Thank you for reading!

It took Major over a week before he could catch Liv. Despite a bewildered and increasingly worried Peyton's best efforts, she couldn't keep Liv home long enough for Major to get there, and Liv never returned any of his calls or texts or emails.

Finally he was reduced to hovering outside her building wearing a jacket he had borrowed from one of the kids at the shelter, a shiny over-sized Indianapolis Colts jacket that was as un-Major as he could possibly get. It worked, eventually—he caught Liv coming out just before midnight, and put himself in front of her before she had time to run.

"Please, Major, I'll be late for work."

He still knew the hours of her internship by heart—she shouldn't have been needed for another six hours. He said as much, and Liv shook her head.

"I'm working in the morgue now. Assistant Medical Examiner. I … dropped out of the internship."

The news sent Major reeling. He could understand her pushing him aside after the trauma she'd been through, but she had dreamed of being a surgeon for so long. How could she have given it up?

"Really, I have to go."

She started to push past him, but he stopped her. He couldn't let things go on like this. "Liv. Let me help you."

"You can't." The words were so soft he could barely hear them.

"I can. You know I can. I'm trained in this kind of thing—and I love you. That has to count for something."

Liv looked up at him, stricken. "I'm sorry. I wish I could. But I have to go."

"Then meet me later. We can have coffee. Please, Liv! You owe me … something."

She swallowed hard. "All right. The shop around the corner, with the great pastries." Her face twisted as if the thought of the pastries made her ill. "I get off at eight."

"All right."

This time he let her go, and stood there in the uncomfortable borrowed jacket watching her go, torn between grief at the loss of everything she had been and fear that he might not be able to help her come back from it. Her eyes had been so empty—like she was still at that boat party.

She met him at the coffee shop as scheduled, which was a relief. Major had been afraid she wouldn't show. Liv curled her hands around a mug and stared down into the coffee with that terrifying blankness still in her eyes. She drank it mechanically, with no jokes about how terrible it was or indication that she even knew what she was drinking.

"Liv. You can't go on like this."

Her eyes filled with tears. "You don't know what I would give to be able to tell you—to talk to you—"

"You can. You can tell me anything. Tell me why you gave up the internship."

"I had to. I just couldn't … I couldn't do it anymore."

"Just like you couldn't marry me anymore. Liv, what the hell happened on that boat?"

She shook her head mutely, her eyes huge and dark in her pale face. Too pale. According to Peyton, she wasn't eating, she was barely sleeping …

"Then … why the morgue? Please, you have to tell me something."

"It's quiet. And there are no—people."

Major blinked and sat back. Was that what it was? She was afraid to be around people because of the boat party, because she couldn't trust them not to go crazy? Surely she knew he would never be like that. Huh. Or maybe she didn't. If it had been bad enough, maybe no one felt safe to her anymore. He leaned across the table again, meeting her eyes. "Liv, I promise, I swear, I'm not going to push you. What you've been through—you're traumatized, I can see that, and you need time to recover. I'll do whatever I can to give you that time, to make sure Peyton does, too. And your mom." He smiled briefly, hoping to spark some of their mutual eye-rolling at her mother's over-involvement in her life, but there was nothing. Just more pain, Liv's eyes dropping again to her coffee. "All I ask is that you give me some hope, some … just … will you take this back? Please?" He took the ring out of his pocket, where he had carried it ever since she'd given it back. "Will you wear this as a symbol to both of us that some day we can be together again?"

Her face twisted as she looked at it as if she was about to cry, one hand lifting, reaching for it. Then she snatched the hand back, putting it in her lap, and shook her head. "I can't."

Clenching his jaw against the his own tears, his throat swollen and aching with them, he took the ring back, dropping it in his pocket. "Are you sure?"

"I am. Trust me, if there was any—but … " She shook her head again.

This silent ghost was so unlike his Liv, who chattered and talked through things and went through a thousand thoughts a minute, it made his skin crawl. "Will you at least see someone?"

"Someone?"

"A therapist."

"Oh. Huh." She blinked, as though she hadn't considered the possibility. He wished he'd suggested it days ago, but he had been so thrown by her returning the ring, he couldn't think straight.

"You'll think about it?"

Liv frowned. "I … can't."

"You can't do this alone, Liv. I know it feels like that, that you can't trust anyone and you can't rely on anyone, and you have to just get through this. I know that's who you are, and I know that's how a lot of people respond to a trauma like this, but … you're not really making your best decisions right now, and …"

She interrupted him, her eyes blazing, her voice stronger than he had heard it since he'd sent her off to that damn party. "Yes, I am. Major, I can't make you understand, I wish I could, but the choices I've made, the things I've done—they were the only things possible. You have to trust me that I know what I'm doing, or I wouldn't be doing it." Liv leaned across the table. "Have you ever known me not to have a plan?"

He thought of the color-coded notebooks she kept, planning out the details of her schedule and her long-term plans and their wedding and future house projects. He had to admit that he never had known her not to have a plan. "And … leaving me is part of your plan now?" Major tried to keep his voice from cracking, but he couldn't.

"It is. I'm sorry, more sorry than I can ever tell you."

"Then tell me this—Liv, do you still love me?" She had to answer him. He couldn't take it if she didn't.

"It won't change anything."

"I have to know."

She looked at him closely, then nodded. "I do."

God, he wanted to shake her. If she loved him, why wouldn't she let him help her? But she wouldn't, that much was clear. Major felt their future hanging in the balance—he could accept that she needed to do things her way and wait, as patiently as he could, for her to come to her senses again, or he could totally lose his cool here in this cheap coffee shop and blow any chance of ever having her back in his arms again. When he put it that way, there was really no choice at all. He loved her, he needed her, he wasn't giving up this easily. "All right. We'll … do it your way. Just … don't shut me out, okay? I'm here for you, you know that."

Liv nodded. "I know." She looked down at her coffee again, the cup still half full. "I have to go."

"Yeah." He'd expected as much. This was a longer conversation than anyone had gotten out of her since the boat party, as far as he could tell.

She stood up, then paused by the edge of the table. "I'll … I'll take care of calling and—canceling everything. You don't have to do anything."

"Thanks." He hadn't wanted to ask—in part not to burden her when she was so clearly hanging on by a thread and in part because if they canceled the church and the caterer and the florist and everything else it would all be real and Major had wanted to hold on to the dream just that much longer, to tell himself that she couldn't really be doing this. But he hadn't looked forward to making those calls, either.

"Bye." It was little more than a whisper, and then she was gone. Major was left here with these cups of terrible coffee at an empty table where Liv used to be, and he couldn't hold back the tears any longer.