The Body #3: Rogue and Euphemia

Chapter 11 (Rogue): Committing Murder

***TW for child/adult kidnapping***

"I want you to leave," she said to me, and she was pissed. Euphemia backed away from me, but I advanced on her, still staying between her and the door, just in case she tried to make her escape again.

"I'm not leaving until we talk," I said in a reasonable, calming voice, despite feeling anything but reasonable and calm. What I really wanted to do was grab her to me and hold her close, making up for the last year we'd been apart. I'd missed everything about this woman, missed her warmth and laughter and the feel of her in my arms. Fuck leaving after we talked; I wasn't leaving until she agreed to come back to our home with me. But Euphemia didn't need to know that right now; not until she calmed down, anyway.

When Joel, one of the PIs I'd had dedicated to finding her, had called me and told me they'd gotten a hit on her name for a background and credit check, I'd just about burst into motherfucking tears before I got myself under control. Some days during this last year, I'd almost given up hope of ever seeing her again, seeing our baby.

Our baby that wasn't.

She'd been genuinely confused at first when I'd mentioned her being the only mother to my child, and I could see understanding dawn on her face as she remembered what she'd said to Gel on that recording. That made me feel better, that she hadn't said that to deliberately torture me, but I was still trying to come to terms with no baby. I'd taken to sitting in the gliding chair thing in the nursery every night and letting my mind think of Euphemia, hoping she was OK. Hoping I'd find her.

"Rogue, two things," she was saying, "I don't want you here in my apartment, and I don't want to talk to you. Actually, three things: I don't appreciate you taking my keys and carrying me into my apartment. You had no right to do that."

"Seemed the most expedient thing to do," I said. Fuck if I was apologizing for that. There was no way I was going to have this conversation in the hallway and she hadn't been budging, so I'd moved her to where I wanted her. Inside, so we could talk.

"I don't care how expedient it was. You have no right to touch me or move me or barge into my apartment. You aren't anything to me anymore."

"I don't believe that. You loved me before you left and I have to believe you still do because I still love you. That hasn't changed at all in the last year."

She shook her head at me in disgust. "You don't know the first thing about love."

"Everything I do is for love, lady."

"Everything?"

I was a lawyer. I should have known better. "Everything."

"So leaving me to bleed out after a shooting...not checking on me...that's love? You think that's love? You love me so much you left me to die without a second thought?"

"No! No, Euphemia, there were extenuating circumstances that I need to explain so you can understand what was going on that day. I made split-second choices, bad choices, without thinking. I was just reacting."

"Extenuating circumstances and bad choices," she said quietly to herself, then raised her eyes to mine. "So there's a reason why all common human decency left you that day? There was more to it than you actually caring about Angelica like you didn't care about me?"

"Euphemia, I don't give the first shit about Gel. Protecting her had nothing to do with her and everything to do with a case I was defending."

"So the case was more important than I was."

"No. It wasn't."

"But it was," she said. "You just said you saved Angelica because she was connected to a case you were defending. That means the case was more important than I was."