I just found this story and it is amazing............I hope you will continue it.........Please update............I find this story magnificent, and I can not wait to see what happens next.............
I just found this story and it is amazing............I hope you will continue it.........Please update............I find this story magnificent, and I can not wait to see what happens next.............
I AGREE. just found it, love it, please come back and finish it.
amazing story. please?
great story so far please update it i can't wait to find out what happend next.
you are cruel for leaving it there. CRUEL!!!!
A/N: You have my sincerest apologies for the long delay on this one. Recently, my muse decided to rekindle her affection for this ship, so hopefully she'll continue to keep the love until I'm able to finish this fic. Thank you all for your patience.
~*~*~
He'd known he couldn't keep Chloe at arm's length forever. She was too stubborn to let anything get in her way when she really wanted something – even if the obstacle was made up of good intentions.
Still, that didn't mean that he had to completely fall victim to her persistence, and thereby destroy both of their futures.
He made sure he was sitting behind his desk by the time his butler showed her into his office. If he couldn't invade her personal space, maybe the urges to touch her and breathe in her scent wouldn't be as strong.
He'd always been very good at immersing himself in denial.
He wondered why the tactic was failing him now.
No. He knew why.
He had been in love with her, and still might be if he let himself get close enough to her to rekindle those feelings.
In love with a woman he'd hurt badly enough that she would never love him back.
The prospect was terrifying.
But despite his fear and his resolution to act in his best interests for once in his personal life, when she came through the door, he found himself rising to greet her; not because of the manners he'd been forced to learn at an early age, but because the usually spunky reporter looked as though her world had just fallen apart.
“Chloe?” He moved toward her out of reflex, temporarily forgetting that all of his recent brooding had been for a reason, and that the small comfort he could offer her probably wouldn't be welcome. “What's wrong? What happened?”
His father might be in federal custody, but he harbored no delusions about how far the man's control reached. One cryptic phone call to his lawyers would be all that was needed to ensure that one of the lead witnesses for the prosecution would find herself more concerned with her personal safety than with convicting him.
“Everything,” she said dully and then waited a beat before making a flippant motion with her hand in the air. “But I didn't come here to complain.”
Which made her the first person in the last person in at least a week who hadn't, he thought dourly.
“I just wanted to tell you . . . I thought you deserved to hear it from me . . . ”
She trailed off and took in a large draw of air. She refused to meet his eyes when she started talking again, and he rightly took it as a bad sign of what was coming.
“It looks like I'm going to be moving after the trial. Maybe even before.”
He furrowed his brow. Gabe hadn't mentioned anything about finding another job – or even looking for one – and the man was a conscientious enough worker to make sure he didn't burn his bridges behind him.
Lex supposed there was the possibility that Chloe's mom had returned to factor herself into the equation, but it seemed a slim chance in his mind. Admittedly, he didn't know much about Gabe's ex-wife, but the little he did know didn't lend itself to her re-emergence into their lives at such a late date.
She'd abandoned Chloe and Gabe and she hadn't fought for custody when the divorce was finalized; why she would suddenly ask for rights now when her daughter was so close to not legally needing to be in anyone's custody was beyond him.
“Why?”
It was a simple question that never had a simple answer. He somehow doubted now would prove to be the exception to that rule, but he wanted to hear what she had to say anyway.
She sighed and skirted around him, moving toward one of the chairs on the visitors' side of his desk. She dropped down onto it, the picture of exhaustion.
The only time he'd ever seen her looking so poorly was when she was in the hospital. The thought didn't raise his spirits. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
He chose the seat next to hers rather than the one on the other side of his desk where he'd been planning to stay throughout the entire visit. He should have remembered how badly his plans had a tendency to come out when they weren't business-related.
“To make a really long story short: my mom died.”
What?
He knew he wasn't as informed about town gossip as he used to be, simply because other things – namely recovering his lost memories and his father's arrest and incarceration – had obviously taken precedence, but it seemed to him as if that should have been one piece of news that made it to his ears, via Clark at least, or maybe even Lana.
“Apparently she mentioned me in her will, which came as a huge surprise to her husband since he didn't even know I existed.”
“Go on.”
She frowned and cast her eyes down to her hands, where the fingers of her left hand were twisting a ring around on one on her right. “She was cheating on my dad before she even got pregnant with me. With the guy she ended up marrying. She . . . I guess, according to the lawyers, they took a break of about a year during their courtship, and letters that he saved have dates on them that suggest that time correlated with her pregnancy with me.”
. . . Oh.
Oh, fuck.
He knew what she was going to say now; there was nothing else that could explain the dim of the fire that used to be in her eyes.
“Anyway, her husband thought I might be his . . . you know, biologically. I had to take a DNA test to see if I was.”
“And?”
His voice cracked with emotion, but Chloe didn't notice.
“Yeah.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And he did his research when he found out. He managed to convince my dad that it's not safe here and that I should move.”
The first point was difficult to argue. The second, however . . .
Well, that was difficult, too.
He didn't want her to move, for obvious reasons, but he couldn't deny that she would be a dozen times safer living anywhere else.
Hell, war zones were safer than Smallville.
She shook her head – a slow, morose movement of disbelief – and his attention was drawn back to the conversation.
“The whole thing's really messed up,” she said and then sighed. “Anyway, Mr. Holcombe apparently has connections—” She made air quotes as she said the word. “—and he's talking to the FBI right now to see if they'll let me just record video testimony so I can leave sooner.”
Lex didn't think he was gaping, but he wouldn't have been surprised to find out he was. He felt like he'd taken a sucker punch to the gut – or several, he reflected with an inner wince – and the body's first reaction to that would be to open his mouth to let his groan of breath out.
The second would be to immediately curl in upon itself in sort of a standing fetal position.
He thought he might be able to keep from doing that just yet, but he wouldn't place any bets on his ability to hold it together after Chloe left his office.
“Mr. Holcombe?” he asked instead. His voice hovered over the line between defensive and angry, but at least it didn't sound shaky or distraught like he really felt.
“Bio-Dad,” she said, her language slipping into the snarky vocabulary he was more familiar hearing from her.
Too familiar.
Comfortably familiar.
The ache that squeezed his heart and threatened to lodge his stomach up into his throat actually eased a little when she spoke that way to him. It meant she was relaxed in his presence.
It meant that maybe, just maybe, she'd forgiven him even though he would never be able to forgive himself.
“Gregory Holcombe.”
And there was the confirmation he'd been dreading.
Fuck.
He'd heard the man was in town, of course, but since Holcombe hadn't approached him and didn't seem to be sniffing around any of his local business ventures, he'd assumed he was there for something that didn't involve him.
He was wrong.
Anything having to do with Chloe involved him. Even if he was trying to pretend it didn't.
“He's rich, apparently, but I'd never heard of him until the lawyers showed up at my house for a DNA sample.” She paused and looked away. “I guess Dad was fighting them in court about it for months. He just never bothered to mention it to me.”
Her pain was palpable and even at the risk of coming across sounding like Jonathan Kent during one of his lectures on how everyone else should live their lives, he couldn't help trying to ease it.
“He probably didn't want to believe it, Chloe. It's a lot easier to ignore a problem if you don't talk about it.”
He very nearly added, 'Take it from me. I have a lot of experience in that area', but didn't. He was glad his brain was swifter than his tongue – at least today.
“Still,” she said.
“I know. I'm sorry.”
For everything.
“It's hard to believe you're moving. I can understand your dad not wanting to tell you about Holcombe until he had no choice, but I'm surprised that he's willing to let you leave with someone who may as well be a complete stranger.”
Chloe shrugged. “He would have had to soon anyway. Not the 'stranger' part, but this is my senior year, so . . . ”
“College.”
“Yeah.”
Right. But he'd always assumed she would go to one of the universities in Metropolis; chase her dream of becoming a reporter for the Daily Planet on her own merits instead of his father's influence.
Metropolis was close, relatively speaking. He could have still seen her on a regular basis.
England, where his memory told him Holcombe lived, was . . . far too far away.
“That's part of the reason Dad wants me to go, I think. He didn't come right out and say so, but I know it hasn't been easy lately, financially speaking.”
Lex leaned forward. “Why didn't you say anything? You know I would have—”
“I think it's safe to say that you've had your own problems to deal with. And things haven't been bad enough at home for me to start asking my friends for money.”
He suspected they would never get that bad in her mind. Even if she and her father were reduced to living in a homeless shelter, she wasn't the sort of person who asked for that kind of help.
Unlike some of his other so-called friends.
And thinking of that, Chloe's words echoed in his head; taunting him to the point where he had to say something or risk losing his mind.
Again.
“Is that what you consider me? A friend?”
Not a manipulative bastard or a drug-addled rapist?
Even just being considered an associate would have cheered him immensely.
But a friend.
He hadn't even dared hope for that; not after he recovered bits and pieces of his memory that suggested she had every reason to despise him.
She looked confused. “Well . . . yeah. I mean, I thought so. You don't think we're—”
“Why didn't you tell me?” he blurted out.
He didn't sound like he thought he had a right to the information, like he imagined Clark or Lana might have. He sounded hurt.
And that was strange, he thought, because wouldn't he have been more upset if she had told him he raped her?
Chloe blinked. “I . . . kind of thought you already knew, Lex. True, we don't exactly pal around like some friends, but . . . I thought it was pretty obvious.”
He met her confused gaze with an unrelenting stare. “I don't mean that, Chloe. I agree, I think we're friends.”
Or he hoped so, anyway.
“Okay. So . . . ?”
“So why didn't you tell me what I did to you when I was under the effects of the drugs my father was feeding me?”
He couldn't say 'rape'. Not out loud.
It was hard enough to come to terms with it in his own mind, and honestly, he wasn't sure he had completely.
Not yet.
Chloe's lips parted, but she quickly closed them and scrambled out of her seat. She didn't rush to the door, though. In fact, she didn't try to leave at all.
Instead, she put distance between them by walking over to the window – a tremendous display of her part, considering what had happened to her there years before.
“You remember.”
It was a statement, not a question.
He rose from his seat, but allowed her to keep the safety she must have felt the space between them provided her. “Not exactly. I asked you if we'd slept together because I kept . . . ” He stopped and then started over. “I kept having dreams, even when I was awake. But they were frustrating jumbles of truth and fiction. I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. I saw – I dreamed – a few snippets of what felt like memory. Of the two of us. The first one was so short that I could only get the image of us . . . together.”
He didn't tell her that the emotions he'd felt while viewing it inside his head were nothing like the ones he vaguely recalled he felt from when he assaulted her in reality. His fantasy had been much more loving than the actual experience, and he doubted she would appreciate hearing about his emotions when she had been subjected to the worst of them.
“That's when I asked you. After hearing your response, I had a few more flashes.”
He stared at the back of her head, wishing she would turn around to face him, and at the same time praying she wouldn't. Confessions were always easier when they weren't made face to face, but at the same time, she deserved the truth.
“I looked into your hospital records to see if they were just nightmares or if they could be confirmed.”
Even if he felt bad about it, he didn't apologize, because he'd needed to know.
He hoped she understood.
He would accept the consequences if she didn't.
tbc
Kris, I am beyond thrilled that you are continuing this fic--even if it is an emotional and heart-wrenching story!
I do like that Lex is talking to Chloe about what happened, and that Chloe feels that she can still trust him.
KATHY
"Don't quote me to me!" Detective Danny "Danno" WIlliams, Hawaii Five-0, episode 1.8 Mana'o
"This could barely fill up Thumbelina!" SALIGIA by westwingwolf
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Yeah an update. I'm so excited you wrote more on this story. I love this plot. I can't wait to see what happens next.
.jpg "Starangel148's Avatar"){kind=avatar}
Emotional chapter. I want to know why Chloe is reacting so calmly to this. Update soon.
I agree, I still can't believe how placid she seems, that can't be a good thing to just push aside something so traumatic. Denial is never good. This is just gut-wrenching and I can't wait for the next update.Originally Posted by Starangel148
Welcome back and thank you for updating this story!
*bounces with glee* I know, I know, I'm greedy for wanting more of this when I also want more of Repercussions, and Compliance Issues, and Ball and Chain, and hey, I'd really love if you wrote . . .
Wait, that's not what I wanted to say when I started this message. Erm, sorry about that. I get easily distracted, especially when it comes to lovely, shiny Krisfic.
Anyway, I fell in love with this ship because of your wonderful stories, and I'm beyond thrilled that your muse has you thinking along these lines again. And what a terrific update! Hurray for Chlex interaction, and Lex finally being the one to hear (pretty much) the whole story of what she's going through simply because he's the one who bothered to ask, and listen to her answer. And I'm loving the way your Lex is so desperate for any sign of . . . well, anything other than loathing from Chloe that he takes hope from the tiniest things. It's heartbreakingly sweet, and all so wonderful that I can't wait to see more!
But hey, that's not to say that I wouldn't like more Repercussions, or Compliance Issues, or Ball and Chain, or . . . *wink* You get the idea.
:-)
Em
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