The What If Factor

Chapter 10: Secrets.

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: If I said I owned them, I lied.

Author's Note: Alrighty, my friends. I just finished taking a mid-term and have oodles of time on my hands. So, this one is longer, which is what some of you have been asking for…

Buffy's POV:

Remember when I said I felt horrible? After I slept with Angel? Well, fast forward a year. I felt worse. It was no longer guilt. It was all disappointment and regret. Also, remember when I said I loved Ben? That he was my husband? I also learned that, just because you're married to someone doesn't mean that you have to love them. I did love Ben, just not in the way I had when I married him. I didn't even know if I had ever really loved him like a husband. That sounds terrible, I know. But it's the truth.

I know that Ben noticed when I would be late. I suddenly made excuses to go out and slay. But, I wouldn't be slaying. Well, not in the way you would think…

Forget I said that.

Anyway, I would sneak off to see Angel. We spend time together, usually end up in bed or on a table or a counter. I was beginning to fell like I had felt when we were married, before he died. But, I also felt like I did when I had been sleeping with Spike all those years ago. I felt dirty. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, yet I continued to do it anyway.

I also began to notice that Paige was beginning to notice. She would give me this look like she knew. And, children can see the innocence on your sole. They know when you're doing something right or wrong. And I think she knew. Paige and I had always been the closest. We knew each other inside and out. Or maybe it was like that because she was just like her father. I knew him inside and out, as well. And she knew me. She asked me on more then one occasion what was going on and I flat out lied to her. The one thing I said I'd never do was lie to my kids about my life. And that was exactly what I was doing.

Now, I'm not going to deny loving every second I was with Angel. He and I are one person, always have been. I just felt so complete when I was with him. I felt right again. And then I would go home and have to look Ben in the eyes. I had to lye awake at night and watch him sleep, knowing that he thought that everything was ok. I didn't say anything to Willow or Xander, either. I just couldn't face it. Like I said, it was like I was with Spike all over again.

And that's what made it worse. Spike started coming around again. Don't ask me why, I couldn't tell you. But he would corner me in the cemeteries and tell me that he could smell Angel all me. How he knew what was going on. He could smell my fear and worry when I was around Ben. I told him he was crazy. He told me I was a lier.

Angel's POV:

It was wrong. I knew that. I had Nina and Dylan now. She had put up with all my distance crap when I had been at Wolfram and Heart, and forgiven me when I had just ended it with her when Buffy told me that we had a chance to make it work. She had trusted me again. And now, I was disrespecting that trust. I was always going into work early or staying late, or going out on Patrol until the wee hours of the morning. But that, of course, wasn't what I was really doing. I was going to meet Buffy.

But, when I was with her, my current life just fell away. I felt like I had felt when she was in High School, the way I felt when we were married. And everything seemed ok. Until I went home to Nina. I had to look at her, see all the hope she had for our marriage, and for our son's future. I knew that it killed her that Connor called Buffy 'Mom.' When she had married me, she had felt as if Connor was her son, and treated him like one. But she would never be Buffy to Connor.

Or to me.

And that's what hurt her the most.

So, how was I supposed to tell her that I was having an affair with Buffy, the one person she had striven to be, before I told her that she was perfect for me just the way she was. How was I supposed to tell her, that for a year I had been lying, being with the 'Other Woman" instead of being with her, making love to someone else.

It would absolutely devastate her.

She couldn't know.

But, what was I supposed to do? Just have an affair for the rest of my life? Lie to my wife for the rest of hers? Make my son think that every thing was just fine and dandy between his mother and me?

We would find out soon enough.

Buffy's POV:

Remember when I said that the night Angel came to see me would be the night that began the decade that would ruin our lives? Well, when Angel married Nina, that had seemed like it was it. And then when Dylan came along, it forced the both of us to move on. But the fact that we now had different people counting on us, trusting us, was what made our Affair all the more painful. You'd think that that would be enough.

But the ruin had yet to come.