Want You to Stay || Chenford / The Rookie

Part 18

Trigger Warning: Grief and mentions of abuse.

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"At some point though, I just got so angry, and it's like I couldn't feel anything else when it came to him. I was so tired of him coming home drunk, so disgusted by him cheating on my mom, so sick of never being enough for him to stop — but maybe Genny was right. Maybe I was too angry and too stubborn and maybe I stopped being able to see things clearly... like I couldn't see that my dad didn't kill Frank Ochoa. Like you said, I just saw what I wanted to see. I couldn't accept that he was anything less than a monster, and I hated him so much because of it. Maybe I was part of the reason he —"

"Oh, Tim. NO. Tim. No. Look at me," Lucy's voice breaks as she loses control over her emotion. She knows she shouldn't interrupt, should let him continue to work through what he's feeling, but she just can't stay silent, can't let him go any further down this path.

But he won't look at her, still staring off into space with such a confused and wounded sadness on his face that Lucy feels like someone has reached into her chest and is attempting to rip her heart out.

She crawls across the couch toward him and kneels next to him. Her fingers find his stubbled jawline and she turns his face, forcing him to look at her.

"Tim, please don't. You didn't do anything wrong. Whatever Genny said — she was speaking from her experience. That doesn't mean that it was true for you. And what I said — that was just about the case; I didn't mean to invalidate anything about what you went through."

She swallows, her throat contracting as she works to get her next words out, "Look, Tim. I didn't know you as a child, but I know you now. I know what kind of man you are — I know the kindness and compassion in your heart, despite what your father did to you. And just the idea — the thought of someone doing even a fraction of what you've shared about your childhood and how your father treated you —"

Her voice breaks and a sob escapes. "I can't stand it. You were a child with this same beautiful heart, and I didn't have to be there to tell you with complete certainty that you didn't deserve it. I don't care what you think you did or didn't do to contribute. No child could ever deserve that, and you, Tim, you definitely did not."

Her voice is shaking with the intensity of her emotion, anger and indignation rising up inside of her, "And I don't care if he was kind or even loving sometimes, you deserved so, so much better — and you are not going to twist this into another thing that Tim Bradford blames himself for, okay? I won't let you."

His face crumples and he's trying to turn away so she won't see him cry. She slips her arms around him, pulling him into her body and he melts into her hold. She cradles his head against her chest as his emotion overtakes him.

She sobs with him, soothing, "It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong," over and over again as she thinks about how many times he must have had those ideas beaten into him as a child to be so certain as an adult that he is always somehow to blame.

She's not sure how long they sit like that, tears freely flowing from them both. But when he finally pulls back, his watery blue eyes finding hers, Lucy feels like she has been punched in the stomach as the reality hits her.

She doesn't just care deeply for this man who is looking at her with such intense sadness and aching vulnerability. She loves him.

She doesn't just admire Tim for the integrity and compassion and strength that are at the very core of who he is, despite his father's every attempt to strip him of exactly those things. She loves him.