Cristina dropped her head and walked slowly away from Owen and Emma. "Good night."
She wanted to reply, but the tears choked her. She couldn't say a thing.
Emma looked back at Owen, "So you wanna get out of here?"
Owen looked at her for a while, sympathy in his eyes, "I-I can't. I'm sorry." He ran after Cristina. He ran like his life depended on it. In a way, it did. Cristina was his life. She made him whole.
By the time he got to Meredith's old place, no one answered the door. He thought of the next best place- the house in the woods.
Owen knocked on the familiar door, familiar because he'd been there so many times before. The owner of this place was his wife's person for years and now remains his ex-wife's person.
Meredith opened the door. Without asking any questions she said, "She's upstairs in her room."
Owen trudged up the stairs, her sobs got louder as he neared the door to Cristina's room in Meredith's house. He wondered if he should have knocked, but he didn't, just opened the door. The sight before him made his heart drop to his stomach. The woman he loved was on the floor, still in her gown, sobbing into the bed. He was pained to silence at first, but then spoke, "Cristina, I love you. I know we were going to try to see other people, but I can't. It feels wrong. It feels like I'm cheating on you. My heart will always belong to you and only you. I can't love anyone else." Cristina lifted her head and watched him with her tear stained face as he continued, "You broke it off for me. You wanted me to be happy with a wife and child, but there's one thing wrong with that. I can't be happy without you. No child can make up for the love we share. I don't want a child if it means I can't be with you." He went over, sat next to Cristina, and held her as her sobs slowed. She looked up to face him, but when she blinked, he was gone.
Cristina sat up in her bed and realized she was still in the gown she'd worn to the gala, her hair a tangled mess. What had happened after she left the hospital was her imagination. She'd made it up-a place of pure bliss, a place where she and Owen could agree to stay together and work through the things that had been pulling down their relationship for years. But it was just that: made up. It wasn't real and now she had to go back into work and face her ex-husband, a man who was learning to love again. In a way, learning without her.
Moving on...
without her.