A/N: Hi friends! So good to see you all back here again! I will be honest upfront, this chapter is only about 4200 words. But with a family reunion coming up and Thanksgiving, etc., I wanted to give you all a little something to hold you over until my intended end for the original chapter is finished. It's not that writing this story is difficulty for me; we are just getting into some intricacies that take more research, more care, and more trepidation to do well. When looking over what I do have written, this seemed like the best snapshot to give you all.

And I'll be completely honest, the middle section of this chapter - it's only about 6 'paragraphs' - but it's some of my favorite writing I've done in a long time. I wrote it semi-autobiographically and damn does it resonate every single time.

Anyways, enjoy! I'm hoping to have the other 10k+ expected words to you all by the end of this month or before Thanksgiving; we'll see what I can do. :)

There's something about intentionally holding your breath. Inhaling and staving off the release of tension though every fiber of your being screams for comfort. It's the feeling of complete control you have, knowing the power you hold over yourself when nothing else feels correct. But more than that, it's the rush of dopamine that hits the moment you exhale. The second new oxygen hits your brain, and your neurons reactivate. That second where you finally feel alive again. Alive in a world with no good news beyond the return of your breath.

I kept repeating the action every time I felt overwhelmed that night. Because I didn't want to fully lose it with Alison just above me. I didn't want Alison to sense the panic raging inside of me. Thought after thought of inadequacy and deserving grief. Of course, Ash was engaged. Of course, she had found someone. The one. Of course, it was the same girl she deserted me for. Of course, her leaving was the right thing to do. Of course, it was justified now. If she hadn't abandoned me, maybe she wouldn't be happy now. Maybe it was the last lingering stitch that her now fiancée couldn't move forward from. Of course, leaving me that way was her only choice. Right? It had to be. Maybe it –

Inhale.

When it was too overwhelming. When my thoughts grew to new heights. When I needed everything to just fucking stop for 20 seconds.

Exhale.

I let out a groan as the temporary high hit my body for the umpteenth time since hearing the news less than two hours ago.

"That feel good, baby?" Alison questioned. Settling back into my body, I reacquainted myself with my surroundings, repetitive tension being placed on my naked back as Alison gave me a massage. Her weight was precariously balanced on my lower back and ass as she straddled me. Hearing the pump of the lotion bottle, she danced over my skin before threading pressure from her palms to the tips of her fingers up my back. "I thought you had fallen asleep on me… got so quiet."

"No, I'm here." I whispered as she chuckled above me, firmly believing this to be exactly what I needed. When in fact, it was just the perfect escape.

After a few more moments, I felt her scoot back before reaching forward to move any lingering hair to my right side away from my face. Her lips cascaded across my back leaving simple pecks along my skin while running her palms fully up and down my sides. "It's incredible how lost in you I become even through something so simple. Taking care of you is by far one of the biggest honors I carry as your girlfriend. I hope you feel that."

'I hope you feel that…'

How are you supposed to tell the woman you love that it's been hours since you've felt anything? That the line between anger and sadness and despondence and devastation is so fine that you're vacillating between all four without notice.

Inhale.

Fuck, me. I had said that I wouldn't do this again. I wouldn't hide. That I would rather Alison have to save me from the brink of myself before I would lie to her for the sake of our relationship again.

Exhale.

"I can't…" The murmur escaped my lips without me even realizing it had been fully thought. I kept my eyes closed, hoping that maybe she hadn't heard me at all.

But instead, I felt her body settle further against my back. Moving her knees up closer to my hips, she hovered slightly over me before tucking her head in between my shoulder blades and reaching her hands forward to hold mine next to me. "Okay, Emmy. You feel this?" I nodded, biting my upper lip with such force that I imagined myself drawing blood. "Did the massage distract you from thinking about it at all?"

"No – " My voice cracked, her grip tightening on the back of my hands instantaneously. " – I can't reconcile it."

I felt Alison exhale against me and for a moment I pictured her completing the same exercise I had been. Maybe she felt just as out of control as me. Maybe she needed moments of nothingness in between feeling alive again, too.

Her head lifted from my back before leaving a drawn-out kiss against my temple. "I'm going to switch spots, okay? I want to be able to see you better."

"You still hold me?" I whispered again into the darkness of the world around me. She exhaled again. This time deeply between her lips.

"I wouldn't consid – " Her voice cracking this time around. "I wouldn't consider anything less. Turn into my side?" My eyes remained closed while turning to my back before scooting to my right into her. "There you go, baby." I felt her left hand immediately warm my arm, tucking me against her like a mom covering her child with as much protection possible in their time of need. She left me briefly to pull the comforter back up around us before throwing her leg over my lower body to wrap me in a cocoon of her. "Let me know what you need. I brought us water up here before starting your massage. But if you need anything else…"

"Thank you, Ali." I laced my hand in hers. "I love you." Pursing my lips together, I leaned further into her in hopes to postpone the tears building from simply feeling her love so purely next to me. The tender firmness entrenching her hold against me.

"I love you too, Emily." We lay in silence. Inhaling and exhaling. A poetic exchange between two hearts attempting to find space between the decay. Between the moments becoming ours that were never meant to become hers to begin with. Moments that in this very moment she was choosing to take on as her own. "What can't you reconcile?"

I knew from the way she let it hang in the silence that I didn't have to answer the question if I didn't want to. That all Alison intended for me to know was that I had been heard. That she wanted to know but also wanted me to feel comfortable with her knowing. And right then, I wished there was a way for her to know without me saying. For her to deeply know my pain without having to express it.

Something I learned during my previous break-up is that there is no word for the type of loss that is so distant, it's intimate. A loss so immeasurable that the only people that could fathom the feeling are those no longer in contact. An intimate self-sacrificing loss that balances and craves the distance already imposed.

The last time I had remembered a similar feeling was after the loss of my grandmother. My mother's mom. Like most matriarchs, she served as a pillar. Not only to her community, but to our family life. To me. My mother was her only child, despite having siblings from her father's previous marriage. So, she bared the brunt of the funeral, the will, the aftercoming of any loss that is never considered before it needs to be. And I remember my mom taking on the burden so well. So gracefully. So purposefully. As though it were a test she had been studying for her entire life.

Alternatively, I was a mess. It was my first great loss. My first big cavern dug out in my chest overnight. But as my mother's only child, I knew I couldn't show it. Perhaps the first of many times in my life, I buried my feelings for the sake of a woman I loved. So, to the world, I was the perfect sidekick to my mother. I filled in each crack that threatened its way through. I stepped in instantaneously. I wore myself down until I wondered how much of myself and my grief were left to truly mourn. And I remember that as the days passed, the further from that initial feeling of her passing I became. The further I believed my mother was from the same feelings in her outward demonstration of perseverance.

But one night, as I stayed up late, escaping the inevitability of sleep to bring on another day without her, I heard a whimper in the silence. My mother from the living room. It started as an unsure sniffle. A request to the empty air for permission to grieve. But as the world opened its arms to her, a decisive sob crawled underneath my bedroom door. A woman breaking open in distinct fragility. Crushing me in a way that I still cannot express.

A loss so distant, it's intimate.

Devastation and destruction that could only be felt by those deeply involved. Hearts marred in ash and coal and yet somehow survive long enough to beg to be heard once more. To say, 'I'm here.'

"I'm here, Emily. Whether you tell me or not. Us making it this far tonight is progress. But I'm here. I'm here."

My eyes opened in confusion as her words echoed my thoughts simultaneously. It could have only been a sign to get over whatever dread I was holding on to. Whatever disappointment I feared Alison may hold against me. My stomach felt like it had been turned inside out pushing its way against my lungs preventing my previous habitual inhale exhale. As much as I wanted to speak, catching my breath felt undoable. So instead, I tilted my head up and placed a small kiss on her jaw line. It was the most I could do to make her feel seen.

But she didn't skip a beat; she never did. I felt Alison's chest raise as she took a breath and then, she just started talking for me. "Ever since Maya called me this morning, I've been going over what tonight would be like on repeat. Because for as much as I understand what you went through when Ash left, I don't understand it in the slightest. I can never attempt to imagine what those days and weeks were like for you." She shook her body out slightly, relaxing further into the bed as she pulled me closer, as though settling in for a story. I closed my eyes again while gently gripping her shirt between my fingers against her torso. "But as I sat in the living room waiting for you to come home, I was transported back to our second date at the museum. Where we got pizza after and where I asked you to stay the night with me because I didn't want you to leave. And I remembered something we said. You asked if I was afraid that if you left right now, after just finding out about Jake, that you might not come back. And I said that of course it was plausible that you might want a 'clean break'. I remember those words so clearly. 'A clean break from all of my baggage'." Alison paused, kissing the top of my head, chuckling slightly before continuing. "And you got so mad. Not really. But mad for what I had seen of you before then, and you leaned away from me immediately jumping into defense mode."

I laughed in return, repeating my own words, "If that's who you think I am. If you think I'm the girl who is silently praying for the moment I can get into my car and drive away, you don't know me at all."

"Mm-hmm. That Emily was right, you know. I didn't know at all back then, and before today, I had never made the connection of your defensiveness then to your past. You'll never be the girl to leave. I must be honest with you though; I was terrified that you were going to leave in the middle of the night that night. I remember waking you up the next morning with kiss after kiss on your face because I was in disbelief that you were still there. And now? Like, of course, you were still there. But when you woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, and I felt your side of the bed dip, the only thing that crossed my mind was that you were leaving me." My arm draped further across her waist, tightening at her revelation. At her vulnerability. "I tightened my eyes until I could only see color willing for the light across the room to turn on. Waiting to hear rummaging on the floor to collect your clothes. But then the bed shifted again, and you blew on your hands – warming them after the cold water, I assume – before sliding up behind me and spooning me again. I snuggled back into you and all you said was – "

" – Hi."

"Like coming home." Her foot moved up and down my calf, replicating the comforting gesture I had done with my hand that first night. Feeling her swallow deeply against my head, she kept speaking, "So as I sat on the couch this afternoon, I tried sitting in that feeling. Those ten to fifteen seconds where I didn't know. Where I thought you had made a break for it. A break from me. And I tried to prolong it. After fifteen seconds, I tried to get to thirty and then to sixty. And I sat in that hurt for less than two minutes before I had to get up and move on. Because the idea of you leaving in a moment of such promise was too much to bear. And you did that for years?"

I shrugged. "Months? I guess until I slept with someone else. Got lost in another feeling altogether."

"Months…" Alison's voice trailed. "That's fucking terrible. I'm so sorry, Emmy. I didn't even love you yet, just knew that I could. Only knew it was possible and that feeling broke me until you got back into bed." Exhale. "So, no. I don't understand. I will never understand, but I am willing to try. I'm willing to endure this feeling. Whatever that may be right now that you can't seem to reconcile. It's okay to feel broken by this, but I'm not going to let it break us, okay? I'm never letting go of you. We will never be that relationship. It was a one-time thing that I wish I had been able to have your heart avoid. And I'm sorry that this whole thing makes you relive it. I just wish – "

" – Ali, pause." I flattened my hand against her torso. "That's not what I'm reconciling. I mean…" I stopped, sitting up and pulling the comforter closer to cover my chest while facing Alison. She moved her hands behind her head to prop her neck up. "Let me try again." Inhale. "First, I so, so appreciate everything you just said and walked me through. It means so much that you'd be willing to do that for me and for us. But, I've moved past waking up alone that day. Mostly, I have. I guess somedays will always be worse than others, but that's not what this is."

"Alright." She whispered, moving one hand to link our fingers casually together and just listen.

Exhale. "Do you believe in fate? Like that everything in life is inextricably tied with a greater purpose or for innate good?"

Alison nodded, "Sure. Maybe not all for good? But everything having a reason in due time? Sure?"

"Okay, good. Me too." I looked up at her smiling. "I actually heard this story a few weeks back at the hospital that this nurse was sharing about this man who stopped at a garage sale when she was little to teach her mom and her and her siblings about their helmets being too loose. And he took time out of his day to show them exactly how to wear them. How to strap them tightly so that if they ever fell from their bikes forward onto their faces, there would be less likely to be damaged, less opportunity for bodily injury. She talked about how appreciative her family was and how diligent they all were after that. How she never really fell off her bike ever or anything but that it was a lesson her family really took to heart because of this random guy's gesture." Inhale. "But she then led into how her daughter was riding her scooter over that previous weekend and hit a small rock that sent her flying forward right over the handlebars and into the sidewalk. And she walked away nearly scot-free. Because a man stopped thirty years earlier to teach her how to tighten her daughter's helmet. A lesson decades in the making. A blip in that man's life that might have saved her daughter's." Exhale. "That's what I mean by fate. That the ripple we make right now might not be felt for years to come."

"Where are you going with this?" Alison asked in my moment of pause.

I shook out my head. "Yeah, sorry. I just wanted to clarify because maybe 'innate good' was the wrong word choice? I don't know. I just mean that all choices and moments carry weight and meaning. At least for me."

"And I'm on board with that, Em." She squeezed my hand. "You're being oddly circular. You're not usually repetitive like this."

Inhale. "That's what I can't reconcile though, Alison. I believe in fate empirically. Like it's a fucking scientific model or something because I've seen fate thread my life together time and time again. But for the life of me, I can't find it here."

"Can't find what where?"

"I can't reconcile how her leaving me that way was necessary." Exhale. "I tried to make it make sense for a long fucking time. Like maybe it was a part of our love story – mine and Ash's. Maybe one day I would come back through the door of that apartment and everything she once took would be back in his place. Maybe Casper would run down our stairs after hearing my key in the door. But that didn't happen…"

"Emmy –"

"No, please, let me say this." Inhale. "I then thought maybe it was a learning lesson for Ash, maybe it wasn't for me. Maybe whoever she fucking left me for. Sorry. Maybe Nora would hear the story one day and realize how callous and cold and cruel Ash was and maybe is, and the fate would be tied to her. Or I don't know, maybe it was meant for us. Like her renouncing me as hers would make me cherish you as mine. But that's not right either. Because I never needed to be hurt like that. I never needed to feel that way to know the love we have now. And so, I don't fucking get it. I can't reconcile something I have always found to be true."

Alison quickly sat up, taking my face in her hands. She shrugged. "Some things can't be reconciled, babe. Jacob's cancer will never make sense to me. He didn't need to go through this for some higher purpose. Some things just are. But the only way to move on from it is to find some other purpose behind it. It doesn't have to be for the greater good or for anyone's benefit or anyone's story. But events always have purpose. Meeting you has held so many. So many." She smiled into me, leaving a lingering kiss against my lips. "You don't have to reconcile your trauma, Emmy."

I dropped my eyes, my chin still in her palms. "But if it isn't tied to fate, if it's not for some other good out there, then I was eviscerated for nothing…" I let the few tears I had fall openly onto her hands as she used her thumbs in attempts to brush them away. "… I can't have the thing that nearly destroyed me mean nothing. I can't have it be heartless. I can't have it just be. Because believing in a meaning behind it allowed me to move on. It gave me the ability to leave it in Austin. To leave Ash in Austin. To leave whatever Emily woke up that morning in February behind. Without a meaning, I'm afraid it's just going to come back. That I'm still going to be that girl. Alone and afraid."

"Do you trust me?" She whispered after a pause in the midnight air.

"Of course." I replied as Alison stood from the bed, keeping our hands linked as she walked us through our bathroom and into the walk-in closet.

"Close the door behind you and turn to face the mirror for me." She ushered us through the door, flipping the light switch as we moved. Alison grabbed our step stool, placed it just behind my feet and climbed up on the first step behind me. And in those few inches gained, she reached forward, wrapped her arms delicately around my waist, and rested her chin against my shoulder. "Look at yourself for me, baby. Look around you." Inhale, as my eyes raised to look at myself. To look at us in the reflection in front of us. "Does the girl in that mirror look the same as the girl you left in Austin?"

"No…" I whispered.

"Tell me what's different." She tilted her head, kissing my neck lightly. "Come on, tell me."

"She's more confident. Holds her head and shoulders a little higher."

"As she should."

"She's happier. Her heart is more full of love than she ever could have anticipated."

"No!" Alison gasped, looking at us. "I wonder how on earth that happened?" I giggled as she tightened her hold on me.

"Her eyes hold promise. Like there are now tangible things to look forward to." I turned my head toward Alison's still on my shoulder. "I love you."

She smiled, kissing my forehead before pointing forward for me to look back in the mirror. "Anything else?"

I shook my head. "I mean, no. Not really. I guess my hair is a little grayer. My fine wrinkles a little more prominent. My body a little less shapely."

"And I love every single inch." Her fingers etched across my torso sending a chill up my spine and wriggling in her grasp. "But tell me, Emily. Does the woman in that mirror look alone?"

"Not at all."

"Does she look afraid?"

"She doesn't."

"Because you're not the same. You never have been and never will be. Maybe at one point you were defined by Ash but look in the mirror. You are so much more than that day. You said it best. You're more confident. You're happier. You hold so much fucking promise. You, Emily Fields, are more than your worst moment. Because that woman in front of you right now? Her? Right there. She's my best moment. You make up nearly all of them at this point."

The lump once settled in my chest dissipated in her words. Butterflies coating every inch of my skin as I turned in Alison's arms to face her, blushing head to toe.

"There's nothing left to reconcile, Emily." Alison whispered, looking down at me as I pursed my lips in admiration. "You're here now. And though that may have been who you were, it's nowhere close to woman I see tonight." She raised her left hand, resting her thumb and forefinger gently under my chin. "I love you."

I shook my head in disbelief up at her. "What am I going to do with you?"

"What?" She blushed in reply.

"Thank you." I captured her in the sincerest of embraces. Our lips meeting delicately and intentionally as her thumb, still placed on my chin, dictated us forward.

"Repeat it back to me, baby." She inhaled while pulling away. "There's nothing left to reconcile."

I closed my eyes, trying to mean the words with every part of me. "There's nothing left to reconcile."

Exhale.

A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this short addition! Also over this past month, this story hit 24k views which will always be crazy to me. The fact that even one of you out there reads this story as their escape is revolutionary to my life. So thank you for being here still. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for every single moment along the way. Until next time!

Read. Review. Favorite. Pass Along.

-secretpen28