I've got the next installment of this FF story up. I hope you enjoy it, thanks for reading and for the feedback? This story's got multiple threads at different times about their lives in this town.

After leaving the diner, C.J. and Matt headed to the car.

"That didn't accomplish very much," he said, as they got inside the vehicle.

She shrugged as she slipped on her seat belt.

"The DA's doing exactly what I would do in his shoes," she said, "which is delaying the transfer of discovery to get the upper hand for the arraignment."

They drove down the tree-lined street that served as the town's main thoroughfare back towards Roy's ranch.

"What about evidence pointing towards another suspect," Matt asked.

"I don't think they even thought to look anyone else," she responded, looking out the window as they passed Alexis' beauty shop.

C.J. thought about checking how her old friend was doing but it had been years since they had seen each other and the last time C.J. had been in town…had been so very different. Matt looked at her and read her mind.

"Would you like to stop and see her?"

She looked over at him.

"I don't know if she would appreciate that Houston."

He heard the wistful tone in her voice, and he knew how much she missed her friend.

"It might help us if she knows something about Dylan's disappearance," Matt said, "Something that got overlooked in this investigation."

"Maybe…I did see her the night that he disappeared," C.J. said, "and then there was the argument."

"That was years ago C.J."

She sighed as he parked the car near the shop.

"I wasn't the easiest person to get along with back then," she said, "You and I…"

"Neither of us was in a really good place C.J.," Matt said, "and I gave you as good as I got. Maybe more so."

She shook her head.

"No you didn't Houston," she said, "I was very angry…but it really didn't have anything to do with you."

Matt knew that now, even if he hadn't for a while back then but he still had unanswered questions about exactly what had been going on the last time they had spent time together in Wild Fork. And in the midst of the remaining mysteries had been a disappearance which had become a murder case with his best friend as the prime suspect.

They got out of the car and walked to Alexis' shop. C.J. gathered herself, unsure of what kind of reaction she'd see in Alexis' face if she were even inside the shop. Matt took hold of her hand and she wrapped his fingers in her own.

The door opened and a woman at the front desk with a streak of blue in her hair looked up from the magazine she read and both Matt and C.J. walked inside the shop.

"You have an appointment," the woman asked.

C.J. stepped forward.

"I'm here to see Alexis," she said, "Is she around?"

The woman looked towards the back of the shop, where the sinks were and called for Alexis. The woman that C.J. spent so much time with growing up walked out carrying a broom and dustbin to sweep up the excess on the floor around her station. When she looked up at C.J., wariness marked her expression on her freckled face and then slowly a smile curled her lips. C.J. hadn't realized how tense her body had become until she felt herself relax after noting that Alexis at least didn't look upset to see her.

"C.J., you look…good."

She smiled back and the two women remained apart.

"Thanks," C.J. said, "So do you, and your shop is beautiful."

Alexis looked around it, nodding.

"I was finally able to get a loan through my aunt to set up in this building," she said, "Business isn't exactly booming but I get by each month."

"That's great, so how are things going," C.J. asked.

Alexis looked at her a moment.

"Better than for you," she said, "I'm married to Brad who owned that ranch on the other side of town. We've got a couple of kids."

The one that Dylan worked at for a spell, C.J. had remembered until he realized that working with his hands under a hot sun for hours on end was beneath him.

"I heard about them charging you for murdering Dylan," Alexis said, "You know they interviewed me."

C.J. hadn't known that but the news didn't surprise her given her close friendship with Alexis since they were very young.

"I didn't tell them very much and some time has passed," Alexis offered, "But they asked a lot of questions."

"That's okay Alexis," C.J. said, "They're going to interview anyone that has any connection to Dylan and to me."

Alexis bit her lip.

"I never thought that all this time…well that he hadn't just taken off and left this town behind," she said, "Like others did and then they find him or what's left of him…dead."

Meaning C.J. and Matt who hadn't been back in the past five years since the last time they left. They had effectively cut their ties to the small town that had raised them both, moving on with their lives miles away in L.A.

"The land about to be developed wasn't it," C.J. asked.

Alexis nodded.

"We didn't think that would ever happen. It'd been left vacant for so long but someone wants to build there and the city council want to revitalize this town."

C.J. thought to be a joke. Wild Forks had never had a heyday but had always been some remote town in some rural corner of Texas. Most people didn't know about it and fewer cared but there had been idle talk over the years about livening it up, and sometimes discussions and planning whirled up like dust devils before the talk faded down again. But most people which probably included Dylan's killer had never figured that anyone would touch the land where his body had been buried and finally answer the question about where Dylan had been all this time.

Alexis folded her arms, looking at the both of them.

"Did you talk to Nadine?"

Matt and C.J. looked at each other.

"No I haven't," C.J. said, "She appears to be the main witness for the investigation."

Alexis scoffed.

"Maybe that's true if she finally killed him."

Matt frowned.

"What are you saying," he said, "That she wanted him dead?"

Alexis looked at C.J. before responding, something Matt didn't miss.

"She…he…they used to fight and then he'd stomp out of the house," she said, "except for the night that she left him."

C.J. looked at the photographs on the wall near Alexis' work station, photos of Alexis with Brad and her kids, with other women in different settings and one where she, C.J. and Dianne stood in front of a refreshment stand at a rodeo held in the fairgrounds on the edge of town. They had been dressed in their jeans and shirts with rolled up sleeves and had gone to watch some of the men including Matt compete in the bronco riding competition. If C.J. remembered correctly, Matt had placed second behind a ringer from out of town. Nadine and another woman named Shelby had been draped all over him after he had won that competition and the group of them had all wound up at the Wrangler.

"She actually left him," Matt asked, "did she return to him?"

Alexis looked at C.J. who nodded.

"After he went looking for her…she…she did return to him," C.J. said, "He disappeared not long after that."

Matt digested that. When he had known Nadine, their relationship if you could call it that had been volatile but then she had been like that with everyone. He hadn't been serious about any women back in those days and when he had returned, he had been engaged to Christina. Only one woman had captured his heart really and it took him years for that realization to catch up. Now he had to smile to himself, better late than never. But Nadine had hung around and had slept with many local guys and she had always partied hard, Matt suspected as an escape from other parts of her life. Her father had left her mother one night and had never returned except to send a line back to them that he had remarried and resettled in Dallas. Nadine's dreams of getting out of Wild Fork and going to Hollywood to become a star had melted not long after and she had become a wild child. Still, Matt couldn't picture her shacking up with Dylan who after all never stayed with any woman long after bedding them. But the two of them had actually married and yet there had comments made by Nadine to investigators that they had fought over whether or not Dylan still had designs on C.J.

Still there was a disconnect between the arguments between the couple and Dylan's disappearance and Matt had to find out why. Because he knew in many murder cases, the killer often turned out to be someone intimately associated with the victim and if they had a history of fighting beforehand then that might highlight Nadine as a suspect. Yet the investigators had zeroed in on C.J. fairly quickly and Matt still didn't know why. The lack of cooperation from the involved agencies in releasing their discovery over to Rusty didn't help matters but deepened Matt's suspicions that maybe they knew that their case against C.J. wasn't as ironclad as they claimed.

"Nadine probably knows a lot more than she's told investigators," Matt said, "We'll have to talk with her."

Alexis sighed.

"You'd better watch out for her," she warned, "because she's still single and on the prowl just like she always has been."

Matt smiled.

"Well I've already got one girlfriend," he said, taking C.J.'s hand, "and she's more than I can handle."

C.J. rolled her eyes at him.

"Don't you forget it," she said.

Alexis looked from one to the other, her eye brows raised.

"So you two…are together?"

They both nodded and she chuckled.

"If that doesn't take it all…not that you don't work…in fact I wondered why you never got together sooner."

Matt and C.J. had left not long after that and had headed back to the ranch. But not before finding out that Nadine lived just off the Main street in the same house she had shared with Dylan. She had gotten her real estate license and her turf covered a couple of the towns surrounding Wild Fork. House sales weren't exactly booming so that had left her plenty of time to drink. Life hadn't been kind to her in the past five years.

The heat baked the air surrounding them as they got out at the ranch house and headed in to get some iced sweet tea before heading towards the relative shade of the back porch, which looked out onto the pastures, some with horses grazing. Matt wondered if his uncle would ever consider packing up his life in L.A. and moving back to his ranch but he knew that Roy enjoyed the investigative work that came rolling into their office. But sitting back here with C.J. miles away from the city brought back memories of a different time, recollections dimmed somewhat by the murder case hanging over them.

"You like it here," she said.

He leaned back and wrapped his arm around her. She moved closer to him where she loved to be, more than content to just sit back and let the scenery pass before them.

"I always did," Matt said, "My uncle always made this home for his son and for me…when my father wasn't around…not that it made him happy."

C.J. knew that the estrangement between the two brothers which had stretched years had weighted heavily on him even as a little boy trying to keep both of them in his life. Matt's father had never forbidden him to see his uncle and cousin but Matt hadn't missed the tension that lit his father's features whenever Roy's name came up in conversation. At the time, he had been too little and had missed too much to be able to figure out what had broken the relationship between the two that time couldn't mend. And when he had discovered that his kidnapping and how it had been handled had played into, he had felt guilt about it for years even as he kept it hidden to himself. The only person who had seen right through his actions had been C.J. and she had let him know it. And then she had helped him work his way through it, although it had taken quite a while.

"They both loved you," she said, "What happened between them didn't change that."

Matt knew that now but back then…well it had taken awhile. He squeezed her.

"If they only could have reconciled before my father died…"

She put her hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath it and trying to soothe the remnants of pain there with her touch.

"At least they reached some understanding," she said, "They never wanted to hurt you."

Matt took a deep breath, releasing much more than just expended air.

"So much happened here," he said, "I hadn't thought about some of it in so long. Been so busy with life but I step back here and it all comes back."

"I know," C.J. said, "I feel that way too."

And she had felt that, the memories and the sensations they carried coming back in a rush when she had been driving back to Wild Fork after having been released on bail. The days spent on the ranch working hard. The times spent in town with her friends and the week she had spent with Matt before they had gone their separate ways. Her mind had lingered on the final days and nights they had spent together, wrapped up in each others' arms and leaving the rest of their lives outside for a little while.

"Saying goodbye to you that day was the hardest thing I ever had to do," he said.

She caressed his chest with her fingers.

"You mean…"

"The day I went to basic training at Fort Ord."

She remembered that morning well, having risen with the sun to see him off. Both tired from having spent their final night doing other things besides sleeping. They had enjoyed the barbecue that had been thrown to send them off but during the fireworks show…well they had decided to go make some of their own. She had nearly begged off saying that he didn't need to feel obligated and he had silenced her with a kiss that caused the reasoning side of her brain to go a bit fuzzy.

She smiled then years later and Matt guessed at what prompted it.

"After…that incredible night we spent together."

C.J. decided to play innocent.

"Oh yeah…the music and the dancing and the fireworks…"

He stroked her mouth with his own before she could say anything more and when he finished, she had forgotten her train of thought.

"No, what came after but I think you know that."

Oh indeed she did and when she had woken up, still wrapped up in his embrace, his body pressed against her own, she had a thought…to tell him that she had changed her mind about walking away. That she wanted something much more than a memorable weekend with him to take to Boston, she wanted dare she say it, a future?

But she hadn't said it out loud as he woke up and the kissing started all over again, pulling her right into the sensations that came from sharing herself with him in newly discovered ways. Later, she had gotten dressed alongside him and had kept her feelings to herself as she said goodbye to him and watched him and Will drive away.

A chapter of her life closed; another ready to begin.

"I do and I did, in fact I wanted a lot more than I ever told you," she said.

That caused him to look at her closely.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

She looked at him pointedly.

"You never said you wanted anything more than the weekend we both took with us," she said, "And besides, everything got so crazy after we said goodbye."

The understatement of the year, he thought.

While he had enlisted into the army during a time of peace, soon enough events would transpire that would place the nation at war. Matt's basic training had been interrupted by news that terrorists had launched attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. The regimen which the military tightly followed had come to a standstill and he and his cousin had gone to the cantina knowing that soon enough, war would be declared against some unknown enemy. He also knew as he stood with Will and the other enlistees and watched the Twin Towers burning on television that he would be fighting in that war.

He had done what many people did that terrible day and that was to call his loved ones to check on his welfare. His father had been stranded in Chicago after his flight had been cancelled after the air space had been shut down from coast to coast. Roy hadn't answered his phone but his housekeeper said that he had to leave town abruptly but hadn't said much about it or when he would be returning.

When he finally got through to C.J. who had been hanging out with Julia and other students after their classes had been cancelled, she told him that her friend had been tracking down her sister who had left to head back to L.A. that morning to start a new job. She had been stuck in a traffic jam and had missed her flight and much more than that, so she would be staying over at their apartment as they sat there wondering what world they would wake up to the next day.

All Matt had wanted to do was to jump into a car and go AWOL to see her face again, to wrap himself up in her arms and her words to hold onto her tightly and feel safe again, to know that the death and the madness that had erupted that day would retreat at least for the brief time they were together. To reaffirm life between them after living through a day where so many had died.

"I wanted the same thing too," she said quietly, "I almost packed a bag, got in the car and took off to be with you… but Julia, she stopped me."

"Will stopped me," Matt said, "I was on my way to the barracks and he pulled me aside and slammed me against a wall to talk some sense into me. All I could think about was getting to you, the only thing that made sense in a world that had gone crazy."

The two lapsed into silence then both thinking back to that day when they realized in the horror of what had marred a beautiful morning how much they had needed each other. But it had been much more than that, between them. But as life had slowly begun to return to its orderly fashion, Matt had been too busy preparing to go to war and C.J. had returned to her legal education burying herself in books and classes so she wouldn't worry about him and Will.

"I think…I loved you even back then," he said.

Her eyes stung as she looked at him, and what she saw in his own eyes. Then she chuckled in response, the wisdom of years spent living filling her at that moment.

"Oh I knew that I loved you," she said, "but that just scared me so much."

His brows furrowed.

"Why?"

She struggled with the words even years later.

"Because Houston…you had so many girlfriends being the town stud and all and that weekend…I didn't know what it meant to you…if it meant nearly as much as it meant to me."

Matt knew that it had been true, that he had played the field a lot while growing up here and he had enjoyed himself.

"It meant an awful lot to me," he said, "I just didn't do a very good job at communicating it."

"We were both very young," she said, "and we both had some growing up to do. But…we're not that young anymore."

He kissed her lips again and tightening his embrace and she responded, draping her leg over his own moving closer to him.

"You've definitely got a point," he said, when he could breathe again, "and now that we're together…"

Uncle Roy came out onto the porch and still tangled up, they looked up at him. The older man suppressed a smile before becoming serious.

"You've got someone who's called the house," he said.

Matt looked up at his uncle.

"Who is it?"

"It's Nadine…"

Matt and C.J. looked at each other wondering what would come next.