Author's Note: Well, first things first, I have to apologise for how long I've left you hanging since the last chapter. I've had a friend staying, then been on holiday, been ill, plenty of things to prevent churning out the next instalment. Aside from that, thank you for all the reviews – so excited to have passed the hundred mark. Anyway, here's chapter sixteen for you. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: As before

Addison sat on her precious suede sofa, stunned, for a very long time after Alex left. That familiar sense of humiliation was radiating out from the pit of her stomach where earlier there had been a flood of desire, and she stared blankly out over the London skyline. Far below her, headlights of cars wound their way along the road, and streetlamps set an eerie orange glow across the city. In a couple of places, there was the blue flash of an ambulance or a police car but here, in her rooftop paradise, she was too far removed to be able to hear the sound of the sirens.

After a little while, she looked down to see goosebumps risen on her arms and realised she was shivering with the cold, especially in the places where, before, her skin had been covered by his. The cold felt like it had permeated right into her bones, and she sat there, frozen. It wasn't until, much later, when the flame of one of the candles sputtered and died, having burnt all the way down, that she was able to move.

Pulled out of her reverie by the subtle change in light, Addison got up and blew the rest of the candles out, turning the main lights on again to banish the last vestiges of the romantic atmosphere. How quickly things can change. Looking down, she realised that in her hurry to cover herself she had buttoned her shirt up all wrong, and she sighed heavily. She didn't even have the energy to rebutton it; he'd sapped every last drop of it out of her.

Going to the kitchen, she took a tumbler from one of the cupboards and poured herself a large glass of vodka, neat, wishing fervently that her freezer had been up and running long enough to have some ice in it. It wasn't the same without it. Nevertheless, she drank it in two gulps, wincing and shuddering as it burnt its way down her throat. At least it warmed her up a little.

How was she back here, again? Did she honestly never learn? It had been exactly the same as before, she had let him in, let him get close – he'd wanted to get close – but as soon as the point arrived where some deeper commitment might be required, you couldn't see him for dust. At least he'd had the courtesy not to screw me this time, she thought bitterly.

But then, she reasoned, he had warned her. He'd told her that he wasn't a relationship person, that he shut people out and pushed them away. Why should she expect anything different? That was what he did last time. There was no reason why things should suddenly change. Well, not so suddenly, but still.

His actions didn't ring true though… You couldn't be as passionate, sensitive, intense if you didn't feel something. You couldn't look at someone the way he did, as if she was the only person in the world sometimes, and not have any emotion behind your eyes. You couldn't be that caring, and not care, it wasn't possible. They'd shared so many little moments; the almost kiss by the fountain in Trafalgar Square, the way he'd been tonight, when he said "you're beautiful". And before, the first time around. A thousand looks and touches, a constant stream of electricity. Not all of it could be meaningless. It just couldn't be.

So okay, he was trying to protect her. He felt something for her, just as before, and was pushing her away, just as before. Well, this time, she wasn't going to let him.

She poured herself another drink but now downed it with a new confidence. He wasn't going to get away with this whole noble, cowardly charade again, simple as that. Tomorrow, she was going to confront him.

When Alex fled, he made his way as fast as he could to the nearest tube station and jumped on the first train that he came across. It was far more by luck than judgement that it was the one he needed to take him back to the hotel. As he sat there – late enough to get a seat but not so late it was crowded with drunken revellers – he looked determinedly at his feet and paid attention to no-one. He could see in the corner of his vision that there was a woman a few seats away that was trying to catch his eye but he wasn't interested.

Christ, what was he doing? Of all the mature, adult, sensible ways they could have talked this through… He ran. He fucking ran. Idiot.

Seven long years since he'd last been that close to her, seven years in which he hadn't been entirely alone, but he had been lonely. He'd missed her. Izzie was his best friend, and Meredith understood in a way that no-one else did, but Addison was…

Everything.

And he couldn't believe he'd thrown all that away, again. What had he been playing at? Did he honestly want another seven years of being dead inside? In fact, he'd been dead inside for as long as he could remember, except when he was with her. It hit him that he didn't know how to be any different. That perhaps he was scared to be any different. And that scared him.

As soon as he was back at the hotel, he went straight to the bar. Steve took one look at his face and put a whiskey in front of him.

'What've you gone and done now?'

Alex ignored him, and knocked back the drink.

'Well, you must have done something.'

'How do you even know where I've been?' Alex asked, shaking his head in wonderment. 'How can you possibly know where I've been?'

Steve refilled the glass without needing to be asked, and pushed it back across the bar with a grin. 'Well,' he said slowly and with a thoughtful expression, 'partly because you're late, even later than you normally are with work. Partly the look on your face.'

'Fair enough,' Alex nodded.

'But mainly because you've got lipstick on your collar.'

Immediately, Alex's hand flew to his shirt and rubbed at it. He looked down and his fingers and smiled ruefully at the light red colour that had come off on them. 'Oh. I guess that might have been a bit of a giveaway huh?'

'Just a bit.'

Finally Alex felt a little of the tension that was stretched across his brow, his shoulders, ease and he sighed. 'Seriously mate, I don't know how I do it. She was right there on the sofa, beautiful, and I ran.' He groaned, and shook his head in disbelief at his actions. Did he really run? 'Fill her up again Steve.'

'Nope, I'm not going to let you drown your sorrows.'

'Dude, I'm the paying customer here.'

'And I'm the responsible bartender.' He pointed towards a sign above the bar. 'Refusal of service is at my discretion.'

'Don't be an ass.'

'All right, all right, one more. But when she comes marching up to you tomorrow demanding an explanation, you're not going to stand a chance if you're bleary eyed and hungover and stumbling over your words, pathetically inadequate though they will undoubtedly be. She's going to have worked through the hurt, humiliated stage; it's going to be nothing but white hot anger by the morning. You need to be…'

'I need to be anaesthetised against the disaster that was this evening. And I've blown it, she won't want to even see me tomorrow, let alone demand an explanation.'

'Not that I can say I know Addison, because I'm still waiting for an introduction,' Steve said, hinting heavily, 'but something tells me this isn't over. I'd have my apology speech pretty well rehearsed if I were you.'

At the word "apology", Alex groaned again, and hit his forehead on the bar.