A/N ok so first of all thank you all for the amazing reviews, when I posted this I never expected to have 22 followers and 8 favorites. You all really don't understand how amazing it is to read each and every review and get the warm happy feeling that someone appreciates you, so to all of my reviewers and favorites and followers YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! SO now this chapter as promised is a little different, it focuses on Will and his reactions to life right now. The quote used is from F. Scott Fitzgerald and is used in it's entirety. I also leaned heavily on Michael Bolton's song How do I Live Without You, which I highly recommend giving a listen to as you read. So with that I bid you all happy reading.

Will sat at his desk. As much as he had liked spending some time off he was glad to be back in the offices of Lockhart/ Gardner, in many ways LG was more his home than many other places. The only problem he was having now was that Alicia and Diane had conspired against him and they wouldn't let him anywhere near a courtroom.

It had been two months since the shooting and he had been home from the hospital for a month but the women in his life thought he needed more time. Alicia was terrified about what would happen if he was assigned to Judge Politi again. If he was being honest he was a little scared himself, he'd had a few more nightmares since that night with Alicia, it was definitely easier to recover from them when he woke up next to her, he preferred not to tell her about the ones he had when she wasn't with him which luckily hadn't been more than a handful.

Dinner at Alicia's house became a weekly thing and he found himself browsing board games during the times of boredom at work so that he would have new games for them all to play when he came over. Will was still just coming over to Alicia's. She wasn't sure how the kids would handle going to his house but she came to him whenever the kids were with Peter.

Everything seemed to be going pretty good until he found himself in these little moments with very little to do, he had just finished a deposition that Diane had asked him to take and was staring out the window. As he sat his thoughts, as they so often did, found their way to Alicia.

He thought of a quote from Fitzgerald that he had found so fitting

"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect, and it's these things I'd believe in… I love her and it is the beginning of everything."

It had been those words that had made him realize that he had loved her ever since Georgetown. He could remember showing up on her doorstep after hearing from a mutual friend that Peter had asked her to marry him. He had wanted to ask her how he was suppose to live without her. He had never told her that he had hoped that one day they would be so much more than friends. He had smiled at her and told her he was glad that she was getting her dream come true. But still he wasn't sure how he was supposed to live without her. He had realized when she called his name on her first day at Lockhart/Gardner that he had never forgotten her, worse was the realization that he had been in love with her for 20 years. It all made him wonder what it was about Peter that had sucked her out of his life in the first place. If he had had even the slightest clue that things would turn out the way they had he would have told her that day on her doorstep not to marry Peter but instead to give him the chance to make her happy, that he had built his future around her. But instead she had told him about Zach.

When he really thought about it he didn't understand Peter, he didn't get how you could possibly want anything else when you had Alicia Cavanaugh in your bed. In a way though he had to thank Peter, had it not been for Peter's idiocy Alicia wouldn't have had to begin her search for a job and she wouldn't be back in his life.

He had been so mad at her when he had heard from Diane that she was leaving. He didn't care that she was taking the clients with her, ok well he cared a little, but mostly it had been that after they had come so far together she didn't trust him enough to tell him. For three weeks she had known and planned her departure. He had tried so hard to hate her, just like he had told her that day in the hospital, for every breath he had tried to take hating her he took two more loving her. Which made hating her all the worse.

It was thoughts like this that made him think about her being in the courtroom that day. It was bad enough that the thoughts entered his dreams but it was worse when the thoughts slipped in during the day. When the thoughts slipped in during the day there was no recourse, he couldn't call Alicia, and while he knew that both Kalinda and Diane would listen he didn't think either really needed to be burdened by the thoughts that overtook his brain at random parts of the day. Instead he tried to think how very lucky he was that she was back in his life.

As he sat he pondered the crazy that was his life now. He liked to think of it as before and after, life before the shooting and life after the shooting. He had to be honest he never would have thought that life after a shooting would actually be pretty damn good. It was while he sat like this, that someone approached his door. Will didn't look up until the knock, Kalinda stood in his doorway,

"you would think the name partner of a law firm would have more to do than stare out the window in the middle of a busy work day." Kalinda deadpanned. "Wanna get some lunch? You know if you can fit it into your busy schedule?"

Will practically growled at her, of all the women in his life in this moment he probably liked her the best right now, she seemed to understand that he needed to get back to work. She had taken to inviting him to lunch to sneak him case files to get his input which she then quietly passed on to the junior associates, it wasn't much but it was something and it was better than staring at the wall.

However this time she really did just want to have lunch with him. They sat eating cheeseburgers at some little dive that Kalinda loved to visit.

"How are things going with Alicia?"

"Pretty darn good to be honest" Will smiled.

" and her kids?"

" I always knew Alicia would be an amazing mom I just never realized how amazing she would be."

Kalinda and Will sat and talked for almost an hour when Kalinda realized she needed to get back to the office for a client meeting with Diane.

The pair split up at the reception desk when Will was flagged down by the receptionist,

"Mr. Gardner? There's a young woman waiting for you in your office, she said you weren't expecting her but she said it was very urgent and she seemed pretty upset"

"Thanks Jill, I'll take care of it"

Will headed back to his office and as he passed his assistant he asked her to bring in two cups off coffee. Will walked into his office and, just as he had expected when he heard that there was a young woman in his office, he greeted his guest.

" Grace? Is everything okay? What's going on?"

Will's assistant popped in that moment with the coffee and handed a cup to the teenager, Grace took a sip as if preparing to announce something huge.

"I think the term is 'the shit has hit the fan."

A/N Before anyone of freaks out too bad the next chapter is already in the works I won't say a set number of days but it should be pretty quick I'm excited about the next few chapters.