Stay Till Midnight || Jolex

Glory days

 "Do you want to hang out here for a bit?" 

"Um, yeah, I'd love too." I reply with a smile. 

We both jump out of the car. Jo goes straight to grab Robin and I unstrap Brooklyn from her car seat. 

"Brooklyn, what do you say to Alex?" her mother chides. 

"Thank you for helping me out of the car Alex," the little girl smiles. "Can you pick me up?" 

I look at Jo, wondering if I was allowed to carry her to the door. She gives me a tiny nod while adjusting the blonde baby on her hip. I bend down and wrap my arm around the little girl, picking her up.

I spend the rest of the day with Jo and the kids. They are wonderful, Brooklyn is such a sweet, happy little girl with a bit of an attitude and Robin loves to crawl and snuggle up between me and Jo. I love them so much. It's almost 6pm and I really should get back to Izzie before she starts wondereing where I am. I haven't told her about my daughters. How do I explain them to her? I never even told her I had gotten married again. 

"Hey Jo, I have to get going. I'll see you tomorrow." I say, kissing her cheek and saying bye to our kids. It strikes me outside that I kissed Jo, on the cheeks, but it still was a kiss. A friendly kiss? Where did I even find the balls to do that? 

"Hey Babe, how was work? I thought you were getting off early?" Izzie greets me when I walk in to the hotel bedroom. 

I give her a small peck on the lips then reply, "Yeah but there was a trauma and I got pulled in." Great, now I'm lying about a kid being hurt. 

"Oh, poor kid. What happened?" she asks. 

"He fell off his balcony, had to have surgery, He's stable for now." I cringe at my lie. 

I can't tell her, not yet. She doesn't know I have an ex-wife, two kids are going to be quite a surprise. Knowing about them will hurt her, well, she should be able to handle Brooklyn's existence but Robin is living proof that I cheated. I felt, still feel, guilty about it happening and I feel worse for not regretting it. I never, even before I found out about Robin, regretted sleeping with Jo at the conference. One day I'll tell Izzie everything, my love for Jo, the existence of our daughters, cheating at the conference.... everything. Just not know, not until Jo and I have everything figured out.

I spend the rest of the week between Jo and our kids, and Izzie. I have to admit, the more I spend time with Jo the more the feelings that I've pushed so far down come back up. She is beautiful, strong and she understands my demons more than anyone else. Why did I leave her? Why didn't I try to make co-parenting with Izzie work instead of running away to Kansas? I regret hurting Jo, I regret leaving her. Ever since I left I regretted it. I told myself that being in my childeren's lives was more imporant than Jo, but I was wrong. Jo is equally as important. Today is my last full day here in Seattle and I plan to spend it with Brooklyn and Robin. We decided not to tell Brooks that I'm her father until we figure out how much I'm going to be in their lives and when I'm going to visit.

"Can't you stay longer, Alex?" my four year old daughter asks. "Mommy is so much happier when you're around." I give her a small smile. 

"No sweetie, I have to go home but I'll see you and your mother and sister very soon, okay?" the tiny brunette nods her head and pouts. 

Her sister, who is lying on my chest, starts fussing a little bit because of me waking her up by talking to Brooklyn but within seconds she falls back asleep. At that moment Jo walks into the living room after having a shower. She flops down beside me and Robin on the couch, and together we watch our eldest daughter play with her dolls. 

"It was nice having you here, the childeren really like you." Jo says and nods towards the sleeping baby on my chest. 

"I'll be back." I promise her. 

She smiles a half smile and leans her head on my shoulder. "When you left, it really hurt. Not only did I lose my husband, I lost my best friend. The only person who truly understood me." she wispers in my ear so that Brooklyn couldn't hear her. 

My heart breaks. I know exactly how she felt. Once again I feel like an idiot for leaving her. 

"I felt the same way too. Izzie's great but she's not you, there are some stuff she just doesn't understand." 

I can tell Jo is at loss of words. Instead of replying to me she calls out to Brooklyn, "It's 8 o'clock, love. Time for bed!"

We put the kids to bed and go back down stairs to watch a movie. Jo goes to sit down on the couch and I head to the kitchen to grab popcorn and beer. Just like old times. We're going to re-watch the movies we watched together when she was an intern. I know deep down this will be hard for both of us. We've gotten so used to each other and reliving old memories the night before I go back home with Izzie is going to hurt like a bitch. I can't wait to see Eli and Alexis but the idea of leaving Jo again is saddening. 

I walk back to the living room and am about to announce that we have an overload of beer when I see Jo wiping tears off her face. 

"Jo, are you okay?" I ask softly. 

She chuckles quietly. "It's so stupid, I spent years trying to hate you or at least dislike you and when I finally got to the point where I was okay with myself and my life, this happened," she motioned to me and the rest of the living room. "now I'm sad because things have been so good between us the past week and now you're leaving tomorrow." 

She hiccups and blows her nose. I sit down and hug her tightly. To my surprise she hugs me back. I'm not sure what possessed me to do it but I lean in so that our noses are touching lightly.  Her eyes dart from mine down to my lips and back. Crap, what am I doing? Every hair on my body is telling me this is the wrong decision and it'll only complicate things but I can't stop myself. I close the distance between us and my lips crash against hers. She kisses me back feverishly. I'm not sure how long we were kissing for. It could have been seconds or minutes, or even hours. Time was infinite when it came to us. My arms wrap around her as I deepen the kiss. Her hands run through my hair. I can't think, I can't speak. I don't care about concequences and neither does she. Her soft moans echo through the room. I snake my hands under her shirt and pull it over her head.

A bit of a filler chapter, until the end ;)

I didn't proof read this so pls excuse any typos or weird sentences. 

Edit: a day after I published this I proof read it but there might still be a few typos and weirdly spelt words.