Chapter 6

It takes a moment for me to break away from his spell. The way his eyes melt into my soul is rather disconcerting, I know what he wants, what he's thinking and if I lean slightly closer. But it's not what I need right now, if we let our emotions rule how we act then we'll end up back the way we were. Sure, we were happy in the beginning, but see how that turned out.

I take a step back, our hands still entwined and hanging between us as our only connection. It would be so easy to close back the distance and let myself be held by him. As I look back into his eyes I see the desire has changed to one of regret, again. I hate that I'm doing it to him, I just don't think we're at a point where either of us are ready. Not while there are things still hanging out there, slightly out of reach but still in our sight waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

"You fancy getting some dinner?" I ask, breaking the silence that has engulfed us both for the last few moments.

"I don't know."

"Please." My eyes plead with him and my hand is still enclosed in his, I can't find the will to break the hold between us. We're working alternate shifts now until Christmas and I don't think I could handle spending that day with him with so much tension in the air. "My treat." I try to seal the deal.

"Sure." I let out a quiet sigh that I didn't realize I was holding. "Not too late though, I've got some foundation stuff to deal with."

"No problem." I reply. "Grab your coat and we'll go."

"Okay," he chuckles. "But you're going to have to give me my hand back."

Right, yeah, woops. I drop his hand and wait by the door for him. As he returns I half expect him to pick it up again, though when he doesn't it isn't too much of a problem we're going outside and being part of some gossip session is not high on my list of priorities.

*

On the way home, we decided it would be easier to get takeout and eat back at my place. So after a small argument deciding whether pizza or Chinese was the way to go, we settled on Mac Donald's as it was closest and are now sat my kitchen table munching through the 20 nuggets we bought to share.

"Weird day huh?" I glance up in his direction and give him a warm smile, which he returns.

"You mean the group of Lord of Thing Rings enthusiasts we got in?"

I giggle at the memory of our earlier patients. Who would have thought a re-enactment would be so dangerous and who would have thought the number in that cult would be so vast. But that's not quite what I was referring to and looking at him I know he understands what I meant. I also know he has to leave pretty soon so I need to get whatever is happening between us out in the open so we can work our way through the mess. "So where do we go from here?"

"I… er…" I guess he wasn't ready for me to come out and ask.

 "I think... I just… we need to talk about what happened at lunch." Because this is driving me insane, I add silently.

"You're right." I'm glad he agrees with me, I guess I just hoped he would start it rolling, but his silence confirms otherwise.

"What I said at lunch about what the nurses were gossiping…"

"The NGS you mean?" He interrupts me, with a glint in his eye, and is his attempt to lighten up the tension we've suddenly created.

I roll my eyes at him, before continuing. "I thought we'd decided to just be friends."

"We did." He answers dejectedly.

"So what was with the attitude earlier?"

"I don't know."

I can tell he's lying. "Just tell me the truth."

I hear him mutter under his breath something along the lines of 'you don't want to hear it'.

I reach across the table, laying my hand gently on his arm. "Susan feels we need to try actual communication if we're going to go anywhere with 'us'."

"You spoke to Susan about 'us'?" He asks, obviously shocked, using the same emphasis on 'us' as I did.

"Well it was more that she dragged it out of me."

He raises an eyebrow in mock disbelief. "What did you to talk about?"

"Us."

"Really?" A hopeful smile appears on his face as I nod in confirmation. "Anything I should know about?"

I nod again, pausing as I work out how to word what I want to say. It was so much easier talking to Susan, earlier everything had come out in a flurry of emotions; now I'm not sure how to even begin.

"You want to tell me?" I nod again, biting my lip nervously. "How about you try telling me how you feel."

That seems like a good idea, especially in principle. Practically I think my mouth has somehow disengaged from my head and is refusing to even work. Taking a deep breath I open my mouth and hope. "Nervous." I manage to muster.

"Why?" He asks softly.

I gulp down the lump that has come up into my throat. "Because what I say may change everything."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing."

"But it might be." My gaze has dropped down to our fingers that have somehow interlinked.

"You think things could get any worse than before?"

"I just don't want to lose you again." I whisper, not believing how hard this is.

"Abby look at me." He waits until I've lifted my head up and I'm looking into his eyes before he continues. "You wont lose me. But I need you to be honest with me."

"Okay." I say automatically. "You have to be honest with me too."

"I was always honest with you."

"Not at the end, you just shut me out." I take this opportunity to take back my hand, using the pretence of wanting another nugget.

"But we haven't ended yet."

Chewing through my food, I swallow quickly and reply. "So what was the last six months about?"

"A momentary lapse." I watch him move his chair closer to mine, and then he cups my face with his soft hands. "I told you, I made a mistake, I needed to sort myself out and so did you." His eyes pleading with me as he speaks. "And if I stayed I don't know where we would be right now."

"We could have sorted it, if we really wanted to." I say to him, but I don't really believe that. So I shake my head and rephrase. "You're right, we probably would have screwed ourselves up even further. At least now we've had chance to work out what we want."

"What do you want?"

"To be happy."

"Are you happy now?"

"Right now?" He's looking at me closely and nodding. Waiting for me to be honest with him. "I guess so. Works going well, Maggie and Eric are fine. It's just something's missing."

"Or maybe someone?" He asks hopefully and smiles.

I nod. "I just don't want to put myself out there and get hurt again. I don't think I could handle that kind of pain."

"And you think I can? But I'm willing to try and make things work."

I move his hands from my face and entwine his fingers with mine as we rest them on the table in front of us. "So, say we do try to take things further. Try to be 'us' again. What happens the next time Eric or Maggie goes off their meds and you resent me for going to help them."

"I never resented you. I just wanted you with me while I grieved."

"I tried to make it work. How could I choose between my brother who could just take off any moment, my brother who I thought was dead?" Even the thought of what phone call I could have gotten tightens my throat. "He needed me, John."

"I needed you to." His voice sounds pained as he talks.

"And I was there for you. I never meant to get stuck with Eric and if I could have come to you I would have done. I made a choice, which I thought was best for everyone. It just didn't work out." I say the last bit dejectedly.

"And that just turned into the beginning of our downward spiral." He says regretfully.

"No. That was just the middle. What about your…" I drift off. I take my right hand from his and rest my chin in it. Exhausted by the route this conversation is taking.

"What about my what?" He probes.

"You were going to propose." I drop my eyes from his again.

"I thought I explained that."

"You said that it didn't feel right. What's changed? You think this time it will end any better?" I want him to explain what's different this time; I want him to convince me that this time everything will be okay.

"Yes I do." He tells me aggressively. "Last time we were just starting out, trying to find our feet. We both needed to work out where we should be heading on our own, and I think we've done that."

"You always wanted to fix me." I whisper.

"I only wanted you to be happy with yourself and you are, and I had nothing to do with that. I just want to be able to reap the benefits. I knew that marriage at that time would have been wrong. We just weren't ready." He reaches over and brushes the hair that has fallen across my face and lets his hand softly caress my cheek. "I think we're both ready to give 'us' another go."

I agree with him, I really do, but, and there's a huge painful but. "You promise you won't run away again."

"I can't promise that I won't leave again, but I will talk to you about it."

I smile; at least this is a start. "Thanks."

"Anything else." There's nothing that I can think of at the moment, so I shake my head. Then he continues. "I want you to promise me something now. You need to talk to me too, you have to be honest and open up."

"I can try." I watch his face light up. I really want to make this work. "We'll have to take things slow." He nods. "And between nursing and being a med student I don't know how much time I'll have to spend on us."

"I can help with that." I know what he's implying, but I can't accept it. It was bad enough asking Richard to co-sign my loan, I don't want to accept anything from Carter so I shake my head. "Hear me out okay, I've been thinking about this for a while. You can either consider it three ways. You can either accept the money as a gift, which I know you wont even go there."

He adds on the latter as he sees me viscously shake my head and try to speak. "So I was thinking you could either take out a non-interest loan? Or the Foundation is setting up a sponsorship programme and you could be our first sponsored student."

"I can't take your money."

"Technically it wouldn't be my money."

"I'm not a charity case and I'm doing fine on my own." I tell him adamantly.

"You're running yourself into the ground. At least let me lend you something to tide you over."

"I'm doing fine." I insist.

"I thought you were going to be honest with me."

He has got a point; it just doesn't seem right to take money from him. Despite the fact that he can afford it and it would solve a lot of my problems I don't want to go down that particular route with him. But he does want me to be honest, so I explain this to him. Though it seems like today he has an answer for everything.

"My lawyers can draw up a legal document, everything will be one hundred percent official and you can take however long you need to pay it back."

"Can I think about it?" I say, knowing he won't drop it until he gets some kind of answer.

"Sure." He takes that moment to look at his watch. "I have to go soon. Are we okay?"

Are we? I guess we are. "Yeah."

Although we haven't officially declared ourselves as 'us', I feel I should take my first bold move. Getting to my feet, I take Carters hands and pull him to his feet. Reaching up on my toes I slowly and sensuously place a soft kiss on his lips.

Before he has chance to register what I've done I wrap my arms around his waist and pull him closer. Loving the feel of how close we are. I mutter into his chest. "I missed you so much."

He answers in a similar tone. "I missed you too." Then he softly places a kiss on my forehead before relaxing into our familiar embrace.

Our moment passes too quickly and before I realise it Carter is pulling away from me. I want to protest, but he has his Foundation duties and I need to sleep before my next marathon shift.

"I really have to go." He says, locking my eyes with his own.

"I know." I make the first move again and reach up to caress his lips with my own. Our kiss deepening with each second until I finally, reluctantly break it.

Walking him to the door I realise this will be the last time I'll see him before Christmas Day. So I arrange to meet him before his shift tomorrow night, an hour has to be better than nothing.

His kisses me gently on the cheek, squeezes my hand and walks away.

Author's notes:  For those of you who enjoyed my last ending! Cliffhangers are kinda my specialty! I used them all the time in Trouble with Happiness and figured it was time for a come back! Sorry if it was cruel and I didn't realize it would take this long to get out this chapter, but I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks again to everyone who reviewed and supported my last chapter, I really appreciate it. :D