After fighting it for who knows how long, my eyes flutter open, taking in the dim early morning light. I roll onto my side, looking numbly at the empty expanse of hotel bed next to me. Two nights I've spent in this room now and I don't feel like I'm any closer to figuring this all out than I was when I left work a couple of days ago. I called Helen yesterday afternoon and asked her for a second day, though I promised to work remotely and be accessible by phone, which is what I wound up doing yesterday. She okayed the request, sympathy evident in her voice, which led me to believe she'd spoken to Josh, who was probably losing his mind, or Josh had spoken to the President and it got back to Helen—who knows? I didn't want to ask. She told me not to worry about working but truthfully, the distraction has been nice. I would have preferred actually being at work, but now is probably not the moment.

I sigh, draping my arms over my face. This is not how I thought my life would be two weeks before my wedding. I always imagined it'd be hectic, but to be hiding from my fiancé is not the life I pictured. Part of me can acknowledge that it's a little childish to be avoiding him this way and that just because his behavior has been poor doesn't mean I should respond in kind. Still, I don't know if I can be around him right now. I tried to listen to the dozens of messages he's left me, but I could barely get through one of them before it was too much.

I uncover my eyes and roll over, grabbing my phone. I vaguely acknowledge that it's not yet seven before I check for missed calls. More than twenty of them since I last looked. I almost have to applaud his restraint, especially considering how many times he called me in one hour after he first realized he couldn't find me. I scroll through the log, noticing there's been a lull for a few hours, and I can't help but be relieved because that means he's probably getting some sleep.

I drop the phone on the nightstand and curl back onto my side, staring at the spot next to me that would usually hold Josh. I'd forgotten how lonely this could be. It can be bad enough when one of us is traveling and we're separated that way, but this is a different feeling all together. I feel hollow inside right now, though it's not entirely because I'm sleeping alone.

My hand reaches out, stroking the empty spot next to me like some melodramatic woman in a soap opera. My engagement ring twinkles in the dim light and I lift my hand up, smiling at it sadly. Tears well in my eyes and I can't help but laugh at myself a little—now I really feel melodramatic. I rub the band with my thumb, watching the stone shift a little in counterpoint. I actually considered taking it off for a few long moments—I damn near left the thing on Josh's nightstand before coming here—but that would have felt far too final and definitely overdramatic. As far as I know, we're still engaged. I don't know how long that'll last at this point, and that's part of the reason I've been reluctant to talk to Josh. I'm not ready to hear what he might have to say.

I don't want things to be over with Josh—he infuriates me but I've never loved anyone the way I love him. I do want to spend the rest of my life with him. I just don't know if the feeling is mutual anymore. He's definitely been behaving like someone who doesn't want to get married. He's gone out of his way to avoid me lately and the more I think about it, the longer I realize it's been going on. I just couldn't see it. I've been wracking my brain, even more so for the last day as I try to figure out what could have happened to make him change. I keep trying to pinpoint something I did or said to turn him off so completely, but I'm drawing a blank. Since the moment we got engaged he's been talking about how he can't wait to marry me. He was excited about setting a date. He smiled happily through the engagement pictures our parents surprised us with in Wisconsin during Thanksgiving. We got through Chanukah with no major incident and managed to spend most of Christmas Eve and Day together. We toasted the New Year while overdressed at some politico's party knowing we had less than two months before we'd be husband and wife. He was absent a lot after that, but I thought it was because of the State of the Union. I assumed that he and the President were hunkered down as they worked on the details of the speech so I didn't let myself think too much about how he wasn't responding to any questions about the wedding or that he never seemed to be around anymore.

I make a noise and rub my hands over my face, sitting up. I have to stop driving myself crazy over this. I didn't do anything wrong; nothing so wrong that I deserve this. He's a grown man who can take responsibility for his actions. I've tried to talk to him and have been met with either a brick wall or the snide remarks that he so easily lobbed at me the other night. He needs to make the effort now.

A quiet part of my brain whispers that maybe that's what all the phone calls and messages have been about. Maybe he's making the effort now. I shake my head as I stand and make my way into the bathroom, going through my morning routine robotically. I'm sure he's worried right now; at least he noticed I'd gone. Unfortunately, the only reason he noticed I'd left was because we'd had a fight at work. I'm not sure what part of the incident made him go looking for me, but I'm positive if things hadn't come to a head when they did—if I'd just gotten fed up and left our apartment and gone to a hotel—he'd still have no idea. He wouldn't even know I wasn't at work. When I talked to Helen yesterday, she told me Josh had been looking for me—her tone spoke volumes but I didn't know how much information she had. All I said in response was "Thank you." I figured if I said anything more, I'd wind up spilling my guts to her and I don't want to put the First Lady in the middle of my domestic squabble, least of all because Helen isn't always a Josh fan and I didn't want to add fuel to the fire.

I contemplate hopping in the shower, but I spent more than an hour in it last night, doing little more than staring at the wall the entire time. I got waterlogged and not much else. I have no doubt that I could easily do it all over again this morning, but some little part of me doesn't see the point in wasting that kind of time or water again.

I move back into the bedroom and pull on clothes. The only thing I know for sure right now is that I need to leave the building, even if it's only for a few minutes. I haven't set foot outside my room since I checked in the other night. I only opened the door for room service. I figure I can run down to Starbucks, stretch my legs a little, make sure the world is still turning before going back into hibernation.

I grab my jacket and purse, making sure my room key card is on me as I pull open the door. I stumble as soon as I cross the threshold, nearly faceplanting into the door across from mine as I try to stifle a scream. I barely manage to catch myself and spin around, my heart thumping wildly in my chest for a split second as I see a person sprawled in front of my door. It only takes another moment for me to recognize who it is. Josh.

"Oh, my God!" I exclaim, my free hand covering my mouth as I try to calm myself.

"Ow," he moans as he sits up. "Don't you look where you're going?"

"Do you always lie down in front of doors?"

"When necessary." He winces, rubbing his forearm, and I realize that's what I accidentally kicked and tripped over. I squat down, pressing my fingers carefully against his arm as I search for damage.

"Are you all right?"

"I'll live," he answers, his voice soft, and my eyes dart up. We're practically nose to nose and it makes me sad to realize that not only have we not been this close to each other in weeks, this is the most physical contact we've had in some time, too.

"What're you doing here?" I finally ask, tearing my eyes from him.

"You have to ask?" I make a noise and he clears his throat uncomfortably. "I made the mistake of not coming after you before. Wasn't gonna do it again. I gave you as much time as I could stand before I abused the power of my position and had someone look into it for me. It only took a few minutes to track you down."

"So you got here and what? Decided to barricade my door by lying in front of it?"

"No, I got here last night. I sat here and called you for hours. I guess I fell asleep, though."

"You slept out here? Josh, are you crazy? What about your detail? They must be going nuts."

"I ditched 'em."

My eyebrows lift in disbelief. "Josh."

"Fine—they're guarding the stairways. They decided to let me have a little bit of dignity."

I shift until I'm sitting next to him, close but not touching. "You've been here since last night?"

"Yeah," he answers, his hand reaching out to me for a few seconds before it drops back to this lap. "I figured you'd call security on me if I knocked on your door so I thought I'd wait you out; I just didn't realize you'd sequestered yourself in your room. I didn't mean to fall asleep but I didn't get much the night before…or the last few weeks…and I guess knowing where you were relaxed me a little."

I want to be touched by the gesture—and a little bit of me is—but a lot of me just can't give in to one sweet moment. "Suddenly you care where I was?" I ask, my voice coming out soft and choked.

His head snaps to me but instead of looking angry at the comment, he just looks sad. "I can't believe that's a question I made you ask. Of course I care where you are and if you're all right. I've just done a shitty job of showing it lately."

I nod, looking down at my hands. "Yeah."

"Donna…I'm sorry."

"For what?"

He pauses for an instant, the confusion coming off him in waves. "What?"

"What are you sorry for?"

"For everything."

I look up at him again, and I can tell he means it. He is sorry. But I honestly need more than a blanket apology at this point. "Save it," I tell him wearily. "If you don't know why you should be sorry—if you can't even take a guess at it—I don't want you to say it just to say it."

"I've been an asshole," he says immediately. "The way I talked to you the other day was…reprehensible. Inexcusable."

"It was. You made me feel this big," I tell him, holding my finger and thumb a sliver apart. "You haven't done that in years."

He cringes even as he nods. "I was condescending as hell. I was putting all the wedding stuff of on you like we're not both going to be there. I shouldn't have implied that you're not busy or that your job isn't as important as mine."

My insides twist painfully. Yes, it's nice that he can acknowledge that he was rude and nasty to me the other night, but I need more. I absolutely hate to feel like I'm being "that" woman, but the other night was just the proverbial cherry on top of the horrible sundae that's been our relationship lately. "Josh…if that's the only thing you can think of that needs forgiving…" I shift my feet, moving to stand, but he grabs onto my wrist, stopping me in my tracks.

"I've been terrible to you. For weeks now. I haven't—I mean, I didn't even realize what I was doing."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? You didn't know you were hurting me?"

He shakes his head vigorously, his eyes growing wide. "God, no. Donna…I'm not trying to…look, I realize I've been awful…I've been hurting you?"

That's such a Josh question and I fight not to roll my eyes. "For weeks I've been trying to figure out what I did that was so horrible that you'd just…shut me out completely, why you'd feel like you needed to lie about having so much work to do when I knew there wasn't that much going on—"

"Donna, you didn't do anything!"

"I know that. At least, now I know that. But I'm still no closer to understanding what happened with you."

"Look, when I said I didn't realize it—that I was being so awful—I just mean that I was in denial or repressing it. I just kept telling myself that I had so much to do and I didn't have time for anything not work related, including you."

I shake my head in disbelief, still lost. "Did you think you'd just show up at our wedding, say 'I do,' and go back to work? Are you even planning on showing up to our wedding?"

He looks horrified. "Of course I am! How can you ask that?"

"Well, what am I supposed to think?!" I exclaim, finally jerking my wrist out of his grasp. "You wouldn't talk to me, you hardly look at me, you never come home anymore, you avoided all wedding talk like the plague, and then I got to the point where I was scared to talk to you because I didn't want to find out you were leaving me or kicking me out. How was I supposed to think anything but…" My voice catches in my throat, nearly choking me. "I thought we were over."

"I don't want us to be over," he whispers, his eyes suddenly shiny, but I'm determined not to let myself get taken in by tears, no matter how much it pains me to see him cry.

"I don't either, but…I don't know what to do anymore. I can't fix this because I don't know what's broken."

"It's me. I'm the broken one."

"Josh, if this is where you give me the 'it's not you, it's me' speech…"

"Even if it's the truth?"

I sigh and shift away from him. "I'm leaving now."

"I'm scared, Donna," he whispers.

"What?" I ask, stopping in my tracks.

"I'm scared."

I think that's the first time I've ever heard Josh admit to being scared about anything. "Why are you scared?" He shakes his head, running his hands through his hair. "Are you scared about being married? I know it's a big step but you were the one ready to elope two days after we got engaged." He makes a noise, smiling humorlessly. "It's okay to be scared about marriage, you know, but you should talk to your future wife about that. If we're supposed to be a team, you have to learn how to be open and communicate. Everyone gets nervous about marriage, though."

"Even you?"

"I've been scared about being left at the altar," I tell him, the edge in my voice audible even to me. "Other than that, I've been so busy working and planning a wedding that I haven't had time to think about it. You know, just because we have an event planner for this doesn't mean there's not a lot of work for us to do and I haven't had any input from you so I've been even busier than—" I stop abruptly, staring at him in disbelief. "You did it. I can't believe I didn't realize it before now."

"Did what?" he asks, lifting his head from his hands to look at me. "What did I do?"

"You did what you always do. You did what I was worried you'd do when we first got together."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"We made it two years, though," I say, more to myself at this point. "I guess I thought we were in the clear."

"Donna, you've got to include me in this conversation."

I actually do roll my eyes this time. Oh, the irony. "The passive-aggressive thing you do. When you'd collide with a woman and try to seduce her and go on a few dates and then ignore her until she went away. The thing I said I was scared you were going to do when we started dating and wouldn't move in with you right away because of it. I really thought we'd gotten past that. I thought we'd made it. I thought that when you didn't freak out when I moved in we'd be okay. I thought because we talked about marriage and kids we'd be okay. I thought because you proposed to me that I didn't have to worry about any of this anymore. I just thought that because we'd made it two years that this wasn't going to happen." I shake my head, big stupid tears running down my cheeks suddenly. "I'm still that naïve girl, though, aren't I? The dairy queen you like to tease because I didn't have the experience you have. The one who thinks that because a guy says he loves her he means it unconditionally. It's so quaint, right—"

"Donna, stop. I don't think any of those things about you. I'm not trying to push you away, I'm not tired of you, and I'm not scared about being married."

"…You're not?"

"No! I like the thought of being your husband. I like that people will assume we're a unit instead of two separate entities, and I have no shame in telling people I'll have to ask my wife before I can commit to anything."

He pauses there and I wait for him to continue, but he seems to be content with staring at the wall in front of him. "You're going to have to help me out here, Josh. Either talk to me or don't waste my time. I've dealt with enough silence from you for a lifetime."

"I'm not scared of being married," he repeats. "I guess I'm scared of not being married."

I'm too tired for this. I've gone too many nights without much sleep to try to figure out Josh's double talk. "I'm not following you. If you're so scared of not getting married, why are you doing your damndest to not get married?"

"No, I'm not worried about never getting married. I'm scared about being married to you and then…not being married."

"What?"

"I'm scared I'm going to hurt you."

I stare at him for a long time, trying to process that information. "So…your solution was to hurt me?"

"I didn't say it'd make sense."

"It sure as hell doesn't. You're scared of hurting me so you ice me out? I don't know how I'm supposed to respond to that. What does that even mean?"

"I'm gonna fuck this up, Donna, and you know it. I remember you telling me really early on that I'm not good at relationships and you're not wrong. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to find a balance."

"What the hell are you talking about? What balance haven't you been finding? For two years now you've been the one to insist we take time for us. You're the one who's suggested mini vacations and real vacations and done your best to get home as early as possible every day. Why do you think being married is going to change that? What happened?"

He shakes his head a little, shrugging. "It's going to sound kind of dumb."

"Yeah, no kidding," I answer sarcastically and his head whips up as he stares at me. "Josh, I already think you sound nuts so you might as well tell me what you're thinking."

He sighs, rubbing his hands through his hair until it all stands out like he's been electrocuted. "No one makes this work. Not in our line of work."

I rub my forehead, feeling my frustration mounting. "Josh, please stop speaking in riddles."

"I'm going to ruin our marriage, and you're going to wind up hating me."

I stare at him for a few long seconds, trying to understand what he's saying, but my heart starts to pound of out control as my mind immediately goes to worst case scenarios. "Did you…" I choke on the words for a few moments; they stick in my throat, nearly killing me. "Did you…cheat—"

"Never. I have never and I will never cheat on you. I love you and I wouldn't screw it up over something dumb like another woman who could never hold a candle to you."

Relief floods through me; I really do know he's not a cheater. It's not in him. But with the way he's acting right now, it seems that anything is possible. "I had to ask," I whisper.

"I know," he answers. "I want to be mad about it, but I get it. I just need you to know that the only thing I'm sure about in my life is my love for you and how much you mean to me."

Now confusion overwhelms me. "But—if that's—"

"I don't know how to explain how scared I am of losing you," he says softly.

"But why would you suddenly be worried about that? What changed? What happened? You never seemed worried about it before—"

"Donna, I am always scared that I'm going to lose you. I have been for years. I should think that'd be pretty obvious. It's not like I wanted to keep you as my assistant because I didn't want to have to train someone else for the job. I didn't take the first plane to Germany because you're so good at typing. Losing you has kept me up at night for years." He sighs ruefully. "I've lost just about everyone that means something to me in my life. I can't lose you, too."

"Josh…it's not that I don't believe you because I know that you mean that but…why would that hit you so suddenly? And why would that mean you should push me away? Wouldn't you want to keep me as close as possible?"

"I guess…I'm more afraid of all this than I wanted to believe."

That feels like a sucker punch. "You're having second thoughts about getting married?" I ask, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible. No easy feat considering I still have traitorous tears running down my cheeks.

"Yes, but not for the reasons you're thinking. I don't want to do all this just to have you file for divorce in a few years."

"Josh, I'm not going to divorce you! Why would you ever think I would?"

"Look at all the failed marriages!"

"…What failed marriages?"

"Aside from the people we know that haven't been able to make it work? The sheer number of people I've spoken to in the last…Donna, every congressman, senator, delegate, and office lackey I've spoken to in the last few months has at least one seriously failed relationship under their belt. All these guys I thought were happily married…they're not. They're in the middle of divorcing their wives; some of them are on their second divorce. They're at work all the time and can't find time to make their marriages work. The women in their lives are unhappy to the extreme and can't handle the hours their husbands keep and want out of the relationship, and who can blame them? And the ones that seem happy…God, the ones that seem happy are having affairs! Do you know how many people in this town are cheating on their wives? How many of these assholes claim to be too busy to come home to help their kids with homework but manage to rent out a hotel room for their mistresses? It's insane! And it's got me thinking about how I don't want that to be us. I don't want to be so wrapped up in my job that you can't stand it anymore. I don't want to be…Leo. I don't want to be Leo, and I don't want to come home one day to find out that you're going to leave me."

Silence falls between us for a few minutes as I try to process what he's telling me, and as I try to figure out what might be hiding underneath it all. "Josh," I finally say as I rub my forehead, "do you know ridiculous and completely…sexist all that sounds? These women can't handle their men working so they leave them? These women are just sitting at home, waiting for their husbands to show up, hoping they'll be granted a few hours of time? This isn't 1950—I'm sure a lot of those women are keeping themselves occupied."

"Donna, I didn't mean it that way and you know it. I'm saying these are guys who have long hours that keep them from their families and it can be too much. A woman has a right to be married to a guy who's going to be around—same way a guy would want to be married to a woman who makes time for him, I hear the sexist thing now. No one seems to be able figure it out, though. No one knows how to make a marriage work. I don't want to do that to you. I don't want to be the person who lets work take precedence over everything."

"So…don't be that person. I don't get what you're trying to say. Josh, all that stuff is something you can easily avoid if you just talk to me. Don't forget that I don't exactly keep banker's hours, either. I'm at work super early and crazy late, too. I worked with you in that office for almost eight years—I know how it goes. I know that the hours can be long, but in the last two years, you've made the effort to not be there all the time. You make the effort to come home at a reasonable hour as often as possible. I don't care about you being busy at work—in fact, I love knowing that you're trying to save the world. It's not like I'm sitting at home just hoping that you'll grace me with your presence for a few minutes. I know your work is important. I find things to do to occupy my time. You're being ridiculous."

He laughs, still mostly without humor. "Thanks for calling my concerns ridiculous."

"You're being ridiculous," I repeat. "You can have concerns. You can be scared. You can feel all those things and I'm not going to judge you. But this, how you've been behaving the last few weeks, how you've been responding to all this…it's ridiculous."

He shrugs, making a noncommittal noise. "Yeah, I guess."

It takes everything I have not to whack him. "Josh, you have to talk to me. You can't just shut me out every time you have a problem. Back when we worked together, you talked to me about everything. If this was six years ago and you were on the verge of marrying Amy—" I pause, choking down the bile that rises in my throat at the very notion. "And you were hiding out at the office until all hours of the night, you'd have me there with you. Even if you didn't tell me directly what was going on, you'd be saying enough that I could figure it all out. I don't see why now that we're in this sort of relationship that has to change. I'm the last person you should be pushing away. If we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, we're supposed to be a team. We should be able to count on each other, not this garbage where you hide at work because you don't know how to deal with your issues. I'm not going to live the rest of my life like this."

He smiles sadly, his eyes red-rimmed, tear tracks shining on his cheeks. "Is that a threat?"

I shrug helplessly. "Yes. I guess it is. If it has to be. I'm not going to spend my life waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm not going to always be looking over my shoulder to see if my husband has dropped off the face of the earth because he doesn't know how to deal with change or problems."

"That's not going to happen."

"How am I supposed to trust that? I thought I could. I thought you'd managed to break this particular habit after we got together and you stopped avoiding relationship stuff. I thought you found the right person and everything fell into place but now…I don't want this hanging over us from now until we die."

"I don't—I promise—"

"How?" I ask, my voice cracking. "What happens in a couple of years when I tell you I'm pregnant? What then? Will you think you're fine until the last trimester when the sonogram starts to look less like a blob and more like a baby? Will you disappear on me because you're scared that you're going to be a terrible father? Not because you don't want to have kids but because you're worried that you'll do something catastrophic to fuck them up? Let me tell you, Josh, I'm already terrified at how much damage I could inflict on a kid and we haven't made any attempts at having one. When the time comes, I'm going to need you with me because I'm not signing on to be a single parent. I can't go chasing after you while lugging around a newborn. It's not fair to me and it's not fair to our future kids." I pause, taking a deep breath, and it's only then I realize I'm shaking violently. "I've waited a long time to do this. I didn't rush off and marry the first guy who smiled at me. I didn't settle down with someone I had moderate feelings about just so I could say I was married. I wanted the real thing so I waited until I found the right guy. Hell, I waited for you. For years I waited for you even if I never thought to call it that. I held every man I met to the impossible standard of Josh Lyman and every one of them came up lacking. I only want to do this once, so if you're not in it for the long haul…"

My heart crumbles a little as I watch a couple of tears trickle down Josh's face. "I've really fucked things up, haven't I?"

Honestly, I hate to lay it all on him, but I don't know what else to say at this point. "Kind of," I whisper.

"Have I ruined everything? Have I ruined us?" I shrug, staring at my hands. "How do I fix this?"

"I don't know, Josh," I sniffle.

He's quiet for a while. The only noise in the hallway is the soft sounds of our tears. "Do you want to call off the wedding?"

A sob bubbles out of me and I bring my knees up to my chest, burying my face in my arms. I cry harder than I have in a long time. The thought of calling off our life together is agonizing, even after all this. It's not what I want at all but he wouldn't mention it if he wasn't have those thoughts, right?

"I know what you're thinking and that's not what I want to do. Not even a little bit. I want to marry you. I have for a long time. I know it's been shitty lately…I've made things shitty lately, but I love you so much I can't see straight. You're everything to me. I know it might not feel like it with how I've been treating you but you have to know it's coming from a place of love. I just keeping thinking about how much I can hurt you if things start to go bad and it locks me up. I know it's not rational. I've spent most of the last two days trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me and why I've been acting so horribly and they only thing I can figure is that I'm just so fucking terrified of being without you and ruining our relationship that I've been closing you out. We're supposed to get married in two weeks and it's the biggest, most important thing I've ever done—more important than getting someone elected President," he assures me, cutting off my objection before it can leave my lips, "and the stakes are higher and…I can't imagine my life without you. Or rather, I can and I don't like it. It's bleak. I've done life without you and I don't care for it."

"I don't like picturing my life without you, either," I whisper, letting my head fall back against the wall. "But for weeks now, I thought that's what I was going to have to do…live without you."

His arms go around me suddenly, pulling me close, and I melt against his side. His touch still has the same effect on me it always has, his proximity is still comforting. Even though I feel lost at sea right now, being this close to Josh helps anchor me a little. I haven't been close to him like this in so long. It soothes me even as I ache for what it feels like I'm losing.

"I want to marry you," he whispers. "That hasn't changed. Until the day I die I'll want to be your husband. But if you don't want this…or me…anymore, I won't blame you. If you want to cancel the wedding, we can. Or, if you'd rather postpone it until you think you can trust me again, we can do that. I want what you want. I want you to be sure about this. That's the only thing that matters—that we go into this marriage one hundred percent sure that it's the right thing to do. It doesn't matter how long it takes; days, weeks, years, whatever you need to be sure that I'm in this with you. I'll do whatever I have to do to prove that I'm not gonna flake out on you. I'll spend the rest of my life making this up to you."

"That's not what I want," I whisper into his neck, my arms involuntarily wrapping around his middle. "That's not how I want our marriage—our life together—to be. I don't want you always begging for forgiveness. That's not fair to either of us."

"I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to prove that I'm not going anywhere. I don't know how…I don't know. Donna…"

"I need time, Josh. I don't know how much time I need. These past few weeks have been agony. I thought my whole life was falling apart. I thought you hated me."

"I could never hate you," he answers quickly, his arms tightening around me. "Never."

"I had no way of knowing that; don't you get it? All those things about you and us that I thought I knew were suddenly gone. Nothing made sense. Everything felt upside down. I thought I'd given up everything for a guy again. I thought I was going to have to find a new home, or a new job, or hell—a new life. I knew that I wouldn't be able to be around you anymore, not if things were ending that way."

"Well, you're going to know it. From now on. I promise you. You're always going to know how I feel about you and how much I love you and…You are the most important thing in the world to me. The most important thing. You're my number one priority. I'm not going to choose the job over you even though I know you've never asked me to pick you. I'm doing it on my own. I'm going to talk to you about everything, every fear and doubt and concern. All of it." He lets out a strange noise, almost like he's choking. "Well, as long as you still want me. But even if you don't, you're always going to be the most important person in the world to me, and I will always want you to know that."

My stomach flutters even as my heart continues breaking into millions of pieces. It's a horrible place to be—so agonizingly in love with someone while being so broken by them. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I want to go back to just a couple of months ago. I want to go back to the moment we got engaged and everything was so blissfully happy and we absolutely couldn't wait to get married. I want my life with Josh back. It'd be so easy—it'd be so very easy—to just fall back into him. To just ignore all the other stuff and pretend everything is back to normal. It'd be so easy. I can't though. I can't do that to myself. I can't go back to him because it's easy. I have to go back to him because it's what I want and because I've thought about everything that's happened and I know I can live with it all and move past it.

"I just need some time," I whisper again, and I feel him nod against my head.

"I know. I understand. I promise I'll give you as much time as you need. I'll give you whatever you need." He tightens his hold on me and I respond in kind. I've missed being this close to him. I've missed everything about him. I've missed how we fit together without any effort. I've missed my other half.

I feel his lips against my forehead, lingering for a long while as he breathes. My eyes fall shut as I try to take in as much of him as I can. It's crazy but I've even missed the way he smells. It's still in the apartment a bit but not nearly as strong as it's been for all the years he's lived there. I didn't completely realize it until I grabbed onto his pillow one night, trying to be close to him, and realized that it only smelled like my shampoo. Here he is now, though—pure, concentrated Josh, making my heart race even as he soothes me.

He chuckles quietly, though it sounds rueful, keeping his lips against my skin. "What is it?" I manage to ask.

"It's horrible—I don't even remember the last time I kissed you."

"State of the Union," I answer immediately. "You kissed me right before the President went on stage and then again right after because you were excited."

"Jesus. Has it been that long?"

"Unfortunately. That's the same time I noticed you weren't coming home anymore."

He makes a different noise, pressing another kiss to my forehead. He moves to my temple, his lips blazing little trails of fire on my skin as he moves to my cheek. He lingers there and my eyes close in response. It feels like a little slice of heaven. He presses his forehead against mine, his breath hot on my face. I open my eyes a little, not surprised to see his lips are millimeters from mine.

"I'm not ready," I whisper, and I can feel his entire body freeze. He nods though, and changes course, pressing a kiss to the corner of my mouth.

"Okay," he answers, his voice barely audible. "Okay. I waited almost nine years to kiss you the first time. I can wait again."

I feel another tear trickle down my cheek; I sincerely hope it's not that long before we kiss again. Honestly, a part of me wants to kiss him now, and it takes all of my strength to hold off. I'm too much of a pushover for him and I really need to take some more time before any decisions are made, even if it's just when to kiss him again.

"Do you think…maybe…we could spend the day together?" he asks hopefully. "We can do whatever you want. Anything. You name it."

"I have to work," I tell him, pulling back a few inches so I can see his face. "I told Helen I'd work remotely if I wasn't coming into the office." His entire face drops and my hand reaches out before I can help it, cupping his cheek. "If you want to hang out with me while I work, you—"

"I'll take it," he answers immediately, nodding his head so hard I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself. "That sounds fantastic."

My lips curve up a little and he gives me the same smile in return as we sit in the hall for a while longer.

Perhaps not what you were expecting or hoping, but it's the best I can do. There's still another chapter to this one, and I'm thinking about writing a second part but keeping it separate. I wanted to get this posted before 2019 came about (at least in my time zone). Happy New Year!