From Here On Out

thirty

"I need you, And baby you need me"

Two Years Ago

"You want a girl huh?" Tris asks, laughing as she leans against his bare chest. They lay in a bath together, and the topic of kids had suddenly popped up.

Tobias nods, kissing her shoulder softly. "Yeah, a bouncing baby girl for me to spoil."

Tris laughs and smiles at the image in her mind at the same time, she can see it as clear as day.

Tobias twirling her around, and her jumping around him dancing. But she can see him placing a Band-Aid gently on her skinned knee, or reading her to sleep after she's had a nightmare.

"What about you?"

Tris hums in thought, "I think I'd love a girl. But a boy would be good too."

"A mini me?" Tobias jokes as she tilts her head to kiss his lips.

"Oh good lord, I can't even imagine two of you." She jokes, kissing him. Soft and sweet, slow a meaningful.

|     |     |    |

Present Day

Driving up the gravel road to the house, Tris is surprised when she sees Tobias's truck in the driveway. Parking beside it, she gets out of her car. Pulling her coat closer to her, as the evening wind nip at her skin.

Another week had passed, and she was going on two weeks without anything from Tobias.

The small heels on her boots click against the wooden porch as she steps up the three stairs. And the person who sits in one of the two wooden chairs out on the porch surprises her more than the truck did. Tobias sits there, for the first time in two weeks her eyes land on him.

"Hey." She says, getting his attention as she walks over to sit beside him in the other chair.

Tobias turns his head to look at her, and his face his tinted red. Whether it's because he's been crying or out in the cold is anyone's best guess.

"Hey." His voice is low and raspy, almost as it is in the morning. But this time she knows it's his emotions and the tension he feels being near her again that causes his voice to sound that way.

"I'm glad you're okay, I was worried when you never," She pauses as her eyes skim over the yellowing lawn and land on an empty whisky bottle. "called."

She finally finishes her sentence as her voice falls, and Tobias picks up on why that is.

"I didn't drink it, hid it under the deck a year back and I took it out today and poured it out. Less temptation."

Tris breathes a breath of relief, and she's proud of him. Months ago if he knew what he did know, he'd take the bottle and more and just down them.

The only sound now between them is only a light blowing of the wind through the trees. As the day has already faded to night.

Tobias lets out a sigh, looking down at his hand that lay in his lap. His fingers beginning to go numb from the cold. "You should have told me Tris."

"Look," Tobias says, leaning forward in his chair. Resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes meeting Tris's for the first time in a while. "I was a mess when you found out that you were pregnant. I understand that, and I know I was in rehab but,"

Tobias shakes his head, looking out at the vast field. "I got better, and I've been better for a long time up until a couple months ago. "

"Why didn't you just tell me, you could've picked me up from rehab two months later and told me then. That you were pregnant."

Tris chews on her bottom lip, unable to look straight at him anymore. The guilt eating her alive.

"Why didn't you just wait a little bit longer to be able to tell me, you made a decision that I damn well should've been a part of Tris."

He stands up then, beginning to pace as he can feel the same anger and hurt building deep within his chest. 

"I never got to feel that joy of seeing the positive on the test. Never got to hear it's heartbeat for the first time or even see it up on that screen looking as small as a jellybean. I never got the chance to dream about the child we'd bring into the world in a matter of months."

She can see now even in the only light from the porch lights, the tears in his eyes. "Why didn't you give me a chance to be a father?"

"Tobias, you're going to get the chance to be a father. You will, but then..."

"Tris, I've sat around with you and without you alone. And when I've been with you these past couple months, I thought we still were in agreement that there would be no more secrets. I looked at you--"

Tobias shakes his head, "I was with you all this time, but I didn't know. I never knew about this."

"I never wanted to hurt you." Tris tells him, her voice breaking.

"God, Tris, the hardest part of this right now is that if I hadn't found that box with the test I still wouldn't know. You'd be sitting there in that chair hiding this and lying to me every day for the rest of my life."

"You don't know that."

Tobias walks past her on his way closer to the steps off the porch to leave, turning around to say something. "Look, I came here hoping I could talk about this and in someway understand just a little better but I can't."

 Watching him walk down those steps towards his truck she stops him by speaking up. "You think I wanted it this way?!"

Tobias turns around to face her now, his face still red not only from the cold but the tears he's been silently crying.

"I wanted to be your wife. I wanted us to be able to raise that child up together in a wonderful, loving home, that you could not provide."

Tears slip off her face and fall onto the frozen ground, the only moisture the dirt and the grass had seen since the snow a few weeks ago.

"That was the hardest choice I ever had to make, still is. And I cried myself to sleep about that for a year, I felt so sick about it. And I wanted it that bad, that it never left me."

She steps down those stairs, only to stand a few feet from him now. "You don't think that when I look at you, I don't see the family we could've had by now?"

"And you're right. I could've told you, I should've told you. But when? I mean, when is the best time to blow up your boyfriend's-- almost fiancé's-- life? When is the best time to relive the biggest mistake you ever made?!"

"I'm taking full responsibility here, I lied. I hid this from you. I did, and I am sure that you resent the hell out me for that. But I can tell you right now, that I resented you more when I had to make that decision, for putting me in that position in the first place."

With one last look at each other, the same shared tears, and similar aching hearts, Tobias gets into his truck. And Tris goes inside the warm house.

Leaving both of them to wonder if this it, if all the fight they had for years had finally run out.

A/N: This chapter made me cry while I was writing.