Title: (If We Knew What We Had Before It Was Gone) If Every Road Led Back Home

Fandom: Private Practice

Rating: PG13

Spoilers: Up to 3.17 "Triangles"

Summary: Sometimes you have to look back to move forward. What happens when Charlotte's past becomes her present?

Author's Note: Title from "Very Last Country Song" by Sugarland

"You want to know why I slept with you again?" she asks him, still a little breathless, sprawled next to him crosswise on the bed they barely made it to in their haste to get naked and sweaty.

He chuckles a little and turns his head to look at her, nods. "Okay."

"You apologized," she tells him. "You were petty, and small, and ridiculous. But you recognized it and you apologized, and you threw in that little 'beautiful woman' compliment there to sweeten the deal-"

"You are a beautiful woman."

She smiles, turns on her side to face him. "Already naked," she reminds. "Flattery isn't necessary."

"That wasn't flattery, that was honesty."

"Well, I appreciate the honesty, then. However, I was sayin' something."

"Right. You slept with me because I apologized."

His brow is a little furrowed, like he's missing the logic of it. "Because you were an adult about it," she corrected. "And I've grown a new appreciation for men acting like adults over the last few months."

"Ah." Now he gets it. "I see. Maturity not Cooper's strong suit since the breakup?"

"Maturity was never his strong suit," she tells him. "He's just been worse about it since the breakup. And the two of you, fighting in the break room… I was afraid I was battin' zero."

He tilts his head, and there's that furrow in his brow again. She almost thinks it's cute. "Batting zero?"

"The men I get involved with tend to turn out…. not how I thought they would. Cooper is petty and small, Scott was poppin' pills, my husband… well, that's, uh, that's…" Private, she thinks, and moves ahead, "And then there you were, wrestling with my ex-boyfriend in the office kitchen of all places. I was thinkin' I really know how to pick 'em. So an apology is good."

"That's all it takes?"

She smirks, shrugs a shoulder. "An apology's a mark of a strong man, if you ask me. Don't knock it."

The smile he gives her is genuine, appreciative, and it's easy to smile back. "Well, thank you."

"And thank you," she replies, before shifting onto her back again and stretching lazily. She catches him watching and winks playfully, earns herself a chuckle. The sweat is cooling on her skin, so she tugs at the sheets until she can slip under. When he moves to join her, she tells herself that they'll go another round in a minute, so there's no need to kick him out just yet. Truth be told, she likes his company; she might even let him spend the night this time. It's been a while since she got to start the day with a quick roll in the sheets.

When the covers are settled over them and she's busy trying to estimate refractory periods and determine if it's too soon to straddle him again, he says, "Your husband what?"

"Huh?" She'd mentally moved on from that bit of chatter, so it takes her a second to figure out why Travis was even up for discussion. She catches up right around the time he reminds her.

"He didn't turn out how you thought," he says. "How so?"

"Oh, he, uh… He just… didn't." She can feel her pulse pick up, pounding a steady thudthudthud that she can feel in her neck, hear in her ears.

"He just didn't?" Sheldon raises his brows slightly, and Charlotte swallows hard. Her mouth is suddenly dry, and her tongue feels sticky and big.

"I don't usually talk about him. Ever, actually. And last time I did, I got dumped, so…"

"For talking about your ex?"

"Well. For not mentioning him until Coop and I had been dating for, oh, two years." There's a loose string on the hem of these sheets, and she catches herself tugging nervously at it, then makes the conscious effort to smooth it flat. Stupid.

"Ah."

"Yeah. I'm a big ol' liar." She traces the hem with her fingertip again. "According to him, anyway."

"Why did you wait so long?"

"Didn't want to talk about it." Now all she can look at is that dumb string, and she just wants to tug at it again, pull it until it unravels stitch by stitch.

"And can I guess from the way you're not looking at me that you still don't?"

Charlotte doesn't answer. She's not sure how. Truth is, her marriage, her divorce, her ex… they've been on her mind a lot, lately. More often than ever in the last year, and damned near nonstop since she's had Cooper throwing 'em in her face on a constant basis. No matter how hard she tries to brush the thoughts aside, she can't stop tuggin' at 'em.

"Charlotte," Sheldon says, and his palm is warm on her shoulder. She wraps the thread idly around her fingertip. "I won't push you to talk, but I want you to know that you can. You can talk to me about anything at all. Nothing will leave this room."

Charlotte glances up, meets his eyes for the first time in a solid minute, maybe even two, and she likes what she sees. Likes it enough that she believes what he's saying is true. She twines the string more tightly around her finger and gives it a good yank.

"I always wanted to play the guitar. When we were young, my brother got one for his birthday, and I was obsessed. Used to steal it all the time, try to play it. Pissed him off somethin' fierce. Momma, too. Big Daddy'd said something about me being naturally talented, so she was worried I'd go running off to Nashville and wastin' my life, or some such nonsense. Said if I wanted to play an instrument, I could play something respectable like the piano. Leave the guitars to the boys. So, I took years of piano lessons, hated and loved every minute. And when I was 17, I spent the summer between my senior year of high school and first year at Johns Hopkins with my best friend, Jen, who lived in Atlanta and had met Todd, who she said was like God's gift to music. If it had strings, he could play it. And just my luck, he had a brother."

"Naturally."

"Naturally," she nods. "Travis Evans. A few years older, but just as talented, just as handsome, just as down-home Southern Gentlemanly as his brother. And he thought me not being allowed to play the guitar was horribly unfair, so he sat me down, taught me three chords on the spot, and that was it. I was head-over-heels, stupid-in-love with him by the first chorus of 'Brown-Eyed Girl' - which, of course, he changed to 'Green-Eyed Girl' just for me."

Sheldon chuckles, and to her surprise, Charlotte finds herself smiling, too. She's still anxious, her belly still knotted with nerves, and she's pretty sure not all of the sweat on her skin is from sex, but every word seems to be a little easier than the last.

"So we dated all through college, got married right after med school. My parents hated him. But, man, I loved him. In that first-big-love way, you know? It wasn't perfect, we had our struggles, but it was good. Great, even. We were happy. Had a house, and a dog, and all that. And then I found out I was pregnant. And I was actually pretty thrilled. I mean, the timing wasn't great – I was two years into my residency, but... I wanted it. The family, and the two-point-five kids and the picket fence. Back then, I wanted it all. We were livin' the dream..."

She pauses, hesitates, looks away. Those things, the happy things, those are the ones she can share. It's the rest of the story that is painful, and private, and reason enough to keep Travis Evans and Atlanta a secret from the second love-of-her-life for near on two years. Maybe she doesn't want to talk about this after all. Maybe some strings aren't meant to be tugged.

But Sheldon is quietly persistent; she's not surprised by that. "And then the dream ended," he supplies, skimming his fingertips down her arm in a touch she's sure he means to be soothing, but she doesn't want to be soothed. She doesn't want to be comforted; she just wants to get through this. So she shrugs him off, trains her eyes on the ceiling, and traces the lines of the light fixture there.

"Yeah." She takes a deep breath, and it catches somewhere in her throat. Words aren't coming so easy now. "Miscarried at fourteen weeks." Her pulse is pounding hard again, and she can feel tears burning at the back of her eyes. She will not cry in front of him, she tells herself. She will not. She can see his hand flutter around her arm again, but he doesn't touch her. She adds that to the growing list of things she likes about him - he's good at taking a hint. "It was awful. Devastating. I cried, alot. For days. Weeks. And then we got in this fight about, uh… dishes. He hadn't done the dishes. But it wasn't really about the dishes, y'know? Just about..." She shakes her head a little, shrugs.

"Everything?"

"Yeah." She turns her head to look at him again, and a tear slips free before she can help it. She wipes it roughly away, and blinks hard trying to clear her eyes, growling her frustration quietly.

"Ignore them," he tells her. "Just keep talking."

Charlotte bites her lips together so tightly they ache, then shakes her head. "No, I, uh… I'm gonna… I don't want…" She can't find any damned words now, and it's pissing her off. She threads her fingers through her hair and fists them there, stares hard into the light until her eyes are watering from light and lack of blinking, not stupid, useless vulnerability.

"I don't know about you," Sheldon begins, and he waits until she flicks her glance to him briefly before finishing, "But I'm a little thirsty. Are you thirsty?"

"What?"

"I could go for an ice water, maybe even one of your martinis." He shrugs, makes this face like everything is casual, like she didn't just bare her soul to him, and Charlotte isn't sure whether to laugh or cry some more. He's giving her an out. She could kiss him for this. Could, and would, is more than willing to do all sorts of wonderful and naughty things to him in thanks for this. She'll make him as many damned martinis as he wants.

"Well, I can't very well make martinis naked," she says, trying for casual herself, but it doesn't quite work when her voice is still wobbly.

"Oh, I bet you could." He grins, all cheeky and teasing, and she actually laughs at him.

"Yeah, you'd like that, huh?" She does kiss him now, quick and teasing, before slinking out of bed and snagging her panties from the floor, tugging them back on before shrugging into her robe. He doesn't bother with more than his pants, even leaves the belt undone, and she thinks that's just fine.

He gets the ice water from the kitchen; she mixes martinis and stitches her dignity back together in the dining room. They don't talk much, at least not until after she's chugged a whole glass of water and half her martini. She feels herself again, steady on her feet, tears firmly at bay, so she starts again.

"So."

"So?"

She swipes her finger along the rim of her glass, studies the curl of her garnish. "We got in this fight."

He smiles like he's grateful she's talking again, like he genuinely wants to hear what she has to say. Takes a sip of his own drink and says, "Right."

"And somewhere along the line...he, uh... Well, he blamed me. Said maybe if I'd taken it easy, hadn't been such a damned workaholic, had just slowed down..." She takes a deep swallow, savors the taste of it as she feels the tension creep back into her. Bearable now, though. "And, y'know, I'd been thinkin' the same thing. Because you do, when you lose a baby. You think of everything you could have done..." Charlotte's made a point to do all her grieving in private these days. She reserves her one day a year to wallow and feel the loss, but that's it. She's not sure how to handle herself now, not sure how to disguise the grief when she's this exposed. Drinking seems to be working for now, so she sips again. "My only job - the only job that should have mattered - was keeping that baby safe, and I failed it. And failed Travis, and myself."

"Charlotte, you didn't-"

"Oh, I know. I know. I mean, miscarriages happen, and I know that. But back then, in the thick of it... You just need someone to blame, so of course I blamed myself, and havin' him say it just made it worse. So I went to Jen's for a while, let her talk me down. Told me people say and do hurtful, stupid things when they're grievin' and I should go home, work it out. So I did, and, uh..." She rushes the words like it will make them easier when she says, "I got home, and walked in on him screwing his best friend on the sofa."

"Oh." She hazards a glance at him, and he looks sympathetic but not somuch that she wants to punch him in the face or anything, so that's something. "Ouch."

Her laugh sounds rough and bitter even to her. "Yeah. Ouch. So I divorced him. Filed the next week."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Didn't want to hear excuses, didn't want to reconcile, I didn't care if he was grievin' or hurtin' or anything. He'd cheated, and I thought that was unforgivable. I thought you don't cheat on someone you love, and if you do, then you must not have loved 'em enough. Never, ever imagined, no matter how bad things might have gotten, that he'd ever cheat. He just wasn't the cheatin' type. 'Til he was."

"Can I make an observation?"

She chuckles again, dryly. "Sure, why not. I already told you my whole life story. Might as well get the commentary."

"You're using past tense – you thought it was unforgivable, you thought you don't cheat on someone you love." Bingo. He really is good. "Do you not think those things anymore?"

Charlotte debates telling him, but only for a second – after all, he already knows her biggest, baddest hurt. Might as well just lay some more on him.

"I cheated on Cooper. About a year ago." She takes a deep breath, then a generous sip, trying to drown the slightly sick feeling she always gets when she has to deal with this particular indiscretion. "Things were bad, and I was hurtin'. Wrong person said the right thing at the wrong time, and… I did it. It seemed the thing to do."

"Mm. But you loved him."

"Terribly."

"So you look at your husband now, and you think…?"

She shrugs again. "I don't know. That I was naïve? When Travis cheated, I thought I must have been such a fool not to see him for who he was, sooner. He and Trish were best friends for years; she was around all the time. We were friends. And all of a sudden, everything just looked different. Had he loved her all along and I was just stupid? All those years, they'd be off in some other town, playing gigs together and I'd be sitting at home, waitin' for him to come back. Were they together the whole time, or...?"

"Were they? Together?"

"Well, see now, that's the thing." She's drained her drink already, so she moves to make another. What the hell, right? It's not like she has to worry about getting drunk and taking the wrong guy to bed. "I don't know. I didn't want to know. Didn't want to talk. I wanted a divorce. So now, I... don't know. Anything."

"And you want to."

Charlotte shrugs, pours alcohol into the shaker. "I do, and I don't. Part of me… Nevermind."

"No, come on." He gestures with his glass while she shakes. "This is good, talking is good. Part of you what?"

She pours before she answers; taste-tests and garnishes and sits. "Part of me would rather believe he was like I was when I cheated. Just a perfect storm, y'know? I think… if he wasn't that way, if he really loved her… I'd rather not know."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"What do you have to lose?"

"What do you mean?"

"By finding out – what do you have to lose? Maybe he was just a jerk, maybe he was cheating on you the whole time, but you survived it. You picked yourself up, moved yourself along, and made a successful life for yourself. So even if you found out that the truth is exactly what you fear, what do you have to lose?"

"Aside from my dignity?" She doesn't let him answer, just barrels on ahead. "Besides, it's a moot point. We haven't talked since he signed the papers, and I fell out of touch with most of our friends over the last six years. Wouldn't even know how to get in touch with him."

"Most, but not all?"

"Sheldon." She levels him with a look. "Drop it. I'm not calling up my ex to ask him… what? Did you really love me? Did she mean anything or was it just you behaving badly in your grief? Did you mean what you said?"

"Why not?"

"I already told you why not."

"Screw dignity," he shrugs, drinking again, and she wonders if maybe she made his martini a little too strong. "Focus on closure. Sometimes in order to get closure, we have to give up a little dignity and pride. Humble ourselves."

"And you want me to humble myself in front of Travis Evans?" she asks, brows raised.

Sheldon just shrugs. "I want you to be happy. And I don't think you should let anyone – not even yourself – get in the way of that."

It's not bad advice, outside of the context, she thinks. But she's still not picking up that phone and dialing Georgia, that's for damned sure. And the second drink is making her feel relaxed and just a touch buzzed, so she slinks down her seat a little and runs her toe up his calf. "You know what makes me happy?"

She can tell by the way his brow raises that he knows exactly what makes her happy, and it's not more than five minutes before they're back upstairs, barely making it to the bed (again) in their rush to get back down to business. Charlotte makes a point not to think about anything other than right now, for the rest of the night.