Chapter 48: Gossip

"Jack, please don't make me do this." She begged desperately, tugging on the bottom of his t-shirt.

"Kate, you promised them." Jack pointed out, and she groaned loudly as he removed her hands from around the hem of his t-shirt and kissed them. "It'll be great, you'll have fun."

It sounded like he was trying to convince a young child to go to their first sleepover or birthday party. Kate pouted. "Famous last words."

Jack laughed. It was day three of bed rest for Kate, and already she was bored stiff. She had been through three novels and six movies already, and because she wasn't allowed to do anything that used up her steadily building energy, she found it almost impossible to sleep all night, which meant that the only exercise she was getting was tossing and turning at night, blinking, and pushing her luck. Three times Jack had found her trying to get up just to "open a window", or "stretch her legs". Yet as soon as he reminded her that this was for the twins health as well as her own, she would allow herself to be marched off back to bed. For Jack, it was like having another child for a week, and having already cared for Kate when she was a child due to their experience on the island, he was well prepared.

"Kate, when Shannon mentioned this you were all for it." Jack reminded her, and she looked up at him from where she was sitting up in the bed.

"That was before I found out what she had planned." Kate revealed. "It's going to be a nightmare, Jack! Torture! There are rules about this kind of treatment! I'm sure that this is some form of punishment!" She blabbered, and Jack laughed, sitting at the edge of the bed beside her.

"Kate, there are no rules about a little pampering." He assured her. "It's not a punishment, it's a relaxation method." He smiled. "This is just Shannon, Claire and Sun's relaxation method."

Kate gave him an unfair look. "I prefer my methods." She muttered under her breath, and started biting her nails, another habit she had picked up for entertainment over the last few days.

"Stop it." Jack scolded playfully, and took up her hands in his own. "Will you relax already? You're blowing this whole thing out of proportion."

"I most definitely am not." Kate said adamantly. "This is my idea of hell. Hell, Jack."

He suppressed a laugh again. "Your idea of hell is sitting around with a group of girls, swapping stories about the guys your dating, painting your nails, doing face masks and watching cheesy slushy movies?" He asked incredulously, unable to think that he had actually found the perfect woman who hated all of those things.

"And I repeat: HELL." She said clearly, and Jack leaned forward to kiss her.

"I love you." He said through a smile.

"I love you too," Kate said, "But I still refuse to be a good sport about this." She folded her arms over her chest. "I don't see how Kaia gets out of this and I don't…she's a girl too."

Jack shook his head. "Kaia wouldn't sit still long enough."

"Neither would I if I had a choice." She grumbled. "Stupid doctors."

"Hey, I'm a doctor too you know." He reminded, looking hurt.

She placed her hand on his arm and smiled sweetly. "And a wonderful one at that." She said sweetly. "The rest of them are just-"

"You'll get to eat junk food." Jack said, trying to win her round the idea and cutting off the swear word she was about to add onto the end of that sentence. She raised an eyebrow at him, urging him to continue. "Ice cream…potato chips…chocolate." He saw the glint in her eyes at the mention of chocolate. "Yes, Kate, lots of chocolate." He assured her slowly.

She shrugged. "I guess I could stand a few hours." She surrendered. "I'd still rather go to the park with you and the kids though." She said with a small, slightly stroppy frown.

"Kate, we've been through this." He said tiredly. "If you come to the park, you'll run around as much as the kids will. The idea of this is to tire the kids out, and you're on orders for bed rest." He recited from their earlier conversation.

Kate sighed. "I know."

"Besides, I don't want to see you in a hospital again until you go into labour." He said determinedly.

"Yes, Daddy." She said mockingly, and he kissed her again.

"Have fun, okay?" He told her.

"If its possible to have fun with mushed up cucumber dried on my face and having to wear make up for no apparent reason twice in a week, I will." She promised him.

"Kate, you know that you don't need all of that stuff." Jack reminded her sweetly. "You look beautiful without it all, this is just to get you to relax a bit more."

She shook her head. "How much more relaxed do you want me to get? I've already been in bed for three days."

"And I'll make it up to you as soon as your week is up." He smiled.

She thought this over for a second, almost contemplating what she could do, and then nodded. "You'd better." She said, holding him to his promise.

"I'd like nothing more." He said, and then Kaia and Curtis came into the room.

"Daddy? Go park now?" Curtis asked impatiently.

Jack and Kate laughed, and Jack nodded. "Okay, say goodbye to Mommy."

The kids came over and leaned over the bed to Kate. Kaia was almost as high as Kate's eyelevel when she was sitting up and Kate frowned at this. "God, you're getting tall." She said with a laugh, and gave her a kiss. "You guys have fun at the park." She told them.

"Bye Mom." They said in unison, and then ran towards the door again. "Come on, Dad!" Kaia called back.

"Okay, I'm coming." He said, and leaned down to give Kate a kiss. As with all their goodbye kisses, it soon deepened, and probably would have deepened even more had it not been for the interrupting call of Kaia again.

"Daddy! Come on!" She urged, and Jack placed one final kiss to Kate's lips before standing up.

"Okay, I'm coming." He told them, and chased them out of the room, then turned back to Kate, leaning against the doorway. "See you later, baby." He said with a smile.

"Bye Jack, go have fun without me." She smiled back, and then turned to the bedside table to pick up a new novel from the pile that Claire and Sun had brought her.

As she heard the door close on their way out, Kate looked at the clock, 10am. Turning the first page in the book, she started counting down the moments until her doom.


"Kate! We're here!"

Shannon's call through the room interrupted Kate from chapter five of the book that she was getting into. Kate held back the groan she wanted to exhale. She was rather enjoying the book about a struggling actress who had fallen in love with a simple man, who didn't think he was worthy to love her. And now it was going to be interrupted by them. Of course, they were her friends, and she loved them for that…but she didn't want to be made to look like a supermodel because it was "relaxing". The next think she knew she'd be reading fashion magazines and going on diets like a teenager, or Shannon, would.

"I'm in here." She called to them, book-marking the page and setting it back on the beside table. She was lying over the covers now, wearing jeans and a t-shirt like she normally did, and when the door of the room burst open, Shannon, Claire, Sun and Libby poured in, piling onto the bed with her. Libby also looked like she was being dragged along, yet she would probably enjoy this more than Kate would.

"Hey!" Shannon said brightly, laying on her front. "How are you feeling?"

"Let's see…bored, restless, bored, bored, bored, restless, bored and bored." Kate rolled off the list, counting them on her fingers.

"Bored much?" Claire laughed.

"Seriously, I would have had more fun watching paint dry…I even tried to have a staring contest with the photographs, but I gave up because I kept loosing, and Kaia didn't really understand the idea of a staring contest." Kate explained, causing the others to laugh.

"Well, we're here to cure that boredom." Shannon announced eagerly.

"Oh goody." Kate said half-heartedly.

"And to start with, we've got a good old chick flick out to get us going."

Halfway through watching Love Actually, Kate realised that she was actually enjoying the film. She hadn't seen it before, unlike the others, who all had, and the relationships in the film that changed from one to the other was starting to remind her of life on the island, with all the different couples and people. They all started to get into the film and start cheering the little boy on when he was running through the airport near the end to get to the girl he loved, and all were laughing when the prime minister was caught snogging his secretary at the school play. And of course, not to mention singing along with the Christmas songs…after all, it was nearly December…

After the film, they all sat swapping stories…just as Jack predicted.

"I went out with this guy called Bryan." Shannon said. "He was such a jerk, he told me that he loved me, and then took of with all of my money."

"Jeeze, what an asshole." Kate said, leaning forward to get another potato chip.

"Yeah, I thought only women did that." Libby mused, causing the others to laugh.

"Depends on whether they actually have money." Claire pointed out. "When I was with Thomas, he didn't have any money."

"Yeah, but that guy was the biggest jerk in the world, Claire." Shannon said. "I mean, Bryan might have took off with my money, but Thomas took off and left his kid behind. How much worse can you get?"

They all agreed with this, and continued to slag Thomas off in the way that only women could.

"Come on, Kate, spill." Shannon tempted, after realising from a ten minute discussion with Sun that the Korean woman had no stories for them.

Kate thought about this. What stories did she have?

"You don't want to hear any of mine." She said, shaking her head.

"Aw c'mon."

"No," Kate said, shaking her head. "None of mine are bitchy or funny like yours."

"Tell us a real tear-jerker then." Claire tempted.

Kate took a deep breath. "It will probably make me teary as well." She warned.

"Yeah, but you're filled to the brim with hormones." Shannon said with a wave. "Now, stop stalling, and make us cry." She smiled.

Well, as they're asking…Kate thought.

"When I was little, I grew up with this guy called Tom." She started. "We were always together, best friends, and as we started to get older, we became more than friends."

"Childhood sweethearts?" Sun asked, already interested.

"Yeah." Kate said with a smile that could only mean one thing.

"He was your first, wasn't he?" Shannon realised.

Kate nodded. "He took me to this place where his parents went for a get-away trip, near the woods, a little cabin." She remembered. "We stayed there all weekend, and it was amazing."

"So what went wrong?" Libby asked.

"We graduated from high school." She said with a shrug. "He went of to New York to become a doctor, and I stayed in Iowa because I couldn't afford college, and there was nothing for me to get a scholarship in."

"So you broke up?"

"We tried to stay together, but long distance didn't work, and he met someone else." Kate revealed.

"He left you?"

"I left him." Kate corrected. "I wanted him to be happy, and whenever he talked about her, I knew that they were going to be happy together. He became a doctor, and moved back to Iowa, with her. Rachel, her name was. They got married up in New York."

"And they didn't invite you to the wedding?" Claire asked, shocked.

"Nope."

"But…you were his best friend!"

"They kept it low key, family only." She explained, remembering the excuse Tom had given her when she had questioned the ring on his finger. "Then, things started to get bad at home, and before I knew it, I was on the run from the law."

They all knew the story didn't end there, simply for the fact that Kate had a far off look in her eye. "When did you see him again?" Shannon asked quietly.

"Two years later." Kate remembered. "I got a letter from a friend, saying that I needed to get home somehow, because my Mom had cancer, and was dying. Even though she was the one who ratted me out I went to see her. Tom helped me. But she screamed when she saw me, she was scared of her own daughter, and so I had to run. By then, the cops were on their way, so I took Tom's car."

Kate went quiet for a moment, and Shannon put her hand over hers, and Kate noticed that all of their eyes were brimming with tears. "Kate?"

"He wouldn't get out of the car." She explained. "The cops were there, and I told him to get out, but he didn't. And he got shot, because of me. A bullet that was aimed for me, and he got it, several times, because of me. He had a wife, a son, and I took him away from that."

Kate had tears of her own now, but she refused to let herself cry. "Kate, that was his choice not to get out of the car. You're not responsible." Sun pointed out.

"It took a long time for me to trust anyone after that." Kate continued. "Everyone that I loved seemed to get hurt, or worse. Mom died. Tom died. They all left. Then…I did find someone." She said, with a soft smile. "I started to trust again, and as much as I tried to deny it, I found that I'd fallen in love harder than I ever had before."

"Jack." They all said simultaneously, and laughed afterwards, including Kate.

"Yeah, Jack." She confirmed.

"What actually happened with you two?" Claire asked. "All I can remember is you two coming out of the jungle all loved up."

"Yeah, good point." Shannon piped up. "How did you get together?"

"Sure you wanna know?" Kate asked.

"YEAH!" They all rounded on her.

"Well, it was like this…"


A/N: BEWARE: The next chapter is going to be primarily FLASHBACK to how they got together. I was writing this chapter, at loss for how to end it, and then remembered that I never actually explained how Jack and Kate got together in this story.