It took everything that Carly had inside of her to not simultaneously faint and try and find a way out of the room. But then she realized something. What did he know? There was no way that he could have known about that. Lorenzo was dead. She and Lorenzo were the only two people who had been there that day, nobody else could have overheard their conversation.

Sucking in her fears, fooling herself into thinking that everything would be all right, Carly adjusted well to the shift. "What do you mean, you know?"

"I think you know what I know, Carly," Damian knew that she was thinking about what he had said. Thinking that he knew what he did know, but trying to fool herself into thinking that he didn't know or that he was talking about something else. "I know that you wanted Alcazar to get rid of me."

"That's a lie!" Carly got up and headed for the door.

"I don't think it is, Carly. In fact, I know it isn't," Damian, who was closer to the door than she was, stood in front of the door, barring her path.

Carly's world slowly began to become even bleaker. The secret that she had strived to keep hidden from everyone was not a secret anymore. And the only person who could have done the most damage by telling people about that secret was the only one other than she who knew about it. She never even told Jason or Courtney, two people who she trusted more than anyone else, because she knew that what she had done was something that was worse than anything else she had ever tried to before. She was trying to push a child out of her husband's life, his own child. "Get out of the way, Damian."

"I'm not moving, Carly, not until we talk about this…"

"What's there to talk about?" She asked spitefully. "You're delusional and you're trying to think up ways to get back at me for all the horrible things that I did to you when we were enemies. Why are you doing this to me now, huh? Now that we're finally… well, I don't know what we are, but we're better now than we ever were before, why are you trying to destroy that?"

"You think I'm telling you this so that I can hold it against you for the rest of your life?"

"Why else would you be telling me this? Not that I'm admitting that it's true, mind you, but why else would you say something like that unless you were going to hold it against me? It's the exact same thing that I would do."

"But I'm not you, nor am I your child…"

"Well thank you for pointing that out, Damian!" Carly tried to force her way through the boy, but she couldn't. "You know, it's not like I don't have to live with the fact that Sonny had a child with someone that wasn't me every day of my life, but you just had to say something about it, didn't you?"

"My dad had a life before you even moved to Port Charles, Carly. You know that, we all know that, but he didn't love my mother. Stop thinking that he did. I wasn't conceived out of some passionate love, believe me, I wish I were, but that's just not true."

"You just had to do this on Christmas Eve, too, didn't you? You had to find some way to ruin my holiday! You're right, this is something that I would never do… which means that you're worse than I could have ever been."

"Carly, would you just listen to me for a moment, please!"

"I have nothing to say to you!" Carly yelled as she continued to struggle against her step-son, the tears flowing down her cheeks. She knew that she was wrong. She knew that she had done something horrible, but she had always thought that she would be the only one who would have to live with that guilt. She was prepared to go to her grave with that secret.

"I have something to say to you…"

"I think you've said enough already!" She snapped back, finally giving up and just standing there, shaking.

"Carly," Damian gently put his hands on her arms, "I forgive you."

The shock of her secret coming out was wiped clean and instead a different kind of shock came over her. What did he mean? He forgave her? "What do you forgive me for?"

"For everything, really," Damian moved out of the way, no longer blocking the doorway. "I'm not going to hold you in here against your will. If you want to leave, you can, but I for one would really like to talk about this, now. I've watched you be eaten up by your guilt over what happened every single time you look at me, I want it to stop."

Carly headed towards the door, putting her hand on the knob. She was going to leave. She didn't want to be around him. She didn't want to talk about what she had done. But she couldn't just leave. He had forgiven her… she would have never forgiven him if he had been the one to do what she had done. Moving her hand away from the doorknob, Carly leaned against the wall and sighed, "I'm not happy about the decisions that I made when you came here, Damian. And what's worse is that I know I would have done the same thing if I was given a chance. I wouldn't change anything. I couldn't change anything. That's just the way that I am. I don't like it when people might be a threat to my family, to the people that I love."

"I was never a threat to anyone…"

"I know that now, but when you first got here what was I supposed to think? Everyone thought that you were here to get something from your father. The way you acted towards him… the snide remarks, the glares. Nobody thought that you weren't going to try and harm him in some way." Carly was forced to confront the feelings that she thought she would never have to make public, it wasn't something that she enjoyed. "So, yes, I went to the one person who I thought could help me, could help my family by finding a way to get rid of you. But, I swear, Damian, I swear on everything that I have inside of me that I never wanted you dead!"

"I know, Carly, that's why I'm able to forgive you. Because I know that you feel horrible about what you did and that you wish you hadn't have done it. I know that Lorenzo Alcazar took your simple little desire and turned it into something malicious, something that suited him more than it suited you."

"I was so angry at him," Carly sunk against the wall, sitting on the floor. "And it wasn't just because of what he did putting Michael in danger. By that time I had gotten used to you… or at least somewhat used to you. I didn't have that anger in me about what you could try to do to us anymore, but I still wasn't completely comfortable with you around, and I won't lie, I'm still not completely comfortable with you around."

"The only one who can decide when they're fully accepting of someone else is that person," he looked at his step-mother, as if he was looking at her in a different light. As if he was seeing Carly without everything that she had put up to block her feelings, her emotions. Her vulnerability. "When you feel comfortable with me being around, Carly, it'll be because you're finally ready to accept everything. I don't care how long it takes, but I hope it comes to you some day."

"You know why I was so angry at Lorenzo? Because, even though I wanted you to leave, I wanted you to be the one who decided to leave, even if it was because of something that I did. If you made the choice to leave Port Charles, to get out of our lives, then Sonny would have accepted it. He would have been heartbroken, but he would have moved on with his life. He might not have ever forgotten about you, but he could find a way to keep on living. If you had died, Damian, that would have destroyed Sonny. It would have eaten him up inside and it would have killed him. That's why I never wanted you dead, because of what it would do to your father."

"The fact that I'm a person with the basic right to live my life as I see fit didn't have anything to do with it? You just wanted to keep me alive for dad's sake?"

"Like I said… I'm not proud of the decisions that I made when you first came into our lives… but, yes, everything that I did was to protect your father, my husband, from feeling broken inside…"

"We're more alike than you think, you know that?"

"What do you mean?" She wasn't sure she was going to like the comparisons that Damian made to her life and to his life, as far as she knew they didn't have anything in common aside from the love that they felt for their family.

"I couldn't leave Port Charles, even if I hated dad, because by then I had already become someone that Michael adored. I never had the chance to be a brother before I moved here, Carly. I didn't even know that I wanted to be one, it never crossed my mind. For twenty years, I was the only child, but that changed in a matter of minutes. Something just clicked inside of me when I saw the admiration in your son's eyes. I knew that I couldn't just leave him. Even if I wasn't able to be around him all the time I knew that I needed to find a way to be there for him when he needed me, and in order to do that I had to make sure that I stayed around, no matter how I felt about everyone else."

"So, what you're saying is that, no matter what, you would have never left Port Charles? Even if you couldn't have repaired your relationship with Sonny?"

"Exactly," Damian was glad that she understood. Sometimes it took Carly a bit to grasp certain concepts, especially when they came from his mouth. She wasn't his favorite person, usually she would do her best to ignore him. "And I think you would have done the same thing, Carly. If you and dad weren't together, even if you wanted to leave Port Charles, you wouldn't. Not if your children made such a strong connection to their father. That's where our similarities lie, in our ability to put aside our own feelings, even the strong hatred, if it means doing something that benefits the people that we care about. That's why I did this…"

"Did what?"

"Told you about what I knew. Carly, regardless of your feelings towards me, even if they're not hate, you're important to me now. You're not my favorite person on the planet, and probably never will be, but that doesn't mean that I don't care about you on some strange level that I can't even hope to explain or understand. You are a member of my family, though, you're important to everyone else that I care about, and to me. I couldn't let you keep on beating yourself up because you didn't think that you could at least talk to someone about what happened, about what you did and about how it all went out of proportion. What happened to me, the accident, it wasn't your fault. You wanted to get rid of me, but you never once said that I needed to be killed." Damian handed her a box of tissue to wipe her tears. "And that's why I told you today, Carly, of all days, because I couldn't think of a better present from me to you than a clear state of mind."

"Most people just buy me clothes, or jewelry…"

"Are you saying that your sanity is worth less than a diamond bracelet from Zales?"

"No, of course not," Carly laughed as she wiped her eyes. She would need to put on some more mascara. "I'm just saying that most people would keep holding this over my head. They would never tell me that they forgave me for what I did. So… thanks."

"Merry Christmas, Carly."

"You, too… I'll see you later tonight. Have fun at the hospital party, okay? If you see my mom… tell her that she's more than welcome to come here and help with the tree trimming."

"I'll pass the message along," there was a light grin on his face. He was glad that he did what he did.

Carly stood and was about to grab the door, but she stopped herself once more and just walked over to her step-son and hugged him. Without saying anything she gave her utmost thanks for the gift, something that she would have never even expected to get from anyone, least of all him. She knew how wrong she was about Damian, how she had misjudged him.

Finally walking out of his room, Carly shut the door and just stood there for a moment. The burden, at least part of the burden, had been lifted from her shoulders. She believed him. He wouldn't tell anyone. It was between the two of them, something that had been discussed and had reached a conclusion. She could stop wondering about him, about why he was looking at her the way he did. She could finally smile and actually smile with happiness.

"There you are," Sonny had spent a good few minutes looking for his wife. His fear was that she was in the kitchen, trying her hand at something that wasn't microwavable, since that was the only thing that Carly could make that would have some margin of a success rate. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

"I was in there," Carly smiled, hoping that Sonny wouldn't notice the hell that she had been through, because it was over. She was fine. She was better than she had been in a long time.

"In Damian's room?" Sonny was floored. His wife? In his son's room? "Do I need to whitewash the walls to get rid of the bloodstains? You know how much I hate it when something happens to lower the value of the penthouse…"

"No, Sonny, don't worry. There wasn't any blood. He just wanted to give me his Christmas present in private…"

"Really? What'd he get you?" Before Carly could even worry about the answer that she was going to give her husband, he saw a new ring on her finger. Moving her hand up with his, he asked, "Was it this?"

It was actually something that she had seen during her recent shopping trip, something that she thought would look good on her. She hadn't found an outfit that seemed to fit with the ring until that day, but it wasn't an opportunity that she was going to waste, "Yeah… it's pretty, isn't it?"

"I guess he knew what you would want, didn't he?"

Smiling, Carly looked at the closed door, "He knew exactly what I wanted."