THE RETURN

Chapter 16

Elliot was quick to soak up the fluid with towels. He went around quickly, putting the chair back in the closet and collecting all of their clothes to start a load of laundry. Although he never wanted to disinfect the area, he found a bottle of disinfectant under the sink and sprayed the floor and counter thoroughly. Once he started the clothes, he walked towards the bathroom door to meet Olivia.

When he entered the bathroom he was met with the steam from the bathtub, the scent of vanilla and the sight of Olivia with her hair pulled up, looking in the mirror at the marks he left behind on her breasts. Her eyes met his through the glass and smiled at him, "These are going to take forever to go away."

He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and placed an open mouth kiss to her shoulder, "Sorry."

She laughed, "No you're not."

He shrugged playfully, "Okay, I'm not." Her elbow came back to connect to his torso lightly, eliciting a laugh from both of them. "Come on, let's get in the tub."

She nodded her head and allowed him to guide her by the hips to the tub. His hand held onto hers as she stepped in. He waited until she sat down to step in behind her and sit down also. Her body scooted between his open legs, so that she could rest her upper body against his chest. When his hands fell on her stomach, she placed hers on top of his. They relaxed in each other's arms for a few minutes in silence.

"Tell me something." He said.

Her hands wrapped around his to intertwine their fingers, "Like what?"

"Something I don't know."

She took a second to think. There were a lot of things he didn't know. Stories about her childhood that she never told him, things that happened at work after he left, exes he didn't know about. She sighed out loud, she didn't even want to get into the discussion about exes. But she knew they were going to have to come up eventually, especially Brian and Tucker... oh god he was going to flip. "Um... when you left, before Lewis, I... um... reconnected with Cassidy."

She felt rather than heard his sharp intake of breath. When they were partners, he had always been protective of her. Always questioned her dates like they were perps. She could only imagine how protective he was of her now.

He responded with, "Mhm." As a way to signify to her to keep going.

"I guess it was after Lewis as well. We were dating for a little before Lewis happened, then dated for a while after. We got this apartment together."

"It was that serious?"

She shrugged her shoulders, "He was familiar and after Lewis, I just didn't want to be alone anymore. I did love him. Not like I love you, but I did."

He nodded, "What happened?"

"Besides the obvious reasons?"

"What obvious reasons are those?"

"That he was the same old Cassidy we knew back in the day and that we never saw each other. Which I think is partially the reason we stayed as long as we did."

"And the less obvious reasons?"

The breath that escaped her lips, made him tense slightly. "At the end of our relationship, I thought I was pregnant."

"Mhm."

"Obviously I wasn't. And he made it very clear that he was extremely excited about that fact. We didn't last long after that."

"He never was a family man Liv."

She nodded and tightened her fingers around his. He tightened his around hers as well.