Author's Note:

Before you read, be aware that this is NOT the next chapter but actually a revise of Chapter 4 or "How it All Fell Apart". After some confusion and questions I decided to finish something I had initially written and ended up scrapping (like so many other snippets) and post it here for whoever wanted to read it.

You do not need to read it to understand anything in [articular, this just fills in how Jamie and Ben split up. If you DO read it then keep in mind that this would have happened after the first half of chapter 4 and before the second half of chapter 4. (in other words, where you saw the cut in that chapter.)

I may even decide one day to replace the original ending of chapter 4 with this one, so feedback is always appreciated.

As always, leave me love.

-Liz

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"How it All Fell Apart.2" revised:

There was a medley of noises outside the open doorway; voices all blended together, the rolling of wheels fading in and out, the beeps and hums of machinery synchronizing like an alien musical instrument. She didn't hear any of it though, not at this moment.

Miscarriage.

The last thing she had remembered clearly was being in the car with Ben, the windows down and the air whipping harshly in the vehicle. She was laughing at something he said, their hands intertwined at the middle console between them. He had glanced in her direction for just a second, his warm eyes smiling at her for just one moment in time before they suddenly went wide, his whole face changed instantly and then the world went black. All she remembered after that was being pulled into a hospital and blood...a lot of blood in an area it shouldn't be.

She didn't even know she was pregnant.

"Jamie?" She barely heard the voice the first two times, but by the third her name registered and she finally turned her attention to the man at her bedside. Ben had a bandage down his forearm, some visible scrapes and bruises but overall looked physically unscathed. The look in his eyes however, was a vastly different story.

"Jamie?" He asked again and finally her eyes snapped onto his. He opened his mouth to say something but after a minute of being unable to form adequate words, he closed again.

"I'm going to be picked up and sent home in the next few days," her words all escaped in a low and shallow jumble before she could even process the thoughts that prompted them.

She watched Ben's face closer and it visibly changed for the worse. "You're leaving?" his voice was broken like a board split down the middle.

Her only answer was silence. She looked away again, the weight of his eyes to heavy for her, a dull ache emerging deep in her chest at the look in his warm eyes, but he wasn't going to let the conversation end so prematurely.

"What's your real story, Jamie?" She didn't answer him, but when the silence grew too long he pulled one of her hands into both of his just so he could feel her closer to him.

"You're not really a 'business' woman, are you?" When her eyes finally snapped back towards him there was a deeper, colder darkness there that made a lump form in his throat that he struggled to swallow. A nurse walked in then, a clipboard in hand and an overzealous smile on her older face. The nurse said a few words to the younger woman, asked a question or two and gave her some suggestions before finally finding her way back out of the room, this time closing the door quietly behind her. Jamie however, remained silent.

"Please, Jamie," Ben's voice was so small and low it was barely recognizable.

"If I read you in, everything changes from this point on. You will be under oath not to repeat what I tell you and to keep up any appearances I tell you to keep up." She searched his eyes for something, for some indication that he was being warded off or that her words were making him uneasy. Instead he watched her with an ever-stronger look on his face, waiting for her to continue. "I'm a covert operative for the CIA working global affairs."

His eyebrow raised and his eyes grew but he remained silent, his warm hold on her hands never releasing.

"When I met you I was trying to make contact with someone who could potentially get me towards some very important and dangerous people. I thought I saw him running though and thought my cover was blown when I tripped over your stuff and then met you." She watched Ben closely as he let out a slow and steady breath between blinks. "I usually use the cover of a businesswoman because it's harder to follow up on and easier to keep the details vague."

"And the flight attendant trick?"

She swallowed. "Usually just to impress guys into taking me home with them. My real cover is the businesswoman I told you I was."

He closed his eyes slowly, and there was a look that spread across his face that mirrored pain she couldn't pinpoint. The breath in his lungs was shaky falling out of his nose, but he didn't look at her, his eyes staying closed like it was the only thing he could do to keep it all together.

A silence fell over the room like a dense fog, clouding everything that existed outside of that small room and creating a strange tension that thickened by the minute. They both sat still, her eyes steady, his remaining closed, the only sign that he hadn't drifted off being the slow rise and fall of his chest and the soft circles his thumb made on the back of her hand.

"I had a miscarriage." The words emerged before she even thought them, and his reaction was so instantaneous, it made even harder to speak. The look in his eyes boring into hers was something she had never seen before and it made her grow so cold, she instinctively pulled her hands back from his to get away from the source of such torture.

"You were pregnant?" his voice was miniscule and watery. "With…?" he couldn't bring himself to finish the question, but the subtlest nod from Jamie answered the question. "How?" he choked on the word.

"How does it ever happen?" Watery barriers formed at the rim of her accusatory eyes. "It was an accident. I trusted you because after three days in and out of bed with you I figured I could trust I wouldn't bring some disease home with me and instead I brought something much more significant."

"I'm not blaming you," he started but her voice was rising.

"Really?" the accusation in her voice was more than evident. "Because I was the one who insisted it would be fine. You didn't want to, you were so much more responsible than me and it was just such a foreign situation for me and it was stupid. I'm not a relationship kind of girl. I have a string of one night stands because they are so much easier and I never have to see the guys again after I leave, and her you are, like some tantalizing candy in front of me and of course, with my horrible luck, you're...you."

"What in hell are you talking about?'"

Her nose was stuffy, the warm wetness of tears sliding smoothly down her soft skin. "You!" Her eyes were burning, her voice almost shouting. "You are everything that I should be avoiding. I'm the wild one, the adventurous one, I have a concealed weapon on me at almost every hour of the day, I can tell you about a hundred ways to get away with murder and I've gambled with more dangers than even the most creative mind can imagine. I'm invisible. If you see me, its only once. My entire apartment's belongings can fit into a box, you will never find pictures of me that I didn't plant, and I have 24-hour web surveillance on my name, my covers, and my photo." He was watching her now, his mouth slightly ajar, eyes pleading with her, the pained look on his face. "And you," she had to swallow back the emotion in her voice. "You're this warm spirit, this creative and refreshingly optimistic and kind, and moral guy who is looking for a relationship. You are the suburban guy. You want to have love, you want to make a web in your life, to bring it all together, to have this future I run away from and every time I think about it I just feel like I tricked you into being with me."

"I'm ok with what you do, Jamie. You didn't trick me into anything."

"No, but I did," she said quickly. "I tricked you by giving you the impression that what we were doing could become something more. I tricked you into thinking it wasn't just sex, that their was something between us that their wasn't. I'm not the girl you need. You should be with a nice girl who will love you, who will marry you one day and give you babies, and buy a house with you, and come home from work everyday ready to share how good or bad her day was with you and take photos with you that you can share with friends and be there for you the way you want to be there for her. That is not me."

There was a pleading look on his face, his eyes begging her something silently. "Why are you doing this?" He whispered to her.

A deep, dull ache started deep in her chest, but she paid it no attention. "I'm going home Ben because I should have never came here in the first place."