Somewhere Only We Know

Jeremy wasn't quite sure how to react to Olivia's sudden acceptance of him, but he wouldn't be bothered with worrying about it. He was just glad to have his little girl back in his life, and things heading back in that beautiful direction of becoming what they once were.
They stayed a day longer than they had originally planned, heading back to Los Angeles the evening after the fishing trip. This trip had been perfect, or damn near it, and for the first time in weeks, Jeremy was given a purpose... he had a daughter who called him dad. It had been 13 years since he had that.
"Should I drive you home?" Jeremy asked Olivia as they got into the limo.
"No, I think I'll be alright taking a cab," she told him.
"Well, here," he said, reaching into his wallet, "Let me give you cab fare at least."
She accepted the money, which was way more than she'd need. She stared at it for several minutes and then handed it back. "I can't take this."
"No, go ahead," he insisted. "It's fine."
"No, I mean, it's not really fair," she frowned.
"Of course it's fair," he smirked. "It's CAB fair!"
He laughed at his own pun a little, and she smiled, but she grabbed his wallet from his hand and tucked the money back inside. "Can you just take back the damn money?" She urged.
He took the wallet back and looked at her curiously. "What's your angle, Moran? Why won't you take it?"
She sighed as she prepared her confession. "I stole from you," she said.
"What?" he thought for a moment. "Oh, you mean at the coffee shop?"
She gave him a look of surprise. "You knew?"
He smiled. "Of course I knew. You're not exactly James Bond with your skills. The wallet was out of place, a whole bunch of money was missing, and I knew."
"If you knew, why didn't you say something?"
"Well, I figured if you needed to steal it, you obviously needed it more than I did. And I'd rather you stole from me than someone who needed it as badly as you."
"I didn't need it," she said. "I took it to buy booze."
"So I guess you needed the booze."
"I guess I did."
"Is there something you're not telling me, Liv?" He looked at her with concern as she finally accepted his money and tucked it into her pocket.
"I guess I'm just going through a lot these days," she said. "I don't know. I've been kind of depressed."
"Why?"
"I don't know, Dad. Why is anyone ever depressed? There's no reason, I just am. And it gets really fucking miserable sometimes, and I just want to die. And when I can't die, I drink. And when that doesn't work..." her words tapered to an end here.
"When that doesn't work, what?"
"Nothing," she shook her head. "I just feel miserable and I dwell in that for a while."
"Have you tried getting help?"
"Help?" she let out a light, sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, no that didn't work. They put me on pills, then told me I was addicted and sent me to rehab. Twice."
"Well, look, if you ever get upset and need to talk, just call me, okay? I'm always here for you."
"Yeah, but," she looked him in the eye, hoping he would understand. "You can't expect me to just call you every single time I'm depressed and tell you every little thing that upsets me. You don't have time for that, I don't have time for that, and it's not like it's gonna fix anything."
"I will always have time for you, Olivia. Maybe there are people who have told you they don't have time for you, but I will never, no matter what's going on in my life, ever say that to you, okay? You're my kid. I always have time for you."
She took his hand and leaned on him. "You don't know what you're getting yourself into with me," she told him. "You have no idea how fucked up I really am."
"I don't know, and I don't care," he said, kissing the top of her red head sweetly. "All the bad habits in the world are never going to make me think any less of you than I have since the first time I held you in my arms."
The limo delivered the two of them to Jeremy's house, where Jeremy insisted she let the driver take her home. She declined again, stating that a getting out of a limo in her neighborhood was just asking for trouble.
"Why don't you let me get you a place out here?" he asked. "That way you're closer, you're safer, and you don't have to worry about stuff like that."
"Because I go to college in one month. I like the feeling of knowing I'm supporting myself. It makes me feel like I can really do this whole independent thing. And you know, after the way mom kept me sheltered all my life, it's nice to be independent. Even if it is in a bad neighborhood, and even if it is only for another month."
He hugged her goodbye as she got in the cab. "Be safe," he told her as he kissed her cheek. "I love you, Sweetie."
"Love you too, dad."
He smiled as he watched the cab take off down the road. He hadn't heard her say those words in 13 years, and he loved it. Back then, she was encouraged to say "I love you" to her father. Now, she was choosing to. And this made it so much better to Jeremy.

He was woken at nearly three that next morning to the sound of his phone ringing. When he answered, a stern male voice was on the other end.
"Mr. Renner, this is Dr. Caulfield at St. Anthony Hospital. Your daughter Olivia has been involved in an incident, and she has requested that we contact you."
Was he really hearing these words? "What happened? What do you mean 'incident'?" He panicked as he was already sloppily throwing on whatever clothes he could find.
"Sir, there are police here who can speak to you about that," he said. "All I can say over the phone is that we are urging you to come by at your daughter's request."
Jeremy barely let the doctor finish his sentence before he hung up and headed out the door.
As he rushed into the hospital emergency room, there were several police officers who recognized him right away and led him to an empty examination room.
"Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" he demanded as they looked at each other, apparently wondering which one of them would deliver the news.
"Sir," one spoke up, "You've been away with your daughter for several days, haven't you?"
"Uh, yeah, we left Friday and we just got back a few hours ago," he answered, confused.
"Did you notice your daughter displaying any peculiar behaviors?"
"No! Look, if someone doesn't tell me what's going on right now - "
Another police officer stepped forward. "Sir, your daughter has multiple injuries obviously sustained during the course of a physical altercation."
He didn't need them to explain what they meant. He'd been in enough crime dramas to translate for himself. "Someone beat her up?"
"Yes, sir," she answered. "And during the course of a tox screen, the doctors discovered she had heroin in her system."
He froze. "That's - that's impossible!" he shouted. "Where is this doctor? I need to see the doctor right now!"
"Sir, calm down," she tried, "The doctor is on his way. We just want to know if you've witnessed any of her drug use during the time you spent with her recently."
"No!" he shouted at her as he left the room and hurried down the hall, peering intrusively behind every curtain on his way until he found her.
"Baby!"
Her face, though bruised, was considerable better than he expected, and he thanked God for that. She had a black eye and a knot on her forehead, and her arms were wound in gauze as she looked up at him. "Dad," she whimpered.
He rushed next to her and leaned over to hug her, careful not to do it too tightly. "Baby, what happened?"
"I'm so sorry, dad," she cried.
The doctor entered the room. "Can I speak with you, sir?" he asked.
"Anything you need to say, you can say right here, okay?" he told him.
"Alright then," the doctor walked over to Olivia and began to unwrap her arms. "Olivia had a lot to tell us when we brought her in here, and I think the best way for you to know what she said would be to show you what we saw."
He pulled the bandages away, revealing multiple marks. Some of the scars were well into the healing process. Others were scabs, and some were almost fresh. They started at her elbow and led all the way down to her wrist. The marks were on both arms, the ones on her right being more prominent.
"Dad, please," she sobbed, "Before you say anything, let me explain. I have been cutting myself for a couple years now. I've tried to kill myself three times, but it's never worked. And yeah, I did some drugs tonight, but I promise I don't do that a lot. Chris was at the house when I got home tonight, and -"
"Who the hell is Chris?" Jeremy raged.
"He's just a friend I used to smoke with," she answered. "And tonight he brought some of the stronger stuff, and I don't usually do that stuff, but it had been a long trip, and I was tired, and I was sad, and I-"
"No!" he shouted at her. "No, you don't get to make excuses for almost dying!" He let go of her hand and paced around the room furiously.
"We both had bad reactions to it, and I went crazy, and he beat the shit out of me," she cried. Her sobs were now uncontrollable.
Jeremy looked at the doctor, who was looking at the tox screen, preparing himself to explain it to Jeremy. "Where is this fucker?" he asked. "Did they at least catch him?"
The doctor was silent, and finally so was Olivia.
"Well? Where is this mother fucker? I'm gonna beat the shit out of him!"
"He's dead, Dad," Olivia mumbled. "He overdosed. He died in my fucking arms."
Jeremy was speechless.
"Mr. Renner, Olivia was almost dead when we found her. We worked on reviving her for almost an hour before she came back. And considering what she's been through, she's doing very well. The mere fact that she's sitting up, talking, and aware of her surroundings is really quite astounding, if you consider how she was when she came in."
"She's a fighter," Jeremy whispered, recalling a day 18 years before when he had said that same thing about her.
"Dad, I'm so sorry," she cried again.
He asked the doctor to give them a minute, and he sat beside her, taking her hand again and kissing it gently.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
He stayed silent, staring at her arms and the history they told.
"Dad, please!" she begged. "Please talk to me! Even if you're going to yell, just do it, okay! Tell me now that you hate me, you're ashamed of me, whatever! I don't care, Dad, just say something!"
"I thought you died," he said quietly.
"What?"
"When you were born," he continued. "I delivered you in the back seat of my car on the highway in the rain. And when I held you, I thought you were dead."
Tears rushed to her eyes as he told her a story she'd never heard.
"I held you so close, and your eyes were shut. You weren't breathing. You were blue. And I just stood there looking at you, and I thought you were dead. And then a voice inside me said I needed to help you live. So you know what I did? I listened to that voice. I rubbed your back, I patted you, it felt like hours. I'm sure it was only a few seconds, but Olivia, I'm telling you. It was the longest few seconds of my life."
She squeezed his hand tighter, tears blinding her.
"And then you let out this scream," he smiled. "It was amazing. And in that moment, I saw all the beautiful things ahead in your life for you. I saw you walking, talking, graduating, going to college, getting married, growing old," he stopped suddenly as he began to cry. "And you don't get to take those dreams away from me, Olivia," he said. "You don't have the right to take those dreams away from me. You can do anything you want and be anyone you want and love who you want, but you don't get to ruin all of those plans I made when I held you in my arms. You don't get to do that to me, ok? That is not your right. Do you understand?"
She pulled him into her and held him tightly. Her arms almost choked him, but he let her do that. Her tears had stained the back of his shirt and he could feel her nails in his neck as she held on to him. He held her back, kissing her temple as she promised she'd never do it again.
"Look at me," he whispered, and she did. "I love you, Olivia. I told you that. I will never change my mind, no matter what you do. But you need help, okay? You can't live like this. It isn't fair. And what did your mom say when you had them call her?"
"I didn't have them call her," she confessed. "I was too embarrassed."
"Give me your phone," he demanded. "I'm calling her."
"Oh, please don't do that, Dad," she cried. "Please! It'll kill her!"
"Would it be worse than a police officer at her door explaining your death?"
She shook her head and handed over the phone. He scrolled down to Alexa's number and dialed.
"Hello?" Her groggy voice answered after a few rings.
"Hey, Lex," he said. "It's me."