CHAPTER THREE

"You're still shaking." Lizzie observed, reaching for Red in the same breath. Her fingertips hadn't so much as ghosted across the material of his dress shirt before he flinched. Whatever progress she enjoyed minutes ago was seemingly long gone.

Back to square one.

"Please, talk to me." She implored, her hands folded helplessly across her lap.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Something, anything...Tell me what happened to you, and please don't scoff." One could attribute the latter request to intuition which Red always appreciated.

Even now, he couldn't deny her anything.

"Before I answer, there are two things I'd like to know." Red looked at her. "First, what you said about Kate, her telling you that Agnes would never be safe in my world, was there more?"

Of course there was.

"Yes, there was more. There is more." His eyes were brimming from anticipation which renewed her spark and earlier vigor. "You once advised me that the Cabal won't allow me to walk away, and you were right. The quarrel you have with them, this war, it's not just your own anymore. The same applies to your world. The battle - it's ours to fight. Your world is my world too."

If he would permit her at his side went unspoken. He respected her so much which ironically was part of the problem. Continually, Red gave and then gave more, and she did nothing except take in equal measure.

Starting now, things were going to be different.

Lizzie insisted on that.

"You said there were two things." She reminded him.

"Second...That day, when you called me by name, you spoke of love." Red paused again to take a breath, not wanting to come across as presumptuous but confident in his deduction just the same. "Were you going to say that you loved me?"

"Yes."

There was no hesitation in her answer.

"Did you mean it?"

Another affirmation.

"Do you still mean it?"

"I do."

"If that's true, then why did you - "

"It's the truth. I don't know why I didn't stand up to Kate and Tom, but I..."

"Tom." The venom in his voice was unmistakable. "I was going to ask why you ran, but of course you would bring him into this conversation."

"He's not my husband."

Red shook his head ruefully. "It really doesn't matter who he is or isn't, does it?"

"It means something to you, so it matters. That's why I'm telling you he's not my husband. You saw to that the day Agnes was born." She winced as soon as the last sentence passed her throat, imagining how the man next to her would respond.

His chuckle was the last reaction she considered.

"It's my fault you aren't married to someone that you don't love? That's rich."

"Red, please. Listen to me." She said, exasperated.

"You. Chose. Him." He emphasized every word, careful to keep his voice low and not disturb Agnes again.

After all the lies, all the deception and humiliation, how you can just forgive and forget.

I haven't forgotten.

Broken and small were adjectives she found to be foreign, the furthest thing from synonymous, in pertinence to Red, but before her was tangible proof.

"You told me that some things can't be forgiven, but I hope you can forgive me. I need you to forgive me. I ran because I was stupid. I was afraid not of loving you but of the ramifications of acting on that love. You and I, we already had targets on our backs. We still have targets on our backs. Agnes came into the world, and I thought..."

"You thought I would never find out."

"Find out? What does - "

"Agnes is my daughter, our daughter."

She swallowed thickly, feeling even more embarrassed.

It was one night.

They shared one night together, and it encapsulated perfection. The timing, the location, the atmosphere, everything was just right: standing together on the ship deck, the stars glistening over them, the waves crashing, shoulders brushing as he spoke.

Best of all was the person.

I think you would have made a terrific captain.

Red was that and more.

When I look at you, that's what I see. I see my way home.

Being on the run was an entirely new experience, but he didn't make her feel like an amateur or treat her like some damsel. She was his equal. He stimulated her mind and body. Turning toward him, she realized how tired she was. She was tired of fighting not just herself but the attraction between them that existed from day one.

Their lips collided, and both fell deeper.

In his arms was the safest place she had ever been which made the charade of pretending the night never happened all the more difficult. She told herself it meant nothing when, in fact, it meant everything.

And a new life was born.

"I didn't want her to be like us. I never wanted to hurt you."

"I watched you die. I felt your life slip away. How was that not supposed to hurt? Then, it turns out that you were in another sector of the world planning a life that didn't include me, one that included another man raising my child. And yet here you are, expecting me to believe that you and him are done, but you're not done. And you don't know what you want."

"We are. He's not - "

"In your life anymore? I've heard that before, Lizzie. What happens the next time he reappears or you get scared? Are you going to take him back and push me away again, make me feel like nothing? You ran away, and what did it get you? What did you run away for?"

"To find my way back home."

He caught the reference, as she hoped.

Sailors have been navigating by the stars for thousands of years. Odysseus spent a decade at war, but his biggest battle was finding his way home.

Lizzie reached for him again, and this time she didn't retract her hand when he tensed. She grasped his bicep and held firm, the muscle beneath contracting and expanding as he attempted to move. "I spoke with Mr. Kaplan regularly, or as often as we could. I won't try to argue or defend her reasoning. I won't ask...what you've done to her either."

On cue, his left eye twitched.

"I don't need to know."

"Don't you?"

"No. I'm already responsible for so much. Really, I don't want to know."

Unsure of how to respond, he said nothing.

"I always asked about you - I missed you. She never let on that anything was wrong. You were fine, that's all she said. I didn't entirely believe that because...How could you be? If the roles were reversed, I know that I'd be devastated. But I suspected or began to suspect something was off, something changed, after speaking with Tom. We only spoke once." She clarified.

Oddly calm, Red asked. "What did he tell you?"

"You disappeared for a few days. No one knew where you were, not even Dembe."

"He still doesn't know."

"But why?" She dropped her hand from his bicep to cover one of his. "You've never lied to me, so please don't start now. Tell me."

"I had to leave. I had to let you go because we were surrounded by police. Kate kept insisting when I was with you in the back of the ambulance. But I couldn't. I...I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe. I held onto you for a long time, just...held your hand, anything to prolong saying goodbye. Accept that you were really gone."

The images evoked by hearing his recollection were vivid.

Multi-colored.

"It was suggested to me that it was delusional on my part to ever believe I could keep you safe, protect you from what was coming, and the mistakes I made with you weren't going to repeat themselves with Agnes."

"You kept me safe." She assured him.

"Did I?"

"Yes, and whatever mistakes were made they were mine, not yours. I endangered myself in separating from you after you kept your word to me. You promised that I'd make it through the Connolly investigation, and I did. I wouldn't have without you. All that's happened since that day is on me. It's my fault."

The silence stretched, each person lost in their own thoughts.

She spoke first. "Where did you go?"

"I went to Cape May."

That surprised her. "Where my mother..."

"Yes. Preceding that, I spent time at an opium den. I wanted an escape, to feel nothing and just be numb if only for a little while. When I traveled up the coast, stopping at the beach, I thought of Katarina - what she did. For a moment, I contemplated joining her."

The man she loved killed by the child she adored. It was just too much. Two months later, she went to Cape May and left her clothes on the beach, walked into the ocean, and was never seen again.

Lizzie turned away, sickened by the depth of the pain she caused and equally horrified by the scenes her mind constructed.

"You went there to die?"

He shook his head. "There are a variety of reasons to explain my going there, but that's not one of them. I promise you. The place is significant as it's the one area where I know had I acted the outcome would've been different. If I had saved Katarina, then maybe..."

"She made a choice, Red. You and I can wish she chose a different way. We can weigh the pros and cons, debate right versus wrong, but the decision ultimately was hers. You did everything that you could for her."

"And you're certain of that?"

"I am."

"How?"

"Because when the people you care about are at risk, you don't cut corners. You go all in to protect them, to keep them safe, even if doing so means putting yourself in danger as well. Selfless - that's who you are, what you are." Seeing his puzzled look, she continued. "I also know that you saved me. You're saving me now...just as you saved me then."

The event she alluded to was no secret.

"How long have you known?"

She laughed. "I've known for some time, Red."

He shook his head, impressed. "It took a change of location for both of us to get what we needed. In addition to an escape, I went to Cape May to find an answer to 'What if?', and what I found instead was much more important."

Her curiosity piqued.

"What did you find?"

"Purpose." Red gestured to Agnes. "Dembe has been my only family for so long. Had I acted differently back then, that wouldn't be the case. And we wouldn't have her now. She's a part of us, a part of you. I could never walk away from that, not unless you asked me to."

Lizzie leaned into him, pressing her chin to his shoulder, and followed his line of sight.

"Us. Here. Together. That's the only future I'm interested in, and I'm not walking away from it either. Never again."

THE END