A/N: I'm soooo sorry it took so long!! School's been crazy and I'm in a ton of clubs plus SGA so I had no time to write but things are winding down again so more updates sooner!!!Once again thanks to everyone who reviewed!! There is still hope yet…enjoy this chapter!!

~Monique~

            "What do you mean she left?!"

            Scott's blue eyes followed me from the couch he was casually seated on as I frantically paced the living room floor. He shrugged his shoulders apathetically and answered in a disinterested tone, like he was discussing the importance of processed cheeses.

            "Just what I said, she's left. This morning actually, after we had a talk."

            My frenzied movements stopped only long enough to shoot him an annoyed glance and to throw my body down on the couch beside him. I stared straight ahead, avoiding his eyes and what I saw in them, pure unadulterated indifference.

            "Like that…she just up and left. You know I seriously thought we would get somewhere but no you had to go and ruin it."

            Scott made a low grunting noise in his throat and then glanced at me incredulously.

            "I ruined it! You were the one that threw us together in one house thinking that just because we had to confront each other things were going to magically resolve themselves."

            "Oh, so now its my fault!" I said with a dramatic roll of my eyes. Scott took this brief opportunity to exit the couch.

            "Look, I know you meant well and in actuality I'm glad it happened because I found out things I would have never known before."

            "Like…" I inquired suspiciously because he had yet to elaborate on their talk and I had a sneaking suspicion that was why she left. He ran a hand through his blonde hair and sighed from deep inside him.

            "Well, I got her pregnant and she didn't want me to give up all of my dreams to bother with my own child, my responsibility. She lost the baby though, his name was Luke, it means light of god… she lost him."

            This newest revelation was nothing short of an incredible jolting shock and for the moment all I could do was stare, open-mouthed as Scott calmly explained their discussion and eventually her leaving.

            "I had no idea…I mean I would have never guessed."

            "I just can't believe she would do that." His voice clearly reflected the anger and bitterness that he kept up locked up inside him.

            "Scott, I've known you my whole life and I know that you are a caring, responsible person. And I also know that the first thing you would have done if she told you was leave Harvard law and scramble to find some half backed job that was about a hundred miles from you dreams."

            "He was my child, it was my job to provide for him. What makes her think that she can take that from me." He stared at me wearily and I went and laid a hand on his arm.

            "Look, I don't necessarily think what she did was right but Shelby obviously loves you more than herself or even the life you too produced because she felt that leaving was best. Think about it, she could have stayed and forced you to quit but she knew you well enough to know that eventually you would resent it and think about what might have been. She wasn't taking anything away from you, she was giving you the life you always wanted and eventually she would give you the family you always wanted. But I guess things never go as we planned. You can't blame her for loving you like that, Scott, I don't know one other person that would have done that."

            "I want to believe that…I really do but right now all I can think about is Luke and the family I would have had. I just need some time that's all."

            I nodded silently and then watched as he walked into the guest room that just a few hours before she had occupied and shut the door. I wasn't sure if he had gone in there to be closer to her or to escape Heather in the other room but I could tell that maybe it was a mixture of both.

~Shelby~

            I hated being on planes, and to make it worse I sat there comparing every little thing to Monique's private jet, like that fact that I was the only one on it and not squished between an enormous snoring man and chatterbox old lady. But I rejoiced in one thing, it kept my mind of him. As I sat there thinking back, there were many times during the course of our conversation that I wanted to hit him over the head with a large heavy object. The way he self-righteously tried to condemn me was too much and I knew at that instant that maybe things couldn't be fixed…maybe we had gone too far but the only problem was that I still couldn't stop crying. I cried for what we had had, for what we had lost and for what we could never experience. I remembered the times when he would lay next to me with his lips pressed to my hair and in the darkness, whispering, we would make plans, cement dreams build our castles and in one brief second everything had been shattered and our fortress torn to the ground.

            Glancing out of the window, as best I could over the fat man, I realized I was going home. I had come to find something but I hadn't. Scott was getting married and Luke would never have a brother or sister who would fill the gnawing, drowning gap that loosing him had caused but really what had I expected. I never really thought he would understand and if I had even for a moment I knew I was kidding myself. .

~Heather~

            "Scott, I'm tired and I want to go home."

            "How can you be tired all you've done all morning is sleep."

            Instinctively my eyebrows raised and my mouth opened wide in indignation. Scott ambled around the bedroom restlessly and all morning I had been trying to get him to talk to me but he wouldn't.

            "I don't know what your problem is but if it has anything to do with that tramp I'll kill you."

            He looked at me in annoyance like I was some child to be castigated. In all my life I had never been so insulted by a man and he didn't even have to say it, I knew his attitude had something to do with her.

            "She isn't some tramp, Heather, she was the mother of my child!"

            The words hit me so hard that I literally stumbled back onto the bed. Scott watched my reaction with sickening keen interest.

            "W-what?" Was all I could manage to get out.

            "You would have found out eventually, I guess."

            He continued to explain to me but it was as if I wasn't hearing him all I could see  was his lips moving. I noticed how stolid and unfeeling his face seemed but behind his eyes there was something, I couldn't identify it because I had never seen it before but I felt it. I stared at the wall behind him, bent at the wait, finding it difficult to breathe and to process what he was saying.

            Then there was silence, deafening quiet that rang through the room, settling in the pit of my stomach and making me feel sick.

            "So what now?" I stammered nervously. Scott continued to stare absently out of the window with little emotion on his face. I heard a deep sigh echo from him and then he turned his ice blue eyes on me wearily.

            "I don't know. Will your parents let you marry a man with a past? They've already forgiven the sexual abuse, drug addiction, drinking, anger. What makes you think your father just won't forbid you to marry me like he did before?"

            I got up and met him halfway between the window and the bed. I wanted to reach for him but refrained.

            "He wouldn't do that to me…us…again, Scott-…"

            "Why not? He has every right too! I never deserved you in the first place! Of course being a lawyer made up for that fact that I wasn't from some prestigious Southern family and that I spent most of my teenage years in an overstated form of a group home! But I'm sure it wouldn't bother you much, you could just go and marry Robert Van Horn, that squeaky-clean rich jerk you were engaged to before!" He spat out venomously.

            "How could you say that!" I shot back just as angrily. Tears began to well up behind my eyes and I desperately tried to hold them in. "I almost lost everything to be with you! Don't you remember? My father threatened to cut off all contact with me, take away my apartment, car, money and force me to have to pay for design school myself! And you know what…. I chose you! Even after all the threats and ridicule and misery, I chose you! Because I believed in you, Scott, because I believed you loved me! I guess I was wrong…what have I done?"

            Sobbing uncontrollably, I fell back onto the bed with my head buried deep in my hands and the mascara running down into them like a polluted river. I felt Scott kneel down beside me but I refused to look at him. His hand brushed a hair from out of my face and then down my soggy cheek.

            "Heather…please. I'm sorry, honey. I really am. I'm sorry. I just found out all this today and I'm just as shocked as you. Please forgive me. I…love you."

            Slowly, I lifted my heavy head from my hands and stared at him through tear stained eyes.

            "You're lying. Every time you say you love me you're lying and I know that. I've always known that. Don't look shocked, you still love her…it's true but the problem is I'm still fully and completely in love with you. So if you still want to marry me I'll go through with it because I'd rather live with you then live without you. If not…I'll pack my things and be gone before you can say 'goodbye."

            He was uncharacteristically rattled and I knew I must have been a sight. I made this speech in a cold, monotone voice with as little emotion as possible but inside I was reeling and my heart stopped when he finally spoke.