"Come on, Jack, come on," I whispered to the phone that was tightly clutched in my sweaty hand. The minutes were dragging painfully by, the long hand on the clock across the room making laughably slow progress around its mocking round face. It had been damn near half an hour since I had shamelessly ensnared our old friend in the ugly tangled mess of our problems, and he hadn't called me back yet to let me know if he had been successful. My knee bounced up and down of its own accord, and I realized in a vague, careless way that I was wound so tightly I was likely to scream when the phone did ring.

I was wrong about that, though. I gasped, but I didn't scream. And I had pressed the button to answer almost before the first sharp ring had even begun to slice through the tomblike quiet of the loft. "Jack," I said, not liking the frantic note that tinged my voice but helpless to change it. "What did he say?"

"It's me, Jo."

My heart thumped once, hard, against my ribcage. "Pacey?"

He laughed shortly. "Good guess. I should probably be grateful you didn't say Matt."

Ouch. "Pace, please don't."

"I'm sorry."

The background noise was still there, but fainter, as if he had stepped out of the thick of the action to make this call.

"So Jackers called me. But I guess you knew he was going to."

"Yes," I said. "I asked him to."

He chuckled softly. "Have we slipped that far, Jo? We can't keep our problems between us anymore, now we have to drag our friends into our shit?"

"I didn't mean anything by it, Pacey, I— It was obvious you weren't going to give me the time of day; I thought maybe you'd listen to him."

"I'm not a child, Joey. I don't have a curfew."

I closed my eyes, wounded by the bitterness in his voice, wishing he was standing in front of me right now so that I could wrap my arms around him and make him remember why it was so damn important that we get through this rough patch.

And then in the gulf of silence that separated me in the apartment from him in the cold night just outside some smoky hole in the wall, I heard something that chilled my blood. It was faint, but it was also unmistakable. And it scared me more than any of the horrible what-ifs that had flooded my mind since the moment he walked out the door.

"Pacey, are you coming back in? You said a few minutes. I've been waiting forever."

A woman's voice. I felt my grip on the phone tighten convulsively as a surge of questions and unthinkable possibilities crowded me at once, fighting each other for dominance. He mumbled something unintelligible to this faceless woman who had dared approach him with me helpless on the other end of the line. And when he spoke to me again, I heard something in his voice that was, oddly, both comforting and alarming. When he spoke again, he sounded much more like himself, like the Pacey that I knew and loved. That comforted me. But he also sounded apologetic, hesitant, as if he were hoping against hope that somehow I hadn't overheard.

"Jo?" he said. "You still there?"

My mouth felt dry. I swallowed hard. "Who … who was that, Pace?"

"No one," he said quickly. Too quickly.

"Pacey?"

He sighed deeply into the phone. "It's nothing, Joey. Do you hear me? It's nothing."

"God, Pacey, please tell me you're … you're not out looking for a way to punish me. You—you wouldn't do that, would you?" I hated my tone, so weak, so supplicating. But I was helpless to alter it, to make it sound more like mine. He was silent for so long that I almost took it as an affirmative answer to my question. My palms were still sweaty, but now it was a cold sweat.

"You know me," he said, his words firm and heavy with meaning. "You know me, Joey."

I nodded before I realized that he couldn't see it. "Yes," I managed to say. "But what I don't know and what I don't like is your frame of mind right now. Will you come home, please? We don't even have to talk tonight if you don't want to. But I'm not going to be okay until you're back here with me."

"Pacey, come on, hon! It's not nice to keep a girl waiting." That voice. It made me shudder violently.

"Goddamn it! I'm on the phone, will you give me a minute?!" Pacey exploded without warning at the faintly echoing voice, and I closed my eyes again, wincing against the forcefulness of his words, realizing just how incredibly out of touch with himself he was tonight. Had I done this to him? Had I really pushed him this far? If so, I would end up hating myself for it. That was one thing I could be sure of.

I reached up with a shaking hand to brush a tear off my cheek impatiently.

"Joey?" he said, the angry tone he had just used on the girl at the bar reverting easily to his real voice, the one I'd known all my life.

"What, Pace?" I asked, resisting the urge to ask him, like a woman scorned, if he was going to hang up on me so he could get back to his new girlfriend, knowing that the bad judgment of a statement like that could push him over the edge he was currently hovering on.

"I'll be home in twenty minutes," he said. "Wait up for me?"

"Of course," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. "You know I will."

It was more like fifteen minutes. When he swept through the door, bringing ghostly tendrils of the chilly night in with him, we stood facing each other for a strange period of moments. I suddenly didn't know what to say. His cheeks and nose were red from the cold, and his eyes were bloodshot, and he was looking at me with an odd mix of emotions that I couldn't begin to interpret.

I was about to say something, anything, just to break the eerie, loaded silence that had settled over us, when he reached for my arm and pulled me roughly into an embrace. Pressing my face into his coat, breathing in a pleasant mix of winter air, secondhand smoke, and Pacey himself, an almost painful wave of relief washed over me.

"I love you," I said, my voice muffled in the folds of his coat. "I love you so much, Pace." He raised his hands to my hair and stroked it firmly but gently. There was an aura of strength about him then, invisible waves of some emotion I couldn't begin to name or analyze drifting out of his body and enveloping mine as he held me. It occurred to me that he seemed like a man who has just escaped some horrible fate and has been returned to the life he'd almost lost.

"I'm not going to let it happen," he said so unexpectedly that I took a step back from him and looked up into his fever-bright eyes.

"What?" I asked, perplexed.

He gripped my upper arms and held me at arms' length, holding my gaze with an intensity that frightened me. "This! This dissolution, or whatever the hell it is," he said. "We're tearing each other apart, Joey, and I want us to stop before we finish the job. I want us to stop while we still can, while there's still something left between us to salvage. If this keeps up we're going to lose each other, do you understand that? I don't want to lose you. That's just about all I know for sure anymore."

I looked back at him, at the fire in his red-rimmed eyes, at the determination written all over his face, and was overcome with a wave of love for this man, this man who was once the boy I had given myself to, mind, body, and yes, even soul—despite the widespread misconception that my soul belonged to another. My soul was Pacey's—it always had been.

"Pace," I whispered. "I don't want to lose you either. I'm just so—"

"I'm not done," he interrupted. "Tonight I could have made the biggest mistake of my life, and knowing my track record, that's saying a hell of a lot. I could have fucked up royally this time."

"That girl I heard…"

He shook his head impatiently. "That doesn't matter, Jo. It was nothing. I told you that. But I'm not sorry I met her, because it was the kind of wake-up call I needed. You see, I could have stepped over the line, but I didn't. I didn't. And now I know that I never could, and I never will. Do you believe that?"

I nodded, unable to speak over the lump that had risen in my throat.

"Look, Jo, I know you're scared, okay? God, I probably know that better than anyone. But that excuse just doesn't cut it with me anymore, and I'm telling you that now because I want it to be clear from the beginning. That fear you have, it's single-handedly trying to destroy us, and as much as I wish I could fight that battle for you, Jo, I can't. It's yours. So you have to tell me right now if you're willing to face your demons and work through this with me. If you're not—" He broke off, a pained expression clouding his earnest eyes. His voice lowered as he went on. "If you're not, I need to know that, too."

Tears had flooded my eyes, but they didn't fall. I looked at him through a watery film, wishing he could read my heart like a book so I wouldn't have to try to put everything I was feeling into words. That would be impossible. I think he understood enough, as it was. His eyes told me that he knew more than I could say.

"I want to," I said in a hoarse whisper. And I tried to go on but found that I didn't know how. Pacey moved his hands up to my shoulders and held my gaze mercilessly.

"Can you?" he asked. "That's what I need to know."

I thought of the look on his face the night he'd come to my office with roses and a ring, the dawning realization in his eyes that Joey Potter might not be the pedestal-worthy goddess he had effectively turned her into over years that made up our past. I thought of my panic, my devastation over what I thought I was bound to lose. The blossoming hatred of myself, of the man whose hand was on my thigh, and even, shamefully, of Pacey—for being the perfect man when there shouldn't be such a thing, for loving me so much it ignited all my terrors of commitment and forever, for not disappointing me as I had fully expected him to do, somehow, at some point. What does that say about me and my issues? I could keep an army of therapists in business, certainly.

Now I looked into those eyes and saw only the man I had always loved, and he was offering me a chance that by rights, I should never have been given. And I loved him so much more for that alone.

I realized I had not answered him and that a long silence had spun out, his eyes searching my face, hopefully, tentatively, carefully. A small smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as I spoke. "Yes," I said quietly. "God, yes. I can do that."

He heaved a heavy sigh and pulled me back into another suffocating embrace, and we clung to each other in the darkness of our loft apartment. When at last we were able to let go of the haunting echoes of what we had almost thrown away, we pulled apart.

"I love you, Potter," he said gruffly, teasingly. "Want to go to bed with me?"

I smiled, the first real smile I'd managed in what seemed like an eternity. It felt wonderful. Returning my smile with a twinkle in his eyes, he reached up with strong, gentle hands and began to undress me.