Author's Note: Apologies for the long gap between updates. Working in tandem on two very different Addisons/stories is harder than I thought it would be. I'm so appreciative that people are still reading, and I hope you'll continue to do so and let me know what you think.

The Girl Who Collects Shells - Chapter 6

"Addie, what's going on?"

Addison blanches under Amelia's appraising gaze. She's been frozen in the same spot on the sofa for hours, watching the breaking dawn slowly light the room. Now Amelia descends the stairs, studying Addison too closely for her liking.

"You slept with him!" she crows as she reaches the bottom step.

"No! Well, sort of. Okay, yes, fine. How did you -"

"Give me a little credit."

Addison sighs. "Look, Amelia-"

"So what was it? Make-up sex? Break-up sex?"

"Neither," Addison says firmly. "Or maybe a little of both. I'm not sure actually. But It's not going to happen again."

Amelia gives a little smile, somewhere between sad and optimistic. "Whatever you say, Addie."

She spends a long time in the shower that morning, turning her face up to the stream of hot water, letting it gush over her cheeks like tears.

Shameful morning after. Finally, something she can do.

She may not know how to process her mother's suicide, or navigate the painful paths among the daily office landmines - but this she can do. The morning walk of shame, an extra long shower, the guilt - she knows it all by heart. She slips back into the feeling like a familiar old shirt.

ooo

The landmines are still there.

"Addison, can I see you for a minute," Sam says, standing in her path, and she's had it with his questions that sound like statements and his statements that she has to question.

"Not now, Sam."

"It will just take a minute."

"Not now, Sam."

She pushes past him, closes her office door behind her and leans against it, letting her head rest against the solid surface. If she never had to go out there again she'd be relieved at this point. She's alone here, she realizes, more deeply alone than she's been able to admit. In a practice full of people she's still alone, and if there's any cloak she wears more naturally than shameful morning after it's this one. It's the loneliness that's chased her in crowds of people, terrible and hollow, all her life: in dancing school at ten, college gatherings at twenty, cocktail parties at thirty and here, now, in this place she once thought could almost be her home.

He knocks twice.

She pretends she doesn't hear.

ooo

He corners her outside the conference room, late afternoon sun slanting across his face. She has to squint to see him. "Addison, I need to speak with you."

"I have patients." She starts to brush by him and he opens his fist to reveal a familiar scrap of blue silk.

"How about if I just return these, then," he says and she sees Violet glance over.

"Sam!" she closes his fist herself, pulls him into her office. Back against the closed door, she folds her arms, mimicking her earlier posture. But this time she looks him right in the eye.

"Seriously?" she asks.

"They're yours," he shrugs. "Even if you're not speaking to me. Anyway, I know you like this pair. I also know they cost more than what I made in a week waiting tables in college. I know you, Addison." He thrusts them into her hand. She accepts them, warm from his grip. "You may not want to hear it, but I do."

"You don't know as much as you think you do."

"I know that you'll -" his eyes flicker to the open shades of her office windows - "sleep with me, but you won't talk to me. We can survive this, Addison. I still believe that. If you'll talk to me. We can."

"I don't want to talk to you," she says. "I'm not there yet."

He takes half a step closer. "I heard you last night. I get it. I'm done making promises, all right? I just want to be with you."

"Sam, enough." She massages her temples, not sure how much more of this she can take.

"Tell me," he pleads. "Tell me what I can do to fix this, to get us through this. Tell me what you need and I'll do it."

"Stop calling me," she says. "Stay out of my office. Stay on your side of the wall. Back off, Sam. Really back off this time. Please," she adds.

He considers it for a long moment. "All right."'

"You've said that before. You just keep pushing," she says recklessly, choosing to ignore the fact that it was she who rang his doorbell the night before.

"You want me to stop pushing, I'll stop pushing." He lets her description slide without objection. "The pushing is done. You're not going to move across the country without a little warning, though...?"

"Sam!"

"All right, all right." He raises his hands in surrender. "Starting now. Come and find me when you want to talk."

"I don't know when that will be."

"Whenever it is, I'll still be here," he says. "I'm not going anywhere." He kisses her forehead, like a benediction, and leaves her standing alone in her office with a fistful of silk.

ooo

There's no office landmine quite like the confines of the elevator, four walls to contain the explosion and no way out. She's reminded of her failed goal to take the stairs when the doors slide shut and she's alone with Sheldon. At least it's not a Bennett, she thinks.

She gives him a brief nod, hoping he's smart enough to keep his distance. She's had it with people looking at her like she's about to break.

"Staying present is the hardest thing about pain," Sheldon says with no introduction, as if they were in the middle of a conversation. Apparently he's not smart enough. "Staying with the pain, being in it instead of going somewhere else when it gets hard."

"Sheldon," she pronounces his name with practiced pleasantry. "I am bigger than you. My shoes are pointier. And while I may be from Greenwich, I spent four years in New Haven - in the eighties. So unless you'd like me to demonstrate the skills I picked up to prevent unwarranted attacks, I suggest you back off right now."

"Taller," he says.

"Excuse me?"

"You're taller than I am. Not bigger. My shoulders are broader. Unquestionably, I outweigh you, by a significant amount. Anyone would conclude that I'm bigger, actually."

"Is this about your issues or mine?"

Touche, he doesn't say.

ooo

She calls Derek that night. Half a bottle of wine, Milo curled beside her, shoes kicked off, tantalizingly close to a habit.

"I'm not speaking to Sam," she announces. How's that for facing my pain, Sheldon?

"Addison. I have a surgery in an hour..."

Now this tone she remembers well, and she plays her own part with pitch-perfect muscle memory. "Fine, Derek. Just go."

But he doesn't and after a minute she releases a hard breath. "Sorry," she says. "I'm sorry. I know I don't have any claim on your time, not anymore, but-"

"It's all right." She offers the avoidance and he jumps at the chance: their old dance.

"I have a few minutes. What's wrong, Addison?" Like she's a post-op presenting with complications.

The problem is that she's alone. The problem is that she doesn't have Sam. Or Naomi. The problem is that she needs to hold on to what's left of her secret, because it might be everything that's left at all.

"I'm not speaking to Sam. Is he still speaking to you? I want to know what he's saying, Derek."

"Addison..." he speaks her name with waning patience. Oh, she remembers this tone well; back then it was sometimes honey ... but the timbre of his voice is identical.

"Bizzy committed suicide, did he tell you that?"

His sharply drawn breath is all she needs to realize she was wrong.

Damn.

"Addie, what?"

"Um." She fiddles with the sleeve of her sweater, buys time. "I thought he-" she tries as Derek says "I thought you told me it was a heart attack."

"Well, it was sort of a heart...thing." She takes a long swallow of her drink. "I thought when you talked to Sam..."

"Suicide?" he asks huskily. "Addison. I'm sorry, I'm very sorry. I had no idea."

"Almost no one does. She wanted it that way."

"Of course."

"The Captain doesn't know. I think it would kill him to find out, so-"

"He won't hear it from me," Derek says firmly. "Not that I expect him to do anything except take a swing at me if I see him again."

"That was one time, Derek."

They're both silent for a minute, remembering, the hint of a smile on Addison's lips when Derek asks, "Do you, um, do you want to talk about it?"

She has to swallow an automatic whine: Didn't you say you had to go? She ignores their old dance, sets it aside like discarded sheet music. Tries something new.

"No," she says. "To be honest with you, I'd prefer to just forget about it. Be done with it."

"What does Sam think of that?" he asks casually.

"I'm not talking to Sam, I told you. But he wants to talk. You know him."

"I do. I guess I still do. And you," he adds. "I know you too."

"I guess you do," she says, and after a long, melancholy swallow of wine she gives a congested sort of laugh and says "we sound like Dr. Suess."

He chuckles. "Sam-I-Am, right? Nance's little ones are still crazy for those books," he says. "And tongue-twisters, they can't get enough tongue-twisters."

"I miss them."

"They're around," he says. "Nancy said she invited you to-"

"No," she shakes her head even though she knows he can't see it. "It's better if I - I can't keep going back there. Going backwards...it's not..."

She takes another sip of wine instead of finishing her sentence, thinks she'll never tire of the heady scent of the wine mixed with the sound of the waves outside.

"I'm sorry, Addison, but I really do have to go."

"I know," she says. "I know. I do too."

ooo

He calls her back early the next morning. "Are you all right?"

"Of course. I'm fine." She rolls to her side, still in bed. It's harder to get up in the mornings now; she holds on to sleep and the edges of her duvet, dawdling. Postponing the inevitable.

"Does anyone else know? About - your mother?"

"Sam knows. Archer. And now you," she says. "That's it."

"You don't have to keep it a secret."

"She asked me to."

"Even so."

"You can't tell anyone," she says quickly, panic jerking her to a sitting position against her headboard. "Derek -"

"I won't, of course I won't. I'm just not sure how healthy it is for you to keep it a secret."

"She asked me to."

"She's gone, Addison. Keeping her secret now isn't going to win you any points."

She hangs up.

Thirty seconds of heart-pounding anger, cheek-burning shame, blood rushing in her ears.

He calls back.

"That came out wrong. I'm sorry. Addison, I'm sorry."

She fists damp eyes; there's something about his apologies that always twists her heart. Somehow they end up hurting her more than whatever he did to prompt the apology. "Don't worry about it."

"Look, I just don't like the idea of you knotting yourself trying to do this for her." His voice is quiet. "It's not good for you."

ooo

I hate the way you act around her! Derek snapped at her once, during an Easter visit years ago. It was one of the last times they stayed at the estate. Why do you let her do this to you?

The argument that followed was a bad one, worse - not better - for having to be conducted in low tones. When finally he stormed out of the house to cool off, she panicked after barely five minutes and chased his shadow down the front steps, too late to find him. She curled in a rocking chair on the porch to wait for him, shivering with a combination of early spring, late frost, thin cotton and the ever-present anxiety.

She must have fallen asleep because his warm breath on her face was the next thing she remembered.

"It's barely forty degrees. What are you thinking?"

"I was waiting for you," she mumbled as he pulled her to her feet.

"I went for a walk. I told you. Don't be like this, Addison," he urged as he pushed her ahead of him through the door.

"Do you like me at all?" she challenged, turning around.

"You're being irrational. I'm not having this conversation now." He rubbed her arms briskly. "You're shivering. Put this on." He shed his coat and wrapped it across her shoulders.

"It's irrational to want my husband to like me? Even a little?"

"Addison." He cupped her face in his hands. "We are leaving in the morning. I cannot take any more of this. This house is not good for you. She's not good for you. No," he said when she tried to pull away. "Listen to me. This is not you. It's not you talking. So let's go to sleep and we'll deal with it tomorrow when we're not here."

He crawled into bed after her, draped an arm over her waist and she pulled away, rolling to the other side of the mattress. "Leave me alone."

He sighed loudly. "Addison, don't do this."

"You said we should sleep, so let me sleep." She stared at the single patch of moonlight pooling in the corner of the room, eyes hot and damp.

"Addison..." The exasperation in his voice stung like a slap and she twisted further away from the fingers grazing her flesh.

"I'm trying to sleep," she said tightly, tears in her voice.

He grasped her arm and pulled her roughly toward him, settling her against him over her protests.

"Let go!"

"No." He hooked a leg over hers, wrapping his arms around her more firmly to still her. "Calm down and go to sleep. Calm down, Addison, you're all right."

She pushed fruitlessly on his shoulders. "Derek!"

"I love you." He kissed the top of her head, which was wedged just below his chin. "And I like you, most of the time. In this house, maybe not so much. But I love you, and we're leaving in the morning, so go to sleep."

"Let go of me."

"Don't let her do this to you, Addie."

She flopped against him, giving up her struggle.

"I don't like this house," she whispered into the fabric of his shirt.

"I know." He stroked her hair. "Go to sleep, you're all right."

ooo

"You're all right?" he asks now. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"This is -" she can almost feel him shaking his head. "This is something else, Addison. It's a lot to deal with."

"It's fine," she says shortly. "I'm fine. I only brought it up because I thought Sam - anyway, I didn't mean to burden you."

"You're not burdening me, Addison. Look, you should talk to Sam."

ooo

She doesn't talk to Sam.

And Sam sticks to his word.

He doesn't call her. He doesn't push. He's cool and professional at work; she makes sure not to meet his haunted eyes, to make sure she stays fine.

The rule is that he can't call her, though; not the other way around. Not that often, but sometimes, she calls him. Always at night.

The first time, she's had a little more to drink than she intended. Again. She doesn't say much, just sighs wetly into the phone. Thinks about his hands.

"I'm not sure if you're even still there," he says after a few minutes, which is fitting, she thinks, because she's not sure either.

The next time, when he tries to talk she interrupts: "Don't say anything."

But on a few late nights when the silence is pressing on her, keeping her awake, she says "Talk to me, Sam," instead. "Talk about something else."

So he talks like nothing has really changed between them, about the beach in Mexico where they all celebrated passing the boards, where the ice cubes left Mark so sick that he insisted on scrawling an alcohol-soaked last will and testament on the back of a bar menu - this makes her smile; she and Derek kept that salsa-smeared menu in a kitchen drawer for years, for blackmail; about the scent of the begonias in his grandmother's front yard; about the way it felt to finally, gloriously pedal a bicycle with nothing holding him up but air... about everything and nothing at all, until she falls asleep.

Another night - but just once - she cries.

"That's it. I'm coming over, " he says. His voice is raw.

"No, Sam, you promised," she chokes even though he didn't, not really.

She doesn't know what's wrong with her, why it's this night that hurts so much. Grief has its own timetable, that was what Sheldon said once. You can't get off until the ride is over.

So Sam stays on the other end of the line, silent, while she presses her hand to her mouth, shoulders shaking, wet salt splashing her cheeks and the screen of her phone, until it passes.

When at last she's quiet, when all she can hear is her own hitching inhales and his breathing (slightly ragged but steady) he asks: "Is this making you feel better, Addison? Putting us through this?"

"A little, yeah," she sniffs. He exhales hard, one audibly angry puff of air, but he's still on the other end of the phone when sleep overtakes her.