Chapter 11 – The Prayer

Alex felt compelled to follow Amy, even though he didn't know where she was going. She had gone upstairs, but beyond that, he knew nothing. But when Chris stood up and walked away, wishing him a sobby Merry Christmas as she went to her room, he decided to go upstairs also. He couldn't go home. How could anyone understand what this meant more than the people in this hotel? He was going to stay, even if it meant sleeping on the floor in the hallway.

And when he got upstairs there was Amy, not in her room, but crouched by Evan's door, placing her pillows on the carpet and spreading a blanket on the floor. She heard him approach and looked over her shoulder as he stood behind her, his ache for his friends death still so raw. She at last showed some emotion and smiled a kind smile at him, getting up and going back to her room to gather yet more pillows and blankets.

A few minutes later they laid down in the secluded hallway, facing each other, and unknowingly closer than they had ever been before. They were lying closer together than they had sat together earlier in the evening, but now things were so different. There was an unspoken bond between them now, the bond that Susie had created, and which left a lasting impression within the two of them.

In the darkness Alex spoke up quietly, his aimed directly at Amy of course. And she of course was still awake, unable to even close her eyes for fear of what she might see there. "I don't want to happen to us what happened to them," he admitted to her motioning with his eyebrow to the room with the door tightly closed. Amy stared at him, an ever ready remark about to spring from her mouth. But Alex didn't let her. "Yes us," he insisted. "We're friends aren't we?"

"Of course," she replied, now embarrassed that he had doubted their friendship for even a moment. She knew if he had doubted it, it had been her fault almost entirely.

He reached out from under his blanket and grabbed a hold of her hand. She pulled away instinctively the moment their skins touched, but he had a firm grip, and he kept a hold of it in the darkness, not allowing her to pull away. "Can I just ask one question?"

She nodded, horrified, as her eyes flicked from him to their hands and back to him again. They were at their closest yet. She didn't need to give him the permission to ask a question – he was going to anyway, and she knew it.

"Why don't you love me?" he asked, a tinge of sadness coming through in his still defiant tone – the tone he had used the entire time they had been in Mt Thomas the last few days.

She didn't know what to answer. How had it come to this? She had wanted something to happen between them so much when they had stood in the carpark and then when she had gone to his wedding and when they had sat on the curb their first night back in town. But then she had just pulled away, not wanting to do anything stupid – just as she had told Alex.

"Why do you love me?" she asked, disregarding his question. "Why?" she didn't see anything about her that was worthy of loving. What was the big attraction? Why did he seem so set on loving her? "Is it because you and Rhiannon aren't working out?"

Alex frowned in response, his mood lowering even more as she mentioned his tattered marriage. "Yes…" he admitted, frowning harder. "…and no." He sighed. "God Amy, why can't you just give me a straight answer? Don't I deserve that after 2 years of missing you?" he sounded so genuine that Amy gasped slightly.

"Yes," she admitted with a whisper. "I didn't know that you missed me." She didn't say out loud what she had been feeling.

"I did," he whispered, still holding onto her hand. She had begun to at last relax in his grip.

"I didn't want to come to your wedding," she admitted, somewhat out of the blue.

"I didn't want you to come either…" he seemed uncomfortable telling her. "…because if you hadn't have come I might've tried harder to forget about you, because you weren't there to remind me."

"But why do you want me, when you have your supermodel lying beside you at night?" she asked, genuinely wondering. As soon as she said it though she realised that tonight she was lying beside him, even if it was just on the floor of a hotel hallway.

"Rhiannon is beautiful…but she's not like you," he was aware of how clichéd it sounded. "I missed you the moment you drove out of the carpark," he admitted it like he was ashamed of his love for her. "I knew I'd never see you again," he went on. "Because you were going to homicide and no one ever comes back from there the same."

"Never?" she asked, afraid.

"Well…" he stammered, suddenly unsure of his previous observations of those who'd gone to homicide. "Are you the same?"

It took her a few seconds to come up with an answer, but in the end she told the truth because she couldn't think of anything else to say. "No," she stared down at their hands, still placed delicately atop the blankets. She knew she wasn't. The truth hurt.

He simply raised his eyebrows at her in the dark, too kind to say a blatant 'I told you so'. They sighed, one after the other, realising the awful mess their lives had become. Unhappy in his marriage, Alex longed to be with her. Unhappy in her job, Amy longed for a life of excitement, of passion, of good friends, of a social life – anything but what she had now.

Unaware they were thinking the same thing, they let their minds drift to their friend for a moment, if only to put a stop to the awful realisation of their own troubles. For hours no sound had come from the room with the closed door, and they both shuddered at what lie in there. It was too horrible to imagine, yet Evan remained by Susie's side, always the one that picked her up. Always her hero. He would never be the same either. Not after this.

As dawn broke on Christmas morning they finally drifted into sleep there in the hallway. Before Amy's eyes closed though, she said a silent prayer. She had never prayed before, but hoped that in this terrible time of need, she would be listened to. It was a prayer for Susie. For Evan. For Alex. For Tom. For Chris. For Kelly. For herself. All they had left was each other.