Her dreams were becoming more and more frequent, more and more real. They were frustrating her. She had learned plenty about her life over the last six weeks - meaningless details about what sweets she had liked growing up (and really, what in the world were Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans?), the types of herbs her mother had grown in their garden, and that her father had a laughable obsession with rubber ducks - but there was nothing that she had discovered that had taught her anything about her life, about why her memory was gone or why it was beginning to come back.

Of course, that wasn't to say that she had learned nothing at all from these dreams. Gwen had discovered some awful truths - that somehow she had lost a brother, that a war had been raging and that she had somehow been right in the thick of it - and that she had known her husband for nearly a decade before her memory had been taken from her.

Drew.

Occasionally, Gwen found herself in moments of solace, moments that allowed her to think of anything else but him. It was a rarity, but sometimes she even felt happy, especially during the increasingly infrequent moments that she would see her daughter with a smile on her face. But then her mind would be dragged back to reality - the reality in which she was now a single mother, abandoned by her husband and the father of her children.

She wasn't sure how she felt when she found out that he had been her schoolmate. On the one hand, it was fascinating to her that, of all the people in the vast country that was the United States, she had found him again, and he had become the love of her life. How impossible were those odds? But then again, from what she had seen in her memories, he was not always the nicest man. He had been, as she had phrased it herself, "on the other side."

Whatever the hell that meant.

It hurt her to think about this, both metaphorically and physically. Drew had hurt her, had broken her heart and Jill's and Jeremy's, but she would have given anything to see him again, alive and breathing before her. It was possible that if she saw him that she would then have to murder him, but at least she'd know he had come back.

Another two weeks had come and gone, but still there was no word from him - not a single letter or phone call. Briefly, she had entertained the thought of leaving the pithole he had left her in, but the thought made her ill. If she left Missouri and never saw him again, she would always wonder if he had tried to come back and just couldn't find her, and that just wasn't something she thought she could live with.

But with each passing day, the hope that she held onto was beginning to wane. It had been over a month now, and he still wasn't back. And what was to say that if she ever did see him again that things would be the same? She had changed a great deal. She had to learn to survive, to remain strong for her children. Maybe she and Drew weren't meant to be together forever after all. Maybe her past self was correct in thinking that he was not a good person.

Jeremy and Jill were sound asleep in their beds when Gwen heard the knock on her door. Her immediate thought was to ignore it. It was late, and nobody had the right to barge in on her and wake up her family at such an ungodly hour. For that, whomever was disturbing her would have to remain on the outside.

But the knocking became more persistent. She was just about to call down to the front desk and report that she was being harassed when she heard his voice.

"Gwen, it's me."

Her heart leapt into her throat, her pulse increasing to double its speed and five times its ferocity. She was halted in her tracks, completely unable to speak. That was him, her Drew - the only man in her life - and he had come back to her. He was alive, and he was right outside the door.

But she couldn't move.

All of those thoughts she had considered, all of the walls that she had built to protect herself and her family still remained. She couldn't just turn it off. Everything she had thought about him and the fact that he had left were still very much true and still haunted her every thought. But he was here. He was alive, and he was so close that she could reach out and touch him. Except her body seemed as though it didn't quite connect with her mind, and so she was trapped in place.

"Let me in," he said, his voice almost pleading and barely above a whisper. "Please."

A strangled sob escaped her throat. She hadn't even noticed the tears that had started to fall. The salty taste of her sadness reached her lips, and suddenly she had found the strength to move.

She opened the door slowly, making sure that it was him on the other side. And it was. It was really him. His face was scruffy and he looked awful - like he hadn't slept the entire time he had been gone - but it was him.

Her voice caught as she opened her mouth to try and speak. Gwen had no idea what to say to him; she didn't know which emotion to express first. She was so happy and full of relief because he was alive and he was there, standing in front of her with no obvious illness or injury. But she was also furious at him for everything that he had put her through, hurt that he hadn't had the decency to contact her for over a month, anxious about what it meant that he was back, and afraid that she was dreaming or seeing things, that maybe she was seeing what she wanted to see instead of what was real. Her sanity was hanging on by a single, frayed thread, and she couldn't take it if he wasn't real.

But most of all, Gwen felt concern for her children. She knew that with a single look at Drew, Jill and Jeremy would be thrilled beyond anything they have ever felt before - and she wanted them to see their father more than anything - but what if Drew decided to leave again? What if Jill came out of her shell and turned back into her old self just to have her father abandon them again? Surely that would be too much for any young girl to take. Gwen could lose her for good.

"Gwen," he said again, interrupting her scattered, frantic thoughts. "I missed you."

His words made something inside her snap. And with a single harried breath, Gwen reacted. With three large, quick steps, she was in front of him, too full of adrenaline to be able to control herself. With an open palm, she reached up and slapped him as hard across the face as she could. Her hand hit his cheek with an immensely satisfying snap, and a bold, red mark appeared where she had made contact.

"How dare you," she spat, her eyes fierce and her voice deceptively quiet. "You don't get to leave and then come back like this. You don't get to run away without a single word of goodbye and then tell me you've missed me. You don't have the right to miss me."

He remained still. "I'll go if you want," he said evenly.

"You don't get to do that either!" she exclaimed, her voice raising to a shrill octave as she grabbed ahold of him by the front of his shirt and pulled him close. "You don't get to be upset with me for being bloody furious with you, you don't get to make a single comment about that slap - which you more than deserved - and you don't get to make a single damned decision from this point forward. You have officially given up your right to do anything but listen to me right now!"

He sighed as the tiniest little smirk found its way onto his lips. "Before you spank me and put me to bed like a child, can I at least get a hug, love?"

Gwen narrowed her eyes and put both palms against his chest, pushing him hard onto the balcony. She grabbed her room key from the nightstand and walked outside with him, shutting the door softly behind her. "You'll get not a damn thing, Andrew Eugene Montrose, and you will bloody well like it," she hissed. "Until you tell me where you've been and why you went there and why you couldn't have been bothered to tell your wife about it first, I don't know that I can stand the idea of you putting your hands anywhere near me."

Drew nodded. "You're angry. I don't blame you."

"I don't care what you think about how I'm feeling," she said coldly. "And until I believe that you're here to stay, I'm not letting you within one hundred feet of the children."

He raised an eyebrow and looked at her incredulously. "I am still your husband, and I will not be spoken to in that manner."

She hauled back and slapped him across the face again before she had time to process what her hands were doing. "You're my husband?" she asked, her voice growing louder and angrier. "What the hell kind of husband are you? The kind that tells his daughter he would be there to kiss her every morning and then disappears before the next one? She won't even speak, Drew, she is so heartbroken." She poked him hard in the chest. "You have no idea what I have had to do to survive these last six weeks, and you can't imagine what it feels like for me to see you right now, standing in front of me like you own me, expecting me to not be angry and petulant. Well you know what? I am beyond angry. I am beyond furious, livid, and whatever other words you would like to suggest. None of them will satisfy what I am feeling, because there just isn't a single word in the English language to express how…"

And his lips were on hers, cutting her off from her rant. Her initial response was to struggle, to push him away and to continue yelling at him because that was what he bloody well deserved, but his hands grasped firmly around her wrists. She couldn't pull away if she wanted to, and she realized after a few seconds that she didn't want to.

Her heart was suddenly beating so fast that she thought she was having a heart attack, chills were finding their way up her spine, making her shiver so violently that she could barely stand up on her own. But she didn't need to. He was there, and he was alive and he was real, and Gwen suddenly found herself unable to remain angry with him, at least for right then. At least while he was holding her in his arms like this, like he did the first night that they had gone to bed together.

His kisses were hot and wet as they trailed from her mouth to the spot behind her ear to her neck and throat and chest and back up. His lips seemed to be everywhere at once, and the sensation was dizzying, frantic, mesmerizing. He had at some point pushed her against the door of their hotel room for balance, had threaded his hands along her neck to tangle in her hair. She couldn't stop touching him, and she hoped he didn't want to stop touching her, either. Without his hands and his mouth and his body pressing against her, she would be cold and alone like she had been before, and she couldn't do it again.

She clasped her hands around the back of his neck and pulled him in tightly for a hug, so afraid that if she let go he would disappear again. The kisses faded away, and instead he focused on holding her close, on warming her body with his own.

They were both here and they were together, and Gwen found that the array of emotions that had been overwhelming her just moments earlier had dissipated into only one - relief.

"Oh, God," she whispered in his ear. "I wanted to hate you for leaving me. So badly, I wanted to hate you."

"I thought about you every second," he said back, his face nuzzling affectionately into the crook of her neck. "Everything I did, I did to help you."

She closed her eyes and chose not to dwell on his words. In truth, she did not believe him - she couldn't; he had given her no explanation, and it wasn't in her nature to openly trust someone who had hurt her and lied to her repeatedly over the course of their relationship as he had - but she put aside her doubts because it didn't matter. Her anger didn't matter. Gwen knew that there would be a long, serious discussion in the very near future, and she was fine with that.

For now, she just wanted to be wrapped in his arms, to allow him to be the strong one for now.