Disclaimer: Meg Cabot owns the Mediator characters. The song lyrics belong to Three Days Grace.

This story just came to me at 3.15 am yesterday. It's kind of dark. But I hope it's good.

- Sharky

I could feel the end coming. The day when our relationship is over. The truth was, the cracks had begun long before this.

He came home late last night. I pretended to sleep, but I heard him enter our room and getting into bed. He didn't say anything. But he kissed me good night.

And that made the pain hurt even more.

Every time we lie awake
After every hit we take
Every feeling that I get
But I haven't missed you yet

I thought he loved me. Then he kept coming home late, giving work as the excuse. His company needed him, he said. And I felt guilty for questioning his intentions. Especially when he had given me so much so that I could live comfortably. But I knew something was wrong. Call it a woman's instinct or whatever, but I knew it.

Then that dreadful day. I saw him having lunch with another woman. A perfectly normal way to discuss things with a client, but she was not. She was a fellow business partner in his firm, blonde, beautiful, smart. He had his hand on her leg.

I knew that it was what I had expected all along, but that didn't lessen the shock. I stumbled away from the café, leaning against the wall in the ladies room. My hand shook, and I dropped the ceramic vase that I just bought. It smashed into pieces, like my heart.

I tried to deny what was happening, but I couldn't. Not when he pretended that he still cared for me. He came home late again and asked me how my day was.

I could smell her scent on him. I lost it.

Of course he denied having being with her. I shouted, screamed and even cried, but he still denied the affair. And when I shifted to Shadowland, he followed me there. He said it was just a misunderstanding and he apologized.

I knew he was lying, but somehow I still wanted to hold on to what we had. I didn't want to give in. I didn't want to lose him. Not after everything we've been through. So I accepted.

But everything changed after that. We became strangers. I took care of the house, of his meals and all the things that a wife should do, but I didn't have my heart in it. And he knew it. So many times we sat down at dinner without saying anything. When we had sex, it was cold. There were no hugs, kisses or sweet whispers. After it was over, he slept while I lay awake.

Every roommate kept awake
By every sigh and scream we make
All the feelings that I get
But I still don't miss you yet

I wondered if he kissed her. If he told her he loved her. The way he did when he proposed to me three years ago.

So many times I imagined storming to his office and facing the woman who destroyed my marriage. So many times I imagined stalking her, and leaving threatening letters in her mailbox. So many times I imagined buying a gun and killing them while they slept.

So many times I imagined finishing a whole bottle of sleeping pills so that I would sleep and never wake again. Because with every second I was awake, every breath I took, it hurt.

Yet I never cried. I think I had spent all my tears on the night we had that argument.

I hated him. At least I think I did. It was hard to sort out your emotions when you don't feel anything anymore. When your heart felt like it had frozen solid, and you walk around not knowing the difference in the days, the hours, the minutes because to you, each and every one of them were the same.

Only when I stop to think about it

I prepared myself for the inevitable. The only thing I was thankful for was that we didn't have any children. A divorce is usually harder on the kids than on the parents.

Then the accident happened.

I swear I didn't see the motorcycle. I turned a corner, and it veered in front of my Mercedes. I braked and swerved to avoid it, but instead hit another car on the opposite lane. I couldn't remember what happened other than the car spinning before I lost consciousness.

Some people who saw the accident said later that my car flipped three times before coming to a rest in front of a traffic lights junction. They all thought I was dead.

But we mediators were stronger than everyone else. I've known that ever since I was a teenager, battling the ghosts that came into my life and had no intentions of leaving. My life was so much simpler then.

Now the only ghosts I'm battling are the ones inside of me.

I woke up later in the hospital, tubes poking into me and the hospital lights almost blinding me. Then I realised someone was holding my bandaged hand.

It was him.

I slowly turned to look at him, and his eyes lighted up when he saw that I was awake. They were red, like he had been crying. And all of a sudden I just wanted everything to be the way it was before. Before the woman, the arguments and the lies.

I hate everything about you
why do I love you

Because I knew that even after all of that, I still loved him.

He said he was sorry. For everything that he had done, for everything he put me through. He admitted to being with that woman, but that it was over. He said it was over the moment he walked into a shop and saw a bouquet of white orchids.

Strange how that moment seemed to freeze in time and suddenly he realized how harsh and cruel the world that we're living in, he said. The world he thought he would never see again. Until he met me.

He begged for my forgiveness. I wanted to slap his face and tell him to go back to that woman. Tell him how much it had hurt me, seeing him with her.

But I didn't. Because behind the tears in his eyes, I saw the regret, the hurt, the pain, and I saw that he was a man, not an angel. A man who had made a mistake because he was only human.

He said after he heard what happened to me, he realised he couldn't live without me. Not because of the good wife that I've been, but because of the woman that I was. The woman he would give up his life for.

Maybe everything can go back to the way it was before. The only way for me to know was to find out. And I wanted to. More than anything.

And then he said the words I thought I would never hear again, and for the first time since the terrible argument, I cried. It was as if the frost that had been gathering in my heart had thawed, and I could feel again.

He said, I never stopped loving you, Susannah. Mi querida.

You hate everything about me
why do you love me

I never stopped loving you too, Jesse.