PART 36

"You're quiet... are you okay?"

Stephanie glanced up, her blank gaze softening a little as she met the blue eyes of her husband. Chris placed his hand on her knee, eyeing her with concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine..." she nodded, giving him a small smile of reassurance. "I just hope that Randy will be okay when he gets out of there."

It was then that Chris realized that the object Stephanie's gaze had been so transfixed on was the door to Trish's room, of which the young man had yet to emerge from. He had been in there for quite some time, and if his emotional state was the same as it was when they'd arrived, Steph had every right to be worried. To say he had been a wreck was an understatement.

"Well, looks like you'll get to find out for yourself soon enough," Chris replied, nodding his head in the direction of Trish's room. "He's headed this way."

Sure enough, when Stephanie turned her head she saw Randy Orton, and he was walking in their direction. He immediately approached the brunette, who had been his shoulder and support since the second she arrived, and he took a seat next to her. After a brief moment of silence, Chris stood, patting Stephanie on the shoulder.

"I'll leave you two alone," he said respectfully, sending her a small grin before walking away, off in search of Dawn, Jay, and Adam.

Stephanie waited till her husband was gone, and then she switched her gaze to Randy. A lump formed in her throat as she studied his face intently, her heart nearly breaking at the crushed expression on his face.

"How is she?" she spoke, a little hesitant to do so at first.

Randy sighed, clutching his stomach as though he was having a terrible pain there. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them he focused on her.

"I... I don't really know how to explain how she's doing, Steph," he said, a sudden look of confusion marring his handsome face. "She's okay, but she's not okay. I mean, she seemed alright while I was talking to her - not her usual self, of course - but I just know it was a front. She's dying on the inside, she's got to be. I can see it in her eyes."

Stephanie swallowed hard, her eyes finding the floor as she suddenly found herself unable to look at him. Randy folded his hands together, sighing again as he placed them between his knees. He couldn't get the image of Trish, lying alone and frightened in that hospital bed out of his mind. No matter how hard he tried, his mind refused to lie anywhere but with her.

"I know you don't like me saying this, Randy, but I'm so sorry," Stephanie said to him, her blue eyes gleaming with concern. "Neither of you deserve to be going through such hell."

"You're right about Trish," he agreed, "but I'm not so sure about myself. I think after all the shit I pulled in the past, I had it coming..."

"Randy, don't say that," she pleaded, frowning deeply.

With the way his emotions had been running lately, she didn't want him putting the blame on himself. He had enough feelings to deal with as it was... guilt did not need to be one of them.

"Come on, Steph, think about it," he said, shaking his head. "All of the wrong doing I've done in the past, all the times I've chosen Paul over Trish and my other friends, all the times I've hurt people... it's all finally coming back to bite me in the ass. And its bitten me harder than I ever imagined possible."

"I understand where you're coming from, trust me - I've lost a lot as a result of Paul, too. But you can't blame the whole entire situation on yourself because you made a mistake."

"I know that, Stephanie, but I don't know who else to blame!" he replied, inadvertently raising his voice just enough to startle her. "At least if I'm putting myself at fault I have someone I can be frustrated with... even if it is me."

"I'll tell you who you can blame, Randy," Stephanie replied, her expression turning sour. "Blame Paul. All of this mess - every last bit of heartache and pain you've suffered in the past months - all of it is a direct result of things he did. You didn't attack Trish, Randy... Paul did."

Randy nodded, and for a long while it looked as though he was considering her statement. His jaw dropped open a bit, and it looked as though he was going to speak, but he held his tongue, shaking his head. Noticing that he had nothing to say, Stephanie seized the opportunity to speak once more.

"And mark my words, this will be the last stunt Paul ever pulls. He's a marked man now, and when the police find him, he's going to rot in jail for the rest of his goddamn life," she said, a look of fierce determination on her face.

Shortly after they'd figured out that Paul had raped Trish, the brunette made more than a few phone calls. Paul had since gone missing, but police were on the lookout for him twenty four hours a day, and she knew in her heart that it would only be a matter of time before he was caught. Of course, her father refused to help them at all... he refused to believe that any of it had actually happened, ever after Stephanie had doctors speak to him. When it got to the point where he began to ignore his daughter's phone calls, she gave up on him. But Stephanie could care less... as far as she was concerned, she would hunt Paul Levesque down and throw him in jail with or without her father's aide.

"That's if I don't find him first," Randy spoke eventually, drawing Stephanie back to their conversation. "Because if I do, there's no way that bastard will make it to jail alive. There's no way he'd make it there whole. If I find him, Stephanie, he's mine. And I'll make what he did to Trish look like a walk in the mother fucking park."

Stephanie bit her tongue, opting to instead eye Randy in complete silence. Goosebumps covered her skin as she stared into his eyes, the intense, chilling glare in his blue orbs bordering frightening. She could tell by his tone that he was dead serious...

And for Randy's own sake, she hoped the police got to Paul before he did.