A/N: Thanks for all the wonderful reviews! They're really appreciated! I hope you all enjoy this next installment! Please read and review!!

Of Rain and Remembering

The next thing I remembered was shooting up in my bed, tears on my face. Nathan lay next to me, and at my sudden movements, awoke. I looked down and saw that I was in his old college shirt and it was dark outside. I must have fallen asleep and he put me in it.

"Hey," I heard him say softly. "You okay?"

I nodded as I moved my body to hug my knees. Before I knew what was happening, tears were rushing down my cheeks, trying to keep up with my emotions.

"Hey, hey," Nathan said in that same, soothing tone as he shifted to put his arms around me.

I shook my head, trying to shake off my raw, broken feelings, but shaking off Nathan instead. I immediately felt guilty when a glance to his face showed his hurt look. So when he asked if I wanted to go to the kitchen for some water, I nodded.

I let him lead the way out of our room. I moved to settle myself into the soft cushions of our couch and my eyes followed his form as he came from the kitchen, carrying a glass of water with him. He set it down on the table before me and turned his body to face me.

His dark eyes probed my face for any sign that I would speak to him. When he found none, he sighed, rubbing his hands tiredly over his face. His hands reached out to grasp mine, but I tensed and moved instead.

"Talk to me," he pled. "We can make it through this."

"I don't see how," I said dully, feeling nothing but emptiness at his sad look. I don't see how I'll ever be able to forgive myself. I don't see how I'll ever be able to forgive you."

He nodded slowly, not wanting me to say more, but now that I started, I felt the emptiness consume me. I wanted him to hurt the way I was hurting. I wanted him to feel what I felt.

"If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have needed my dad to pick me up, and we wouldn't have been fighting and we never would have gotten into that accident." I shot up from my seat and looked pointedly at him. "I want you to go. I don't want you in my house."

"This is my house, too, and I'm not leaving. We are going to work this out, Hales. We have to."

"You're right, this is your house." I walked to the door and slipped my feet into my shoes. I grabbed a coat to go over my t-shirt. "I'll leave."

"You can't leave, it's pouring rain outside!"

"Well I can't stay here!" I needed to get out of the house. Although it was dark, and cold, and raining, he let me go, knowing that nothing he could say would stop me, would make it better. He knew that nothing he could do would erase what he had done. And so he watched me walk out of our home and into the rain and into the cold. He watched me go.

An hour later, he found me. He had walked to the site of my accident and my father's death and found me standing, unmoving and unmoved in the rain. I was cold and shaking but I did not cry. My tears could not compare with the torrent of rain and therefore did not try. We stood there together for a few minutes and watched the rain's tears try to clear the skid marks left on the road from the car accident that killed my father. Then, unspeaking, we turned and walked home.

For three days I did not speak and he did not make me. I did not cry and I did not eat and I did not sleep and I did not stay in our room. Rather, I could not do any of these things. I could not sleep, so instead graded papers from the class I taught and cleaned the house, scrubbing the floor as if I was scrubbing at my guilt. I acted as though I was in a trance, and felt stuck in the way I was acting. I thought about nothing, or my father, and saw no one else, heard no one else, not even my husband.

On the third day he came in from work and took my hands in his. At the first human contact I had had in days, I jumped, shocked from my stupor. He had not touched me since that night and now my surprise was evident. I ripped myself from his grasp and shook my head, angry at his interruption of the stupor that held my grief at arm's length.

"Don't," I said, the first word I had spoken in days. "Don't." I dropped the sponge I was using to clean the counter and walked myself into our room. Sighing, I moved to lie down on the bed, exhausted by my grief and insomnia. Yet my grief, which I had kept at bay for these three days, now overwhelmed me. My father was dead. My dad had died in a car accident because I had called him to pick me up from the house. We were fighting about Nathan again, about how we were married too young and wouldn't last. My mother understood, my mother convinced my dad, but after she had died he couldn't see how Nathan and I would last any longer. And so once again, we were arguing about him, and my dad didn't notice the car coming at us. The driver was drunk and didn't realize he was on the wrong side of the street. And my dad couldn't get out of the way fast enough. I distracted him. I called him to pick me up, and then I distracted him. If I hadn't, my dad would still be alive.

All of a sudden, as I thought about my part in my father's death once again, I couldn't breathe. Despair enveloped my lungs and squeezed, trying to smother the life left inside me. I tried to relax, and suck in a breath, but could not. I stood up, choking on my lack of air.

I walked, rushing out of the room. Nathan saw me, and knew something was wrong. He knew I was having a panic attack, and tried to put his arms around me as he told me to breathe with him.

"Don't- touch me," I gritted out. "You- you-"

"Stop fighting me," he said firmly, gripping my body though I trashed violently for him to release me. "Just listen to me. Breathe when I breathe," he repeated. "Breathe when I breathe. Come on," he pressed my chest to his so I felt his lungs expanding. "Breathe. Breathe with me."

I obeyed him, ignoring the closeness of our bodies and focusing on my breathing. After a few minutes, it returned to normal and, closing my eyes, I leaned my forehead against his chest in exhaustion.

"Let me get you some water," he whispered, afraid to startle me. I nodded against his body before stepping back. He released his grip from around me, and I moved to sit on the couch as he returned with my water. I still felt shaky and could not pick up the glass to drink for a few more minutes.

"You're tired," Nathan stated the obvious in the soft voice he had adopted recently when speaking to me. He placed a pillow at the foot of the sofa and motioned for me to lie down. I started to protest but was too weary to continue and I moved to lie prone on the soft cushions. My husband then tucked a blanket around me as if insulating me from the hurts of the world.