A/N: Thanks for all the feedback. I know I said there'd be one more chapter last chapter, but I lied, the next chapter will be the last one, so yeah, enjoy, leave a review! :)

He can live without her.

Those words stuck in her brain, turning themselves over so she could see them from every angle. What did that mean exactly? Did it mean he was over her, completely and totally, and that he never wanted to see her again? What if she had to go the rest of her life loving him while he just moved on without her? But then, wasn't that what he was doing? Hadn't she inflicted that kind of pain on him for so long it drove him to learn to live without her? Maybe this was her punishment?

"Paul, we need to talk," Stephanie said the moment Paul walked into the house. She'd been sitting near the door, waiting for him to come inside.

"Hey," Paul leaned in and kissed her, but she turned away at the last moment, letting him kiss her cheek. He narrowed his eyes and stared at her, "What's going on with you?"

"A lot," she told him. He looked around, as if trying to hear the constant chatter their daughters always made. "The girls are with my mom tonight, she wanted to take care of them, and I think it'd be best if they weren't here tonight."

"Now you're scaring me," he said. She closed her eyes as her head hung down. Her shoes were fascinating at that moment. Paul didn't deserve to be hurt, not like this. She was about to inflict so much pain on him, and this was the fear she stamped down for so many years. It was like bile rising from her stomach and into her throat, burning the words straight out of her mouth. "Steph?"

"Can we sit down?" she managed to say, walking over to a couch and sitting down, her butt right on the edge as if she needed to bolt, and the need to bolt was rising with each passing second. So much of her life was spent being what everyone wanted her to be, doing what everyone wanted her to do.

Chris was her first rebellious act. He was the first thing she'd ever done that was out of line. She'd been so good for so long, and now the badness, all of it was creeping up on her like a web slowly being built around her. But if she ever wanted to be happy, she needed to be honest. The weight of her lies weighed heavy on her shoulders, and her guilt would be enormous, but at least the weight would be gone.

Paul sat next to her, wanting to grab her hand, but she held her hand up to give him pause. "Please don't," she shook her head.

"Stephanie, I need you to tell me what's going on," he told her, his brow furrowing and his eyes darkening. He knew there was something going on, and he couldn't figure it out, and that bothered him. He was always so bothered when he was kept out of the loop. It was why, when he was injured, he hurried to come back to the ring, simply so he could be back in the loop.

"I've been a horrible wife to you," Stephanie said. "The entire time, I've been a horrible wife."

"No, you haven't," he scoffed, "you're amazing, you practically keep the entire world together as far as I'm concerned."

Stephanie pressed her hand to his cheek and he leaned into it. "I wish you could believe that forever, but you can't. Paul, I'm so sorry, I can say that I never meant to hurt you, and you can believe however much of that you want, none or all, but it wasn't something I did to hurt you. It was something that was already so much bigger than us."

"Stephanie…" His voice caught ever so slightly, and he was starting to glean onto what she was saying, but he didn't dare voice them into words because that would make them true.

She took pause, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. She'd never been particularly religious, but if there was some otherworldly deity, his or her strength would have done her a world of good in that moment. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. So she tried again, "I've never been faithful to you."

"Never? What does that even mean, Stephanie?" he shook his head at the words. It was the never that tripped him up.

"I started having an affair before we were married," Stephanie confessed to him, pulling her hand away before he could jerk his head away.

"So let me get this straight," he scoffed, "the entire time we've been married, you've been having an affair. So all this time, I've been here, and you've been screwing some other guy, is that pretty much what's happened? But you never meant to hurt me? So you letting some guy, or guys for all I know, all over you was never meant to hurt me?"

"I never…this isn't an excuse, for once, this is simply an explanation. You were gone, away with the quad injury, and I couldn't help myself—"

"It's Irvine, isn't it?" Paul started to laugh. "God, I'm a jackass. I'm a jackass because I knew. I knew and I pushed the thought away because I figured that you weren't a horrible bitch. But I should have known. I saw it, I saw you two, so all this time, all these fucking years, you've been screwing around with him?"

Stephanie nodded, "On and off. We were going to stop when you came back and we did, but then…we couldn't, I couldn't."

"So what are you going to tell me next? The girls aren't mine, huh? You want to twist that knife a little deeper, Steph, huh?"

"The girls are all yours," Stephanie said, "I was not sleeping with him when they were conceived, not any of them. I haven't really been with him in a long time, but…I still have feelings for him, and I still…I love him, Paul. I love him."

"Wow…so you've been stringing me along for years," Paul wiped his hands on his jeans. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill that bastard."

"Please, don't, it's just as much my fault as it is his," Stephanie told him. She could tell Paul was on the verge of losing it, and she didn't want that. She knew she deserved his harsh words, but if he went after Chris, that would spell nothing but trouble. "We both made the decision, we both kept it up, I deserve your anger as much as him."

"Oh, believe me, you're getting it. We're getting divorced, I don't even want to look at your face right now. I hope he was worth it, Steph, I hope he was worth it all. But don't worry about me, you haven't worried about me in the last God knows how long. You don't do shit like this to the people you love, so you didn't love me. You were a selfish bitch."

"Yeah, I was," Stephanie nodded. "One who is trying to move forward, and I'll give you what you want."

"So he's going to be around my girls?"

"No, probably not," Stephanie said with a shrug, "he doesn't want me anymore. He said he could live without me. He left his wife for me, and I rejected him, that's why we haven't been together really. So…he probably won't want me."

"You're kidding me, right? You confess after the guy doesn't want you?"

"It was the right thing to do," Stephanie said, "I still feel that way. I'm sorry, I'm sorry a million times over, but that's everything. He left his life for a chance with me, and I told him no because I was scared to do this, all of this, all the stuff that's yet to come."

"Then it serves you right that you end up alone," he told her, walking over and knocking over some knick-knacks, Stephanie winced, but otherwise didn't do anything. He deserved his anger, and she wasn't about to take it away from him. "I gave you eleven years, Stephanie, do you even get that? Do you even get what it does to me to think that while I was proposing you, you were screwing around with him!"

"No, I don't get it," she said quietly.

"Why the hell did you even say yes! Tell me that! Why the hell would you say yes to me when you were getting it from him?"

Stephanie stared at her hands, "He was married already."

"Oh, wonderful, wonderful! The only reason you married me was because the guy you actually wanted was married, thanks for settling, Steph, real good work there," he knocked over some picture frames this time.

"I loved you, I know it wasn't enough, I know that you won't believe me now, but I did, I did—"

"Just not as much as your precious Chris!" Paul said. "I'm done with you, I'm done with all of this."

Before another word could come out of her mouth, he stormed out of the room and out the front door, just grabbing his car keys and slamming the door behind him. She could hear his car start pull out of their driveway, the sounds of the engine fading the further he got to their gate. Stephanie sat there for a long time afterwards, not knowing quite what to do. She knew it would happen that way; she hadn't expected differently, but she never thought about what might come afterwards.

She leaned back on the couch and closed her eyes. Chris would know what to do. When he'd left his wife, he'd told Stephanie all about what they were going to do now. He told her how they would get divorce lawyers, the best one, and they would try to make this as easy as possible for everyone. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but he would tell her they could do it together. Everything they could together. He promised her everything he could just to get her to go to him, and in the end, she'd still told him no.

No wonder he wanted nothing to do with her any longer. So many times he'd put everything in front of her, tried to pretty it up, make it beautiful, make it easy for her, which meant he took all the difficulties. He would have too. He would have taken all the blame, he would have taken a beating from Paul if it would make her feel better about the entire thing. She cringed at the way she treated the people in her life. She knew Chris wasn't an innocent in all of this, but he confronted the truth long before she did, tried to take action, which she rebuffed.

She stood up slowly, trudging her way through her home to grab her phone. She called her mother and waited for her to answer. "Stephanie, is everything okay?"

"He left, he's angry," Stephanie said dully. "I mean, I don't blame him, not at all. He has every right to be angry. What I did to him deserves all his anger. He's leaving me, he wants a divorce, and I want to give him that."

"Okay," Linda said, once again knowing there was more her daughter wanted to say so she waited patiently for it.

"Can the girls stay with you for a couple days?" Stephanie asked. "Paul is probably going to be on edge for a couple of days, he'll probably go to Shawn's and regroup before he comes back here. And I just…I need to do something."

"I understand, I'll take care of them as long as you need me to," Linda told her.

"I'll be back the day after tomorrow, no matter what," Stephanie told her. "I'll call in a little while to talk to them, is that okay?"

"You don't have to ask to talk to your daughters, Stephanie, we'll be waiting, and sweetheart, whatever you're going through, I promise you, okay, it's going to get better and easier."

"I hope so, Mom, I hope so."

"Okay, I'll let you go, but we'll be waiting, alright?"

"I love you," Stephanie said simply before she hung up and dialed another number.

"I already talked to him, Stephanie."

"I knew he'd call you," Stephanie said, "Look, Shawn—"

"I'm not the one who needed explaining, Stephanie. He's coming here."

"I thought so, is he driving around?"

"Yeah, he is, cooling his head," Shawn told her. "He's probably waiting for you not to be there so he can go get some stuff. He'll probably call the girls later when he's not so angry."

"Thank you for taking care of him. I never intended for all of this to end this way," she rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I'm not sure how I thought it would all end, but it wasn't like this. Can you just…can you just make sure that he'll be okay, eat and sleep and all that."

"Yeah," Shawn said, "I know you care about him, love him even, Steph, I know, I get it, I may not get why you did what you did, but I don't believe your heart was always in the wrong place."

"That means a lot, thank you again for taking care of him."

"Okay, and you take care of yourself too, alright." Stephanie knew the old Shawn Michaels would never have acted this way. The old him would probably spearhead some kind of revenge towards Chris, but Shawn had grown up so much since she'd first met him decades ago now. He would help Paul in so many ways. She wished she could have a friendship like that.

"Thank you, you can call him and tell him I'll be gone within an hour."

"I'll tell him now."

She was gone within thirty minutes. She grabbed a bag, packed some things, called the airport and was off. She needed to be somewhere else right now, somewhere important that couldn't wait. She'd waited 11 years, and it was time to put an end to this. When she landed, late that evening, she knew it would have to wait until the morning. A surprise was one thing, but a surprise this late at night would be another thing altogether. It could wait until morning at the very least.

And it did. She waited until she knew Jessica would be out, at least when she hoped Jessica would be out. It'd been a long time since Chris called her when Jessica was out, but hopefully she kept roughly the same routine. She pulled up to Chris's house, well, not exactly to his house, but a little ways down the street so she could go unnoticed. She pulled out her cell phone and called his number.

"And what torture am I going to be put through today?" Chris said when he answered her call.

"Hi," she told him, her voice already clogging with tears. "Is Jessica there?"

"No, she's not, why? We going to have phone sex again?" he asked her, but it wasn't playful, it was hard-edged and mocking. She got out of her car, closing the door behind her.

"Am I too late?"

"Too late for what?" Chris asked then he sighed, "Stephanie, I'm not going to fall for your games any longer, alright. I told you everything I had to tell you, but you won't admit anything for yourself, so I'm not going to let myself fall into your trap again. It's self-destructive to us both. Will you please just go to back to your husband?"

"No."

"Stephanie, what do you want from me? I told you that I couldn't do this anymore."

"Am I too late?" Stephanie asked slowly.

"Stephanie, stop it." Stephanie rang the doorbell to his house, standing out on the porch. "Hold on, okay, there's someone at the door."

"Okay," Stephanie told him, wondering how he hadn't heard the doorbell over the phone. She stood there and waited, finally seeing his figure through the frosted glass on the door. She could see him stop before he ever reached the door. That's all there was between them right now, a thin pane of frosted glass keeping them apart.

"Stephanie…"

"Am I too late?" Stephanie asked again. The figure moved forward and then the door opened slowly and he had the phone still to his ear as she looked at him. His eyes were already filled to the brim, that familiar red tinge to the bottom of them as his mouth dropped open just slightly. His blue eyes swam in the ocean they created.

He made a strangled noise and croaked out, "Steph…"

"You said that if I really wanted to hear what would make you happy, I'd do it in front of you, not over the phone, I'm here, I'm in front of you. Chris, what would make you happy?"

"The same thing that has always made me happy. You." She smiled as they stood there, him still in his house, her still on his step. "You're here," he said, laughing a little as he tried to keep the tears at bay. "You're really here." It was time to put it all on the line, just like he had done years ago. It was her turn to be brave.

"All I have to give you is myself…and my love."