A/N: Very brief...I'm going on vacation, so it will be a week or two before the next update...thanks for the reviews.

I push on the enormous door, and fall into Wyndemere, Nikolas was already at the door. I stumble into him.

"Sam! Alexis! Is everything alright?" He rights me, then looks anxiously from Alexis to me. "I almost called Mac and had him put out an APB."

"Well, that's certainly not necessary Nikolas." She hugs him briefly. "Are the girls asleep?"

"Yes." He answers slowly, shooting me a quizzical glance. "It's after midnight."

"So it is…well thank you. Goodnight Nikolas, Goodnight Sam."

Nikolas watches as she ascends the main stairs, then turns to me. "What the hell happ…"

I push past him, into the living room. "I need a drink." I head straight for the wet bar, clank the bottles till I find the vodka. I open and chug.

"Sam? What's going on?" Nik implores me.

The liquid burns, I close my eyes. "I finally did Nikolas…I've broken my mother."

"I just knew you were a girl. I never picked a name for a boy. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. No one asked me, no one cared that you had a name before they took you. Your eyes were so bright, you stopped crying as soon as they put you in my arms. You were the most perfect thing I'd ever seen. I whispered your name. Just once. And I swear you looked at me. And then you were gone.

"Have I shown you my treasure box? That's what Kristina calls it. The nurse, the kind one, cut off one of your locks, it was black, she tied it in a yellow ribbon. It's in my treasure box, next to Kristina's, Molly's. My mother's necklace is there too, and a ring of Kristina's…you never got to meet her. I think you would have loved her, she was the total opposite of me…so honest, so easy to be with, to love."

"I love you, Alexis…I do…I love you so much it hurts. Can we go home now? Please?"

"Home?"

"Wyndemere…"

"Wyndemere?" she pauses. "You want to go home?"

"I want us to go home…to Kristina, to Molly."

"Nikolas has them…" It sounds like a question.

"Yes, Nikolas is taking care of them, but they need you, us, we need to go home to them."

"Nikolas…"

"He needs us too."

"We should go home?"

"Yes Alexis, we should go home."

"It started off as such a great day…but when I saw her with Jason…and then she acted like it was nothing." I take another gulp.

"That's enough Sam." Nikolas holds out his hand, and I reluctantly hand over the bottle.

"I just lost it. I was mad at him for just walking away, and her…you know Michael told me she likes me. He's 11 and he doesn't even like Alexis, but he told me she liked me. Like it was a fact. But when she went into her lawyer mode, I just couldn't deal."

"Sounds like you broke a little yourself."

"Yeah, that's sort of it. I felt like a puzzle with a couple pieces to go, and then a cat ran across the table and I flew all over the place." I look at him. "She called you?"

"Yes, she had me meet her at Kelly's, she said she had to find you. She was frantic. I wanted to help her, but she said she had a pretty good idea where you were and that she needed to do it alone."

"Well she found me." I sigh. "Do you have any bourbon?"

"Getting drunk isn't going to help anything."

"I'm pretty sure you are wrong about that." I pull him over to the couch. I take both his hands and try not to cry as I begin the story of how I'd broken Alexis.