Disclaimer: Hey, there not mine, unless some one wants to give me Christopher Ralph! :) They belong to Disney! Anyway, I FINALLY got the next chapter of this story up--yay! (Yes, I had a snow day today, for anyone wondering, so I got to work on all the stuff that I have been putting off! Hehehe!) Well, I can't think of anything else, so without further ado...

The Road Home

Chapter 2

This had to be a dream.

Caitie Roth chanted the sentence in her mind, over and over again, as she stared into a pair of the darkest brown eyes she had ever seen--and though that she would never see again. Long lashes framed those deep depths, so long that they nearly brushed his cheek when he blinked.

Tearing her eyes away from his, she took survey of the rest of him, her heart banging like a jackhammer in her chest. He had stood when she had entered the room, giving her a full view of him.

His trademark leather jacket had been replaced with on with a slightly looser cut, flowing around him like black mist. A pure white tee shirt sparkled from the depths of the jacket, laying flat against his stomach and outlining the muscles that lay beneath. His long legs were encased in dark blue jeans, slightly tighter then she had seen him wear before. His jet black hair was still spiked and wild, and his lips...his lips.

Lord, he hadn't changed.

Her mind was full of how he had once looked, and looked back at her, a smile pulling at those lips that made her tremble inside now. She could hear his silky voice, caressing her ears, sliding out of the darkness to wrap around her like a blanket.

She could still see his eyes, staring into hers with so much love and longing in them that she thought she was going to drown in those warm pools of light. Even now, she could see those eyes, superimposed over the dark, older, colder eyes that stared back at her now.

Not that she could blame him for having cold eyes. How could she? Blame him, that is.

How could she not blame herself?

Caitie felt tears burning at the back of her eyes, but after nearly four years of practice, she had learned to shove them back, to blink them away. But this time, they refused to budge, and she had to fight the sob that rose in her throat.

He took a step forward, as though he was going to come to her, but then stopped, almost like his feet were cemented to the floor. Caitie swallowed hard again, wanting to reach out to him, to go to him, but some invisible force stopped her.

But no matter how much her body refused to move, she still couldn't take her eyes off of him, her mouth opening on its own accord. She snapped her lips shut when she realized that there was nothing she could think to say.

What does one say when she's lost, for the first time in years, in the eyes of the man she never stopped loving?

@-}--}---

Jamie Waite stared at her, his heart stopping in his chest for the briefest period of time, and then beating overtime to make up for it's lack.

Good Heaven, she was beautiful. Why did she have to still be as beautiful as the last time he had seen her?

Her long black hair was longer now, falling to nearly the middle of her back. A stray strand of the ebony locks had fallen into her face, and clung to the smooth porcelain of her cheek. The rest was coaxed back into a hair clip, a gold and blue one from what he could see.

He couldn't look her in the eye yet, so he allowed his eyes to scan the rest of her face. Her cheekbones were still high, and her skin was still smooth, and her lips still held that semi-pout that he found...had found so incredibly sexy.

Jamie pulled his eyes away from her face--that was dangerous. He shifted his gaze to her feet, but to do so, he had to pass by the rest of her body, and that's when he realized what she was wearing.

The dark haired woman was clad in the dark blue and black uniform, the same uniform that his two oldest younger sisters were dressed in. And something was telling him that his mother's cafe's waitress uniform was NOT the newest style.

He wanted to turn around and glare at his mother for not at least WARNING him that the woman he had once and still loved-- worked in her restaurant.

@-}--}---

They could have stood there forever, both losing themselves in the past, if the present reality hadn't taken that moment to make itself known in the form of Crimson.

The red head cleared her throat loudly, drawing air between her teeth as she did so to make a quick little noise at the front of her mouth. The noise caught the attention of the former lovers, causing Jamie to turn around, so that he was no longer looking at Caitie.

"Umm...well...isn't this..." Genevieve trailed off, taken aback the sudden pain she saw in both young people's eyes.

She hadn't thought that it would hurt them both so much to see one another again. Causing her beloved son and the girl she had always wanted for a daughter-in-law pain had been the last thing on her mind when she concocted her little plan for them to see one another again, and perhaps, get back the fire and love they had once had.

It actually hadn't even been a plan. It was actually nothing more then a series of coincidences that had brought the "star-crossed lovers" as Molly had dreamily dubbed them together.

It had been a coincidence when she had run out of tea bags the same time that Caitie Roth had, three months ago. It had been a coincidence that they had literally run into one another at the market place.

Of course, it wasn't really a coincidence that she had asked Caitie out to lunch at her cafe. She hadn't heard even the merest whisper of the girl's name, for nearly four years, and she was morbidly curious to see what the young woman that had neatly shattered her son's heart had been doing.

Perhaps "morbid curiosity" hadn't really been the right word. Perhaps it was a mother's need to know that those that had hurt her children had properly paid for it. So, with the skillful bluntness her son had inherited from her, Genevieve has set about her task.

What she had found out was more then enough to satisfy that cruel little need to know. In fact, it tore at the older woman so hard, she had pushed aside the past, and offered the young woman a job. Anyone that could suffer as Caitie had deserved a break.

At first, Caitie had refused. When Genevieve had prodded her on the point, Caitie had reminded her of the past Genevieve's son and the girl shared, the woman had waved her hand, deciding, in that moment, that the past was dead.

"Le passé est mort."

Now, to convince her beloved little boy of that point.

Taking a deep breath, Genevieve steeled herself, and faked a smile.

"Um, Jamie--I believe you know Caitie Roth?"

@-}--}---

Sami knew her mother had made a mistake the second the words were out of her mouth. The little girl didn't REALLY understand what had happened between Caitie and Jamie all those years ago--she had only been four at the time--but she did remember...that night.

She had gotten up to answer nature's call and to find some one to give her a drink of water. When the most important business had been taken care of, the little girl had padded downstairs, wondering if her older brother was home yet.

Sami had pushed through the doors of the living room--and stopped dead in her tracks.

Jamie had been sitting on the couch, his head in his hands, and his shoulders shaking roughly. The sadness had rolled off of him in waves, bringing tears to his baby sisters eyes as quickly as if it had been her to hurt, and not her brother. Sami, not knowing what else to do, and moved forward until she was standing in front of her brother, staring at her brother with the same wide brown eyes as him.

He'd looked up then, and Sami had been shocked to see the tears that rolled down his cheeks. She had NEVER seen her brother cry before, not once. Unable to stop herself, teardrops had began to roll down her face in a flood.

Jamie had pulled her onto his lap at that point, hugging her as they cried together--he for the loss of the only woman he would ever love, and she for the pain that he was going thorough.

Snapping herself out of the past, Sami locked her eyes on her brother and Caitie, closer to each other now then they had been in years.

The little girl could see the hurt in both their faces, could almost taste the pain and the tears that she knew were threatening to run down their faces. Sami watched, almost spellbound, as he brother turned from glaring at their mother, to look back at Caitie, meeting her gaze for a second before looking away.

Caitie opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again. Jamie still refused to look at her, his frame so tight it looked like he was going to shatter to pieces at any moment.

Not knowing what else to do, Sami stepped forward, intending to go to her brother, but Caitie's voice brought her up short. Evidently, the dark haired girl had finally hit upon something to say.

"Hello Jamie."

@-}--}---

Her voice. Oh, God, her voice. Her voice--that voice could have and did call him back from his personal darkness some many times, that voice had warmed his heart, made him feel like he was flying--and that voice had been the one to destroy him.

He couldn't handle this. He had to get away from this, from her, from her voice, from the memories that he couldn't forget, from the pain that had never stopped, and from the love that would never loosen it's grip on his heart.

Without so much as a glance at his family, Jamie Waite did the only thing he could think to do--he ran.