Only You

by kellsmarie

“I love you,” she breathed aloud into the night, a soloist who alone played that last sorrowful note in order to completely their love affair. And he pretended not to hear over the pounding of his heart in his own ears. Blair/Nate fic.

Title: Only You - Chapter One
Pairing: Blair/Nate, Serena/Nate
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "I love you," she breathed aloud into the night, a soloist who alone played that last sorrowful note in order to completely their love affair. And he pretended not to hear over the pounding of his heart in his own ears and her still staggered breathing beneath him. But he had heard her. He had heard every last word that had spilled forth from her still slightly glossed lips.
Author's Note: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing right now. I can't promise when I'll post again or when this will end or how long it will be or even where this will lead, but I spent most of my Valentine's Day contemplating the themes of the novel I had just finished and somehow it led me here, with a Blair/Nate fic. It was one of those ideas that I just couldn't get to leave me alone. So, I caved and I went with it. And this is what happened. It's not meant to be a love story. It's meant to be a story about rebuilding what has been so carelessly broken.

Chapter One: Show Me How To Lie / You're Getting Better All the Time

Warm hands pressed against even warmer skin, and yet, those same slender, delicate fingers he seemed to know just as well as his own larger ones felt as if they were burning his cheeks, his abs, his thighs as they traveled over the contour of his body, trying to commit it to memory just in case this happened to be the very last time these hands would touch him in these places. Kisses went from being gentle and loving to being guided by a lust that demanded to be satisfied, that begged to be satiated. Passion. It was passion that coursed through his veins then, that drove his every action far more than adrenaline had ever pushed him on in his efforts during any sporting event over the course of his entire life. He found that he was amazed by the way their bodies fit together in the right places even if they had never been designed for the other. At least, if you asked him, she had never belonged to him. No, this perfect goddess had never belonged to anyone but herself, and that was the way it was supposed to be. It was why this would end here tonight after she had caught her breath and his heart had stopped racing this fast without the cage of his chest. The scent of her perfume would stay there on his mind, and he would catch it when he was alone in a room and the aroma wasn't really there at all, but that single second would bring him back to this moment now, breaking up the normalcy that his everyday life consisted of. He would recall the heat of her hand against his skin when he was sitting in his office, attempting to actually accomplish something before he returned to that penthouse that he now called home, even though she was on the opposite side of the city and his clothing was still perfectly in place. And he would remember her taste at night when he laid awake, his arms around a very different girl. But this physical contact would conclude tonight.

They composed their own perfect song there that night beneath satin sheets that were nothing like the 500- count Egyptian cotton sheets he usually laid upon, and when they reached that peak, that highest point to their ecstasy, they overcame that precipice together, her entire body trembling beneath his own as his arms finally gave way and his slick skin pressed against her own. It was in that coda that followed that perfect rhythm they had written together, it was those last few notes where the song turned sour. He had just buried his face into that place where the sweet soft skin of her shoulder and her neck met when her voice broke the silence for the first time since they had settled there beneath these cool, silky sheets. "I love you," she breathed aloud into the night, a soloist who alone played that last sorrowful note in order to completely their love affair. And he pretended not to hear over the pounding of his heart in his own ears and her still staggered breathing beneath him. But he had heard her. He had heard every last word that had spilled forth from her still slightly glossed lips.

The truth was Nate Archibald couldn't return the sentiment. He had never asked for this life in the first place.

/-/-/

Over the course of the past three years, Blair Cornelia Archibald and her husband had developed a routine that they seemed to follow like clockwork, but it didn't mean that their lives were monotonous. No, they were far from being boring. Their life together just had order and control and all those other things the petite brunette had always thrived on like some peopled needed to be loved and others needed to just be left alone. She craved order like some craved power and others craved fortune, and when she woke up one morning not so long ago to find that there was a set schedule that their lives now followed as if there was no other way to live, she found that she had achieved absolutely perfection. On this particular day, it was a Wednesday, and in the past three weeks, she had come to discover that Wednesday was her least favorite day of the week. It was the only night when Nate didn't return home from his office at a reasonable hour and she was forced to try to fall asleep on her own without the warmth of his embrace surrounding her tiny frame. It was also the only day throughout the week that Blair walked through the doors of the Archibald & Hancock law firm, the very same firm that had been conceived just a little more than a year ago after her husband had obtained his degree in law right along with James Hancock whom he had befriended during those seven years he had spent there at Dartmouth. It still shocked her to no end that of all of them, she and Nate and Serena and Chuck, it had been the blue eyed boy who had so little determination who had spent the most time in college. And that extra time spent in a classroom had not been a direct result of his partying habits. No, it had been to achieve that future that had always been written in the stars, his stars. In order to appease his parents. Because none of them had truly drawn their own hands when it came to this card game they were still trying to figure out.

In another city with another set of parents, Blair may have wanted to be a lead singer in the latest rock band or a nursery school teacher who cared more about the lives she touched instead of the number of zeros on her paycheck, but instead of being born into a family that would honor either of those professions, Blair had been born a Waldorf. It had been expected of her to attend Yale and follow in her father's footsteps. It had been her wild card that had allowed her to major in Fashion Merchandising instead of law like her father had always dreamed of, but in the end he had only wanted his baby to be happy. Nate, on the other hand, was still trying to find where his parents had tried to hide that wild card so many years ago. He had attended Dartmouth for seven years after the single one he had somehow managed to spend at sea instead of going on to college with the rest of them, and now he was the high profile lawyer his father had always dreamed he would be. They too had followed her own personal plan to create the perfect future for the two of them. By 23, they were happily married, living there in Manhattan in their own place. And now, as he began his 26th year and she was fast approaching her own, they were beginning to try to start that family they had always talked about. (Or at least she had always talked about and he had pretended to feign interest in to appease her until more recently.) And that was the second reason she had come here today, in hopes of whisking him away for a short while and then allowing him to return with good new. No, great news. Better news than either of them had received in a while now.

A soft, friendly smile resided upon her full, glossed lips when Blair came to a stop before his secretary's desk, despite the fact that she hated the girl sitting there before her with a passion. She was a temp, which seemed to be a big enough clue to convince the brunette that this girl was bad news. And then, if you could look past the fact that she didn't see herself capable of holding a real job any time in the near future, there was the fact that her gorgeous blonde hair came out of a bottle and she went by Candy. Her name was Candace or Cadence or something equally as annoying and seemingly 90s, but Blair couldn't remember nor did she care. All that mattered was that the blonde stay at her desk where she belonged, and that she be more than willing to assist Blair whenever she came to visit her husband at work, which really didn't happen all that often to begin with. But there was no place she had to be this particular afternoon, and she didn't feel like falling asleep again tonight without having seen her husband in nearly 24 hours. And she didn't want to be discovering their good news, their great news, all on her own.

Coming to a stop there before Candy's desk, Blair cleared her throat to catch the girl's attention, but apparently the sound she made in the back of her throat wasn't loud enough to pull the young, naïve girl's attention away from the obviously personal call she was currently engaged in. Oh, if only she knew who she was dealing with every single time she chose to do this, pretending like Blair wasn't standing there so she could throw her blonde little head back and giggle aloud one more time, her obviously fake blue eyes sparkling with a happiness that the brunette unfortunately could recognize as that blissful feeling that came with being in love. She had been its slave for seven years now, doing things that Blair Waldorf would have never done before she had met Nate Archibald, or before she had become Blair Archibald. But love was the strongest emotion she had ever encountered, and it was impossible to control it like she controlled her husband or she controlled her daily schedule. It was the only time she ever willingly played the victim. Now, though, she didn't want to pay witness to this young girl's wistful conversation about the happenings of the approaching weekend.

Clearing her throat again, the petite brunette crossed her arms over her chest and began to tap her ballet-flat clad foot against the floor, finally pulling Candy's attention away from the mobile phone cradled in her perfectly manicured hand. Blair caught the eye roll the other girl gave her before replying to the person on the other line that she needed to go. She also caught with the temp plastered that sickeningly fake smile on her little face and asked Blair just what she could help her with, if she had an appointment. But she ignored it as she finally straightened, her foot no longer hitting the floor. When she feigned her own friendly smile, it was far more believable than this other girl could ever hope to be. "I don't need an appointment," she told the naïve little girl who was probably barely out of high school as she pretended to be far more interested in the fingernails of her right hand than the fact that this little temp had finally decided to start doing her job. Lifting her eyes from her hand, she used that same smile again, this time just a little more genuine as the conversation drifted towards her favorite topic. "I'm here to see Nate." Formalities had lasted a month with Blair before the slight excitement of referring to him as Mr. Archibald there had faded and given way to a secret pleasure that came with letting these secretaries that changed even more rapidly than Blair's mood know that she was on a first name basis with the gorgeous man who occupied the corner office. It was ownership that had come with his last name when she had legally changed it to be her own as well. And Blair loved ownership nearly as much as she loved being in control. Exceeding Blair's highest expectations, Candy seemed to recognize her as she merely gave a wave of her hand and nonchalantly told the woman standing before her that Mr. Archibald was in his office at the moment and she could go ahead in. The brunette hadn't really needed to hear any of this, knowing that her husband would always have time for her, but she thanked the temp and went on her way before she had to go through the torture of listening to the blonde as she turned back to that phone conversation again.

Just like she had stopped referring to the man that she loved by his surname, Blair had also given up the formality of knocking before entering his office. If Candy was seated there at her desk and there existed some unspoken rule that James' secretary, Ginger, was off limits, Blair figured there wasn't anything she would want to be sure she didn't see behind that door. So far, she hadn't been given a reason to rethink this theory, and that would be the way it would remain if she had anything to say about it. When she opened the door this time, she found him sitting there at his desk as promised, on his phone as well with his feet up on his desk, but she only flashed him a smile as she closed the door behind her again and took refuge in one of the two seats there before his desk. Love was a funny thing, that much was certain. Like a wine, it only seemed to improve with age, at least that seemed to be the way it had always worked with Blair and Nate's relationship. She no longer demanded all of his attention all the time, and she no longer grew impatient when he was trying to work and she was sitting right there before him. Now, she was more than content to sit there and listen to the familiar waves his voice created when he spoke into the receiver. She found the way his eyebrows furrowed in concentration every so often to be absolutely adorable. And the way that his blue eyes changed color just slightly every time he lifted his eyes away from the paperwork on his desk to meet hers again warmed her heart in a way that nothing else ever had. They always became a little darker, a little deeper in hue when they met her chocolate brown ones. It was just one of those many tiny details she had mesmerized about him, long before their wedding day three years before now. And it was one of those things she was sure she would never ever want to forget.

She could still remember that day when she had taken his name as her own and he had promised her forever. It had been the best day of her life thus far, and it was cemented in her memories just like so many firsts she had experienced with him. He had been her first love and her first kiss, her first boyfriend and the first boy to break her heart. There was only one first that he hadn't been for her, just like she hadn't been his, but that didn't seem to matter anymore. She was the only girl he had ever lived with, he was the only boy who had ever officially shared her bed, their bed. Blair knew far more about Nate Archibald than anyone else could ever dream of knowing. And that seemed to negate the fact that they had never shared that one single experience together, especially when there were so many other experiences laid out there before them, just waiting to be discovered.

"Sorry about that," he finally told her in that warm, melodic voice that filled her dreams at night, even when he laid right there beside her, and it was then that Blair realized that he had placed the phone back in its cradle. "It's just this case. It's driving me crazy." As soon as she had heard that C word that should have been grouped with all those other four letter words you were told not to say as a child, she could feel her fingernails curl into the soft palms of her hands, leaving behind indentations in the shapes of tiny seashells. She hadn't come here to talk about The Case, even if said case was the exact same reason why she was there in the first place. It was some legal situation that Nate had taken under his wing, the matters of which were supposed to stay confidential until the case actually made it to court. It was what consumed his Thursday nights now and left her feeling more lonely than she usually did in that big penthouse by herself. It was why she had come here in hopes of pulling him away from this stressful case long enough to grab a bite to eat with her and discuss the day so far, at least the parts that could be discussed. It was the one thing she was absolutely certain she didn't want to talk about right now.

Without a word, Blair stood up from the chair that she had been seated in and moved around to the other side of his desk. A silent chill ran down the length of her spine when he shifted in his chair, already anticipating her next move when she would sit herself down right there in his lap and his arms wound wrap around her waist in that perfect circle while her lips brushed against his own. This was what love was supposed to feel like, this familiarity, this warmth. This was the feeling she had always longed for, and now it sat right there upon the palm of her hand, a solid weight that she could never misplace. His arms came around her to pull her close just like she had imagined, and when she laid her head down upon his chest after she pulled her mouth away from his own, she missed that flash of uneasiness that flashed across his cobalt eyes. "I don't want to talk about it. It doesn't matter now," she murmured softly as her eyes drifted shut for just an instance and she breathed in his familiar scent of detergent and the same cologne he had been wearing since high school. She wanted to memorize every part of this moment so she could recreate it in her mind later tonight when she laid awake in that big, lonely king sized bed all by herself.

From the way his hand rested there upon her hip so perfectly to the way he rested his chin upon the top of her head when she stayed like that for a while longer than she had originally planned, she committed it all to her memory before she finally pulled away at the sound of his voice. "What are you doing here? Not that this isn't a nice surprise," he added as his hand moved from the curve of her thigh to run up the length of her side. "I just wasn't expecting you today." The way that his voice rumbled against her cheek when he spoke made her want to stay glued there to his front, but she fought that desire as she lifted her brunette head in order to meet his eyes, the smile on his face making her forget her purpose for being there for just a second. But only a second. Because Blair had never left the penthouse that morning with merely the intention of asking him to lunch in mind. The plan was to get him away from the office for just enough time to stop at home so she wouldn't be there alone when she finally took that test that she had purchased that morning, the test still sitting there upon the bathroom counter.

Four months. They had been trying now for four months, and this time, Blair was absolutely certain that they had finally succeeded in their efforts to start a family. It wasn't that she felt nauseous or sore in places where she wasn't usually sore. She wasn't craving anything out of the ordinary and she wasn't sensitive to the scent of his cologne or to the aroma of Candy's latte sitting on her desk outside in the waiting area of the office building. In her opinion, she wasn't glowing and her hair didn't look any more full than it had a month ago or a year ago. She wasn't even late. She just felt… different, like something had changed and her body was just waiting for the perfect time to clue her in. And there was no one in the world who was more observant than Blair Waldorf. She had just given up on waiting for that perfect moment to arise. She wanted to know now. "I wanted to take you out to lunch," she told him instead like she had practiced that morning, careful to keep that giddy tone out of her voice when there really was nothing extraordinary about leaving the confines of his office to go out to lunch. They would go to lunch, she would just break the news to him over their meal and hope he had enough time to go home for just a minute. But when his expression fell, hers did the same.

"I wish you would've called instead of coming all the way over here," he told her with a sigh as he lifted that hand away from her hip to run it through his sandy blonde hair. It was in that very second that the moment was broken, the atmosphere immediately changing as she took in his grim expression now, that regret there in his familiar baby blues. There was something about the way he said he wished she had called instead of paying him this visit that immediately set her off, that immediately changed the atmosphere in his office. She was up and off his lap before he had said anything more, finding that she was… fighting tears? Well, if she was pregnant, she certainly hoped that this was just hormones and nothing more. Because really, it was ridiculous to be this upset. He was busy. There was nothing she could do to change that. "I'm sorry, Sweetheart, but I really have a lot I have to get done right now. Otherwise, I'll be here twice as late tonight. But next time, I promise to make time for you."

He offered her that same half smile she had always loved when he said it, but it made her feel sick to her stomach as she shook her head, plastering a smile on her own face. "No, it's fine. You're busy. Like you said, I should've just called." With a quick peck on his cheek, she was moving for the door already, kicking herself for having been so stupid to think that he could put his day on pause in order to be there for her. It wasn't like he was missing anything of true importance. And The Case was taking up all of his time now, she had known that as well. "I love you," she told him as she wrapped her small fingers around the doorknob, waiting until he returned the sentiment with another smile before she turned the knob and exited the room. This time, she never glanced in the direction of Candy's desk like she normally would have, allowing her slightly puffy lips and the happiness that wouldn't leave her face to be evidence of what had just occurred behind that closed oak door. Instead, she was too busy fighting away these tears that had come so suddenly.

/-/-/

Over the course of the past three years, Nate Archibald's life had developed a pattern. And over the course of the past six months, the same Nate Archibald had found that he despised patterns and for the life of him, he couldn't explain why. How did you explain that feeling you got in the pit of your stomach when you woke up one morning and found that your future had been laid out before you, every last detail fitting perfectly into place? For his wife, it may have been the best feeling in the world. But to him, it made him feel as if he couldn't breathe there in his own skin. It was suffocating him, slowly but surely, with each and every morning that he woke up to find that the same girl still laid beside him, the same clothes still hung in his closet, the same housekeeper greeted him downstairs, and the same secretary was already seated there in his office, ready for another day to begin. It was part of the adult world, Nate knew that. He wasn't stupid, he knew there came a point when you stopped making these crucial decisions and things just happened because it was the road you had chosen to travel down. He had just hoped he would reach this point sometime long after he reached the age of 26. It was because everything had become so familiar, so mundane, so predictable that Nate had come home one night just a few weeks ago and had successfully fabricated the story about The Case.

It wasn't that he didn't love his wife because he did. He loved Blair more than he had ever loved anyone else before in his entire life. Sure, he loved Chuck like the brother he had never had and he loved Serena in a way that he wouldn't ever love another friend, and he loved his parents. But Blair just seemed to be on this pedestal above all the rest. When she was happy, he was happy. And when she was upset, he always found himself scrambling to find a way to fix the situation before a single tear had been shed. But things always seemed to be the same anymore with the brunette. He knew now what she would do when he would return from work, to the way her fingers worked on undoing the knot his tie formed at his neck to the words that she always said as she performed that tiny task, leaving a soft kiss on his lips before she was draping the tie over the banister and pulling him farther into the penthouse. He could tell you just what her morning routine consisted of and what order in which she did everything. And when they made love, he now could predict just where her hands would go and when she'd purr so softly in reaction to what he was doing, you couldn't be entirely sure she had ever made a sound. It wasn't that he was bored with Blair because he wasn't. There were moments when he had had a stressful day and knowing just what was waiting for him at home was refreshing and welcomed. He found himself looking forward that that warm, familiar embrace that would be waiting for him at home, and he found comfort in the petite brunette who still fit so perfectly in his arms. But there were also days, more days than there were not, that he found himself feeling as if he were drowning under all of these expectations that had been put into place by his wife, wondering if he would ever manage to get his head above the surface again.

And that was why when he had answered his cell phone three weeks ago to catch the familiar voice of the beautiful blonde he had more often than not considered to be his best friend, there had been no hesitation in his voice in the least when he had agreed to his request. The truth was, there was no case that was keeping him at the office late on Thursday nights, the one night a week he had informed his beautiful wife that James could stay later so they could work together on putting together a defense plan. And this afternoon when she had come to his office with that breathtaking smile on her lips and that bounce in her step that always seemed to scream that she had a plan that was beginning to fall into place just the way she wanted it to, he had turned her away because he needed to catch up on the work he would be missing when he left the office that afternoon at five instead of six like he normally did. The truth was, he looked forward to Thursdays when he shut off the light and locked off the door an hour earlier than normal, knowing full well that he would spend the next two hours of his night with Serena van der Woodsen.

Really, he was lucky that a lull had settled into the middle of his friend's thriving film career, or else the story he continually fed his wife about a case and extra time spent at the office would have been destroyed by now as a result of the constant paparazzi. Serena had been the lucky one of the four of them, there was no doubt in Nate's mind. He had been forced to spend seven more years after high school in order to earn the degree that made it possible for him to create this lie about a legal matter, and Blair had done her own time for four years in order to establish her own career as well. Chuck Bass had skipped out on college, what with having fallen head first into the deep end of the pool and having forgotten how to swim after his father died, and he still spent the majority of his time in that same suite in the Palace Hotel, waiting for life to come grab him by the collar and force him to finally do something more with himself than drink himself into oblivion each and every night. But Serena had become an overnight success when her first film had debuted while Blair and Nate were struggling through their second year of college. It was some romantic comedy that Nate hadn't really understood, but the rest of the world had immediately fallen in love with the girl he had lusted over for so long when he was younger, and as a result, she had become quite the star. But her call hadn't been about assistance concerning her next movie. Instead, it had been a simple question. Serena wanted to learn how to dance, and she was looking for a partner.

There was a partner she had wanted far more than she had wanted Nate Archibald in years, and that was her reason for having this desire to learn now to ballroom dance in the first place. So many times, Serena had tried to do something and had fallen flat on her face in the process. This time, though, she had promised herself that things would be different. She was set to marry Dan Humphrey in the coming spring, and she wanted their first dance as husband and wife to go as flawlessly perfect as Blair and Nate's had at their own wedding three years before. She wanted to have that perfect moment where everyone envied herself and Dan for just that single instant, wishing they could love someone as completely as they loved one another, and so she had decided upon the ballroom dancing lessons as their only solution. But the problem was that Dan Humphrey was on his way to becoming a celebrity in his own right as well. He was trying to fulfill his dream of becoming the next Pulitzer Prize winner by writing the next Great American Novel, and that took precedence over dance lessons that weren't entirely necessary. The plan had been for Serena to find another partner for the time being, and then to begin to reteach Dan what she herself had learned in those few moments they had together, when she wasn't being overwhelmed by these numerous wedding plans and he wasn't busy putting all of his many ideas into words. When she had decided to find a partner, the first name to come to mind had been Nate's.

It wasn't like he was having an affair where he constantly laid awake at night, hoping Blair wouldn't catch that hint of another girl's perfume that lingered on his dress shirts or that she wouldn't spot the lipstick stain that was right there on the collar in plain sight. But he also had his reasons for not telling the brunette who had quite the temper at times about his current arrangement with her best friend. For one, Nate had refused to take classes for their own wedding three years ago, but in his own way of thinking, he had decided he was doing that for her. Unlike Serena, Blair always strove for perfection, and if Nate were to make a single wrong step, the dance would be ruined in her opinion. So why not just sway to the music with her body pressed against his own, her beauty being the only thing he saw? With Serena, he was merely assisting her in practicing for the big event in which someone else would play the role of her faithful partner. Part of Nate knew that he was only making everything worse by not informing his wife of where he really was on these nights when he claimed to be staying late at the office, but once he had told that first lie and he had somehow gotten away with it, he had kept going. Once again, he told himself that he was only trying to keep her from hurting. And at the same time, he chose to ignore all of the pain she would feel in addition to this hurt he was trying to protect her from if she found out where he was spending this time.

The first two times, he and Serena had gone together to get something to eat, and then they had attended the class, unwinding from their stressful days as they stumbled over one another's feet and tried to follow the directions of the instructor of the class. But the third week, something had just clicked and suddenly, they were the most graceful pair there, moving to the music in a way that no one else in the room seemed to be able to. She didn't step on his toes when she tried to lead, and he turned her at the right time, right in time with the music down to the very last half beat. His blonde partner had suggested that they go grab a drink afterwards to celebrate, and after only a single moment of contemplation and a call home to Blair, Nate had agreed. Tonight, when they seemed to excel even more than the last time and the blonde suggested the very same idea, he never even hesitated, too eager to wash away the image of his wife's heartbroken expression when he had turned her away from his office earlier that day. They didn't go to some nightclub, the music was always too loud and it made it entirely too hard to talk. And they didn't go into some sports bar where guys who had spent the past six hours in that same bar stool would try to coax Serena into their bed before the end of the night. Instead, they went back to her place, or the apartment she had once shared with Dan before he had decided it was more beneficial for his writing if he spent most of his time in a loft in Brooklyn that reminded him of his childhood home. Really, Nate that it was weird, a little more than weird, but he wasn't about to tell anyone else how to live their life when he still hadn't gotten a grasp on his own.

With an exasperated sigh, he sank into the couch with the beer Serena had offered him in hand, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes as he waited for the blonde to sink into that spot right beside him. When had life become this stressful? He didn't understand how relationships worked, he really didn't, and the one he had developed with Blair was no different. It seemed as if as time went on, she became increasingly happy with the state of their marriage while he seemed to be falling the other way, drifting into that gray area where okay didn't pass anymore and miserable was the only word that seemed to describe how you were feeling. But he didn't want to think about that now, any of that. He had come here to forget, and the effects of that first beer he had consumed while still standing in the kitchenette of the apartment while Serena flipped through the mail that had come that day and listened to voicemails were already beginning to make the image of Blair's disappointment appear to be distorted. What wasn't distorted was the image of the blonde as she finally dropped down to that spot beside him with her own bottle raised to her lips, one of her legs curling beneath her as she sank into the soft cushions of the couch. She was so drastically different from Blair, Nate really had to wonder sometimes how the two of them had ever been drawn to one another. For one, Blair never drank beer, not even during college when it was the beverage of choice at nearly every party. But then again, she hadn't really attended many of those parties. And she would never sit here like this, with her back pressed to the arm of the couch and her leg curled beneath her lithe body. Even Serena's attire was something Blair would have never left the confines of the penthouse in. Despite the instructor's insistence that dance was best learned in formal attire, Serena had yet to dress up like she was supposed to. Tonight, she wore a pair of worn jeans with a hole in the left knee and a white wifebeater Nate was nearly certain had belonged to Dan at one time, her blonde locks pulled up into a messy knot at the back of her head. Everything about her appearance seemed to scream freedom, and it was slowly but surely beginning to pull him in until he was in over his head, unsure of how to extract himself again.

"You shouldn't be getting married," he finally said off-handedly as a way to break the silence between the two of them, his eyes drifting over to her relaxed form once before he peered back at the wall across from him instead, raising his bottle to his lips. As soon as he had said it, she threw her head back as she laughed aloud, a real laugh that was filled with mirth and this brightness that seemed to radiate from every inch of her form. In that moment, he was willing to argue it was the most rewarding sound he had ever heard before in his life.

Her laugher didn't dissipate as she moved her slender body onto his lap, and once again, Nate was forced to reflect upon the differences between this blonde goddess and his wife who was surely in bed by now at home. She just fell there, sprawled out with her legs extending to the middle of the couch and her arms wrapped loosely around his neck. And he was fairly certain that if she were to stand up again and then sit back down there in his lap, she would drape her body in a different way. Blair always seated herself in the same place, in the same way. There was always consistency. "Why do you say that, Natie?" she asked him in her singsong voice that was just as light and free as the rest of her. "You know I love Dan." She straightened after a moment, pulling one of her hands from around his neck to take another sip from the long-necked bottle in her slender hand. When she finally allowed her wrists to cross again just beneath his left ear, she wore a playful smile as she spoke to him again in that same trilling voice. "Why? Are you jealous? Beginning to contemplate just what you're going to be missing out on?"

It was his turn to laugh as he shook his head, his empty hand falling to rest on her hip, holding her there in place as if it were his worst fear that she would eventually stand up from this couch and leave him there alone before he was ready to let her go. "No," he responded with a sureness he hadn't been sure he truly felt before he had spoken the tiny word aloud. "You know I love Blair." As soon as he had spoken that small phrase aloud, he grew serious as he moved the bottle to the hand resting at her hip and raised his other hand to push a single strand of golden hair behind her ear. His cobalt eyes met her startling sapphire ones as his hand lingered there on her cheek. The pit of his stomach clenched as his mind began to argue with his desires internally, meeting somewhere in the middle and leaving him twice as confused as to what he really did want and what he only thought he should want. "But do you really want to tie yourself down like that? You're so free right now, Serena," he said as he kept his hand there on her cheek, even as she raised her own bottle to take another sip. "You're so happy. Being married isn't like that. Not all the time. Suddenly, everything is just laid out there before you and no one ever asked you what you wanted out of life. It's just… there and you don't have a choice." As his words washed over her, he could see the way her own expression changed, sensing that this conversation was taking a drastic turn all of a sudden. His thumb traced a slow circle on the apple of her cheek as his voice dropped down low, seeming too quiet when they were the only two people in the room. "Don't change. Don't give up that choice."

"I won't," she replied without any hesitation at all, her eyes still locked on his. And then suddenly, everything had changed in a single instant. In the days to come, all the days that would pass between tonight and next Thursday, he wouldn't remember if it had been he who made the first move or if she had been the forward one who had allowed her lips to just barely brush against her own. What he would remember was the taste of the alcohol on her breath, and the fact that her lips were slightly chapped, and the way that her teeth hit his a few too many times to really think of the kiss as being enjoyable. And yet, it would haunt his every thought until he laid his eyes on this same blonde goddess again. It would stay cemented in his mind for the rest of eternity. And the problem was that he had kissed Serena while Blair sat home alone in an apartment across the city. The problem was that he didn't feel a single ounce of guilt when he pulled back to meet her eyes, making sure that she didn't seem to regret what had just happened, and then allowed his mouth to collide once again with her own.

/-/-/

Unlike every other Thursday night on which Nate had spent those few extra hours at the office, tonight Blair hadn't drifted off to sleep in order to find some semblance of comfort in her dreams like she had for the past few weeks. Instead, she felt as if she may never be able to fall asleep tonight no matter when her husband returned from his office to take that place beside her in their bed, what with that excitement that had only become harder and harder to ignore with each and every passing hour as she waited for Nate to finally return home. She heard his footsteps before he had ever set foot into the bedroom, and with that sure sign of his arrival home, she had flipped off the TV, set to AMC where Sabrina had been playing that night, and she had laid down beneath the covers, closing her eyes in an attempt to appear as if she had been sleeping soundly for hours while he had been finishing up what had to be done in his office. Once again, it had all been a part of this carefully crafted plan she had dreamed up during those long hours she had spent alone between the moment she had returned from his office and now when he had finally returned home. She had tried to wait for him, but in the end her desire to know what their future held had won out, and now, for nearly the entire evening, that test had been sitting on the bathroom counter where she had left it, waiting for him to view that result just like she had a few hours ago. It was the reason why she had stayed awake despite how tired she had felt, and it was the reason why she trembled just slightly beneath the covers now as she listened to the sounds of his footfalls become louder, then the turn of the knob as he opened the door and the sound of all the air leaving the room when he closed it again. She listened for the sounds of his feet as he moved around the room, removing his tie and then his shirt. She waited with baited breath when he entered the closet to place these things in the hamper, or, more likely, on the floor beside the hamper as if he hadn't seen it there at all. On his way into the bathroom, he mistook her excitement to mean that she was cold and readjusted the blankets around her tiny frame before finishing his journey and closing the door behind him. But something here was wrong. Something here was amiss. And she could feel it before he had ever exited the bathroom.

The problem was that the minute Nate had lain his eyes upon the vulnerable form of his petite wife beneath the covers of the bed they had shared now for three years, he immediately felt that rush of guilt that came with the knowledge that he had done something he wasn't supposed to have done. It was like the time when he and Jeremy had decided to practice for their upcoming baseball game in the townhouse Nate had grown up in while his parents were out for the evening at some gala or another and the ball had gone sailing through the living room window before either of the boys were able to stop it. He hadn't slept with the blonde, he hadn't even gone farther than a heated make out session right there on the couch with both of their clothes still very much intact. But he hadn't been the one to pull away before it became too late to think about stopping whatever it was that was very quickly unfolding between the two of them, and he hadn't felt guilty at all until Blair had been right there before him. After he had finished in the bedroom, he had gone into the bathroom without leaving a soft kiss on her cheek or whispering an "I love you" softly in her ear like he normally would have when she was asleep. Instead, he took his time in removing his plain white t-shirt and his dress pants, brushing his teeth and doing everything else that he normally did before climbing into bed and laying down beside his wife. Never once did he catch that small piece of white plastic that was so obviously out of place there on the bathroom counter. Never once did he take notice of what those two pink lines staring back at him meant. Instead, he didn't break out of that same daze he had been in since he had spotted her there in bed until he entered their bedroom again to find her sitting up in bed again, a smile upon her pretty little features, not quite wide enough to allow him to fall into her seemingly endless joy.

"Did I wake you?" he asked softly as he moved around the edge of the bed to the side that was his own, and she couldn't help but find it to be slightly disheartening at best. She shook her head as she pulled the covers around her chest a little tighter, her eyes following him until he was laying there beside her, his face buried in the pillow. How had he missed it? She had laid it right there beside the sink where he would be forced to see it when he washed his hands or brushed his teeth, and somehow, he had looked past that very important piece of their future that she had set there for him to see. With a dramatic sigh she laid down there beside him again in the quiet that filled the bedroom, her eyes staying wide opened as she willed him to flip back over with a wide smile upon his features as he told her that he was oh so happy that they were finally going to be starting a family together. And when it didn't happen, she sighed again, this time a little more loudly. But when he did flip over, it was far from the reaction she had wanted. "What, Blair?" he asked with a sigh of his own when he flipped over again. In the darkness, she could just make out the bright, bold color of his eyes that told her he was past mad and now furious at her for now reason. When he spoke, frustration seemed to drip from his words, forming a puddle there between their two bodies. It was only then that she realized that he had never moved close enough to her to wrap his arms around her small body. "Why don't you tell me whatever it is so you can stop wasting your time and mine?"

He hadn't meant to seem quite so angry with her when she really only seemed to have wanted to talk to him and he had shown little interest in her, but he was angry. This anger was just misdirected for the moment, seeing as it was far easier to be mad at Blair than at himself. It was a philosophy that Blair herself had always lived by, directing her anger at the nearest person instead of on the real source of her unhappiness, which was almost always internal. Even when she did try to punish herself, she had ways of coping with that anger, even if her purging habits had most certainly come to a standstill in the past few years. But Nate had never quite felt this kind of rage towards himself before in his life, and now, he wasn't quite certain how to deal with it all. Her big brown eyes looked glassy when the moonlight caught the porcelain features on her face, and it only seemed to make him more angry when he realized that she must be on the verge of tears, a result of her exhaustion or her loneliness or something else that he couldn't seem to fix. And then where would he be if she were to ever find out where he had really spent the majority of his evening? She would be a sobbing mess that he wouldn't be able to control. But Blair was more resilient than he gave her credit for, and her voice broke the silence of the bedroom before he could even figure out what he was supposed to do if she began to cry now. "Are you sure you don't need to go back into the bathroom?"

"Why would I need to go back in the bathroom? I was just there." he questioned her as he posed the question back to her, confusion blanketing his features for the moment as his words still rang with that irritation he obviously felt for her right now. But Blair was stubborn. She had always been stubborn. And one of her plans had already been ruined that day. She wasn't about to stand back and allow a second one to be massacred.

"I don't know. Why don't you just go see?" she prodded as she turned over onto her side, supporting herself on her elbow. For a second, it was only a puzzled expression that covered his handsome features, and she couldn't help but find it endearing. In the next moment, he would rise from the bed if only to get her to stop insisting that he go back into the en suite bathroom, and he would return with a wide smile on his face, choosing to finally take her into his arms and keep her warm like he always did at night.

Instead, it was another frustrated sigh that she received as he flipped over, burying his face in the pillow once again as his angry tirade became muffled by the fabric now covering his mouth. "I don't have to go back into that damn bathroom, Blair," he told her forcefully as he used that rage that he felt towards himself as a result of his actions that night to keep him going. "I don't have to leave this fucking bed for anything right now. Just give it a rest and go to sleep."

In the silence that followed the sound of his voice on its heels, quiet enough to produce a ringing in her ears, Blair didn't really know how to react. He didn't move, didn't lift his face from the pillow, didn't offer a single word of apology for his unnecessary reaction. And she didn't know what to say as well. This hadn't been part of her calculated plan that she had prepared for, and she had considered nearly every reaction he could possibly have to the news that was waiting for him there upon the counter in between the Jack and Jill sinks. She flipped back onto her back as she waited in the silence to hear his breathing even or to feel him come closer, his breath warm against the skin of her neck as he apologized for getting so fed up with her when it was really this case that had him so worked up. And when it didn't happen she took matters into her own hands, guiding things along a little more than she had planned to. If he had had such a rough day, then maybe this was what he really needed to break his mood. She could give him that last bright spot before he drifted off to sleep. Besides, she never slept well when they went to bed with an argument left unresolved. "I'm pregnant," she finally said aloud as her eyes remained aimed at the ceiling for a moment longer while she allowed those words to sink in, then allowed him to react as he turned in the direction of her voice, his expression now blank as he tried to make sense of what she had just told him. When he asked her just what she had said, she turned her head completely to face him, watching his face closely in the dark. "I'm pregnant. I took the test earlier today." There was another long silence that stretched on with no more reaction, and she felt herself begin to grow nervous in response to what she could only guess was his way of replying. "You're not mad, are you?"

Was he mad? Yes. God, yes, was he mad. But it wasn't because she was telling him this piece of information that he knew she had been waiting for months now to discover for herself. Really, it had absolutely nothing to do with what she had said, and everything to do with what he had done that evening. But how could he possibly tell her about that kiss now? She was waiting for his reaction though, and he couldn't continue to lay there like this mute, unable to function. He smiled as he shook his head in response, closing the distance between their two bodies as he wrapped her up in his arms, his hand falling to rest on her still flat abdomen without even really meaning to, but she took it to be intentional, and it was what caused her to relax fully there in the circle of his arms. "Of course I'm not mad," he told her as he pressed his lips to the crown of her head, taking his time to breathe in the familiar scent of her honey and almond shampoo while he waited for the words that he wanted to say to come, words that he wanted to say yet wasn't entirely sure he could say right now. "This is great news," he finally managed as he met her serious brown eyes with his smiling blue ones. "This is the best news I've heard all day."

He remained there with her with her tiny frame enveloped in his arms as she spoke to him about how far along she probably was, about when she would be able to make an appointment for, about how she was feeling and how she had just known and everything else that would have mattered to him if she had told him this news last night instead of tonight. But Nate found that he couldn't quite concentrate on his wife's words when his mind was swimming with the memory of a sweet yet slightly bitter taste and a lithe body that felt warm and inviting upon his lap. He wanted to share in her joy over this baby they had created together, a baby they had both agreed they had wanted and had begun to try for some months ago now. And yet, he couldn't. And when she finally fell asleep after he had told her that he loved her and kissed her goodnight like he knew she always wanted him to, he lay awake in the silence of their room, trying to figure out why he could only think about a pale blonde who had nothing tying her down instead of the woman in his arms or the child, his child, that she was now carrying, his hands making continuous small circles upon her back as if she were the one who was in need of comforting tonight.

/-/-/

It had been Serena who had decided upon her bedroom as the place where they should settle in for the hour or two in which they had to converse before Blair would become too suspicious and may try calling his office or his cell phone number to make sure that he was okay, at least that's what he told himself in the days that followed that fateful Thursday night when everything changed. It had been a week since that one single kiss that he hadn't been able to forget no matter how hard he tried, and Serena had pulled him by the hand into the bedroom where she now slept alone to show him the glow-in-the-dark stars she had stuck to the ceiling in the past week. She told him she had been feeling lonely there with Dan gone so much of the time now that he was nearly finished with his self-proclaimed masterpiece, and they had reminded her of the room she had had in one of the many apartments her family had lived in over the years. They had turned off the lights and laid down on top of her comforter to study the iridescent blues and pinks and greens that were only visible in the dark. It had left them both feeling nostalgic as they remembered laying upon a different bedspread, one that hid pink Tweetie Bird sheets, with another friend laying there beside him, but neither of them brought up Blair's name at first because it was the gray area that existed between the two of them, the big purple elephant that had taken up refuge in the corner of the room. Instead, Serena complained about how they were supposed to be stars and yet none of them appeared to be yellow. In return, Nate had broken that unspoken promise and told her that Blair was pregnant.

"She doesn't want anyone to know right now," he added almost immediately, as if in the next second Serena would have picked up the phone in order to congratulate their friend. "She's going to tell you herself in a couple of months, after she's moved past that point where the risk of miscarrying is greatest, but she's been to the doctor and everything. She's really pregnant." A week had passed since the night he had told her, that night when he had been so quick to be mad at her, and since then, he had allowed himself to think more and more about that life they had created, the little person who would enter the world in a matter of months. But the problem was that thinking about that baby more only really meant beginning to think about this change in the first place, and there were only small windows of time he devoted to pondering this latest news before his thoughts drifted back to the girl who was now hanging on his every word. "Blair's wanted this for so long," he concluded after another moment as his eyes drifted back to those tiny stars, each one with five points the same distance away, seeming to be perfect from this far away, much like the illusion that had become his life.

The blonde flipped onto her stomach, chewing on her bottom lip as she studied his profile instead of those little plastic images she had pulled him in here to see in the first place. "But is it really what you want, Nate?" she asked him as she cradled her chin in the palm of her hand, trying to read those thoughts that lingered there beneath the blue of his eyes. It was one of those questions he didn't now how to answer, just like he hadn't known how to respond when he had found out his wife was expecting. He had told Blair that he was happy, and whenever she began to talk about the baby, he tried to match her enthusiasm. But he had skipped out on her first appointment by telling her that he had a meeting and promising to attend the next one with her, and he had tried to change the subject more than once by asking if she knew where a particular tie was or what time they were supposed to be at her mother's house that Saturday evening for dinner. There were certain things he couldn't tell her, even now after so long. He couldn't explain to her how it felt to feel as if you were being smothered in a relationship you had once felt comfortable in, especially when she wasn't feeling that same inability to catch her breath on a regular basis.

His eyes finally left those tiny stars to meet her eyes as he thought about his answer with care, working through what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it before he spoke. "It scares the hell out of me to think about this little person who's going to depend on us for everything," he told her honestly as he sighed aloud, his eyes never leaving her own. It was as if she was feeding him this slightest bit of comfort through her gaze alone, edging him on to tell her just what was on his mind instead of losing his confidence halfway through. "And it just seems so permanent. I mean, I know that being married meant that things weren't going to really ever change with my love life, but this really can't be changed. This baby will always be mine, no matter what happens between Blair and I five years from now or fifty years from now. She can't change the fact that this child is mine, and I can't either." With a sigh, he rubbed at his eyes, looking back to the stars once again to avoid seeing the sympathy written across his friend's face. "I think I agreed to trying to get pregnant to make her happy, not because I wanted it too."

Serena didn't say anything at first, too preoccupied with picking at a loose thread upon the comforter that covered the bed, and that was one of those things that Nate loved about her, still after all these years. She had always been the best at listening, never complaining if he spoke for hours or if he only spoke for five minutes, which was far more likely. It was easy to talk to her because she didn't get angry and she didn't resort to tears and she didn't immediately try to find someone at fault. She didn't judge him for his opinion. She loved him unconditionally, the way it was supposed to be. And when she finally did speak, it wasn't even about anything that he had said. It wasn't meant to prod farther into his life. "Dan wants to move after we get married," she told him when she did speak, her voice nonchalant despite the subject as she continued to gaze down at the comforter and the loose thread instead of back over at him. "It has something to do with this idea he got for another book. His publisher feels that it would be best if he got some experience living in the conditions he wants to write about before he sets out on this next project. He thinks L.A. is the perfect place for the setting of the story, and Dan figures I can find work there anyways. It seems pretty perfect when he talks about it, but New York's the only home I've ever known. You had Dartmouth and Blair had Yale, but I've only ever had Manhattan."

The idea of losing her now caused his stomach to clench as he imagined an existence that didn't include Serena van der Woodsen for merely a second, and that reaction to her statement seemed to make him all the more fearful. Since when did he depend on anyone? Since when did he depend on someone that wasn't Blair? The problem was that in these past four weeks, Serena had become an escape of sorts for him. She was a part of his day that wasn't routine and planned to a T, just waiting for him to arrive on set for that next scene so the show could carry on. The first week, she had convinced him to go to McDonald's with her before the class began, last week they had sat out in her living room, reminiscing about all the great memories they had made before everything went wrong with their lives, and tonight they were here in her bedroom. He couldn't have told you earlier that he would end up here tonight on her bed staring up at plastic stars that belonged in a nursery instead of this bedroom that Serena had shared with her fiancée not so long ago. When he finally figured out how to move his mouth to form simple words again, he locked his gaze on her painfully blue eyes, demanding answers before he had even spoken. "When would you leave?" All the reasons why he had always loved Serena van der Woodsen seemed to fall away in this moment as he realized her spontaneity was his worst enemy in this moment. Blair wouldn't just pick up and move just like that, which meant that he would never do the same, in turn meaning that he believed this philosophy was true for the rest of the world. No, his wife always had a plan in place, exact with every last detail drawn out for him to see before anything began to unfold. She hadn't told him she wanted to try for a baby until she had reached that point where her dress wouldn't need to be altered anymore than anyone else's would for her best friend's wedding. But Serena could leave tomorrow, turning her back on the life she had always known without a second glance and no one would find it to be uncharacteristic of the lithe blonde's normal behavior.

She shrugged her thin shoulders as she looked back to the comforter, studying the pattern there upon the fabric as if it may hold the answers to the question he had asked her. Her pale hair spilled over her shoulders, and in the places on her face that it didn't obstruct his view, those plastic stars cast an other worldly glow upon her milky skin. In that moment, gorgeous seemed to be the only word to describe what she looked like, despite the fact that she was in a simple pink tank top and a pair of white shorts that were tinier than any other pair of shorts he had seen on a girl before now. He didn't know what was wrong with him, but he didn't think of Blair even once as she picked up her head again to look over in his direction when she spoke. Instead, he focused on the way her lips moved to frame her every word, imagining the way they would taste now when her lip gloss was obviously a different shade than it had been the last time. "It wouldn't be until after the wedding, but it would be before the baby is born," she told him with a small motion of his hand, merely trying to put her own personal time frame into perspective by juxtaposing it with his own. In the end, it only upset him when he found it hard to move past the fact that she had mentioned the child he was now supposed to be preparing for with Blair. It seemed all the more real when she was mentioning it, when it was her voice saying the word aloud instead of his own or Blair's. She sighed aloud as she flipped back over onto her back, her eyes immediately going to those stars upon the ceiling she had told him she put there in hopes that they would be a source of comfort. "I don't know if I even want to go," she told him as she wrapped her arms around her body, pulling herself closer until there was no room left for the outside world to pull her away from this moment, or this boy that didn't belong to her.

"Then don't," he replied as if it were that simple. But if anyone knew about simplicity, it was Nate Archibald, and he knew that it didn't exist. If it had, he could tell himself now that he didn't need Serena van der Woodsen in his life and she would be gone. He could tell himself that he would be happy and he would feel that same bliss that seemed to radiate from Blair's form now. He could tell himself that he loved Blair with all his heart and rest easy at night. Unfortunately, real life wasn't that simple no matter what your last name happened to be. If Serena wanted to be with the man that she loved, she would pick up and leave, and that would be the end of it. And he would be left drowning slowly again, or stuck in a room while all four walls burned around him, the fire beginning to spread inwards until he was completely enveloped.

That same twinkling laughter spilled forth from her mouth as she tossed her head back, now supporting herself with her elbows, her back extended. As he watched her there in the darkness of the room, he wondered what it would be like to feel her writhe in pleasure beneath him, to feel her cry out his name when he pushed her over the edge, to hold her in his arms afterwards and feel her heartbeat fall into sync with his own. But her voice pushed these thoughts away instead before he had a chance to act on them. "I don't think I have a choice," she said in that same singsong, carefree voice despite the topic of conversation.

Instinctively, he moved his body a little closer to her own as his hand rose to cup her small face in his hand, watching the way her eyes deepened when he moved so close that his breath was warm against her skin when he spoke. "But you promised," he wished into the night as she responded softly with an "I know." His lips were melding into her own before he had the chance to stop himself, her lip gloss the same flavor as that first strawberry in the very beginning of the summer. It wasn't like kissing Blair where his hands already knew where to go and he anticipated that moment when her small tongue would curl into the roof of his mouth because she knew it always drove him crazy. He didn't know what to expect when he was holding Serena or when he was kissing her. And he didn't want to know. He wanted to be caught off guard. He wanted to be surprised. He wanted to be blindsided by what was coming next.

And that night, he was. Because by the time he remembered that he shouldn't have been there kissing another girl while his pregnant wife lay asleep in the bed they shared across the city, their clothes had already faded away with the night.

/-/-/

After he had made love to a woman who wasn't his wife for the first time in more years than he cared to think about for the moment, after Serena had confessed her feelings to him and he had pretended to not hear, after his heartbeat had calmed and her breathing had evened and there wasn't a single evidence left of their sexcapade despite the memory that they both had captured in their memory banks, Nate had gone home. He had had no choice but to leave her apartment and return to his own because unlike her, he had someone who would grow suspicious if he hadn't returned come the next morning. The last thing he needed was for Blair to wake in the middle of the night and decide to call James when she realized that he was missing. His lie would be unveiled and his wife would be heartbroken, and this had really never been about hurting her. In that journey that he made across the city that night, he wasn't even entirely sure that he was a fan of the decision he had made, for more than just the reason that he was married and that girl who had stolen his heart was not Serena. But he wasn't entirely sure that he should have gotten so close to his best friend if he knew her feelings ran this deep, that they were so true. He had only been looking for an ear to listen to him, and someone to give him that zest that had been missing from his life. If it hadn't been Serena then it would have been Candy or Ginger or any of the other secretaries that had paraded through his office at one time or another. And if it hadn't been a secretary, then Nate would have contacted Chuck Bass for the name of another girl who would help him achieve that relationship with no strings attached, the kind he had never been able to establish for himself during high school. He had needed an escape, and Serena had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He got into bed that night with this thought weighing heavily on his mind, but it seemed to dissipate the moment that he shifted just slightly and Blair, in her unconscious state, became aware of his presence there. She turned in her sleep, the moonlight creating shadows over her porcelain features, and it broke his heart for that moment while he watched her sleep. She had only ever loved him like no one else had ever loved him before now. She had only ever given him everything he had ever wanted, she had only ever tried to be the one for him. She had never tried to hurt him, not like he had hurt her so many countless times before. And now, when she was finally content with the person she had become, when she was finally happy with herself and her life, he had to go and do something as stupid as this. No, sleeping with Serena tonight had been the biggest mistake he had ever made, he was absolutely sure of it as he pulled his wife's tiny body into his arms and kissed the top of her head, holding her tightly as if letting go would mean that he would lose her altogether. He did love her, of that much he was absolutely sure no matter what stupid thing he did. He would always love this girl who had given herself so completely to him, who had always loved him so unconditionally. He needed her like a fish needed to be in the ocean in order to survive and a flower needed sunlight in order to grow to its full potential. She was his better half. She made him a better person. And tonight, he had come so close to throwing it all away. But it would be the last time he made that mistake, he vowed to himself as he apologized to her in the silence of their bedroom, knowing that she would never remember these words and finding solace in that fact. He couldn't lose her. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if he did.

But there was still that knowledge in the back of his mind that wouldn't let him go, that knowledge that those three little words had come so close to spilling past his own lips earlier tonight when he had laid with another girl in his arms. And the fear that if he were to same them to that other girl, they would be true would not leave him alone as he settled in as the monster he had become for a sleepless night.