Three Years and One Lifetime

3

"JAY" he hears his brother call out, voice still somehow ringing loud and clear above all the chatter at Molly's. The noise dies down briefly, a few heads turning to Will with questionable expressions before resuming to the party. 

"What do you want?" asks Jay, confused, clearly already starting to get tipsy. "Keep your voice down."

"We need to talk, NOW" states Will firmly, dragging Jay out of the building.

"What the hell was that, barging in yelling like-"

"How long have you known you have a daughter?" his brother asks, voice shaking with accusation. 

"What?" he gasps, knocked back by the shocking words that just left his brother's lips. Well that's sure one hell of a way to sober up. "I-I.. I don't have a-"

"I ran into Hailey today, at the local grocery store."

Jay's mind immediately latches on to her name, not even making the connection between her and his brother's previous accusation. Hailey. His former partner and best friend. He'd screwed things up to an unimaginable degree 3 years ago, shutting her out like that. He was in a bad headspace after the Marcus West case, getting drunk and hooking up with random girls. By the time he'd realised what he'd done, she'd disappeared. He never got to explain anything to her.

She's in Chicago now, maybe he could-

"She has a little girl."

Jay's eyes widen.

"Hailey's a mom?" he whispers in disbelief. He always imagined what her life was like now, somewhere out there. A fancy detective job? FBI agent? NEVER in a million years did he think she'd be a mom, at least not yet.

"Jay-" his brother starts, head shaking in disbelief. This made Jay pissed.

"Of course I didn't know! I haven't spoken to her for three years, you know that" Jay raises his voice.

"Jay, that little girl looks- Hailey said you knew."

Finally his brain gets the implication. 

"Will I do NOT have a daughter. If Hailey has a daughter, she's not mine-" As painful as it is imagining her having a baby with someone else... "she can't be." A picture flashes in his mind of another world. A world where he didn't cut her out in the aftermath and they had a little girl who looked a lot like Hailey and a little like him. His heart clenches and he can feel his eyes beginning to fill with moisture.

"Are you telling me that you and Hailey never had sex, that it had nothing to do with what happened between you and why she left?"

Here, he shuts up, because he remembers. That one time they did it and everything screwed up and she...he gulps. Hard. Audibly. Shit...

He can see his brother's hand on his shoulder, but he barely feels it. Everything is numb. His mind turns to the last time he saw Hailey. 

He spotted her getting out of her car in the apartment car park. He was out throwing away a bag of empty beer bottles. His day had already been pretty shit, and the last thing he wanted to do was talk to her after what had happened a month and a half earlier. Except, he could see that she'd obviously been crying. He's only seen her cry a handful of times, despite working difficult cases everyday for the past three years, so he knew this was serious. 

She noticed him standing there, and turned to look at him. Her hair hung limply over her shoulders and her normally grey-blue eyes were red rimmed and made bright blue from the fresh wash of tears. In other words, she looked like hell. 

He began to walk towards her, preparing to have the long and difficult conversation he knew they needed to have. The conversation that ended up taking place was much shorter than the one he'd anticipated though. 

As soon as he was a decent speaking distance away from her, she started talking. 

"I need to hear you say it...that you- you don't want us" she managed to choke out, her voice breaking off a little at the end. She stood there looking him in the eye, trying to hold herself together, waiting for a reply. Her arms were wrapped protectively around her lower abdomen. He thought her closed body language was just a way of protecting herself. Now though, this arm placement takes on a new significance. 

...you don't want us

Not Hailey and Jay, as he once thought.

Hailey and...

Shit.

Fucking SHIT.

Then he remembers his response, and it's a knife in the chest. "I can't do this, I'm not ready."

Hailey steps back, looks down and quietly slips into her car. She never looked back at him, but through the rear mirror he could see the steady stream of tears flowing down her oddly expressionless face. That image has haunted him for the past three years. 

She disappeared suddenly. Never left a note, never said goodbye to anyone. The only person who knew her whereabouts was Voight, but Hailey had sworn him to secrecy. She didn't even tell him the true reason behind her leaving. She left no trace of herself. Her phone number was disconnected and her apartment was empty, with a 'for rent' sign in front of it. 

"Oh my god Jay" Will sighed, finally believing his brother. Jay notices the stream of tears down his own cheeks now, and bit his lip as he tried to hold himself together.

"Jay, that little girl has your eyes" Will delicately treads. "Anyone who knew you and Hailey would be able to tell she's yours'" Will's expression is clouded with concern, as more tears flow down Jay's cheeks. "Look, whatever happened between you two back then, you have a daughter somewhere in Chicago whose mother is currently under the mistaken impression that you knew about her existence." He pauses, before deciding "she wasn't lying, she believed what she said."

"How could this have happened? I don't know how this-"

Oh. He suddenly remembers this girl: Jessica, if he remembers correctly. They'd slept together a couple times when he needed to get his mind off things. It appeared that she'd developed a fun trick where she'd use his fingerprint to unlock his phone while he was passed out to delete messages from other girls. He knows this because the day he went back to work Burgess had cornered him, questioning why he didn't reply to any of her or Rojas' texts. Judging by the time stamp on those messages, he knew it was her. He confronted the girl about it and she'd admitted to deleting a few texts here and there, but she was adamant that she only did it to 'protect their relationship'. He ended things with her anyway. Now he realises: if she'd deleted texts, there's a good chance she replied to some as well, just for fun. 

"You're kidding. If she saw a message along the lines of 'I'm late' or 'I'm pregnant', she definitely would've replied in the worst possible way" Will states. Jay is taken back by how Will just read his mind, but quickly realises he'd been thinking out loud. 

"But why would she text me? Something as important as that-" Jay begins.

"You wouldn't answer her calls, wouldn't see her, what else was she supposed to do?"

"Oh god no" Jay moans. "Whatever that girl sent to her...that last day I spoke to her, she was pregnant." He sees her standing there in the car park, eyes red-rimmed, arms hugging her still-flat belly. "She thought I didn't want her or the baby...she still thinks that." He's never experienced emotion like this. A black hole of anger, frustration, but above else, profound sadness. Complete and utter sadness.

"I have to find her" he decides. "I have to talk to her." He's already heading towards his car, leaving Will standing there. He doesn't even bother explaining himself, or saying goodbye. 

A/N: Well...that was intense... (see, I told you guys not to hate Jay too much yet).