A/N: Hello! Okay, I'm updating my profile so I mean business, I am back! Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and I promise you that I will reply to each and every review for this chapter because you guys are very lovely and I'm very lucky to have such readers like you. This is shorter but it's meant as a bridge, something to show you how things are changing.

Let me know what you think please, my lovely people? You have stuck with me for so long #happy as a clam. If you guys are really eager for more, I might have another chapter in me for tonight #am eating nutella out of jar with spoon, please talk to me so I can feel not terrible about possibly posting two chapters in one night and indulging my chocolatey desires.

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Comin' home from you, holding a basket of proof
Flowers I pressed in your books
Sentiments, together we were crooks
I hid them around our shack
in places I can't remember anymore
It's all I hear, it's all I ever hear from you dear anymore
the ghostly song I once adored
Now, I don't have to see
your inking eyes shed tears that bleed
the screaming silence that you agreed to
Your threadbare body in the night
I'm trying to remember all the spots in the air where I hid it
It's come back, you wrote it on a napkin
said you didn't want a hand in marriage
I press your eyelids shut, I want to hear your loving stories,
summer sparkles, religious glory and now I've got
clear, it was a great big yellow dandelion
I pressed it in your favorite spine
right next to kerouac, between the lines
of salinger and that cohen rhyme
I just want those flowers back,
some of the scent they gave and some of the rent they paid
some of the scent they gave and some of the rent we paid
one less family grave
- S.T

Chapter Twenty-four:

He felt like he was sinking and she felt like she might throw up.

It was the tiniest rattle of silence that crept up their elbows with sticky touches and awkward glances.

They were sitting across from one another, once powerful and now simply swimming along and trying to match words to feelings.

Blair ran her finger around her martini glass. She took a breath.

They had seen each other several times in the last couple of months. It was becoming nothing to be nervous about and yet she felt the same twinge of anxiety bubbling in her stomach.

"So, what did you do on Thursday?" She asked.

Chuck leaned back in his chair and wet his lips with scotch.

"We went to the zoo," He said, "Ate ice cream and fed the ducks in the park."

The children had shown her photographs. Chuck and Tula, arms around her shoulders, her chin pressed into his shirt as they stood next to the Gorilla exhibit, a little off kilter, as if a certain young boy had pressed the flash. Another of Henry licking at his ice cream, smiling broadly as if the whole world lived and died in that one day as he held his fathers hand with pride.

"It looked like fun," She smiled, "I'm glad you take them on these little adventures."

He smirked, unsure of what to say. "Me too."

Chuck had slowly but steadily begun to take on a role in their lives. Now, he picked them up after school three days a week and drove them to their respective classes. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the children spent the whole day with him. Alone. They were building up the bond, that instantaneous spark of shared DNA. And quickly, the three of them had become the best of friends.

The adults involved had not originally thought it would be as easy as it was.

Mark had his reservations, Chuck had tucked his parental rights in clenched fists and Blair had only her nerves and the idea of things eventually working themselves out.

But it had all only taken some time.

"How's work?" Chuck coughed, grappling for conversation.

Blair was beginning to ease a little into her own body.

"It's good," She nodded, "Eleanor seems to be the pretty face, I'm the blood and sweat."

"As per usual," He leaned forward, enough for a lick of his cologne to tickle her senses.

"Oh well, it's fun ..." She looked him over and lowered her eyes. "What about you?"

"I'm dealing with a huge merger right now," He rolled his eyes. "It wouldn't be as difficult if ninety percent of my staff weren't so incompetent."

"As per usual..." She mimicked him playfully, raising an eyebrow.

The night passed easily in a cloud of simple conversation that lacked depth or reach. Eventually, she settled her anxieties and he forgot his reasons.

He helped her into her coat as they left the restaurant. The drinks had made the floor a little light beneath her feet and the scotch, doing as it always did, left him a little less difficult.

And when he reached for her hand, Blair felt a piece of him opening up. He was something that she had lost, so close and yet so far, intermingled hands and tired thoughts that rested heavily on her eyelids.

As they walked, he knew he could never forgive her and something about this realization had so suddenly freed him. He had become something untouchable, a father to his children and they would always be connected, the tiny strings thick like gold.

He wanted to tell her that he had always known, always felt it but somehow but the words would not form and he left them alone and sitting cold, in the back of his mind.

Blair had always felt it, always known but she couldn't keep the words together any more than she could keep herself from melting at the touch of his fingers. She was left trying to remember where she'd hidden all her sentiments.