Hey everyone!

I hope you all had a great New Years Eve/Day and Christmas! This is the final chapter of Mending the Heart and I hope you all enjoy it! It was supposed to come out on my birthday, then on New Years Eve, and now it is finally come out...Sorry about the delay! Life happens, I guess.

Enjoy!

Mending the Heart

Part Three

"Are you sure about this?" May asked timidly as she walked with Shelly through the front doors. "What if he doesn't want to see me?"

"Since we now know that Archie is a lying piece of shit, even if he says he doesn't want to see you, I call bullshit and you're staying," Shelly replied calmly, flicking a strand of blue over her shoulder. "It'll be fine."

"This is going to be so awkward…" May lamented, wringing her hands. Part of her was excited, but part of her was also seething with hurt and anger. Why would he lie just to leave her? Why would he do that if he still loved her just as much as she loved him? Why?

"I'll be there," Shelly assured her. She chuckled. "But expect a lot of swearing. He's going to be surprised as-"

They were interrupted by the sound of someone hacking on liquid. Both pairs of eyes honed in on a large man sitting at a booth at the nearby Starbucks, who was pounding his chest with a large fist and staring at them with the look of a deer in the headlights.

"Well I'll be," Shelly smirked. "There's the bastard himself." She began to approach him.

May, however, was also reflecting the look of a deer in the headlights and was frozen in place. She hadn't seen him in so long…and now here he was.

Tears filled her eyes and she quickly blinked them away. Her hands were trembling and her heart was pounding like a Thoroughbred's hooves on the racetrack. She swallowed hard.

Shelly noticed her young friend's state and turned around. "Hey, hun, don't worry. It'll be fine." She held her hand out to her and May tentatively took it, shaking her head.

They approached Archie, who was now approaching them. May couldn't look into his eyes, so she focused on his chest, which was somehow more muscular than before. He looked stunning in a navy blue V-neck and fitted black jeans. He looked just as good as he had before they broke up, while she had lost weight in her depression and her skin had grown paler due to her shutting herself in.

They finally met up and silence reigned for a long second. May wouldn't look at him, but she could feel Archie's eyes on her.

"So, Shell, got any more surprises up your sleeve before I leave?" Archie grumbled, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Something in May snapped. Here he was, looking so good, so healthy, so completely composed about this whole thing while she was a complete mess over seeing him again. She felt her cheeks flushed and she glared.

"You two have issues to work out," Shelly said casually. "Since you're leaving, I thought it would be best that those issues were resolved before you flew the coop."

"If I had known-"

Smack!

May had marched straight up to him and slapped him across the face with all her strength. Archie finally looked her in the eyes and she knew she looked like a mess: eyes watery and red, cheeks flushed, teeth gritted. But she suddenly didn't care.

"Bastard!" she hissed. "That's what you get for lying to me!"

Archie's face now had the perfect impression of a handprint on it. Bewildered, he rubbed his cheek and just looked at her, as if truly seeing her for the first time.

"I missed you," he said, his lips pulling into a small smile.

Tears overflowed and she lunged at him. He took a step back in case she was attacking him, but all she did was latch onto his shirt and start bawling into his chest. Archie looked to Shelly for assistance, but she just shrugged with the attitude of, 'It's your mess, you clean it up.'

After a moment he wrapped his arms around her gently, but as he felt how perfectly her small body still fit against his and remembered just how wonderful it was to hold her, his grip tightened and he embraced her fully. He rested his chin on her head and breathed in her fresh scent like a drug addict who hadn't taken a hit in too long. Two years, to be exact.

May Andrews was his drug, to be sure.

Archie remembered the first time he had held May while she cried; it had been just after her boss had set her up with a drug deal that she had been unaware of. After being tricked into breaking the law, she had come to him for reassurance. He hadn't been as gentle about it as he could have been, which he had felt guilty about for a long time afterwards, but nonetheless it was the first time he had held her while she broke down.

While he had been uncomfortable the first time around and he had started out uncomfortable this time, his body seemed to react to May's proximity accordingly and it was all he could do not to grip her closer to him when she started to pull away. He had to force his shoulders to relax and the urge to pull her back into his body was overwhelming. He managed to keep his instincts at bay, however, and released her successfully.

Shelly watched on with soft eyes as the two lovers reunited, albeit for a heartbreakingly short period of time.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, sir," she reminded Archie while the two just looked at each other, lost in their other half's eyes.

This seemed to break the trance they had been in.

"Yeah, you do," May said, and while she attempted to be threatening, it was only cute when she was doing it with puffy red eyes and mussed up hair.

"Let's, uh, take a seat," Archie said nervously. The look Shelly gave him told him that it was obvious he was just trying to buy time, but when May didn't accuse him of anything, the older woman stayed quiet.

The trio walked over to the table where Archie had previously been sitting and took their seats, May across from Archie and Shelly off to the side. Awkward silence reigned between Archie and May for a brief time before Shelly punched Archie in the shoulder none too gently.

"Hey!" he snapped, rubbing his aching bicep. "What was that for?"

"You told her you left her for me," Shelly bit right back. "That's what that was for."

Archie reddened and averted his eyes. "It seemed like a good idea at the time…"

"You idiot!" the females chorused at the same time. May went on, "You broke my heart and made me hate her and she didn't even do anything! How is that fair?"

"Good question!" Shelly agreed nastily. "Let's hear you answer it!"

Both women glared at him pointedly and Archie broke under the pressure.

"Okay, okay, fine. I was doin' it to protect you! It was a dumbshit move to get Shelly in on it, but it was the only good reason I could find at the time!" Shelly raised her fist again and Archie raised his hands up to defend himself.

However, May interrupted the impending brawl. "What do you mean, to protect me?"

"Maxie," Archie growled, and Shelly lowered her fist. "After whole fiasco when you started working at the bakery, we had a deal. You had to keep working at the bakery so he could try to get into your pants or whatever since I lived right next to you and everybody won. It was supposed to end when you made a choice."

May's jaw dropped at the ridiculousness of the deal that had been made over her and Shelly summarized, "So basically, modern man reverted back to the days of the Neanderthals."

Archie at least had the decency to look sheepish. "Well, we guys get territorial and shit. What can I say?"

"You could learn to behave like adults and-"

"What does this have to do with you breaking up with me for no good reason?" May interrupted somewhat waspishly.

"Well, so the deal ended when you chose me, I guess. The son of a bitch didn't really put up a fuss. But when you got that new job at the museum and left that pansy-ass bakery, he got his panties in a twist and decided it was time for some good, old-fashioned revenge. He had befriended one of the rich twats on the school board and had enough leverage to possibly ruin your scholarship, so you wouldn't have been able to keep going to school at Harvard. He told me about this and said it was either leave you or fuck up your whole life," Archie explained. "I chose the high road."

"You fucking idiot!" May screeched, slamming her palm on the table. A barista glanced over at them with suspicious concern and Shelly waved her off reassuringly. "Why didn't you just tell me? We could have figured something out! I could have, I don't know, talked to him or something?"

"I just wanted what was best for you and you didn't need the drama!" Archie was starting to get angry, only able to handle so much abuse in one conversation.

"The 'best for me' was breaking my heart and telling me you left me for a real woman?!" May growled right back. "As if that wouldn't give me an inferiority complex for the rest of my life!"

"At least you'd have your fucking degree!"

"I rather have just gone to a different school! I almost failed Chem II that semester because I was so depressed!"

"That's dumb as shit! You shouldn't let me have that much control over your life!"

"You're dumb as shit! It wouldn't have been a problem in the first place if you had just freaking told me what was going on!"

"Yeah, I fucked up! Whatcha gonna do about it? I'm flyin' halfway across the world in less than an hour and a half!"

"You'd better hope I don't follow you just to kick your-"

"Excuse me," a firm voice interrupted. "If you're going to continue being so loud, I'm going to have to ask you to go outside."

Shelly watched on helplessly as a security guard, called over by the barista behind the counter, scolded the two for their behavior. "It won't happen again, officer," Shelly assured him, kicking both Archie and May with her stiletto heels under the table. Archie yelped and the officer looked at him strangely, but nodded and left.

It was quiet for a moment before the elder woman at the table cleared her throat. "Now, children, I think it's time we discussed things like adults."

The silence continued for a while after that, Archie glaring down at the table and May staring dejectedly out the window of the café.

Finally, Archie said quietly, "I'm sorry, babe."

It was all that needed to be said. "It's okay. There's nothing that can be done now." May looked up at him with a sad smile.

"I'll have to get a new phone when I land," Archie said, "but if you have the same number, I'll text you?" He couldn't hide the hopefulness in his voice.

"Yeah," she said with a smile. "I'd like that."

It was then time for Archie to leave and they embraced again, May starting to cry once more at the feeling of being reunited just to be ripped away again. She couldn't very well cancel her program in Australia and she didn't know where Archie was going, but she wouldn't expect him to bail on whatever he had planned to go with her, so it truly was goodbye all over again.

This time, though, it didn't have to be permanent.

May had just gotten settled in at the home she was staying in with some other students who had come to study in her program. She had met a nice, exuberant guy named Satoshi from Japan and her host in the small port town where they would be staying was a flirty, slightly older guy named Brock. She liked them well enough, as they would be her roommates, and thought they could get along very nicely.

It was her first day to go out onto the beach and she was happier than she could ever recall being in a very long time. Brendan had heard about her closure with Archie and had listened to her cry on the phone until she fell asleep that night, but had encouraged her to let herself move on now that she finally had the end to the story that she needed. She was feeling that she just might take that advice.

Stepping out onto the pier with Satoshi, her team leader Melissa, and the rest of the program participants, May gazed up at the medium-sized ship they would taking out to sea. It was being manned by sailors hired by the program's hosts and Melissa told them that they should try to get along with the sailors as best they could.

Melissa was talking now and May was struggling to pay attention when she saw a familiar silhouette cross the collapsible bridge over to the dock. Her eyes widened when she took him in and her knees suddenly turned to jelly.

He hadn't noticed her, though, so she went back to attempting to absorb the information being given to her by her team leader. It was all very important stuff, she imagined, but all she could think was what were the chances that he would be here?

Finally, they were allowed to board the ship and May kept with the group, although her eyes kept wandering in his direction. He was now unwinding the ropes tying them to the dock with the help of another man who she unsurprisingly did not recognize. He was talking amicably to him, though, so May assumed that he was already making friends. Good thing she was, too.

It felt like forever before the sailors walked over for introductions; by then, they were already speeding out towards the reef.

The moment their eyes met she smiled at him brightly and his jaw dropped in surprise. Nobody noticed the exchange, but the look he gave her told her that they would be speaking soon.

As it turned out, they were very busy throughout their time on the sea and it wasn't until after they had docked towards the end of the day that May was able to approach him. She waited patiently for him to get off work—because she assumed that he was here for work and was actually being paid for this instead of being the one paying for the experience—and told Brock that she would catch up with him and Ash later.

When he approached, there was a question in his eyes. "What the fuck are you doing here?" he asked, but it didn't sound angry at all, just elated.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded excitedly before launching herself into his arms. He caught her easily and gripped her so tightly that she had to pull away in order to breathe. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to be in Australia, too?"

Archie scratched his head. "Well, I didn't want to get our hopes up in case we were on two separate sides of the country."

May nodded, thinking that made sense. "Okay, I won't begrudge you that one."

It was quiet for a moment before Archie cleared his throat. "Well, what do you say? Can I take you to dinner, my treat?"

A blush burned her face. "Are we…are we doing this…again?"

He looked down at her with a gentle smile. "Only if you want to. There's ain't no redheaded bastard to ruin things this time."

She nodded, barely able to make eye contact, and grasped his hand. The sun was setting, highlighting the golden tones in her hair and making his darker skin almost glow in the light. They walked down the dock towards the beach, and May thought that while this wasn't going to be easy after all the damage that had been done, it would certainly be worth it.

No matter what happened, it was a start.

fin.

And that, my dears, is a rap! I hope you all enjoyed it! Don't forget to review!