Here is Chapter two. I should have Chapter 3 up sometime tomorrow. I wanted to say thank you for those who reviewed and like my story! This is the first time I have put my writing out into the world for others to judge…which is scary and totally exciting Hope you enjoy!

Pounding, lots and lots of pounding. That's what finally woke House up from his drunken stupor he fell into the night before. As he begrudgingly emerged from his dreamless sleep he realized that the pounding was coming from the torrential downpour of rain hitting the hastily put together roof of the hut he rented the evening prior.

He blinked the sleep away and looked to his left, startled for a second, but not surprised to see a buxom blonde girl next to him. He winced as he shifted upright noting that the pounding was also coming from his head, and the massive hangover that was starting to form around him. After House surveyed the area he woke up in, it was then that he began to piece together where the hell he was and what the hell happened.

He was in Mexico, he remembered that much. He had driven the nail in the coffin and left New Jersey, with no going back. It was freeing, knowing all the hate that probably emanated from those he left behind. He could finally be done with all of it! Be free from Wilson and Cuddy and the hospital forever, waste his life and money away in another country until he overdosed or drank himself to death. 'Oh what a way to go,' he thought as he not so quietly starting picking things up from around the room in hopes of arousing the busty blonde from his bed so he could be left alone in his misery.

Alone. That's what he wanted right? That was all he ever wanted. It was what was meant to be from the beginning. He tried to be normal, to be a friend in his own way, to solve puzzles and be with the women he always…House stopped his thought. That didn't work; he would not rehash it, not dwell on it, on her.

The girl with a name he probably never learned the night before woke up and started to say something. House held up his hand to stop her and pointed to the door. Voices were only going to make matters worse for his head right now. She made a sour face and huffily got up, got dressed, and flipped him off while exiting the door.

Once she left, House sat back down on the bed while massaging his leg. 'Where the hell are my pills,' House wondered, as he surveyed the small room in front of him. After finding three empty bottles he noticed one last prescription on the floor in the corner of the room and limped over to pick them up. Empty…how much had he taken over the last two days. He found some tequila on the table and took a couple swigs of it to numb the pain, knowing that it would only do the trick for so long until he had to go searching for some pills in town.

After taking a shower and washing the night's events off his body he rummaged for some clean clothes and went out to search for pills. Of course when he got outside he realized there was no way he was going anywhere. It looked like a hurricane was swirling around him, and in the sand he already had a hard time using his cane. House slammed the door closed and reached for the tequila again, knowing that he had a hard day ahead with only a quarter bottle of booze left, no pills, and a couple bags of potato chips on the table. This is exactly the opposite of the day he had planned for himself. He needed to get out, needed his pills, and desperately needed a distraction to quiet his head. At that last thought House's leg began to throb and then the throb turned into pulsating pain. As he slowly began to detox House made his way over to the toilet and waited for the vomiting to begin.

He knew this process well he had been through it before. At Mayfield he had been alone, locked away in a white room screaming out for help, pleading for anyone to fix him. He was alone now just like then and the times before that. The only time he wasn't alone was not a part of reality. A sick hallucination from a delusional man reaching for the one woman he'd ever trusted. Someone he could never have. He knew it then as he had known since the moment he met her; she was never going to be his. Not really. Then the hallucination changed. She kissed him; she had wanted to kiss him, not because she was in pain but because she loved him. Seeing the look in her eyes, the love in her eyes, even though it was in a world he had created, terrified him and made him happier than he had ever felt. It was after that fantasy that House finally realized that he needed to have her. Whatever the cost; whatever he had to do. She couldn't just be an elusive desire anymore. He had to try, to finally hold her again after so many years of pushing her away.

So he fixed himself. Of course Mayfield was a waking nightmare, something he fought against most of his time there. He thought of Cuddy very little during that time, falling back into old habits of denial and doubt. House had never been one to hold out hope. Living with hope was a foreign world to him. He would never be a man Cuddy would want, sober or not. He knew deep down she loved him, he had known for years, but he also knew her. Besides being one of the sexist women he had ever been with, she was also the most stubborn. A streak in her he obviously admired but a quality among others that would deter her from ever giving him a chance. So he once again pushed her out of his thoughts, pushed her away like he had done for most of his adult life…until he saw her again.

Seeing Cuddy sober for the first time in years was like an explosion for House. A bomb went off in his heart. She had looked at him through new eyes, he noticed it right away. He might finally be the man she could let her whole heart love. Of course House should have known it would never be that easy, their past twenty years of back and forth should have clued him in. She had Lucas, and he had nothing. He tried, oh how he tried to mess them up. To convince her to finally surrender to what her heart was screaming for all those years. It took her awhile, he knew it would, but he would wait.

The moment she came to him was indescribable, she was there, beautifully in front of him, telling him what she had bottled up for years. It wasn't in House's created world, wasn't because she had suffered a loss, wasn't a hook up at a college party. This was Cuddy, all of her, standing in his bathroom, saying the words he had waited too long to hear. That morning they fit together, like a missing puzzle piece. House memorized every inch of her that day, the way her hair felt on his fingers, how her touch sent shivers through him, the way her hand fit perfectly in his. Every second House got to spend with her from then on, regardless of fighting or self doubt; it was like everything in his life made sense. He would never want anyone else but her for the rest of his existence; he felt that with every inch of himself. She was his forever.

House puked at this last thought, finally succumbing to the queasy feeling he had been holding at bay while trapped in his reverie. It was Cuddy that gave up, somewhere inside him always knew she would. She had left him standing in his doorway pleading for her to stay. He had messed up too many times and that was that. He would never be a good enough father to Rachel; never be the perfect enough man that would match the image she had concocted in her stubborn mind. She broke his heart like he had done so many times to her in the past. Now it was his turn to feel it, to deal with it.

He didn't try to win her back, she didn't want him, and he would have to live with that. By doing every stupid thing in his power to push her further away, reminding her with each step of misery he inflicted why she ran in the first place, he could escape his pain. House retreated back into vicodin and into his dark world like he had done most of his life. It wasn't until he called her in a time of urgency that he allowed himself to remember what he had lost. That beautiful, pain in his ass woman was still there. He had called her and she came. It hurt just to be near her, and House hated it.

Then she pushed him. She forced him to confront his feelings, and everything he pushed away from the moment she left him in his doorway came flooding back. He was angry; angry because he hurt. More than his leg ever had in his life, he felt the torture in his whole being.

When he saw them through the window, something snapped. He knew it. He had to be done. This couldn't go on anymore. If she wanted to take herself away from him completely, away from the bond he had created with Rachel then so be it!

House leaned over the bowl he was grasping with clammy fingers and purged himself once again. Lying down on the cold floor he braced himself for the next few hours. He had to stop thinking about it, about her. That's why he did what he did, wasn't it? Make her hate him! That's what he wanted, it would be easier! To finally free him, and her, from the love that they carried for far too long. Free them? He had been thinking of her for the last couple hours, she was still in every part of him. He might have liberated Cuddy from loving him, but he could never stop loving her. What had he done?

At that last thought, House threw up again on the floor this time and passed out.