"No!" he choked out, balling his hands into fists. Stephanie rounded the desk and knelt down to check on him. "No, Steph, that can't be true. You wouldn't do this to me. Say it's not true," he said, sitting up on the floor and grabbing her wrists. "Tell me you're lying. You have to be lying."

"We're broken up!" Her eyes flickered like a candle flame, and she tugged out of Chris's grip, standing up and dusting her pants off. She looked down on him with disdain, and Chris knew then that he had lost her. The Stephanie he recalled, his Stephanie, was long gone, and she wasn't coming back. He had burned every bridge with her, had let her down every chance she gave for him to prove his love, and now he was left with nothing except a bitter ex-girlfriend, who was carrying another man's baby. "I'm sorry you're hurt, but...actually, no, I'm not sorry at all," she said, crossing her arms, "because you hurt me while we were together. I gave you a chance to grow up, but you didn't want to, so whatever we had is done. Accept it and move on, Chris."

Her rejection supplied the drive and determination that it took to get Chris moving, and he rose from the floor, dusting off his pants just as she had earlier. If he wanted a fighting chance, he had to talk to her like a man, and that required him to stop throwing tantrums on the floor of her dad's office. "I love you, Steph, even if you don't think I do. I've always loved you. We were growing apart, yes, but I never thought it was anything that couldn't be fixed. I can still be what you need, if you're willing to let me try."

"I can't."

"Baby..." He reached a hand out, but she slapped it away.

"I'm not your baby anymore, okay?"

"Fine, but how do you expect me to believe this baby isn't mine?" he asked, pointing toward her stomach. "I haven't heard anything about you and a boyfriend, and there are no pictures or online stories about you and another guy, so that must mean I was the last person you were with."

"I haven't been in a relationship since you, but that doesn't mean I don't have an active sex life."

Chris guffawed, turning his back. He rubbed his fingertips against his forehead, kneading the skin as he paced from one end of the room to the other. Stephanie leaned against the front edge of Vince's desk, slouching like she hadn't a single care in the world, and for some reason, her lack of compassion set Chris off. He stormed over to her and grabbed her wrists. This time, when she attempted to tug herself free, he refused to let go. He was going to make his point, or die trying.

In a voice low and dangerously solemn, Stephanie told him, "Get your hands off of me, right now."

"No."

"I said," she rose to her feet from the desk, "get the hell off of me. You have no right to touch me when I don't want you to."

"I'm not letting go until you listen to me."

"Fine," she shrugged, "have it your way."

Chris rejoiced, inwardly of course, but he was still in the midst of celebration. He had shown Stephanie who was boss and that he wasn't going to put up with her bullying tactics. She could turn her back on him all she wanted, but lying about the paternity of her baby, their baby, an unborn child they most certainly had created together, was an all-time low that he would never let her live down. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a howl of shock when Stephanie stomped down on his foot, with no warning whatsoever.

He released her hands in a brief moment of distraction, and she smirked, crossing her arms and circumventing his broken form to leave the room. If he allowed her to leave, they would no longer have their privacy, and if they didn't have a quiet place to speak, she would throw a fit until someone came to her aid and sent him away. The fight to keep her in Vince's office was on. Chris ran after her, slapping his palm onto the door and slamming it shut from behind. She whirled around, palm connecting with his flesh in the form of a most vicious slap, but Chris remained undeterred, pressing his body as flat to hers as possible and pinning her arms to the door, above her head.

"Let go of me!" she squirmed. Stephanie attempted to raise her knee high enough to send it crashing into his groin and throw him off balance, but she was in no position to follow through with the action, so she lashed out verbally instead, angry she had lost control. "I hate you, you stupid bastard! I didn't want you because you weren't man enough for me, okay? You didn't satisfy me in any way, and I left, so get your filthy hands off of me, you asshole!"

"I know what you're trying to do," Chris smiled, shaking his head. He leaned in, the tip of his nose bumping hers, and she jerked away sharply.

"Get away from me. This isn't your baby, because you weren't man enough to get me pregnant," she mocked, glaring. Chris's face dropped, and the inferno returned to her gaze. "What? You're surprised by that? You didn't realize that you didn't have what it takes to make me a mother? Why do you think we were together for five years, even without protection sometimes, and I never got pregnant? It's because you're an overgrown little boy, Chris," she taunted. "You don't have anything that I need, so I moved on to a real man, who was actually capable of giving me a baby. I wasn't looking to have kids right now, but it happened, because fate intervened and wanted me to fall into parenthood and get the hell away from you."

Chris shook his head, bearing down on his grip when she attempted to squirm out of it. "Why are you trying to hurt me?"

"Because I don't like you, now get off of me!" she screeched, enough to make Chris wince.

"I don't think that's true at all," he guessed.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. Do you expect me to believe you would be acting like this if you no longer had any feelings for me?" he said. "You're angry because you're hurt, and you're hurt because I wasn't as good a boyfriend to you as I could have been. I'm sorry for hurting you, I really am. I wanted to come into your life and make it better than it had been when I first found you, but all I did was make things harder on you, and I wish I could take that back, but I can't. All I can say is that I'm so sorry. I hope you can forgive me, whether it's now or someday in the future."

She cleared her throat, blinking away a welling of tears that sprang to her eyes. When she swallowed thickly, Chris knew he was getting through to her. After a pause, the breakthrough was lost, and she replied, "You're pressing on my bladder, and I have to pee now, so can you please let me go?"

"Steph," Chris whispered her name like a song, leaning in and pressing his lips to her cheek. When she didn't struggle or move her head, he enjoyed the closeness, pressing his cheek flat against hers and holding her there. "I need you to be honest with me. I can understand that you might not be comfortable with having me around, but you can't keep me away from my baby because of that. It's not fair, and it's not right."

"I try to do what's right all the time. I try so hard."

"I know you do, baby."

"Please stop calling me that."

"I'm sorry. Old habits die hard, I guess."

"This may not be what you want to hear," she said, breath tickling his neck as he remained pressed flat against her, "but this baby isn't yours. The timing is off. You and I broke up almost six months ago. I had a doctor's appointment last week and found out I'm a little over four months along. It doesn't add up, no matter how you slice it."

He peeled his cheek away from hers, their skin flushed in the spot where they had been connected. Stephanie was calm, so he let go of her arms and she dropped them at her sides, not attempting an escape. Chris was thankful for that. "I don't understand," he shook his head. "I want to, but I need more of an explanation than this."

"You don't think I wondered whether or not the baby was yours?" she asked. "Of course I thought about it, Chris. I went over it in my mind all the time, but I sat down and did the calculations, and there's just no way. I'm four months along, and my due date is July 8th. That would mean I got pregnant sometime in October, but we broke up in July and haven't been together since then. She's not your baby, and the sooner you accept that, the easier this will be on everyone," she said, bringing her hands up to massage her stomach.

"She?" Chris blanched, sucking at his teeth.

"Yes," Stephanie smiled, not in a mocking way, but in the proud, motherly type of way. "I recently found out it's a girl, so I'm pretty thrilled. I always wanted a daughter, and now I'm going to get one."

"She's really, really not mine?"

"She's not."

He ducked his head, bringing his hands up to cover his face. His knees threatened to lose their functioning all over again, but he held it together, only because he didn't want to come off any more pathetic than he already had. In a tone muffled by his hands, he said, "I probably have no business asking this, but if I'm not her father, who is?"

Silence filled the air, except for the muffled sound of nearby footsteps and voices as people roamed the hallways freely, having no clue the amount of tragedy taking place inside Vince's private office. The second hand on the clock ticked, and Chris trained his breathing so that he inhaled deeply every fifth tick and let it back out after the same amount of time. He lost himself in a sea of perpetual time, never slowing down or speeding up, but keeping an even pace that tortured his very soul. He waited so long to hear from Stephanie that he thought she might not answer at all, and just when he lost hope, her voice cut through the thick wall of nothingness, slicing roughly at the foundation, like a chainsaw through wood.

"You're exactly right," she said, meeting his eyes when he finally lowered his hands. "You have no business asking."

Chris slipped around her, grabbed the door handle, yanked the door open, and fled. He ran like a marathon participant, his coworkers becoming a blur once again, just as they had when he first entered. He passed seamstresses, makeup artists, stretching wrestlers, vending and soda machines, the lively catering room, and everything in between. He hadn't run from his problems that frantically since his mom had gotten sick and forgotten who he was, during one of his weekly visits in 2005. The reason for his escape on the present day was completely different, but the deep-seated pain was all the same.

His throat burned, his eyes blurred the passing images to nothing more than random color blots, and his chest ached. He heard his name being called, people asking what he was doing unannounced at a show and why he wasn't performing with Fozzy, their voice fading out the faster he ran from them. His life would forever be impaired without the woman he loved, and he had to survive knowing the loss of her was his own fault. When he circled back around to the same doors he had entered through, Chris burst out of them, bumping into the firm body of a man waiting to be let inside, undoubtedly one of his coworkers, but he didn't care enough to stop and find out which one.

He felt Andrew's eyes burning a hole into his back for bursting in without permission and putting his job on the line, but an irked security guard was the least of his concerns. Chris made it back to his car, fumbling with the keys and giving each of his eyes a ferocious swipe to remove the tears that were blocking his vision. Once the door was unlocked, he climbed in and slammed it shut, dropping his forehead onto the steering wheel and wallowing in his grief. He lost track of what time it must have been when he heard a series of wounded sobs from nearby, too uncaring to lift his head and find out where they were coming from. He couldn't help but wonder what the odds were that someone would be equally as upset as him, and at the very same time.

His only focus was slowing his breathing down enough that he wouldn't hyperventilate all alone in his car. It had been a long time since he felt so unloved and tossed away like filth, and all he wanted was adequate time to miss Stephanie until he could finally get over his loss of her, but he couldn't move past the howls of absolute despair filling his ears, rendering him helpless to concentrate on anything else. He clenched his fists, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing himself to block the sound out, to shut out all surroundings, but it wasn't working. Encompassing him from all sides was the most wretched cries he had ever heard, and he was hit with a rush of blinding fury in seconds, raising his head as he challenged the surrounding area, searching for the culprit so he could put them in their place. When he finally found the offender, he took no action.

Chris had been the one making the sounds.

By the show's end, Stephanie found herself hanging around outside of Vince's office. Her head hadn't been in her work at all that evening, the show passing by without compelling her to even glance at a monitor. Vince had taken it upon himself to give her a personal and extremely public verbal thrashing, letting all of her employees know exactly how incompetent he thought she had been. Perhaps if he knew of her internal struggle, he would be a smidgen more understanding. Her time with Chris was up, and she had come to terms with it, but he obviously hadn't and that hurt her. She was glad to be free of their rocky relationship, but she couldn't go on knowing that he was in pain and not doing a single thing about it.

Vince's door creaked open and she stood at attention, her hand automatically zipping to her stomach. She did that a lot. "Dad, hi. I've been wanting to leave for the night, but I didn't want to walk out to the parking lot by myself, so I thought I would wait for you."

Vince turned his back, pausing to lock his office door, although she wasn't sure why, since he was finished with it for the night. He shoved the keys into the lower pocket of his suit jacket and held his briefcase in the other hand. His eyes met Stephanie's and he gave a curt nod, gesturing with his hand for her to take the lead. "You disappointed me tonight. I expect a lot better out of you, and especially after your recent promotion. I wouldn't have given you the position if I knew you were going to present yourself the way you did this evening."

"I'm sorry."

"Actions speak a lot louder than words, and I'll need to see progress before I determine just how sorry you are."

She slowed her pace, waiting for Vince to catch up. Once he was at her side, she tried again to reason with him. "I wasn't expecting Chris to come visit today, so when he did, it completely threw me off my game. He found out somehow that I was pregnant, and just like I expected, he assumed the baby was his. I guess I can't blame him for thinking that, but he can't just barge in here and expect for me to tell him who my baby's father is."

"He asked about that?" Vince wondered.

"Yes, and I told him it was none of his business."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I guess because I didn't feel like it was his place to ask. I gave him the timeline for when I got pregnant and made it very clear that the baby isn't his, so I don't see why he needs to know anything else. He doesn't deserve any more information than what I gave," Stephanie said, tone creeping higher the more distressed she grew. "When we dated, he was always out partying his ass off. He never gave a damn about me, but now that we're broken up and I have a new life, he wants to come in and act like he cares so much. He's out of the picture, and I'm glad. I don't wish bad on him, but we're no good together, and if he thinks we were, he's only fooling himself."

"I never liked how toxic you two could sometimes be together, but I do think he loved you," Vince said, placing his hand on the small of Stephanie's back and guiding her around a sharp corner. "I still think he loves you, even now."

"He'll have to love me from afar, then," she said.

"If that's what you think is best, then I support you," Vince said. "Always go with your heart, just like I taught you from the time you were little."

"My heart says the only thing that matters anymore is my daughter."