Adopted by Olivia Benson: Part 2

I-I Love You

*Olivia's POV*

I woke up feeling clean and my room was straightened. Blake however, was nowhere to be found. I smelled food. Not just takeout that I'd been nibbling on for the past two weeks but real food. The kind you smell from your mother's kitchen. The kind you wake up to at your grandmother's house. A home cooked meal.

I followed the smell to the kitchen and saw a man with a familiar build. One that had almost become foreign to me. He had bags of trash in his hand and he cleaned up my apartment. "Elliot?" I whispered, not believing my eyes. "what are you doing here?"

"Helping you," he calmly stated, turning the doorknob.

What? He was helping me? Yeah right. "Helping me!?" I shouted. "Where was your help three months ago, Elliot!?"

"Geez, Liv. Will ya take it down a notch?"

"No, I won't! You don't show up for months and today you randomly show up and expect me to be okay with that!?"

Elliot calmly sat the trash down and faced me. "Babe, you don't understa-"

"No, I understand perfectly well, Elliot. You left because I'm a freak. Because Lewis broke me and I can't love you like you want me to."

"That's not-"

"It is true! You said so yourself,"

"I didn't mean any of those-"

"But you did!"

"Olivia will you stop cutting me off!? Will you stop yelling for five seconds!?" Elliot got my attention. He ever yelled at me unless things got pretty heated, and that they were. I drew back and pursed my lips. "What day is it?"

"Why?"

"Just answer the question, Olivia." The truth is, I didn't know. I'd been so busy drinking and forgetting about my problems that I allowed the date to slip as well.

"Um, Tuesday," I said in more of an asking tone than a statement.

"Wrong. It's Friday. And where's Blake?"

"She's at school." I didn't know the answer to that question either. The last time I saw Blake was when she was sitting on the edge of my bed. That could've been six months ago for all I knew.

"Wrong again. She's at my house."

"You're lying!" I shouted out of embarrassment.

"No, Olivia, I'm not! She's at my house and has been for the past three days but you were too drunk to notice she was gone! Do you know what she did?" I could see the anger in his eyes. I wasn't exactly sure what I did or what I said because I couldn't remember. But whatever it was, it was terrible. "Your daughter took the bus from Manhattan to Queens. Alone. Then she walked almost fifteen miles just to get to my house. And as if that wasn't enough, she's lying to cover for you! So, no, Olivia, I'm not the one who's lying!"

He chucked a pen at the wall, placed his hands on his hips and paced the floor. Blake did that? Where was I? What was I thinking? She could have gotten hurt, raped, or even killed. "She did all that?" I whispered. Then it hit me. My baby girl had to go through that all because of me. All because I couldn't keep my head on straight. All because I couldn't put the bottle down. Elliot, my love, was one thing. But Blake was another. She was my heart, my best friend, the only reason I could stay sane. My sanity. I couldn't possibly imagine life without her.

I was my mother. I worked so hard, every single day to be the very opposite, not realizing I was turning into her with each passing day. To make matters worse, I have no clue of what I told Blake, what I might have said to her. What if I hit her? What if I called her a bad name? What if I pushed her away for good?