"We don't have to do this right now."

Eyes fixed on your lap, you squirmed uncomfortably in your seat. You felt jittery, every cell of your body anxious and alert. The heel of your foot tapped nervously on the floor as you sat on the couch. Steve sat on the other end, an awkward and obvious amount of space in between you. The walk back had been a quiet one. Somewhere in between the pastry shop and the house, the comfortable silence had turned quite the opposite. Turns out that two people who have a mountain of words left unsaid but neither one sure that they wanted to listen resulted in an awkward silence only a mime could envy. Who would have thunk.

"I know I sort of freaked out on you back there but we can wait. I don't want to force you into talking about this if you aren't ready."

Steve sunk dejectedly into the soft cushions. He looked like he wanted to pretty much disappear into them whereas to you, the squashy feather pillows felt more like quick sand, pulling you down and locking you under.

"No it's alright. Let's talk." You sighed heavily. It was time to rip off the band-aid. You weren't excited by the prospect but you knew you had pushed off this moment as long as you could. The band-aid was never a viable long-term solution, only a temporary bandage over the wounds of your past, covering the immediate pain but leaving the ugly scars underneath.

Steve moved slightly, situating himself so he was angled towards you, a serious look on his face as he steadied himself and you did your best to prepare for whatever he had to say. You felt yourself grow even more anxious, grabbing your water bottle from the end table and taking a sip just to keep yourself occupied.

"I want you to come back to New York with me."

It took everything you had not to spit out any of your drink and you coughed loudly as the water travelled down the wrong pipe, burning the back of your throat. Well, you had to give him credit for not wasting any time. What an opening statement. No apologies, no excuses or explanations. It felt like you had fast-fowarded through the musical and gone straight to the flashy finale.

"Just like that? I think you skipped a couple steps." You noted, your voice hoarse from coughing as you gently messaged your throat, placing the bottle back on the table.

"Well what else did you expect?" He reasoned. "It's not like you can just stay in Boston on your own."

It was comments like these that reminded you that Steve was from an entirely different generation. He wasn't sexist by any means, but he had different deep-rooted and built-in assumptions about certain things that the modern era had shifted.

You scoffed, looking at the man dryly as your feminist instincts took over. Who was he to tell you where you could live? If you wanted to live in Boston you could damn well live in Boston.

"Says who? I like it here."

Steve sighed, shaking his head slightly. He met your gaze head on, not breaking under the semi-glare pointed his way and giving you a disheartened and knowing look. You stared back, swinging one of your legs up onto the couch and sitting on top of it. Steve was tall, and sitting here next to him you felt so small.

"It's not home, (Y/n)."

You looked away, turning your head towards the fire place to avoid the intense gaze of those piercing blue eyes. New York may have been your home in the stereotypical sense, but to you the term had always been subjective. Home wasn't just where you lived, it was the feeling you got when you were happy to be exactly where you were. You had felt it reading in your old neighborhood coffee shop and walking through central park on a crisp fall day. While you wished you could deny it, you had felt it at the tower too, playing video games with Peter or that day on the boat with Steve. But even the strongest of home's can be torn to ruins by a severe storm. You had tried so hard to build a solid foundation but you weren't sure if the comfort levels you had accumulated there had been enough to withstand Hurricane Sharon. Right now just the thought of facing everything and everyone that awaited you back in New York was daunting enough to made you wish there were even more miles between you and the city. There was still too much left unsettled.

"Can we go back a little bit?" You asked, battling for control of the conversation. "I mean we haven't even talked about anything yet so you can't really expect me to just agree to go back to New York with you."

"I tore up the contract." He confessed quickly. "I sent it through the shredder before I came to find you." You could tell from the way he spoke that he had been wanting to tell you this for days but it didn't do much in terms of making you feel better about the situation. Destroying the paper didn't erase its prior existence. Even now you could see his signature on the pages, the same image that had haunted every good memory and moment of your relationship with him for the past three weeks.

"That doesn't magically make everything okay. You still worked on it for months without telling me, told my best friend to keep it a secret from me, and then signed it before I even knew it existed. You promised we were in this together and the whole time you were lying straight to my face."

"If I could take it all back I would but I can't."

"No, you can't." You whispered quietly. It was strange, the finality of it all. He had made his choices and he couldn't unmake them. They would forever be written in your history. Now you stood at the crossroads, determining whether these mistakes would be remembered as the culmination of everything wrong or the test that would push you back together.

"You were right." Steve spoke, earning a confused look from you. "When you said I didn't trust you I thought you were wrong but you were right, just not for the reasons you think."

Your hands fiddled nervously in your lap as he spoke. Steve was growing more frustrated. His voice kept the serious tone but he seemed more embittered now, like he was trying to explain multiplication to a three-year-old.

"I knew you weren't after my money and I never thought there was even the slightest chance that you were lying about me being the father of your baby, but I didn't trust you to stay."

Thinking you had a pretty good idea of what he was trying to say you opened your mouth, feeling the need to defend yourself. This time the roles had reversed and it was Steve that gave you a look that told you to keep quiet until he was done explaining himself.

"I know you have your reasons for not trusting people and I get why you feel that way I do, but you are always looking for reasons to run away."

A pit began to grow in your stomach, forcing yourself to stay quiet as the man who had torn down all your walls and made you see the good in people threw your own flaws in your face, even using them as excuses for his own lies. Still you listened silently, giving him his chance to speak, praying that you had misinterpreted where he was going with this.

"You ran the night after we first met. Even when you eventually moved in it didn't ever feel like you had really come back. I was so worried that any little thing might set you off and you'd be out the door again. I just- I wanted you there so badly and was so scared that if you had known Tony wanted the contract, you would push yourself away from me."

Steve shot up from the couch now beginning to pace the length of the sofa in front of the fire place. His gaze was fierce and focused, highly concentrated on completing the missing pieces of the puzzle.

"Then when we started dating I could feel you getting more comfortable, more relaxed. You were letting your walls down and finally really giving me, giving us a chance. That's when I realized I couldn't keep this from you but the more time passed the harder it became to find a good time to tell you and keeping the secret from you at all became so much worse."

You nodded sadly, trying to wrap your head around what he was saying. A little voice in the back of your head was telling you not to listen to him. To not give him or anyone a second chance to cause you more pain. How are you supposed to trust someone who had already shown you that you can't? A second and louder voice said to believe him, that everyone had their flaws and it would be the strongest act of hubris to let a cascading layer of mistakes made with good intentions to ruin something good. Was that foolish or was it compassionate? Maybe both?

Steve saw the conflict in your eyes, recognizing the storm raging on behind them. He knew your guard was up but not as strong as it had been before and seemed to take this as a sign that you might be wavering in your resolve to push him away. Walking over to the couch, he sat down beside you, this time eliminating all of the space in between, his knee brushing up against yours.

"I'm so sorry, (Y/n). I hated myself for hurting you like that. I was just so terrified of losing you that I convinced myself not telling you about the contract was the right thing to do and ended up losing you anyway."

The disheartened look in his eyes made you want to comfort him, tell him everything was okay and that he hadn't really lost you. Only he had lost you, you just weren't sure if it was a temporary or permanent loss. For three weeks you had wanted nothing to do with him, so much so that you had refused to let yourself even think his name. Everything about him made you want throw things across the room. It was so infuriating that after it all, he could come back here and be so... reasonable. You had promised yourself that you would never give anyone the chance to let you down after time and time again that's all anyone had ever done and yet somehow he still managed to make you regret making that promise.

"We could be happy, you and me. If you can find it in yourself to move past this, to forgive me I..." Steve trailed off, his hand reaching out to cup your face. His eyes were nervous but he still looked serious, almost stoic.

"I love you, (Y/n)."

You sucked in a sharp breath. Then it felt like you stopped breathing at all. Eyes wide you stared at him in a panic. Surely you had misheard him. You tried to take another breath but it was hollow and raspy. It felt like your brain had forgotten to tell your body how to function.

"Okay breathe sweetheart, deep breaths." He said, moving his hand to your back and rubbing it lightly. You closed your eyes, focusing on his touch as you began to compose yourself.

He loved you.

He loved you?

You thought back to that night before your final where you had thought there was a small chance he might. You had never seriously given the matter much thought but here he was confessing his love for you anyway. Why was he telling you this now? Of all the moments he could have picked he had to pick this one? You opened your eyes to see him watching you carefully, reading the slightly hardened but mainly confused expression in yours.

"I know what you're thinking." He said, as he moved his hand back to your knee. "I'm not saying it because I think it might make things better or because of the baby. Believe me I love the fact that you're giving me the chance to be a father but that's not why I'm telling you that I love you now."

You kept your eyes trained on his hand as you listened but that wasn't good enough for Steve. He tilted your face towards him so you had nowhere else to look but directly at him, gently pushing the hair that had fallen in front of your face behind your ear.

"I'm saying it because I spent the last month not being able to tell you how much I love you and I can't spend another minute without you knowing that. I love you. I love you so much, (Y/n). Please give me a chance to show you that."

Silence fell over the room as Steve finished his declaration. A haze of muddled words and disconnected thoughts ran through your mind as you tried to form a response. His eyes scanned your face for some sort of reaction but you stared blankly trying to regain your ability to speak. Come on (Y/n) say something. Use your words it's not that difficult.

Only it was extremely difficult. Nothing about this situation was easy. You mind raced trying to catch up with and assess how you were feeling, asking question after question until that was all you had. Was he telling the truth? Did he love you? Could you ever trust his words again or would the mistakes of the past forever haunt your future? How would you ever be able to answer that question if you didn't try? Any and all answers escaped your grasp as you searched for them left and right. The only thing you could conclude with certainty was that nothing about this was easy peasy, it was very much so difficult, difficult, lemon difficult. When you took a step back to assess the facts, it was clear to you that it wasn't as simple as him not trusting you or lying to you.

Between your parents relationship and everything with James and Amanda, you would be lying to yourself if you didn't admit whole-heartedly that you had major commitment issues. Steve was absolutely right. You had run from him at every chance, looked for every possible sign or reason that something was wrong even in the beginning periods of your relationship. That wasn't fair to him. Yes, Steve had been wrong not to be honest with you about the contract but if the situation had played out differently and you had learned that Tony and the others thought you were using Steve so early on, would you ever have agreed to stay in the tower? Would you ever have let him break your guard down and given yourself, your little bean, or Steve a chance at happiness?

If there was one thing you knew, it was that being with him had made you happy. Steve had a way of making you throw everything you had known out the window. Every instinct, every impulse to protect yourself became mere afterthoughts in his presence, caring only about replacing every concern with his smile and laughter and feeling the pride in knowing that you had been the one to make it happen. Was that love?

You thought back to the night you had first asked yourself that question. Back to when you had laid in his arms with your head on his chest, resting peacefully with the comfort of knowing that you were simultaneously protecting eachother from the inner darkness in both of you. The words he had sang to you that night still rang in your head. "You'll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away."

"Sweetheart?" Steve's voice broke the continued quiet. He was looking at you in anticipation, having laid all his cards on the table, open-faced and brutally honest. He had taken you, with your rips and withered strings, sewing every loose thread and broken stitch until each hole was covered and patched. No more hesitation, no more distrust, just faith in the man who took on your own demons, battling every fear and doubt with bare-handed devotion.

"I..."

Could you do it? Could you do this?

You thought back to your parents who had let ego and stubbornness destroy a fifteen-year-long marriage, to James who had let his yearning for temporary gratification and desire to conquer every challenge outrank his conscious commitments and loyalties. Then you thought about yourself. How your fear of people letting you down and your need to prove that you could handle every curveball life threw at you on your own without help made you ignore the fact that you didn't have to. You had even convinced yourself that opening up to someone wasn't worth the risk of getting hurt. It was pride. It had always been pride that had gotten in the way, sometimes pushed to the side but never forgotten, seeding and taking root in the back of every relationship you had witnessed and experienced. Pride that threatened to push you off the precipice head first into a life of isolation. Pride that had caused so much of the aching and suffering in a space that could have been filled with joy. It terrified you to think that if you didn't break this pattern now, your own flaws would seep into your baby's life, passed down from generation to generation. You needed a clean slate. The cycle had to end here.

"Yes?" Steve prompted, using his thumb to rub your knee, as if he could gently ease the words out of you.

He had to know. You needed him to know. Because if there was a man in this universe that could make you feel so whole, so untouchable... you wouldn't allow yourself to waste another second of your time without him. You wouldn't let your one chance at happiness walk away and you wouldn't dream of taking away his.

I love you?

I love you.

"I love you too."