Where is she? He wonders as she pulls up in front of the main entrance of the Swedish. He barely gets out of the car as he spots her walking out the door.

His heart plummets by the sight of her. Her lips are swollen, her eyes are puffy and her eyeliner is smudged. She's in a short black skirt, a white, now rumpled, silk top with lace beneath a short sleeve fitted jacket that she has left unbuttoned. She must've come here straight from that meeting, he realizes.

"Ana, over here." He shouts as she stops and looks for him.

Their eyes meet and his world seems to crumble, as hers well with tears. She forces a weak smile onto her lips, but it doesn't reaches her eyes.

In a heartbeat he has closed the distance between them, and he wraps his arms around her presses her against his chest. She sobs quietly, her shoulders shaking, her now so petite frame, fragile against his strength.

Totally dumbstruck over her state, he doesn't know what to say. He just stands there, in broad daylight, holding her tightly, not giving a flying fuck if anyone from the office might see them.

"What's wrong?" He finally asks, as the sobs racking her body start to be farther apart.

"She… No… I…." Her incoherent words are a hardly audible, as she starts sobbing again.

"Sh… baby. It'll be alright," he murmurs into her hair as he strokes her back. "Let's get you home."

He ushers her into the passenger seat and buckles her belt, kissing her on the cheek on the way. Tears are rolling down her cheeks and he starting to freak out. Handling crying women has never been his expertise.

When they get to her door, she fumbles with her keys, her hands shaking so badly that she finally just shoves the keys into his hands.

He opens the door, and she stumbles in, kicks off her heels and sinks into the corner of the couch, folding her legs under her body, squeezing a large pillow in her arms.

"Please... Tell me what's wrong?" He hunches down in front of her.

She lifts her gaze, her clouded blue so void of warmth it chills his soul. She says nothing.

"What were you doing at the Swedish?" He tries to be specific, hoping that simplifying his questions might somehow get her to answer. Nothing.

"Were you visiting someone?"

She finally responds, shaking her from side to side.

"Did you have an appointment?"

She squeeze the pillow harder and nods.

"What for? Are you ill?"

She shakes her head, and wipes off her cheek with the back of her hand.

He frowns with frustration, he can't figure her out. There should be some damn manual for crying women.

"But something's wrong?"

She nods, her lip quivering again.

"Can I help?"

She shakes her head. "No one can help." Her voice cracks.

He reaches out and strokes her chin that is damp beneath his touch, she sighs and leans into his hand. Slowly he moves closer and without losing eye contact until the very last moment before his lips touch hers, he kisses her. There's a strange current that flows between them. He can't quite grasp it, but he feels it. It's not a sexually loaded kiss, as a matter of fact it's nothing like any of the kisses they've shared before. He wills for his strength, and his calmness to somehow transfer into her and soothe her. The feelings he already has developed for her, are much stronger than he'd like to admit, but there's no way for him to deny them. It breaks his heart to see her like this.

"Let me try," he whispers onto her lips, and kisses her again, this time a bit deeper. Slowly but surely she responds to his kiss, tentatively parting her lips and meeting him halfway. His blood rushes through his veins, but he controls himself, reminding his body that this time it's not about sex.

He sits beside her on the couch, and she snuggles into his side. He presses a kiss onto her hair, and inhales her scent. Her hand is resting on his chest, her fingers mindlessly playing with the buttons.

"Tell me," he says.

"I had an appointment with Dr. Greene."

"What for?"

"A regular prenatal checkup..."

His body goes rigid by the word prenatal, but she doesn't notice, all her focus is on keeping herself together.

"I laid on the examination seat... Just like the last time. We talked about the Emmys... Laughing at the costume failure of that comedienne. Dr. Greene squeezed gel onto my tummy and pressed the Doppler to my skin." Sobs are racking Ana's body, but she continues, the words now spilling from her lips at an increasing speed. "Dr. Greene stopped laughing, her expression going from happy to worried and then grim. I heard the swooshing sound of my heartbeat and all the other noise the Doppler usually picks up. But not the sound we were searching for." Ana's shaking all over by this point. He holds her tighter, his heart breaking at what she's been through. No wonder she's a mess.

"She left me alone for a moment. I don't know for how long. I wiped off my tummy, got dressed and sat down, hoping that I'd snap out of the nightmare. Dr. Greene asked me to follow her to the other room, and again I bared my lower abdomen. She switched on the ultrasound." Ana pauses, and grabs hold of his shirt, wringing the fabric between her fingers. "It confirmed what I was afraid of as we didn't hear the galloping... He was so tiny... Tinier than he should have been... I prayed for him to move... For anything to move. But nothing did." Her sentences are chopped by the sobs, breaking through.

Fuck. He feels the air being punched from his chest by the impact of her words.

"I'm so sorry, Ana." He whispers, holding her tighter, his mind reeling with all the information thrown at him. She's pregnant? It explains her rounded shape, he realizes now. Was pregnant, he corrects himself and frowns as the image of Callahan's smug face flashes through his mind. Now, where the fuck is he? Does he know? He has to. How can he leave her like this? What kind of a monster gets his mistress, or girlfriend or whatever the hell she was to him, pregnant and then moves her to the other end of the country all alone? Out of sigh out of mind. Discarded her like a piece of trash. That bastard. His blood boils with fury.

Her weak voice snaps him from his thoughts.

"He... It… Had died a few weeks ago, Dr. Greene told me. That's why he was so tiny… I've failed him... I failed... I'm so sorry..." She bursts in sobs, hiding her face in his chest.

"Don't... Don't blame yourself, Ana... There's nothing you could've done." He strokes her back, desperately hoping his touch will soothe her. All the while his own emotions are brewing up a storm. Callahan better fucking watch out when I'll get my hands on him. The fucker won't know his ass from his elbow after I've taught him some manners, he muses. "Have you called him? Does he know?"

"Called whom?"

"Callahan."

She shakes her head.

"No. I'm not to contact him... Unless it is work related."

That son of a bitch.

"You've got to tell him."

"What the fuck for?" She sits up, anger flaring on her tearstained face. "He doesn't want anything to do with me. He made it very clear."

"How could he not? You were pregnant with his child, for fucks sake!" his words are heated and he stands up and paces back and forth.

"He wanted nothing to do with the pregnancy in the first place. He won't care that I've miscarried." She hisses and stands.

"He should be here. He should be the one here seeing you through this..." He stops in front of her.

"What the fuck for, Christian?"

"It's his..." Her eyes flare with fury.

"It's not his. It was not his fucking baby, alright!?"

"But who..."

"It was yours... It was ours." The adrenaline spike that held her anger vanishes, and her shoulders racking with held back sobs. She runs to the back of the room, disappearing through the door.

He stands there frozen, her words like a slap to his face. What the fuck? It was his? Snapping out of his haze he runs behind her. Surely he hear her wrong.

She sits in the middle of the bed, her knees folded tightly to her chest.

"What did you just say?"

"It was yours." She repeats quietly. Her lip quivers and a lone tear runs down her cheek. "I'm so sorry Christian."

"How…. What?! Why the fuck didn't you tell me earlier?"

"I don't know…," she answers. "I freaked. We had one night and one flight, Christian. It's not like I wanted to get pregnant."

He scoffs.

"Here I was worried for some fucking STD, and all the time you were knocked up…. Oh… Holy shit." He says to himself and flops down onto the bed, his head spinning. Internally he kicks himself, he should have thought about it.

"I thought I'd get over you Christian. That night, those moments on the beach… They've haunted me all this time. I tried to forget you… but you made sure I couldn't. I fucking freaked when my period was late. James got furious." She runs her hand over her cheek, her eyes glazed by the memory. "At first I wanted to get rid of it… But I couldn't go through with it. I was selfish… I wanted to have someone who would love me… Only me. But now I won't have anyone who…" Her voice fades off. He reaches out and tugs her down to lie with him; wrapping his arms around her, he holds her close. You'll have me.

"How do you know it's not Callahan's? It could be his right? You were sleeping with him… right?" He asks her quietly.

She shakes her head. "It's not his."

"Are you sure?" How the fuck can she be sure?

"Yes, I'm sure…" she pauses and looks at Christian. "He has had a vasectomy."

Yeah, probably not to have a bunch of love children all over the US, he thinks but manages to keep his mouth shut.

He just holds her, totally silent. He finally gets it. She lost his baby. There had been a part of him growing inside her. And now it's gone. An odd sense of lost sweeps through his body. It would have been his kid.

Fuck.

The thought of having kids hadn't crossed his mind in ages. Ever since Mia made it very clear she didn't want to have kids, her body being a piece of art she didn't want a pregnancy to destroy, he had buried the hopes of one day having a bunch of kids running around. His heart breaks at the thought of what could've been.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you Ana. I swear to god I would've been there for you if I just had known." His voice breaks and he kisses the top of her head. "I should've called you. I should've fucking called you the minute I landed in Portland, and every day after that."

They lie in quiet, just holding each other for what feels like an eternity, both settling into the unfortunate situation fate bestowed upon them. His mind is still filled with questions, but he leaves them for later not wanting to risk her crying again.

"I have to go back tomorrow." Ana finally says.

"Where? LA?"

"I wish... To the Swedish."

"Oh." He says confused.

"Dr. Greene will perform a D&C..." her voice cracks and she closes her eyes. He holds her tighter.

"You don't have to tell me... Unless you want to." Having overheard Tina's friend talking about her miscarriage, he knows what the abbreviation means. He remembers the teenage girl crying as she was telling his sister all about it, sitting on the couch in the living room. Ana shouldn't be going through this on her own, she needs someone by her side.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

She looks into his eyes, her eyes filled with surprise and wonder.

"You would do that? For me? You would come with me? What about work?"

"Of course, Ana... You need someone there with you… And it's my responsibility to be there. God knows I wasn't there before." He waits for her to accept his offer. Fuck work. If it becomes an issue he'll work in the lost hours.

She looks at him and breathes the words "Thank you." onto his lips, before kissing him gently.

Their evening floats by, in a cloud of tender kisses, wiped tears, shared details of their lives. Both of them being new in Seattle, makes them free from obligations to anyone, and time ceases to exist.

His phone rings, disrupting their peace. He picks it up, refuses the call and shuts off his phone. He doesn't care who it might have been, whomever it was, can wait until tomorrow. Tonight he is finally getting to know the woman who dragged him by his dick out of the dark fog that had surrounded him. She had him by his balls, literally, but the more he learns the stronger the hold she has on him becomes.

They cook dinner together, their fine dining of the evening consisting of mac and cheese with a quick salad on the side. As they prepare the dishes together, they manage to momentarily forget all about the miscarriage, his spectacular failure at plating the mac and cheese making them both laugh until they are on the verge of tears. Oh, how good it feels to laugh, he thinks, looking at her fighting for control over the fit of giggles. He hugs her from behind, kissing beneath her ear. "That's the most beautiful sound." He says and smiling she leans into his body.

Without intention, his hand brushes by her lower abdomen, where her hand is automatically covering the beginning of a bump. Their fingers touch, and the light mood they shared is shattered, as pain rushes its way back to their hearts.

"I was scared to tell you." She confesses. "At first I thought I was imagining it all… The nausea, the aching breasts. Then I did the positive test, and life as I knew it was over."

He stokes her hand, urging her to go on.

"James found the pregnancy test, and he… Well… He didn't handle it well." She strokes a few strands of hair behind her ear, but her fingers brush over her cheek just a bit slower than necessary.

"Did he hit you?" He asks, clenching his jaw. Fucker keeps a mistress and then hits her for cheating.

"He didn't mean to."

"Ana." He growls.

"Don't Christian. That's ancient history by now anyway." She pauses. "I was going to call you, as soon as I found out. But I… I thought you'd hate me when you found out."

"I wouldn't have hated you… I would have been shocked yes, but I would have been there for you… And the baby." He strokes her tummy and that is enough to push her over. Sobs rack her body as she twists in his arms and buries her face into his chest.

"Christian... Stay with me tonight." She finally asks her voice so faint he hardly hears it. He tilts her head up, and closing his eyes he kisses her forehead, and then he brushes his lips against hers. Her gasp, leads him to deepen the kiss and how no matter how hard he tells himself to keep things platonic, his dick throbs uncomfortably in his pants. He knows it might be weeks before he'll get to plunge into her sweet heat, but it doesn't matter if it would be a year. He has already fallen hard, and he will wait.

AN: Thank you all for reading and reviewing!

H xx