My Baby, My Darling.

Something was wrong. When I stumbled out of the guest bedroom, a sort of hectic frenzy greeted me. Various figures sped past me and conversations were exchanged from the top of the staircase to the kitchen downstairs, to the outside patio. I went out of my way to dodge a sprinting Annie as she rushed past me and sprinted downstairs only to yell an incomprehensible phrase to Gabe who sounded to be on the phone inside of the kitchen, frustration and seriousness evident in his tone.

My head throbbed, the sunlight streaming through all the open windows in the hallway sending a migraine all throughout my senses. My ears were ringing, my throat was dry, and I smelled like alcohol, most likely due to the many times I had stumbled into the bathroom to vomit the remaining substances in my system. That was in the early hours of the morning, when a hint of a sun was barely making its way into the horizon and faint car horns and train whistles could be detected through the bathroom’s open window. But now, it was bright and loud and busy. And I was dizzy from the unrelenting hangover as well as the chaos now surrounding me.

I stumbled into the nearby bathroom and forced myself into the shower, ridding my body of last nights scent and allowing the steam of the water to seep into my pores. After brushing my teeth and cleaning the smeared make-up from my face, I retreated back to the guest room I was supposed to share with Nicole and Annie. The sheets were left in a tangled mess and the comforter was sprawled out on the floor along with various articles of clothing most likely left behind in Annie’s hurry to get ready this morning. I realized that a newfound silence had settled inside of the house as I pulled dry clothes over my body, and I had never appreciated silence more than I had at that moment.

A knock on the door sounded just as I was pulling my black leather boots over my jean-clad legs.

"Come-in." I muttered, shuffling towards the closet and pulling out my coat.

"It's me." Dexter's voice rung out from behind me as he slowly inched the door open.

I spun around immediately regretted the action, realizing my nausea was still very much in tact. My hand shot up to my head and rubbed circles around my temples as I shot him a confused look. "Hey."

For a moment, I had forgotten he was here, in my parent’s house. It didn't dawn on me until that moment that he had traveled all the way here and had even helped me into bed in my drunken haze. A part of me believed that the whole encounter with him last night was a dream, something I fantasized in my compromised state. It was surreal to see him in front of me, in the flesh and as perfect as ever. My eyes scanned over his frame, as if at any moment he would vanish and I needed to remember every aspect of him, from his thin grey sweatshirt concealing his toned arms that flexed with his arms crossed like that, down to his fairly slouched, fitted jeans as they hung fairly loosely around his waist. As my gaze traveled up to his face, I noticed the prevalent stubble framing his thin lips. He suddenly looked the oldest I had ever seen him, closely resembling a tired version of his brother. And I found my eyes narrowing, my lips parted slightly as I paused in my tracks.

Dexter cleared his throat, leaning against the door frame as his hand moved up to rub the back of his neck. I could tell he assumed my silence was out of irritation because he furrowed his eyebrows in hesitation before speaking. "Travis didn't come home last night, so everyone went out to look for him. Your mom left early this morning, before everyone woke up, so she doesn’t know yet.”

"What do you mean he didn't come home last night?" I narrowed my eyes, not entirely believing him. I was surprised how easily the words came out of my mouth, how I didn't have to think before formulating an answer. It was odd to me, to have a normal conversation with him as if nothing were wrong, like we were familiar but not close.

He shook his head slowly, dropping his eyes to the ground to tell me that he had no answer for me. "I don't know any other way to put it, that's just what happened. Everyone left about twenty minutes ago to see if he maybe stayed the night somewhere or ask local bars if they've seen him. I’m the only one that stayed behind.”

"Is that all?” I cleared my throat, pushing a few strands of hair out of my face.

"No." His gaze moved over my features, scanning my eyes and silently analyzing my expression. "Are you hungry?"

I sniffed and shook my head before pushing a few strands of hair out of my face. "I know how to fend for myself, Dexter.”

"I know you do. I just wanted-"

"What do you want, Dexter?" I snapped, narrowing my eyes at his lax frame as it leaned against my door frame. "What did you want to accomplish by coming here? You clearly want something so let's just skip this formality bullshit and tell me why you're here."

He took a deep breath and hung his head low before prying his body away from the door frame and standing so that he was facing me. His eyes met mine and I detected his exhaustion mixed with a sense of purpose. "I want us to talk."

I bit down on my lip, shaking my head slowly. "I don't know if that’s a good idea.”

"Well then, I want you to hear me out. I'll talk, if you're willing to listen."

I was quiet for a moment. I needed to be strong, show him that I wouldn't be easily swayed in my decisions. But I wanted to know, I wanted to know what was so important that he would come all the way out here. But more than anything, I wanted to just be around him, be surrounded by his presence. Even if it was only for an hour.

"Will there be bacon?" My question was sincere, but after the words came out of my mouth, I realized the familiarity of the words.

He smirked, dropping his head to conceal his laughter. "Yeah. There will be bacon."

I bit back a smile, remembering how contagious his laughter was. I moved to the far end of the room to grab my purse so that he couldn’t see my strained expression. And just like that, by one smile, he was able to ease the tension in the room if only for a second.

The car ride was quiet, all except for the hum of his Jeep's engine. The familiar smell of his car sent a wave of nostalgia all throughout my senses as I rested my head against the cool window. His gaze stayed transfixed on the road and I could tell he was deep in thought, like he was silently mapping out what he was about to say before he said it.

“Your mom’s Cafe is really coming along.” He nodded, his gaze still fixated on the road as he broke the silence. “She showed me the blueprints last night and this new restaurant is twice the size of the one back home. You were right. She’s doing really big things in New York. This city is meant for her.”

He was so casual about it, like we hadn’t been apart for the past couple of weeks, like nothing happened. I watched him send me a small smile before turning his gaze back to the road. And then I missed him. Not being able to talk to him like I once did, not being able to reach my hand out to him and trace his lips or run my fingers through his hair or inhale his scent. I felt the most distance from him at that moment than the nights I spent in the emptiness of him.

We pulled up into the nearly empty parking lot of a diner off the side of the highway. It was exceptionally smaller than Peggy's Diner and the waitresses were mostly petite, blonde college students with shirts that were two sizes too small. Dexter paid no attention to them as he led me over to a booth in the corner. Our server eyed him flirtatiously and only half-heartedly listened when he asked her to leave the coffee pot on the table. He had to repeat himself and she only blushed before going off on another tangent about her own stupidity in an attempt to appeal to him more. He merely mumbled a half-hearted thank you before turning his gaze toward me.

"You're a single man now, Dex." I said when the hostess finally made her exit. "I don't mind if you flirt with the waitress."

It was the first words I had said to him since we left the house. He blinked, his unrelenting gaze burning holes into my cheeks as I examined the menu in front of me. It was a useless task since Dexter took the liberty of ordering for both of us once we sat down, a habit that annoyed the shit out of me when we were together. Although, he did order exactly what I wanted since I always ordered the same thing when we went out to breakfast. He knew me, and he observed more about me than I was aware of.

"She isn't my type." He cleared his throat before pouring coffee into my mug and pushing it toward me, just like he always did when we went to Peggy’s Diner. Then, he poured himself a cup.

I reached for the mug and traced the rim with my fingers. Normally, I would have devoured the substance in one gulp. I don’t know if it was his presence or the blatant elephant in the room, but my caffeine addiction suddenly wasn’t my priority. "You wanted to talk."

"What?" He furrowed his eyebrows, nonchalantly taking a sip of his coffee.

"That's why we're here, isn't it?" My eyes finally met his curious stare. "You didn't take me here just to watch me drink coffee."

“You don’t want to eat first?” He raised his eyebrows, curious. I shook my head slowly.

He nodded, pausing as his grey eyes scanned the surface of the table to formulate his next sentence before meeting my gaze once again. "I lied to you, Chelsea. And I was wrong for doing that. You are right to be angry with me.”

Dexter paused, expecting some sort of reaction from me. I merely blinked, waiting for him to continue.

"I knew that Lydia was my daughter and I didn't tell you. Instead, I asked Monica to lie to you and I let you believe Ben was the father. I did this to protect you from the situation I was dealing with."

He met my eyes and half-expecting me to butt in like I always did. But I didn't. I kept my eyes glued to the table in front of me. He took my silence as a cue to continue.

"My mother left us a trust fund.” He explained, transfixing his gaze on the coffee pot. “Ben found out about it a few years ago because he handles almost all of my father’s personal assets. He did a bit of digging around and uncovered a hidden account. He took it to our family lawyer and they confirmed that there was nearly half a million dollars in the account. The lawyer explained that my mother did leave it behind, but that there were limitations. The account could only be accessed under one condition: in the occurrence that there are future heirs of the family tree. The money would only be accessible to her grandchildren. I suppose that she knew we wouldn’t have any financial problems. She left the money so that we could get a life independent of my father and the family business, so that the same thing that happened to her wouldn’t happen to us. When you ran into Ben outside of my apartment a few weeks back, that's when I connected all the dots: why Monica showed up with Lydia out of the blue, Ben's sudden interest in my finances and account numbers when we'd go to hockey games. I called the family lawyer that morning and he all but spelled out what happened. Together, Ben and Monica tried to access the account claiming Ben was Lydia’s father. And since Lydia's birth certificate doesn't have a paternal name, the bank wouldn't question it. As long as Lydia looked even remotely similar to him, the bank wouldn't question it at all. I mean, the similarities were enough to fool you, right?"

The waitress came by and placed our food in front of us before scurrying back to the kitchen. The scent of waffles filled my senses, but I was not hungry anymore.

He continued. "That night, after you left, I called Monica. Supposedly, Ben didn't stay true to his word and cut her out of the deal. That's why she came into town, why she told me about Lydia. She was being careful, so that Ben didn’t know she was in town. She couldn't come out with everything until I figured it out myself, until she knew if I was trustworthy. Ben is a dangerous man where money is involved, he wouldn't blink twice before screwing you over. He and my dad are similar that way. I've been cautious to never go into business with them or dare question their financial decisions. Monica unknowingly became a victim of their manipulative game. She came back to ask for my help. And suddenly I was in the middle of a law suit. Multiple law suits, actually: one for embezzlement an one for partial custody of Lydia. That's what I wanted to protect you from. I figured it was better that you didn't know what was going on rather than dragging you into the middle of it. Trials are messy and it's only going to get messier as time goes on. This was my way of protecting you. I tried to tell you this at the Rock Arena, but that also became… messy."

I licked over my lips and nodded, showing him that I listened to everything he said. "Why are you telling me all of this, Dexter?"

He blinked, partly disbelieving of my question. He looked at me as if the answer were obvious. "Because you want the truth."

I let out a sigh, finally meeting his eyes. "What does all of this solve, though? You thought that if you came out here and explained all of this everything would go back to normal?"

"Those were my thoughts, yes..." He hesitated. My response confused him.

I shook my head slowly and looked away from him as I licked over my lips. I brought the weight of my bag and slung it across my shoulder before stepping out of the booth and making my way towards the exit of the diner, quickly. I could faintly hear Dexter jump to his feet and follow after me, his clumsy, haste footsteps.

"Where are you going?" He called out to me when I had reached the end of the parking lot, where the black gravel meets the pavement of the sidewalk.

I licked over my lips before spinning around to face him. He was a few feet away from me and closing the remaining distance with his broad steps.

"I'm just..." I cleared my throat, pointing in the direction of my parent's house. "I'm going to walk back. It's not that far."

He stood there, his eyebrows furrowed as he tried to figure out what was happening. His breathing came out in puffs of air, quickly condensing into the New York chill.

"You should go home, Dex. Coming here was a mistake." I nodded one last time before spinning on my heel and continuing my trek towards the main road.

"What do you want from me, Chelsea?" His voice was sarcastic, disbelieving.

I spun around again, narrowing my eyes as they focused on his gaze. He was confused, distraught even. And it took everything to not press my lips against his, to pull his body close to mine and feel like I used to. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t.

"I am trying so hard to make everything right, and you make it seem like I don't care at all. I'm doing everything in my power to fix this, to make everything okay. But you just treat my efforts like everything I do is wrong. I don't know what you want from me anymore. I can't figure out what it is you want me to do. Can you just tell me, tell me what I can do to fix this?”

And there it was, the question I had been asking myself since the night of the Rock Arena. What needs to happen to make everything alright? How can all of this just go away? How can we go back to normal, to the way we used to be? And for so long, I didn’t have an answer. I lied awake at night and ran this same question over and over again in my head, trying to find out the solution, the right solution. But I always came to the same conclusion, there was no answer. There was no possible way that things could go back to the way it was. Everything was different. And that hurt, as if I couldn’t go through anymore pain, couldn’t experience anymore hurting, I was struck with the inevitable. Dexter and I could not be together. It was not possible.

"You are trying to fix something, but you have no idea what is broken." I said, meeting his eyes. The newfound rasp in my voice gave way to my emotions, the helplessness that consumed me. And with that, tears began to well up in my eyes and I cursed my tear ducts. I licked over my lips and looked away from him.

"Then help me." He said, closing the distance between us and rubbing his calloused fingers over my cheeks, making it so that my eyes had no choice but to look into his own. I blinked and tears slowly began to roll down my cheeks. Dexter’s thumbs ran across my numbing cheeks, wiping the tears away. "Help me understand what about us is broken so that I can fix it."

"We are broken, everything about us is broken." I said, removing his hands from my face and taking a few steps back. "I'm looking at you right now and I feel like I don't know you anymore, like the person I knew and the person standing in front of me is not the same person. The Dexter that I loved, the Dexter that I knew, wouldn't lie to me. He wouldn't hide this vital piece of his life from me. He would have loved me enough to tell me the truth, regardless.”

My voice was weak as I rubbed the sleeves of my coat against my cheeks, wiping the tears away.

"And it's scary," I breathed. "to think that everything someone says, everything they do, could be a complete lie. And I believed every single lie...because I loved you."

He clenched his jaw, this situation frustrating to him. He couldn’t do anything, couldn’t convince me any further. He felt helpless, like all he could do was watch me break down in front of him. My heart ached for him.

"I loved you so much, Dexter...and then you were gone. I'm sitting alone and I begin to question whether or not I even had you at all, if all of it was even real or maybe I just imagined your feelings for me, that I was stupid enough to believe it. It doesn't feel good, it feels fucking terrible to think that everything you said to me very well could have been one massive lie."

"That is not at all what I wanted." He said, hesitation in his voice as he chose his words. My words pained him. He reached forward and grabbed my arms, his grip forcing my eyes to meet his grey orbs, full of sincerity. "You have me. I'm here, right in front of you. I'm not going anywhere, darling. I love you just as much as I always have. I am so sorry that I lied to you but I promise you, what I feel for you is real, as real as the ground we're standing on."

"You don't get it." I sniffed, wiping the tears streaming down my face using the sleeves of my jacket. "This isn’t all your fault. This is my fault, too. I loved you too much. I feel too hard and too fast and I wasn’t cautious. I loved you so much that I lost sight of myself, I changed. We both changed. We are not the same people we once were, Dexter. And we're just fooling ourselves if we think we can go back to the way we were. You’re a dad now. You need to move forward and focus on that. I need to move on and figure out what it is I'm doing with my life, move on from community college and focus on myself.”

He licked over his lips and ran a hand through his hair as he looked away from me. "I don't know if I can do that. I won't do that. I am not going to just move on and let you go.”

"Dexter-"

"No. Damn it. I still love you, and I will do whatever you want me to do so that I can prove it to you. We can make this work, we can fix this-"

"You aren't listening to me." I whispered into the air, shaking my head in frustration. “We can’t be together. Not now, at least. If we did, we’d just be forcing something that won’t work.”

Dexter shook his head, a pained look in his eyes. “Why is it always up to you to decide whether this works or not? I deserve a say in what happens to us, don’t I? It can’t just be up to you to call it quits.”

“You think this isn’t hard for me?” I cried, narrowing my eyes at him. “I want nothing more than to crawl into your arms and feel safe again. It’s taking everything inside of me to not kiss you or touch you or hug you like I used to. I’m looking at you right now and it physically hurts because I’m remembering all the times we were happy together. But I have to remind myself that those are memories, that was in the past and now we need to move on. So please, do this for me.” I met his eyes, my hands moving up to wipe tears away. “Go home and fight for Lydia. Move on, without me. Please.”

He sniffed, averting his grey orbs from me as he nodded. Dexter's gaze dropped to the ground as he rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. He didn’t look at me as he spun around and walked back into the diner, angrily pushing the door open in the process. Dexter hated my decision. He hated that he had no control over it. That for once, there was no solution, no all-knowing answer that would suddenly make all of his problems go away. And he had no choice but to give up, accept the inevitable, and move on.

When I made it back to the house, there was a single car in the driveway, a silver shiny Honda Civic. And leaning next to that car was a disheveled, exhausted figure. But all I seemed to notice, was the cigarette dangling between his fingertips as he brought it back up to his lips before tapping away at the dangling ashes.