The ring made her finger itch. It had never done that before. Since the day Jax slid it down her slender finger, the ring had been comfortable. It had signified home, in a way. Not just a place to live, but a place to just... be. She honestly hadn't thought that it was a feeling she would experience. The closest she'd come to it in the past, well... There wasn't a ring involved there, but there were other things.

Brenda sighed and twisted her engagement ring absently. It could have been the diamonds, not necessarily itching her ring finger, but the digits beside it. At four carats, the princess cut jewels were wide and bumped against her pinky and middle fingers. But that wouldn't explain the urge to rip the ring off of her finger and scratch where it had previously laid.

This was all Luis's fault. She could probably blame everything on Luis, and more than once, she had placed blame with him for things that were nowhere near his fault. Stub your toe? Yeah, that was Luis's fault. Spilled some champagne? Yeah, Luis did that. But this time... this time, it really was his fault. This time, he'd shown back up in her life and made it perfectly clear that he was there to destroy what she'd rebuilt after his last departure. This time, the itchy ring and anything after it really was Luis's fault.

"I should just do like Lois said and ignore him." Brenda sighed, then rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that's easier said than done. You don't just ignore someone like that." Her voice was low as she muttered to herself, moving back and forth across the floor. "Just... put it out of your mind. That's it. You've got a wedding to plan. A big, huge..."

"Wedding." Brenda jumped and spun around. Jax stood in the doorway, leaning to the side. His legs were crossed at the ankles. His right hand was shoved into the pocket of his slate gray designer suit. He looked for all the world like the cover of GQ. She thought that she probably looked like the cover of the most recent psychiatric magazine... One that had to do with insanity. "Talking to yourself again?"

"Yeah." Brenda giggled nervously, then shook her head. "Told you I was crazy. Insane, even." She almost said that it was Luis's fault, but thought better of it. Mentioning your ex-boyfriend to your current fiancee was bad form. Not even Brenda Barrett was that tactless. "I was just thinking about some stuff."

"I heard." Jax stood up straight and pulled his hand out of his pocket. He walked slowly towards her, a small smile curving his lips upwards. "Something about... a wedding?" His smile widened as he drew nearer to her. Jax put his hands on her hips. "A huge wedding?" He bent and kissed her lips lightly. "Possibly even the biggest wedding to hit Port Charles in years."

"Bigger than Lois's, even? Because Lois was like... a princess when she got married."

"Why be a princess when you can be a queen?" He winked at her, then kissed her again. Brenda giggled and Jax tapped the tip of her nose. "It's your wedding, Brenda. Whatever you want, that's what you get."

"I like that," she said softly. Staring up at Jax, she wondered how anyone could ever insinuate that there was a choice to be made at all. On the one hand, there was the man of her dreams. He was legal and there was never the fear that he would run. He was devoted. He loved her. He was marrying her, after all.

And on the other hand, there was Luis.

Looking at Jax, feeling his hands on her hips... Brenda was able to forget for a moment the thoughts that had gone through her head as she walked away from Luis outside of Luke's. She preferred to forget that conversation more than most others she'd shared with Luis since his arrival in Port Charles. That particular conversation was too full of admissions. Not to him, or anyone else, but to herself.

To think of that... She would have to admit that she had at one point thought of herself as being Brenda Barrett-Alcazar. Actually, though, in the early days of those thoughts, it had just been Brenda Alcazar. But, times changed. There were people in the music industry who knew her, felt comfortable with her, and she wasn't too sure how well they would take an abrupt name change. But a hyphen... A hyphen she could do.

Honestly, the first time she saw him, when he strutted into her office at L&B with Lucky Spencer at his back... Just before the anger hit and she ran to him, pummeling his chest with her small fists, she'd thought of it again. Within a brief second, she had lived an entire fantasy where the ring on her finger was from Luis and he was coming to take her out to dinner so they could finish planning their wedding. But, reality had hit.

She wasn't marrying Luis, so her nightmares of becoming a widow wouldn't come true. He was long gone from her life, and so were her dreams of being Mrs. Brenda Barrett-Alcazar. He had seen it, too, when his eyes landed on her engagement ring. He knew that he wouldn't be her husband, even if he denied it.

But, it all led to another admission. That part of her fully expected to be divorced from Jax within a few years... because she was marrying him for security and as much love as she could possibly have, but not nearly enough to stay married forever. She could force herself to believe that she was madly in love with Jax and they had a forever love, but in the end... The part that she squashed kept saying the same thing. The part that she refused to let swim to the surface because it would only cause trouble still broke the waves, anyway. I'd rather be Jax's ex-wife than Luis's widow.

"Now, why do I think that you're not thinking about the wedding anymore?"

Brenda looked up at Jax with a small amount of shame. She shouldn't have been thinking about Luis at all, let alone while in Jax's arms, but it could have been worse. She could have actually brought it up and spoke about it. "I just have things on my mind," she said.

Sighing, Brenda stepped away from Jax and turned. She looked down at her desk and hoped that he would assume that the things on her mind were work related. Of course, that was asking Jax to be stupid, and that's one thing he'd never been. It didn't take a genius to notice the constant twisting of the rings, or her reluctance to talk about anything. Though, she thought that it possibly did take a genius not to talk about those things. For the time being, Jax was Albert Einstein, but she felt deep down that it wouldn't last for long.

Jax's sigh was heavy behind her. "It's after two in the morning, and you're in your office, but I don't believe that any of this has anything to do with L&B work."

"Jax..." She dropped her hands to her sides and turned to him. "If you mean tonight at the club... That's just..." She shook her head. "Things are complicated there."

"I know, and we've talked about that. And every time we talk about it, you tell me that you love me, that you're happy with me."

"I do, Jax. I am." She sighed and her shoulders slumped. She took in a few small breaths, then crossed back to Jax. She took his hands in hers and squeezed. "We're getting married, Jax. Luis doesn't have anything to do with that. Yeah, he's persistent, but..." She shrugged. "That's how he is."

"Persistence, I can understand. Who wouldn't be persistent to reclaim you?" He leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth. "But, I don't plan to have to reclaim you. I'm not letting you go." He stared down into her eyes with intensity and seriousness. "Can you say the same, Brenda?"

"I'm marrying you, Jasper Jacks. Not Luis Alcazar, or anyone else. And before you ask, no I don't know if things would have turned out differently if Luis had left. Maybe he's not even the marrying type. I mean, he's nearly 40 years old and he's still single, never been married. Whatever, though... I just don't know, Jax. I dont' know if things would have been different, or if they'd have ended up exactly the way they are now." She moved into him and slid her arms around his back. "With the two of us engaged, on our way to being husband and wife."

Brenda pressed her head against Jax's chest. His arms wrapped around her. She waited for him to say something, to continue a discussion she hadn't wanted in the first place. That was her reason for going to L&B that late night. To get away from any and all discussing and be able to think. The words didn't come, though, and they stood there embracing.

But behind his back, Brenda was resisting the urge to twist her ring because it was itching again.