he wants to spend time with Jack."

She was well aware of that. "I don't understand." JJ looked at Garcia with legitimate confusion. "I told him…" She replayed the last words she'd said to him in her mind. "Oh God." Her eyes met Garcia's. "I told him I couldn't do this anymore." Her eyes filled. "I meant, oh no, I meant a lot of things; fighting with Will, living out of a suitcase, feeling like I had a scarlet letter on my chest and most of all staying away from him."

Garcia's eyes softened. "Oh sweetie."

"I found an apartment, that's where I've been all evening. I signed a year's lease. I told Will that I was sorry for the way everything happened but we needed to move past it for Henry's sake. I also told him that I stayed away from Hotch out of consideration but I wasn't going to do that anymore." She blinked down at her friend. "Pen, I need a sitter."

Garcia grinned and shooed her towards the door. "Go already! Why are you still standing there?"

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