It was almost twelve when Michael parked his car and headed toward the courthouse. He was meeting with his lawyer at a café for lunch just across the street to go over everything. They had to be in court at one. Frank assured him everything was in order but Michael wanted to go over everything one more time just to make sure.

The icy wind whipped around him as he made his way across the street and into the café. To his surprise Frank was already there. Shrugging out of his overcoat, Michael slid into the booth adjacent.

"Did you bring everything?" Michael asked.

Frank smiled at his client. "Of course. That's what your paying me for remember. Here's everything," he said as he slid a large folder over to Michael.

Before he could open the folder the waitress came to take their order. As soon as she was gone however, he dove into the material in front of him. He was still reading when she came back with their food.

Frank had been Michael's lawyer long enough to know this was normal for his client so he just sat back and began eating. Michael however, didn't even glace at his food until he closed the file. Looking up, he pushed the file back to Frank and reached for his lunch. "I'm not a lawyer, but everything seems to be there." After another moment Michael added, "I didn't mean to question you, it's just…"

But Frank stopped him. "It ok."

The rest of the meal was finished quickly as neither one of them wanted to be late.

Michael walked into the courtroom and saw Nika already sitting behind the large desk with her lawyer. When she saw him, the look on her face was one of disgust. A very different look from the last time he'd seen her in his apartment.

Frank and Michael took their seats and a few minutes later the judge was entering the courtroom.

Less than thirty minutes later, Michael was walking out of the courthouse and back to his car. It was done. He was divorced. Once getting behind the wheel of his car, he sat there a moment to take it all in. In a lot of ways he couldn't believe this was real. He'd thought he would be paying for the rest of his life for breaking Lincoln out of prison and all that followed, but now…now his life was beginning to make sense again. The woman he'd married to help him escape, but had never loved, was now behind him. He only had six more months and eight days left to serve on his parole and then he would officially be a free man again. And best of all, he was engaged to Sara. It all seemed surreal to him. There was still a part of him that felt as if he didn't deserve this but that was changing with Sara's help. He trusted her. And she was showing him, little by little, that it was ok to be happy and enjoy life again.

Starting the car, he headed for home.

Sara hadn't known what to expect when she'd went to pick up her car. All the man told her was that it was ready. Since Michael had already gone, she'd called Lincoln to take her. All was fine until the man behind the counter had told her that what they'd fixed today would be $526.39, however, she needed another $2,000.00 worth of work done. $2,000.00!

Sara hadn't known what to say so she paid the man the money she owed and took her keys. When she'd come out of the shop, Lincoln was waiting on her. She must not have been masking her shock very well because the first words out of his mouth were, "What's wrong?"

It was too cold to stand outside and talk so she slipped back inside his car and explained what the man had said. "Would you like me to take a look at it?"

Hope bloomed in Sara's chest. "Would you do that?"

Lincoln gave her one of his winning smiles, "Of course." A little more seriously he added, "I might not be able to fix it, but at least I can tell you if it's worth fixing."

Sara reached over and gave her future brother-in-law a kiss on the cheek. "That would be wonderful. Thank you."

A small blush appeared on Lincoln's cheeks. "Your welcome. Would you like me to follow you home?"

Sara looked down at her watch. "No. That's ok. It's only a few miles so I should be ok. And Michael should be home soon. I hope."

Lincoln lifted an eyebrow at this. "Oh don't look at me that way," she said. "I mean I know he'll be home. It's just…well I'm hoping everything went…smoothly."

The pauses in her comment made him wonder why she didn't think it would. "Any reason why it shouldn't?"

"No. I guess not." Sara had no idea if Michael had told his brother about Nika's visit and she wasn't going to be the one to tell him if he hadn't. "Thank you again for the ride Lincoln. We'll see you Thursday." And with that she got out of the car and made her way to her vehicle.

Sara arrived home to find Michael pacing a hole in the floor. When he saw her enter he scanned her from head to toe, looking for any sign that something was wrong.

"Is everything ok?" she finally asked when he didn't say anything.

At odds with himself over how to respond, he remained silent. He'd been so scared when he'd come home to find her gone. There'd been no note and the first thing that had crossed his mind was that there'd been a price for him to pay and Sara was it, again. Knowing that wasn't a logical answer he'd racked his brain for a reason but his mind just couldn't focus. When she'd walked in he hadn't known what to do, how to react. When he finally got his body moving however, it was to cross the room in giant strides and pull her tightly to him.

Sara wrapped her arms around him but she was growing concerned so she repeated her question. "Michael is everything alright? Did something happen in court?"

Michael slowly pulled back, but didn't release her. His eyes were brimming with tears although she could tell he was trying to hold them back.

Shaking his head, he finally answered. "No. Everything went fine. It's done."

Bringing her hand up to caress his face, "So why are you upset."

Closing his eyes for a minute to compose himself, he tried to explain. "I know it's silly but when I came home and you weren't here…I panicked."

"Your right. It is silly." She said mater of factly then softened her tone, "You know I'm not going anywhere. Lincoln took me to pick up my car."

He pulled her close again. This time Sara wound her arms around his neck and just held him. They'd made amazing progress but it seemed there were moments like this where he still lacked confidence in their future.

They stood like that for a while, just reassuring each other of the others presence and love. Finally pulling back, his hands found hers, "I picked up some Christmas movies I thought we could watch."

Sara's eyes lit up at this. She hadn't sat down to watch Christmas movies since before her mom died. "What did you get?"

"The classics of course." He said with a hint of a smile. Taking a step backward, he didn't relinquish her hands and she followed him to the couch to begin what turned out to be a Christmas movie marathon.