Amending the End Game, Chapter Five
Title: Amending the End Game, Chapter Five
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Lincoln and Gretchen
Category: Multi-chapter (5/5)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Gretchen comes to collect what she's due.
Author's Notes: This follows the events of Eulogy and is basically post-series IMHO. I make conjecture about what will happen in the final six episodes, but I haven't read any spoilers as yet, and don't know any details, and this picks up after it's all over. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four. This is the end, thank goodness!
Over the course of the next few days, they develop a routine.
It’s quite ridiculous, Gretchen acknowledges, at least to herself, but it is something she could easily get used to. A part of her hopes every morning as he makes love to her before he goes to the office, that when the moment comes he won’t be able to leave her.
But she knows he will. He has to. This cannot go on, and probably the biggest reason it can’t is because she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve this kind of happiness, not after everything she’s done.
What’s really sick, though, is that Lincoln does deserve it. He deserves to have someone for real, not just someone to play house with for a few days. He definitely needs someone more exciting than Sofia Lugo, though. Gretchen supposes he won’t settle for that once he gets to Baja-but part of her also hopes he is miserable without her.
While he’s negotiating who will do what with regard to Scylla, she lies around the bungalow and watches television; he doesn’t invite her to come with him, and she finds that she really doesn’t care to. Without the payoff, Scylla really isn’t very interesting to her, and so she focuses on the idea of staying in one place for an extended period of time. She calls it ‘practicing’ because she really doesn’t know if she’s capable of just living with Rita and Emily. Not because she wouldn’t love to, but because it’s been so long since she did anything remotely like it.
When she says as much to Lincoln, he suggests therapy.
She also discovers that she’s no cook, but she makes a mean salad, and since there are plenty of vegetables in the well-stocked refrigerator, she uses them. She attempts to make spaghetti one night, but Lincoln ends up finishing it for her because she almost dumps the sauce into the pan containing the noodles without draining the water off of them first. When he grabs it away from her, she feels rather foolish, because of course, the noodles need to be drained, and she knew that, really, but what is she supposed to say? She’s literally never cooked anything. She is incompetent when it comes to all things domestic.
But he just laughs, and doesn’t seem to care at all, and she watches his face with a growing ache in her chest. She’s really fucked herself up this time. Loving him was never part of the plan, and it’s the worst feeling in the world because it can’t go on.
So they have a lot of sex. Whenever Gretchen’s feelings swell up uncontainably, she goes down on him, or invites him to pleasure her in some way, and he never refuses. On the fourth day, she realizes they’re having a pseudo-honeymoon, and she’s thankful that thought occurs to her as she showers alone. Lincoln has already left for the office, but she ends up kneeling on the shower floor, her gut wrenching sobs echoing off the beige tile.
Opening herself up this way has been both the biggest revelation of her life, and also the hardest thing she’s ever done. The urge to run away is almost constantly combated by the fact that she’s on a draining hourglass timetable, and every day brings them closer to when he will leave.
She procrastinates calling Rita, and she anticipates that at practically any given moment Lincoln will ask her about it. But he doesn’t. Instead, he instructs her about the ‘Big House’ and the servants, and how everyone gets paid through an accountant who handles everything for him. He sets her up with the names and phone numbers of all the people she would need to know for various things, including a family doctor and a dentist. He calls her ‘baby’ and smiles at her, bends her over the arm of the sofa and fucks her like he’s got all the time in the world, and cuddles her against him on the same sofa as they watch various action movies on cable.
Finally, as the credits roll on the fifth such movie in the same number of days, she feels his lips on her temple. Then he murmurs, “Tomorrow, Scylla will be a done deal.”
Gretchen snuggles into him, her eyes closed because she was drifting to sleep. They remain closed now because she doesn’t want to face the truth with them wide open. “And when do you leave for Baja?” she questions.
He hesitates, just briefly. “The day after that.”
His voice is low, his tone an intimate rumble that reminds her that he doesn’t have to say sexy stuff to turn her on. Just being who he is, is enough. Instead of responding to that-and in an attempt to avoid how it makes her feel, she confesses, “I don’t know if Rita will agree to this.”
“You mean coming here to live with you?” he clarifies.
“Yes,” Gretchen replies. “She probably wants nothing to do with me.”
He waits again, just a beat, before saying, “Probably, but you’re her family, and she might make an exception if you tell her you’re turning over a new leaf. Besides, if you can’t get her to come here, we’ll fly to LA and get her. I can convince her,” he says firmly.
“You are ridiculously over-confident,” she says, opening her eyes and tipping her head back so that she can see his face.
Chuckling, he leans his face down and rubs his lips over hers. “My self-esteem tends to go up after a few blowjobs.”
She starts laughing, unable to help herself. “Then you must be on top of the world right now,” she says, watching while his face is transformed by a shit-eating grin.
He nods. “Things look pretty amazing from up here, I gotta say.”
Gretchen feels her heart clench in her chest and she starts shaking her head negatively. “If she won’t come out here from just a phone call, I don’t want us to try to go convince her. I need this to be over when you leave.”
She can tell from the expression on his face that her sudden mood shift surprises him, but very quickly, he seems to understand what she’s saying, and that, for some inexplicable reason, makes her start crying. She pulls herself from his arms, and climbs off the couch. Pacing away from him, she wanders over to a window by the front door, though she hasn’t ever looked out of it since she’s been there, she suddenly finds the view fascinating.
“I’ll go alone to convince her, Gretchen. You wouldn’t have to come with me. And if she still says no, you can stay here anyway. The proposition is only dependent on you being willing to ask her, not her being willing to do it.”
In irritation, she turns toward him. “Why do you have to be so nice about this?” she demands. “Remember five days ago when you threw me up against this door and tongue fucked my brains out? I didn’t even know for sure if you’d let me live past that orgasm, much less anything else. I need you to be that ruthless son of a bitch, Linc. That’s who you should be, so when you leave m-here I can stand it.”
His eyebrows shoot up, but he remains in his slouched position in the corner of the couch. “You’re gonna try to pin this on me? You’re the one who kissed me on the mouth and started being sweet. You’re the one who changed the tone of this-“ waving his hand in the air between them, he disdainfully indicates their physical relationship- “thing.” Heaving out a deep breath, he continues, “I was never as bad as you thought I was, but you were always such a bitch, I had to match you.”
Gretchen thinks of a million things she could fire off in response, but it’s his last remark that gives her pause. She’d never considered that; in her line of work, she had always been up against people equally ruthless, and lots of times even more unscrupulous than she. She’d never stopped to consider that Lincoln had some sort of moral code, and had probably in his previous life, been an ardent and rather thoughtful lover. But of course he was. It was all there for her to understand-Michael hadn’t just become Mr. Morality; he’d been raised by Lincoln more or less. Some of that integrity must have originated with his brother.
Turning back to the window, she bites her bottom lip until she tastes blood. She’d never bothered to delve too deeply into Lincoln’s romantic past other than to discover he’d been briefly married to LJ’s mother, a time period that indicated they’d gotten hitched due to an unplanned pregnancy. He’d had one long term relationship with the now-dead Veronica Donovan, and its on-again, off-again status seemed to correlate with the duration of his marriage.
And then, of course, he’d shacked up with Sofia in Panama. Despite his prowess in the sex department, she would guess that his belt wasn’t as notched as other men with his same expertise. He was more of the monogamous type. When she compared that with his love and loyalty to his brother and son, she felt stupid that she’d ever thought she could come here and propose a union of sorts between them, but be satisfied with a few rolls in the hay and then be on her merry way if he wasn’t interested in a long-term business arrangement.
Lincoln couldn’t help romancing her, because it was his way.
Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t hear him come up behind her. Then his arms slide around her waist, and he tugs her back against his body. “Sorry,” he murmurs, his lips moving gently against her jaw line.
“What are you sorry for?” she asks, blinking back the tears that she seems to fight on a daily basis now.
“That you feel bad. That we got in too deep. That I can’t stay.” He buries his face in her neck. “Whichever.”
Leaning her head back on his shoulder, she sighs forlornly. Resting her arms over his, she presses back against him as she feels his embrace tighten. That’s it really, in all its simplicity. Neither of them could have known it would be like this, that somehow it would become real. “I know you can’t stay,” she whispers. He’s stolen her breath again with his tongue flicking over the sensitive skin of her neck, but whispering also makes it so he can’t hear the tears in her voice. “I know it,” she repeats.
“LJ would never understand. Fuck, I barely understand it,” he says, his tone soft and low as it delivers deathblows.
She can’t help the watery giggle that ruptures from her throat. “Me, either,” she says.
She can feel an erection growing against the cleft of her bottom, but he pulls away and gently says, “Maybe you should call Rita before we go to bed.”
Blinking rapidly before turning to face him, she forces a smile to her lips. “I think you’re right.”
*
Lincoln sits on the arm of the sofa, listening to every word she says. She could have gone into the bedroom if she wanted privacy, and he supposes, he still could get up and leave her to it alone, but he doesn’t because he doesn’t want to. He wants to hear how she sounds as she asks her sister to give her another chance.
He wants to see her humbled.
So he watches her with no pretense of doing anything else, and she just sits on a stool at the breakfast bar and returns his stare while she asks Rita to come to a little island she’s never even heard of. He can tell it’s not going well at first, but then Gretchen asks to speak to Emily, and really pulls out all the stops. She asks her daughter if she’d like to come visit ‘Auntie Gretchen’ on a beautiful tropical island. The child’s response is slightly more enthusiastic than her sister’s, he can tell by the wide smile that comes over her face.
A few minutes later, Rita must take the phone back from Emily because Gretchen’s expression becomes serious again. When he hears her say, “You won’t regret it, I swear to you,” he is rewarded with discovering what he’d hoped all along. Rita, like any good woman, is looking for a reason to give her big sister another chance. Lincoln knows what an opportunity like that means, very personally, and he has faith that it will have the same effect in Gretchen’s life that it has had in his.
She hangs up the phone, but remains sitting at the bar, her gaze resting on him. “She said yes,” she announces.
He nods, and pushes himself off the arm of the sofa. As he walks around the island into the kitchen, he says, “I figured.” He opens the fridge door and gestures to the well-stocked right side of the top shelf where all the beer sits. “You want?” he asks, looking at her over his shoulder.
Gretchen’s eyes turn smoky, the thought of her sister fading away very plainly in that instant. “I want,” she says.
Lincoln knows she means something entirely different than beer, and it’s enough to get him to close the door without retrieving anything for himself. He circles back around so that he can stand in front of her as she slides off the stool. Her bare toes brush his when her feet touch the ground. “It’s a done deal,” she says softly. Lifting her arms, she locks her wrists around his neck and pulls herself up so she’s pressed tightly against him.
“It is,” he agrees while their eyes communicate something bigger and deeper than their words.
“When the time comes, just go, okay? Don’t say anything, or make any grand gestures. It’s all been more than I deserve anyway.”
He drops his gaze to her lips, which have been devoid of her usual lipstick all week. In fact, she hadn’t really put any make up on at all, and he’d noticed, only because she had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that he had never seen before. She looks younger, and fresh, as though she has her whole life ahead of her. As though anything is possible.
And maybe it is, he realizes, in part due to him. Leaning down, he brushes his mouth over hers, his breath speeding up when her tongue makes the first foray over his bottom lip and then her teeth sink gently into it too. Against her mouth, he whispers, “Whatever you want,” which is a lie, because he can’t give her what she really wants-what he really wants.
She bites him again, and this time it hurts so he hisses in pain. He thinks she did it purposely, as retaliation for the lie, but then her lips open up and he takes control of the kiss and it doesn’t matter if it’s his blood or hers between them, because somehow in the middle of all of this, it has become theirs together; theirs to hoard away in their memories, and theirs to bemoan privately that it can’t continue, and theirs to lose-or give up, depending on how you looked at it.
It had become something neither of them could have expected when they met up on the beach. As he pulls her into the bedroom, to the bed that he has spent more hours in with her in five days than all the months he’d previously been there by himself, he knows just how it will end. He will take her as many times as is physically possible tonight, not allowing either of them any sleep and when he finally lets her go, she will be so exhausted that nothing will penetrate her consciousness for hours.
While she sleeps, he’ll leave, and they won’t have to say goodbye. When he flies out to Mexico in only 36 hours, they will become nothing more than a memory.
The end could have been so much less than it was; he could have killed her on the hot pavement in Los Angeles, or he could have killed her in the stifling humidity of Panama. Or he could have let her come here and almost loved her.
It isn’t the ending either of them expected, but now, as he kisses his way down the shadowy hills and valleys of her body, he knows he hasn’t given her what she wants, only what she needs.
And somehow that feels like winning the war with The Company more than anything else he’s done.
Michael and LJ are waiting for him, and it's time to face the music.
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Lincoln and Gretchen
Category: Multi-chapter (5/5)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Gretchen comes to collect what she's due.
Author's Notes: This follows the events of Eulogy and is basically post-series IMHO. I make conjecture about what will happen in the final six episodes, but I haven't read any spoilers as yet, and don't know any details, and this picks up after it's all over. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four. This is the end, thank goodness!
Over the course of the next few days, they develop a routine.
It’s quite ridiculous, Gretchen acknowledges, at least to herself, but it is something she could easily get used to. A part of her hopes every morning as he makes love to her before he goes to the office, that when the moment comes he won’t be able to leave her.
But she knows he will. He has to. This cannot go on, and probably the biggest reason it can’t is because she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve this kind of happiness, not after everything she’s done.
What’s really sick, though, is that Lincoln does deserve it. He deserves to have someone for real, not just someone to play house with for a few days. He definitely needs someone more exciting than Sofia Lugo, though. Gretchen supposes he won’t settle for that once he gets to Baja-but part of her also hopes he is miserable without her.
While he’s negotiating who will do what with regard to Scylla, she lies around the bungalow and watches television; he doesn’t invite her to come with him, and she finds that she really doesn’t care to. Without the payoff, Scylla really isn’t very interesting to her, and so she focuses on the idea of staying in one place for an extended period of time. She calls it ‘practicing’ because she really doesn’t know if she’s capable of just living with Rita and Emily. Not because she wouldn’t love to, but because it’s been so long since she did anything remotely like it.
When she says as much to Lincoln, he suggests therapy.
She also discovers that she’s no cook, but she makes a mean salad, and since there are plenty of vegetables in the well-stocked refrigerator, she uses them. She attempts to make spaghetti one night, but Lincoln ends up finishing it for her because she almost dumps the sauce into the pan containing the noodles without draining the water off of them first. When he grabs it away from her, she feels rather foolish, because of course, the noodles need to be drained, and she knew that, really, but what is she supposed to say? She’s literally never cooked anything. She is incompetent when it comes to all things domestic.
But he just laughs, and doesn’t seem to care at all, and she watches his face with a growing ache in her chest. She’s really fucked herself up this time. Loving him was never part of the plan, and it’s the worst feeling in the world because it can’t go on.
So they have a lot of sex. Whenever Gretchen’s feelings swell up uncontainably, she goes down on him, or invites him to pleasure her in some way, and he never refuses. On the fourth day, she realizes they’re having a pseudo-honeymoon, and she’s thankful that thought occurs to her as she showers alone. Lincoln has already left for the office, but she ends up kneeling on the shower floor, her gut wrenching sobs echoing off the beige tile.
Opening herself up this way has been both the biggest revelation of her life, and also the hardest thing she’s ever done. The urge to run away is almost constantly combated by the fact that she’s on a draining hourglass timetable, and every day brings them closer to when he will leave.
She procrastinates calling Rita, and she anticipates that at practically any given moment Lincoln will ask her about it. But he doesn’t. Instead, he instructs her about the ‘Big House’ and the servants, and how everyone gets paid through an accountant who handles everything for him. He sets her up with the names and phone numbers of all the people she would need to know for various things, including a family doctor and a dentist. He calls her ‘baby’ and smiles at her, bends her over the arm of the sofa and fucks her like he’s got all the time in the world, and cuddles her against him on the same sofa as they watch various action movies on cable.
Finally, as the credits roll on the fifth such movie in the same number of days, she feels his lips on her temple. Then he murmurs, “Tomorrow, Scylla will be a done deal.”
Gretchen snuggles into him, her eyes closed because she was drifting to sleep. They remain closed now because she doesn’t want to face the truth with them wide open. “And when do you leave for Baja?” she questions.
He hesitates, just briefly. “The day after that.”
His voice is low, his tone an intimate rumble that reminds her that he doesn’t have to say sexy stuff to turn her on. Just being who he is, is enough. Instead of responding to that-and in an attempt to avoid how it makes her feel, she confesses, “I don’t know if Rita will agree to this.”
“You mean coming here to live with you?” he clarifies.
“Yes,” Gretchen replies. “She probably wants nothing to do with me.”
He waits again, just a beat, before saying, “Probably, but you’re her family, and she might make an exception if you tell her you’re turning over a new leaf. Besides, if you can’t get her to come here, we’ll fly to LA and get her. I can convince her,” he says firmly.
“You are ridiculously over-confident,” she says, opening her eyes and tipping her head back so that she can see his face.
Chuckling, he leans his face down and rubs his lips over hers. “My self-esteem tends to go up after a few blowjobs.”
She starts laughing, unable to help herself. “Then you must be on top of the world right now,” she says, watching while his face is transformed by a shit-eating grin.
He nods. “Things look pretty amazing from up here, I gotta say.”
Gretchen feels her heart clench in her chest and she starts shaking her head negatively. “If she won’t come out here from just a phone call, I don’t want us to try to go convince her. I need this to be over when you leave.”
She can tell from the expression on his face that her sudden mood shift surprises him, but very quickly, he seems to understand what she’s saying, and that, for some inexplicable reason, makes her start crying. She pulls herself from his arms, and climbs off the couch. Pacing away from him, she wanders over to a window by the front door, though she hasn’t ever looked out of it since she’s been there, she suddenly finds the view fascinating.
“I’ll go alone to convince her, Gretchen. You wouldn’t have to come with me. And if she still says no, you can stay here anyway. The proposition is only dependent on you being willing to ask her, not her being willing to do it.”
In irritation, she turns toward him. “Why do you have to be so nice about this?” she demands. “Remember five days ago when you threw me up against this door and tongue fucked my brains out? I didn’t even know for sure if you’d let me live past that orgasm, much less anything else. I need you to be that ruthless son of a bitch, Linc. That’s who you should be, so when you leave m-here I can stand it.”
His eyebrows shoot up, but he remains in his slouched position in the corner of the couch. “You’re gonna try to pin this on me? You’re the one who kissed me on the mouth and started being sweet. You’re the one who changed the tone of this-“ waving his hand in the air between them, he disdainfully indicates their physical relationship- “thing.” Heaving out a deep breath, he continues, “I was never as bad as you thought I was, but you were always such a bitch, I had to match you.”
Gretchen thinks of a million things she could fire off in response, but it’s his last remark that gives her pause. She’d never considered that; in her line of work, she had always been up against people equally ruthless, and lots of times even more unscrupulous than she. She’d never stopped to consider that Lincoln had some sort of moral code, and had probably in his previous life, been an ardent and rather thoughtful lover. But of course he was. It was all there for her to understand-Michael hadn’t just become Mr. Morality; he’d been raised by Lincoln more or less. Some of that integrity must have originated with his brother.
Turning back to the window, she bites her bottom lip until she tastes blood. She’d never bothered to delve too deeply into Lincoln’s romantic past other than to discover he’d been briefly married to LJ’s mother, a time period that indicated they’d gotten hitched due to an unplanned pregnancy. He’d had one long term relationship with the now-dead Veronica Donovan, and its on-again, off-again status seemed to correlate with the duration of his marriage.
And then, of course, he’d shacked up with Sofia in Panama. Despite his prowess in the sex department, she would guess that his belt wasn’t as notched as other men with his same expertise. He was more of the monogamous type. When she compared that with his love and loyalty to his brother and son, she felt stupid that she’d ever thought she could come here and propose a union of sorts between them, but be satisfied with a few rolls in the hay and then be on her merry way if he wasn’t interested in a long-term business arrangement.
Lincoln couldn’t help romancing her, because it was his way.
Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t hear him come up behind her. Then his arms slide around her waist, and he tugs her back against his body. “Sorry,” he murmurs, his lips moving gently against her jaw line.
“What are you sorry for?” she asks, blinking back the tears that she seems to fight on a daily basis now.
“That you feel bad. That we got in too deep. That I can’t stay.” He buries his face in her neck. “Whichever.”
Leaning her head back on his shoulder, she sighs forlornly. Resting her arms over his, she presses back against him as she feels his embrace tighten. That’s it really, in all its simplicity. Neither of them could have known it would be like this, that somehow it would become real. “I know you can’t stay,” she whispers. He’s stolen her breath again with his tongue flicking over the sensitive skin of her neck, but whispering also makes it so he can’t hear the tears in her voice. “I know it,” she repeats.
“LJ would never understand. Fuck, I barely understand it,” he says, his tone soft and low as it delivers deathblows.
She can’t help the watery giggle that ruptures from her throat. “Me, either,” she says.
She can feel an erection growing against the cleft of her bottom, but he pulls away and gently says, “Maybe you should call Rita before we go to bed.”
Blinking rapidly before turning to face him, she forces a smile to her lips. “I think you’re right.”
*
Lincoln sits on the arm of the sofa, listening to every word she says. She could have gone into the bedroom if she wanted privacy, and he supposes, he still could get up and leave her to it alone, but he doesn’t because he doesn’t want to. He wants to hear how she sounds as she asks her sister to give her another chance.
He wants to see her humbled.
So he watches her with no pretense of doing anything else, and she just sits on a stool at the breakfast bar and returns his stare while she asks Rita to come to a little island she’s never even heard of. He can tell it’s not going well at first, but then Gretchen asks to speak to Emily, and really pulls out all the stops. She asks her daughter if she’d like to come visit ‘Auntie Gretchen’ on a beautiful tropical island. The child’s response is slightly more enthusiastic than her sister’s, he can tell by the wide smile that comes over her face.
A few minutes later, Rita must take the phone back from Emily because Gretchen’s expression becomes serious again. When he hears her say, “You won’t regret it, I swear to you,” he is rewarded with discovering what he’d hoped all along. Rita, like any good woman, is looking for a reason to give her big sister another chance. Lincoln knows what an opportunity like that means, very personally, and he has faith that it will have the same effect in Gretchen’s life that it has had in his.
She hangs up the phone, but remains sitting at the bar, her gaze resting on him. “She said yes,” she announces.
He nods, and pushes himself off the arm of the sofa. As he walks around the island into the kitchen, he says, “I figured.” He opens the fridge door and gestures to the well-stocked right side of the top shelf where all the beer sits. “You want?” he asks, looking at her over his shoulder.
Gretchen’s eyes turn smoky, the thought of her sister fading away very plainly in that instant. “I want,” she says.
Lincoln knows she means something entirely different than beer, and it’s enough to get him to close the door without retrieving anything for himself. He circles back around so that he can stand in front of her as she slides off the stool. Her bare toes brush his when her feet touch the ground. “It’s a done deal,” she says softly. Lifting her arms, she locks her wrists around his neck and pulls herself up so she’s pressed tightly against him.
“It is,” he agrees while their eyes communicate something bigger and deeper than their words.
“When the time comes, just go, okay? Don’t say anything, or make any grand gestures. It’s all been more than I deserve anyway.”
He drops his gaze to her lips, which have been devoid of her usual lipstick all week. In fact, she hadn’t really put any make up on at all, and he’d noticed, only because she had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that he had never seen before. She looks younger, and fresh, as though she has her whole life ahead of her. As though anything is possible.
And maybe it is, he realizes, in part due to him. Leaning down, he brushes his mouth over hers, his breath speeding up when her tongue makes the first foray over his bottom lip and then her teeth sink gently into it too. Against her mouth, he whispers, “Whatever you want,” which is a lie, because he can’t give her what she really wants-what he really wants.
She bites him again, and this time it hurts so he hisses in pain. He thinks she did it purposely, as retaliation for the lie, but then her lips open up and he takes control of the kiss and it doesn’t matter if it’s his blood or hers between them, because somehow in the middle of all of this, it has become theirs together; theirs to hoard away in their memories, and theirs to bemoan privately that it can’t continue, and theirs to lose-or give up, depending on how you looked at it.
It had become something neither of them could have expected when they met up on the beach. As he pulls her into the bedroom, to the bed that he has spent more hours in with her in five days than all the months he’d previously been there by himself, he knows just how it will end. He will take her as many times as is physically possible tonight, not allowing either of them any sleep and when he finally lets her go, she will be so exhausted that nothing will penetrate her consciousness for hours.
While she sleeps, he’ll leave, and they won’t have to say goodbye. When he flies out to Mexico in only 36 hours, they will become nothing more than a memory.
The end could have been so much less than it was; he could have killed her on the hot pavement in Los Angeles, or he could have killed her in the stifling humidity of Panama. Or he could have let her come here and almost loved her.
It isn’t the ending either of them expected, but now, as he kisses his way down the shadowy hills and valleys of her body, he knows he hasn’t given her what she wants, only what she needs.
And somehow that feels like winning the war with The Company more than anything else he’s done.
Michael and LJ are waiting for him, and it's time to face the music.