Drama, drama, drama...and plenty of it for the next few chapters. Enjoy!

P.S. Do you SEE how quickly I'm updating now??? I want a new story to write! My mind is blank. Sniff sniff.

I wanna feel a car crash
'Cause I'm dying on the inside
I wanna let go and know
That I'll be all right, all right

"Car Crash"-Matt Nathanson

The sudden decline of Amber's world began at the most inconspicuous moment, as most unfortunate events do. There had been no spectacularly earth-shattering revelation that had brought it on. It was a simple night, like any other, and Amber had been tucking Sophie into bed. Corny had been in an unusual amount of pain with his back, and Amber had agreed to put Sophie down for sleep. As per usual, there was no bedtime story, and when Amber was preparing to leave the room, Sophie called out to her.

"Amber." She turned to look at the child. "Once this baby is born, you and Daddy aren't going to forget about me, right?"

Amber nodded slightly, already feeling the strain in her back from her growing stomach.

"Right." She licked her dry lips, turning slightly.

"Can you love two people at one time, though?" Sophie called the question out, and though Amber knew she was referring to herself and the baby, her mind had already begun to wonder. She calmed Sophie's fears, returned to Corny's bed, and crawled in beside him. She turned on her side, away from him, and tried to answer the little girl's question in her own mind.

Was she in love with Link? No, she didn't think so. It wasn't exactly the same thing she felt when she was with Corny, and Link definitely didn't give her that sense of comfort and safety. Still, there was something. There was something that kept her thinking about his lips, and his words; something that kept her awake at night, and made her furrow her eyebrows at that engagement ring on her left hand. There was something that was causing this underlying guilt in the pit of her stomach, something that made her look away when Corny questioned her directly about Link. There was certainly no denying any of that, as much as she would have liked to. It kept her in a constant state of guilt, and she felt bad that she often found herself thinking of Link at night when she was next to her fiancée. It wasn't necessarily those kinds of thoughts that she entertained about Link, but Corny would be none too happy to know she was thinking of him at all, much less when she was with Corny himself.

That was how Amber knew that she had to do something. She had to figure out exactly how she felt about Link, and quick, because constantly thinking of him was driving her insane. She knew it wasn't fair to Corny, because he'd been nothing if not faithful to her since they'd begun dating, and even if she was only thinking about Link and not acting on it, it was still something. It was still inappropriate, and still wrong.

The morning after her somewhat mind-bending conversation with Sophie, she made another disturbing self-discovery: the majority of her clothes no longer fit. It wasn't necessarily the best time to unearth such information, considering that the entire reason she couldn't seem to stop thinking about Link was because he had made her feel wanted when she felt oddly undesirable for the first time in her life, yet that was the way it had happened.

On that particular morning, she woke Corny with a kiss, informed him that she needed to go back to her apartment for a few hours to find some clothes to fit her, and left his house. She found herself in the quiet apartment sometime later, ruffling through the clothing that she'd left in her closet when she'd basically moved into Corny's. She sighed as she realized exactly why she'd left these clothes behind, sneering at the ugly designs and patterns that she found hard to believe she'd worn at one time. Well, if nothing else, at least this pregnancy was a good reason to go shopping. That seemed to be all it was good for; save maybe the few days of sanity that it had salvaged for her and Corny. There was a knock at the door of the apartment suddenly, and she pulled her head out of the jungle of clothes, narrowing her eyes and straightening her hair as she made her way to the front hallway, pulling the door open and sucking her breath in as she saw him.

"Link," her eyes were suddenly, unconsciously, wide, "what are you doing here?"
And though she asked the question, she could do little more than pretend to listen to his answer, because she found herself staring at his lips as he spoke. Her breath was caught in her throat, and she felt her cheeks flushing as he laughed nonchalantly, presumably making a joke to which she could only feign a chuckle in response.

This was it; she realized suddenly, this was a sign. Link had literally shown up on her doorstep at exactly the right, or depending upon how you looked at it, wrong time. If he noticed that her cheeks were flushing suddenly, he pretended not to, and smiled warmly at her.

"So, can I come in?"

"Of course," she stepped aside for him to enter, not bothering to close the door behind them. He brushed past her, turning to look at her from his current position, still watching her expectantly.

"You're, um," he paused, letting his eyes graze her stomach, "getting bigger. I guess that's a good thing?"

She looked at him, and felt her eyebrows furrowing slightly, but wasn't exactly sure if she had any right to act indignant about his remark. It wasn't a bad thing, she presumed, that her stomach was growing, but he had said the words with such an arrogant air that she couldn't tell if he was making fun of her, or asking a simple question.

"Uh, yeah," she let the corners of her mouth turn into a light smile, "good, I guess."

She allowed her tongue to dart out and wet her lips, her two front teeth digging into the soft flesh. She took a few steps toward Link slowly, clenching her teeth together as she worked up the nerve to say any of the words that she'd been planning in her head.

"Link," his name got caught in her throat, and she ended up spitting it out as he looked at her.

"What?"

"Why did you say those things? The other day, you know, at Sophie's party."

"I just thought they needed to be said," he answered her after a moment. "You didn't deny them." He added the last part as an afterthought, purposefully looking up at her face.

"I shouldn't have to," she felt stiff saying the words, and even straightened her posture a little, "I don't have to explain myself to you."

"Must be a nice change from what you're used to, then, huh?" His eyebrows arched slightly, watching her nonchalantly, "Corny's like a vulture. All eyes on you, all the time."

"He's my fiancé," she felt the need to defend him suddenly.

"Exactly. Not your master."

"I never said he was-" She stopped, "He doesn't own me. It's called being in an honest relationship, Link. You should try it sometime."

"It's called being your own person, Amber. You should try that."

She narrowed her eyes at him, her cheeks flushing.

"You can't talk to me like that. I'm your boss now, in case you've forgotten."

He smirked at her, crossing his arms over his chest and resting back against the wall.

"You're so full of shit. You try to play that professional woman card, and in the meantime you're screwing the man that used to run the show," he berated her, shaking his head.

"I'm not screwing him, you moron. I think we've moved past screwing; we're engaged. That little tidbit of information seems to keep slipping out of that rock that you call a brain," she narrowed her gaze at him, "And what the hell do you want from me? You criticize me for my personal life, and then for my professional life. I can only be so many people, Link."

She wasn't exactly sure why she felt the need to defend herself against him. With their history, she certainly didn't feel like she needed to prove anything to him. It occurred to her suddenly that perhaps she needed to prove these things to herself, rather than anyone else.

"Well then why don't you start being the person you want to be, Amber? Forget about Corny for a minute, will you? Forget about the fact that you're engaged, and just tell me, what the hell do you want from you?" His eyes were dark suddenly, and she found herself inexplicably closer to him. She twisted her pink lips into a scowl, her eyes locked on his.

"Why do you have so much trouble accepting the fact that I love him?" She felt her mouth going dry, "And that I'm happy with my life?"

He stared back at her, unwavering.

"Why do you?"

She wanted to smack him at that instant, to fire him just as she had fired Corny those years ago for infuriating her beyond belief by kissing her. She knew, though, that that was not what this situation called for. Her pounding heart, and flushed face told her that. She needed to seize this opportunity, to use it to figure out what in the hell was wrong with her, why she couldn't get him out of her brain when all she wanted was to forget about him. Suddenly, there was only one plausible solution, and though she knew it was wrong, it was completely necessary. She needed to do this like she'd never needed anything before.

The moment that she pushed her lips against his, sending his head back against the wall with the force, she knew it was a mistake. There was nothing spectacular about the kiss that she instigated, nothing that made her stomach quiver, or her head spin. Nothing that left her breathless, or made her want to throw her engagement ring back at Corny, and tell him that she loved Link instead.

The kiss couldn't have lasted more than five seconds, but she felt his hands pressing against the small of her back, obviously attempting to get deeper into the kiss. She was just beginning to place her hands on his shoulders, just beginning to push herself away from the kiss that had confirmed the fact that she was most definitely not in love, or even attracted to, Link, when the even words split through the deafening silence.

"What the fuck, Amber." It was not a question; it was a statement, and it came from the open doorway.

Of course she knew, without even looking, that it was Corny.