Burn Notice: It's not mine, I just like to play with it.

Just a little something that came to me this morning when I woke up.

Broken Time

By WritePassion

Fiona and Elsa walked up to the table at Carlito's with matching smiles on their faces, but their arms were empty except for their purses. Sam wasn't sure of what to make of that. He turned to look at Jesse, and he wore the same puzzled expression that Sam was sure he had on his face.

"Uh, Fi, I thought you and Elsa were wedding dress shopping," Jesse asked before Sam could form the words.

"We were, and we succeeded," Fiona replied with a look passing between the two women before they took their seats. "Elsa needed her dress taken in, and mine is on order. It'll arrive in a couple weeks, and then everything is a go." She picked up the drink the server placed before her and took a sip. "Don't look so worried, boys. Everything is on schedule."

"Well, as long as Mike gets home in time," Sam interjected. He glanced at Jesse. "You're still my backup, you know."

"Oh yeah, no problem, I've got your back," Jesse said with forced cheer. He would never tell anyone, but he secretly hoped that Michael wouldn't make it back in time for Sam and Elsa's wedding, and that he could play the best man role. He and Sam had worked a lot together over the past couple of years and a bond formed between them, but there were times when Michael was around that he felt as if he was the odd man out. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind, because they were supposed to be celebrating a really momentous occasion. Sam was finally ready to settle down with one woman for the rest of his life.

The foursome stayed long enough to finish off several drinks and dinner, letting the old feelings of camaraderie sink into their skin along with the humid sea air while the sun began its descent. Times like these were what they all treasured after the chaos and struggles they dealt with the previous year. Living among the populace again felt good, and to not have to watch their backs and worry who was after them was heavenly. A police car trolled up the street and none of them blinked an eyelash. That's what it was like to be free, and they savored every moment.

Amidst the shadows, a woman watched the people at the table. So many years had gone by, she wasn't sure if it was him or not. Lucky for her that Mack gave her a copy of the photograph he had taken when he was in Miami getting Sam's help with catching a criminal. Otherwise, she would have just walked away and not even approached him. Now she was just trying to build up the courage to do it.

When Amanda studied Sam, seeing how his eyes crinkled when he laughed and he showed off those perfect teeth, it all came back to her. They used to laugh a lot. She couldn't remember what they laughed about, but she thought they were happy. Then he went away on his missions, and they became more important than her. Tears stung her eyes. She couldn't think about that now. Her main goal was to reach out to him, to see if there was still a spark. That wasn't going to happen if she just stood behind the landscaping. It was time to move forward.

He put his arm around the woman to his left and kissed her. It wasn't just a simple peck on the cheek when the woman turned and locked lips with him for just a few seconds. Amanda felt a chill, and a rage rose up in her. How dare she? That's my man!

Sam's body leaned toward Elsa and he spoke softly to her when a flash of movement caught his eyes. He pulled back just enough to see a woman approaching. He noted the tenseness in her body from her stiff gait to the arms crossed over her midsection, her hands grasping her waist. She stopped at the table and looked down at him, staring to the point where everyone's gaze moved between her and Sam. Elsa looked confused.

"Sam, do you know her," Elsa asked.

Amanda's voice caught in her throat. After all this time, she thought he would certainly remember her. "It's me, Sam... Amanda."

The smile melted off his face as recognition dawned, but he had to use his imagination. The Amanda he remembered wasn't this old. She appeared to have kept her figure, but the face of an angel had turned into a roadmap of pain and anger. "'Manda. Wow, it's... it's been so long since I've seen you. I... I don't know what to say." To defuse the colliding emotions inside him, he turned and introduced her to everyone at the table. "Amanda, these are my friends Fiona and Jesse." Turning back to Elsa, he put his arm around her again and he could sense the shift in her mood. Squeezing her shoulder with his hand, he gave her a charming smile and said, "Last but not least, my fiancee, Elsa. Everyone, this is Amanda, my ex."

"Amanda," Jesse acknowledged her with a tight but friendly smile.

"The ex-Mrs. Axe," Fiona asked, making Sam turn away and cringe. He met Fiona's eyes, and hers told him that she was trying to help. Sam wasn't sure he wanted her brand of assistance.

"Not exactly ex," Amanda clarified. Building up the courage, she folded her arms across her chest and said, "Sam, we need to talk."

The look in her eyes brought back a lot of memories, and none of them were good. He apologized to Elsa by caressing her bare shoulder and kissing her cheek before rising. "I'll be back in a little while, baby. Fi, Jesse, make sure Elsa gets back to the hotel okay?"

"Sure, Sam, no problem," Jesse said. With a small salute he wished him good luck.

"Thanks, guys." Sam's hand still had not left Elsa. He felt like they were on two different rafts in the middle of the ocean and if he released her, he would never see her again. He'd never been so afraid of anything on their adventures with Mike as he was at that moment. Sam let out a sigh that came from the depth of his soul before stepping away from his friends and his love. The balmy breeze turned cold in the space between Elsa and his fingertips, and he wished that Amanda would just disappear.

He loved her at one time, or so he thought. He thought she loved him too. But they were young and in lust, acting on a whim when they got married, and between the two of them, he had no doubt she paid the higher price for their folly. And now regret was the only thing he felt when he looked at her.

"When were you planning on getting married," Amanda asked once they were far enough away from his friends. They walked down the opposite side of the street and Sam steered her toward the park that divided the traffic from the beach.

"In a couple of weeks. Why?"

"Does she know that technically you and I are still married?"

"Yes, she does." Sam stopped and faced her, looking down into her eyes. "I don't hide anything from Elsa. And she knows that I've been busting my butt to find your location so we could take care of this."

"You make it sound so simple," Amanda said with a huff. "Like you're just taking out the trash or something. Is that how much I mean to you?" Pain telegraphed through her words and Sam reacted with his own kind of pain etched on his face.

"There are a lot of years separating us, 'Manda. Did you think you could just find me and pick up where we left off, only now things would be nice and rosy because I'm no longer an active SEAL? There's no risk of my running off on a mission, so you thought it was safe. Am I right?" He remembered how easy it was to read Amanda, and time hadn't changed her one bit in that regard.

"I was hoping we could get together and see if there was anything worth saving." Amanda admitted after a long pause. "I still love you, Sam."

"Really? If you loved me so much, why'd you leave me for Mack?" He could have kicked himself for being so cruel, but a long-buried pain cut through him and forced the words out before he could think.

"If you loved me so much, why did you have to keep running away," Amanda countered, her eyes flashing anger as she stood ramrod straight on the deserted sidewalk in the park..

Sam let out a soft groan and turned toward the ocean, staring at the darkening sea and sky painted a soothing blue and mauve. He ran his hand through his hair a couple times, shoring himself up to give her the truth. He turned to her, taking her upper arms in his hands, meeting her eyes. "I'm sorry, 'Manda. I maybe loved you way back then, but... but not anymore. I don't know how I feel about you, to be frank. Could be I'm still in shock from seeing you after all these years, but I think if I felt the least bit of love, when I saw you it would have come back." He shook his head in sadness. "I'm sorry."

Amanda slapped down Sam's hands and stepped back. "What if this Elsa woman wasn't in the picture? How would you feel then?"

"If it weren't for Elsa, I'd be a lonely man looking for any port in the storm. That's who I was for a long time, 'Manda." He hesitated, knowing his words would hurt but they were true nonetheless. "Elsa grounds me. Sure, I still look at other women, but my eyes always rove back to her. I don't want anyone else, ever again." He swallowed. "That's how much I love her."

"Did you ever feel that way about me," Amanda asked. She knew she was sounding pathetic, but her heart still hoped that there was some sliver of emotion in him that she could cultivate and grow. "You know, despite what happened between Mack and me, and, uh, other men, I've never gotten over you, Sam. To borrow your words, you were what grounded me."

"We barely knew each other when we got married," Sam's voice cracked.

"So? Lots of people marry and barely know anything about each other." She was getting desperate. "Look at all those people who have arranged marriages." She gave him a hopeful smile. "At least we made the decision ourselves. No one held a gun up to our heads and made us get married."

"True. But it was a decision I made in haste, when I should have thought it out first." He dropped his gaze to the ground, not sure how to move forward without crushing her. He at least owed her that much. "I'm sorry, Amanda. The way I see it, we made a big mistake. I was loyal to you because you were my wife, but I had a duty to fulfill to the government. That obligation was stronger than how I felt about you, and I'm sorry, but that was a fact. Then I found you in the arms of my best friend, and after that, I felt you'd made your choice and I wasn't it."

"I was lonely, and Mack was a good friend to me," she explained. "Our getting together was a mistake. I'm sorry for that."

"Yeah. We might have been able to pick up from there, but I realized how wrong the whole thing was." Experiencing all the heartache again drained him, and he sat on a bench and stretched an arm across the back.

Amanda stood staring at the empty seat, tempted to sit but afraid that she was unwelcome. Was his arm on the seat back meant to scare her off, or was it a challenge? Perhaps he did still feel something and he was hoping that she would make the first move to bring it back to him.

"People make mistakes, Sam, but that doesn't mean we have to throw everything away." She took a step closer to the bench. Looking down into his eyes, she said, "If it helps, I forgive you for running off on me. I want to put that all behind us and see if we can start over."

"It's not that easy."

She sat on the edge of the bench. "Sure it is. We do what we should have done from the beginning. Go on dates, talk about our lives and our history. Get to know each other and let everything else fall into place." Amanda gave him a soft smile and dared to reach out to touch his crossed leg at the knee. He felt just as good as he did back then. For a moment she thought that he enjoyed it as much as she did.

Sam's eyes diverted to her hand and he let it stay there for a few moments as she spoke. "It's too late for that, Amanda." His wide palm pushed her hand off his knee as his gaze rose back to her eyes. "I love someone else now, more than I've loved anyone before. I know I'm taking a risk telling you that, because you could turn around and refuse me a divorce, which would ruin everything and not allow me to marry Elsa."

Amanda gasped and scooted back a couple feet. "You think I would be that petty?"

Shrugging, Sam replied, "I don't know. See, that's the problem, 'Manda. I don't know you anymore. I don't know if I ever did. I can't predict what your reaction will be, but from tonight I get the feeling that you aren't going to let go that easily."

"I wasn't planning on letting you go at all. I came into this hoping, maybe unreasonably so, that you would be willing to resume our relationship." Amanda blinked and turned away to hide her eyes. "It was stupid. Mack told me you were getting married. He warned me that you were crazy about this woman and that it was too late to do anything about it." Her breath came out in a shudder and she drooped over her knees, her forearms planted on them and her body folded over her arms. "Something inside me made me think that I had to at least try."

"I'm sorry, 'Manda. That's all I can say."

She sniffled and straightened, still looking away from him. "It's not your fault. I was the idiot." Amanda turned her tears-stained face to his. "I should apologize for embarrassing you like that in front of everybody. In front of the woman you love."

Sam was tongue-tied. He didn't know what to say because he hurt for her, but he didn't love her. He felt sorry for Amanda that she'd carried a torch for him for decades and over a great distance only to have it doused on a park bench in Miami. He couldn't stand to see her cry, so he reached for her and pulled her into his embrace.

"I'm sorry, Amanda. I wish I had the answer you wanted."

Her arms circled him and pressed him close. She knew this was the last time they would ever touch, and she made every second count. Sam's grip loosened, signaling that her time was up. Like a woman dying of thirst, she needed just a few more seconds, and then she would break away, leave, and he would never see her again. She pulled her head away and his hands slipped around her back, to her sides, and the look of regret in his eyes tipped her over the edge.

Amanda tightened her arms around his shoulders and with her hand pressed against the back of his head, guiding his lips to hers. She pressed hers into his warmth, the shock freezing his lips while she worked to make him respond. It was as if his entire body became encased in ice. He stopped moving, holding his breath, waiting for her to stop and move away.

If she hadn't made a complete fool of herself before, she certainly did it then. Amanda released him and retreated on the bench, turning her attention to the skirt that had hitched up her thigh half way between her knee and hip. When she noticed that Sam didn't even look at it, a booming sound like a hammer striking a nail resounded in her head. It really was over, and there was no turning back.

"Amanda..."

She held up a hand and stopped him. "No, Sam, I was wrong. I was being a helpless fool." Her eyes shifted up to meet his. "I'm sorry. It was a dumb move to come here and think I could change anything. I see that now." She took a step backward when he rose from the bench. "I'll, uh, I'll get those divorce papers to you in a couple days. I promise." She turned and ran, afraid of embarrassing herself any further if she stayed one second longer.

"Amanda! Wait! 'Manda!"

She was too far gone, and although she heard him, Amanda refused to turn around and go back, because the end result would only be worse.

"She didn't tell you when she would get the papers to you," Elsa said. "Does she even know where to deliver them?"

"No, and I don't know," Sam replied with an uncharacteristic snap in his tone. He never raised his voice to her unless it was necessary, like in an argument. He had a feeling this discussion was headed toward that route if he wasn't careful. "She took off before I could give her an address. I'm sorry, babe." He collected Elsa in his arms and when hers clung to him, he felt a tingle rush from his toes up to his head.

"Two days. We're supposed to get married in two days, Sam." It wasn't very often that he heard such sorrow in her voice. The last time was before he and his friends ran from the CIA and he tried to prepare her for the possibility that they might never see each other again.

He let out a breath. "I'll call Mack and see if he's heard from her. 'Manda seems to have become friends with him." He broke the contact with Elsa and reached for his phone, finding Mack in his directory and dialing the number.

The conversation was short. "Sorry, I haven't seen Amanda since she left for Florida to meet you. I steered her to that hotel I stayed at when I was there. I know, it's not five star like your fiancee's place, but she's workin' on a shoestring here, Sam."

"Thanks, Mack. Knowing where she's staying, that helps. Maybe I can track her down."

"Good luck, buddy. Sorry I can't make it for the wedding. You know how it is."

Sam was glad to hear real regret in his friend's voice. After everything that happened, he was sorry too. "Yeah. We'll have to see if we can get over there to Houston sometime. I'll talk to you later, Mack."

"You too, Sam. Take care."

After he hung up, Sam headed for the door. "I'm going to see if I can locate Amanda at the Breaker Motel. Mack said he steered her over there."

"Do you want me to come along," Elsa asked, a strange sense of fear in her voice.

Sam smiled at her and caressed her cheek. "It's okay, baby, I'll be fine. See you in about an hour, okay? If I'll be later, I'll call." His smile widened when she nodded, and he kissed her lips before leaving her office.

"Mr. Axe? Mr. Axe!"

Sam was crossing the lobby and was about to reach for the door when he heard the voice calling him and he turned toward it. He recognized Anna, one of the day shift reception clerks. "Yes, Anna? What is it?"

She handed him a manila envelope. "A woman stopped by with this just a few moments ago. When I told her you were in a meeting with Ms. Darabant, she didn't want to wait. She just dropped this on the counter and asked me to give it to you."

"Thanks, Anna." He pinched the clip holding the flap closed and peered inside. Anna was half way back to the desk when he realized that these were the divorce papers he needed. But he also knew that he had to sign them and Amanda should have a copy.

Without thinking it through, he rushed outside and stopped on the sidewalk, looking both ways in hopes of seeing her. His eyes picked through the pedestrians but he didn't see anyone who looked like Amanda. Both ways he checked and across the street, but she was gone. A part of him felt a twinge of sadness, but it was only temporary, replaced by excitement. He pulled out the papers as he climbed the steps back into the hotel, and the doorman opened the door for him.

"Good morning, Mr. Axe," he greeted him.

"Morning," Sam mumbled in reply as he walked through. He nearly ran into a guest before he decided he needed to sit down and peruse the information in the envelope. His first instinct would have been to go to Carlito's, but this was more private, so he went to the cafe inside the hotel and took a table near the windows that opened up to the pool area, yet he was tucked away in the corner where no one would bother him.

Sam tugged on the papers and they slid out of the envelope to lay on the table. The top page was a letter written by an attorney. He hadn't expected that. For a moment, Sam wondered if Amanda had something up her sleeve, that she was seeking dollars along with a divorce. About all he had to offer was a pension and part of what he'd saved up from working jobs with Mike and Fi. He skimmed the letter and his blood pressure went down to a normal level.

An hour later, Elsa found him still in the cafe, a cold cup of tea sitting near his elbow. "What is all this," she asked and pointed to the papers fanned out on the table.

Sam's eyes glinted as he looked up at her and pulled a chair out for her to sit. When she settled in, he answered, "Amanda had the divorce papers drawn up, and I'm going through them. Just finishing up, actually, and I was about ready to sign them when you showed up. Your assistant is a notary, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is."

"Good, because I need a notary so I can sign the papers, and then that's it, we're done. Amanda and I are no longer married." A smile blossomed on his face. "As long as things are still on schedule, we can get married tomorrow."

"They are." Elsa's smile measured her sense of relief. "Let's go to the office and take care of this. And then I'll take the rest of the day off so we can finish preparing for tomorrow."

"What else needs to be done?" He gathered up the papers and followed her out of the cafe, and he had to slide an arm around her waist to slow her. "I thought you had everything done."

"You'll see. Let's just go and get this done."

After Sam signed the documents and Elsa's assistant notarized, scanned, and e-mailed them to the lawyer as instructed in the letter, he and Elsa retreated to her office. He felt an incredible sense of lightness.

"Until I signed those papers, I didn't realize that I'd been chained down," he said to Elsa before taking her into his arms and celebrating his new-found freedom.

When she came up for air, Elsa said, "Let's go. We need to do some shopping before tomorrow."

"Oh," Sam drew out the syllable. "So that's what you wanted to do, rope me into shopping."

"This'll be fun. I promise." She grinned.

"We'll see." He took her hand and led her out of the office. "Where to?"

"The Riverwalk," Elsa replied as she slipped her sunglasses over her eyes and smiled wide.

"Alrighty, let's do it." With hands clasped between them, they headed for the exit. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw a familiar figure. He turned his head and for a moment he saw Amanda watching them. He felt sorry for the broken hearted expression on her face, but there was nothing he could do to erase it. Their relationship was broken a long time ago and nothing could fix it. He looked again and she was gone, disappearing into a crowd of tourists, and he never saw her again.