A/N: Hey guys! I'm sorry the previous chapter was pretty short, but it was because I didn't want to have "two subjects" in one chapter you know. I've seen that many have alerted this story, and some of you also me as an author, and I would like to know what made you continue reading this story? What makes you want to keep reading it? I would be very happy of your answer, so please review both this chapter of course and include the answer of my question there! :D Love y'all!

I Don't Hate You

Chapter 15: The Bridge Is Broken

"I brought you coffee," Meredith said cutely. She was so pretty and doing all these wonderful gestures.

"Thank you, hon-," Addison began but interrupted herself because she saw a perplexed gaze from Derek.

She leaned in to whisper in her ear. "I think we better tell Derek before he's finding out on his own."

"Yeah."

"Thank you very much, Dr. Grey," Addison said theatrically and loudly.

"No problem," she said, smiled and went back to the pit where she had to work that day.

She followed her back with her gaze, putting her lips to the coffee cup. When she disappeared out of sight she went to her office to get some paper work down before her following surgery. The blinds of her office were still closed because she hadn't bothered to open them since the last time she had made love to Meredith there.

She sat down on her chair and enjoyed the fresh memory while sipping on her coffee. Just when she was about to start working someone knocked on the door.

"Come in," she said, taking another sip of the coffee.

It was Derek.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked her and locked the door behind him.

"Wha-what are you talking about?" she said and stood wearily up.

"With Meredith."

"I don't know what you mean."

He rolled his eyes.

"I'm not an idiot, Addison. Always when I see you she's giving you coffee or whatever and when I see her you always come out of nowhere to talk to her about a patient and now you're even sharing on-call rooms. So what the hell is going on between you two? Is this some kind of revenge? A sick revenge where the ex-wife become friends with the ex-girlfriend?"

"No, it's not about revenge, Derek," Addison tried.

"Then what is it about?"

"I... We..."

"You could at least be honest with me. Why can't you explain this to me? What is so hard?"

"Nothing!" she tried but didn't have time to figure out something better to say.

"What reason do you even have to be around her? I thought you hated her!"

"No, I've never hated her."

He snorted and took a moment to turn around and collect himself so he wouldn't lash out on her. He looked at her with furious eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked.

"Actually, it's none of your business. Everything isn't about you. Meredith and I might be friends, but that has nothing to do with you, so it's definitely not about revenge."

"Of course it's my business! You're my ex-wife for fuck's sake!"

"Yeah! Ex-wife!" she emphasized. "So, my life has nothing to do with yours now and you should just stop fooling yourself with the belief that you have any right to meddle with mine! I'm a completely separate person from you now, and so is Meredith."

"So is Meredith," he repeated bitterly. "What happened to the Dr. Grey? Why are you hiding these things from me?"

She didn't answer.

Her phone beeped.

They glared at each other in silence.

"Look at it," he urged her.

"I can do it later."

"No, you do it now."

She reached down to the pocket of her lab coat to take the phone and just as she saw that the message came from Meredith Derek snatched the phone out of her hand.

"No! Give it back! You have no right!"

He turned his back on her to read the message without her being able to take it back even though the panic made her try to use violence.

Then he suddenly froze and the phone dropped to the floor. It all was like in slow motion.

Addison didn't move. She saw how parts of the phone scattered, the battery fell out. But she didn't care. She didn't care about what Meredith had written. It could have been anything revealing, all from finishing with "kisses" or "love you" to going on a date or where they should spend the night. It didn't matter, because she knew that he now understood. That all the pieces had been put together.

That she'd fucked it up.

The time of silence and not moving, not even breathing, seemed to last for ages.

She had to break it, but it took a great effort just to find her tongue and form a word in her mouth, to even form the very sound in her throat.

"Derek," she managed to breathe.

"Don't speak," he breathed.

She wondered if she should leave him alone or try to talk to him. Or no, she couldn't leave him alone. Not like this.

"This is not real," he said very calmly.

She didn't know what to do and just waited.

"I didn't read it right, right? It's a joke?" he said and looked at her.

Her facial expression told him right away that it wasn't a joke and he turned away from her, covering his face in his hands.

"Derek," Addison sighed and tried to put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her away.

"I'm trying to be calm."

He was slightly shaking, his knuckles were white and his back was rigid.

"How long Addison? How long have you been fucking her?" he asked slowly.

"Let me explain," she tried.

He finally faced her. "How long?" he repeated, his words trembling with controlled rage.

"Since February," she answered truthfully, her voice was small.

His eyes widened. "She cheated on me for a month," he stated.

"I know," she whispered.

He lift his arm as if to hit her, and she automatically lifted her arms to protect her face, but he dropped his arm and began walking toward the door without another word.

"Derek, let's talk about this," she sniffled.

He turned around to face her. His eyes were empty, as if containing his shock, hurt and anger deep inside, behind a thick shield, not permitting her to catch any emotion at all.

"What do you want me to say?" he said quietly and tonelessly. His words seeming to be an effort for him.

She tried to find the right words to say, but realized there weren't any. She sighed in an exasperated way, as if the air just fled her lungs.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He turned away to go and opened the door, but stopped halfway out and without turning around he said evenly "I hate you. I've never hated anyone so much as I hate you right now."

"I didn't mean to," she said with a plea in her voice she didn't manage to cover up. "I didn't do this to hurt you. You have to believe me. Please..."

"How the hell can you fuck someone without meaning to?" he practically growled.

She didn't answer right away.

"I love her, Derek," she finally said quietly.

His back straightened as he drew a shuddering breath and then left, slamming the door shut behind him.

She stared at the door, not able to believe what had happened, nor how to solve it.

When her mind had restarted itself she realized that she should warn Meredith before Derek gets her. And God knows what he would do to her.

She quickly paged her, but she wasn't patient enough to wait for her to respond and decided to go to the pit and look for her.

She half-ran to the pit and the way there felt really long. She started crying as she hurried and didn't care about the people that stared. She turned a corner and someone swooped her up with his arms.

"Addison! What is going on?" Mark asked her with shock.

He put away the charts he was carrying and stroke away her tears.

Some people could look beautiful when crying. Addison wasn't one of them.

"I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to see me like this."

He shook his head. "Tell me."

"Derek knows," she said and started crying hard. "I- ha-have to- f-f-find Mer-edith," she sniffled almost incomprehensibly.

"Oh," he needed a couple of seconds to process these news. "How did he take it?"

She glared at him.

"Why did I even ask," he grumbled for himself.

"I ha-have- to find h-her," she said and didn't even bother to listen to his response and darted away through the corridors.

When she arrived to the pit she wasn't crying as much anymore, even though her eyes were horribly red and watery, so no one could miss the state she was in.

She didn't see Meredith right away but Stevens approached her.

"Dr. Montgomery, are you crying?" was the first thing she said.

"No," she answered dismissively.

Stevens looked as though she wanted to get something off her chest.

"I'm so sorry about last night, that was totally inappropriate and it won't happen again."

She couldn't care less.

"Have you seen Meredith?"

Stevens looked surprised, as if she thought she would have been crying over the fact that Mark was a manwhore but she was just one of the many girls he screwed. It didn't interest her at all, but for some reason Stevens seemed to think it should.

"Uhm, yeah, she's over there, getting a blood sample or something," she said and pointed toward a closed hospital curtain.

"Thank you," she said and pasted on a fake smile for politeness sake.

"Meredith?" she asked when she arrived by the curtain, she didn't want to just pull it aside, since it would be disrespectful toward the patient.

"Addison?" came the answer and Meredith pulled away the curtain. "Oh my God, what's wrong?" she asked when she saw that she'd been crying, which of course set off another stream of tears.

Meredith began taking off her plastic gloves and excused herself to the patient. She led her out of the pit to go outside where the ambulances arrived. There they sat down on the curb, since it wasn't drenched in rain water for once.

"What's going on?" Meredith asked, after giving her time to collect herself.

"Derek knows."

Meredith's eyes widened.

"He didn't take it well at all," Addison continued.

"Did you really expect him to take it well?" she frowned.

"No I guess not," she sighed. "But it could have been better. I mean, if we would have talked to him maybe-"

"He'd freak out anyway. There's no point in talking about would, and could, and should," Meredith reasoned, waving around with a stick she'd found on the ground.

"You're right," Addison said and took away the stick from her hand and threw it away.

Meredith glared playfully at her, but then said more seriously: "So... What do we do about it?"

"I don't know..."

"Let's avoid him," Meredith said simply.

"Avoid him," Addison repeated in a breath, looking straight a head, as if the idea hadn't stricken her. Then she shook her head and looked at Meredith. "Avoid him? Are you serious?"

"Yes. We'll avoid him, but if we do have to talk to him we'll just act completely normal as if nothing's changed."

"And what if he acts out? What if he's a total dickhead? I guess I wouldn't be surprised, but nevertheless..."

Meredith kissed her cheek and then went close to her ear and mumbled "stop being so bitter. Who cares about Derek... He's got his problems and he needs to process this."

"Yeah," she sighed. "But the question is how we're going to handle him?"

"We just try to stay out of it, to give him time. He'll need time. I needed time after you showed up, but this is even worse so-"

"Why would it be worse?" Addison frowned. "We're not cheating on anyone. I betrayed Derek and then Derek betrayed me and most importantly you, because you didn't even know that he was married. I would say that's worse."

"Yes, if you talk about moral. But if you talk about feelings... I mean, isn't it just ethics? Moral, ethics? How moral and ethical is our situation? He feels betrayed by us both, not by cheating, but it's more an emotional betrayal. And maybe that's the worst betrayal of all."

"I feel sorry for him," Addison mumbled almost incoherently.

They were quiet for a moment, contemplating their situation and having a silent minute for Derek's heart.

"What did you text me before?" Addison eventually asked.

Meredith thought a bit.

"Uhm, just that you are beautiful and that I think we would have had the best sex of my life if we hadn't been interrupted by Izzie and McSteamy. I guess that's what he saw? Poor guy," she smiled crookedly and didn't seem to mean it at all.

"Yeah," Addison said and let out a laugh. "Poor guy." It was so ironical that Derek found out about Mark and Stevens at the same time as he found out about his exes.

"I know!" she laughed, making Addison smile. "That's so brutal," she continued laughing and stroked away some tears. It was hard to say if it was tears of sadness or happiness. Maybe a mixture of them both.