Thanks for all your feedback, here's the next part! Hope you enjoy :)

Part III

Things start perking up, after that. Karen pulls herself together in that moment, and by the time Owen and the boys get back from their walk, she's put something on for dinner. Claire and Owen set themselves up in the spare bedroom, and get a precious moment of quiet between walls.

"How's Karen?" he asks, brow furrowed.

"Struggling. But she'll cope… it's just… it's been so long, she doesn't remember what it's like to be on her own, no matter how long she hasn't really been with Scott… they got together when she was a freshman, you know that? She's never been with anyone else."

Owen gives her a small smile. "A huge change, then. And how about you? Did you have any inappropriate college boyfriends that lead you astray?"

She shakes her head, laughing, dryly. "Nope. None. I didn't have my first boyfriend until I was 23 years old, just out of college."

He raises an eyebrows slightly. "You probably had the men scared, even then… and I didn't think the high school quarterbacks could get scared…"

"Thank you for coming." She breathes. "You didn't have to. You were turning into quite the fisherman."

Owen shakes his head, wondering if she'll ever quite understand. "I was a fisherman in Costa Rica, when you needed to be there for Masrani Global. I was a hideout partner in that God-awful hotel we stayed in the first few weeks, when you needed to stay behind closed doors… I'll be whatever I can find to be in Wisconsin for however long you need to be here… I'm sticking with you, Claire."

"For survival." She breathes, and his eyes dart down to her lips, his pupils blown, before Karen calls them down to dinner. He swallows, thinks hard about old people naked and follows her down the stairs.

A couple of weeks into their stay with Karen and the boys, Claire starts getting them. Job offers, from various different corporations, huge companies, and one far too hopeful theme park, all across the US. The first one she receives, an email from one of the largest shopping complexes in Colorado, offering her top priority in the interview process for assistant CEO, she stares at the screen in silence for an indefinite amount of time, until Owen comes back into their room. He looks at her face, paler white than usual, and then takes the laptop from her, reads the email, and sets it to the side.

"You're freaking out." He breathes, putting one hand on her side, and cupping her cheek with the other, stroking his thumb across her cheek. When she looks at him, there are tears in her eyes.

"There's a life afterwards." She half whispers, pressing her lips against his wrist. "There's people that know exactly who I am and still want to hire me, I… we don't have to be always stuck in the after-Jurassic World place we're in right now. One day it's just going to be a thing that happened to us, once…"

"And so many other things are going to happen to us." He finishes, and presses his lips against hers. She closes her eyes, and smiles. It sure as hell sounds like he's promising her something not dissimilar to forever.

After the first one, they keep coming. But Claire keeps ignoring them, for now. Right now, it's about Karen, and everything she needs Claire to be.

And she's not sure she's quite ready to start the 'life afterwards'.

It's Gray she's the most worried about. He still has nightmares, though if you try to ask him about, he denies screaming in the night. Zach gives her almost sharp eyes and mutters that he'll handle it, and though Karen's managing so much better now, she knows her sister doesn't have any idea how to broach the subject of 'the incident'.

After she's been split from Scott almost two months, the divorce lawyer contacts Karen, and surprisingly, she hangs up the phone, a small, slightly bitter smile on her face. When she asks Claire if she and Owen could stay in with the boys tonight whilst she goes out for a drink with some friends, Claire's heart swells.

They sit down in front of a movie – Ironman 3, or something like that, Claire's paying very little attention – suddenly she realises this is her opportunity to let Gray know he's not the only one struggling. She muses on that throughout the film.

When the film finishes and they get up to go to bed, Zach's out of the room before they can hardly even breathe – there's a girl in his Economics class he's been messaging like crazy this past week or so – and Claire seizes the moment.

"I hope I can sleep tonight." She sighs, as if to Owen, but loud enough for Gray, who's yawning from his almost-asleep state on the couch, to hear. "Sometimes the nightmares keep me up."

Owen frowns slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if doubting Claire's strategy. But after moments of silence, there's a tiny voice from the couch.

"You still dream about it too?"

They take a walk one evening after they've been living with Karen nearly three months, and neither of them expect the rain. But once it starts, it starts pelting, and Claire starts running in the direction of Karen's road – cupping her hands over her head as if to protect her hair.

Owen can't help laughing – it's futile, they're about a half hour walk away from Karen's road, and the heavens have opened. She spins, eyes flashing.

"What's funny?" It's raining so hard her hair's already beyond help.

"You." He smiles, taking a step towards her. Is that the ghost of a smile on her lips? "You're going to run all the way home in those shoes?"

She looks up at him through hooded eyes, the echo of a memory of running somewhere quite different in three and a half inch heels dancing between them, but neither of them mention it. She takes her hands down from above her head and steps back in his direction. She loops her arms around his neck, a definite smile on her face now.

"I was going to try." She laughs slightly, and looks up into the rain. "This is going to ruin my hair."

He presses his lips against hers; briefly, but full of promise. The kind of kiss that catches your breath and leaves you gasping for something more.

"I think you're probably not going to make it back before there's some damage done." He chuckles.

"Well, I'm not now." She pouts slightly, indignant.

"God, I love you." He breathes, and Claire's sure her heart stops for a moment. She looks down, abashed, but he tilts her chin up so her eyes can't miss his. She bites her lip. "All of you, everything you do that drives me crazy… running ridiculous places in ridiculous shoes… and your stupid idea that it even matters what your hair looks like. I love you with wet hair. Hell, I'd love you with no hair."

Her heart feels genuinely like it's swelling in her chest, and she's never felt like that before.

There's something almost worried in his eyes then, searching hers, waiting for a response. She almost laughs when she realises he could even consider any other response.

"I love you too." She breathes, so quietly he can't be sure he heard anything at all, "And since we've cleared that up, I was thinking we should think about where we're going, now. We can't stay living with Karen forever – she needs to get used to living on her own with the boys – I need to apply to one of those jobs, I'll go mad not working forever, we should probably look into buying a place near wherever we both end up working, and I-"

Owen cuts her off with a deep belly laugh, and cups a hand round the side of her face. "I even love that about you. That you can turn a guy pouring his heart out to you into the minutes for a meeting, and that I'm pretty sure you just suggested in the most decidedly unromantic way that we move in together – you know, properly-"

She frowns slightly. "Don't you think that would be a good idea, then? I mean, sure, if you want to work somewhere other than one of those places I've been offered, and we'll manage long distance, or you think it would be too soon, I-"

"I'll follow you anywhere, Claire. You should know that by now. I'm going wherever you're going."

She can't conceal the little smile that turns up the corner of her mouth. "Wherever we're going, we go together then. You should decide what you want to do, and we can look at the opportunities for you near those job offers – we'll have to find somewhere for that life afterwards I found so scary..."

"Not so scary anymore?"

She looks up at him, a tiny smile on her lips, and tilts her forehead against his, in the still pouring rain. "Suddenly it seems quite exciting. Suddenly I want to be part of it."

So it turns out three parts weren't nearly enough… I think the next one will be the last, but until I finish with the tweaking/final details I can't promise anything.

Be patient awaiting my next update, I'm currently taking some exams and I'm writing in my spare time/on little revision breaks, so it might be a little longer than the first 3 chapters!

Thanks for reviewing :)!