** I don't own the characters, but I'd love to have Steve Burton under a "personal" contract… just sayin'.
Chapter 1
Glancing back toward the bed, Jason watched Sam sleeping peacefully. She has tried to comfort him and raise his spirits, but nothing seemed to get through to the heaviness weighing on his heart.
Everything was crashing down on him… he had failed Michael in the worst way and now the boy was going to pay for it the rest of his life. How could he accept that?
Taking a deep breath he headed down stairs to try and rid himself of the restless feeling that was overwhelming him. He needed to do something… anything- he wanted to kill Dante… save Michael and the shitty part was that he couldn't do anything.
Glancing at this cell phone he realized part of what had been bothering him all night was that Carly had never called him. Faced with something so emotional and devastating it was totally incomprehensible that she hadn't called him a million times by now.
Did she blame him? Did she feel like he did and blame him for letting their boy down? Did she hate him for not keeping Michael safe?
Grabbing his keys he headed for the door. He had to know if she could ever forgive him.
Carly sat rocking on the back porch listening to the sounds of the night and glancing periodically toward the baby monitor in her lap. She had been out here for hours just trying to breathe and keep her head together.
Normally the job of keeping her calm would fall to Jason, but having seen the devastation in his eyes she didn't want to make his life any harder than it was at the moment. He needed to be comforted and not dragged down into her ocean of guilt and terror.
How had it come to this? They had all made mistakes. Trusting when they shouldn't trust, lying when they shouldn't lie, keeping silent when they should have spoken… the list could go on.
But the fact of the matter was that everything that had happened to Michael and everything that he would go through came back to her. It was all on her. She was his mother- she should have kept him safe and protected him better. Would things have been different if she had just left him with Jason and never returned?
Hearing someone walking up the sidewalk Carly froze for just a second… it only took that second to know who was coming to see her. Only Jason would walk around her backyard at 3 o'clock in the morning. Anyone else wouldn't have made it past the guards.
As Jason stepped into view he choked on the words that he had come to say. Carly knew that no words could make things right, so she did the one thing she could. Opening her arms silently she offered him whatever she had left to give.
Silently he moved into her arms and feeling them close around him, he let himself give into the tears that he had been fighting since leaving the courtroom.
As the first signs of the new day began to appear, two frightened souls clung together trying to find the strength they would need to help their boy.