A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, lovelies. Some of you accurately predicted what would happen the next time Blair talked to Chuck. Some of you are worried they aren't going to make it through this. (Spoiler alert: they are.) Just keep reading, and you'll see how it all unfolds...and if you review, you might even have a hand in the action yourself.


Monday. At the Empire penthouse.

"Blair? Are you feeling all right?"

"Hrmm?" Blair jerked her head up at the sound of Chuck's voice.

They were sitting at a small table on the balcony of the Empire penthouse. Over their heads, strings of lights hung in a criss-crossed canopy; on the table, a bottle of Chablis, cradled by a bed of ice, sweated into a white towel wrapped around it.

The second course of a catered dinner from a four-star seafood restaurant—a sauté of Carolina red shrimp on a bed of baby leeks, tossed in a lime-kaffir marinade—lay on Blair's plate in an elegant, interlaced pattern. A light breeze wafted the white flowers in the vase in the center of the table setting, and the setting sun cast its warmth across her bare shoulders.

The weather, the gourmet cuisine, and the complex tang of the wine, which perfectly complemented the shellfish and curry—all of it was perfect.

At least—it would have been, had Blair been able to forget her act of treachery for longer than two seconds.

"Why would you ask that?" she said in a diffident tone. Clearing her throat, she adjusted her napkin on her lap, pretending to make sure that it covered every inch of the light-blue fabric of her dress—a floor-length halter with a thin wire collar of gold.

She looked up to regard Chuck. He had dressed in a white summer suit that she had bought for him a week and half ago, and he had added a light blue shirt—one that matched the shade of her dress—and a little budded yellow flower in his lapel.

He looks gorgeous, she thought with a repentant twist of her heartstrings.

If only she could just go sit in his lap and tilt his face up with a gentle motion of her hands. Envelop his lips with hers. And forget about yesterday entirely.

"You haven't even touched your shrimp," Chuck said.

"I ate my salad earlier," she claimed, destroying the pattern of shrimp and leeks with a swipe of her fork.

He flicked his eyes down at her plate. "Moving things around on your plate with your fork doesn't count as eating, Blair."

"Okay, fine," she sighed. "So I don't have much of an appetite. Sue me."

Chuck peered at her, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"I think I know what's going on here," he said.

Blair's heart began to pound in her chest.

Keep calm, she reminded herself. Yesterday never happened. The Blair who cheated is gone. Eliminated. She no longer exists.

You are non-cheating Blair.

"You know that I ate a big lunch?" she said in what she hoped was an insouciant tone. "Chuck, you really should stop bribing the new housekeepers to report every last little detail of my life. Dorota gets so frustrated when she has to give the boot to a new hire and start the interview process all over again—"

"I don't spy on you anymore, Blair," Chuck interrupted. "I have no idea what you've been eating lately. Or not eating," he added pointedly.

In response, she stabbed a shrimp with her fork, inserted it into her mouth, and chewed on it mechanically. It may as well have been Styrofoam for all the appetite it inspired in her.

She looked at Chuck with an expression that said, There. Because non-cheating Blair would be a little annoyed with him by this point.

Cheating Blair, however, was finding it difficult to swallow.

She coughed, and reached for her water glass.

"What I was going to say was this," Chuck continued. "I know you're still mad at me. Even though I already apologized."

"You apologized via text," she reminded him with a glare. "That hardly counts."

"Fine," Chuck said with a slight hint of exasperation. "I was planning to do this after dessert, but…well."

To her surprise he walked over to her side of the table, lowered himself into a squat and presented her with a dainty red box adorned with gold trim.

Cartier, she immediately realized.

She heard Mack's scornful words echo in her head. Some expensive sparkly present.

"Chuck—" Blair began in a conflicted voice.

He undid the tiny clasp and opened it, revealing a pair of exquisite drop earrings with round diamond studs, delicate gold chains, and three circles of interlocked gold at the ends.

"…they're beautiful," she said in reluctant admiration.

One by one, he took the earrings from the box, inserted the thin gold wires into her ears, and capped them behind her earlobes.

He let his hand glide down her skin from her ear to her collarbone.

"They show off your neck," he murmured. "Which is even more beautiful."

He leaned in to kiss her neck, and to her dismay his lips met her skin in the exact same spot that Mack's mouth had so languorously caressed the day before.

She instantly recoiled from him, feeling a fresh surge of guilty nausea.

Biting his lip in apparent frustration, Chuck quickly rose to his feet, and paced a few steps away from her.

Then he took a deep breath, and returned to his seat.

He looked at her questioningly. "Not enough?" he offered with a sad smile.

"It's…it's not about the earrings, Chuck," Blair said hesitantly. She raised one of her hands and clasped the chain of an earring between her fingers. "It's…"

She came to a stop, and realized that she sounded like she was giving him a cue to apologize.

Which is exactly what non-cheating Blair would have done, so…okay.

"Blair, I was completely out of line at the gala the other night," Chuck said in a sincere tone. "Instead of taking you aside and giving you a chance to explain—" (he hesitated for a moment) "—what happened," he continued in a slightly strained voice, "I acted…well. Like a jealous idiot. And when I think about the scene in the limo, and the part I played in it…I'm ashamed of myself.

"You're a beautiful woman," he went on. "Guys are going to hit on you from time to time. And I need to learn how to deal with it.

"Because…I've been doing a lot of thinking, and you were right. You've never given me a reason not to trust you. And I know in my heart that you would never betray that trust."

The lump in Blair's throat swelled, and she suddenly felt as though she were about to choke.

"Because you love me," Chuck finished, and looked at her with a warm glow in his eyes.

Oh God.

Blair tried to speak a couple of times, her mouth opening and closing again, but somehow she ended up shaking her head instead.

As if another, deeper part of her were protesting her plan of action. Saying there was no way she could go through with this.

She looked up at Chuck and saw that he was obviously confused by her lack of response.

"Right?" he said in a suddenly vulnerable voice.

Blair pressed her lips together to try to keep them from trembling, but her entire chin began to wobble instead, and then her eyes glossed over with tears.

She covered her face with her hand.

"Blair? What's…what's going on?" Chuck asked.

"I—Chuck—" She swallowed hard. "I did something bad," she finally managed to croak through her hand, which was still halfway obscuring her face.

"Blair," he cut in, "if this is about the gala, you don't have to apologize."

Blair eyed him in disbelief through the slots between her fingers.

"You had no idea that guy was going to be there," he went on, "and I doubt you knew that he was going to make a move on you. I'm sure you were just as surprised as I was. Okay," he conceded, "maybe you shouldn't have danced with him…but I'm sure you wouldn't have if you had known that—"

"No—Chuck," Blair interrupted, her face contorting as she mentally prepared herself for the words she was about to say. "I'm not talking about Saturday night. I'm talking about yesterday."

"Yesterday?" he said, frowning. "What happened yesterday?"

"Like I said. I did something bad." She struggled to say the words, and the next phrase came out even more high-pitched and strained. "Really, really bad."

"What are you talking about, Blair?" Chuck said in a worried tone.

"He…" (here she struggled some more) "—he came to see me. At the duck pond."

"He? You mean...Mackendry?"

"I told him I didn't want anything to do with him," she sputtered out, wiping an errant tear from each eye.

"Blair…that—" Chuck rubbed his mouth with his palm, plainly trying to keep his temper in check. "He's persistent, I'll give him that. But…"

He pushed a long, slow breath out of his lungs. "It's not your fault he showed up looking for you. And I'm glad you told me. And I'm glad you told him to fuck off, too," he added.

Good God. She could just stop here. And she would forever be non-cheating Blair, and Chuck would be never the wiser.

She looked up at his face, and saw that he was looking at her with pride and with love.

If you tell him, he might never look at you that way again, a panicked voice whispered into her ear.

That's a risk you have to take, said a voice of greater authority.

Blair shook her head.

"No—that's…that's not it. That's not what I need to tell you," she blurted out in a jumble. "I fell and hurt myself. And I was bleeding, and about to faint…and he…I went up to his apartment."

Chuck's eyebrows shot upwards. He took in a deep breath and exhaled through rounded lips.

"You went to his apartment?" he began, obviously unhappy with this information.

"He was just going to help me fix my knee," Blair said lamely.

Chuck stuck his tongue into his cheek and nodded several times.

"Okay," he said slowly, still plainly trying to process how he felt about this. "But Blair—you should have just called me. I would have been there in ten minutes. You know that."

"I—I didn't know you were to going to apologize. I…was mad at you, I—God, I've thought about what I should have done like, non-stop since yesterday. Yes, I should have called you. I should have done anything that wasn't what I did," she rambled in a torrent of words.

"It's okay. You needed help and he helped you. That's—" Chuck swallowed, plainly having trouble forcing out the second "okay."

"That's not it," Blair went on miserably. "He, he fixed my knee and then…something happened."

"What do you mean, 'something happened?'" Chuck said, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows.

Blair put her face into her hands.

Chuck stared at her, an expression of realization slowly spreading across his features. "Blair…did he…do something to you?" he said in an alarmed voice.

Blair dropped her hands from her face and shook her head violently. Her eyes were clenched shut. "No," she choked out. "It was me. I—"

Once again, it was impossible for her to speak through the tremors that were racking her body back and forth.

"Did—" Chuck's eyes wandered up, down and over the table before refocusing on Blair's face. "Did you kiss him?" he finally managed to say. "Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Blair nodded. And then shook her head.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Chuck asked in angry confusion. "It's either one or the other, Blair. Did you kiss him, yes or no?"

"Yes—I kissed him," Blair forced herself to say. "No—that's not what I'm trying to tell you."

She lowered her head, unable to look him in the eye. "It's…not all that happened," she finished.

"You…" Chuck hesitated. "That's…" he hesitated again.

Then he let out a mirthless, hollow-sounding laugh.

"Blair," he said, his voice cautious and wary, "it's…I mean, it's not like…" He stopped and started again. "You didn't…"

Blair lifted her head and closed her eyes, sending twin tears running down her cheeks.

Chuck's eyes widened.

"You did," he said in a devastated voice.

He looked at her for a moment, incredulous. He put his hand to his chest and rubbed hard against his sternum.

Then he backed up and away from the table as if there were a poisonous creature in front of him, overturning his chair in the process.

It hit the deck with a clatter, and Blair flinched at the noise it made.

Chuck turned his back to her and walked several paces away, still holding his hand over his chest.

"Chuck," she said weakly.

He was silent.

She rose from her seat and edged towards him, but, fearful of his reaction, hesitated a few feet behind him.

"Say something," she begged, a horrible fear taking hold of her heart.

Letting out a slow ragged breath, Chuck turned his head back—barely. Blair could just make out the line of his profile.

He shook his head in a series of small movements; he bit his bottom lip.

And then he said in a rasp, "Get out."

"Wh…" Blair tried to speak, but ended up with a whimper.

"Get out," he repeated.

"Chuck, no, no, please," she pleaded, and grabbed at his arm, trying to get him to turn around and face her.

"Don't touch me!" he barked, yanking his arm away from her. He took another set of paces ahead, increasing the distance between them.

"I know I made a mistake," Blair babbled at his back, "a horrible, horrible mistake, but—Chuck, we have to talk. We…we have to work through this. I swear to God—I never ever…the last thing I ever wanted was to hurt you."

"You didn't just hurt me, Blair," he said in a pained voice.

She was expecting anger. She could deal with anger. But when he turned around to face her, she realized it was far worse.

She hadn't seen him this upset since his father died.

But now she couldn't be the one to comfort him, she realized with a plummeting sensation in her stomach. Because she was the one who did this.

"You've broken my heart," Chuck said, forcing the words out of a constricted larynx.

Blair let out a despairing sob and brought her hands to her face.

On the verge of tears, he repeated, in a barely audible whisper, "You've broken my heart."

He turned around again, laid his hand over his mouth, and gave his head another shake.

"If you don't get out I'll call security to escort you out," he choked out, his voice breaking on the last few words.

Then he quickly walked off the balcony, leaving Blair alone.

"Oh," Dan said. "Wow."

Blair put her elbow on the table and laid the side of her head in her hand. All of a sudden she looked very tired.

"He's blocked my number on his phone," she explained. "He won't let me up to see him. I tried twice. The second time…as soon as I walked into the lobby, two security guards came up to me and requested that I leave the premises immediately." She let out a harsh little laugh. "It was…more than a little humiliating."

"I'm surprised you haven't staked out the Empire yet," Dan ventured.

"I would have—believe me," Blair said in a weary voice. "But he hasn't left the penthouse all week. There haven't been any Gossip Girl sightings of Chuck Bass since Monday afternoon."

"I'm sure he's just been drowning his sorrows in a glass of Scotch," Dan said, trying to be reassuring.

"More like a forty of Scotch," Blair rejoined, taking a sip of her own drink. "You know he's hardly a moderate drinker when he's emotionally distressed."

She paused for a moment, and looked up at him with soft plaintive eyes.

"Dan—I'm worried about him. I need you to go see him. Make sure he's okay. And tell him…"

She swallowed, and tried to keep her voice from cracking. "Tell him how much I love him. And—how sorry I am."

"Uhh…Blair—" Dan hesitated for a moment. "Somehow, I—uh, I really don't think I'm the one you should be sending as an emissary to Chuck Bass."

"Who else am I going to send?" Blair replied with a hint of frustration.

"Well, Serena comes to mind. Considering that he doesn't hate her."

Blair rolled her eyes. "She's in Marrakesh this week, remember?"

"I forgot about that," Dan admitted. "Oh—" he added in a murmur. "Suddenly that text she sent makes a lot more sense…"

He cleared his throat. "Well…uh, what about Nate?" he asked.

"He's at a lacrosse tournament," Blair reminded him, obviously getting more than a little impatient. "And there's no way Chuck will let Dorota in. You're all I've got. You have to go. You…you have to help me get him back."

Dan stared at her. "You…really want him back. Blair, uh. I don't know how to say this, but…okay, I'll just say it."

He took a deep breath. "Are you sure it's not maybe just…time to let it go? I mean, look at your history together - there's always some new crisis. Maybe you haven't gotten over the last one yet."

He paused, then added sotto voce, "Maybe you don't want to."

"Humphrey—what in God's name are you talking about?" Blair asked with a scowl.

"Just hear me out, Blair," he said with a defensive gesture. "I've been listening to you all afternoon."

She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.

"Look—that guy Mack sounds like a jerk, all right?" Dan continued. "But he had some good points about…uh, your recent behavior. Has it—has it crossed your mind that…somewhere, deep inside of you, on some…unconscious level—you just might not want to be with Chuck anymore?"

He braced himself for a scathing reply. But, to his surprise, Blair sat for a moment in contemplative silence.

"Maybe some of what he said made sense," she finally conceded. "I was upset at Chuck. Not just because of the gala…or the limo. It was a lot of things.

"I was acting out," she continued. "I know that now. But the second I realized that I might lose him for good…I—I just knew that I couldn't let that happen."

She looked up at him with a passionate intensity in her eyes. "Chuck and I belong together," she said in a tone of absolute surety. "And I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure we stay together from here on out."

"You're twenty, Blair," Dan said to her gently. "People don't settle down at twenty anymore—I mean, unless they're Amish or Mormon or something. It's not…normal."

"Chuck and I are far from normal," Blair countered.

"Well, uh. I sure as hell can't argue with that one," he muttered.

"We're lucky," she insisted. "By the time we were eighteen years old we both knew that we were perfectly suited to each other."

"Oh—like beans and rice, huh?"

Blair looked disgusted. "Far too proletarian. We're more like…oysters and caviar," she said with a lofty flutter of her hand.

"Who's the oysters and who's the caviar, in this…uh, distinctly unappetizing equation?"

"Okay—forget the food analogy, Humphrey!" Blair snapped. "It's not important. Chuck and I…"

She closed her eyes, and paused for a moment to collect herself.

"We're important," she said in a vulnerable tone. "He's the only person who's ever loved me for exactly who I am. Not an idea of me. Not an edited version of me. Not as a substitute for someone else. Just me.

"He makes me stronger, not weaker. Better, not worse. And…while it's true that we've had our ups and downs…through everything, he's never once given up on me. And I am not going to give up on him now.

"I can't lose him, Dan," she said, looking at him with a renewed insistence. "I won't lose him. You have to go to him. And convince him to give me another chance."

Dan let out a slow resigned sigh.

"Okay," he said reluctantly. "Fine. I'll…help you."

At that moment an all-too-familiar chime rang out from their phones.

They stared at each other for one frozen second, and then fumbled for their cells.

The headline of the Gossip Girl blast read:

Queen B stepping out on her man?

Blair gasped.

Underneath the headline was a snapshot of Dan Humphrey and Blair Waldorf, sitting in their usual booth at their secret bar. And his arm was curled around their shoulder—which meant that the photo must have been taken less than twenty minutes prior.

What on earth is Blair Waldorf doing below 42nd street? I'll tell you, boys and girls—she's at the Old-Fashioned off Union Square, having a heart-to-heart with her boyfriend's least favorite stepsibling. Are you and Dan Humphrey getting a little cozy, B? Better make sure C doesn't see!

"Oh thank God," Blair said as soon as she finished reading the blast. She pressed a hand to her chest in relief. "It's just a rumor about you and me."

She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh," she added disgustedly. "I can't believe I just said that."

"Looks like our secret hang-out spot is no longer a secret," Dan griped.

"Well. We both knew it was only a matter of time," Blair reminded him.

She slung her purse over her shoulder and stood up.

"I'm going to go," she announced. "No need to give the lurkers around here any more of a show. You—stay here," she ordered, as soon as Dan made a motion to rise. "Wait another ten minutes or so. The last thing I need right now is for people to think we're leaving a bar together."

"Okay," he acquiesced. "I'll just—finish my drink." He gestured with his empty glass.

Blair hesitated for a moment.

"Will you go see him?" she asked, her eyes once again soft and plaintive. "Tonight?"

"Yeah," Dan said. "I'll…I promise, Blair—I'll do my best."

Blair shot him a look of gratitude that could have melted a heart of stone.

And then she traipsed out the door with her head held high, and her best society face locked firmly in place.

Dan Humphrey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His mind began to race. He knew that he should be thinking about what he was going to say to Chuck—on the off chance that Chuck would actually let him get his foot in the Empire Penthouse door—but his thoughts kept swerving back to something that Blair had said to him much earlier.

About that nasty habit he had of turning his back on people.

He thought about Vanessa. His former best friend. He'd ignored her calls for months, but when she came back to Brooklyn, she'd fallen into his arms, and made it clear that she was more than willing to help him raise another woman's baby.

Her level of devotion had scared him, and he had seized upon any and every excuse to push her away—including her alliance with that schemer Juliet. But she really hadn't deserved all the viciousness that he'd cast her way.

Jenny. He hadn't hung out with her since she visited the city for her interview at Parsons several months ago, and they rarely called or texted nowadays. He supposed that on some level he was still reeling from her sudden transformation from a starry-eyed, self-conscious young girl into a raccoon-eyed, self-sabotaging drug dealer.

Oddly enough, out of all the things she'd done, he was most upset at her for losing her virginity to Chuck Bass. Somehow, that—well. It made her seem tainted to him.

Which made no sense, because Blair had sex with Chuck all the time, and Blair had, oddly enough, become his closest friend in recent months.

But, then again, Blair Waldorf wasn't his little sister.

His thoughts turned to Serena. Since their last fallout, they'd largely avoided each other, but he had been talking to her a little more over the past couple of weeks. They had run into each other at the van der Humphrey penthouse, and during an awkward pause she had asked him if he wanted to read the final paper that she wrote for her Romanticism class. She had gotten an A+ on it, and she was proud of it.

He hadn't been looking forward to it much, but when he sat down to read her paper he discovered that it was actually quite good. So good, in fact, that the next time he talked to Serena he had completely trashed her argument. Ignoring the essay's obvious merits, he had told her that she needed to incorporate more examples from books that he knew she hadn't read.

He had also mentioned that her professor had perhaps been grading her according to an alternative rubric. One reserved for leggy, attractive young blondes.

They had parted on angry terms.

Dan rubbed his forehead, cringing at the memory.

A few weeks ago, when Serena had told him she wanted to get back together, he had still been far too hurt to take her back. After all, the last time she'd told him that, she hadn't waited five minutes before flittering off to some guy who'd been actively plotting to destroy her life for the past several years.

And so he had rejected her.

But he hadn't stopped wanting her. And for the past six weeks he had been trying to convince himself that she wasn't worth wanting.

That hadn't been going so well. To say the very least.

Maybe he should start small. Call Serena. Tell her that he was a jerk for lambasting her essay. Because it really was good—certainly as good as anything that he'd ever written for an English class, if not better.

Dan scrolled down his contacts list and paused at Serena's name.

His thumb was hovering over the Send button when he suddenly became aware of a man who had walked into the bar moments earlier.

Ordinarily, he never would have noticed him. But instead of heading towards a booth or a bar stool, the man had come to an abrupt stop in the middle of the floor, a scant ten feet away from where he was sitting.

Dan looked up from his phone to regard the stranger.

He was tall and good-looking, with thick tawny hair clipped in a stylish, GQ sort of way. He was wearing a fitted suit and looked like he had just come from work.

The tawny-haired man looked down at his phone, flicked his eyes up to examine Dan's face, and then looked down at his phone again.

Then he looked up again. Their eyes met.

And somehow—suddenly—Dan just knew.

This was the guy. The guy Blair had slept with.


A/N: Thanks to Maribells for beta-ing the hell right out of the this chapter. The term "beta" doesn't even begin to cover what she's done to this little story of mine.

I've got lots of questions for all of you. Should Chuck take Blair back? What would you say to Mack if you were Dan? Hell, what would you say to Chuck?

And what do you think Mr. Bass has been up to for the past four days, anyways?

Eagerly awaiting your reviews. Till next time, kids!