Chapter 7

Sam and Alexis walked through the door to the penthouse tiredly, and while Alexis headed to the kitchen to make some much needed coffee, Sam headed upstairs to check on Danny. Minutes later she returned with a puzzled look on her face, "they're not here," she said to her mom exiting the kitchen with two mugs of steaming brew. Sam looked around for a note and finally noticed one on the desk. "Had to run out, Danny's with Monica."

Sam was both disappointed and relieved in that moment. She could really use a hug from her main man, as no matter the ache or the distress, Danny's hugs always did it for her, but she was also relieved that he wasn't around for a little while. The upheaval and turmoil that she was feeling at the moment was not the kind of energy that she liked having around her baby boy. She needed to punch out the pent up energy, so she took a swig from her coffee cup and indicated to her mom that she was headed back to her home gym. Alexis followed her, encouraging "good idea, take it out on something that won't get you arrested."

Five minutes into the punching bag and Sam's anger was still prominent. She pictured Elizabeth's face as she whacked the bag mercilessly, imagining the sound of bones crunching in response. "She knew, mom. She knew he was alive and she hid it from everybody. Who does that?"

"I don't know baby." Alexis was sitting on a bench watching her daughter intriguingly, marveling at the power encased in her tiny little body. She almost felt sorry for the silly nurse. She had learned many years ago that coming between Sam and the love of her life was a recipe for pain and retribution from her little dynamo. Sam was nobody's pushover, and the pain that she faced when she thought she'd lost her husband had been unbearable for her mother to watch. It had taken all of them months of begging and pleading with her to give up her notion that Jason was still alive out there somewhere trying to get back to her and Danny, and to move on for her sake, but especially for her son's. Sam had wanted no part of it, had kept hope for so long, until they'd finally convinced her that he was truly gone. They persuaded her to take a chance on Patrick and find some kind of happiness again, and just when she had finally listened and done just that, her world went into complete chaos. To now learn that the timid little nurse had the most valuable piece of information about Sam's husband and father of her child but had kept it to herself? Alexis almost felt sorry for her, because a furious Sam was a force to be reckoned with.

"Sick bitch!" Sam pummeled the bag tirelessly and the harder she hit, the stronger she felt. The stronger she felt, the harder she hit. Pretty soon Elizabeth's face had morphed into strong jawbones, a regal nose and striking blue eyes, and Sam found herself just as angry at her new target. She grabbed the bag with both gloved hands, lifting her right leg to knee it at the side furiously. After several powerful kicks she let her leg fall back to the floor as she steadied the bag, turning to face her mom, her chest heaving from her heavy breathing. "He let her do this mom. He let her do this to us, again!" She caught her breath then turned back to the bag, punches wailing at Jason's imagined face again.

Alexis rose from the bench and approached her, cautiously grabbing the bag from the other side and bringing it to a stop as she tried to calm her force of nature. "Okay, okay, that's enough. Calm down before you give yourself an aneurysm."

Sam pealed off the gloves and grabbed a bottle of water from the counter, swallowing a few gulps as her chest slowly calmed. That had felt pretty good.

Her mom was addressing her again. "Go take a shower and get some sleep. You can't function on adrenaline alone and Danny will need you to be his mom, even with everything around you in disarray, you still have to provide him with that sense of normalcy." She cupped both sides of her daughter's head and pursed her lips for a second before she continued, "we'll figure this out my sweet baby, don't you worry." Planting a kiss on her sweaty head, she continued, "now come, let's get some rest," as she guided Sam out to the living room.

Sam knew that her mom was right, she knew that she needed to first take care of her son, take care of herself, and then she could give what was left over to anything else. Jason could not be a priority for her in that instant, not when he had clearly proved that she and their son wasn't a priority to him. The realization left her sad and drained, and almost instantly she felt the weariness of the previous night and the morning sweep over her body. She let her mom out with the promise that she would rest, and after calling Monica to check on Danny, she headed upstairs to do just that. A steaming hot shower and shampoo later, Sam could barely keep her eyes open as she plopped onto her bed and allowed sweet sleep to claim her.

Hours later Sam was rested, calm, and ready to see her baby. She was grabbing her keys from her pocket mid stride towards the front door when she heard a soft knock. It was him. She didn't really want to see him, wasn't in the mood for "the" talk that needed to happen but maybe the sooner she put it all out there the sooner she could get back to her life and her son. The look on his face told her that he was dreading the talk almost as much as she was, and it gave her a tinge of satisfaction. Good, she thought, he should be sweating. "Come in." Her invitation was terse.

He walked into the living room, shutting the door behind him as Sam had turned to head over to the couch. Jason couldn't contain the nervous energy that made his palms sweaty in that moment. He rubbed them against his jeans as he took another faltering step over near the chair, looking at Sam, trying to gauge her mood. She wasn't giving anything away, the calmness she protruded in that moment was a stark contrast to the anger he'd witnessed when he last saw her the night before. Sam was unnerving when she was calm he was learning, he wondered now if he'd always felt that way. He watched her take a seat on the couch to face him inquiringly. He needed to say something to ease the tension, she obviously wasn't going to. "How are you, are you okay?" When she didn't answer immediately he continued softly, "I, huh, sent Diane to get you last night but she said your mom was already there so you didn't need her. I'm sorry you had to spend the night there, Sam."

She was glib, "hey, that was my own fault. Next time I beat a bitch I just have to remember not to do it in the middle of the night when there's no judge available to arraign me." She didn't miss his nervousness, enjoyed it even. The Jason Morgan she knew enjoyed being in control, he was used to being the one to leave his opponent sweating and off guard. She stayed silent, watching him search for a way to start the uncomfortable conversation.

"Look, Sam, I know you're sick of hearing it by now, but I really am sorry…about everything. This is all my fault, I handled everything badly and I know I have no right to expect it but I hope you can forgive me." He eased into the chair as he looked at her earnestly, waiting for her to say the words that would make this easier, somehow. He grew more nervous when she still said nothing. "I'm sorry, Sam."

Sam looked at the man who had so completely captured her heart and she remembered why she had lived for Jason Morgan, like she had ever really forgotten. She remembered every unique part of their relationship that was theirs alone, the impenetrable connection, the unbreakable trust, the unimaginable honesty between them, and those were the very reasons that she couldn't forgive his callous treatment of her heart, of her everlasting devotion. They had been to hell and back together, and the fact that he could not remember was prominent and significant, but his heart should have remembered what his brain had forgotten. If their connection meant as much to him as it always had to her, some part of him would have always stood up for her, could've never forgotten her. She found herself shrugging at his words as she replied indifferently, "and what, that's all it should take? Now that you've seen for yourself what everybody who loved my husband has been preaching to you for months, now that your eyes have opened to what a snake you've been sleeping with, all should be forgiven?" Dammit, her newfound zen was leaving her again.

He was taken aback by how cold she was. He didn't know quite what he expected but didn't think this was going to be it. She seemed so resigned, so nonchalant in the face of his sincere remorse. "No, of course not. I know I'll have to earn back your trust and I'm willing to do that, Sam. Just please, please let me."

Sam looked at him for what seemed like minutes then she sat up, leaning forward to place her elbows on her legs, clasping her hands together as she looked him in the eye. "Do you even understand how deeply you've hurt me?" The question was rhetorical, there was no possible way for him to grasp how deeply the knife had cut. "Jason, I think you should start by asking yourself the really difficult questions, like why do you hate yourself so much? And why was it so easy for you to allow someone else to manipulate you so effortlessly?" She didn't miss the hurt in his eyes, the questions behind them, as she continued, "did your saint tell you that you've been here before, that this is not the first time that you've lost your memory?" When he looked at her even more lost, she answered her own question, leaning back in the couch again. "Of course she didn't. Why would she risk telling you anything at all about your old life? Why risk anything that could've triggered you remembering?"

Sam couldn't stay still, leaning forward again to continue, "that's a big part of my problem with you right now, Jason. You hated the fact that you were Jason Morgan so much, that you couldn't even bother to ask the people who knew you about yourself. You were so busy living in the new fairytale existence that had been created for you that you couldn't even take the time to find out why so many people loved you, why so many people grieved you for so long, why they would want you back. The first time that you lost your memory you hated yourself when you realized that you could kill, when you realized all the dangerous things that you knew how to do, how you'd lived, and you wanted no part of it. But at least then you were curious to learn about your life. You asked questions about the people who mattered to you, about us. You wanted to leave your dangerous life behind and go off by yourself, but you gave in to what you knew you felt for me and it made you stay, but not this time, this time you just branded us all as outsiders and went on your merry way with your fairy princess."

"Sam, don't say that, please don't believe any of that. I cared, Sam, I wanted to know but at the same time there was so much going on around me that I had to make some really difficult decisions. Deciding to go ahead with the divorce was not easy for me, but I felt that I had to, for you and Danny as well as for Elizabeth's boys. You were happy, Sam. You'd managed to move on and find a safe life for you and our son, and her boys needed me. I had promised to adopt them and give them a complete home, and they were so looking forward to it that I felt like a louse for wanting to go back on those promises. I felt like I had no right to walk back into your life and put you and Danny back in danger again. I had to stay away, don't you see?"

She felt the sincerity in his words but they did nothing to appease the hurt in her heart. "What I see, Jason, is that each time that you lost your memory you hated the person that Jason Morgan was. Without your memories you wanted no part of the man I loved, no part of the beautiful life that we lived. It leaves to wonder, don't you think, what exactly is in your heart? Who do you truly want to be? It's clearly not the wonderful, selfless, giving, nurturing, kind man that I've loved for so many years. He doesn't cut it for you, so deep down you must really want that quiet suburban lifestyle that she offered you. Is that it, is that why she was able to fool you so completely for so long? Because all I'm hearing you say is how what she needed was more important, again."

Jason didn't like the path their conversation was taking, didn't care at all for the resignation that she was showing, but he supposed that she had the right to question everything, to get answers to what troubled her the most. How had he missed how gravely he had hurt her? He honestly thought that she was happy and in love and had moved on from their past. He remembered their talks about him when he was Jake Doe, remembered how she had finally let him go on their fourth wedding anniversary, and he truly believed that she'd wanted a different life than anything that he could have offered her. Truly felt that she had deserved more than an amnesiac husband who couldn't remember their life together and possibly never would, who had fallen in love with somebody else when he thought he was free to do so, and he had stayed away to give her the room to live her new life with her new family. He could see now just how badly he had handled everything and he hated himself for what it did to her. "No, Sam, it really didn't have anything much to do with Elizabeth. When I found out who I was, I had already been struggling with the things that I knew that I was capable of. Killing those men who had Sonny was an eye opener for me..the way I ran into that warehouse and the ease with which I disarmed those men and took them down was nerve racking. Someone that dangerous, that lethal couldn't possibly be a good father or husband, I needed to distance myself from that man and become a better person. I'll admit that I judged you then, thought that if you had loved that monster of a man so deeply then you loved the danger that came with him, and I just didn't want to be him, Sam. So I let you go, I let us go, and I'm so sorry."

Sam looked at him keenly, her eyes softening now as she said, "there was a time when that's all that it would have taken to get me back into your arms. I loved you so much and so completely that anything you wanted I was first in line to dish out, felt it was my duty to you, love of my life." She moved away from the hope in his 'lose yourself in me' blue eyes to stand by the terrace doors, overlooking the quiet harbor. "But that was a long time ago, that was two very different people ago."

Jason could feel the door closing. "Sam, please, don't shut me out. Just tell me how I can make this up to you and Danny…what can I do?" He moved to stand closely behind her, so close that his breath fell on her hair and his chest was a mere fraction from her beautiful back. Everything about her was so damn beautiful to him. "How do I fix it?"

He was too close. She could feel the static energy that always existed between them, pulling at her to lean back against him and let him hold her, ease the fog from her mind and wipe away the sadness in her heart. But he had put it there, he had put it all there and she couldn't let him in again. Sam stepped over to the side to move away from the radiating heat trying to magnetize her to him, and signaled towards the door. "I have to go get my son, I've missed him terribly and I need to see him. You can let yourself out." She was abrupt again.

He knew she was shutting down. He had sensed the moment her heart closed to him, to his pleas, and he knew his work was only just beginning. He would give her the space that she needed but he would never give her up, never again. "Okay, Sam. Take as much time as you need, but I need you to know that I've been remembering a lot about us, and I don't intend to let you leave me." He continued before she could cut in to tell him she wasn't with him to begin with, "even before I remembered anything about us, I felt a very strong pull to you, something that I reigned in because you were somebody else's girl, but now I know that what I felt from the very beginning was my soul reconnecting with yours, and I intend to listen this time." He used a forefinger to lift her chin so she would look him in the eye, "I'm not going anywhere, Sam. I will be right here, whenever you decide to give us a shot again, I will be waiting right here for you."

Sam shifted her head so her face would slip from his finger, before she turned and moved purposely to the door, holding it open for him to exit before her. "You do what you want Jason, but I can't think about what you want right now. I've spent enough time doing that and all I have to show for it is more heartache and disrespect." She locked the door and crossed the hall to push the elevator button, "I'm good without all that bullshit right now."

He looked at her closely, stubbornly determined to shut him out, and Jason decided that if it's begging that she wanted then begging she was going to get. Whatever it was going to take was what he was going to do, because losing his wife again was not an option, whether she knew it or not. He smiled a little when he noticed how often he kept referring to her as his wife, because in his heart that's who she'd always be.

The electricity in the elevator wires wasn't the only producer of fiery static on that looong ride down to the lobby and as they exited and went their separate ways, each were as determined as the other to be the victor in the upcoming melee. Silent battle lines had been drawn.