Author's Note: Once again, I don't own anything related to the film Red Eye. Seeing as there was some confusion with this chapter the first time around, I took the time to re-write it, so hopefully there will be no more questions and everyone understands it. Let me know what you think! Any opinion is greatly appreciated.

Yours truly,

Chelsey Nova

P.S. Just to help you get a better image of what Will looks like... When I was writing this, I pictured him as a young Dermot Mulroney. Kind of the way he looked in "My Best Friend's Wedding." God, I love that movie.

A few nights after the episode in the bathroom, Lisa laid herself down in the double bed and settled herself on her side to face the man sleeping beside her. Her eyes traveled the length of his body, skimming over relaxed muscles and white flesh. She paid careful attention to the way he breathed, to the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, to the slight rasp that could be heard in his every breath if one listened carefully enough. His eyes fluttered behind his closed lids, and she wondered what he was dreaming about, or if he was dreaming at all. There were few times when she really knew what went on behind those beautiful eyes, and other times, she took a certain comfort in not knowing.

A few mumbled words slipped from the slumbering man's mouth and released Lisa from her thoughts. She listened to his mutterings, and attempted to understand them, but found that she couldn't. The young man shifted onto his back and was still. She reached out and tucked a stray piece of his dark hair behind his ear and sighed warmly.

After lying in the same position for quite some time, she grew uncomfortable and rolled over onto her left side. The shiny glint of the diamond ring on the bedside table snatched her attention, and Lisa picked it up, and placed it on her ring finger. She twisted the decorated metal around on the base of her finger and let out a sigh that came from the bottom of her aching heart.

Will Jamison had unexpectedly entered her life two months after the incident on the plane. He was a classically handsome man, with sensitive brown eyes, wavy dark hair and a crinkly smile. Even Lisa had to admit she was attracted to him.

Will was a lawyer with his own successful practice, and a good friend of her father's. At Joe's gentle coaxing, Lisa accepted a first date with Will. And then a second. And then a third.

They dated exclusively for seven months. After two months, Will told Lisa he was in love with her.

Lisa didn't have the heart to tell him that she didn't feel the same.

She was merely... attached to him, used to having him around. Nothing more, nothing less.

One would imagine that Lisa's lack of feelings towards the lawyer would prevent her from saying yes to his abrupt proposal.

But for some reason that Lisa couldn't understand to this day, it didn't.

Soon Lisa sported a princess-cut diamond ring on her left hand, which should have symbolized everlasting love for Will. Instead, it felt like a weight on her hand, a contradiction of her true feelings in its purest form.

The engagement thrilled everyone who knew them, especially her father, who took great satisfaction in the fact that he had been the one who'd introduced them. Everyone loved Will. And why shouldn't they? He was charming, pleasant, the true definition of a people person. He managed to make new acquaintances and potential clients feel immediately at ease with his outgoing personality and his quirky sense of humor, and he was honest without being hurtful. He was Mr. Personality. Everything he touched turned to gold.

William Michael Jamison was seemingly perfect, almost irritatingly flawless.

Lisa should have loved him. There were fleeting moments when she almost believed she could. But other times (and the more frequently recurring times, she noticed), she desperately wished she could lead a life without him.

Will was everything that Jackson Rippner wasn't, and it bugged the hell out of her.

It shouldn't, Lisa thought.

But it does.

Lisa slid the ring off of her finger and set it down on its previous place on the table. She covered her face with her hands and sucked in a deep breath through her nose, counted to three in her head, and slowly released it through her mouth.

A pale hand reached over from the other side of the bed and softly clasped around her wrist. Lisa jumped at the sudden contact and her hands flew from her face. Bright blue eyes gleamed at her in the dim lighting of the room.

She had somehow woken him up. Of course, it wasn't a difficult thing to accomplish. He had trained himself to be a light sleeper; a skill that had saved his life on more than one occasion in his line of work. Though he had retired months before, he still had trouble killing those old habits.

His voice, still harsh with sleep, slashed through the silence of the bedroom. "Can't sleep, Leese?"

A tear trickled down her cheek at the thought of why she couldn't sleep, and she abruptly wiped it away with the back of her hand. She hated crying in front of Jackson. "No," she whispered.

He shifted closer to her in the bed and slid an arm around her stomach. Heat radiated from his presence and caressed the right side of her body. "What is it?"

Her head was heavy with thoughts of the faceless child, and of her poor fiance, but she highly doubted Jackson would be ecstatic to hear about either. "It's nothing," she lied. "I'm fine."

He was quick to call her bluff. He always was. Call it a manager's instinct. "You're lying to me."

Instead of lying further and digging herself a deeper hole, Lisa rolled out from beneath his arm and emerged from the bed. "I'm going to take a shower."

She could see Jackson's jaw tighten, but he didn't press her further, much to her surprise. "Fine," he said coolly, and rolled over on his side, leaving her faced with his back. There was an undefeated tension lingering beneath the surface of his surrender, and she knew this was not over.

He would pester her about it later, whether she was ready to talk or not.

Because he took such great pride in being an honest person, Jackson expected the same from everyone else.

Lisa knew this one simple lie had hurt him more than it should have.

But she was rapidly learning that when it came to a relationship with Jackson, truthfulness of the smallest degree was key.

Or else.

Lisa awoke the next morning to bright streaks of sunlight trickling into the room, a result of Jackson forgetting to close the drapes once again. She rubbed the sleep away from her eyes with her fists, and glanced over to the vacant spot on the mattress beside her. The cool surface of the sheets greeted Lisa's palms, informing her that her lover had emerged from the bed some time ago.

Jackson's disappearances were annoyingly frequent, and a voice inside her head told her that he wasn't as retired from his job as he had led her to believe. Lisa never asked where he flitted off to, or what he did while he was away, afraid that the answers to those heart-piercing questions would be more than she could bear. She never asked because it made things between the two of them easier. If she didn't inquire, he wouldn't have to hurt her. Simple as that.

However, it was mornings like this that made Lisa want to drop Jackson like a bad habit. Life could be lived peacefully, simplistically if she could cut Jackson out. The weight on her shoulders that she bore every day would dissipate, the dull ache in her heart would beat itself away, the dreams that she suffered through nightly would steal away from her head.

It seemed simple enough.

Of course, nothing is as it seems.

Of all people, Lisa Reisert understood this notion best of all.

Leaving Jackson behind and starting over new with her fiance should have been effortless, conceivably easy, considering who Jackson had been to her only a few months prior: her would-be killer, the man who had wanted her dead and would have done anything necessary to see it happen. Instead of gazing longingly into his chilling blue eyes, she should be clawing them out of his face. Instead of becoming breathless whenever he laid a hand on her, she should be violently recoiling from his touch. Instead of her heart pleasantly twisting and swelling in her chest whenever she caught sight of him, it should burn with the poisonous hatred she felt whenever his face came to mind.

Nothing makes sense.

This is not how it's supposed to be.

I should leave him and never look back.

Of course, it was easier for Lisa to think such things when Jackson wasn't in her line of sight.

God, when she was with him... everything seemed... slower. As though time stretched on forever. When his silhouette filled the doorway to his house, beckoning her inside, the world blurred around her and faded into a realm of dull grayness. His presence was intense, consuming, dominating, life-threatening. He thrilled Lisa in every possible way that Will had tried and failed. What Lisa lacked in the real world, Jackson more than made up for in the second life she lived with him.

Jackson Rippner was everything crucial, everything necessary for Lisa to survive.

If only it wasn't so.

Lisa rose from the cool sheets and softly padded past the open doorway of the bathroom. The scent of Jackson's shampoo clung to the air just inside the room, permeating her senses and rendering her breathless. A warm, pleasant feeling washed over her, and she entered the bathroom in one quick stride. She flipped on the light beside the mirror and gazed at her reflection. She ran her fingers over the tender, bruised flesh along her neck and silently cursed Jackson. It looked like another week of wearing scarves and turtlenecks was in order.

Lisa snapped on the faucet and splashed her cheeks with lukewarm water. She caressed the beads of water away from her eyes and blindly reached over for the towel that was usually draped over the rack. Feeling nothing but the cool metal of the rack beneath her fingertips, she moved over to the cabinet beside the shower and slid the door open, grasping for a towel. When she found one, she padded her face dry and glanced around the bathroom. Jackson's towel, still damp from his earlier shower, hung on the hook behind the door. Lisa grabbed it and pressed the masculine-smelling fabric to her face. She inhaled the scent of Jackson deeply, and then exhaled. She knew if Jackson could see her doing this, he would think her soft and effeminately weak, and he would tell her so. Then she would rapidly remind him of the ass-beating he had suffered from her in the earlier months, and he would curse her for having too good of a memory.

Lisa smiled as she replaced the towel on the hook. Being in this room, overwhelmed by his scent, forced her thoughts back to the day that Jackson had surprised her in the shower.

Lisa had been in the middle of bathing herself when she had heard the soft click of the bathroom door opening and then closing. She could make out Jackson's lean, naked form through the glass of the door and she sucked in a breath as she watched him approach the shower.

Suddenly, the glass door opened, and Jackson joined her in the cubicle.

Without a word, he took the loofa from her hands and tenderly grazed it over the sensitive skin of her belly, the soft curves of her breasts, the jagged scar below her shoulder. Lisa knew the ugly mark never ceased to intrigue him, and he lingered there a little longer than necessary. Before long, she could see familiar sparks of anger surging in his eyes.

Holding her breath, she reached up and stroked the damp hair away from his electric blue eyes.

His name dropped from her lips in a breathless murmur.

"Jackson."

His head snapped upwards as her voice reached his ears, and the loofa fell from his hands. The blue fury slowly melted from his gaze, and he lowered his head to her own and kissed her.

Gently, without breaking the kiss, he pressed her into the wall of the shower and ran his strong hands down the length of her body before burying them in her damp curls. He made love to her then, beneath the rushing water of the shower head.

As their ecstasy exploded and then gradually subsided, Jackson rested his face in her hair and whispered that he loved her.

It was the first time he had ever uttered those words to her, and hearing them made Lisa cry.

Because as wrong as it was, she knew she felt the same.

The haze of the memory slowly melted away and Lisa was faced with reality once again. She gazed intently at her reflection in the mirror, as though it would provide her with the answers to the questions she was always asking.

Why?

What good can come from this?

Why does it hurt so much?

The woman in the mirror peered back at her, clueless, oblivious.

She had no answers.

Annoyed with the blank stare of her reflection, Lisa opened the mirror to reveal the medicine cabinet that dwelt behind it. Her fingers skimmed over Tylenol labels and Jackson's razor, and came to rest on a medium-sized glass capsule. A perfume bottle with clear liquid swirling inside.

Lisa grasped the bottle and brought it to her face. The name Vera Wang was intricately printed on the side of the glass.

Pricey. When Jackson pampered her, he never settled for anything less than top quality.

Lisa unscrewed the cap of the bottle and spritzed a shot of the perfume onto her wrist. She placed the bottle on the edge of the sink, let the perfume set for a few seconds and then lifted her wrist to her nose.

The overwhelming scent of lavender burned the sensitive caverns of Lisa's nose.

Lavender!, her mind screamed.

Images of a white, faceless girl streaked painfully through Lisa's mind and she let out a low moan.

"No... no," she murmured to herself as she yanked Jackson's damp wash cloth from the rack and viciously scrubbed the part of her wrist that had been assaulted by the putrid smell. "No!" she screamed. "What do you want from me?"

She hurled the wash cloth into the sink. The edge of the fabric caught the bottle and sent it hurtling to the floor. The glass capsule broke into a million pieces and before long, the scent of Jackson's shampoo evaporated and the sick, overpowering aroma of lavender wafted into Lisa's nose, causing her to sputter and reel backwards. Tiny shards of glass embedded themselves into the bare heels of her feet and she lowered herself onto the toilet lid.

The expensive smell of lavender clung to Lisa like a drowning person, seemed to seep into her pores, her eyes, her fingertips. Lisa choked and sputtered, lowered her head into her arms briefly, and when she glanced back up, her reflection peered back at her, taunted her with its watery green eyes and flaring nostrils.

Suddenly, Lisa was overcome by a thought that made her feel more pain than anything she had ever known.

Lavender.

Jackson bought me lavender perfume.

Realization hit her like a bullet in her heart.

Lisa recalled a night when she had come to Jackson with desire burning in her belly. It was a lust she had never felt before, a hunger that desperately needed to be sated.

When she arrived at his house, Jackson had taken her hands in his and he'd led her straight into the bedroom.

She remembered thinking that he must have been starved for her as well.

Passion had prevailed that night, had caused them to be blind, careless.

Jackson hadn't worn anything.

Lisa had pulled him deep inside... where they made a baby.

A little girl.

With no name.

With no face.

Oh, God. What have we done?

A/N: Thanks to all for your patience. I know it's been forever since I've updated this story, but I've been held captive in a state of writer's block for the past few weeks. I just now broke free, and this chapter is a result of said freedom. I hope you're all enjoying reading this story as much as I am writing it. I'll have Chapter 3 as soon as possible. Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed; all of your opinions are greatly appreciated and go straight to my heart. I love you all!

Until next time,

Chelsey Nova