Beneath Your Beautiful (A Chenford | The Rookie Fanfic)

Part Eighty-Seven: After

Week 6, Day 5: Thursday

He holds her after, gripping her so tightly against him her skin practically melds against his own. He uses one hand to follow the line of her side up along her thigh and over her hip, his brain trying to comprehend how drastically things have changed between them. For much of their relationship it has been the physical leading the emotional, but now it's like the physical can't possibly keep up. That there's no position, no amount of contact between their bodies that can sate his need to be closer to her still.

"I'm sorry," she says softly, her hand catching his as he automatically lifts it to avoid her tattoo. She twines their fingers together before settling their joined hands over the ink.

He frowns, "You don't have anything to apologize for, Lucy."

She shakes her head, "I'm sorry about yesterday — that I didn't tell you what was going on. And I'm sorry that I let this get between us instead of just telling you the truth sooner."

He opens his mouth to protest — to assure her that none of that matters now that he understands the weight of what she was battling — but stops once he realizes she has more to say.

"I knew... I knew I was going to have to have the conversation when I signed up for this, but I never realized it would be this hard. I thought that maybe I could even have just ripped the bandaid off at the start and put it out there, and we could move past it."

She starts to laugh, "I actually wrote a little speech. I wasn't going to get into all the details — just the basics. You know. Went out with a serial killer. Buried alive. Lots of therapy. But don't worry — I'm totally not an emotional wreck about it or anything." Her eyes fill at the last sentence as her attempt at humor fails to cover the depth of her pain.

The idea of her attempting to address this through some talking points she'd drafted is so completely her. It makes him ache to think about her working up the courage to share what she'd been through (even at a surface level) with a stranger, and...

"I gave you every reason not to do that."

She shrugs, "Well, yeah. But it was also..."

"Also what?" he encourages gently when she doesn't continue.

She sighs, frustration entering her expression. "After it happened... I don't know. Everything was so different. It felt like nothing was the same — no one was the same. And yeah, I guess I wasn't the same either. The people I was closest to — they didn't know how to be around me, and I didn't know how to be around them. It's not like they didn't care or didn't try — they did.

"But I couldn't stand it — the way they looked at me. It made me feel like a victim all over again."

Sadness flickers in her gaze. "So yeah, eventually it was like the life I'd had before... it just kind of faded. And I — um — I guess I let my world get pretty small after that." She looks away, the sadness in her voice giving way to anger, "I let him take so much."

His eyes burn as he looks at the grief reflected back at him in her beautiful brown eyes, and he knows then and there that he wants to be a part of making her world bigger again, wants her to be a part of every aspect of his own.

He thinks about how she is when they are around other people — bubbly and outgoing and radiant. So easy to be around. So easy to love.

Someone you'd expect to have no shortage of friends and loved ones surrounding her at any given time. It makes him ache to think about how much she's lost.

He slides his hand over hers, again fighting his urge to do and say more because he doesn't want to miss a word of what she has to say.

"I think somewhere along the way — doing the show and being with you — I think that maybe I just wanted to have this — to not have to be her... I don't know. It sounds dumb when I say it loud."

He shakes his head, lifting his hand to her cheek. "It's not dumb, Lucy. I get it."

He pauses before asking something he's been wondering about for a long time — something he's even more curious about now that he knows it must have happened only a few months after she'd been abducted. "Is that why you decided to go undercover?"

She looks surprised but then nods, "It was definitely part of it. Don't get me wrong — I wanted the story. I wanted to prove myself. But it was hard — really hard — coming to terms with this giant fracture in my life that happened overnight. So, yeah — I made the decision to go undercover when I still felt like a stranger in my own life. I wanted to escape. I wanted to be someone else for a little while.

"It wasn't all bad though."

"Jackson and Tamara?"

Her lips curve upward at the mention of her two dear friends. "They were everything I needed. They became my family. They grounded me when I came back."

"Jackson checked in on me at first... after Caleb. In the hospital and then a few times after I was released. And talking to him was so easy because he knew what I'd gone through, and I didn't have to explain anything, but he also didn't have this preconception of who I was before. And the way he talked to me — he never made me feel weak. He made me feel strong — like a survivor."

Tim squeezes her hand, this time unable to keep quiet. "You are a survivor, Lucy."

She offers him a soft smile in response to his words before she starts to laugh. "I think that maybe at first Jackson was a little worried that I was like obsessed or in love with him when I started calling because of the whole saving my life hero worship thing. But once he got over himself, I found my best friend. He saved me when he pulled me out of that barrel, but he saved me after too, Tim."

He nods, feeling a rush of gratitude toward the man who had played such a vital role in making it possible for this woman to come into his life. The mutual protectiveness and intense loyalty between the two friends now makes perfect sense, and Tim promises himself that he'll keep working to win the trust and respect of the person that's been Lucy's anchor for so long.

"With Tamara — she was struggling when she stole my car, and it was maybe a little crazy to take her in after that, but being able to help her — it felt like coming back to myself, it felt empowering, and I just really needed — I needed to focus on something other than my own pain. She didn't know it at the time, but she was helping me as much as I was helping her.

"Anyway, enough about me," she laughs uncomfortably, her cheeks tinging pink. "I'm done telling my life story for a little while; can we talk about something else?"

And there's an edge of desperation in her tone that makes it clear she needs a break from all of the darkness surrounding that part of her past.

He studies her quietly for a few moments, before reaching over to brush her hair back off of her face. "Let's go to the beach."

"Huh?" Lucy asks bluntly, eyeing him suspiciously, as if she's seriously questioning the motive behind all his unexpected proclamations this morning. "But... you hate the beach?"

"I hate the ocean," he corrects, before shrugging, "but Kojo loves it, so..."

She suppresses a smile as he unsuccessfully attempts to play off the suggestion as anything other than an obvious ploy to distract her.

"Well, if Kojo loves it..." But apparently, she isn't above playing along.

And that is how they find themselves making the trek down to Long Beach — one man, one woman, one dog, and one heavily mutilated beach volleyball.

In her defense, it's not like she didn't warn him.