"It's cold." Gregory offered as his first excuse. He sat easily in the chair near the window of the lavish penthouse apartment. "I know it's not really, but it seems cold without her."

Roger took a long sip of his coffee, his antidote to the exhaustion threatening to put a quick end to a necessary conversation. "You've been sharing her bed, on-and-off I suppose if you want to be technical, for twenty-two years. It can't be easy to be alone on the couch here." He grinned suddenly, unable to help himself. "Though it's not the first time she's kicked you out of bed."

Gregory turned morosely from the twinkling lights of the harbor. "It's the first time I remember."

"Ahhh," Roger closed his eyes and leaned back on the sofa. It was still made up neatly because Gregory hadn't even attempted to sleep on it tonight. "Hurts doesn't it?"

Gregory set down his brandy. Even the depressant affect of the alcohol wasn't enough to quiet his mind. "It shouldn't." He rested his head thoughtfully on his hand.

Roger studied the intricate moldings on the ceiling. "Why not?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why shouldn't it hurt?" Roger wondered as he tapped his fingers against his cup. "You love her."

"I don't remember loving her." The sting as he finished his brandy remained hot in his throat. "I don't remember anything about our life together."

"Doesn't mean you don't." Roger pointed out as he rolled off the sofa to raid the kitchen. "Want anything?"

Gregory shook his head glumly, but followed as Roger dug through his refrigerator. "You think I'm in love with her."

Roger pulled boxes of leftovers out of the fridge and lined them up on the counter. From the dull look each of them got as he opened them to check the contents, Gregory guessed none of them were appealing. He didn't care much for food lately. He thought about Olivia while he ate. He couldn't help wondering what she was eating. If she was taking care of herself. If the baby had moved today.

Opening a square container of Chinese food, Roger poked it and licked sauce from his fingertip as he counted back the days since he had ordered it. Only three. It was fair game. He dropped the line of other boxes into the trash.

Gregory raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he moved out of the way.

"Bette doesn't eat leftovers. And if I don't want any of them now, I'm not going to get around to eating them." Roger dug out a beautiful cut glass bowl and unceremoniously dumped the his Chinese food. Stray pieces of dry rice bounced against the sides as he stuffed it into the microwave.

"You could just order in something." Gregory suggested in an attempt to be helpful.

Roger tapped the clock on the microwave. "Three in the bloody am. No one delivers now. No one's open now in Sunset Beach and I'm not driving halfway to Santa Barbara when I have perfectly good three-day-old Dar Cheen chicken to eat." He opened the drawer for a fork and pointed towards the fridge. "Fetch me the hot sauce would you?"

Gregory obidently found the hot sauce from rows of condiments inside the door. He set it on the counter next to the microwave and watched as Roger took out his snack, stirred it, liberally coated it with orange hot sauce and stuffed it back in the microwave. "Have to get it while you can, don't you?"

"Bette won't kiss me when I've been eating habeneros. Says it burns her lipstick off." With a pleasant ding, the microwave announced it was finished. Roger freed his steaming bowl and retreated back to the comfort of the living room. He flopped down on the couch and took a deep sniff with relish.

"But you don't have to worry about that tonight." Gregory finished as he sat back down quietly next to his empty brandy sniffer.

"The boy and his spitfire girlfriend are up the shore this weekend to go rock climbing. I think we're all agreed that we don't want Olivia to stay in that big old house alone." Roger licked hot sauce from his fork and felt it burn into the soft tissues of his mouth. He smiled wickedly at Gregory and leaned in to share a secret. "I think I'll be losing a son and gaining a daughter before too long now."

"Everyone's reached the age for weddings." Gregory mused as he refilled the sniffer with amber brandy. "I saw your invitation to Casey's wedding came yesterday."

"January's a time we always avoid for weddings in the old country, but I suppose here in the land of eternal sunshine it'll be just fine." Roger nudged his coffee cup towards Gregory. "Put a little nosh in my coffee, won't you?"

"I thought you were trying to stay awake." Gregory teased as he added a splash of brandy to the proffered mug.

"Keep going-" Roger ordered when Gregory moved to restopper the bottle. "I've decided that if I'm going to be up I'd rather enjoy it in a state of drunken bliss than be mercilessly aware of how late it is."

Gregory poured until the liquid threatened to overwhelm the brim of Roger's cup. The doctor set down his nearly empty bowl and dropped to the floor to sip it down a little. "Perfect. Now, tell me why you DON'T think you're in love. I want to shoot it all down."

Gregory rolled his eyes. "If you're so brilliant, you should tell me why I am."

"Touche-" Roger mimed a stabbing motion to his chest. "All right. You think about her all the time. You look up from whatever you're doing whenever Bette or I mention her name. Or any other word that could possibly sound like her name. You come up with excuses to stop by Liberty during the day. You call Ethan twice a night to ask how she's doing. The mornings when Olivia lets you walk Belle you're actually when you leave. You're happy when you come back if you even catch a glimpse of her." He took the brandy and refreshed the sniffer Gregory had quickly emptied.

"Should I go on?"

"You're dying too, aren't you?" Gregory knew the glint in Roger's eyes. The satisfaction of being absolutely correct was written all over his friend's face.

"I am actually." Roger winked and took a deep breath. "It's smashing of you to let me."

"Get it over with."

"Olivia's the light of your life." Roger finished simply. "Even if you don't have the foggiest who she is, she's in every part of your being. Having her gone is worse than losing your mind. You've lost your heart."

"I seem to remember being told I don't have one." Gregory reached for the brandy again and swished the bottom of the bottle around. It was nearly empty.

Roger pointed out the window and up the shore towards number One Ocean Avenue. "You're heart's down there." He took the bottle and clinked it against Gregory's glass. "Here's to you winning her back."

"I want you to know this is the closest I've been to a shirtless man since you kicked Gregory out." Bette pointed to the open magazine on the coffee table and sighed as she licked chocolate ice cream from her spoon. "I swear I don't know how you two managed to even get pregnant with the kids around. How'd you find a second to yourselves? Every time I turn around Gregory's there and Livingston and I can't do whatever it was we were thinking of doing."

She stuck her spoon back into her pint of ice cream and sighed heavily. "Not that you even heard any of what I'm saying."

Olivia looked back from the window out to the ocean. Bette was entirely correct. She hadn't heard a word of it. The baby, Gregory's legacy, turned slowly beneath her hand. Even their child wasn't sleeping well since she'd kicked his father out of the mansion. It was too quiet without him. Too still. When she woke up, she was alone. When she slept, she was alone. It wasn't right. Too much of Gregory was in the house. But Bette couldn't understand that.

"I'm sorry." Her apology was weak and as halfhearted as everything she'd been doing since he was gone.

Bette patted her hand and snuggled down next to her on the couch. "It's all right Livie. God knows I've crashed on your doorstep a couple of times when I an ex-husband or two."

"Gregory's not an 'ex'," Olivia corrected immediately. "Nor is he going to be."

Bette caught the way her voice cracked. She'd seen this before. The tempestuous love-hate relationship that her best friend had settled into after years of self-destruction. A small voice in the back of her mind argued that maybe this was it. The brief moment of happiness for Gregory and Olivia was already over and worst of all, their new baby was going to be born into the wreckage of what could have been a beautiful family.

She strangled that voice before it could sound too convincing. "He wants you back."

"He doesn't bloody know who I am!" Olivia snapped as she left the couch. "How can he want me back?"

"He loves you." Bette continued to her back, watching as Olivia's hands planted themselves angrily on her hips. "You're all he talks about. You and the baby. Every single time Roger comes over here to see how you're doing he won't leave him alone until he has a full report on everything. He worries about your blood pressure, mopes sympathetically when Roger tells him your back hurts." She paused to melt a lump of ice cream with her tongue and swallow it quickly.

"I wasn't suppose to mention this." Bette began slowly. "Roger thought it would just make you upset."

"Little chance of doing that now." Olivia crossed her arms tightly over her chest and tried to ignore the way she wanted Gregory's arms around her instead.

"He misses the ultrasound photos." Bette's spoon scraped against the wall of the nearly empty ice cream container. "Don't get me wrong Livie, he understands why you won't go back in the hospital, but it doesn't mean he doesn't miss seeing the baby."

"Well isn't that sweet." Bitterness dripped from Olivia's voice, but Bette just shook her head. She didn't buy any of it. "He remembers that it's his baby."

"Livie-" Bette licked her spoon spotless and set it down on the coffee table. "I hate to be the one to remind you, but Gregory's gaps in his memory, his little stint as the English Patient, it's not his fault." She shivered as she remembered watching Roger try to shock life back into Gregory's body. "He was very nearly killed."

"Caitlin-" Olivia shuddered and turned back from the window. "Caitlin tried to kill him. Our own daughter." A tear slid numbly down her cheek. "She loved him so much once and God, I always thought he loved her more than anyone in the world."

"Gregory killed the man she loved." Bette rested her hands on her shoulders for a second before reaching up to take care of that tear. "Gregory had a choice Livie. He choose you and the baby."

"What if that was wrong?" Olivia's chin trembled and Bette could see the overload of emotions behind her calm. "He shouldn't have had to choose between me and our daughter."

Bette caught her chin tightly. "You didn't ask him too! You and Gregory did everything you could for Caitlin after Cole died. She's the one who didn't tell you she loved him. She's the one who went along with the charade and let Cole pretend to be AJ's son. She's the one who tried to kill Gregory."

"Bette-" Olivia shook her head and just stared at her.

"He could have stopped her." Bette continued because she knew she had too. "I know you don't want to hear it-"

Olivia pulled away and kept shaking her head. "Then why do you insist on talking about it?"

"Because you haven't talked about it. You haven't talked to me. You haven't talked to Roger, and you're not talking to Gregory-"

"Would you just shut up about Gregory!"

Bette jumped back, putting her hands up in defense as Olivia whirled around with fire in her eyes.

"I'm sick to death of hearing about Gregory. I don't care if he miraculously survived. I don't care if he's the best damn lawyer to ever walk the face of the Earth." Her breath shuddered through her chest. "He remembers you. He remembers Sean. He remembers how to win his bloody cases, but he doesn't remember me." "Bette he doesn't remember anything about me! He's supposed to be my husband first." Her last admission took all the energy she had. Bette could barely hear her through her tears as Olivia finished. "I need him."

"Hey- hey Livie." Bette wrapped her arms tightly around her friend the dam on Olivia's emotions finally broke open. "It's all right." She led them both back to the sofa and let her cry into her shoulder. "I want you to listen to me."

She stroked Olivia's head, surprised when the right words seemed to be on the tip of her tongue. "It was wrong of Gregory to lie to you. He should have told you the moment he woke up that his memory was all scrambled up."

Olivia wiped vainly at her tears and nodded weakly. "He should have been honest with me."

"Honey sometimes it's hardest to be honest with the people we love." Bette cupped her chin and turned to dig up a handkerchief out of her purse. "You might have to face the fact that he was afraid he was going to lose you."

Olivia opened her mouth to protest, but Bette hushed her with a finger over her lips. "Ah-ah, even Greggy-Poo occasionally succumbs to being human. He worries about losing you just as much as you worry about losing him."

"I find that rather hard to believe." Olivia argued petulantly as she sniffed away some of her tears.

"He loves you. He does nothing but mope without you. He can't stop talking about you. His head might be few candles short of a Christmas tree-" Bette patted her own chest for emphasis. "But his heart's in the right place. Gregory might not know what he's feeling, but you can bet that giant diamond he gave you that it's love."

"But what am I supposed to do with that?" Reeling on the edge of hysterics, Olivia crumpled up the handkerchief she had just been using until her fingers went white.

"What can you do with that?" Bette laughed, putting a hand over her mouth when she realized how inappropriate. She slapped Olivia's shoulder lightly . "How many times have you came to me and wished Gregory felt as bonkers about you as you do about him? Constantly, that's what."

Looking past Olivia's shoulder at a picture of the Gregory and Olivia smiling at the camera, Bette realized the perfect irony of the situation. "You've both been wanting to start over. Put all of the past behind you. Now you can. For once in your marriage you can trust that Gregory loves you with all his heart. Not for what you were once, but for who you are now."

"Livie," Bette dropped her hands dramatically to her lap. "What more could you want? You have to take him back."

Olivia sighed heavily, closing her eyes for a moment and wishing her head was clear enough to tell her what to do. "I want him too. God Bette, it's all I can think about. I can't do this without him. The house is too quiet. My bed's impossible to sleep in. I don't feel safe shutting the lights off by myself. And there's-" She dropped her hands to her belly helplessly. "I can't bring this baby into the world on my own. He's Gregory's son. He's what he wanted. He's the reason we're back together in the first place."

"Good reasons." Bette hugged her tightly, trying to squeeze some life back into her. "You missed the most important one however."

"Oh?"

"Having Gregory stay in our apartment has absolutely murdered my sex life."