A/N: I am so, so, SO sorry that it took me this long to get this chapter up. Been having a lot of family obligations this past week and school just started, but I'm hoping to keep on a semi-regular schedule of updating. Please be patient with me, I promise I won't let this story go unfinished! It might take me a while, but I promise to finish it! Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, or put this story on their favorites list - it really means a lot to me. I'm glad you're all enjoying it, hopefully this chapter was worth the wait! Enjoy!
It was a week later before Stephanie saw Chris again. She had tried to make a way for Chris to come up to Connecticut to visit her, but things kept coming up that caused her to be out of the house and on the road so she could never give him a definite date on when to come. She'd been calling him every day to check up on him and on Ash, who was on the fast track to recovery, but closer and closer to the end of the week Chris was starting to sound sick himself. When he erupted into his third coughing fit in their fifteen minute conversation, she threatened that she was coming down to Florida to check up on him and he worried her a little when he didn't even offer up any resistance. Before she even had time to process what she was doing, she bought herself an airplane ticket and was on her way to Florida.
She guessed she should have discussed it with Paul first, but she told herself that she was an adult and he wasn't her mother. She told him where she was going, of course, but she didn't feel like he should get any say in whether or not she would go. After all, he did the same things to her when Shawn had needed his help - she was just repaying the favor. She called Chris when the plane landed and he told her to just let herself in when she got to his house, in case he didn't hear her knock.
"Chris?" She asked, setting her things down and walking into the living room. She was slightly taken aback at the state it was in. Furniture was moved haphazardly around the room, pictures were face down across the mantle, the entertainment center on the far wall had all of its doors open and tapes were stacked up in various piles all over the room. She wrinkled her brow and made her way upstairs.
"Chris?" She asked again, peeking into Ash's room to find it empty of all of the furniture. Her worry line deepened and she continued into Chris's room.
Ash's crib and the rocking chair had now been moved in here with the rest of Chris's things. The closet doors were open and there were a few things strung out along with several large garbage bags that were packed full. She noticed the bathroom door was closed in here before quickly walking over to the crib and looking in on Ash, who was babbling happily. She smiled at him, picking him up as she looked around the room once more. Chris was generally a neat person, so she couldn't understand why he would leave his house in such a state of disarray like this. But, as she stared at the things that were missing from her surroundings, she started to realize what he was doing. Before she had time to process any more, the bathroom door opened and Chris emerged.
He looked horrible. He was paler than she had seen him in a long time, and the dark circles that had been under his eyes were becoming more pronounced. He hadn't shaved in a couple of days so he was starting to get a decent amount of growth on his face. He smiled faintly at her when he saw her, but she could tell he was miserable.
"Hey Steph, I didn't hear you come in." He told her, walking over to her slowly.
"Good Lord, Chris, how long have you looked like this?" She asked him, putting her hand to his forehead to gauge if he had a fever or not. She was guessing he did from how warm he felt.
"My whole life." He quipped, smirking slightly when she gave him a look.
"That's not what I meant." She scolded him. He held his hands up in surrender.
"I know what you meant. Honestly, I didn't even really feel too sick until this morning." He told her, walking over to sit on his bed. "I think I might have caught what Ash had, in which case, I'm in for nice couple of days." He closed his eyes for a few moments, resting his head in his hands. "I hope I don't get you sick." He said before erupting into a coughing fit. She waved him off as she continued to rock Ash.
"Don't worry about it." She told him. "I'd have been here sooner if I'd known how bad you were feeling." She continued to study him as she set Ash back in his crib. She couldn't get over how bad he looked. There was no way he just started to feel sick today. She wondered how long he had been sick before developing the cough that warned her.
"Stop analyzing me." He mumbled, not opening his eyes.
"It's kind of hard not to." She told him, that condescending tone still in her voice. She sat down on the bed next to him. "You look horrible, Chris."
"Thanks for the compliment." He said drily.
"Have you not been taking care of yourself?" She asked him.
"Actually, I've been working on a new diet plan. Something akin to being bulimic." He told her, opening his eyes. She gave him that look again and he sighed. "I've just been sick, Steph. I most likely got it from Ash. What do you want me to say?" He asked her tiredly. She said nothing and looked around at his room once more.
"I see you've been…redecorating." She commented. He followed her gaze and nodded.
"Couldn't stand being here surrounded by all of her things." He told her. "I suppose that makes me a horrible person, for wanting to cover her up so soon, but I don't know how else to do it. Especially after I read the first part of her journal." Stephanie turned back to look at him, an eyebrow raised.
"Journal?" She asked him. "Jessica didn't seem like the type to keep a journal." She commented. Not that Jessica didn't have thoughts worthy of keeping a journal, it's just that Stephanie always thought of Jessica as the type of woman who liked to keep busy, not spend her time writing about what happened in her day.
Chris reached across the bed and grabbed the black journal that was resting on the nightstand and handed it to her.
"Did you read it?" She asked him. He shook his head.
"I only read the first page." He told her as she examined the cover. "After that, I didn't feel like reading much else. I keep moving it around, as if I might read it later, but I don't think I will."
"What did she say?" She asked, setting the book back on the bed next to him.
"That even if she had lived giving birth to Ash, she'd have been dead within the next year anyway." He said. Stephanie felt her stomach drop.
"What? Why?"
"Her cancer was spreading." He said. She gaped at him.
"Her cancer came back and you didn't even tell me?" She demanded.
"Don't feel out of the loop – she didn't even tell me." He said, and she sat back for a second.
"She kept that from you?" She asked him. He nodded and closed his eyes again.
"She didn't see the point in telling me, I guess, since I would just be miserable the whole time, knowing that there was nothing I could do to help her. Knowing that she was going to die no matter what. She wrote me a note in the front, apologizing for not telling me any of it, but I guess I understand her reasoning." He told her. "What gets me the most is that I didn't even know that something was wrong." He confessed. "I never once knew that anything was up. She never let on that anything was bothering her. Never acted like she was sick. I never knew that my wife was keeping the biggest secret of our lives from me, and that eats at me. I'm her husband. I'm supposed to know these kinds of things, you know?"
They sat there in silence for a few moments as Stephanie processed everything that Chris had just told her. She was completely dumbfounded. She didn't know what to tell Chris. She had no words of wisdom, nothing to share with him to make him feel better when he obviously was angry with himself for not seeing it, and angry with Jessica for not letting him share the burden with her. She knew how Chris was about these things and she knew that he was beating himself up about it. She remembered one time his mother calling and asking him to come up one weekend and he had to cancel last minute. When he called to cancel with her, it wound up being the last time he spoke to her. He'd never forgiven himself for it. That was just how Chris worked. Stephanie gripped his hand before pulling him into a hug, not caring if he made her sick later or not. At first, he made no move to hug her back, but then he let his head fall into her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her.
"Jessica was a wonderful person, Chris, and she was stronger than I can even imagine being." Stephanie started, unsure of where the words were coming from, but somehow knowing they were what he needed to hear. "But you're right, nothing is going to bring her back, and if removing these things from sight is how you need to move on, then I'm sure she knows that. I'm sure she wouldn't want you to sit around and mope about things that are already done. Things that can't be changed or fixed. She loved you and you loved her. Nothing will ever change that. Everything else is just background noise. She probably worked very hard to keep you from knowing because she wanted to keep seeing you happy for as long as she could. That was the image of you that she wanted to take with her. She didn't want to think of you in her final moments and think of the sad, upset version of you. She wanted the smiling version to reassure her that you would be together again someday." She pulled back a little bit to see his eyes had started to water, but he was fighting it. She tried to smile at him and he nodded at her.
"I know, I keep telling myself that, but it's just… it's hard, you know?" He said. She nodded. "I try to say that I'm over it, that I don't care anymore, but I do. I still feel as messed up and angry as I did the day she died. I just don't know how to get rid of it. I don't know how to shake the feeling. I'm trying everything I can think of to get her out of my head, to focus on Ash and try to keep myself busy, but I see her every time I close my eyes….Hell, I've even had nightmares about her." He admitted. "I thought maybe taking some of her stuff away would help, but I don't know…I don't know if it's helping at all. Plus, now I'm coming down with this stupid cold, virus, whatever the hell it is…" he took a deep breath. "I don't know what the hell to do anymore, Steph. I just wish there was someone who would tell me what to do, and when I would get over this, but there isn't. There's no one."
"There's me." She told him quietly, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked at her. "I may not have all the answers to your questions, but I can still tell you what to do." She reassured him. He snorted at her and she smiled. He let his hands slide down her arms.
"I know, but I hate always bothering you." He admitted. She shook her head at him.
"Don't." She told him. "If you need me, you tell me. Do you even remember how many times you've helped me with something?" She asked. "Don't you even worry about it." He turned away from her to cough again and she patted him on the back.
"Did you get yourself anything to eat for dinner?" She asked. He shook his head.
"Haven't been able to keep much of anything down today." He told her.
"Well, let's try to get something in you." She said.
"I love it when you talk dirty to me." He joked, his eyes sparkling briefly. She shook her head at him, ignoring him.
"Even if it is just crackers." She finished, standing up. He sighed and let her pull him to his feet. They both checked in on Ash before she went downstairs to get him some food.
"Look at him - all zonked out." Stephanie said to him as they stood over Ash's crib a few hours later. Chris was looking a little better, and he said earlier that he seemed to be feeling a little better as well, but she attributed that to him not being here by himself.
"I'm about to join him." Chris admitted, running a hand along the side of his face. "You didn't get a hotel room, did you?" He asked her. She shook her head.
"No, I remember the lecture you gave me last time about the hotel." She said, smiling at him. "I figured you might want some company in the night anyways – maybe I can take care of Ash while you get a full night's sleep."
"Steph, you know I can't let you do that." He told her. She gave him a look.
"How about switching on and off with me, then?" She countered. He held her look for a few minutes before finally giving up.
"Fine. I'll let you do that." He said. "You come get me if you need any help." He told her, grabbing a blanket and spreading it out on the floor.
"What are you doing?" She asked him. He grabbed one of his pillows from the bed and stopped to look at her.
"Making a pallet to sleep on. What's it look like?" He asked, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world what he was doing.
"Oh no you don't." She said to him, pulling the blanket back up off the floor. "You're sick, you're going to sleep in your own bed. I can take the floor."
"Not a chance." He argued. "You're my friend and my guest and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you sleep on the floor." He grabbed the other end of the blanket to try and set it back down.
"Chris! Seriously, just let me have the blanket. I don't mind sleeping on the floor." She tried to reassure him.
"You're not sleeping on the floor." He insisted, pulling on the blanket. "It's non-negotiable." He looked at her seriously and she just had to laugh. She couldn't believe that they were…wait, she could believe that she and Chris were having an argument about who was going to sleep on the floor and who was going to sleep in the bed. It was Chris. These were the kind of arguments they got into.
"Okay, how about this?" She asked him. "What if we share the bed?" He looked at her.
"Why Stephanie, I never knew you felt that way about me." Chris joked, chuckling when she popped him on the arm.
"You know what I mean, Chris!" She told him indignantly.
"Yes, I know." He said seriously. "You sure you're okay sharing a bed with me?"
"We're just going to sleep, Chris." She told him.
"Sleeping in the same bed as me can be dangerous." He warned her. "I tend to roll around." She rolled her eyes at him.
"I think I'll manage." She reassured him. "Besides, we've slept in the same room before already, remember Pittsburgh?" Chris did indeed remember Pittsburgh. The desk clerk at the hotel had screwed up his reservation and left him without a room. Stephanie happened to be passing through the lobby when he was arguing with the clerk when she offered for him to stay with her. Granted, the room had been a double so they'd had separate beds that night, but they had coexisted on at least one other occasion.
"Yeah, I remember. I remember twenty different people coming up to me later and asking me if we were sleeping together." He told her. She blushed and he had to laugh. This happened more than six years ago, before she married Paul, and she still blushed when he told her he'd been asked if they were sleeping together. He shook his head lightly and threw the pillow back on the bed.
"I'll take the side with junior here." He told her. "He tends to snore." Stephanie shrugged.
"All right, sounds good." She said. Chris climbed into bed and she went into the bathroom to perform her nightly routine. By the time she came back out, he was already asleep. She smiled at him and placed a light kiss on his forehead before walking around to climb into bed on the opposite side.
She couldn't get herself to fall asleep though.
She kept rolling over the conversation in her head from earlier, where he had told her about Jessica's cancer and basically everything that was bothering him. She was touched that he had confided so much in her at the time, but laying here in bed she realized that there was no one else left for him to confide in. His parents were gone, his wife was gone, he had no siblings. He had plenty of friends, but none who had been through similar experiences and honestly, none that knew him as well as she did. She realized that she really was his only out.
And that's when the guilt started to seep in.
She had previously decided that she wasn't going to tell him about the instance with Paul, but now she was starting to feel guilty about not telling him when he trusted her with so much. Chris Irvine was not an emotional man. He didn't shed tears on a daily basis, and to show such unguarded emotion around her showed her just how much he trusted her. She was getting to the point now where she wished that she had already told him, or that he would just call her out on it somehow, because if she would tell him what happened now he would get upset for not figuring it out and that would just add to his guilt about not noticing when things were wrong.
She let out a sigh as she rolled over to face Chris. She was surprised to see him wide awake, staring at her.
"Can't sleep?" He whispered. She shook her head. "Me either."
"You were sleeping when I came out of the bathroom." She told him. He shook his head this time.
"I was faking." He confessed. "Thanks for the kiss, by the way." She didn't know why she was embarrassed that he knew she kissed him, but she suddenly was.
"What are you thinking about?" He asked her.
"Who says I was thinking about anything?" She countered.
"I could hear you thinking from over here." He said, turning away to cough briefly. She let a few moments of silence pass between them.
"I'll tell you in the morning." She promised finally.
"Steph," He started to whine, but she shook her head.
"Tomorrow." She said. "We'll talk about it then. Otherwise you'll wind up staying up all night." He clearly wasn't pleased with the answer, but he let it pass.
"Fine. Good night Stephanie." He told her, patting her hand.
"Good night Chris." She said, before rolling back over to face the window. She sent up a quick prayer that he would forget about her promise by tomorrow and she could get away with it for a little longer, but if he didn't…well she prayed she had the courage to tell him, and that he wouldn't completely flip his lid when she told him. That he wouldn't try to kill Paul the next time he saw him. And that he wouldn't hate her for keeping it from him this long.