Author's Note: And we begin in Summer 2016, with Eric in prison for killing Daniel, Nicole perpetually mourning Daniel, Brady about to marry Theresa, and Clyde/Xander/Orpheus planning a prison break.

One.

Xander was always watching Eric, and Eric knew it.

It was tiring to be always, always on his guard, but Eric was able to make certain that Xander never had the opportunity to corner him or fight him. Eric had been in a few fights during his incarceration— more because his police officer relatives had put many of these men in prison than because of anything Eric himself had said or done— and he'd acquitted himself well enough that he wasn't viewed as an easy target. His time in the priesthood had taught him never to raise his hand to another human being, but the self-defense lessons he'd gotten as a child who was the son of a cop were even more deeply ingrained.

But he didn't want to try Xander.

Xander was insane.

Xander would willingly take more years in prison, or solitary confinement, or serious bodily injury, if it meant that Eric suffered.

For month after month, Eric managed to keep Xander from getting within ten feet of him except when they were standing next to a guard or three.

So Xander was reduced to whispering.

"The time will come, Eric."

"You'll be reunited with Serena, and you'll both like that, won't you?"

"You escaped the furnace, but you won't escape again."

"Your cousin had to lie to put me here, but you're here for something you really did. Don't you think God will even things out, Father Eric?"

"Do you think I would have a chance with Nicole if I avenged her doctor's death by murdering you? The woman is an unmitigated bitch, but her body doesn't quit."

Eric liked to think that he was good at controlling his emotions, but Xander knew just which buttons to push. He would return to his cell hot-headed and furious, barely able to control his anger, only just managing to channel the fury into pushups and sit-ups while his cellmate wondered aloud what precisely his problem was.

Usually, Xander wasn't able to get close enough to Eric to whisper. Usually, Xander was reduced to glowering from the other side of the cafeteria or the exercise yard.

That was why it chilled Eric to the bone when, on a day that seemed much like any other day, Xander looked at him with a satisfied, happy grin.

Nicole stared disconsolately at the wedding invitation that had been hand-delivered by a young man in a too-snazzy uniform. At first she'd thought that she was being served; a moment later, she reconsidered that a lawsuit would have been preferable.

It wasn't that she didn't want Brady to be happy; of course she did. She had even come around to the position that Theresa might be an acceptable choice of bride. Brady had certainly done worse when he'd tried to marry Kristen DiMera of all people. Brady and Theresa shared a son, after all, and there were worse things than giving a child his best shot at having two loving parents in his home.

But the last thing Nicole wanted to do was attend a wedding.

The wedding she should have been attending was her own wedding to Daniel.

Or, at least, she should have been attending this wedding with Daniel as her date.

She looked again at the invitation. The RSVP card had already been filled in with the number "two;" she couldn't scratch it out and say she was coming solo any more than she could have demanded that she be allowed a guest if the invitation had been addressed to her alone.

Since when had Nicole become Miss Manners?

Since Daniel's death had drained her of the energy to make her own rules.

She pulled out her phone and skimmed through her contacts. She laughed at her options. Dario and Deimos were too much a betrayal of Daniel; she didn't want to go somewhere romantic like a wedding with either of them.

Rafe was firmly in her friend-zone, would no doubt be attending with Frowny Face. Wasn't Rafe all about becoming a father? Why was he so infatuated with a woman who had a mostly-grown grandchild?

Lucas would have been a longshot anyway, as much of a disaster as their marriage had been, but he had that thing going with Adrienne Kiriakis. Maybe older women was the trend? Should she look around for an escort almost young enough to be her son? JJ Deveraux had a certain appeal, handsome like his father, but his girlfriend had already established her willingness to murder when romantic entanglements didn't go her way, and Nicole wasn't going to get involved in that.

The thought of giving Aiden Jennings a call almost made her laugh out loud. As much as Aiden was persona non grata with the rest of Salem, that would have been a sight to see. Aiden might have been a bit of a psycho, but he was fun and no one had ever hit him with an ugly stick. There would be no concerns about romantic undertones because he would be busy gazing across the room at Hope. But, no, Nicole was a good person now, and even if she wasn't, she couldn't make a spectacle of Brady's wedding.

Forget men, then. She'd rather attend with Brady's ex than one of her own, anyway.

Satisfied with her decision, she sent Chloe a text asking whether they could be each other's dates for Brady's wedding.

Chloe texted back that she loved the idea of Brady's two favorite exes attending as a team, and that they could get their hair done together that morning, too.

A moment later, Brady texted that that was not what he and Theresa had intended when they had pointedly suggested that Nicole bring a date, but that he was just happy that she would be there.

Nicole sighed.

Eric was edgy for two days after Xander grinned at him. He was so edgy, in fact, that instead of avoiding Xander, he sat right across from him in the cafeteria when the opportunity presented itself.

Once again, Xander smiled. "I hear your whole family is going to be at Brady and Theresa's wedding," he said pleasantly. "Your whole family except you. It must be difficult for you. I know how you and Brady just love each other. I heard that when you accidentally got locked in with the furnace, Brady stood over you like an overbred guard dog until you got to the hospital."

Accidentally locked in with the furnace. Rage started to rise in Eric's chest again, but he forced it down. "You know how it is," said Eric as pleasantly as he could. "I wish I could be there, but since I can't, I'm just glad that he's going to be happy."

"Eighth time is a charm, right?" asked Xander. "I think that's how many weddings my dear cousin is up to. Funny how you've never given it a try, not even once. Not even with… Nicole."

Eric pondered whether it would be worth it to grab Xander by the throat and tell him never to mention Nicole's name again.

No, he decided. It would be enjoyable, but not worth it. He would never find out what Xander was doing while sitting in solitary confinement.

"Nicole is still a sore spot with you, isn't she?" asked Xander.

"No," said Eric.

Xander's laughter was disconcertingly carefree. "You're a terrible liar," he said.

"He always has been, even when he was a little boy," said the older man beside Xander. Eric hadn't even looked at him, which was a violation of every law of prison survival in existence. Now, he stared openly at Xander's companion and searched his memory. He came up empty.

"Do I know you?" asked Eric. A warning tone sounded through the room. Their quick meal period was over, and the prisoners were being ordered to their feet in groups of four.

"No," said the man. "But I know you." He held out his hand for Eric to shake. "Milo Harp."

"How do you—" Eric began, but the warning tone sounded again and he was ordered to his feet and back to his cell.

He hadn't liked the look of Milo Harp at all. He didn't know the man himself, but he knew desperation and vengeance and viciousness when he saw them.

Xander had found a dangerous ally. No wonder he was so happy.

No wonder Eric felt so helpless.

Early on the morning of Brady's wedding, Chloe met Nicole at the salon, as promised.

Unfortunately, Chloe was not alone. She had brought along Belle and Claire.

Nicole steeled herself to ignore the whole group of them. Chloe was fun as her adult self, but around her high school classmates she tended to regress to a teenager that Nicole found both boring and insufferable. Belle offered polite condolences about how hard it must be to attend a wedding so soon after losing Daniel even though it meant so very much to Brady, and Nicole resisted the urge to claw Belle's eyes out for bringing it up. Claire, meanwhile, had the one-track mind common to most teenagers and was bound and determined to monopolize Chloe so that they could discuss singing, singing, singing, and more singing.

Nicole was glad when sinks and blow driers started running and she couldn't hear any of them. She couldn't even see Chloe and Belle, although she could almost feel their giggles as they relived their Last Blasts, or whatever those ridiculous dances had been called.

But she could see Claire, and that was worse.

Nicole knew that when most people looked at Claire, they saw Belle all over again in the porcelain skin, wide eyes, and impossibly innocent gestures.

Nicole saw Claire's Uncle Eric.

Eric had been just about Claire's age when he and Nicole had first met. He'd been just as confident and gentle, just as determined and quick to see the good in people.

The years had hardened Eric like they hardened everyone, like they would someday harden Claire. The years— and Nicole— had hardened Eric so badly that he was currently sitting in prison rather than getting ready to stand up at his beloved brother's wedding.

To Nicole's horror, her eyes flooded with tears.

Even worse, Claire noticed and scrambled for her mother's purse to get Nicole a tissue.

"Were you thinking of Dr. Jonas?" asked Claire in that super-sweet way that Eric had had once, too.

Nicole made a show of drying her eyes so that she wouldn't have to answer.

"Here," said Claire. "Take the whole package."

A card tumbled from Belle's purse into Nicole's lap. Both Nicole and Claire looked at it curiously.

Enjoy the wedding.

—Milo Harp

"Who's Milo Harp?" asked Nicole, glad to focus on something else.

"I don't know. A wedding planner? Mom?" Claire waved the card at Belle. "Who is this?"

But Belle was as puzzled as the rest of them. She didn't know how the card had made its way into her purse, let alone who Milo Harp was.

"It's definitely a fake name," Nicole decided. "Does Brady have security at this thing?"

Belle assured Nicole that after their son's recent kidnapping, yes, Brady and Theresa had taken steps to make sure the wedding guests would all be safe.

It didn't make Nicole feel much better.

Two.

Eric had hoarded all of his credits of any kind, a twisted reflection of the materially simple life he had been expected to live as a priest. It wasn't difficult to get time and permission to make a phone call.

"Eric!" Roman's voice was frantic when he picked up a moment later. Eric hated that he had put his family in the position of panicking every time they thought of him. "Is everything okay?"

"I hope so," said Eric. "Does the name Milo Harp mean anything to you?"

Roman paused. "Not off the top of my head, no. I can run it through our system if you'd like, but I can't necessarily tell you what I find."

"Do that, please," said Eric. If this person had really been watching Eric since his childhood, he had been watching the rest of Eric's family as well.

While Roman entered one thing and another into the police department's clunky computer system, Eric told him everything that Xander and Harp had told him the day before.

"It may just be Xander Kiriakis playing mind games with you," said Roman. "I hope to God that's it. I'm looking at Harp's mugshot right now, and he does look a little bit familiar but I don't see any connection to anyone you know. He wasn't even arrested by the Salem PD, and the charges aren't that serious."

That was just the news Eric had hoped for, but it was deflating all the same. In a wild flight of fancy, he had imagined that he was doing something to help his family even while he was stuck in prison. "Okay, thank you. Sorry to bother you."

"Not a bother!" snapped Roman. "You did exactly the right thing. I want you to call any time you think I can help you or you see something that doesn't seem quite right. I want you to call just to say hello. I miss you, Eric."

A lump rose in his throat. "Miss you, too, Dad."

As he hung up the phone, all of his concentration went into composing himself. He couldn't very well walk through the cell block whimpering and vulnerable. There was no place for that here.

Distracted as he was, he didn't see the first blow coming.

Off guard as he was, he didn't have a chance of blocking the second blow that knocked him unconscious.

Nicole downed a dirty martini at the hotel bar before making her way to the wedding. She would have preferred two or three martinis, but a morning spent with Belle had made Chloe a killjoy and Nicole was all but dragged by her hair to St. Luke's.

"Why is he having his wedding here?" Nicole demanded. "The last time he tried to get married here…"

The scene rose unbidden before her eyes. The horrible tape that proved to Eric that she hadn't been the one who had raped him. Eric's utter humiliation. Brady's conviction that Eric must have been the one who seduced Kristen. Her own anguish that Eric, who had more faith than anyone she had ever met, had need video proof to understand that she would never have hurt him in such a way.

"It's the last minute thing," Chloe was saying. "Scheduling. They don't want to have it at the Kiriakis Mansion because they still think Victor might have had something to do with Tate being kidnapped. They were looking at a conference room at Basic Black, the Brady Pub, or this. Theresa chose and Brady agreed."

"Isn't this where he married you?" asked Nicole, trying to push the memories of Brady pummeling Eric up on the altar out of her mind.

Chloe shrugged, and Nicole wondered if she was imagining the hurt in Chloe's voice. "It was a very long time ago. We've both been in love so many times since then. We've had children with other people! That binds you together forever, much more than some teenage romance."

Nicole bit her tongue to keep from reminding Chloe that she would never have personal experience with that. Instead, she strode into the sanctuary quickly enough to outrun the memories it held.

Belle was there already, talking to John, Roman, and a man Nicole vaguely recognized as Theresa's father, the famous Shane Donovan.

"Did you ask them about that card?" Nicole demanded a little too loudly, because she was not going to subject herself to a replay of her once-favorite fantasy, which had involved Eric and a confessional.

Bless me, Father, for I am about to sin….

"Not yet," said Belle with a look of petulant superiority. (Eric was good at those too. It ran in the family.)

"What card is this?" asked Roman, who had slept with Nicole on one unfortunate occasion, and therefore gave her more credence than men who had not had the honor and pleasure.

Belle dug out Milo Harp's note and handed it over.

Roman clenched his fist and his jaw. "Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Nicole," he said.

"It means something to you?" asked Shane.

"Eric called me earlier today."

Eric. Why did it always have to be Eric? Why was he suddenly everywhere? Didn't the universe know that she was still mourning Daniel, and that she had Deimos and Dario ready to help her move on when she was good and ready, which she wasn't?

"What did Eric say?" asked John.

Apparently Eric had said that a man calling himself Milo Harp had made a veiled threat.

"I know we have security, but I'm going to stay outside and run it myself," Roman decided.

Shane and John objected, but Roman was adamant that he wasn't going to let anything spoil the day for John's son and Shane's daughter.

There was nothing left for Nicole to do but crawl into a pew beside Chloe and wait for the wedding and her memories to go away.

"You're a hypocrite."

"What?"

"The guy gets a free pass and the woman gets all the judgmental—"

"No, not the woman. You, Nicole, and you damn well know why. What's going on here?"

"You know what's going on, Eric. You weren't always a priest, surely you have some memory."

"Of the other side of you?"

"What other side? Of the human side, the blood and flesh side?"

"No. No. You know better."

"You're the one who told me—"

"Vargas?!"

"—to give him a chance."

"Oh, come on!"

"You said we'd have something in common, and you know what? We do. You're the one who pushed me to him."

"Do not try and twist this around."

"You're the one who told me to keep an eye on him."

"Oh, so you thought you would just try to hook up with him in my office?"

"I did not hook up with him— no! I did not hook up with him in your office."

"You were very close, Nicole. And yes, I do remember!"

She'd known ever since she'd first seen Eric in a clerical collar that God had a wicked sense of humor. But God liked to remind her from time to time.

When she and Eric hard argued about Vargas, she had been too angry and afraid to feel the depth of his frustration and jealousy. He'd been a priest, but he'd wanted her. He'd wanted her deeply and completely and badly, and seeing her making out with Vargas in his office had driven him to the brink of madness.

No wonder he'd accused her of being the one to attack him in his hotel room. Sex with her had been on his brain for months.

Even though she'd forgiven him for his accusations (of course she had), she'd never quite thought of it that way.

And now she was alone in the very same church (well, alone except for half of Eric's family) and wondering what it would have been like if they'd fallen into each other's arms on that day.

It didn't matter.

That hadn't happened.

"When does this stupid thing start?" Nicole asked Chloe.

Chloe rolled her eyes and didn't bother to respond.

Three.

When Eric awoke, he was too confused to panic. This wasn't his apartment or a room above his grandmother's pub or the rectory; no, of course not, he was in prison. It wasn't prison, either, though, because prison didn't shake. An earthquake? He'd felt earthquakes before, and that wasn't right, either.

It took him a moment to recognize the intermittent jostling of a vehicle in motion.

He opened his eyes to see the back of a van, illuminated only by the glowing phone in Xander's hand.

Xander.

"Hello, Sleeping Beauty," said Xander casually when he felt Eric's eyes on him.

"Your friends wouldn't let you ride in the front with them?" asked Eric. His heart pounded. He'd been in plenty of dangerous situations in his life, but he didn't especially thrive on them. Not the way his father and some of his uncles and cousins did.

"I volunteered for this position," said Xander. His voice remained calm, but every word dripped with a threat. "Since you and I have so much history, and all."

"Seems like a waste of your time," said Eric. "You're free. We're away from the prison. You don't need me as a hostage. Shouldn't you be on your way to some country that doesn't have an extradition treaty?"

"This isn't about my freedom," said Xander. "This is about revenge. Your services as hostage may yet be necessary. Don't discount yourself."

"Revenge against whom?" Not Nicole, not Nicole….

"Don't worry your pretty little head about things you cannot change."

Eric agreed that not worrying about things one couldn't change was basically good advice.

He didn't agree that this was something he couldn't change.

Xander hadn't tied him or chained him, perhaps because he hadn't expected Eric to awaken so quickly and perhaps because he simply hadn't had the means. Xander did have a gun, but he had let it drift lazily to his side, rather than holding it on Eric properly as soon as Eric roused.

There was an opportunity, and Eric would never again have the element of surprise that he had right this moment.

Ignoring his headache, he lunged across the van and grabbed at Xander's gun.

Xander reacted swiftly and knocked the gun out of his own reach as well as Eric's. For a long while, Eric and Xander wrestled and punched and scrambled in the tight confines of the van. At long last, Eric got his forearm against Xander's throat and choked Xander the way Xander had choked Nicole in her office a year before.

As much as he hated Xander, he was repulsed by the spasms of Xander's throat against his arm. He was revolted by the way Xander whimpered and struggled and tried to breathe.

Only until he passes out, Eric assured himself. I won't kill him. I won't kill anyone. It's to buy enough time to warn my family, that's all.

His mother. His father. His grandmother. His brother and his sisters.

Was Sami here in Salem for Brady's wedding? Could he send her a message in that inexplicable way twins sometimes could? Would Sami understand that she had to make sure everyone was safe, even the people that she didn't really like?

It was worth a shot, he decided, and it was better than continuing to take stock of the fact that he was choking the life out of another human being.

They aren't safe, Samantha Gene. None of you. None of them. If you can't build a moat around that wedding, you have to stop it. Someone's going to hurt our family, Sami. I need your help. Please.

The van lurched to a stop, and Eric made his move. He let Xander crumble gasping against the side of the van and jumped to the far corner where the gun had skittered beneath what looked like a toolbox.

The doors of the van flew open to reveal Milo Harp and Clyde Weston. Both of them were armed, and Eric had a sinking sensation that both of them were better shots than he was.

"Well, this is just unfortunate," drawled Clyde, his weapon trained on Eric.

Milo carefully made his way to Xander's side. "It's all right, son," he soothed.

"Not your son," gasped Xander.

"I have a son that I love," said Milo. "He won't have anything to do with me, but I hope that whoever is with him now shows him kindness. And I will show you the kindness that your father would if he could."

"Not that I don't know where you're coming from with the estranged son thing, but the Kiriakises mostly eat their own young," Clyde opined without taking his eyes off of Eric.

Clyde wasn't young and impulsive like Xander. Eric was going to get nowhere with Clyde.

And as for Milo Harp…

It didn't seem likely that Milo Harp was an easier target than Clyde, but Eric knew from a lifetime spent as the son of a psychiatrist and a police officer that in a hostage situation, the hostage always had to try to connect with his captors. At the very least, he might learn something that would help his family if he survived the next five minutes.

"I'm sure your son can feel how much you love him, even if he's far away and he doesn't know what he's feeling," Eric told Milo. "It was like that for me when I was away from my parents."

"Was it now?" asked Milo with a pleasant interest that was at once completely logical and completely unhinged. "What was it like, being a child and hearing your father say that you would never see your mother again?"

"I try not to think about it," Eric said, bitterly resenting the need for absolute honesty. "At the time I didn't quite understand. I knew it was bad because my older sister was devastated. But my twin sister and I—"

"Samantha," Milo cooed, and Eric did not care for the way Milo pronounced Sami's name. "It's a shame she's not here today for this little family reunion. But I have eyes on her all the same. I certainly heard enough about her back then. Sami and Eric, Eric and Sami. You grew into a fine man, Eric. A credit to your mother."

"You know my mother?" asked Eric.

"Well enough," said Milo.

"And my father?" Eric prompted.

Milo's face froze in a violent grimace. "Come on, Alexandros. You've had long enough to catch your breath."

Xander obediently crawled out of the van and jumped to his feet in the bright sunlight outside.

It was still afternoon. It seemed like it ought to be night. What kind of prison break took place in broad daylight?

"I reckon we should gag him," said Clyde to Milo. His eyes hadn't once left Eric. "You want to do the honors?"

Milo cautiously approached Eric and plucked the gun from his hand. Eric let it go. He would regroup. There would be another opportunity.

"What have we here?"

Milo froze with one hand on Eric's cheek and the other on a rag that he intended to stuff in Eric's mouth.

"Dad?" whispered Eric in disbelief.

"Roman," whispered Milo just as quietly.

Four.

Milo's touch had been gentle, almost reverent, on Eric's cheek as he'd begun to put the gag in place.

When Roman approached, though, Milo gripped Eric painfully and pressed the muzzle of his gun to Eric's temple.

"I wouldn't call for backup, Roman," said Milo gently. "Your son will die if you do."

"I'm putting my phone down," Roman obeyed. "You can see my hands. I'll do it nice and slow for you. Do you want it on the ground?"

The village was burning. The rebels— the terrorists— drank and danced in the streets as the villagers huddled miserably and watched their lives go up in smoke, quite literally.

Eric's eyes came to rest on Neema. She was thirteen years old, or not much more, but the resignation he saw in her as she folded up her long legs to crouch near her mother belonged to someone who had seen centuries of suffering.

And yet, Neema was pretty in her devastation. She glowed with intelligence and promise in the way very few people did.

"It's time to make an example of somebody," shouted the rebel leader. He jerked Neema roughly to her feet and put his gun to her head.

Neema's mother began to cry and beg, and some faraway memory deep within Eric stirred.

"Stop!" Eric took a step forward. "These people are innocent. They haven't done anything wrong."

The rebel leader met Eric's challenge. "All right. Anybody in this place, they can just stand up and take Neema's place."

Eric didn't step forward.

"Take me," said Father Ryan.

Eric was a person who learned from his mistakes. This time, he found his voice.

"Don't do it, Dad," Eric called to Roman. "Don't let them use me as leverage. Stop them from hurting everyone else in our family, everyone else in Salem, even if it means they kill me."

"Intriguing," mused Milo. "Roman, would you like to sacrifice your only son's life so your impostor's son can finish getting married before I kill him?"

"What did Brady ever do to you?" Eric objected.

"Less than you have, I suppose," said Milo. "Certainly less than he has." Milo's eyes met Roman's with a hard, hard look.

"Why don't you and I sit down and talk about it, then?" offered Roman.

"That time passed before your son was even born." Milo ground the gun harder against Eric's temple. "The years have changed you. They've changed me, too. I do believe, though, that you ought to remember your old partner before I make you suffer as you made me suffer."

The gun clicked against Eric's head.

Something else clicked inside his head at that same moment.

His father's old partner, bent on revenge.

Marlena's disappearance when he and Sami hadn't been much more than toddlers.

Milo Harp.

Harp.

Orpheus, the legendary musician. Orpheus played a harp.

Orpheus, whose actions had shaped every day of Eric's life.

"Are you Orpheus?" Eric asked.

"You're smarter than your father," breathed Milo. Faster than Eric could register what he was doing, Milo turned the gun on Roman and squeezed the trigger. Two bullets hit Roman in the chest at point-blank range; a third clipped his leg with an explosion of blood.

Eric tried to run forward, but while Milo had released his grip, Xander and Clyde were more than ready to push him back into the truck. When Clyde let go of Eric's arm to shove the heavy gag into Eric's mouth, Eric lunged forward a final time. His fingers wrapped around the lip of the van; he could see Roman lying on the pavement.

Xander slammed the door, hard, on Eric's outstretched fingers. Eric fell to his knees in pain, trapped once again in the darkness of the van.

"Your father's beyond rescue, but ask your God if he'll save your hand," Xander offered sarcastically from somewhere Eric couldn't see or reach.

Theresa walked down the aisle, accompanied by her father, and Nicole found herself so drained of jealousy and resentment as to be bored. Maybe Chloe had been right to deny her that second martini.

When at long last Theresa and Eve and Brady and Paul were all standing at the altar, Tate cooing in a stroller beside them, and Nicole detachedly wondered at the falseness of it all. How well did Eve and Theresa even know each other? How long had it been since Brady and Paul had met? And Tate, while adorable and loved, hadn't been planned or anticipated. He had been presented fully formed to his parents as the product of a bizarre Kristen DiMera special and had somehow pulled them together instead of apart.

Not that Nicole was even certain that Brady and Theresa liked each other. Their arguments during Tate's kidnapping had seemed to suggest otherwise.

Nicole was delighted when she felt the phone in her purse vibrate urgently.

"Sorry," she whispered to Chloe, who appeared not to think that Nicole was sorry at all. "This could be important." Nicole slid out of the pew and into the entranceway between the sanctuary and the front door.

She almost threw the phone down in disgust when she looked at the caller ID and realized that her savior was Sami. For several seconds she glanced from the phone to the door and back again. Which fate was worse?

She pushed the "accept" button.

"Sami, don't you know that your brother's wedding is taking place right now?" she snapped in lieu of a greeting.

"Yes, Nicole, I know that a little too well," Sami snapped back. "Everyone in my family has an agreement not to take my calls during weddings. They either turn their phones off completely or they block me temporarily."

"I guess after you interrupt four or five weddings, people will start doing that," Nicole suggested helpfully.

"And the worst part is, even Lucas did it today! Lucas! What if I needed to call him about Allie?"

"Is something wrong with Allie?"

"No, but every one of you at that church is in danger. Did Brady use his brain for once in his life and get security?"

Nicole's hands went numb and her heart dropped in her chest. She had had a bad feeling about the wedding all day. No matter how ridiculous Sami usually was, Nicole was inclined to believe her this time. "In danger from whom, Sami?"

Nicole could almost see Sami biting her lower lip. "I don't know."

"What's going to happen?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you think something is going to happen?" Nicole dragged the words out slowly, as if she were speaking to a very small, none too intelligent, child.

"Eric told me."

Nicole really didn't like the way Eric's name was in the air today. "Eric called you from prison? Because I happen to know that he called your father, too, and Roman went outside to talk to the security crew himself—"

"No. Not like that. I felt him. He was afraid, and he was angry, and he felt helpless. He couldn't call. He needed me to do it."

Nicole sighed and slumped against the narrow door that led to the rickety staircase to the back corridor. "Sami, you do not have a magical twin radar that lets Eric contact you whenever he wants to."

"Listen to me, Nicole—"

Nicole ended the call just as she heard the unmistakeable pop of a gun with a silencer.

When the front door flew open, she jumped backward through the nearest door.

Five.

Nicole was glad that she'd ended the phone call when she did. It would have been fitting if she'd died at the hands of a group of gun-wielding psychos because they'd overheard Sami's shrieking from 3000 miles away and found her hiding place.

It was considerably less fitting that she was in a hiding place at all because of Sami.

No, not because of Sami.

Because of Eric.

Eric who was suddenly everywhere: in his young niece's solicitousness, on his father's and sister's minds, lingering in the very air of this church.

"God damn you, Eric Brady," she whispered, not caring that he might have saved her life, not caring that she was in a church. She rolled her eyes at herself. "Although I suppose you're punishing Eric pretty well without sending him to hell. Having him know that his family is in danger and there's absolutely nothing that he can do about it?"

She shivered in sympathy, painfully reminded of her mother's death. Seeing Fay lying there motionless on a hospital bed had hit Nicole like a physical blow. It had been like wanting to go home and knowing that she would never again have a home to go to, even if that childhood home had been full of resentment that Fay had never managed to remove her children from Paul's reach. All the beatings Brandon had taken while Nicole had been stranded on the other side of a locked door, able to do nothing for the one person she had really and truly loved back then…

Nicole shook off the memories of her family and the memories of Eric. She had to focus on the here and now and protect herself so that she could help Chloe and Brady and everyone else at the wedding.

She stepped out of her heels, not wanting to risk the clicking sound they made on the cement floor of the bare passageway, and crept further into the darkness. The shouts were loud enough to reach her ears.

"NO ONE MOVE!" She'd know that voice anywhere. It was Xander. Things would not have gone well if he'd seen her, but she would have liked one last chance to punch him in the face.

"This here's what we call a hostage situation," drawled a second voice, deceptively slow and calm. She knew him, too. It was sicko Clyde Weston. "All cell phones and weapons will be provided to young Mr. Kiriakis, please. This is your grace period. Anyone found with one of these items after the grace period will be shot on sight."

There had been a prison break, then. Eric had caught word of the plan and had tried to warn his family. It all made sense, and it all sucked.

She retreated to the farthest part of the corridor and dialed 911. She reported gunplay at St. Luke's church, along with a prison break and a hostage situation. The dispatcher advised her to stay quiet and stay where she was.

Nicole had no problem taking that advice.

She sank to the floor and listened.

The last bit of the puzzle fell into place when she heard a third voice, one she didn't know, introduce himself as Milo Harp.

"No," gasped Marlena. "Orpheus."

"Orpheus?" asked Brady. "Aren't you the one who… the one who…."

"Young Mr. Black. I had heard that you were not the brightest star in the sky, but your inability to so much as complete a sentence disappoints me all the same. And Marlena was so eager to take you in when you lost your mother, while she couldn't spare a drop of compassion for my children when they were orphaned by her husband's hand!"

"Your children weren't orphaned! They had you!" Marlena protested. "You were the one who chose vengeance over them."

"I fought to get a mother for my children! Roman Brady was the one who callously murdered a woman, and Roman Brady's children were the ones who should have borne the consequences. And they did."

"You stole years from Sami and Eric and me that we will never get back. Eric and Sami to this day make choices that I don't believe they ever would have made had their mother not been taken away from them! You had your vengeance. What more do you want?"

The Orpheus character didn't seem to be any too interested in answering Marlena's question. "There's a certain irony to it, isn't there?" he asked. "You weren't Roman Brady, you weren't the man who murdered my wife, and yet you were the one who tried to murder me. Who thought he had killed me, no doubt," he said, and Nicole understood that Orpheus had turned his attention to John. "So this is between you and me, now. Roman is dead."

From behind the safety of her wall, Nicole felt the wave of horror and grief that washed through the room. There were gasps; there were a few muffled tears.

And there was a realization that Roman wouldn't be able to do anything to stop the carnage inside. None of them knew that Nicole had been able to call the police, for whatever questionable good that might do them.

She wished that she could comfort them. She wished that she could send Chloe or Brady a message the way Eric had been able to signal Sami.

"All right, it's between you and me," John agreed. "Let the rest of these people go."

Sharp laughter punctuated the room. "Mr. Milo Harp Orpheus isn't the only one with a score to settle, now is he?" asked Clyde.

"Yes, Clyde has been promised his woman, and Alexandros has been promised his," agreed Orpheus.

There was a scuffle and an annoyed grunt that Nicole knew belonged to Kate. Kate, of course, was Clyde's "woman;" who the hell was Xander's? Nicole shivered.

Xander was going to come for her.

He would strangle her, he would try to burn her to death, he would find her…

There was a cacophony of shrieks and a loud objection from Brady.

That was it. It was Theresa's word that had sent Xander to prison, and it was Theresa against whom Xander wanted revenge.

Relief and guilt coursed through Nicole as she heard Xander drag Theresa away, screaming, at gunpoint.

And there was a tiny bit of offense, too. Nicole didn't even rate on Xander's vengeance list any longer?

"All right," John resumed. "There are still people here who have nothing to do with any of this."

"Which one of your sons would you like to see die in front of your eyes? The baseball star you just met or the rather dull-witted one that you were able to raise? No fair choosing Roman's son. He's been dealt with."

"What do you mean, 'dealt with?'" Marlena demanded.

"Eric is with his father," Orpheus informed her.

Eric was in prison.

Eric was with Roman.

Roman was dead.

Eric was… dead?

Nicole wanted to rage and scream and beat on the walls. She wanted to pace the length of the corridor throwing things as she went. She wanted to run into the sanctuary and rip out Orpheus' throat twice: once for what he'd done to Eric as a child and once for what he'd done to Eric today.

All of the above would have been suicide.

And Nicole couldn't do suicide when there was so much need for vengeance.

If Orpheus and his little friends thought they had cornered the market on vengeance, they were sadly mistaken.

She glared at Orpheus through the wall, mindless of the tears that were soaking her cheeks.

Six.

At first sheer terror kept Nicole bolt upright at rigid attention in her dark hiding place. She couldn't see what was going on, but she imagined Orpheus swinging his gun between Brady and Paul, taunting John to make a choice.

The part of her that she would never reveal to anyone— not her brother, not her best friend, not a therapist, not a priest— was wishing that John would just choose Brady and get it over with.

Paul was a nice kid from what Nicole knew. Handsome, too, and she didn't even care that he was gay since the fact that he shared a name with her piece of shit father made him fundamentally unattractive to her on a visceral level anyway. She didn't want Paul to die.

But Brady… well, there was no comparison. She couldn't imagine that there was really a comparison for John, either. Brady could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but John had raised and loved him all his life. He'd barely begun to make Paul's acquaintance.

John probably would have shot Nicole dead on the spot if he'd been able to hear her thoughts. She didn't feel guilty.

She'd lost Eric. She sure as hell wasn't losing Brady. She was a survivor, but she was not going to walk forward in that kind of a world.

As the minutes wore on, though, Nicole began to realize that Orpheus wasn't going murder Paul or Brady, at least not now. Orpheus wanted to torture John and Marlena, and that meant extending the agony of their uncertainty.

And once Nicole realized that, she became suddenly, unexpectedly unable to focus on the hostage situation unfolding on the other side of the wall. Over and over, her thoughts looped back to Orpheus' understated announcement.

Eric is with his father.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Nicole had had something else to focus on. If she had been in the sanctuary with the other hostages, she would have been busy annoying the captors or holding Tate or keeping Brady from losing his temper and getting himself shot.

Nicole was a survivor. Nicole got things done even when she felt miserable. Nicole could move through the pain. She'd survived her father and his film crew of dirty old men. She'd survived her marriages to Trent and Victor. She'd survived the loss of her daughter and her son and her mother.

There had always been something to focus on, except perhaps for those first weeks after the death of the little boy she'd carried inside her for a full nine months.

And then Eric had arrived.

Eric is with his father.

Eric, who told her that she was a good person while she wondered if she would ever be able to see what he saw, just once.

Eric, who, when a drug addict held a gun to his head, talked the man into turning himself in and getting treatment.

Eric, who built schools and prison outreach programs and stayed up all night with dying parishioners.

Eric, who had finally, when it was too late for them, forgiven her for destroying the documents that reopened the door to the priesthood.

Eric, who she hadn't forgiven for a drunken accident.

Eric is with his father.

"If I forgave you now, would you be able to hear me?" she whispered under her breath.

Eric is with his father.

No. She didn't think he would. That was how it went with Nicole and Eric. They always heard each other except when it was most important.

When they'd first been engaged, he'd told her that he loved her and would be able to handle anything about her past. She hadn't trusted him. She'd married Lucas instead, not entirely because of the money the way everyone else seemed to remember it, but because Lucas had never had the sweet innocent air about him that Eric had had. Lucas had looked at her past life as Misty Circle without blinking or flinching. She hadn't given Eric the chance.

When she'd fallen for him again years later, when she'd fantasized about relieving him of his vow of celibacy but Kristen was the one who had done it, Eric had blamed her. He'd accused her of rape, and no accusation had ever hurt her so badly in her life. There were lines that even Nicole Walker never crossed, and Eric of all people, deep down, didn't know it. She'd wanted to comfort him and support him and help him find justice. Eric hadn't given her the chance.

When all had been forgiven as far as rape accusations went, she had risked life and limb to help him return to the Church if that was what he really wanted. Then, at the last moment, when she had fought longer and harder than anyone else and found the evidence that no one else could find, she had panicked and shredded it. Eric had told her, later, that he'd been prepared to choose her over his vocation back them. She hadn't given Eric the chance.

When Eric, furious and willfully blind, had been swept into the machinations of Serena and Xander and their elephants, Nicole would have done anything to protect him. He hadn't given her the chance.

And when Eric had come around and she might have forgiven him, she might have tried once more to get their timing right, she might have offered him her hand when he'd hit rock bottom as he had more than once done for her…

It didn't matter. There were no more chances.

Eric is with his father.

Outside in the sanctuary, Orpheus had turned his attention to Belle and Belle was answering him with just the right amount of spunk: enough to let everyone know that she couldn't be broken so easily, but not enough to aggravate Orpheus into opening fire on the whole group of them.

Nicole was impressed.

That ran in the family. They looked like fragile little sanctimonious drips, and then all of a sudden you saw the steel.

Eric had fought Orpheus and Xander and Clyde. Nicole had no doubt of that. He'd fought with words the way he'd fought the junkie in the church. He'd fought with his fists the way he'd fought Xander in her office, or her awful ex-boyfriend Jay a million years ago. He'd fought with his will the way he'd fought off the fever brought on by Kristen's rape drugs in the hotel room.

Had it been slow or fast? Had it been bloody and painful? Had he felt any sort of peace? Had he known that she would think of him like this?

Eric is with his father.

It didn't matter.

It was over.

Nicole brushed away her tears.

Seven.

The pain blocked out everything else. Eric crouched on the floor of the van and clutched the shattered fingers of his right hand with the unharmed fingers of his left. He knew that sooner or later he would have to let go, but he couldn't bring himself to do it yet. There wasn't enough light in the van to evaluate the damage, and anyway the pain left him with no thoughts to spare for the humiliation of the rough gag in his mouth, the shame of his failure to save his family, or the agony of his father's death.

He listened as hard as he could. He didn't hear moans or shouts or whimpers from the other side of the door. Roman must be dead.

He had taken two shots to the chest. There was no other way.

Eric's mother, though, was still alive. He had a brother and a sister and a niece and a nephew inside the wedding hall.

It shot through his mind that every moment that he spent cradling his injured hand was a moment he let them all down all over again.

There would be time for grief and self-recrimination later. Eric knew about compartmentalizing. Ironically enough, Orpheus had been the one to teach him. He and Sami had known, instinctively, that it was their job to be happy when John and Carrie had been so sad about losing Marlena. When they'd gotten to be teenagers, Sami had tossed out the idea of ever hiding her feelings about anything, but Eric had embraced it all the harder.

He forced himself to ignore the sticky blood the way he ignored everything else as he uncurled his good hand and began to feel his way around the truck. There had been tools in the corner. Maybe something would open the door. At the very least, he might find something that would pry the gag out of his mouth (he was unable to untie the knot one-handed) or be good for banging on the walls of the van to let a passerby know someone was trapped inside.

Would there be a passerby? He had no idea where the van was parked. There were so many unknowns.

His good fingers found a wrench in the dark, and he settled himself against the door, using it alternately to poke his gag and to poke the latch on the door.

The latch sprang free first, and he was confronted with slanting early autumn sunset and a familiar loading dock.

St. Luke's. Of all the places in the world that they could have chosen, his prison break kidnappers had picked St. Luke's.

Of all the places in the world that Brady could have married Theresa, he had picked St. Luke's. Eric loved Brady fiercely, but sometimes he wondered about him in a rather uncharitable way.

Eric headed resolutely for the back entrance. It was well-hidden; not even the parishioners knew about it. He would be able to get in without tipping off Xander and Orpheus.

"Stop! Police!"

Eric stopped and hoped with everything in him that it really was the police. He turned around slowly, as he had been taught to do in just such a situation, and recognized his cousin a split second before his cousin recognized him.

"Eric," Shawn breathed with a sympathy that had Eric wishing that almost anyone else had found him. Anger and loathing and psychotic mortal enemies he could handle. Compassion was going to be his undoing, and he couldn't afford to be undone.

He resolutely forced back the tears while Shawn made fast work of the gag. "Uncle Roman said they had you in the HVAC truck," Shawn explained. "You got out on your own? Good for you."

"Dad shouldn't have called," said Eric. "They told him not to call— no, I told him to call even though they said they'd kill me. That's why they killed him. I saw it. Two shots right in his chest." His bad advice had gotten his father killed. He'd tried to help and he'd made everything worse.

Shawn had grabbed Eric tightly by the shoulders and was saying something, but Eric didn't hear.

Shawn kept talking. "Bullet proof vest. Bullet proof vest. Bullet proof—"

"Vest," Eric whispered. Of course Roman had been wearing a vest. The bullets would have knocked him down and hurt like hell, but they wouldn't have been fatal.

Shawn, who knew exactly what it was to be the son of a cop who was forever putting himself in danger, nodded when Eric understood. "He'll be okay. He'll want to know you're okay. I'll walk you back outside the the police line, and you can call him on your way to the hospital." Shawn flicked his eyes to Eric's bloody hand. "They'll want to check you out."

"Not going," said Eric firmly. He was grateful to his little cousin, but he wasn't going to be bossed around. "Not going anywhere but into that church."

"You can't get in even if you want to," Shawn objected. "They're watching the doors. If Clyde and the others don't get you, the friendly fire will."

"You really think I can't get into this church?"

There was a frantic flash in Shawn's eyes.

"Belle and Claire are in there, aren't they?" Eric asked, a little too manipulatively. "Why aren't you with them?"

"Belle and I had this fight. Well. Not important. Look, if you know a way in, you have to—"

"Take the opportunity now before they have a chance to realize that we're planning something. They're watching the rest of the cops out by the doors they know about, but they aren't watching us."

Shawn hesitated, and made a subtle gesture to someone to join them.

"Fine," he said. "You show us, and you can come. But you stay down and back if anything happens because you aren't armed and you aren't trained."

Eric nodded his agreement. He didn't even cross his fingers. Not that he could.

Eight.

The thought crossed Nicole's mind that she might as well leave her hiding place because letting the trio of psychos know they had another hostage was superior to one more minute alone. She'd never been good at being alone.

"Don't be stupid, Nicole," she said out loud.

She froze, rigid in her hiding place again.

No one had heard. She had wandered closer to the entrance while trying to shake off thoughts of Eric and return her focus to the goings-on on the other side of the wall, but they weren't near the entrance, were they? Clyde had said something about taking Kate and taking off, but Nicole would have had to have had the worst possible timing—

"What was that?" came Clyde's voice. "You hear anything, Kate?"

"The lovely organ music, the birds singing outside, children laughing in the streets, and that might be an ice cream truck," suggested Kate unhelpfully. Nicole had to admire Kate's nerve. Not everyone could toss out that much sarcasm when there was doubtless a gun pressed into her side.

"I always did love your sense of humor," said Clyde, and another chill ran down Nicole's spine. Clyde didn't need to get angry or threaten. Clyde was in control, and Clyde was smart enough to know it, for all of his good-old-boy drawling. "A spiritual man like me knows than any house of God has some back corridors. Get the choir in and out. Hide the child molesting priests when the police come. That sort of thing."

"I wouldn't know. I'm not a spiritual woman."

The door opened with a bang, and Nicole held herself very still. She might not be visible in the shadows. The light didn't reach all the way down the hallway.

"You can come out with your hands up, or I can start shooting blindly down this here secret passageway," said Clyde pleasantly.

It was possible that he couldn't see her.

It wasn't possible that he would miss if aimed his gun in her general direction.

"I'll come out," Nicole answered.

Be careful what you wish for. Right. Nicole was never going to learn that particular lesson no matter how many times God or the universe or her subconscious tried to teach her.

Eric swallowed his irritation at Shawn taking the time to brief the other cop. The cop happened to be one Roman had mentioned as a good cop from time to time, so Eric at least knew that he wasn't going to betray them to Orpheus. And the cop nodded when Shawn explained that they were not going to send Eric away because Eric had promised to stay down and back.

Eric led them to the hidden door. The door wasn't a secret so much as it was useless. The steps leading down to it were crooked and uneven. They were hard to walk even if you were young and healthy; the older priests and parishioners would not have been able to descend them safely. The parish's budget had never allowed for something unnecessary like correcting the landscaping to make use of the door. No one had ever mourned it as a great loss; there were other doors, after all, and this one happened to open inconveniently close to the altar.

The other cop whispered to Shawn and Eric that one of the hostages had managed to call 911 early on and that as far as they knew everyone was gathered in the sanctuary. "Sounded like the guns came out right before the 'I dos.'"

"Poor Brady," Eric muttered, even if he still questioned Brady's sanity for having his wedding here in the first place. There was something to be said for the ability to move on— it was not a strength of Eric's, and he knew it— but sometimes his brother swung too far in the other direction.

Shawn and the other cop looked at Eric so speculatively that he almost rolled his eyes. He had promised to stay down and back, and and he wasn't going to break that promise because he felt sorry for Brady.

Of course, he would break that promise if someone in his family was in imminent danger. His father was alive. Everyone else was going to stay alive, too.

Eric didn't say that aloud. Instead, he explained exactly where the door would open, how easily they could be exposed, and how close they would be to the center of the action.

He let them enter first, but he followed close behind.

"You've put me behind schedule, Miss Walker," said Clyde as he gestured at her with the gun while keeping a tight hold on Kate. "My friend and I were just leaving, and now we'll have to escort you back to the party."

"Don't put yourself out," said Nicole, but Clyde's face was hard and set as he called to Orpheus (Xander had dragged Theresa off somewhere, thankfully) that someone had tried to outsmart them.

"Do you know what I do to people who try to outsmart me?" asked Orpheus. "Come up here. Right here, by the altar. Fitting spot for the woman who spent years pining after a priest, isn't it?" Nicole's legs betrayed her and shook a little.

Orpheus raised the gun. Nicole had just enough time to recognize that he was starting to squeeze the trigger and this wasn't for show, but not enough time to move, to take her chance at running like she should have done hours before.

This was it.

The first thing Eric saw was Orpheus purposefully raising his gun to Nicole. Nicole was overwhelmed. Nicole didn't know how close she was to a rescue. Nicole wasn't going to move.

He didn't need to see a second thing.

In the tiniest fraction of a second everything made sense.

Orpheus would be just as satisfied with a dead Eric as with a dead Nicole, and Eric's life was already in ruins. Shawn would be in a position to take Orpheus out in just a few more heartbeats. Shawn wouldn't miss. Belle and Claire were in danger and he would always protect them. Of all of Eric's siblings, Belle was the one who worried him least, ironically enough, since she was the baby.

No one else would be hurt. Just the exchange of Eric for Nicole.

It was beyond fitting.

Eric pushed Nicole to the ground just as Orpheus squeezed the trigger.

The sound of gunfire filled his ears and the scent of blood filled his nostrils, but he could see and feel Nicole beneath him, and that was all that mattered.

Nine.

Nicole struggled to orient herself amidst the screaming and gunshots. Orpheus' gun had fired and she was on the ground but she didn't feel any pain. The one thing that made sense right away was the sense that her body was entangled with Eric's.

She was always going to be entangled with Eric. There wasn't any escaping that. Sometimes Nicole felt like a slow learner, but time had certainly taught her that even if she stayed away from Eric for years— over a decade!— all he had to do was turn his head to look at her and her life would be upended again. At first the upending would seem to be for the best. Then it would turn out to be for the worst.

And if they were dead, and she was well aware that she'd been told he was dead, it made sense that they were in hell.

There was no way that heaven was full of guns and wet, sticky blood.

She hadn't really expected heaven, anyway. She'd hoped for it, sometimes, but deep down she knew that a woman who hired hit men and blackmailed freely and shot people and stole babies and married filthy old men for their money and committed adultery was going to end up in hell if there happened to be an afterlife. As for Eric, well, the death of Daniel had probably sealed his fate.

"Eric," she whispered, as if she hadn't told him months ago that she would never forgive him and never intended to speak to him again. "Is this hell?"

"No. Not enough brimstone or worms," said Eric, and the raspy groan that escaped as he spoke did more than his words to convince her that they were, after all, alive.

They were alive, and Eric was hurt.

She was alive because Eric had saved her.

She didn't feel any pain because the hot blood currently soaking through her dress wasn't hers. It was Eric's.

"Okay, baby," she murmured, not knowing quite where the endearment had come from. "You're on top of me and I need to get out from under you so we can put pressure on the wound and stop the bleeding."

"Doesn't matter," said Eric dreamily. He made no effort to move.

"Unless you tell me you got the fastest medical degree ever in prison, I'm going to go with my own judgment on this one," Nicole told him. She wriggled out from beneath him without any help. "Are you going into shock or something? Because I'm pretty sure shock is bad."

He didn't respond, but instead watched her curiously as though he didn't quite understand what she was doing as she began to divest him of the blue prison shirt. "All the times I fantasized about stripping you down in this church, I never thought about it happening this way," she told him.

He laughed, and the laugh became a groan when she got the shirt over his arms. She could see now where the bullet had torn through his upper arm. Better that than his chest, she thought resolutely as she wrapped the shirt around the wound and pressed down.

"It would be eternal torment, though," he mused, his pain-brightened eyes locking on hers. "Having to look at you forever and knowing you would never forgive me."

"Of course I forgive you, jackass," she blurted out. She didn't know where she'd gotten the jackass any more than she knew where she'd gotten the baby.

"If I'd died it would have made it even," he said. "As much as it could be. My life for the life of Daniel's fiancee."

"No, if you'd died it would have sucked. I know that because I thought you were dead for most of the day. Now shut up and stop bleeding."

"Interesting bedside manner, Nicole," said Kayla, not unkindly. Nicole hadn't heard Kayla approach, and she shifted to let Kayla get a better look at the patient. A moment later, Marlena was there, too, and then the EMTs and paramedics arrived.

Nicole backed away shakily, half-considering demanding to be allowed to ride to the hospital with Eric and half-glad that she seemed to have been forgotten. She didn't want to hear Marlena's reprimands for almost getting Eric killed just yet.

Once Eric was out of sight, Nicole took stock of the room. Xander was back in handcuffs; Orpheus appeared to be dead, or close to it. It looked like Clyde, the smartest and least crazy of them all, had escaped with Kate. Friends and families had divided into tight, tearful knots. Nicole felt more alone watching them than she had felt the whole time she had been trapped in the passageway.

She wandered down the aisle, reaching out to touch Chloe as she walked by. Chloe responded with a quick squeeze of Nicole's shoulder.

When she passed Abe, he interrupted his rapid-fire conversation with half a dozen law enforcement types to tell her that he had texted Brandon that they were fine but she should call him anyway. Nicole nodded her understanding, but she didn't think Abe had even seen, so quickly had he returned to the task at hand.

The only group left to pass were the not-so-happy couple, and then she would be out on the street, free to go home, shower, have a few more martinis, and decide what she was going to say to Eric when she visited him in the hospital.

"We'll have this conversation tomorrow," Theresa was saying. She was clutching her son and flanked by her parents and sister. Nicole wondered what it would feel like to be that surrounded by a loving family.

"Fine, tomorrow," said Brady, but he didn't sound happy. Nicole didn't think he had noticed her, but he grabbed her wrist hard and wouldn't let go. "You're all right?" he demanded. "Is that blood?"

"Eric's blood," she said, and saying the words out loud made her dizzy.

"What the hell? How is he? Where is he?"

"They're taking him to the hospital. He's walking and talking and it looked like the bullet just grazed him but it was still a lot of blood."

"Then you're coming with me." He shot Theresa a glare that Nicole usually didn't associate with brides and grooms and wedding days. "And we will talk tomorrow."

Brady dragged Nicole rapidly from the church and toward his car.

"Don't ask," he instructed.

"Give me your jacket," she answered. She was all right with being ordered around by Brady, but she wasn't all right with strangers' eyes locking on her bloody dress. It was too raw. It was too personal. But the feelings would vanish as soon as she wrapped Brady's suit jacket around herself. They had to.

Ten.

It turned out that Brady's suit jacket didn't have the magical power to make Nicole forget that she was covered with the blood of the man she'd sworn never to forgive, who for extra complications was both her first love and Brady's brother.

However, being shoved into the position of Brady's impromptu assistant did provide a welcome distraction. She was glad to be doing something at last.

The first thing Brady did was hand her his keys and ask if she was all right to drive. When she agreed that she was, he used her as a chauffeur while he called half of his family. He used the speakerphone so that Nicole could hear, and she let the car wobble over the yellow lines in relief when Brady got confirmation that Roman wasn't actually dead. A few other people had been hit in the crossfire but no one's condition had been deemed especially serious. They didn't have a specific update on Eric, but the report came that Marlena was still with him, and Nicole meanly thought that they would hear Marlena's shrieks all over Salem if anything had happened to Eric. She didn't share her conclusions with Brady, though. She didn't think that he would appreciate it.

She also didn't think he would appreciate her commentary when he called an attorney well known for his work in child custody and put him on retainer. "It's only a precaution. For now," Brady explained.

She wasn't that surprised when they checked in at the courthouse and made sure the marriage license had not been filed.

She was amused when Brady had half of the food from the reception, and the entire wedding cake, divided into to-go boxes, with instructions that the remainder could be given to anyone who happened to arrive, invited or not, and disposed of at the end of the night.

"She did this, I get the cake," said Brady tersely, as if Nicole had been criticizing him.

"Sounds reasonable," said Nicole. "Are we going to drive around Salem ceremonially throwing cake at everything that reminds of us of romance?"

Brady smiled wryly, and Nicole appreciated the smile even though it didn't hit his eyes. "Tempting, but no. Drive yourself home."

"Are you sure?"

He nodded. "You need to get a shower and get out of that dress." It was true, but she didn't like to think that their little adventure was over. "Thank you, Nicole," added Brady with utter sincerity. "Most people would have said 'screw you, I was just held hostage all afternoon and you're asking me for favors?' You just covered up the blood and kept going. If I don't tell you enough, I really appreciate your friendship, and I really like you."

"Like you, too," Nicole echoed.

"Do you want to come to the hospital with me or is that the absolute last place that you want to go?"

"I want to come," she said without even thinking about it. "You'll wait for me?"

"I'll wait for you."

"You'll make sure there aren't any creepy escaped prisoners hiding under the bed?"

"I was going to do that anyway," said Brady.

And so Nicole stripped off the dress while Brady was making a loud, comical search that was clearly designed more to make her laugh than to assure her that no one was lurking in the shadows to grab her.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and looked away as soon as she did. The blood had soaked through her dress and left red-brown patterns on her skin, a perverse sort of art project by the photographer.

She jumped into the shower, leaving the bathroom door open so that she would be able to hear Brady. The last thing she wanted to be was alone. Facing Eric would be easier than that by far.

Eventually Brady's voice came closer again and told her that the police wanted her dress as evidence but that she could keep his jacket because it looked better on her than on him. She couldn't bring herself to laugh, but she managed not to cry, and she counted that as a victory as she watched Eric's blood swirl down the shower drain.

Marlena fussed over Eric and promised him any number of things that he didn't really want, like the best medical care and the best lawyers to make certain that he wouldn't return to prison unless and until it was absolutely safe.

She was thoroughly unwilling to let him see Roman, though, which was the only thing Eric genuinely did want at the moment.

"Your Aunt Kayla checked on him," Marlena assured with the voice she used to speak to distraught patients and small children. "He is going to be fine, and you will have lots of time to speak with him after you have been taken care of. He wouldn't have it any other way."

That was undoubtedly true, but Eric didn't have to like it.

The doctors determined that he needed surgery on his left arm but that it would be better left until the next day. The fingers on his right hand, which still hurt more than the bullet wound, were miraculously unbroken but were bandaged and iced. He had thought that they would let him see his father after that, but the nurse noticed the knot on his head and Marlena launched into an anxious diatribe about why hadn't Eric mentioned that he had been knocked out, and had he forgotten?

He hadn't forgotten, precisely; he just hadn't thought to mention it. Being kidnapped for use as a hostage or a human shield made for a very long day. After what seemed like an eternity, the doctor and nurses agreed that Eric was not in imminent danger of much of anything and were persuaded to allow him to visit Roman.

"Not long, Dr. Evans," one of them told Marlena deferentially as she gave Eric's wheelchair a push. (More stupid hospital policy; there wasn't anything wrong with his legs.) "He needs to get into his own bed and rest."

Eric knew for a fact that prison beds were more comfortable than hospital beds, so that was one more stupid hospital policy, but he bit his lip and let himself be escorted to Roman's room.

As they'd promised, his father was alive. He hadn't doubted them, but it was better to see with his own eyes.

"Hey, Eric," said Roman.

"Ten minutes, and only ten minutes," said Marlena severely. "I'll be back."

"Thanks, Doc," said Roman, and Eric managed a thank you of his own before he stood up from the wheelchair and walked to his father's bedside.

"You supposed to be doing that?" Roman asked.

"Probably not," said Eric.

"I'd do the same thing," said Roman. "Glad to see you're well enough to be pissed off about all the stupid rules. I wanted them to let me come and sit with you while they were checking you out, and you can guess what they said."

Eric smiled. "Mom had it covered."

"I know she did."

"But I really needed to see you," Eric admitted. The image of the bullets hitting Roman square in the chest rose before his eyes, he hoped for the last time. "It didn't occur to me that you were wearing a vest until— well, at all. Shawn had to tell me about five times before I understood."

"I was afraid of that." Roman reached up and caressed Eric's hair. "Nothing to worry about, though. Your old man's tougher than that. I'll be on crutches for a little while and that's all. They'll let me out of here before they let you out."

"Mom seems to want to keep me here," said Eric petulantly. He hadn't ever had the opportunity to be a teenager playing one parent against the other, thanks in part to Orpheus. He wondered if this was what it would have been like.

"So do I," said Roman. "You were kidnapped from prison and used as a hostage, and you've been hospitalized as a result. We would like to prevent a repeat performance, if you don't mind."

"I do mind. I belong in prison and I'd rather be there than here, anyway."

Roman shoved himself upright and swung his good leg over the side of the bed. "What are you doing?" asked Eric with alarm. "Are you supposed to be doing that?"

"Look who's talking." Roman jerked his chin in the direction of Eric's abandoned wheelchair. "Anyway, I need to get up so I can knock your hard head into something even harder until you start talking sense."

For all the mistakes Eric's assorted parents had made throughout his childhood, none of them had ever laid a hand on him in anger, so he gave Roman's threat exactly the concern that it was worth. "Mom won't like that," he said.

"She would like the talking sense part," Roman returned, re-arranging himself on the bed. "Eric, I love you. I am proud of you for owning up to your mistakes. I'm proud of you for wanting to make amends. I'm even proud of you for throwing yourself in front of a bullet to protect Nicole despite the fact that my heart stopped for a minute when I heard what you'd done. But tossing yourself around like you're worthless needs to end."

"What does that even mean?" asked Eric. Maybe he didn't want the whole ten minutes Marlena had promised him after all.

"When Orpheus threatened you, you suggested that I let him kill you because that might help me save everyone else."

"So?"

"So, you will notice that you are not dead and neither is anyone else in this family. There was nothing to be gained from you martyring yourself in that truck. There is nothing to be gained from you marching yourself back to prison when what you need is a good surgeon. I don't know whether this is your guilt over Daniel or this has something to do with your experience with the church, but it needs to stop."

"What about my experience with the church?" He'd thought of Neema and Father Ryan when he and Roman had faced Orpheus, but he didn't think Roman knew about that. Nicole wouldn't have said anything, no matter how much she hated him now. Had Serena?

"I don't know if Orpheus said it by accident or whether it was a bigger part of what was going on in his mind, but he asked me whether I wanted to sacrifice my only son. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"I was an altar boy. You know that, right? You've seen the embarrassing pictures?" Eric had. "You know I was proud of you when you decided to become a priest. It's not an easy job, and it demands a great deal of sacrifice. Maybe you absorbed it a little too much."

"I do not think I'm Jesus Christ," said Eric, a little offended.

"Then quit trying to martyr yourself. How do you think I would have felt if I'd had to watch you die? What would that have done to your mother? How do you imagine Sami would react to losing her twin? Even Nicole, she may be angry with you, but she also loved you very much once upon a time. If you had died saving her— and I'm not saying you did the wrong thing there, because there was an actual benefit to what you did— do you really think that it wouldn't have mattered to her?"

"She told me it would have sucked if I'd died," said Eric, remembering the moment with Nicole in a jumbled, confused way. He'd been bleeding and half in shock at the time.

"Nicole always did have a way with words."

"Is the lecture over, then?"

"Sure is," said Roman, and he launched into a ridiculous story about how Sami had attempted to bribe the nurses with a role in a movie about her life if they would only let them talk to her father while they were busy inserting his IV. Marlena returned for the end of the story and listened with amusement before ordering Eric back into his wheelchair and pushing him back to his room.

He had just climbed onto his horrible excuse for a bed (Roman was wrong about Eric having a martyr complex, because if that were true Eric would have liked the bed) when he heard Brady calling out to Marlena and Marlena asking what "all this" was.

"Food," said Brady. "From the reception. No one who's stuck here has eaten anything all day and I guarantee you it's better than what's in the hospital cafeteria."

Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to Eric to be hungry. He had had too many other demands competing for his attention. Now that Brady mentioned it, though, he was starving. He mentally apologized for any thoughts he might have had earlier that day that might have implied that he sometimes considered Brady to be a bit of an idiot.

Marlena said something about needing to see Belle and Claire, who had fractured her wrist, and Brady agreed that he would catch up in a minute. Presently, he appeared in Eric's doorway. "Hey, brother," he said with forced cheerfulness. "Are they letting you eat?"

"They haven't told me not to," said Eric.

"Good enough." Brady's eyes swept over the bandages on Eric's hand and arm. "Can you eat?"

Eric waved his hands as well as he could. "I don't think chopsticks would be a good idea or anything, but whatever that is, I can figure it out."

Brady looked doubtful. "Hey, Nicole?"

Eric stiffened. He hadn't realized that Nicole had accompanied Brady. She'd been uncharacteristically silent.

"Yeah?" Nicole peeked around the corner of the door.

"Take the rest of this stuff down to my sister and Marlena and then— well, text me when you find them, and—"

"Wouldn't it be easier if I stayed here with Eric?"

"That's all right with you?"

"Yeah," Nicole repeated with a horrible forced smile. "He did save my life today. I can open the stupid to-go packages for him."

"Is that all right with you?" Brady asked Eric.

"I don't need a baby-sitter, but it's fine," said Eric.

"You do need a baby-sitter," said Brady mildly before turning to Nicole. "I'll check in with you when I can."

And he left Eric and Nicole alone together for the first time in a very long time.

Eleven.

Eric raised his eyebrows in surprise when Nicole shut his hospital room door behind Marlena and Brady. He knew that she felt awkward enough being alone with him without the added dose of privacy. Hell, he felt awkward enough being alone with her, and he was the one whose head was swimming with painkillers.

"Technically, there's a rule against outside food," Nicole offered by way of explanation, though Eric hadn't voiced his question aloud. "They really only enforce it if it bothers someone. It'll be harder to bother anyone with the door shut."

She kept her eyes on the various packages Brady had left for longer than strictly necessary. She fidgeted first with one and then with another, looking anywhere but directly at Eric. She had always done that when she was nervous, Eric recalled. Usually she relaxed as soon as her asked her to look him in the eye. He'd never quite figured out what just what she saw there when she did that calmed her down. Under the circumstances, though, asking her to look at him seemed like one demand too many, even if he had just taken a bullet for her.

There was no way around it. Even in the midst of blood and trauma and family secrets, Eric plain old liked the fact that he'd taken a bullet for Nicole. It was old fashioned and it was macho and it was a little ridiculous and it was an absolute fact.

"Nicole?"

"Hmm?" She had busied herself re-arranging the cords that ran from the television in the corner of the ceiling to the heavy call button twisted around his IV stand and the back of his bed.

"Look at me, please," he said, making it as much a request and as little a command as possible.

She turned around slowly as if every inch she moved was causing her pain. (Perhaps it was? He'd knocked her down pretty hard, and he wasn't entirely sure what she and Brady had done in the hours after the shootout.)

"If this is too much for you, you should go. I can take care of myself, and if I can't there are nurses at the other end of the call button and a police officer outside the door." Although Eric wasn't sure whether the cop was there to protect him or keep him from leaving. He supposed the man would probably do either in a pinch.

"It's not too much for me," said Nicole, and she squared her shoulders in the way she did when she was resolved about something. Eric had always loved that about her. "Besides, I promised Brady."

Of course. It was Brady she was really looking out for, not Eric. That made sense. Nicole and Brady had logged more years and more adventures together than Nicole and Eric ever would.

Nicole returned to the food. "This is salmon. And these are some kind of mushroom turnover. Good, it will all be okay cold. And that's cake—"

"Start with the cake," Eric interrupted.

"Dessert first?" asked Nicole. "Walking on the wild side?"

The only reason that he wasn't in prison was because he needed surgery, and Nicole was still making jokes about how he was so straight-laced that he couldn't eat dessert first.

Their eyes met and the smile slid off her face, replaced by a pained look as she realized that she had slipped into an old habit that didn't fit them anymore.

"Well, it's a wedding cake," she said resolutely. "No one would screw up a wedding cake, and if group of escaped cons come in here to kill us it's exactly what we should have for a last meal."

"I don't think any escaped cons are coming in here."

"If they are, they can't have any cake. It's all for us." She carefully handed the cake to Eric so that he would be able to balance it, and moved a glass of water closer to his bed. Then she glanced around, looking for the least awkward way to be able to eat herself and also hand things to Eric as he needed them.

Eric acknowledged the only real solution before Nicole did and slid himself up against the side of the bed. "Sit here," he told her, patting the bed beside him. "It's the only way you're going to be able to reach everything."

They could pretend there was nothing weird at all about sitting in bed together eating wedding cake.

As soon as they tasted it, they weren't pretending. No one could worry about awkwardness when there was the best cake either one of them had ever eaten on the bed between them.

"This is amazing!" Nicole gushed. "No wonder Brady made sure Theresa didn't get any."

"Why would Brady— oh my God," Eric interrupted himself as he took his first mouthful. He hadn't eaten all day and he had expended a lot of energy, but he didn't think that was the whole story. The cake just happened to be better than any other cake that had ever been baked.

"Right?" asked Nicole. "Kind of sad that now you know that nothing that will happen for the rest of the week will be as good as this."

"So I'll enjoy it now," he told her, and toasted her with his fork.

"That's the spirit."

After a few minutes of savoring, Eric returned to the origin of their spoils. "Brady made sure Theresa didn't get any?" he asked.

"Brady won't tell me the details, but he put an attorney on retainer in case he sues for custody of Tate and he made sure the marriage license didn't get filed."

Eric winced. "Brady doesn't do well with breakups."

"And you and I are just great at them."

"You'll keep looking out for him? I know you always do."

Nicole nodded. "I already am. It's why I told you what I know. As far as I know, no one else knows that much. But I thought he might talk to you. If he talks to you…" She hesitated for a moment, then nodded resolutely. "If he talks to you, what I want you to do is push him to talk to Chloe about shared custody. She'll be on his side, but she has recent experience with doing it right and doing it wrong, you know? And he'll trust her. And we can trust her to do right by him."

It sounded reasonable. It sounded too reasonable. Eric knew what it meant when Nicole sounded too reasonable. "You wouldn't be planning Brady's next romance before the ink is dry on the marriage license he didn't use, would you?" he asked.

"Well, Brady certainly isn't very good at deciding these things for himself," Nicole muttered.

Eric swallowed his laugh. It was too damn cute when Nicole got like this, and he hadn't been able to see her this way in such a long time. "Don't push too hard," he advised. "Remember how the thing with Kristen's computer and the Titan files blew up in your face?"

Nicole sighed. "But how much trouble would it have saved everyone if it had worked?" She removed the empty containers of cake, gave Eric his glass of water, and put the rest of the food on the bed.

The salmon was just as good as the cake had been. Eric didn't realize that he'd fallen silent and started shoving the food into his mouth as quickly as he could until he noticed Nicole watching him. "Sorry for my table manners," he apologized. "I haven't had food this good in…"

"They still make you eat shepherd's pie in the prison?" she asked quietly.

"Do not remind me about that."

"Sorry. The warden always used to taunt us about it. Said it was her very favorite."

"Mine just tells us every time it comes up in the rotation that it's made with real shepherds."

"Would taste better if it was."

"It would taste better if it were one of the mud pies Sami and I used to make in the backyard when we were four years old." Nicole paled a little, and Eric wasn't sure why. She never had responded positively to any mention of Sami's name, but a story about making mud pies in the backyard seemed innocent enough. "Didn't you and Brandon and Taylor ever do that?" he asked.

"Not that I can remember. My family wasn't much like yours."

"I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."

"You didn't. I just…" Nicole busied herself once more gathering the empty containers and throwing them out. "Do you want more? We ate all the cake but there's bread and there's some kind of vegetable dish."

"No. Thank you." The food had hit his stomach all at once, and belatedly he realized that it had been hunger that had been keeping him alert against exhaustion and whatever was in the IV attached to his arm. He doubted that he could keep himself awake, let alone keep eating. He forced his eyes open. "What did I say?"

"Today, when they took you out of the prison, did you try to send some kind of voodoo twin signal to Sami?"

A shudder ran down his spine at the memory. The dark truck. His forearm on Xander's throat. "They weren't going to hand me a phone. I had to try everything."

"But how is that even a thing?" asked Nicole with an explosion of frustration. "You can't just think something and have your twin sister hear it 2000 miles away. Like, hey, Sami, remember to pick up milk on your way home."

Eric laughed. "No, I can't do that. It's not thoughts. It's feelings. And not all feelings, just really intense ones."

"How does that work?"

Eric shrugged, then winced. Shrugging hurt. "We don't know. We've just always had it. I don't even remember the first time we did it, but Mom and John and Carrie, they all acknowledged it. None of them said we were making things up. John even counted on us to do it sometimes, like when we'd get lost on a ski trip or something."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"The world is full of things that don't make sense," said Eric. His words were slurring; he was half-asleep. Nicole wouldn't have gotten a better answer out him even if he'd had one to give. "You can't control everything. Some things you take on faith."

Nicole made a face at Eric's sleeping form as she tugged the sheet over his chest to keep it from twisting around him. "Why do people always imply that it's bad to want to control everything?" she asked Eric, or God, or the universe. None of them answered.

"And I know the world is full of things that don't make sense."

For example, the fact that she'd just eaten dinner with Eric Brady as if he had never killed her fiance or taken a bullet meant for her did not make sense.

"And I don't see what faith has to do with any of this."

She pulled out her phone to check for messages; nothing from Brady yet, so she figured that she was still charged with protecting Eric. That was fine. She didn't want to go home and be alone anyway.

She sank into a chair and watched Eric sleep.

"None of it makes any sense," she repeated.

Twelve.

Figuring that her voice wasn't likely to wake Eric, Nicole decided to follow Abe's instruction to call Brandon. It was getting late, but not quite too late, not that she and Brandon had a long-running habit of standing on ceremony.

Just to be nice, and to honor her mother's memory, she sent a quick text to Taylor that everything was fine and that Taylor shouldn't worry if she heard anything about Salem on the news. Taylor almost immediately responded that she had been glued to the news feed and to say hello to Eric. Nicole promptly deleted the text, not caring to dwell on how as a teenager Taylor had all but followed Eric around with her tongue out and implied that Nicole didn't deserve him; after all, those thoughts inevitably led to memories of EJ carrying around Taylor's scarf like it was the holy grail and Taylor announcing that she was somehow the wounded party for having an affair with Nicole's husband. Getting along with Taylor was going to be a lifelong project.

Then she tapped the picture of her brother— a sweet photo of Brandon holding his namesake, Theo Brandon Carver, when Theo had been an infant.

Brandon answered before the phone had rung once. "Nicky! What the hell happened today?"

"That's a very long story."

"I've got time," said Brandon stubbornly, and so she gave him the abbreviated version.

As she was wrapping up, a nurse arrived and shooed Nicole out of the room with assurances that she could return in ten minutes.

"Where are you?" asked Brandon. "I thought you were home, but it sounds like you're in the hospital. You told me everything was fine! Abe told me everything was fine!"

"I am in the hospital," confirmed Nicole. "But visiting! I'm not a patient! I was just sitting in Eric's room and the nurse wanted me to leave so she could check everything over and probably wake him up when he needs to be asleep."

"You were sitting alone in Eric's room while Eric was asleep?" Somehow, Brandon sounded even more concerned.

"Yes," said Nicole, more defensively than she would have liked.

Brandon whistled. "Be careful with that, Nicky."

"He took a bullet for me today and his brother asked me to look out for him for a couple of hours. There's nothing to be careful about. What are you implying?"

"Implying nothing. Merely pointing out that you have loved Eric Brady since the Dodgers left Brooklyn."

"I was over Eric before Daniel died, and I'm not going to get back under Eric now that he's responsible for Daniel's death!" she hissed, hoping the police officer standing guard near Eric's door would not overhear.

"I know it's incredibly complicated. That's why I'm warning you to be careful."

"Warning me." Nicole rolled her eyes heavenward. "I'm not a child, Brandon. I don't need any kind of warning."

The nurse chose that moment to leave the room, and Nicole took the opportunity to hang up on Brandon and return to the chair in the corner.

She scrolled through her texts. There were at least ten from Deimos, and nearly as many from Dario. She sent both men vague answers about how she was fine but wouldn't have much time in the near future.

She stared at the texts with a mixture of boredom and revulsion until Eric stirred in his sleep and drew her attention. His wounded arm brushed against the side of the bed; a strangled, pained noise rumbled deep in his throat.

"No need to move," she whispered, moving to the side of his bed. "Don't hurt yourself."

His eyes moved wildly behind his closed eyelids and she could see a pained grimace starting to overtake his face. Whatever he was dreaming, it wasn't pleasant.

"You're okay," she tried. "We're all okay. Your mom and dad are fine, and your brother and sister, they're fine too. You got to be the big hero. You warned Roman about what was going to happen, and you warned me, too, somehow. And then you saved me again."

She wasn't getting through to him. His breathing was ragged and he was starting to sweat.

All those months in the rectory, she had wished for this very thing: to be in the position to alleviate the nightmares that left shadows under his eyes and sometimes had him crying out so that she could hear him from down the hall. The dreams had abated, somewhat, after they'd talked about the death of the priest in Africa, and had returned in full force when Kristen DiMera and Dr. Chyka had opened their bag of nasty tricks.

For all that, she'd never had a front row seat. Now that she did, she didn't like it at all.

She'd seen enough people trembling with anguish and terror for one day. Enough was enough.

She reached out and touched Eric's shoulder, high above the bandages on his hand. "Wake up. Eric? It's a dream. Not real. I mean, whatever you're dreaming about probably is real, but it's not happening now. It's over. Torturing yourself like this won't help." She gave him a final squeeze and his eyes flew open, flashing with confusion, then embarrassment, then irritation.

"What are you doing, Nicole?" he accused. She was very familiar with his post-nightmare attitude and decided not to take offense.

"I am weak, I am not perfect, and I couldn't stand watching you suffer like that so I woke you up," she declared, folding her arms across her chest and wishing she were about thirty years younger so she could get away with stomping her foot.

His lip quirked almost into a smile. "Okay."

"Okay?" she had expected an argument and was almost disappointed that she hadn't gotten one.

"Okay."

"Want to tell me what the dream was about?"

"No."

"Saying it out loud might make you feel better."

The look in his eyes told her that the subject was closed. "No."

She couldn't resist smoothing back the lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. "Do you want to talk or do you want to go back to sleep?"

Something horrible and haunted crossed his face, and she felt something inside of her twist in sympathy. "I am not going back to sleep anytime soon. But you don't have to stay, Nicole. I know Brady asked you to eat with me, but he didn't mean you had to be here all night."

"It's not all night. You were asleep for less than two hours. Barely enough time for me to catch up on my texting. My sister says hi."

"I'm glad you're still talking to her."

"So am I. I guess." Taylor probably wasn't ever going to be Nicole's favorite subject. Leaning over the bed was awkward, but she wasn't ready to break physical contact with Eric, not while she could practically see his heart pounding out of his chest. "Can I get up on the bed again?"

He slid over in response and she crawled up beside him. The bed was high and narrow and she had known she would have to lie down close to him, but she hadn't expected him to put his arm around her shoulders and tuck her against his side.

She could have told him to stop.

She didn't.

It felt good, and after the day she had had, she deserved a few minutes of feeling good, Brandon's brotherly warnings be damned.

Eric's bandaged hand rested on her hip, and she took a good look at it for the first time. "That didn't happen in the church, did it?" she asked.

"No." His voice was soft but wry in her hair. "That was Xander."

"Tell me what happened?" she asked. "From the time that they took you until you got inside the church?"

"If I do, will you tell me what happened to you?"

"Deal," she agreed, and if she cuddled against him a little bit it was only to help him tell his story.

When he reached the part about almost choking Xander to death, she knew right away that that had featured heavily in the dream she'd interrupted. The whole thing had no doubt been compounded by thinking he'd seen his father murdered before his eyes.

"Sounds like taking that bullet for me was the easiest part of your day," she joked half-heartedly as his story reached its conclusion.

"It was," said Eric seriously. "Now tell me your version."

She did. She gave Eric a few more details than she had given Brandon, hoping that it would be good practice for when she spoke to the police the next day.

"I should go," she said when she'd finished. "In a minute," she amended. Somehow, in a too-narrow hospital bed lumpy with some sort of contraption that was supposed to prevent bed sores but probably created them, she felt safe and at peace. She didn't want to go home, where there weren't police officers stationed outside the door.

"If you have to," said Eric sleepily, but he didn't loosen his grip on her. She could feel how tired he was; it was a perfect match for how tired she was. For all that, he wasn't letting go.

She decided that she would stay until he was asleep again. That would definitely fulfill whatever vague promise she had made to Brady to watch over Eric, and she was a woman of her word. Well, she was sometimes a woman of her word. Well, at least, she always tried to keep her promises to Brady.

But by the time Eric was asleep, so was Nicole.

Thirteen

For a woman who lived in a convent, Nicole had an inexhaustible supply of short, tight dresses. She was wearing another one this evening, and as usual it left Eric in no doubt that her body hadn't changed much since he'd first met her almost twenty years before.

Not that he was contemplating the state of her naked body, of course. He was, after all, a priest.

It was just hard to ignore those memories considering what Nicole chose to wear— or not wear.

And that was even without considering what Nicole chose to do, or rather who Nicole chose to do on Eric's very own desk. Maybe the prisoner release program hadn't been such a great idea after all, if Vargas' idea of appropriate post-incarceration activities included heading for third base with Eric's…. secretary, and then having the nerve to imply that Eric didn't even know what he was missing.

Eric knew what he was missing.

That was the point.

You were supposed to make a sacrifice as part of your devotion to God, and it wouldn't have been a sacrifice if no part of him wanted to grab Nicole and do things that priests didn't do. Didn't contemplate. Didn't fantasize about.

Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. Proverbs 6:25.

"Nicole," he said as calmly as he could manage. "You know that you can't go out in that dress."

"Don't you like it?" she asked, sauntering closer to him.

He gulped. He was glad that his close were loose and not likely to show the world that one particular part of his body hadn't gotten the message about how God felt about lust. "That's irrelevant," he managed.

"Well, whether you like it or not, this dress and I are going to the new club down in the basement by the pier."

"It's not a new club. It's like every other club you've ever been to. There's nothing new for you there, Nicole."

"Maybe I don't want something new!" she snapped. "Maybe I want something that I used to have and I lost!"

As soon as she was gone, he knew that he had to follow her. He knew for a fact that she was in danger and that he was the one to protect her.

He went straight to the club. For all its newness it was just like every other club he had ever seen: pounding masses of sweaty, uncovered flesh, the stench of alcohol, flashes of drugs changing hands, groping and running and hiding and danger and…

"Nicole!"

She was dancing with three men who looked about half her age. She turned her head.

"I'm not leaving," she said. "You can't make me leave. They can offer me something that you never will."

Rage welled up inside of him. Rage at the young men and the sweat and the dress and Vargas and the noise and the smell and the lights and above all at Nicole who he couldn't have. He pulled her by the hand and half-dragged her outside and down the back alley behind the club.

"I was having fun!" Nicole snapped. "Remember fun? Remember dancing? Remember sex?"

"I remember all of those things, Nicole!"

Her lips were an inch from his. "Prove it!" she whispered.

And he covered her lips with his and lifted her up so that her back was pressed against the brick wall of a warehouse.

She kissed him back and wrapped her legs around his waist. One of his hands drifted to the too-short hem of her skirt. She wore nothing underneath it, and they both moaned with desperation when his fingers crazed her delicate skin.

He was wearing his Roman collar. He was wearing a cross. They were in public.

He was too far gone to care.

There was nothing, nothing but the pounding, pulsing, aching need for Nicole and release and Nicole and Nicole and Nicole.

Her hands were on his fly and he swatted them away to do it himself. She was too slow. He couldn't hold out, he couldn't last, and he knew that she must feel the same from the way her nails and teeth were everywhere as he entered her.

Every movement was agony. "Nic—" he tried to tell her, but her name was too much for his fevered brain.

She screamed his name.

His body tensed a final time, ready for the release it had needed since he had first seen Nicole in one of those dresses—

"Damn right, that's the right kind of coffee! This time of the morning, there's no wrong kind of coffee. It was quiet all night, just nurses and family going in and out, so maybe you'll get a quiet day, too. No more escaped psychos."

Eric's eyes snapped open.

There were police officers making early morning conversation outside the door three feet away.

He was in a hospital bed.

He was not a priest, but Nicole was draped over him and he was one wrong thought away from having to make explanations about the state of his sheets that he really didn't want to make.

Nicole's eyes were open, too, and they were blazing with fury, shame, and something he couldn't quite name.

He tried to focus on the shame, because the fury and the mystery were hot. Then he tried thinking about dead bodies and Christ on the cross (which he knew he shouldn't use this way but under the circumstances he thought God should give him a pass) and shepherd's pie and prison breaks. It finally occurred to him to clench the fingers of his smashed hand to give his body something else on which to focus, and it was good that he did, at that moment Nicole's hand brushed across his groin as she frantically tried to escape the bed. The situation had become less dire but his body still jerked in response.

"Nicole, it's not—" he began, even though it absolutely was.

"I know how the male body works, Eric," she called over her shoulder as she rescued her purse from its spot beneath the chair in the corner and hit the door running, without so much as a goodbye.

The cop who was still guarding Eric's door was tactfully silent.

Fourteen.

The world came at Nicole in flashes. She knew that she saw something and avoided slamming into it; it was long seconds later that she registered that the "something" was a police officer guarding Eric's door. Perhaps it was the police officer that had spent the whole night outside the door and knew perfectly well that Nicole had spent the whole night in Eric's bed.

Nor would Eric's bodyguard be the only one who knew. Nurses and aides would have been in and out of the room every two hours, and they would have checked on Eric, reaching over and around her, doing their jobs without disturbing her because they felt sorry for the situation in which Nicole and Eric had found themselves.

It was, after all, against the rules for visitors to spend the night in patients' rooms, let alone in patients' beds. Nicole knew that, just like with the rules about outside food, the staff would ignore any breaches of regulation that didn't bother anyone.

She knew that because Daniel had told her.

Daniel who was dead because of Eric.

Daniel who should have been her husband by now.

What had she done?

Wild-eyed, Nicole ran past the elevators. She wasn't going to risk getting into one of them with a stranger who had been in the room last night, or a colleague of Daniel's who had heard the gossip making the rounds, or, worst of all, one of Daniel's friends.

She couldn't justify her decision to spend the night with Daniel's killer— not to herself, and not to anyone else. She couldn't imagine confessing that, worse than merely falling asleep in Eric's arms, she had slept more contentedly than she had in at least a year.

And she certainly wasn't ever going to admit, even to herself, that when she'd woken up in distressed humiliation, a tiny part of her had jolted with interest when she'd accidentally groped Eric and registered that he'd woken up with one hell of an erection.

She hadn't lied when she'd told Eric that she knew full well how the male body worked. Morning wood wasn't the same as sexual arousal. Maybe he'd just had to pee after all the fluids the doctors had pumped into him. Maybe he'd been dreaming about something completely innocuous. Even if he had been dreaming about sex, she could hardly blame him for that. She had a long, long list of things for which she blamed Eric Roman Brady. That list didn't include weird things his brain told his body to do when he was unconscious.

The only one Nicole had to blame was Nicole. Nicole had climbed into bed with the man who had killed her fiancé, and Nicole hadn't been able to summon the willpower to leave.

It had been with Daniel that Nicole had well and truly changed into a mostly honest person. Rather than wait for the secret of what she and Eric had done in the furnace crawl space to come out in the worst possible way after months of fear and blackmail, she'd told Daniel the truth. And Daniel had still wanted to marry her. Daniel hadn't punished her for a year the way Eric had when he'd learned the truth about the documents that incriminated Kristen and Chyka. Daniel had said he understood that people did strange things when they believed that they were about to die.

Eric's hands had been bandaged then, too. He burned them trying first to block off the grate and then to pry it open. He'd collapsed, naked, into her arms and she'd stroked his hair and been sure that God or the universe or some great force had meant for them to be together in death since that hadn't been possible in life…

She ran down the stairs. The stairs were one more thing that she wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for Daniel; they were hidden behind an unmarked door, open to the public but not advertised since the expectation was that patients would have some mobility issues and were better off with the big, brightly lit elevators.

At long last, she reached the first floor and slammed open the door to the lobby. It was early enough that the information desk should be abandoned; standard out-patient appointments wouldn't start for several hours.

Her peripheral vision saw the movement of only one person as she made for the door and outside and anywhere but the hospital where Daniel had worked and saved lives and died.

"Nicole!"

The severe summons stopped her dead in her tracks. It was the worst possible person. She couldn't bring herself to curse her rotten luck. She deserved this.

"M— Maggie," she stammered.

Maggie was Daniel's mother. Maggie had known almost everyone who worked at the hospital even before Daniel had come into her life because for a long time Maggie had been a Horton and for a long time the Hortons had run the place. Maggie had been at the wedding and knew everyone else who had been there.

There was no way that Maggie didn't already know where Nicole had spent the night.

Maggie had never thought that Nicole was good enough for Daniel, and had only been convinced by Daniel's steadfast devotion to Nicole— and by Daniel's death.

"Nice morning, isn't it?" asked Maggie with an edgy false cheer.

"It's really not," said Nicole. "Did they catch Clyde yet?"

"Not that I've heard. I didn't have a lot of time to catch up on the news, though, I was so worried about all of the people who were hurt yesterday. What about you, Nicole? Was there anyone in particular who you were worried about?"

"I didn't want anyone to be hurt," said Nicole, even though she knew that she was caught. "It seems like everyone is going to be fine. That's— that's a blessing, isn't it?"

"A blessing," Maggie repeated. "Sounds like something a former priest might say. How is Eric, Nicole? Or didn't you talk to him last night? Were you too busy doing other things with the man who killed your fiancé?"

"We didn't do anything!" Tears spilled down her cheeks. "We talked, that's all, we talked and we ate dinner and we fell asleep. He'd just saved my life and I thought I owed it to him to make sure that he was all right."

"This is a very fine hospital," said Maggie coolly. "Even though it has lost the best physician it has seen in the past fifty years, there are still many professionals who were quite capable of taking care of Eric Brady, don't you think? Or did Eric require a very special kind of care that only a woman of your very particular talents could provide?"

"He saved my life," Nicole repeated lamely. She knew it didn't convince Maggie. It didn't convince Nicole herself.

Maggie pursed her lips and became very quiet. Nicole almost wished that she would yell. "You never deserved Daniel. He told me over and over that you had changed, and that you made him happy, and I so very much wanted that to be true. I even let myself believe it. But you are the same woman that you always were. A liar, a cheater, a… a vindictive little murdering trollop, as Victor likes to call you. I suppose if there's a silver lining to Daniel's death, it's that he isn't here to see this and have his heart broken. If you were cheating on him the whole time that you were together—"

"I wasn't!"

"—He'll never have to know."

"Daniel would have understood," said Nicole weakly. He'd understood about the furnace crawl space.

Maggie glared imperiously at the engagement ring that still rested on Nicole's left hand. "For heaven's sake, have a little grace and take that off." Maggie narrowed her eyes. "Grace. That was the name of the little girl you stole who died, wasn't it?"

"I didn't steal her," whispered Nicole as the memory of the infant-sized coffin made her weak on her feet.

"That's right, it was Sydney you stole. So hard to keep track. Speaking of children to whom you have no right, I hope you understand that Parker does not need the woman who is sleeping with his father's killer in his life. I'll speak to Chloe, but perhaps you'll decided to do the right thing without any help?"

There was a long pause.

Then Maggie laughed. "What am I thinking? People don't change. You haven't changed. Get on with whatever you were doing, Nicole."

Fifteen.

When Marlena appeared in Eric's hospital room fifteen minutes after Nicole's exit, he half-expected a scolding for having spent the night with Nicole in his bed. He was intimately familiar with the hospital's rumor mill and assumed that his unauthorized sleeping arrangements were common knowledge. Marlena probably didn't need to rely on the rumor mill, though, because she'd probably come to check on him and seen Nicole curled into his side with her own eyes. She hadn't woken Nicole and told her to get out, though, and Eric appreciated that.

"You didn't eat breakfast, did you?" asked Marlena as soon as she'd greeted him. "Nothing since last night when your brother brought you dinner?"

He hadn't expected that. "No."

Marlena lit up with happiness, suddenly looking as if she hadn't spent the previous day at the mercy of a man who had stolen five years of her life and the previous night checking on injured children and grandchildren. "Good. One of the operating rooms is unexpectedly free, and the best general surgeon in this hospital also happens to have had a cancellation. It's a perfect storm. We'll get your arm cleaned up this morning instead of next week."

Having the surgery completed almost before he'd had time to worry about it was an appealing prospect. No one wanted to spend longer in the hospital than necessary. Nonetheless, Eric evaluated his mother's unmitigated delight with suspicion. "Did you pull strings to make this happen?" he asked. "Is this something that would have happened to someone whose mother isn't a world-renowned psychiatrist on staff at this hospital?"

"World-renowned is pushing it," said Marlena, caressing Eric's cheek fondly. "But I appreciate the flattery, so you can continue to say that in the future."

Eric admired her ability to be playful under the circumstances, but he wasn't in the mood to have his question dodged. "Mom."

"No, Eric, I did not call in any favors or pull any strings. What I did was advocate for you. Any patient in any hospital needs an advocate. I wish it wasn't so, I genuinely wish it wasn't, but sometimes you have to push to get the best treatment and there is nothing unethical about that."

"How soon?"

"Soon," said Marlena, and she nodded toward the door. Eric noticed a team of scrubs-clad men and women diligently reviewing something on a computer monitor.

"Okay," he agreed, as if his agreement would have mattered. "Thank you. For advocating."

"I love you," she answered, and she kissed him on his forehead before she left.

When Eric came to after the surgery, he was back in his room and his mother was back at his side. Belle was there, too, and she and Marlena were talking quietly.

"…It's basically perfect," Belle was saying. "Not bad enough that he's in a lot of pain or has to be dependent on anyone else for more than a minute here and there, but not something he can possibly deal with in a prison cell. They won't want him in the infirmary at the prison because it's less secure and he doesn't really need to be there. We won't even have to ask. Statesville will ask."

"Statesville's going to ask what?" Eric wanted to know.

"For you to stay with us for a little while before you go back," said Belle cheerfully. "Which buys us time to talk about the rest of your sentence being changed so that you can't be kidnapped and used as a human shield again. And before you argue, tell me how you're going to change the bandage on your right hand when you can't move your left arm and you don't have anyone to help you."

Somehow, Eric had forgotten how insufferable Belle was when she was right. He didn't dignify her victory with a response. "How's Claire?" he asked instead. He knew that his niece had been injured the day before.

Belle pouted. "Mad at me, of course. I fractured her wrist and gave her a black eye when I pushed her out of the way of a hail of bullets, and apparently I did this as part of a plot to ruin her singing career."

Since Belle had been so diligent about handling Eric's well-deserved legal issues when she should have been at home with her husband and their daughter, Eric refrained from pointing out that Claire sounded like the clone of a teenage Belle. Apparently his thoughts showed on his face, or else Belle had heard the observation before, because she answered him anyway. "Don't say it," she warned before breaking off in a yawn.

"Go home and rest," he said. "Both of you."

"We will in a few minutes," Marlena promised. "John is waiting outside."

"Can he come in?" asked Eric, an opportunity slowly resolving itself in his mind.

"Of course," said Marlena, and Belle opened the door and gestured to her father.

It wasn't just John who came in, but Brady, too. "Did you talk to her?" Belle murmured, and Eric couldn't hear what Brady said but could tell by Belle's body language that the answer hadn't satisfied her.

"Hey, kid," said John. "How're you doing?"

"Good," said Eric.

John evaluated him quietly. "I think you are," said John. "It's a strange thing to say, but you look better than you did the last time I talked to you."

The last time Eric had spoken to John, Eric had just made the more-than-slightly questionable decision to go to his sentencing, and then to prison, unshowered and with a hangover. He hadn't been able to hear much over the din of his own fear and guilt, but he did remember talking to John. "I remember thanking you," said Eric. "For taking care of my mother. I know you don't really need to be thanked for that and that you couldn't stop doing it if you wanted to."

"Which I do not."

Eric smiled. "So I wanted to tell you to take your wife and your children home to take care of themselves instead of hovering around here worrying about me. I told them myself, but they don't listen to me."

John's laughter drowned out whatever mock-outraged commentary Eric had provoked from Marlena and Belle. "Do you think they listen to me, kid?"

"Do you think I should call security?" asked Eric.

John's eyes sparkled tiredly. "We should consider that, yes. It may be the only way."

Marlena playfully swatted John's arm and kissed Eric goodbye. "We're going. We will be back tomorrow unless you call us. You will call us if you need anything or want anything," she commanded severely.

"Yes, Mom," Eric agreed, and Marlena, John, and Belle left. Brady stayed behind. "You, too," Eric directed. "You've had a really bad couple of days." Eric was reasonably sure that Brady was still wearing the same shirt he'd worn to his wedding, although he had discarded his tie and put on a pair of jeans somewhere along the line.

"Tell me about it," said Brady. He braced his hands on the rail of Eric's bed and looked Eric squarely in the face. "I'll go in a minute. Just as soon as you tell me what happened with you and Nicole last night."

Eric groaned and leaned back against his pillows. He'd almost forgotten about the mess with Nicole in the middle of mothers and sisters and hospital policy and legal loopholes. And surgery. He'd just had surgery. Brady couldn't make him talk about anything when he'd just had surgery. That was some kind of rule, Eric was sure of it.

"I just want to know why she ran out of here in tears this morning and has her phone turned off."

Eric hesitated, not quite sure what to say.

"Let me make this a little easier. I came back to check on you a few hours after I left and you were both asleep. You're both consenting adults and she didn't get where she was by accident, so I left you there."

"Okay. So?"

"Did you do more than sleep?"

"In a hospital bed?" Eric demanded.

Brady favored Eric with a look that left Eric knowing more than he'd ever needed to know about his brother's sexual conquests.

Eric made a face. "No."

"I can always ask Nicole what happened instead of asking you," suggested Brady mildly.

That would be worse for everyone concerned. "I was asleep, all right?" Eric didn't like how defensive he sounded, especially since Brady had no doubt heard a thousand stories like this in high school locker rooms. "I was dreaming, she was lying on top of me, and even though this is something that's supposed happen a lot less when you're not fourteen years old anymore—"

That was as much as Brady needed. He exploded with laughter and let go of the bed, dropping to the floor and burying his face in his hands.

Eric glared at him.

"Sorry," said Brady, not sounding sorry at all. "I thought it was something bad that was gonna do serious damage to one of you."

Eric wasn't really angry— after the way the last 36 hours had gone, Brady probably needed to laugh hysterically at something— but he turned away just for form's sake. "Out of all of my brothers, you are my absolute least favorite," he told Brady.

Brady stood up and dragged one of the chairs closer to the bed, then leaned against the arm rather than sitting in it. He wiped a stray tear off of his cheek, and there was something about the gesture that would have made Eric forgive Brady on the spot if he'd ever been mad to begin with.

"Fair is fair," said Brady. "Want to know how my day went?"

Eric nodded.

"Xander broke out of prison partially because he was very angry with Theresa."

"She was the one who put him in prison after he tried to rape her," Eric remembered.

"She was the one who put him in prison by pretending that he tried to rape her," Brady corrected.

Eric felt his eyes widen of their own volition. He'd known that Theresa had had a tenuous relationship with the truth over the years, but somehow he hadn't expected her to lie about something like rape. "Did you know?" he asked Brady.

Brady shook his head. "That's the thing. If she'd told me, I would have gone along with it. I know you don't like that and you don't agree with it, but if that had been what it took to keep you and Nicole safe after what Xander tried to do to you, I would have supported it. But she didn't tell me. And she wasn't trying to protect you. She just wanted me to see her as vulnerable so I'd let her worm her way back into my life after she tried to keep me hooked on drugs, ran Melanie out of Salem by threatening to keep Tate away from me, and, oh yeah, you may remember she almost killed my father."

"So you decided not to go through with the wedding?"

"You would think that I'd get to decide that, right? No. Orpheus, he was the ringleader of this operation. Orpheus was after my father. Your parents. Our family. Theresa said it was too much crazy for her to marry into. She thinks we're too dangerous. Last I checked I never hit Shane over the head and needed Eve to sacrifice a piece of her soul to save my ass. Theresa wanted to cancel the wedding and take Tate back to California with her parents."

"So what did you do?"

"Called a custody lawyer and got an injunction."

"Good," said Eric. "I mean, not good. Custody battles aren't good. But good that you're on top of things." He remembered what Nicole had said the night before and decided that she had probably been right. "You should talk to Chloe."

"Chloe?"

"She'll be on your side, but she's also done this the easy way and the hard way."

"I guess she has."

"I wish I could be here with you. I wish I could help."

Somehow, that made Brady look even sadder. "I miss you."

"I miss you, too."

Brady sighed heavily and leaned his head against the rail of his bed, looking completely exhausted. Eric fought the urge to caress his brother's head, his shoulder, anything to offer sympathy and comfort. The last time they'd had a real conversation, it had been in this very hospital. Daniel had just died; Brady had barely survived. Brady hadn't been cruel, but he'd certainly been firm in his convictions that he and Eric were on some sort of a twisted hiatus. The thing that had driven it home, even more than the words, had been the way Brady had carefully avoided touching Eric.

Brady was tactile almost to a fault. Eric had lost count of the number of times he'd wondered why Brady was hugging him or slapping him on the back or just plain grabbing at him. He'd understood why Brady had done it as a child looking up to his teenage older stepbrother, but Brady had never outgrown it. On that day, though, Brady's physical revulsion had shown through his tolerance. And so Eric kept the hand that he was currently permitted to move to himself.

"I didn't think we were going to get into this today," said Brady without lifting his head. "But hey, nothing like having three assholes crash your wedding and threaten to murder your family to remind you of what's important. Did you hear that Orpheus tried to make my dad choose between murdering Paul and murdering me?"

"Nicole seemed to think John should have just shot Paul."

Brady laughed humorlessly. "She's loyal. We have to give her that."

"He said I was dead, too?"

"Implied it. I don't know how to explain it, but I was pretty sure you weren't from the way he phrased it. Or maybe I was just hoping… you know I love you, right? You know I forgive you? You know I'm so glad you got yourself together and you're you again?"

"I know that," agreed Eric, and this time he did put his hand on Brady's shoulder. "And because I love you, I'm telling you the same thing I told your father and my mother and our sister."

Brady stood up shakily, giving Eric's arm a squeeze as he guided it back to the bed. "I'm going." His forced smile somehow hit his eyes. "Behave yourself for the pretty nurses, will you?"

Eric refrained from replying with an obscene gesture that was popular in his cell block, and presumably all cell blocks.

Finally alone, he was free at last to wonder what was going on in Nicole's beautiful head.

Sixteen.

Some people believed that you weren't supposed to drink early in the morning, but Nicole wasn't one of them. If God didn't want people to drink with breakfast, God wouldn't have invented mimosas and screwdrivers and Bloody Marys.

She dragged herself to a diner where her mother had waitressed for a number of years. It was close enough to the hospital to allow her to walk, but far enough away that she didn't expect anyone named Brady or Kiriakis to show up. It was also far enough away that she had time to dry her eyes and lift her chin before she arrived.

After Nicole's first screwdriver, she was focused enough to turn off her phone so that no one could summon her to the police station to give a statement or remind her that she had never been good enough for Daniel.

After Nicole's second screwdriver, she was able to look at her engagement ring for a few seconds at a time without feeling like the world was about to collapse around her.

After Nicole's third screwdriver, a waitress dropped a platter heavy with bacon and eggs and toast and potatoes in front of her.

"I didn't order this."

"On the house," the waitress said. Then she added, under her breath, "You look very much like your mother, Nicole. We miss her around here."

The promise of a fourth screwdriver helped Nicole hold the tears back. "I miss her, too. I wish I could talk to her now."

"Is everything all right?"

The question was carefully open-ended, giving Nicole the chance to claim that everything was great even though she was drinking alone before the clerks and teachers and businessmen around her even began their work for the day. And Nicole took the opportunity. "Yes," she said. "Everything is fine. Thank you for the food."

"You should try to eat some of it," the waitress pushed.

"I will," Nicole lied. She didn't have the energy to scream that she wasn't going to eat food she hadn't ordered because some woman she didn't remember seeing before had invoked her mother's name.

What would Fay have said, anyway, if Nicole had been able to talk to her? If Fay had known anything about relationships, she would have gotten herself and her children the hell away from Paul Mendez.

Nicole left after the fourth screwdriver. She took a cab home because, unlike certain other people in her life, she understood that it wasn't all right to drive immediately after drowning her sorrows in alcohol.

She changed out of the clothes she'd slept in and went in search of a dirty martini.

Before she found one, though, she was recognized and all but dragged into the police station to give a statement about the previous day's events.

She was lamentably almost sober when the statement had been given and she ran into Chloe, who had presumably been ordered to the police station for the same purpose.

"I've been trying to call you," said Chloe.

"My phone is off."

"Obviously. Why?"

"Did Maggie talk to you about Parker?" Nicole blurted out.

"She talks to me about Parker all the time. So?"

"Did she talk to you about making sure I don't see him anymore?"

"No. Why would she do that?"

Nicole wasn't going to cry. She just wasn't. "Because I… Because Eric. Because she thinks I did things with Eric that I didn't do, but even though this time I'm innocent I won't always be, you know? Sooner or later I'll do something that betrays Daniel's memory no matter how hard I try not to."

Chloe's apparent confusion would have been funny if the situation hadn't been so serious. She guided Nicole toward the park, and the two of them sat on a bench together.

"Parker is going to keep seeing you because Parker needs to hear about his father from as many people as possible," said Chloe after a moment. "Parker is going to keep seeing you because Parker likes you. Parker is going to keep seeing you because I like you. Parker is going to keep seeing you because it sucks for a kid to be ripped away from an adult who loves him because the adults' relationships changed. If Maggie doesn't understand that, Maggie can learn how. But I think Maggie does understand that. She knows what it's like to have to say goodbye to a child. She was a foster parent, didn't you know that?, and she lost a foster child because she was drinking."

"I heard that story, but I don't think she's likely to apply that to me. She said people don't change."

"People say things when they're stressed out or grieving. Is that really what you're upset about? Maggie accusing you of wanting to move on from Daniel with the man who accidentally killed him? Because you know she can't stop you from seeing Parker."

Nicole twisted the ring around her finger. "I used to have this stupid fantasy in my head," she admitted. "Lots of stupid fantasies. There are the obvious ones where there's been some kind of mistake and Daniel turns out to be all right. He went to Tahiti for a conference and he forgot to tell me. The body was misidentified and he's been getting treatment all this time. But then there are the more realistic ones where he's really dead, but everyone who loved him really wants me to move on and be happy, and I do."

"I think that's very realistic," Chloe agreed. Nicole shot her a dubious look. "So Maggie's in a mood and she took it out on you. That's one person. I loved Daniel. I am raising Daniel's child. I think that you should move on as soon as you want, in whatever way you want."

"What if I told you Maggie was right and Eric and I made love all over that hospital last night?"

Chloe's eyes widened. "Did you?" she asked, not even pretending not to be fascinated.

"No!"

"If you did, that would be your business," Chloe decided, but Nicole thought she looked almost disappointed.

"Well, I'm not going to. It's not even really a choice. He's going back to prison."

"Not forever."

"Four and half more years."

"They'll let him out before that for contrition and good behavior."

"Contrition." Nicole rolled the word around on her tongue.

Chloe shrugged. "Or whatever they call it legally."

"Do you forgive him? Because he's contrite?"

"Yes," said Chloe, as if she hadn't even had to think about it very much. "He didn't do it on purpose, it was very out of character, and he's going to punish himself more than I ever could."

"You're going to tell Parker that you forgive the man who killed his father?"

"Yes. I'm going to tell Parker that his father and I disagreed on a lot, but that we agreed that forgiveness is a wonderful thing. I would rather spend my life raising and loving Parker than trying to hurt a good man who made a bad decision. You know what happens when you take refusal to forgive as far as you can? We saw that the other day. You get Orpheus. Roman Brady shot Orpheus' wife by accident. It was a tragedy. But instead of telling his children that they still had him and that they would all do the best they could, Orpheus decided to get back at Roman by hurting the people he loved. By taking Marlena away from her own children for five years so Sami and Eric could suffer too. Orpheus' children didn't appreciate that. They got to the point where they washed their hands of him because they knew his hatred was more important to him than they were."

"There's a lot of room between refusing to forgive someone for taking a life that was precious to you and retaliating against everyone around them."

"I still like forgiveness better," said Chloe stubbornly. "One time I forgave this woman who put flesh-eating bacteria on my face hoping that would make me too ugly for my boyfriend to want me anymore. It made my life better. I might not even have Parker if I'd never forgiven her."

"What does that have to do with Parker?" asked Nicole, the old guilt welling up in her chest. Flesh-eating bacteria. She'd put flesh-eating bacteria on a teenage girl's face, and she'd done it on purpose.

"I wasn't sure I wanted to have kids. They kind of scared me. My adoptive parents were older and their friends were older and I was never around kids younger than I was until I went into foster care and I was supposed to take care of these kids who were… who had had problems no kid deserves to have and weren't exactly great at doing what this fifteen-year-old they'd never met told them to do. I love my little sister, but I wasn't really around Joy that much because my singing career started taking off when she was still a baby. When I came back to Salem and I started to get involved with Lucas, I didn't want to take another step with him because of Allie. You were the one who told me I could do it. You said I could be a stepmother and it would be okay. You were so certain of it that I believed you. And you know what? Allie cried and whined and got me in trouble, and she was the best part of that marriage. My name was the first word Allie ever said. Sami and Lucas will tell you it wasn't, but it was. The worst part of the divorce was losing her. Neither one of her parents had any interest in letting her keep seeing me, and I doubt she remembers me at this point. But she changed my life. I wanted Parker. I knew I could handle Parker. And I know it wouldn't be a threat to me if I let Parker stay in your life. Or in Jennifer's life, for that matter."

"Jennifer never had any problem forgiving Eric, either. I mean, she was high as a kite for a lot of it so maybe that helps, but she was with Daniel longer than I was and she… She actually was in bed with him the morning he went to prison, if I heard that story right."

"That's what I heard, too. But you know what, Jennifer's escapades aren't important right now. What's important is whether you want to tell Eric that you forgive him before he goes back to prison."

"I sort of already did," said Nicole. "It was hard to do anything else when he was lying on top of me bleeding because he'd just saved my life."

"There's real forgiveness and there's heat of the moment forgiveness," Chloe decreed.

"This was both." She twisted her ring around her finger one more time. "You really think Daniel would be all right with it?"

"Daniel loved Eric, too, you know," said Chloe. "If Eric had gotten one of us killed, Daniel would have been following him around telling him to stop drinking."

"Jennifer said the exact same thing."

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable agreeing with Jennifer this much."

Nicole almost laughed. "Believe me, I get that. When I agree with Jennifer, I like to rethink my position. Even though we're kind of friends sometimes."

"Even though she forgave you once for pretending that she killed your son."

Nicole ignored the reminder, which she hadn't needed. "If I forgive Eric, it's like admitting that I'm leaving Daniel behind. It's like taking off the ring. It's like admitting it could never happen again."

Chloe was silent.

Nicole took off the ring.

That night Nicole locked Daniel's engagement ring in the back of a dresser drawer beside the engagement ring Eric had once given her.

She didn't care for the irony.

Life sucked sometimes.

Seventeen.

It was the same and it was different.

Eric was being discharged from the hospital, police were everywhere, and his parents were hovering. That was the same.

No one tried to put him in handcuffs and Nicole didn't appear to scream in his face that she wanted him to rot in hell for all eternity. That was different.

When they stepped outside, he was confused for an instant by the crisp autumn air. It had been winter, and autumn came before winter. Then he remembered that he'd seen the end of winter and the beginning of spring from the bottom of a bottle and that spring and summer were entirely different when filtered through a prison yard.

He swallowed a rush of fear. He didn't want to go back.

He wanted to pay for what he'd done, of course. He needed to pay to depths of his soul. He had no intention of running or complaining. He certainly had no intention of letting Belle push for a lighter sentence beyond what she had to do to give their parents peace of mind that he would be safe from the shadows of their family's past.

But the part of him that was selfish and irresponsible didn't want to go back.

John and Marlena's townhouse, too, was the same and different.

It wasn't the house he and Carrie and Sami had grown up in next door to the Horton Center. It wasn't even the penthouse he had visited as a teenager when Belle and Brady had been young. It wasn't home, and had never been home, but it was full of things he recognized.

When he went upstairs to take a shower—and no, he had not wanted to be sponge-bathed by the pretty nurses, no matter what Brady claimed—the sight of a million bottles of fruity and flowery shower gels and shampoos felt familiar. This time they belonged to Claire and Belle instead of Sami and Carrie, and this time he used them because he didn't have anything of his own.

This time, he would get on the prison transport smelling like a teenage girl instead of a brewery. He wasn't sure whether that would be a problem, but for the moment he was too invested in feeling clean and enjoying the hot water to care.

All the hot water he wanted, and total privacy to boot.

The part of him that was selfish and irresponsible really didn't want to go back.

He couldn't decide whether to remind himself that he had chosen to give up this sort of thing more than once in his life. Seminaries weren't big on shower heads with fifteen massage settings, and as for the quality of life in the Congo, well, the sunrises made up for a lot.

It was all noise, anyway, he decided. It didn't matter how well he could tolerate particular conditions at Statesville. He had a debt to pay to society, and he was going back. He didn't get to choose where or how long or how much it hurt.

There might be noise in his mind, but there was none in the townhouse that night, and the quiet kept him awake. Even on the calmest night in the calmest cell block in Statesville, there was no quiet. The smallest noise echoed over and over off the hard surfaces.

Eric glanced around the guest room to which he had been assigned. One of the framed pictures on the wall was of Eric and Sami as toddlers. Sami was reaching toward the camera as if to protect Eric— to protect you from something I did, probably, Sami claimed as an adult.

After everything that Sami and Eric had put their mother and John through, Eric was half-surprised that that particular photograph was even on display. From an artistic perspective, the composition was really very good. The lighting was correct and both of the subjects were in focus and looking at the camera. Their personalities, too, had been captured quite well. Sami was taking action without thinking at all, while Eric was hanging back and probably thinking too much.

Now the vibrant little girl was on the run with a bank account full of stolen money and the cautious little boy was on his way back to prison because the one time when caution would have mattered, he hadn't bothered with it. They were killers, both of them, but Sami had killed to protect and Eric had killed because he was stupid and reckless.

Eric turned to stare at the opposite wall instead. On this wall was a framed, lovingly preserved crayon family portrait drawn by either Belle or Brady. No matter how hard Eric looked, he couldn't tell which. Whoever the artist had been, though, he or she had drawn Eric with a smile on his face and a camera strapped over his shoulder.

It was the perfect depiction of Eric right around the time he'd met Nicole. Back then, he'd thought life had been a bit too complicated and might have wished himself back to the days when his twin sister had tried to protect him from camera flashes instead of romantic entanglements. Now, he was tempted to wish himself back to a time when he could have looked into Nicole's eyes and assured her that there would never be anyone else for either of them and she really didn't need to worry about Lucas' money or anything Misty Circle had been forced to do.

He didn't want to look at that wall anymore, either.

Since the rest of the inhabitants of the townhouse hadn't spent two days in the hospital being encouraged to sleep as much as possible, he left the room as quietly as he could and made his way downstairs without turning on a light.

He picked up a book that lay discarded on the living room couch and began to skim through it, not much caring what he was reading. There was a man; there was a woman. He had his world; she had hers. Their worlds weren't any too compatible, and when she chose to return home rather than stay with him, she regretted it for the rest of her life. The book was careful to note, though, that the people who chose to stay regretted it for the rest of their lives, too.

He closed his eyes in exasperation and considered whether he might be able to sleep if he went back upstairs.

There was a quiet noise behind him and he bolted to his feet, ready to defend himself.

"Sorry," said Claire, who hadn't moved a muscle when he'd jumped like he might attack her. "I didn't mean to startle you. Here." She held out a glass of what looked like chocolate milk.

"I'm surprised your grandmother lets you keep this around," said Eric. Marlena couldn't cook, but everything in her refrigerator was healthy.

"I keep it way in the back behind the emergency water and she pretends not to notice," explained Claire. "I mean, she should be glad it's not beer I'm trying to sneak in here, right?" It was almost comical to watch Claire realize what she'd said, and to whom. "I mean— I didn't mean—"

Eric took pity on her. "You're right. As vices go, chocolate milk is a pretty mild one." He took a drink and sat back down on the couch. Claire sat beside him.

"Did you like the book?" Claire pointed to the novel, which had tumbled to the floor. Eric retrieved it and put it back on the table.

"Not really," he admitted. "But I'm not exactly the target audience."

"I am the target audience and I hated it," said Claire. "I threw it across the room when I finished it. What's the moral supposed to be? That you'll be miserable whatever you choose?"

Eric was tempted to tell her that, at least, there was some realism to that moral. Instead, he asked whether the woman should have stayed.

"Of course," said Claire with real authority. "She loved him."

"I'm sure you're sick of hearing this, but you are so much like your mother."

"Thank you." She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and that made her look even more like Belle. "I do hear that a lot." She fixed her wide blue eyes on his. "Most people say I remind them of her, but then there are a few people who say I remind them of you."

Eric almost choked on the milk. "I really hope not."

"Why not?"

"Because I would rather you not grow up to be a convicted felon."

"It adds credibility in the music industry," said Claire blithely.

"No, it doesn't. And don't joke about that. What are you doing up, anyway?"

She held up her wrist, which was wrapped in a brace. "It hurt and you're supposed to take the pills with liquid."

"Oh." He should have asked about that in the first place. "Are you all right? If the pain is really bad we can—"

She waved him off. "It's annoying, that's all."

Claire didn't look to be in pain, so Eric decided to take her word for it and ask the question that was burning in his mind. "Do people tell you why you remind them of me?"

"Not really," said Claire. "It's just something they say sometimes. I thought it might be because I wanted to sing and not do a boring regular job, and photographer, that's more interesting than being a cop or a lawyer or some kind of business mogul, right? Why did you stop being a photographer to be a priest?"

Now there was a story that Eric wasn't going to tell a teenage girl in the middle of the night, or ever. Claire and Neema were about the same age, and when shots had rung out in the church Belle had thrown herself over her daughter without a second thought. Belle had done the right thing.

Claire didn't seem to notice that Eric hadn't answered her question or that his mind had wandered.

"Someone did tell me something," Claire continued. "I don't remember who said it. All of a sudden I'm in this town where everyone knows who I am and who my parents are even though I don't know half of them, you know? They said that you had really weird stuff happen to you but you were always reaching for people who were less lucky than you were. That you would take runaways out to lunch and then convince them to go home. That you… the way you saw Nicole working as a waitress and you knew she could be more."

"Anyone could have seen that," said Eric.

"Most people don't even look at waitresses," said Claire. She grabbed the empty glasses and took them back into the kitchen. "That's who told me. A waitress." She shrugged, the mystery having been solved. "Are you coming upstairs now?"

Eighteen.

The first day after Nicole took off Daniel's ring was the day the police finally captured the third fugitive, Clyde Weston. Kate was reportedly unharmed, and while Nicole was glad of it, she was also meanly aware that Kate had brought this on herself. Kate, who had married a man who had beaten her and abused their children, had tracked down a man who had beaten and abused his children with the express intention of hurting one of those children.

As Chloe had delighted in reminding Nicole, there were a lot of things that Nicole had done in her life. Flesh-eating bacteria, sure; baby-switching, everyone knew that; marrying for money, she somehow hadn't learned was a bad idea until she'd done it more than once. But handing a young woman over to the "father" who had attacked her was over the line. At her worst, it wouldn't have occurred to Nicole to do it.

Kate had gotten a little taste of karma.

But if karma existed, where had Daniel's karma been?

Daniel hadn't deserved to die.

Nicole hadn't deserved to lose Daniel.

Nicole had done everything right with Daniel.

"Life sucks, Nicole," she reminded herself aloud. "You already knew that."

Since she couldn't let Xander and his friends keep her from going about her business for another day, she checked in at work. She exchanged a few texts with both Brandon and Taylor and didn't get particularly annoyed with either of them. She called Chloe and reminded her to check on Brady. She had lunch with Abe and Theo and found herself genuinely touched by Abe's pride in Theo's success in navigating college so far.

Then she wondered why the hell Eric hadn't called her before remembering that he didn't have a phone and probably hadn't memorized her number. (His reason better not have been that she had left. He was the one who ought to be chasing her around, not vice versa. Not even if he had been shot for her. It had barely been more than a flesh wound. He was fine.)

Then she wondered why Abe hadn't spontaneously given her an update on Eric's condition at lunch. Abe had to have known, as close as he was to Roman and Marlena. She certainly wasn't going to ask.

Instead, she went home. She didn't open the drawer and look at the ring, but she felt better knowing that she was close to it.

The second day after she took off the ring, Nicole decided to stop waiting for other people to read her mind and texted Brady to ask how Eric was.

Fine. Released yesterday. At Dad and Marlena's townhouse.

Nicole determined that that was close enough to an invitation.

She heard raised voices before she even knocked on the front door of the townhouse. Naturally, she stopped to listen. If Marlena lost her temper— especially if Marlena lost her temper because her precious Eric was being infuriating in the way her precious Eric tended to be— Nicole didn't want to interrupt. She considered taking out her phone to record the whole conversation.

She needed to get back into reporting. Whoever had decided that being nosy should be a profession had been a very, very wise person.

"I don't know what you're so upset about," Eric was saying. He wasn't shouting, but his voice carried; she suspected that in the seminary he'd been taught to project in a certain way and now he did it without thinking. "I probably would have enjoyed it, and it's not going to happen, anyway."

"It's not going to happen because your sister didn't allow it to happen," snapped Marlena. "You should thank Belle."

"Thank you, Belle," said Eric, and if the timing was mocking, the tone was not.

"Solitary confinement is torture," said Marlena. "It has a terrible effect on the psyches of released prisoners going forward. So does being moved to a prison too far away for regular visits from family, but at least this will make writing and calling easier."

Marlena had calmed down enough that eavesdropping wasn't interesting any longer, so Nicole knocked on the door. It was Belle who opened it with a polite greeting followed by a sideways glance at Eric.

"I came to see how you were," said Nicole.

"I'm fine," said Eric, and he'd stopped with the priestly projecting thing. His voice was quiet and husky instead. "How are you?"

"The same," she said. Then she couldn't resist. "Did you just say you would enjoy solitary confinement?"

"For a day or two," said Eric defensively. "I didn't mean forever."

Marlena could communicate disgust abundantly well without a word.

"Maybe we can take a walk and discuss this?" suggested Eric.

"You're allowed?"

Eric nodded.

"Go ahead," said Marlena, granting permission to her thirty-something convicted felon to leave the house in the middle of the day. "And Nicole, I never thought I'd say this, but perhaps you can talk some sense into him about the reality of punishment in prison."

"I'll consider it," said Nicole magnanimously.

"I don't need a lecture on the realities of prison, Nicole," said Eric as soon as they were out of earshot of the townhouse. "I've been in prison. I'm going back to prison. You of all people understand why I can't accept an easy way out when there's an alternative."

"They offered you an easy way out?" asked Nicole as calmly as she could manage. Her heart pounded in her ears. She had come to forgive Eric, to say some kind of goodbye to Eric, to get some kind of closure before she moved on with her life and gave Eric her blessing to move on with his. She wasn't sure that she was willing to do any of that if he was getting special treatment five months after beginning his sentence and less than a year after Daniel's death.

"They're concerned that if I go back to Statesville I'll be targeted again. They think that Orpheus and Xander and Clyde highlighted what a great bargaining chip I am."

"Sounds surprisingly reasonable so far."

Eric shrugged. "It's not like everyone there didn't already know who I am. The police commissioner's son. There's my uncle, my cousin. The name Brady means cop. Anyway, they wanted to keep me away from the other prisoners by putting me in solitary."

"Strange as it is to agree with your mother, I kind of have to. That's punishment. That's not protection. That's making you answer for something someone else did."

"Doesn't it all even out in the end?"

"No," said Nicole. On this point, of all points, she was sure. "No, it really doesn't. If things evened out in the end, Daniel wouldn't have died the way he did."

Eric flinched.

Months ago, when Eric had flinched at the sound of Daniel's name, Nicole had hated it. Hated him. Eric didn't get to feel sad when this was all his fault. The only one who got to feel sad was Nicole, because Nicole had lost everything.

Now it was different.

Nicole brushed her hand over Eric's arm. "If things evened out, the world wouldn't have fallen in on you when you messed up and got behind the wheel that night. This would have happened to someone who did stuff like that all the time and never felt any guilt."

"I do feel guilty," said Eric. "I know I can't ask you to make me feel better, and I don't want to feel better. But if it helps you at all to know that I regret what happened every minute of every day, I do. I know that I took a son away from his mother and a father away from his children and a doctor away from his patients and a friend away from half this town, and most importantly I took the man who made you happy and the future you were going to have with him. I was stupid and I hurt you and I can't ever undo it. I don't know if it will ever do you any good that I'm sorry. But if it does, I told you before and I'm telling you now. I'm sorry."

"I know you're sorry," said Nicole. "And I already told you I forgive you. That wasn't a heat of the moment, the man is bleeding all over me decision. I forgive you because I know it was a mistake and I know you'd do anything to fix it if you could. I forgive you even if you don't have to go back to prison," she decided, and she liked her decision a lot.

"I'm going back to prison," said Eric, sounding surprised that she'd thought he was not. "Just not Statesville. They're moving me to a minimum security place out of state. Somewhere where no one knows or cares who the police commissioner of Salem is. They don't usually move people like me out of state, but I guess there isn't anyone else quite like me."

Nicole was well enough aware of that.

"When my dad tried to get me to memorize faces and names and emergency phone numbers to prepare me for Statesville, I didn't want to listen. I didn't want treatment that someone who wasn't the police commissioner's son wasn't going to get. And my dad pointed out that the prisoners were going to treat me differently because I'm his son. He was right." Eric shook his head and looked at the bandaged fingers of his hand, half-amused. "At least Xander hates me for me. This stuff with Orpheus…"

"Enough said," concluded Nicole. "Let's not talk about him. Either of them."

"Okay. Oh, it's not anywhere near the same category, obviously, but I also apologize for the night in my hospital room. Or the morning. I didn't mean for that to happen."

It took Nicole a long moment to figure out what Eric was talking about. When she did, she laughed out loud. Men. "Eric, I panicked because I realized I'd spent the night in your bed. Not because of something your body did when you were unconscious. You probably weren't even thinking about me."

He turned sharply to look at her, and in spite of everything the look he gave her made her go weak in the knees. Oh boy. "Yes, I was dreaming about you. Look, this is another thing it's the wrong time to say to you but I don't know if I'll ever get another chance. I've been thinking a lot and I'd rather regret saying something than regret not saying it."

"That's new," said Nicole drily. "It used to be that I couldn't pry your feelings out of you with a crowbar."

"Yes, you could. That's it. You cared enough to use the crowbar when no one else did. My feelings are that I didn't appreciate you the way I should have when we were together. You were the only woman who ever really loved me and you're also the only woman I ever truly loved. You forgave me, and I'm grateful for that and that's more than enough. I know that doing more than forgiving me… that being anything other than probably a polite acquaintance or maybe a friend isn't in the cards. You're grieving and when you're ready to move on, you're going to have a lot of men eager to help you. Most of those men will be better men than I am, and none of them will be the man who killed Daniel. But I want you to know that I love you and I always will, and if you ever change your mind—"

"I won't," she said hastily.

Talk about life not being fair. Where had this been two years ago? Five years ago? Ten years ago?

"But if you do, tell me. You won't ever have to wonder what my answer would be."

They had almost come full circle and reached the rows of townhouses. She stopped, and Eric turned to face her. "This is it," she told him. "This is closure. If you come home to your family after they let you go in four years, and I hope you do because your family loves you, you and I will be polite. We'll be friendly. But even though you were my first real love, we will never be anything else. That time in our lives is over, and it is never going to come around again."

"I knew that had to be your answer," said Eric. "But I'm glad I told you. You deserve to know that there's always going to be someone out there wishing you were his. You're brilliant, and you're loyal, and you're compassionate and funny and brave and resilient and open-minded and you're perfect."

"I'm not perfect," said Nicole uncomfortably.

"You're perfect for me," said Eric, and she realized why she had been so uncomfortable. She'd always been the one saying it to Eric. The role reversal made her feel as if the entire world had been turned upside down yet again.

"Not anymore," she corrected. "You're not the kind of man who's going to be ruined by prison. You have connections and you have skills. You're not going to have to fill out a job application where you check the box about being convicted of a felony. You're going to have a new life, and women are going to be throwing themselves at you like they always did."

Eric laughed. "Women never threw themselves at me."

"That's cute that you may actually think that," said Nicole. "Yes, they did. I did. My sister Taylor did, little Princess Greta did, God knows Serena did, half the models you used to photograph did. The next time someone does, consider accepting what she has on offer." Eric started to object. Nicole held up her hand to silence him. "I wish nothing but the best for you, but this is an exit interview for you and me. These last few days have been different because of Xander and all those things we never said before you went to Statesville. But incidental contact from now on. No more eating wedding cake in bed together, and definitely nothing else in bed together. Got it?"

"Understood," said Eric.

She reached up to hug him. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Nicole."

She turned and left without looking back. She cradled her left hand in her right, wishing that she hadn't taken off her engagement ring before having this conversation. If she'd been wearing the ring, the whole thing would have been less confusing. If she'd been wearing the ring, she wouldn't have felt the rush of attraction when Eric had told her he'd dreamed about her or the flicker of regret when she'd told him that some other woman would be the one by his side in the next phase of his life. The ring, heavy on her finger, would have reminded her that she and Eric had grown in different directions and would never again fit together, not with the specter of the past between them.

The ring would have kept her from wondering all night, even in her dreams, why Eric's hair had smelled like strawberries.

To be continued...