Disclaimer: Still nothing's mine.

WARNING: Contains some M for language because Jess mouths off. Couldn't resist roaming through Jess' head, curious what you make of this chapter...

'If you wanna get on his good side, you have to let him lead, at least in the beginning. He has some deep-laid macho issues but once you tickle his male ego, he grows all soft and putty.'

They had reached a clearing where other dogs were running freely. Cerberus gave Rory a questioning look, asking for permission. She gave him a nod and smiled.

'Go play with your buddies.'

The black Labrador wagged his tail and ran towards the other dogs.

'He's quite popular with the ladies,' Rory filled Jess in.

'I don't want you to think he's entered the promiscuous phase of his puberty or something,' she further explained. 'He just gives off that dark masculine vibe of an alfa dog and he gets quite a lot of fangirling. Sometimes he can't resist all the female attention, if you get what I mean,' she finished conspiratorially. 'Jess?'

Jess looked at her. She held her steaming to-go coffee cup between mitten-clad hands, warming her palms on the leftover warmth. He wondered if there would be a time when simply walking side by side with her wouldn't feel like the ultimate privilege, without finding it hard to concentrate on a single thing she said because he felt like he was gonna implode.

Rory narrowed her eyes, searching his look. He let out a white puff of air and ran a palm through the hair above his right ear. He was nervous.

'You've hardly said a word since we met,' she tucked back a strand of her hair that was freely falling down over her shoulders today. 'Is there any particular reason you're suddenly freezing me out or are my Spidey senses tingling for nothing?'

Jess raked his teeth over his lower lip and looked around as if searching for something. He then took her coffee cup from her hands and dropped it into the nearby trash bin.

'Hey!' Rory made a step towards her disposed coffee.

However, she couldn't get far because Jess took hold of her waist and turned her to the side, winning a surprised whimper as her back hit the trunk of a tree. She was about to ask him what the hell he was doing but his mouth covered hers and his palms were on both sides of her head, cool fingers pressing against her cheekbones. She gasped as she felt his tongue enter her mouth slick, cold and insistent. She squeezed her eyes shut. His hands splayed back over her hips, pulling her into him, making the temperature scorching hot in a matter of seconds. There was no coaxing her into the kiss, no reacquaintance. It went directly from zero to ten. It was a kiss that could make you think doing stupid things was perfectly alright. It was dirty and consuming and amazing and twisted her in knots.

Rory heard something. A groan. This was her own voice right? She had to pull away. They were outside, french kissing like lovesick leeches, and it was the middle of the day. But she wouldn't. In fact, if he stopped doing what he was doing with his tongue right now, she would slap him, hard. He gave and took and then gave some more, and at some point Rory was pretty sure that had he tried to make a move and make this any more explicit than it already was, she wouldn't stop him. In fact, she felt like her body was humming with his proximity when nothing else had remotely felt that good in the last year. However, instead of taking the kiss any further, he stopped it, moving his mouth away as abruptly as he had moved in on her. His head dropped against her shoulder and she could hear his labored breathing. Maybe he was trying to get back his bearings just as hard as she was.

When he rested his forehead against hers meeting her eyes, he looked like an enormous weight had dropped off of his shoulders. No trace of the smug grin she would expected from him after he'd made her moan in the light of day in the middle of a freaking dog park.

'I've been needing to do this for some time,' he breathed out. 'I'm good to listen to you now.'

Rory blinked, slowly coming back to her senses.

Kill me. Just kill me now.

At least that one part between them seemed to still work with an amazing lack of effort and complications.

'You owe me a coffee,' she mumbled with more confidence than she gave herself credit for at the moment. He smirked.

'Will do.'

Jess looked ahead at Cerberus playing in the drying grass and rubbed his palms together. He had never been one to wear gloves, gloves were for prissies, but he couldn't deny that frostbite was a bitch.

Just minutes ago he had felt like it was the middle of July. Jeez, what had possessed him to act like that? He had all but manhandled her in plain view in a goddamn dog park. What had he been thinking? Was this the point he'd been trying to get through? Look at me, I'm ready for this. I may have acted like some stupid cowardly moron before but I'm ready to be the rock stable man beside you now, just give me a chance to prove it... By kissing your face off in a dog park. Shit. Good for you, Jess. What the hell were you thinking?

That was the point. He hadn't been. When she was around it was so easy to get lost in her and stop thinking at all.

Get it together, man. Freaking get it together. She's been quiet. Why is she quiet? She's usually rambling about something, how is she suddenly quiet? What are the odds I've hurt her tongue while playing he-man on her? Jeez.

Jess clamped both lips between his teeth and looked at her. They were sitting on a bench and she was finishing the coffee he had gotten her as compensation.

Rory met his look openly and put the to-go cup down into her lap.

'Can I ask you something?'

He arched an eyebrow, bracing himself. Were you always a conceited jerk? That would be a yes. Or maybe, are you planning on trying to get into my pants every time you face an emotionally complicated situation? Yeah, probably. Or what about - Jess, do you think you could not call me anymore because I've had enough of your shit and I don't want to deal with your complicated love slash fear slash guilt issues anymore? Please let it not be the last one.

He wetted his lips, feeling them get cold immediately.

'Ask away.'

'What was hating me supposed to engross?'

He blinked. He felt like he'd snapped out and missed some essential part of the conversation.

Rory studied his puzzled expression and shrugged, twisting the to-go cup between her hands.

'You were so adamant on keeping me away from your supposedly dark side. What would it be if we'd stayed together through this?'

He felt stupid. Like in really stupid. He must've had a blackout. He'd thought they were gone after the surgery but there was no such thing as a sure thing, right?

'What?.'

Rory sighed, leaning forward to leave her coffee on the ground next to her feet. She looked like she'd expected him to react like this.

'You would've hated me, that's what you said. I want you to elaborate.'

'Rory...' he took a breath and let it out slowly, running a hand through his hair. 'Can't we just move on past this?'

'No,' she folded her arms before her chest and looked up at him expectantly. 'Not until you tell me about all the twisty wicked thoughts you had or thought you'd have if we stayed together.'

He got the feeling that they were never really moving past this. No matter what he did, no matter how much time passed, they kept walking in circles, always getting to the memento of how they changed from loving to hurting each other. Not each other, really. Him hurting her. That's what it eventually came back to and no amount of mindblowing makeout sessions was about to make up for this simple fact. Shit.

'I don't know what you want me to say,' he sighed, suddenly feeling wary.

'The truth,' she said. 'All I ever wanted from you was the truth. Not what you thought I wanted to hear from you.'

He opened his mouth and then clamped it shut as he saw the determination written in her look. Why did he have to fall in love with the most stubborn woman on the face of Earth? And why did he have to feel like he was entitled to screw up? The truth was, he really wanted to make it work between them this time. He knew she would give him a fair chance, but his biggest fear was he was gonna blow it just like he had done with the one before. Because really - what was different this time? Other than the fact that he was much more aware of the consequences of his own actions. He would give his best. He would do as much. He opened his mouth to say just that but clamped it shut, realizing how volatile this was.

Rory shook her head with a huff.

'Do you think I want this polished, apologetic, washed-off version of you? This isn't you, Jess,' she let out a mirthless laugh and rose a hand to press her mitten-covered point finger into his chest bone. 'This cautious, tiptoeing stranger is nowhere near the mouthy outspoken punk I fell in love with.'

Jess blinked, finding her words hard to assimilate. What?.

'I fell in love with the conceited jerk who doesn't care about people's rules and regulations. I felt safe with him because he was spontaneous and forward and had the nerve to manhandle me in a public park and feel smug about the way he made me forget my own name instead of beating himself up for not being someone I expect him to be. You seem so dead set on keeping yourself from ruining me but can't you see that's not the point, Jess?'

Really. That's not the point. Interesting then, what is?. Because he's always been a trainwreck in the making and he didn't really know how to keep her safe from that.

'Tell me what you envisioned for us while we were apart, Jess.'

Everything he'd been trying to shield her from, now she kept prodding for. They were caught into a stare off. He could see she had her mind set with a very slime chance of changing it. She wanted to hear the whole story and wasn't about to give up. The same way she hadn't given up on him after all this time. Why did she have to poke those wounds open? Maybe, inwardly, he had known she would do this, expected it all along. He had feared she would do just that, but had hoped she wouldn't. He wasn't surprised. It took a special kind of woman to love his poor self through all of his bullshit. And this kind of woman came at a price. She wanted to inspect every dusty secret corner of his mind and she wasn't gonna let him beat around the bush this time.

He stood up from the bench. Gave her another pleading look and, as he met her unrelenting eyes, gave her a small nod before he left without another word.

As soon as Rory opened the front door he brushed past her into the apartment. She followed him into the living room and watched as Jess plopped down into one of the two armchairs by the coffee table.

'At first I was just angry,' he started at once, as if he was afraid he would lose momentum if he paused. 'It wasn't personal but it was so powerful, it was directed to no one and everyone. I felt uncomfortable with the whole shitload I was suddenly feeling and I could feel myself quickly spiraling out of control. My first reaction was to try and shut down, keep you at a distance so that you didn't feel like you could've done a better job because you couldn't. Then I came to realize I felt pressured to feel optimistic and brave simply because you were still there. I felt like I had no freedom to vent about my loss because you were still something so potent and good in my life...' he shook his head, rubbing his point and middle finger against his lips, the memory bringing some of the old feelings of anger and loss of purpose back.

'And?'

He huffed, his patience wearing out.

'And I guess I tried to make myself thoroughly miserable. It didn't feel better but at least it felt less confusing. It's stupid.'

'That's how you felt,' Rory said calmly, taking the other armchair. 'I don't expect an excuse about the way you felt, I just wanna know how you felt. You don't have to justify it.'

Jess let out a sigh. This was torture.

'When I ended things, it was the first time I knew exactly how I felt and allowed myself to revel in the pain I caused both of us.'

She nodded slowly, as if she'd known this all along and was simply waiting for him to acknowledge it before getting further into the story.

'This is like fucking therapy,' he sneered and ran both hands through his hair, hanging his head back.

'You never believed I could handle you,' she said quietly and his head snapped towards her.

'What do you mean?'

'Please try and go on,' she said, her eyes a strange mixture of tired and understanding. 'Whatever it is, I can handle it.'

Jess tapped his fingers along the armrest. Stopped. Tapped them again. Then settled into the armchair, resting his elbows against his knees.

'I would get jealous at some point,' he started in a clipped, efficient manner. 'I would start putting words into your mouth, intentions into your head. I would insist you were oblivious to your mutual attraction to some random dude from work, that staying with me was only an act of pity and generosity. I would be able to tell that you wanted to move on to someone else but were too timid to act on it. I would urge you to go out dating, to let another man put his hands on you.'

He took a deep breath, his lung hurting with the quick expand. He felt as if he had dive jumped off some high cliff into dark muddy waters and he wasn't sure he even knew how to swim. However, once he was in so deep, he had to continue. Or drown.

'In my head I envisioned you living the life we were supposed to have, only it wasn't with me. I kept telling myself I was only in your way. My subconscience, however, didn't get the memo. I thought you were better off without me, but at the same time I thought of coming to your place. It would be dark but I would be able to picture all the corners and edges, so the image in my head was pretty vivid.'

Jess paused and chewed on the inside of his cheeks, his eyes lost in the memory. His mouth was set to the side, as if he was having a distasteful inner debate.

Her brows furrowed.

'You're embarrassed.'

He rubbed both palms against his hair, puffing out a breath.

'You could say that,' he smirked, the smile not reaching his eyes.

'Why?'

He paused and rubbed his jaw. He was fidgeting. He didn't answer her question but continued changing topic instead.

'I thought I would be able to let you go, thought what I wanted for you was to move on and find someone...'

He shook his head with a bitter smile.

'However, in those thoughts you weren't anyone else's.'

Rory rested back in the armchair, her feet tucked under her, folding her arms before her chest as she watched him incredulously. There was something there, and he was trying to sidestep telling her about it. She had a pretty good clue what it was. Not the specifics of it, but what it probably came to. But that was the thing, she didn't want his safeguarded ambiguous half-truths, she wanted him to tell her everything.

'Go on.'

He let out a sigh, as if he'd expected her to say this.

'The lights would be off,' he huffed a frustrated breath out and stood up from the armchair abruptly, rubbing his palms over his face and pacing a couple of steps. 'Why do you wanna stew me? Is this some kind of revenge?'

'No.'

He slid his hands to the back of his head and locked them behind his neck, hanging his head back.

'What's the point? Why do you want me to tell you all this?'

'I want everything.'

'That's bullshit, Rory.'

'I wanna hear it anyway.'

'Really? You wanna hear how I stood in that corner of my rental blind as a mole getting high and jerking off on the thought of coming into your place at night and working you over so hard that you wouldn't be able to look at another man without thinking about me touching you?'

Rory set her jaw firm at his deliberate crude choice of words and lifted her chin as she stood up.

'Don't you get it? I want you. Your good and your ugly - I'll take it all. I want all the broken and uncensored parts of you along with the healed and lovable ones. You have to trust me to see you at your worst and find the reasons to hold onto you anyway. You can tell me everything, I will handle it. You just never gave me enough credit to do it.'

Rory made a few steps towards where he was standing.

'I missed you too,' she said, her eyes leveling his. 'I would put on a blindfold and think what it would be like if you were there, reaching for me in the dark. What it would be like to not see but to be able to feel you. To get as close to you as it was physically and emotionally possible.'

He watched her like hypnotized. His arms were hanging limp by his side and he looked like a reindeer in headlights. He hadn't expected her to look relieved. He had imagined she would prod around while she found something ugly and bitter to feed her irrational yearning for spontaneity and this whole spill your heart out session would be over. However, Rory didn't look appalled. Or hurt. Or put off. She looked relieved that all of this was finally out and they had reached a level of closeness they had been missing for almost an year. Hell, he'd never felt as close to her as he was feeling right now. Bared and vulnerable yet somehow... proud. Proud that this time around, he didn't succumb to the instinct to run. Instead, he applied himself.

There was a smile on Rory's face that reached her eyes and all that shone from them was love and relief.

'I knew you were a handful when we started this thing between us and I imagined it would take a lot of work. And it took ao much more work than I originally imagined. Yet, every time we were forced to compromise and find a way out of a bad situation, we fought through it and every single time it was worth it. Once I've had what we had, I'm not settling with convenience. You're everything to me, Jess, and I'm not settling with anything less. I'm willing to put that work into us as long as you're on board with me. But you have to stop freaking out whenever something good happens to you. You're worthy of being happy. You're not your mother.'

He cringed.

'You're not your father either,' she said just as gently. 'You're you and who you are is just enough to make this work.'

She lifted a hand to cup his cheek and felt his breath on an exhale against her wrist as he leaned into her touch.

'Only the Jess and Rory who are imperfect and lost, and spiteful every once in a while are true and only they can be perfectly imperfect together.'

And for the first time in what felt like an eternity Jess Mariano felt like he had (finally) made a step towards moving past this. A new page could be turned only when the old one was closed. But in order to do that, they had to read it to the last word. He'd never believed someone would be able to love him so thoroughly, take him as he came in the entity of his parts - the broken, along with the healed ones. He had been so blind. The irony of it.

Rory watched as her ex-boyfriend had a revelation.

There was this time when she was driving her first car. She was seventeen, had just gotten her driving license and climbed on that old Dodge Lancer, it was like the Frankenstein granny of all Dodge Lancers. However, she was driving around Miss Patty's but took the turn too short and crashed into a delivery truck. Thankfully, the truck was just stopping, so she got away with a couple of bruises and an ugly gash over her right elbow. The Dodge Lancer was quite useless after the incident, but Gypsy had been convinced the car had been good for nothing even before the crash. For a while Rory wouldn't want to drive. She got into college, then med school, and in the rare occasions when she did have to get on a car she would always get a queasy feeling when taking a turn from a back alley. The gash had healed in less than two weeks but if you took a closer look you could still see the thin white scar over her right elbow. Crashing didn't take away her joy from driving but it had put the fear there. Now she would always feel both. Joy and apprehension would compliment each other and remind her of the fear she'd felt, but also of how healing made it so much better.

'Don't ever hide yourself from me,' she pleaded, cradling Jess' face between her palms. 'Next time you have to choose between your fears and me, choose me. All this time, I wanted you to choose me, so bad. I waited for you to see that whatever else changed, you being my best shot at happiness would still be true. It took you forever to get that,' she chuckled a breathy half sob.

Jess felt the buzz of his blood rushing. It was getting really loud in his head. He had to do something - move, act or he was gonna shed a tear or whatnot. He caught her head between his palms, his fingers tangling into her hair as his thumbs rubbed against her jaw and his mouth closed on hers. She held onto his wrists for leverage.

This time around, all in meant all in. Whatever came out of this, at least they would know they had both given it their best try. Love wasn't enough. It took something so different from romantic love to make a happily ever after last - it was called hard work. To hold onto yourself and at the same time to open yourself for someone else. It was worth it but took so much courage. Once you got to your 'happily ever after', that's when the real legwork began. Because keeping your ever after was that fragile yet transcendent truth everyone reached for but so few got to. When you got to the matter of things, though, it wasn't impossibly complicated. Actually, it was quite simple. It really was only one tiny step. One tiny step, but you had to take it every single day.

TBC