Rusted Hearts

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.

Robert South: 1634 - 1716

"I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion."

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

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Part 1

February 14 1980

"You know what today is don't ya?" Starsky suddenly rolled from his back to his side, his deep blue eyes dazzling me with a fervor of excitement I had not seen shining in them since forever – or so it seemed.

Sleepy and sated from our sex, I remember I had drawn a blank at the question, managing only to smile indulgently at him as I reached again for his warm body. "Umm…a long hard day at work followed by a long hard session in bed with my new lover?"

"No – not that dummy. Yeah – well that too of course." A rare flash of coyness crossed his face. "Our first time."

"Our first time." I echoed his sentiment, as throaty with emotion as he was.

"But what I meant was – today Hutch. It's February fourteenth. Today – it's the fourteenth!"

"Umm….and so?" I was intent on nuzzling his neck, still damp from our lovemaking, and was only half following him.

"It's Valentine's Day. Don't ya see? We just happened to consummate our relationship on Valentine's Day. Jeez – can you imagine that? Like – well sorta like magic don't ya think?"

The pure joy and fresh happiness in his voice had been sparking awake again. I pulled my body upward and rolled to gently center over the top of him. Catching his dark head in my hands I framed his face, drinking in its familiar contours, my love for him almost bubbling over. "It is Starsk. I think it is magic. You babe – you're my very own Cupid."

"Nah – I can't be Cupid," he answered, watching me just as intently as I was watching him. "Cupid's the little guy with the bow and arrows. Not the one who ya' get to fall in love with." He'd said it with such solemnity I wanted to laugh with affection but knew the moment called for more than him thinking I was making light of his romance.

"Then, Cupid's hit us both dead center in our hearts." I sealed my declaration with another long kiss.

But I'd been right in what I'd said. It was true. Starsky had been piercing my heart with arrows since the day I met him. I'd just been too stupid to realize that it was Cupid who I had wanted all along and not all the other lovers who came my way.

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Duluth Minnesota 1951

I first learned that I was capable of true deceit when I was eight years old. That very afternoon on the same day I learned the true meaning of guilt.

I'd found myself alone in my classroom, the first one back from lunch break when my gaze was drawn to my best friend, Billy Henderson's desk and what was on it. It was the pocket watch handed to him after his father had died, shining like a beacon from his desktop, enticing me toward it. I recall feeling almost mesmerized by the glint of it, this small object I had coveted since I had first seen it some weeks earlier. Whether or not I ever gave thought to my actions, I cannot remember for sure. I walked quickly to his desk, picked up the heavy gold timepiece, and slipped it seamlessly into my jacket pocket.

I felt the weight of it in my clothes for the duration of the school day, acutely aware of it pressing against my too thin, boyish frame, while I sat and endured Billy's initial confusion, then distress when he realized his prized watch was missing. By the time the school bell rang I was well on the way to feeling sick, mortified that I had been capable of such treachery.

Like some creeping cancer the guilt was already consuming me when my grandfather found me crouched and shivering in his barn house, on that bleak Minnesota winter's afternoon. I've never forgotten how it felt to have that terrible feeling inside of me, slowly eat away at my guts, tearing at my soul. Grandfather, finding me in such a miserable state, crying softly and clutching the old pocket watch in my small hands, crouched down beside me, eyed the watch speculatively and waited. Without him asking, I told him what I had done – the story coming out in a stuttered, tearful voice.

It was always easy for me to tell my grandfather all the things that I held inside from everyone else in my life. His gentle, calm ways freed me up to share everything – my sadness and my happiness, my fears and hopes. Never though had I had to tell him something that had made me feel so shameful. It took some courage for me to tell him and he listened without any sign of rapprochement.

It was his belief, he said, that my self-remorse, though hard to suffer, only proved my inherent worthiness as a person. My deep inner pain was a sign that I would grow to be a man of moral standing and noble character. How he knew that I couldn't fathom, nor really believe, so overwrought was I with self-shame and guilt. I wanted to think he was right – as he always was about all the lessons I needed to learn about life, and I held fast to his reassurance, hoping that the terrible feelings would soon pass. I felt marginally better, comforted by having confessed my sin to him, the most beloved person in my life. That was, until he smiled gently and told me what I had to do. I needed to return the pocket watch to Billy the very next morning.

When I heard what I should do to purge myself of the aching guilt, I felt that his instruction was not within my capability.

"I can't grandfather – I just can't. Everyone will know – and, even if Billy never tells anyone else, he'll know. He'll know what I really am." The idea of having to face up to my best friend and admit my crime filled me with mortification.

"Then do you want to go on feeling like you are now? It doesn't feel very nice does it Kenneth?" he asked me.

"No. It feels so bad." I admitted to him. "Why do I feel so bad inside Grandfather?"

"It's because guilt can cause us a lot of pain and you are old enough now to feel guilt." He pointed up to the barn wall behind my head. "Look over there at those old horse shoes hanging up? Can you see what has happened to them?"

I twisted my head and looked, confused with why he had suddenly changed the subject. "Well, they're old and ….and they're all rusted over I guess. Is that what you mean?" I asked, looking up at my grandfather, wondering what on earth this was all about.

"Exactly. Rust has eaten into them and made their weak and ugly. There's an old saying Kenneth. That guilt, which is what you are feeling now, is like rust on iron. It eats away and eats away at us, until it slowly destroys us. Just like those rusted out horse shoes."

"Oh? I guess I sort of understand," I'd said, thinking about how much my tummy was hurting inside and imagining a couple of rusty old horse shoes rattling around inside of me.

"So if you want to stop the guilt from hurting, you have to put a stop to what is causing it before it can cause you anymore pain inside."

"And? If I tell Billy what I've done, like you said, I'll feel better?"

"I think you will Kenneth. By admitting to him what you did, you should start to feel better very soon."

I didn't like the solution he was offering me much at all. "Billy will be hurt then – hurt that I have taken his pocket watch and been such a bad friend to him."

Grandfather nodded. "Yes, I'm sure that he will be angry and upset with you, but he will also know you have been strong enough to make amends for your wrongdoing."

"But what if he never wants me as his friend anymore?" I'd asked plaintively.

"Real friends can trust each other Kenneth. Right now Billy's trust in you is misplaced. Do you know what I mean by that?"

I thought about it for a little while. "Yes – it means he really shouldn't trust me because I'm such a bad person and a bad friend."

"No – you're not a bad person Kenneth. But you have made a bad mistake. When you admit to Billy what you did you will be trying to win back his trust. If you never tell him, then you let yourself down and you really don't deserve his trust anymore."

His words cut me to the core. For me to be seen by grandfather, as anything but being worthy of his love and affection left me stricken. I knew then what was causing me to feel so bad inside. I didn't like myself at all since I had done what I had done and even worse, how could I go on with my grandfather loving me less than he did if I couldn't make things right?

Still I was unsure of placing myself at risk of being rejected by my friends and peers.

"But it is such a small thing Grandfather. It's just an old pocket watch. I only wanted it for a little while, to hold it in my hands and believe it was mine just for a day or two. I never meant to keep it, to steal it away from him. " I rolled the smooth disc in my fingers. "This small thing, it can't really matter that much can it?"

"Ah but it does matter. It matters very much to you because you are suffering from the guilt. I can see that pain in you Kenneth." He said in his soothing, sage voice as he stood up uneasily from his crouched position, wincing from the winter ache deep his bones. "It is your decision whether you want to fix that."

"But couldn't I just put it back where he'll find it? He doesn't need to know and he gets his watch back safe and sound," I asked desperately, already knowing in my heart that it sounded like deceit piled on deceit.

"You could do that I'm sure - but this is not about Billy, nor his pocket watch Kenneth. This is about you. You must decide what parts of yourself you can live with and still be happy." His blue eyes, the same color exactly as my own and still bright despite his advancing years were regarding me with concerned understanding.

I nodded silently, feeling my face stiff with the solemnity of my heavy emotional burden and what I knew I must do.

Grandfather gave my small shoulder a firm squeeze and then left me alone with my guilt.

It was far from easy, but the next morning I did my grandfather proud by confessing to Billy what I had done to him and returned the watch to his possession. Our friendship weathered the small storm as young friendships do. I never told my grandfather that I did what he suggested. Even in my immature eight-year-old mind I knew that it wasn't necessary to tell him at all. In his wise way, he would know anyway.

For years after I recalled that day in the barn and what my grandfather taught me about the destructive force of guilt. I always remembered his story about the rusted iron horse-shoes.

I would have liked to think that I had learned a life lesson that would protect me from ever repeating such a painful process again.

I would have also liked to believe my grandfather now long passed away, was right in his belief that I would one day grow to be a good man. Grandfather was right about most things in life. In this one thing however, in his judgment of me, he missed the mark.

Thirty years later I learned another lesson in life. I learned that I was just as capable of abusing the trust of a friend as when I was a guileless eight year old. And, just as it had been then, my act of deceit was directed against my best friend. Not just my best friend, but also the most precious person I'd ever had in my life or would want to have in my life.

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There are so many ways that relationships can die. I'd been thinking a lot about this of late. In fact, I'd thought of very little else over the last three days.

What are the ways that love can end? Love, commitment, emotional symbiosis or whatever label we want to call the incredible connection that can form so strongly with another human that is not of our own blood? Like what is between Starsky and me – and which began no doubt from the very day we first met. It is an almost indescribable bond. Seemingly indestructible. Seemingly, but not quite.

All bonds can break. Relationships – even the most enmeshed and strongly forged, get broken.

I guess love can probably just get used up, like any other finite substance. Maybe one person simply wears out or exhausts the limits of the other's capacity for love by asking too much of them for too long. Maybe like taking another person for granted.

The end of love can happen slowly in the form of steady but persistent erosion, a rotting away of the foundations of commitment, emotional structures that have stood the test of time and outside stressors. God knows I'd seen that happen enough time in my job as a cop where marriages gradually disintegrate and blow away in the wind.

Then, there is the other way – the swift and brutal way, where the edifice of a relationship is destroyed in minutes, ripped apart by the bomb blast of truth. The walls of the relationship implode, the shattered bricks of trust and emotional investment shattered into a million particles by one clear moment of devastating realization. Fragments of what was once love and caring get jettisoned into a darkened sky to rain down again as brittle shards of hate and resentment.

Is this how Starsky's love for me would die when I told him the truth? Blasted away by one huge storm of truth. I had to tell him of course – not so much to unload my own burden of guilt but to try and protect him from the consequences of my actions. My pain I could live with, but I knew with absolute certainty, I could not live without his love.

Starsky had taken it from me once already. Never could I survive the loss a second time.

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The Present

February 13, 1982 – The Present

Los Angeles.

Valentine's Day had never been a particularly momentous occasion for me – to say the very least. Anyone who knows me well knows that I have little time for festive dates on a calendar and the hype surrounding this one had to be up there with the worst of them. In my younger adult years I purposely spurned the rampant commercialism that surround such holidays. However things change, and in the past two years the fourteenth of February had come to mean something to me, and this year especially, the date would have marked a time of great personal sentimentality. Would have, because I knew that this Valentine's Day would be the anti-thesis of anything related to romance or love.

It would be the day that Starsky would learn the truth. Of course I should have done it sooner. I suppose I had the chance, if not the courage, in the last few days when I learned about the ramifications of my deceit – but every time I thought that I could do it, I pulled back. I would never have chosen for it to happen this way – on our special day of all days, in the same way that one would hate to lose a loved one on Christmas Day or find out they are dying on their birthday. But fate is a fickle thing and doesn't always play nice. It would have to be tomorrow now. I had yet again let the moments skitter by where I might have braved the declaration, but now there were no more chances left for me to put it off. No more stalling, no more hiding my head in the sand.

The night had worn on and it was too late in the evening to do what I should have done earlier that day, or even better, the day before – but had been too weak to do.

When is it ever the right time to hurt the person you love? To hurt them in the way that you know will hurt them the deepest?

Starsky was asleep, worn out by an incredibly long day. He'd put in six hours at the Child Abuse Foundation where he'd been working as a police consultant for more than a year now, followed by a few hours in the afternoon researching for his Master's Thesis in Criminal Psychology. He topped all of this off by a couple of hours preparing the special culinary delights he was planning for tomorrow evening. Although I knew he was exhausted, he refused to let me anywhere near the kitchen, claiming that this was his surprise to me and that like all of his new endeavors, he enjoyed trying out his newfound skills in the kitchen. He claimed that it helped him to wind down and relax.

I was banished to our small study to supposedly catch up on outstanding paperwork. At least that was what Starsky had assumed I was doing. In reality, my in-box went untouched while I spent more than an hour inside my head, warring with myself. Later when Starsky looked in on me to call it a night, I could barely stand to look him in the face so certain that he could read the guilt in my eyes. So I kept my face turned from him, pretending to focus on the papers spread out on the desk in front of me.

"You still at this?" Starsky asked as he popped his head into the office.

I rubbed at my eyes, still hiding my face from him. "Can't seem to concentrate. Maybe it's all those great smells wafting in from the kitchen. I thought it was just meant to be the two of us for dinner tomorrow night? You sound like you're making enough for ten in there." I laughed softly, pretending to highlight a couple of lines on my working document.

"Hey, you think I've been in there throwing meat patties together? This is high-end stuff I'm making for us, not just our usual everyday chow. Swanky food takes time and care to produce Hutch. I want it to be special for you – for us," he said, coming up closer to me and touching my neck.

Oh don't say that Starsky…Please don't.

"Anyway, my work is done. The meat is marinating, drinks are chilling, vegetables are prepped and the desserts are in the spare fridge. Make sure not to open it and look or they might sink or somethin'."

"Okay I promise, no fridge opening. Though I think it is when you open the oven that things sink – not the fridge," I said, not able to keep the affectionate teasing out of my voice.

God, he was so loveable.

He leaned over from behind me and wrapped his hands around my chest as I sat at the desk. "All that work for just the two of us. Jeez! I hope you're worth it Blondie!" he laughed as he rubbed his hard chin into the top of my head.

I nearly snapped the pencil I held in my hand in half when he said that. His lighthearted jibe sliced straight into my heart. He couldn't have framed a more painful statement had he tried. Worth it? I was worth nothing. At least nothing more than a worthless piece of shit.

I squeezed his forearms, pulling them even tighter about my chest, not trusting my voice, but reluctant to let him go. I could have stayed like that forever, with his arms encircling me, his warm breath on my head, his beating heart pressed against my back. I closed my eyes, to intensify the sense of his touch, his smell, the sound of his easy breathing. I opened my eyes again and feasted on the visual beauty of his forearms, olive skin, dark with hair and solid with muscle again, after so many months of wasting and weakness, they were beautiful to me, as every part of him was. It was so natural to bend my head down and touch my lips to the skin, the taste of him, salty and spicy tingling my mouth.

"Mmmm – You wanna do that some more – only when I'm horizontal. Like in bed? I'm beat." He snuggled his lips closer to my temple.

Of course I wanted nothing more, but I couldn't, I wouldn't.

I feigned the need to spend some more time on an outstanding departmental proposal. Such an easy lie and it fell effortlessly from my mouth. I was so good at it. I felt him, rather than saw him because I could not turn around to meet his eyes, nod a little hesitantly against my head, accepting the gentle rejection, even if it must have confused him. These days, he tired more easily than me but even so, rarely did we close down the night separately. "These days". How I hated that fucking expression. It represented everything that had changed in his life because of the day that came before "these days" - the day of the shooting.

"Sure – just make sure you get the damn thing out of the way because tomorrow night – this office is outta bounds you hear me?"

He must have wondered….

He yawned but stayed with his arms about me like he was reluctant to let go until I realized I was the one still holding onto him, having wrapped my own arms firmly over his.

"Go to bed Starsk," I patted his arm. "You've had a big day and tomorrow you've got your lecturing at the Academy early in the morning."

"God – don't remind me…" he groaned tiredly. Personally I thought he was stretching himself too far with work and new endeavors. His physical rehabilitation had had only be completed finally a year ago and even now he still needed maintenance sessions with his physical therapist and check ups with the medical specialists. I worried endlessly for him as I had done since that fateful day in the police precinct's garage. I never would stop worrying – I knew that.

This time I did turn in the desk chair to lay my head quickly against his stomach in a familiar gesture of affection. Still I kept my eyes averted from his.

"Bed now. I'll lock up and kill the lights. I just need a little longer here to get this wording right."

When he clutched my shoulders tightly once more and dropped a gentle kiss goodnight on my temple, I swallowed against the rush of longing that his touch evoked in me. A longing so deep and powerful that I thought in that moment I could die from never deserving of it again. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to shut off the lights and go to bed with him, to stretch out with him in the cool, dark room and fold him in my arms, secure in our love for each other.

But my unworthiness prevented me from going with him. I had no right for him to feel secure with me. No right to hold him and have him press his scarred back - all the more precious to me because of what those scars represented, his strength, his resilience - into my chest as we lulled each other to sleep with soft kisses and gentle caresses. All of my rights had been forfeited.

Tomorrow was to be our special day, our celebratory evening. For me, however, the thought of the next evening conjured up the same level of dread that I had felt that afternoon in the cold barn thirty years ago. It brought to mind the same deep panic I had felt when my grandfather had told me what I needed to do to free myself from my own torment.

And after tomorrow? What would our special day become then? It would mark an occasion for sure, but not the one for which Starsky had so joyously prepared.

After tomorrow he would always remember it as the day that I had destroyed everything we had built together. The day I had taken his heart, his love, his trust, and crushed them beneath the heel of my deceit.

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Valentine's Day, February 14, 1982.

"You know – I think I've been to morgues with more life in 'em than this evening's had so far." Starsky put down his empty champagne flute, the third one he'd thrown back since we'd been sitting here on the couch. I knew he was drinking quickly as a way to deal with the unease he had picked up in me as soon as I had come in the door. It wouldn't have been hard for him to sense it. I knew it was radiating from me as brightly as some tacky neon light in a mall strip.

"Hey? Somethin' wrong? " he leaned in closer, all flippant Starsky humor gone from his voice. "Have you suddenly decided this," he waved his arm about the room, "is all too much?"

His hand waving and "this" was meant to denote the supposed night of celebration he had waiting for me when I'd dragged myself and my mood home from work and through the front door half an hour earlier. At least I hoped that's what he meant and was not referring to our relationship in broader terms.

I shook my head, a pitiful show of trying to convince him that he was wrong about his assessment, because as usual Starsky's assessment of me was right of course. We had known each other too long and too well to hide anything from each other, especially severe moods. It was all too much, but I didn't even have the courage or the strength to answer him. I sighed deeply, rubbed a hand over my upper chest like I always did when I was thinking.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was coming across like that." Of course I did. I fumbled to think of something to add. "Just been a bad day." Like every day had been in the past few days. Day and night – one long nightmare - since I'd found out. Since I'd received the news from out of nowhere and felt thunderstruck by it.

"Just today? Because I thought you were acting a bit strange last night as well," Starsky pressed.

"It's just work babe," I prevaricated, running a hand over my face. If I could, I would have covered my face completely with my two hands so he couldn't see the parts of me he could see so easily. "I thought our days on the street were tough, but some days I feel that dealing with my squad is a hell of a lot tougher. Maybe I'm not cut out for the bureaucracy of being a Lieutenant." The evasion wasn't a total lie. It was hard juggling the whims and testosterone rushes of young headstrong officers alongside the political and procedural underpinnings of the police department.

Still, my weak ruse didn't convince him one bit. This was Starsky and he knew me better than anyone on this planet. Those deep blue eyes narrowed with the intensity of that knowledge, seeing right through my soul, cutting through my crap as easy as a hot knife through butter. I don't even know why I tried.

"Come on Hutch – that's bullshit. You were born to be a leader. You know full well that you'll make Captain within a year if you keep up the quality of work you push yourself to achieve."

"Still," I tried again, "the challenge to make everyone happy in the department seems to be getting old really fast and –"

"Challenge is what you thrive on," Starsky threw back, not even letting me finish my poor performance. "That's not the issue and you know it Hutch." He prodded my leg, the beginning of concern on his face warring with underlying anger at my denial. "Try again. What's got you lookin' like you are, acting like you are?"

"Starsk – cut it out. I told you nothing is wrong." I picked up my champagne glass determined to get with the party. I experimented with a shallow swallow of the bubbly wine but its acidic bite caught in my throat and refused to go down.

"No?" he insisted, not missing my desperate attempts to gag down the drink. "Are you sure? Because, I know how you get about this sort of – about my – enthusiasm for this sort of thing. Somehow though, I thought this occasion was different. You know – special to both of us. You seemed as buzzed as I was about celebrating the occasion. At least you were a couple of weeks ago, when we first talked about marking the date with somethin' memorable."

His disappointment – his wretched sadness – was unmistakable and for the hundredth time that day I felt like every kind of bastard I knew I was.

I didn't have to hear Starsky's lament to know that he'd already picked up on the darkness of my mood. Hell, even a deaf, blind person could sense it. I was radiating dejection and gloom. Not to mention cowardice and avoidance.

It was all I could do to even be there in the same room with him, to watch his face, as the realization that the long awaited celebration was all going rapidly to shit. The worst part was watching him struggle with the reason why and the utter helplessness I felt in relieving him of his disappointment. There would be none of that. No matter what I said or what I did, there would be no relief for him – or me. There would only be greater, far greater pain and anguish.

It was Valentine's Day night – a hallmark occasion for us in the truest sense of the word. It marked the first time we ever admitted what we felt for each other physically and emotionally – back in 1980, not quite ten months after Starsky had cheated death from Gunther's men. The day we tipped over from being best friends and closer than brother partners to testing the waters with what we felt for each other intimately – sexually. The day we became lovers – albeit tentative and hesitant lovers – but still a major step, an irrevocable step for both of us. It wasn't exactly all wine and roses after that however, we went through a long journey together and apart until we arrived at the place where we were solid and committed as not just partners but lifetime partners. Still Starsky held fast to that Valentine's Day back in 1980 as being the date that marked the "beginning" of us. Thus the special evening he had laid out before us, prepared with love and care as a way of underscoring the evolution of our relationship as lovers.

I knew that in the kitchen he had prepared a veritable feast, with no small effort and more than one trial to perfect the menu: a roasted medium rare leg of lamb with all the trimmings, an expensive Beaujolais uncorked to breathe, and crème bruleè, so perfectly formed that I couldn't believe he hadn't bought them from some upscale restaurant. He had carefully chosen two vintage bottle of champagne, which we now sat with in hand (mine barely touched) and that behind me on the sideboard he had placed a few, beautifully wrapped gifts shimmering in the candlelight - candlelight that Starsky had strategically arranged around the room. All of it was a credit to him and testimony to the value he placed on this special day.

And so this evening had to be on the top of the David Starsky hit parade of anticipated events probably since God knows how long. It had been years since I'd seen him so excited about a social occasion. The "old Starsky", the Starsky I had known before May of 1979 had approached celebrations with all the restraint of a hotwired three year old, but since the Gunther shooting, where against all odds he'd lived only to have his entire existence re-aligned, Starsky's whole personality had become more tempered, more subdued. He had become more constrained in most things. Skating between life and death for over a month might have started the process, but surviving more than a year of grueling rehabilitation really finished the job.

Just as Starsky had spent all his days, maybe weeks in the planning of this night, I had spent days and then excruciating hours as the clock ticked down, in the dreading of it. Now it was upon us – or rather it was upon me, and Starsky's bright-eyed fervent glee, that goddamn beautiful, unsuppressed, unbridled joy of his was killing me. Almost paralyzed with rising panic, I worked on drawing breath, not helped by the forced down champagne, which burned like liquid acid slipping down my throat. It felt like I had some great gaping hole in my middle chest where my stomach should have been but was now like a tangle of barbed wire. Every time I sucked in air it hurt.

I felt like hell. I was in hell.

And Christ, did I ever deserve it. Starsky however, didn't. He deserved so much more than I had done to him. He deserved so much more than me.

I really thought that I could pull the night off and he'd be none the wiser as to what was happening inside my head. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him on this night of nights, this sacred day that he had so looked forward to – but - it turned out I just didn't have it in me. Not only could he read me like a well-worn book, but any hope I had of disguising my anguish was quickly lost. I never could keep anything from him, and anyway what was the point in delaying it? I might as well let him know what I was, what I was capable of – and most certainly – what I deserved to receive because of it. Starsky's absolute condemnation of me as a man and a life partner.

"What's goin' on Hutch?" he asked in such an insightful way I could have sworn he had been walking through my head, watching me thrash about feverishly as self-contempt consumed me.

And yet I still could not face him. "Why don't we have dinner? It smells fantastic and you've gone to so much trouble." I tried to stall again, coward that I was.

"Why? You goin to tell me you're hungry?" he said, the first sharp edges of his anger evident.

"I haven't eaten a thing all day," I told him. Wasn't that the truth? The thought of eating made me want to gag.

"I don't doubt that. I haven't seen you eat a solid amount of food in days," he said, all pretenses of being upbeat about the evening sliding away rapidly. He was getting too close to my discomfort for me to keep hiding it.

"Maybe I've been saving myself for the feast I know you've prepared tonight." the words came out strained, catching in my dry throat.

"Bullshit again!" His tone ratcheted up. He was really getting angry now. "You look 'bout as interested in food as you are in drinkin' that champagne – the real deal champagne I might add. I got it especially for you because you hate the cheap shit you call sugared fizz – but it's as though you can't even see it in your hand."

I looked down at my almost full glass of champagne, mortified that I was so transparent to him. "I'm sorry babe – it's good, really good. I've just got to wind down a little from work…"

"That's the last avoidance line I'm goin' to accept from you tonight Hutch. Somethin's got your guts in a twist and I'm not moving from here till you tell me what." Starsky's voice had risen. "Forget the damn food will ya? You think I'm gonna enjoy dinner when there's something I know you're holding back from me?"

How well did this man of mine know me? How tuned in was he to my every fiber?

I stood up, dropping more than placing my champagne glass down on the coffee table, the hiss of bubbles splattering on the hard surface. "God - I need a real drink." I walked to the cabinet where we kept our strong liquor and proceeded to pour myself a healthy dose of amber colored liquid courage. Starsky's eyes never left me the whole time. His lips tightened, his eyes darkened and his whole body seemed to tense up with apprehension. Worried as well as angry now.

"Whatever it takes babe. Just talk to me," he said, more softly than the challenging tone of earlier. When I sat back down again I could see the flare of fear in his eyes, taking precedence over his anger.

"Hutch?" he said, his voice a little tremulous. He was frightened. "What the hell is it?"

Oh God.

That did it. The one thing that I cannot cope with is a frightened Starsky. It just breaks me down, brings out every need in me to make it okay for him, to protect and nurture. I'd do anything to not have him frightened. Anything in my power. I'd seen enough fear in those dark blue eyes when he was battling to stay alive in the hospital to last me a lifetime. His fear became my fear –magnified ten fold, because I couldn't deal with the thought of him being in that state. Not since he was nearly taken from me.

I cupped my hand around his cheek, tried to smooth out the frown lines around his worried eyes with my thumb. The small lines only deepened as he regarded me solemnly. I let my hand drop and sat back a little. What was the point in trying to erase something that I was only going to put back?

"You're starting to scare me babe…" he said, meaning of course that he was reading the pain on my face, sensing the mounting anxiety in my body.

"I'm scared myself Starsky, really I am." How scared he would never know. I had to do it now. Destroy the evening, ruin everything he had prepared for and planned out for us. I had to get it out and into the open…. The swift and brutal way, …. ripped apart by the bomb blast of truth…..fragments of what was once love get jettisoned into a dark sky to rain down again as brittle shards of hate and resentment.

When I saw the look in his eyes I almost couldn't do it. He knew I was about to pull us both into a place he didn't want to be taken.

Don't hate me Starsky. Please don't hate me. Losing your love is going to be hard enough, but for you to hate me is too much to bear… I don't think I could go on living if you did….

"I have to tell you something Starsk. It shouldn't be today of all days that I do this, but I can't let it go another moment longer."

TBC...