Sam had conveniently received an urgent phone call from Samuel, who was going on about something to do with alphas, and the relation to them and the case at hand. Despite Ryan's protests, he'd left, promising that he'd be back in no time. Call it her mind playing tricks on her, but she could have sworn she saw Dean wink at him before he walked out the door.

She exhaled loudly as he left her alone, and folded her arms tightly against her chest. This wasn't going to be a caring-and-sharing experience for her, she wouldn't let it. Things had already gone far enough, and she'd already let herself cry in front of him about this whole situation more than she should have. If she was ever going to move on, she had to close off her heart. For good.

The stale air conditioner mixing with the smell of dead genie wasn't doing much for her stomach, so she began to walk towards the door.

"Ry, please," he pleaded, thinking that she was trying to make another stealthy escape.

Without turning to face him, she said, "You wanna talk, talk outside. I don't like the smell of this place."

He followed her silently as she walked toward the empty driveway, taking a seat in the middle and bringing her legs to her chest. He sat down beside her, bending one leg and leaning onto his knee. Her heart pounded against her chest, but she fought against the feeling of nervousness. She knew what was coming, and although she wanted to bolt from the driveway and run as far away as her legs would take her, she knew that he needed to say it.

"Look, Ry, I know all of this… it isn't what you expected when you came back-"

"You're damn right, it wasn't," she snarled.

"Let me finish. When you died," he looked away from her, his jaw clenching tightly. It was the first time she looked at him, and the look on his face broke her heart all over again.

"When you died, when Sam died, I was alone. I tried to hunt, and you bet your ass I went to the ends of this damn earth trying to find a way to bring you back. But no demon would deal, and no book had a spell. I was out of answers. You think I watched you die, watched you get thrown into hell, and then packed up the next day and hit the road looking for Lisa? I didn't. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat, I didn't do a damn thing for months except try to find a way to save your ass. To get you back."

Her eyes searched the empty pavement, looking for some snide comeback to send his way, to diminish the efforts that he put toward finding his girlfriend and his brother when they were sent to the pit. But she found nothing. Nothing except a growing, aching hole that had found new home in her stomach.

"And time just kept passing. I never found a damn thing… I even punched Cas one time for telling me that there was no way to get you out. I didn't want to believe it. But after eight months of nothing, I couldn't help but start to feel it. And then Lisa found me."

"Stop."

"You don't want to hear this, I get it. But you need to hear this,"

"You were supposed to marry me! You were supposed to have babies with me! I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. You were everything. Everything. For ten years. Your goddamn right I don't want to hear this," as the words left her lips, she started to cry, but stopped herself before the sobs became uncontrollable. She took in a deep breath and turned away from him, regretting the fact that she'd let herself slip. She'd let her wall come down.

"Look at me."

As she kept her eyes locked on the street, she could feel them start to well up with tears. How could she? How was any of it even possible?

"Look at me."

Her nostrils flared as she shifted her gaze toward him. The expression on her face was no longer hard. It was no longer illustrating the numbness that she felt inside. Her expression was twisted with utter, complete defeat, and heartbreak.

"You know that it's always gonna be you. Deep down, you know that. And as much I don't want to believe it, as much as I'm gonna try to change it, I'll never be able to."

Ryan's eyes shut tightly, releasing two tear drops down her cheeks. With clenched fists, she willed herself to open them, to face the new, terribly reality that she'd been thrashed into.

"But I have to say goodbye to you now," she could see the glassiness in his eyes as the words came out, and he choked back whatever cries were rising in his throat.

The headlights of the Charger illuminated the darkened street, and Ryan got to her feet in a hurry. She looked back just once at the broken man standing in the driveway, the man who would never truly leave her heart. The man who used to keep the toilet seat up on purpose, because he knew that she got up in the middle of the night and was too sleepy to remember to put it down. The man who would pay her in pieces of apple pie to do his math homework. The man who would let her drive his car and do figure eights in stranded parking lots. The man who had saved her more times than she could count. The man who could electrocute every fiber in her being just by kissing her. The man who she was supposed to spend the rest of her life loving.

She locked eyes with him for the last time, and got into the car.