All I can say is WOW! Thank you all so much for reading the first chapter and your reviews. I never expected so many people to be interested in this story. Hopefully this next chapter doesn't disappoint.

CHAPTER TWO

Several minutes had passed since Jackson had revealed how he and April knew one another. Or perhaps it had been hours. It was difficult for him to judge the time and he was not about to let her out of his sight to check his watch.

She had walked out of his life seven years ago and never looked back. He was angry with her, sure. Yet none of those negative feelings were enough motivation for him to look away from the face he now realized he had been missing every minute of every day for all of those years.

And somehow, her standing in front of him was not another cruel dream. It was reality. April was in Seattle, working at the hospital that his family's foundation owned – the same hospital that he had been running for the past year. Even more surprising, her brother was the same Dr. Hunt that he had worked with every day for the past four years.

Jackson remembered how she had spoken about her brother. She told him that after her parents died, her brother raised her on his own while putting himself through medical school. She worshiped him. It was only in the present moment that he realized she never mentioned his name.

It wasn't until April broke their gaze to look toward Owen that he fell out of the spell she had cast over him and allowed himself to hear the voices around them.

"You were engaged? To each other?" Meredith repeated. "How? When?"

"Nice Avery," Alex laughed from behind him.

"Avery was the guy from med school?" Owen questioned April.

"Yes," she admitted softly, staring down at her feet.

"Hold on," Alex interrupted. "You two have worked in the same hospital for years and never realized that Avery was screwing your sister while they were in medical school?"

"Watch it, Karev," Owen growled.

Cristina, who had been unusually silent, chose that moment to break out into laughter. "This day just keeps getting better and better."

April pulled her lower lip between her teeth, the same way Jackson had seen her do before every exam they had taken in medical school. Her anxiety was subtle to everyone else in the room, but to him, it was palpable. Thousands of miles and years worth of time had not changed his ability to read her.

"You know what? I'm feeling pretty exhausted," she spoke softly. "I really appreciate all of this, the party and the introductions… but I think the jetlag is getting to me. I'm going to catch a cab back to the hotel."

"I'll give you a ride," Owen offered.

"That's not necessary," she started, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

"You shouldn't be out in a city you don't know by yourself."

"No!" April snapped. "Just – don't, okay? I really just need some time alone. I don't need a babysitter, especially not you."

A part of Jackson wanted to follow her when she stormed out of the bar. But the part that still harbored resentment for the way things ended between them won out. He turned around to leave money on the bar for his drink and immediately felt swarmed by the other doctors around him.

"Why have you never told us you were engaged?" Meredith asked him. "I thought we were all friends here."

"It was a lifetime ago," he answered, pushing past all of them toward the exit. "We were classmates, then we were friends. We started dating, got engaged, and then we weren't. End of story."

"What happened?" she continued questioning him.

Jackson shook his head. He knew they were all his friends, but even if he wanted to explain to them why his relationship with April ended, he couldn't. He still did not understand it himself. One day, they were filled with excitement about planning a wedding and starting their intern year, and the next, she was gone. He had invested a lot of time and energy into trying to answer the question Meredith had posed, and he was not about to open an old wound just to satisfy his friends' cravings for gossip.

"I'm going home," he informed them just before he marched out the door.

(5 a.m., Next morning, Cristina and Owen's Loft)

Owen poured himself a cup of coffee and paced around his kitchen. His nightmares had been infrequent since he completed his therapy for his PTSD, but he had not been so lucky over the past few weeks. He had been hopeful that April's safe arrival would calm his fears and allow him to get a restful night's sleep. Unfortunately, all it had done was bring on a whole new kind of stress.

"Owen," Cristina yawned from across the room in their bed. "Did you get paged?"

He cursed himself for making noise and waking her up. She was definitely angry with him, even though she refused to express it. Instead, she spent the evening before hammering him with questions about his sister and what he knew about her previous relationship with Jackson Avery.

What he had told her was the truth – he had been serving his first tour in Iraq while April attended medical school. She had written to him about a boyfriend, but never mentioned his name. He had no idea that the man she had been so in love with had been working alongside him for all this time.

By the time they completed that conversation, Cristina had drifted to sleep. He knew this kind of anger from his wife. It was worse than when she screamed at him or cried. This was the type of bitterness that left him feeling guiltier than any of her other reactions could have.

"No, I just couldn't sleep," he answered softly. "Go back to sleep. You don't have to be into work until later."

"Neither do you. But something tells me that you're not heading to the hospital."

Of course she had to be right. Cristina Yang was rarely wrong. It was what he loved and hated about her. She knew that he had been pacing, just waiting for the sun to start coming up so he could drive to April's hotel and check on her.

"I just need to know she's alright," he explained, crossing the room to sit beside her on the bed. He pulled her into him, letting her settle into his chest. "And I need you to know that I'm so incredibly sorry for not telling you that I was bringing her here. It wasn't fair to you."

"You were probably right to hold off," she admitted with a yawn. "I mean, if I would have been warned in advance, I probably would have run away to Meredith's house in the woods to hide."

Owen smirked. "True. But now you've met my sister. April is smart and strong, sure. But she's hardly intimidating."

Cristina laughed. "Unless your name is Jackson Avery."

(7 a.m., Attendings' Lounge)

April stared at the journal in front of her and sighed. She had read the same article four times already. Unfortunately that had been in her hotel room, which was apparently adjacent to a honeymooning couple who didn't believe in recovery time. After two hours of crying into her pillow the previous evening, she realized she was not going to get any sleep, so she resorted to preparing for her boards. But karma proved to have a sense of humor when the newlyweds refused to take a break from their lovemaking to get some sleep.

Not that she would have accomplished much in the way of studying, even if she had been in complete silence. Her mind kept drifting back to the look on Jackson's face when they came face-to-face the previous night. She used to be able to read his expressions in any situation, but she had failed the evening before. She imagined it was a combination of shock, anger and confusion. At least, that's what she knew he should be feeling towards her.

The door to the lounge swung open quickly, causing her to gasp and slam the journal shut. In any other circumstance, she would have willed her heart rate to go back to normal quickly. But when she looked up and saw that it was Jackson, she knew there was no hope.

"Sorry to startle you," he murmured softly and turned to leave, "I'll come back in a few minutes."

"You don't have to," she argued, "Leave, I mean… I can go study somewhere else."

He stopped and turned back slowly to face her. "What are you studying for?"

"I'm taking my boards next month."

"Your boards? Why didn't you take them two years ago, after the fifth year of your residency?" he questioned. April sensed from his tone that his interest was not as a friend or even an ex-fiancé, but rather as a board member checking up on his new staff.

"I got reassigned to Syria three years ago. Our team there was pretty small, and I would have needed to take two weeks off to come back to the states for the boards. I just couldn't leave them short on staff."

"Syria?" he responded sharply. "What was wrong with Africa? Was it not far enough for you to run away anymore?"

She inhaled deeply, taking in his bitterness. She knew she deserved it, but it didn't make it hurt any less. "Jackson, I owe you an explanation."

"No, you don't," he argued, "Not anymore. The appropriate time for an explanation would have been before you snuck out of my apartment in the middle of the night to catch the first plane out of the country."

"Jackson," she started, fighting back tears as she remembered how sick she had been to leave.

"Or how about when I was standing in front of you in that airport in Malawi begging you to help me understand why you ran away from us? Those would have been great times for you to explain your reasoning to me. But now – after seven years? It's a little late for that."

Malawi was another painful memory. That day had been the only time she had ever seen him cry. After his plane left, she cried for days on end.

"I have felt sick about that every day," she explained. "And I don't expect you to forgive me. I know that's probably impossible. I just – I didn't know you were here. I wouldn't have come if I did…"

Before she could continue with her explanation, Owen barged into the room. "April, I've been looking everywhere for you. I need to see you for a minute."

She looked between her brother and Jackson before addressing Owen. "I don't want to talk to you right now."

"Well, I'm very sorry about that. But it can't wait. So let's go."

"Owen!" she argued.

"Just go," Jackson instructed. "We're done here anyway."

She knew he didn't just mean they were done with their conversation, and it stung. She hadn't been living with hope that the two of them would reunite. In fact, she never anticipated being in the same room with Jackson again. But now that they were going to be seeing each other every day, she found herself wanting his forgiveness. He had been her best friend for so many years, and if there was a way she could get that friendship back, she wanted to fight for it.

But in that moment, she decided to give him the space he requested. She followed Owen out of the room and into the elevator with her arms crossed in front of her chest. She hated that he was now her boss, because even though she was angry with him, she had to listen to him. April cursed herself for not realizing that before she got on the plane to come to Seattle.

When the elevator doors opened, the brisk air flowed in and caught her by surprise. They were on the hospital roof, but there was not a helicopter there, so he obviously wasn't bringing her in on a trauma case. She stepped off of the elevator with him and waited for the lecture she had been anticipating.

"I need to know exactly how much he knows," Owen demanded with his hands on his hips.

"Excuse me?"

"Avery. You need to tell me everything you have told him," he barked.

"How much have you told Cristina?" she argued.

"That's irrelevant," Owen countered, "Cristina is my wife."

"And Jackson would be my husband right now if you hadn't blown that apart!" she exploded.

"You're blaming me now?"

"Of course I blame you!" April yelled. "You were the one who showed up in Boston just as I was about to start the next chapter of my life telling me that I would never be able to have a happy ending! You convinced me that you and I were never going to be able to have successful marriages because of our past! And you are the same person who has been pleading with me to come to Seattle for months now, all the while neglecting to mention that you got married years ago, and that the man I walked away from under your orders just happens to run this hospital!"

"I didn't know that Jackson Avery was the guy from medical school until last night," Owen explained, maintaining his composure. "And you and I both know why you had to leave back then. You can blame me all you want, but it was unavoidable. Now answer my question. How much does he know?"

"What if I told you he knows all of it? Every last detail," she answered spitefully, unwilling to admit that her brother was right. The thought of her unhappiness being inevitable stung worse than the resentment she had been feeling since finding out that Owen was married.

"April…"

She sighed. "I only told him your version of our story… that we grew up in Cleveland and that our parents died in a car accident when I was fourteen and you raised me after that."

"So he doesn't know the truth?" Owen clarified, clearly relieved that she had spend her entire relationship with Jackson lying about her childhood. She found it ironic that a man with so much integrity had been terrified that she might have shared the truth with someone that she trusted.

"No, he doesn't."

"Thank God," he exhaled as if it were the first moment he had been able to breathe in days.

"Not yet," she added.

"Damn it, April!"

"I'm going to tell him everything, Owen. You have Cristina to talk to now. Jackson and I… well, we're probably never going to be anything more than colleagues or maybe even friends. But he means something to me, and I need to tell him before the guilt about leaving him eats me alive."

"Cristina doesn't know," he argued, "And she's not going to. Neither is Jackson."

"You've been lying to your wife this whole time?" she questioned. "That's messed up. It was a lifetime ago, Owen. You should really get over this whole running and hiding thing…"

"How do you not understand this!?" he yelled, reaching forward and holding her shoulders as if he could force her to focus on what he was trying to tell her. "I didn't just call you out of the blue to come to Seattle because I missed you. If that were the case, I would have done so years ago!"

April's anger quickly dissipated into anxiety. "What are you saying?"

"They reopened your file as a cold case six months ago. Bringing you here is the only way I know how to make sure you stay safe," he explained softly. "They're looking for you again, Chuck."