AN: I'm BAAAAACK! Not only am I back, but I'm bringing you guys exactly what you want: A sequel to "The Cardinal Rule"! I was reading back at all the reviews for "The Cardinal Rule" and it was like, hot damn, I really better right a sequel and lo and behold here it is. I'm not a big fan of this chapter, just cause I think I'm tackling a chunk of writer's block, but anyway, there are a lot of characters from "The Cardinal Rule" that will be appearing in this fic, so I'm bringing back all our loveable Bolepick residents. And well, one more person but that's a mystery…

Five years changed a lot.

Leo was convinced he still had a pretty nice body. However, he wasn't exactly out in the trenches of construction anymore. His office tended to lean towards the corporate side, wardrobe and body reflecting. As for Piper, he thought all the softer places and new curves on her body were sexy as hell. Not that he really touched her a lot anymore, but that was a different story. All in all, he figured they had the American dream. Both parents held down a steady job, and their houses was bought and paid for. They had two beautiful daughters, Emma, now eleven, which was both joyous and terrifying, and little, five-year-old Anne, with her mother's hair and her father's eyes.

But it was the current state of his marriage that had Leo reflecting on it a lot. Lying with his arms folded behind his head, watching Piper change, he thought that its current state was hellacious.

"Don't look at me like that." Piper said, dropping into the chair tucked in the corner of their bedroom. She started to latch up a strappy, sexy stiletto around her foot. "I have to go to the club tonight. I have a lot of bands to arrange."

"Couldn't you just get Sandy to do it?" He asked, referring to the new girl she'd just hired. "I rented The Notebook."

She gave him a classic little smirk as she switched feet. "You think that'll get me into bed?"

Leo grinned. "It's worth a shot. I hear that movie opens receptors in a woman's brain that—"

"I'm taking the pick-up." She interrupted, standing. Her own car, a black SUV, had just been dropped off that day in order to have the brakes repaired, and his silver Ford was the only other option. She walked past the end of the bed, towards the dresser, where her jewelry box sat. They were in silence for sometime, until she said: "It's not you. It's me."

He sighed. "Honey, that's something you tell someone when you want to break up with them."

Piper turned, her hair piled on her head in that Glamour magazine kind of way, and gave him a sad half-smile. "Leo, I married you. I'm in for the long haul."

"Then what is it?" Leo had to ask. He hadn't intended to have this very open-ended conversation right now, but it was being coaxed out of him like that doomsaying groundhog on Groundhog's Day.

Piper sighed too. "Leo, can we not do this now—"

"No!" Leo said, stabbing his finger into the forest green bedspread to make a point if nothing else. "We'll do this now!" Piper huffed, and he could tell that she was getting mad. "Piper, please." He sighed again, hoarsely. "We haven't had a real conversation beyond something about the house or the kids in months. I haven't touched you in months. We haven't cooked together, or turned on jazz and just danced together in this room right her in god knows how long." He couldn't look at her just then, preferring instead to gaze at the ceiling. "What's wrong with us?" he asked throatily. "What the hell is wrong with us?"

Even if she was going too, Piper never go the chance to reply because Anne flew in, landing with a loud giggle on the comforter next to her father. Seconds later, the reason for her running was discovered as tall, lanky Emma ran in after her and jumped on the bed as well.

"Annie," she yelled, using the little girl's nickname, "give it to me! Give it back to me!" She screeched at the end as she struggled with her sister for whatever it was in her sister's iron-grip.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Leo admonished, sitting up to balance his weight on his hip. He used and arm for each and wrestled the girls apart. Both of them were breathing heavily and when Leo pried Anne's fingers apart he found the root of the problem—a tube of glittering lip-gloss.

"It's mine!" Emma shouted.

"But she said I could have it!" Anne argued.

"I did not!" Emma roared.

"Yes. You. DID!" Anne screeched back, her last word landing on one of those ear-piercing, incredibly high-pitched screams only young children could accomplish.

Leo snatched the lip-gloss away. "Well guess what?" Of course, he didn't wait for an answer. "Now it's mine."

"Daddy!" Emma and Anne said together. In answer, Leo opened the tube and used the wand to smear glitter all over his lips. He looked completely ridiculous, and his daughters were shocked speechless, but Piper couldn't help falling love all over again. Leo swatted his daughters out of the bed and fake-berated them out of the room. After they left, he didn't bother to wipe his mouth off.

In her fantasies, Piper would've walked over there, straddled him, and kissed his make-up away. But right now, she just couldn't. Not yet. She picked up the keys to the pick-up. "I'm gonna go know. Even us owners have to do some work now and then."

Leo sighed. "Piper, you know we need to—"

"Yeah, I know Leo." Piper admitted. "I know."

XxXxXxXxX

Sometime around one o'clock, Piper retreated from the noise and dancing and camaraderie of her club, P3, to the back office. She booted up her sometimes elusive laptop—memo to herself, see into getting a new one—and logged onto the internet. There was the invitation to the chatroom, the one you could only get into by invitation. And she was the only person invited.

She logged in with her username, nothing fancy, nothing clever, just her own name. And he was there, waiting with his.

Adam: You came!

Piper: And you thought I wouldn't?

Adam: Well, no, but………

Piper: I get it.

Adam: I want to talk to you, but first, I want to extend an invitation. Would you like to come visit me? Maybe during an upcoming weekend? I know you've got kids and a husband and everything, but I want you to come. I got money and everything.

Piper: You really want me to come?

Adam: Yes.

Piper: Then I'll come. And foot the bill.

XxXxXxXxX

Piper and Phoebe sat in a tiny café, sipping coffee and eating a cinnamon roll and bagel, respectively. Piper's hair was twisted back in a chignon, which she kept fiddling with.

Phoebe grabbed Piper's hand to still them. "Okay, put the hand down and step away from the hair." She laughed. "What's up?"

Piper smiled half-heartedly. "It's…nothing, really."

Phoebe raised an eyebrow and ran a finger through threw the bangs of her newly shorn hair. She was still getting used to the saucy pixie cut. "Nothing?"

Piper sighed. She liked this café. She and Phoebe liked to hang out here, especially at lunch because their husband and fiancée, correspondingly, came in here on their lunch break. As a matter of fact…

"…And so," Leo was saying as he and Bret Miller, Phoebe's longtime love, strolled through the door, "if America's Most Wanted is on, just go take a cold shower." He spotted his wife and his entire face brightened. "Honey!" He said, moving in to kiss her. She turned her face ever so slightly, so that his lips caught her cheek instead. She couldn't let him love her just now. Not when there was so much she was hiding. Leo's whole body stiffened.

None of them missed the exchange and the fact that they lived in a little town where every knew, but no one said a thing made it much harder. Before he could really pull away, she gripped the lapels of his jacket, in that kind of half-hug. He was still pissed, covering up an even deeper emotion: sadness. She didn't mean to hurt him, but she could let him love her when there was so much he couldn't know. When she was such an awful person. When she led him on this way.

"Honey," she said slowly, "do you guys want to join us?"

Bret and Phoebe physically recoiled from the tension at the table. Yeah, they wanted to stick around like they wanted to tarred and feathered. "Phoebe," Bret said delicately, "there's a color I wanted to show you that might look god for the flowe—"

"I'm there!" Phoebe said, scooting out of the chair. She and Bret wandered towards the flower shop across the street and Leo slid into the seat the younger sister had just vacated.

Leo covered her hand in his, his face intent, the look in his eyes intense. "Piper, you have to talk to me."

Piper nodded slowly pulling at the collar to her long caramel colored pea coat, which was really more of pea jacket in its weight. "You're right." She said mildly. Then, she looked him dead in the eye. "I need to go to New York."

"New York?"

"Nightclub owner's convention." she lied.

"A convention?"

"That's right."

Leo sighed, leaned back in his seat, and ran his hands roughly over his face. When he sat back up again, his eyes were gleaming once more. "Tell me what you want me to do. If you want me to walk to that flower shop, and buy you the biggest damn bouquet of roses they've got, then I'm there. If you want me to take you back to Greece—Hell, if you're feeling nostalgic, we'll go back to the treehouse, but goddamn it, don't you do this, don't you shut me out!"

Piper glared at him. This was how there fights went. He asked how he could do better, yet there was nothing he could do. He knew this. He would accuse her of shutting him out, and she would get pissed.

"Look, Leo there's nothing you can do—" Then, she stopped, because now, he just looked tired. So, she didn't shut him out. She shut down. "Dinner will be ready when you get home." She said, gathering her purse together, "Have a nice day." She started out of the café, an made it to the glass door, when he grabbed her and turned her around.

"We've become them." He said solemnly.

"Who?" she asked, annoyed.

"Holly Homemaker and Big Corporate Hubby." And she was floored. It was true. They were them. Without the hot sex. Oh God. Leo sighed. Yes, good, he was getting through to her. "You once told me, that it was a cardinal rule to tell someone you love them. Well guess what? It's a cardinal rule to act like it too."

Piper took a step back from him, his comforting smell, embrace, to clear her head. And when she did, she had to push him away one last time. "Well, I guess I'm breaking all the rules."

AN: Don't fret, don't worry. That's all I can say. Peace and please review! It gets better, promise!