A/N: Sorry it's been so long since the last update! Please review, I'd love to hear what my readers think of this story, good or bad. Thank you! The song that this chapter is named after is "Nothing Left to Lose" by Mat Kearney. Enjoy!

NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

"How much did you have to pay them to get me a private room, Cohen?" Summer asked softly when he reentered her hospital room. She knew there was no way she would otherwise have been given a fairly quiet, private corner room in one of the busiest hospitals in Los Angeles, but she appreciated his gesture and was grateful.

"It doesn't matter," he told her, touching her forehead lightly. She closed her eyes, relishing in his touch. "What matters is that you get better. Okay?"

"I know, I do," Summer agreed. "I have to get back to work tomorrow, I only have one sick day left for the year."

"That's not what I meant," Seth replied, trying to keep the anger from his voice. He didn't want her to back to work at all, let alone before she had fully recovered.

"I know that's not what you meant," she retorted, narrowing her eyes. "This is a different world for me, Seth. It's just different now."

"Why does going to the hospital when you're beat up and in pain have to be a different world?" Seth said, throwing up his arms in frustration. "I don't understand, Sum."

"I have two jobs, a four-year-old, and a pretty demanding…"

"Is he your boyfriend, Summer? Is that what you call him?"

"Oh, stop it, Seth. You don't have to do this, be like this."

"And neither do you," he snapped. He looked at her, hating that he was being so bitter when she was in so much pain. But he had to make her realize what she could be, and do, and live like. "Come back to Newport."

"What?" Summer laughed bitterly. "Seth, that's impossible."

"Please. Come back. Everyone's missed you, you know."

"It doesn't matter anymore." She shifted in the hospital bed, her dark hair lying limply across the pillow, biting her lip to keep from crying out in the pain that movement caused her. "I have a new life now."

"New doesn't always mean better."

She narrowed her eyes. "And neither does old."

"At least let me help you," Seth pleaded.

"You have helped me, Cohen," she reminded him. "And I'm really, really thankful. Honestly. But what I need right now is to get a prescription for some painkillers and go pick Audrey up from the sitter's. It's on the complete other side of LA."

"I'll get her," Seth said, shaking his head. "You need to rest. The doctor told me you should be in bed for at least a week or two."

"Impossible," Summer said quickly, shaking her head. "I do work, you know."

"Not for the next two weeks you won't be," Seth responded.

"Oh, so now you can control my life?"

"Look, if you're worried about the money, I can—"

"The money is only half of it, Cohen," Summer cut in, breathing heavily. "You don't seem to understand. For better or for worse, this is what I have right now. Yes, the father of my daughter hurts me. Yes, I work two jobs and hate both of them. Yes, my apartment is shit and I know I could live in my father's guest room or something in a second." She paused, letting this sink in for the both of them. "But I love my daughter. And I'm not willing to give her up to lie in a hospital and feel bad for myself."

"You won't be giving her up, Sum. That's what you have to understand. Why can't you let me help you, you and Audrey both?"

"Me and Audrey don't need you, Cohen! We don't need you!" She screamed, her face reddening as tears streamed down her face.

"Then why did she ask me on our way to the diner who her dad was, why he didn't love her?" Seth asked quietly, letting out the secret that had built up since that afternoon. He turned to face her. "Why did she ask me why you were so sad all the time?"

At these words, Summer's heart broke, and along with it, she did too. She let out huge, wracking sobs, causing her body to shake with anguish. For so long she had tried to create a perfect life for Audrey, if not for herself. Learning that her efforts had been futile made her entire body burn with sadness. She remembered her own childhood, asking her father over and over again why her mother had left them. Asking why he was always so busy, why there was never anyone to play with her. He had married Gloria, probably partially to give Summer a mother—and their relationship had never been the same. She compared that to her current life. In Newport—pre-Seth, at least—she had become a person she wasn't, created a shell around her, to prevent her heart from being toyed with again. All Summer had wanted for Audrey was to give her baby a way to not have to do that, a way to let her heart be open and loved. But she was realizing quickly that she had done just the opposite, that within Audrey were the same emotions Summer had had as a child, that Summer's attempts at creating a better life for her little girl had failed. That was what she was. A failure.

Seth could read exactly what was happening. Summer allowed him to slide onto the edge of the bed next to her, and he wrapped strong, protective arms around her, shielding her from the world just like she had tried to shield Audrey from the world she had hated growing up in. But maybe Seth's shield had been all she needed. Maybe that was all Audrey needed.

"What time do you need to pick her up?" Seth whispered into her ear when Summer's sobs had slowly begun to subside.

"12:30."

"It's close to midnight," Seth said quietly. He did not say what was in his mind: that Summer shouldn't be working so late, that she shouldn't have to bring Audrey home so late, that the entire situation shouldn't exist. "I'm going to go get her."

"Thank you," Summer said earnestly. "I don't know what I would've done…" They both thought back to the battered Summer hunched on the bathroom floor.

"I'm glad I was there," Seth said, easing the tension with calm, airy words and brushing her forehead lightly with his lips. "I'll be back with Audrey."

He exited the room with one more glance at Summer, and he left to retrieve her daughter. He knew he was getting more and more entangled in the family of two's life.

And he couldn't have been happier about it.

…

"Mommy doesn't let me ride without my car seat," Audrey piped in from the backseat of Seth's car as he headed towards the hospital.

"This is a special situation," Seth promised the little girl.

"What's a situation?" Audrey asked in her cheery baby voice. She was mature for her age, agreeable and friendly, and sometimes Seth forgot that the four-year-old was only a four-year-old.

Seth wracked his brain for a legitimate response, deciding that the word "situation" was nearly impossible to define simply, before realizing Audrey was yawning sleepily. "How about I explain in the morning?"

"Mmm…okay…" Audrey sighed as she drifted into sleep. Seth smiled into his rearview mirror at the little girl curled up in the back of his car.

Seth had always thought he would have a family. He loved children, he had a high-paying job despite his lack of interest in it, and he had always liked the idea of being a father something like his own. He had seen his friends' parents—Ryan's dad, convicted and jailed; Marissa's dad, who had embezzled and then abandoned his family at least two or three times; Summer's dad, who though loving and well-intentioned, had never been the constant presence Sandy had been in Seth's own life. And Seth wanted to be Sandy for another kid. He wanted to have children to play with and teach and raise right.

But it hadn't happened. Things had just gotten messy and stayed that way.

He remembered when he and Summer had split up. He was at RISD, struggling with his direction for the future, figuring out what to do in terms of sticking with an art career or taking the less risky route and heading into the Newport Group empire. Then there was Summer, at the other end of Providence at Brown, dealing with an entirely different set of problems when she had refused to show up at her father's latest wedding and Neil had threatened to cut her off and stop paying her college tuition. They were juniors. Despite the Cohen family's promises that they would help her out and Seth's consistent begging, Summer finished up her junior year and told her father, the Cohens, and Seth that she would be fine on her own. She guiltily ended things with Seth, both of them confused and frustrated, and picked up and moved to Los Angeles, where she began a life far different from the one she'd always led.

Seth remembered the last time he'd seen her in Providence, when she'd kissed him in the rain with all the passion they still had and took her suitcase and got into a cab and drove away. He hadn't known it had been goodbye. He hadn't known she'd made her decision—she was leaving, leaving him and Rhode Island and their dreams and the destiny they'd always talked about. The destiny was supposed to be together.

But Summer had quickly erased the epilogue of their story, the happily ever after part. She decided to add in more chapters, sloppily fill in the room, make up new miserable plots for the main characters to go through.

So Seth had finished up at RISD and gave up his own comic book dreams to take over the Newport Group and begin life as a bored, frustrated CEO. Summer had met Marcus at Luna Chicks and had given birth to Audrey and started her own life—one of pain and struggling and long, hard days.

Seth wished he'd stopped her. Made her tell him what was really going on all those years. Made her see him when he'd called over and over again when she'd first gotten to LA and was refusing to see anyone from her old life. But they had simply become, after time had helped to heal them, long-distance friends with a short distance between them, and she had always refused his help, and he had relied on brief phone calls and the rare visit to keep her cheerful, which he had made his goal very early on.

Finally he pulled the car into the hospital parking lot, carefully took Audrey out of the backseat of his car and into his arms, and entered to go up to Summer's room.

Summer was asleep—resting—when he arrived in her hospital room. He smiled when he looked at Audrey's and Summer's matching sleeping faces and slid Audrey into the bed next to Summer, and the little girl immediately curled up next to her mother while Summer wrapped a protective arm around her baby daughter subconsciously.

Seth sat in a stiff chair across the room and watched them sleep in the 1 A.M. dimness of the hospital. Mother and daughter; Summer and Audrey. He wanted it to stay this way. He loved it this way.

…

Summer's eyes cracked open painfully, and she could feel her dry lips curl up when she realized a small warm body belonging to her four-year-old was tucked next to her. As her vision came back and her eyes adjusted to the florescent light of the hospital, she realized where she was and what was going on.

That was when she saw Seth, across the room, sitting in that goddamn chair. Smiling, like he always did, unless he was busy worrying about her. She knew the smiling was mostly meant to calm her down, to soothe her, and above all she appreciated it. "Cohen."

He was looking directly at her and grinned. "Sum. You're awake."

"Thank you," she said, after a moment of mutual staring. She said it so genuinely that Seth knew what she meant. She meant thank you for everything, for finding her, for convincing her to go to the hospital, for driving her there, for picking up and bringing back Audrey, for likely saving her life.

"Any time," he replied, and she knew he meant it completely and fully. And he knew she knew that.

A doctor, balding and impatient, entered the room swiftly. "Good morning, Ms. Roberts. How are you feeling this morning?"

"I'm okay," Summer lied. In all truthfulness, she felt worse than she did the previous night, if that was at all possible.

"That surprises me," the doctor commented suspiciously, looking her in the eye over the rims of his glasses. "You've broken two ribs and gotten a total of twenty-two stitches in three places, and you have extensive bruising, especially on your spinal cord."

Summer gulped. That was a lot.

"Mr. Cohen here has informed me of your reluctance to stay in the hospital, and I think you'll be alright if I prescribe you a heavy-duty painkiller," the doctor said, "And I'm afraid you're going to need to stay in bed for at least two weeks or so."

"I'm sorry, doctor, that's not really an option for me," Summer explained, trying to stay calm and polite.

"You're not going to be able to walk for a while," the doctor said simply, trying to force his patient to understand the seriousness of her medical problems. Summer's jaw tensed. "Ms. Roberts, you have some severe injuries. You will need to take care of yourself."

"I understand, doctor," Summer said, lacking all feeling. "Thank you." The doctor exited the room and Summer felt Seth's eyes on her.

"See what I told you?"

She tried to turn over but failed to do so. "I know."

"Come to Newport," he urged. "If you don't want to stay with your dad, stay with me. You and Audrey can each have a room, and if you want her to stay at the preschool where she is, I'll drive her every day. I promise."

"I don't know, Seth," Summer sighed. "Marcus isn't going to like this, and I'll lose both my jobs."

"Two weeks, Sum," Seth pleaded. "Two weeks. You'll get better and you can just relax and I'll help you with Audrey. You know my parents are going to be so happy to see you and Aud both. And after that, if you want to go back, I will personally threaten both of your bosses until they rehire you."

Summer frowned. "And, Mr. Solution-Finder, what do you propose I do about Marcus?"

"Dump his fucking sorry ass," Seth said under his breath. Summer sent him a warning glare and checked to make sure Audrey was still sleeping; she was.

"I need the money, Seth," Summer reminded him, knowing it was useless to cover up what was really going on. She had never loved Marcus. She had never wanted anything from him besides the protection, financially at least, that he provided her with.

"I'll give you the money," Seth returned. And she knew he would, too. He was, after all, the head of the Newport Group now. He was a twenty-four-year-old Caleb, and Summer and Seth both knew what that meant. But he had mysteriously shied away from having girlfriends, purposefully avoided the plastic-surgery-laden blondes who managed to find their way towards him at every charity benefit or Newport group event.

"I'm not a charity case," Summer retorted defiantly. Her eyes had momentarily regained the passion Seth hadn't seen in them for a long time, and they were ablaze with the idea that Seth was threatening her independence. This independence was, besides Audrey, the one thing she had, and she treasured and revered it above all.

"Fine, have sex with me instead of Marcus then," Seth joked. Summer rolled her eyes but couldn't help blushing in embarrassment. In true Cohen fashion, Seth had not waited until the appropriate time to make a joke—which in this case would likely be never.

"Cohen!"

"We'll work it out. You can't stay in that apartment by yourself for two weeks with no one to help with Audrey. You know you can't."

"I know," Summer said quietly, realizing that denial would not get her anywhere, at least not with Seth Cohen.

"So how are you liking my solution?" Seth asked, desperately wanting her to accept. He wanted to help her. He wanted to show her that she was still Summer Roberts, and that she was above waitressing and stripping at she could still be the amazing, beautiful person he once knew. She had forced herself into a life Seth knew was not hers, and he would not be at peace until she realized that there was more out there for her to do and be and feel.

"Fine." Summer nodded simply, and Seth could not fathom the idea that she was actually agreeing to his proposal.

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Thank you, Sum," Seth grinned excitedly, bending down to her level to hug her. She hugged him back and pulled him close, his arms wrapped snugly but not too firmly around her, knowing she would never feel like she did when she was near to him.

"No," she smiled. "Thank you, Cohen."