Chris knew what he had to do. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be fun, but it was necessary. He may not have Stephanie anymore, but this was still something he had to do. His affair with Stephanie had instilled in him the realization that Jessica just wasn't "the one." He had thought she was, but the feelings he had for Stephanie had eclipsed those that he had EVER had for Jessica.

This wasn't some misguided attempt to get Stephanie back either. Stephanie had made it absolutely clear that they were over. As hard as that was to accept, it was the fact of the matter. How could you go about changing someone's mind that didn't want to be changed? He had yet to even enter the realm of answering that question. And so here he stood, on his doorstep, about to have the biggest conversation of his life.

He was reluctant to go in, as anybody would be. He was not a man with many fears, but he knew that he was going to break someone's heart, and that stung. He didn't want to crush Jessica, but he couldn't live this charade much longer; it was the right thing to do. He took his key and with a slightly trembling hand, he unlocked his door and walked inside, setting his luggage off to the side.

"Jess!" he yelled out.

"In the kitchen honey!" she yelled back.

Chris trudged his way to the kitchen and saw Jessica pouring a cup of coffee for herself. She got off the stool she was sitting on and walked over to him, a happy smile on her face. She reached her arms up, going in for a welcome home kiss, but Chris held a hand up in her face before she could.

She looked a little hurt. "Chris?"

"Jess, before we do anything else…we need to talk."

"We do?" she asked, her voice quivering. "Is it about work?"

"Yes and no. I has more to do with us."

"Oh."

"Jess, sit down," Chris said, gesturing to the stool she had just been sitting on. She sat numbly, her hands folded in her lap. "You have to agree that I'm not here much."

"Yeah, I know that," she nodded.

"I just don't think it's helping our marriage. Wrestling is a full-time job, it's a full-time life, and my real career is just getting started and I don't think that I have time to be married."

She teared up, "So you want a divorce then?"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"But why!"

"Jess, I just don't think we're going to work out."

"So you don't love me anymore then?"

"I still love you, but it's not the same Jess, and I don't think it will ever be the same again. I'm sorry."

"Is it another woman?" Jessica asked brokenly.

Chris thought momentarily about Stephanie, but Stephanie was no longer his to think about. "There isn't another woman Jess, this is simply about you and me."

"I just don't understand!" she yelled. "Where the hell is this coming from!"

"Jessica, I just don't want to be married anymore! I don't know why it happened, or when, I just know that this is what it is, and I'm not changing my mind!"

"Get out…get out!" she yelled.

"I just need to pack and then I'll be out of your hair. Jess, I'm really sorry about this, but it's the way I feel and you can't change that."

"Just leave Chris," she said, her voice cracking. "I can't even look at you anymore."

Chris walked upstairs and into his bedroom. It was dark until he fumbled his hand against the wall to flip the switch. He grabbed a suitcase from under the bed, throwing it on the bed and flipping it open. Sighing, he started throwing clothes inside, deciding what to take now and what to save for later trips. He looked down at his bed for a moment, and you'd think that he would be thinking about good times he had with Jessica…but he wasn't.

He and Stephanie had had a lot of good times in a lot of beds dotting the country. She was so beautiful and innocent-looking, like her life had been just wonderful for all days and nothing bad had ever touched her. In the light of the bedroom, her eyes had always been so dark, almost smoldering. It was always a surprise when he saw them in natural light because they'd always been so blue.

He also loved how she was always letting her hair fall in her face. He would be constantly pushing it out of her face and she'd giggle at him, and he loved her smile. He had yet to figure out how she had gotten under his skin in so short a time. He had never met anyone like her before, and he had a sad feeling that he never would again.

That was just a depressing thought. He wished daily that he had met Stephanie first. Would things be different now? Speaking from a strictly omniscient point of view, yes, they most certainly would be different. He wouldn't be packing and he wouldn't be at the beginning of a divorce. If he were married to Stephanie, there would be no way he'd ever give her up. He hadn't given her up this time. She gave him up…and rightly so, when he thought about it.

Without her, his life just wasn't fun anymore. She had given him an excitement he hadn't felt since college. He wanted that back, but she had made it so clear that they were done and he loved her too much to fight her wishes. He had unknowingly finished his packing and quickly zipped it up. Just as he picked the suitcase up, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

He picked it up blindly, "Hello?"

"Chris?"

"Stephanie," he said quietly, closing the door so that Jessica couldn't snoop around him.

"Yeah, it's me."

Her voice sounded strange. "What did you need?"

"Can you please just come," she pleaded. "I need someone right now and Shane isn't picking up and can you please just come?"

"What happened?" he asked, keeping his cam so that she wouldn't get more freaked out than she obviously was at the moment.

"Chris, please, just come."

"Ok, I'm on my way," he told her, quickly hanging up without even saying goodbye.

He snatched up his suitcase and quickly left the room and quickly walked down the stairs. Jessica was at the foot of the stairs, looking like she was waiting for him, but he didn't have time for her. She opened her mouth to speak, but he went right past her. He grabbed his duffel bag and shouldered it, walking out without another word.

He headed straight for the airport without stopping once. He begged his way onto a flight to Connecticut, and spent the entire flight tapping his fingers on the armrest. Luckily it was so quiet nobody could get annoyed. He willed the plane to go faster, not satisfied with its speed.

His mind conjured up horrible images of Stephanie being hurt or worse. She sounded paranoid, which set off all his receptors. Now he was paranoid because she sounded that way. He couldn't imagine what had happened, but he was definitely on the path of worst case scenario. When the plane finally landed, he was a blur, impatiently waiting for his luggage and getting a rental car. When he was finally on his way, his mind was racing, and he thusly raced to Stephanie's house.

When he got to her house, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Her house was still there. It hadn't burned down or blown away. He pulled into the driveway, and without grabbing any of his things, he went to the front door, ringing about fifteen times.

"Who is it?" Stephanie's small voice floated through the door.

"It's Chris, Steph."

The door opened quickly and Stephanie was immediately in his arms, hugging him tightly. Chris hugged her back, feeling a kind of fear emanating off of her. That just made him embrace her tighter. She buried her face against his shirt, hiding her face from him, and maybe hiding from the world.

"Steph, what happened?" he whispered.

"Paul," she said with a silent sob.

Chris stiffened, "Stephanie, did he touch you? Did he…r-rape you?"

"No, God, no," Stephanie told him, pulling away from him. "I didn't even let him in my house."

Chris let out his breath. "Good, that's…really good to hear…but still, what happened?"

"He came over, and I looked through the peephole and saw him, but I didn't want him to come in because you saw how angry Joanie was, and I don't want to make her mad at me again, so I put the chain on my door, and opened it. So then he was telling me how he wanted me and all this stuff, but I kept telling him to go away, and he kept refusing, and I tried to close the door, but he wouldn't let me, and he almost tried to break it down, and so I stomped on his foot, and when he pulled back, I slammed the door. I thought he would leave, but he got into my backyard and tried to get in through the sliding door, but he couldn't, but he kept yelling at me to let him in, that he wanted me and I had to go upstairs not to hear him. He finally left, after I called you. I was so scared he would break in."

"Oh Steph…"

"I didn't want to bring the police into it because Paul didn't really DO anything, but he can just be so intimidating that I was afraid. I was probably overreacting."

"You did the right thing calling me," he said.

"What did you tell Jessica about you leaving?" she asked. "I didn't mean to call you, but I couldn't think of anyone else."

"I didn't tell her."

"Oh no! She's going to think the worst. Chris, what if she finds out you're here! You have to go!" she exclaimed, starting to push him out the door.

"Steph, before you called, I told her I wanted a divorce."

Stephanie paused, "Why?"

"If our relationship proved anything to me, it's that Jess and I are not going to work out, and it's better to end it now than let any bitterness form."

Stephanie closed her front door. "So you're over?"

"Yeah, we're over. And I didn't do this to try and win you back or anything, because I heard you loud and clear when you broke it off. And you're probably right in that you deserve better so you--"

Stephanie interrupted him quite unexpectedly. Her lips seized his, pressing hard against his mouth. She coaxed his shocked mouth open with her tongue, running it across his teeth briefly before invading his mouth. She wrapped him up in her arms before Chris broke and kissed her hard.

"I can't believe you broke it off. I was so sure you wouldn't."

"What? I said I would divorce her for you."

"But saying and doing are so different," Stephanie told him. She looked down for a moment. "I just…I felt like I was second in your life behind Jessica, and that was fine, that was ok because she's your wife, but it wasn't how I wanted to live my life. I felt like I deserved to be someone's number one, but you broke it off with her."

"I couldn't live like with her anymore, not when I know…"

"Know what?" she asked shyly.

"That I love you."

Stephanie hugged him again. "So where are you staying?"

"I don't have anywhere to go. She kicked me out, and I was actually packing when you called."

"You can stay here," she said. "Stay with me. I mean, we're going to have to hide this for a couple of weeks because we don't want people to realize that we had an affair, but people think we're friends right?"

"Yeah, they do."

"Then this can just be a friend lending a house to you. I mean, I know you've made friends elsewhere, but we can just tell people that the reason you're staying with me is so that you're close to Titan. And then after a couple of weeks, we can just tell people that we got closer while you were staying with me and they won't even question us being together."

"You've thought about this before haven't you?" Chris asked.

Stephanie blushed, "A few times, yeah. So you're here to stay right? I mean, you're really going to break it off with her."

She sounded worried, and he wished that he could cure that for her. He could only tell her that he was going to divorce Jessica, but he was really going to do that. He realized, looking at the woman he had come to love, that he just couldn't deny it anymore. He couldn't be someone that he wasn't, and the person that he wasn't was someone who would stay with Jessica.

"I am definitely going to break it off with her. I will call my lawyers tomorrow and we will get those proceedings started as soon as possible. I don't want to wait any longer to be single again."

"You'll be single?" she asked, giving him a look.

"Ok, no, I'll be with you," he said, kissing her again. "I'm sorry I made you feel like you were the second most important person in my life."

"It's ok, I guess it was just something Paul told me that set me off. But I don't even want to talk to him right now, which is going to be weird since I'm pretend married to him. I don't think Daddy will let me just call off the entire storyline without good reason."

"I thought that Paul and Joanie were still together."

"By Joanie's account they are, and I just don't want to mess with her because she's scary, but I don't know what's up with Paul."

"He sees how beautiful you are and he wants you, it's as simple as that," Chris said, an edge to his voice. He didn't like the taste of Paul's name in his mouth. If he had done what Stephanie said he did, then he should be in handcuffs for, at the very least, trespassing on her property. But Stephanie didn't want to drag the police into this, so he would have to be his protector.

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head. "I just don't know, I thought he was so nice, and then he pulls this and I don't think I'll ever be able to look at him the same way again."

"It's ok Steph, I'm here now, and I'm not going anywhere…not anymore."