When she gets on the little commuter jet with Joe and some of the other veteran talent she noticed him texting someone before takeoff with a little smile on his face.

She leaned over into his space. "Who is she?" she asked meaning to sound conspiratorial and teasing but it comes off more possessive than she intends.

He looked at her oddly. "Cammie. It's Cammie."

"That's a change…"

He sighed giving Nikki a measured glance. "Look I gotta try with Cammie and not for my kids, but I gotta try because I love her. In order to do that to really give it all I got? I have got to quit using the fact that we loved Luca in the same way as a crutch Nicole. Because I accidently shut my wife out."

Hearing she's nothing more than a crutch stings like a wasps nest has been planted on her chest. She simply lifts her chin. "Back off I got it."

"That's not…Thank you."

"I wish John would fight for me." She whispered

"That's a two sided fight my friend." He replied.

As silence filled the cabin air she ordered a screw driver from the attendant totally ignoring Bryan's recriminating stare.

-/-/-/-

After the show she takes a nameless stranger to bed. In hopes to numb the pain she feels, the constant ache of missing John and the life she thought they had. She uses the sex to forget the things she's hiding from. She's hiding from the pain of the fact that she'd wasted her life loving John a man who refused to give her children with the exception of Luca who wasn't even halfway hers because John had refused to marry. The hardest thing is to grieve the loss of Luca alone. Grieving everything she had given up for false dreams and half-truths.

She can lose herself in the rhythm and the heat of it all the release of endorphins overriding her sorrow. It even overrides just for a moment feeling of losing a battle buddy, a friend, when Joe told her to back off today. It had hurt more than she expected. Maybe they were too close but Nicole honestly liked him she'd never expected to like Joe.

She can hear her mother somewhere in the back of her head telling her that to be with John needed to learn to be okay alone she had never mastered that.

When the guy rolls off her and high ebbs away she feels just as cold inside as she has for the past six months.

-/-/-

John sits in the gorilla enclosure sipping his Jack hidden a Big Gulp cup. "Sir we're about to close." A woman about Luca's age said giving him a gentle nudge meant to encourage him on to his feet.

He murmured sadly watching the Silverback sleep. "My son loved it here…He thought the gorillas would be something to see."

"And were they?" She asked with a gentle smile.

John shrugged laughing to himself. "Nah they were asleep, and so were we. Actually he loved the big cats I think." He squinted in thought.

Unbidden tears hit him and he shoves them away. "I loved this tiny spot though…it symbolized hope… now though I'm not sure what it means or what I'm supposed to hope for." He got sloppily to his feet. "See you next week." he read her name tag. "Tatum."

She looked at him with so much kindness and humor his heart ached. Who woulda thought simple kindness could make him miss his boy. "Sir if you take a cab? I will pretend that's tea in your cup."

"Deal kid, you got a pretty name." He said.

"Thanks, my Dad named me."

He walked away from the curly headed girl thinking two things. One he missed being called Dad. Two, Luke would have liked that girl.

-/-/-

They sit in the little room that smells like whole field of lavender has taken up residence in Joe's nose he knows it's meant to relax him but it's truly just given him a headache and nothing more.

He looks at Cam who is fiddling with her journal. He wants to reach over and touch her but is too afraid of being rebuffed.

"Cam could you please read your journal work from the exercise to Joe?" She nods. "Turn and face him as you do. Acknowledgement of him is important."

"Okay…:" She turns toward him giving him a tremulous smile. "Okay here goes…"

She cleared her throat. "When did I break him? How did I do this? It was never my intention to leave him so beaten down. He doesn't even look the same. I'm not sure how losing Luca made us old but we are… we're old. He looks so worn and I just want to fix it, I don't know how though because… he doesn't talk to me. Fighting isn't talking. I wonder sometimes if when looks at me he sees all the time lost trying to love me. I'm hard to love…"She pauses to swallow back tears and wipe away the few that escape and Joe's heart feels wrenched out as she continues on.

She shrugged but her voice broke. "I know that and I know for as much as he loved Luca it was added weight a responsibility I never expected anyone to want. In some ways especially Luca colored in what our relationship looked like. Neither of us can maintain our balance since the loss..." She took a breath as though acknowledging the loss is like being punched.

More tears drip silently down her face. "I hope he still loves me. I pray I haven't pushed him away too hard and too far, If I have…" she bites her lip and chokes back a sob.

"Hey Cammie…" he started to speak and reached out for her trying to nudge her chin so she looks up at him.

The doctor jumps in. "Let her finish Joe, She's okay."

"If I have it's my own fault, I will never forgive myself for it either. I love him and I'm not sure he knows or if I can say it in a way he can understand. I feel like he's going to leave me, he's the only person to make me feel like I belonged somewhere. Me, little orphan Cammie. I love you. Please, please, don't leave me. I can't lose you too."

He immediately reaches out and brushes the tears off her cheeks. "Joe…" the doctor interrupts.

"No, let me fix this part please? We're here to fix us and I need to say this so just let me?" he pleads.

He holds her face in hands so she can't look away. "I love you. Do you hear me? I love you and I'm leaving, I'm not running, and I'm not going to die."

Her body shakes with force of trying to hold in her tears. "But he did…" She said having broken down into heart wrenching sobs. "He died and he left me… everyone leaves me." He gathered her to him.

As he holds her he speaks into her platinum hair, yeah he still hates that. "I'm not going anywhere Cammie. I'm here and I'm ready to fight for us. For as long as it takes, you know I don't know how to quit."

Once Campbell's tears have calmed Dr. Sands sets them back on track. "Joe would you please read yours now?"

Joe sort of freezes for a second afraid of what showing his feelings will mean and or feel like. Cammie squeezes his hand and he remembers a time when his girl deserved his all. Above all else he was all hers. He wants it back being all hers so he opens his mouth and tells the unvarnished truth as he feels it.

"As I look at her my epically strong, indomitable wife I wonder how we ended up here in this place. Staring at each other, not communicating. We're totally different people trapped within ourselves. I find myself jealous that she gets to feel the loss nobody questions her if it shows on her face. No one cares if her work suffers because grief steals away your every thought. I'm tired of shoveling work, anger, silence, and indifference on top of the pain so no one sees it. I feel awful for being jealous that the person I love most feels the worst pain. I'm the man, I work and I provide I keep moving. I don't have the time to be sad." Cammie looks so wounded he can't breathe.

"Is there more?" Dr. Sands prods.

He nods. The words blur on the page, he realized he was crying. In front of Cammie.

"Then continue, she'll survive."

"Really the only thing I want to do at all is be with Cammie. To cry with her, to be angry with her and not at her. She's my world, my partner, the person who taught me what grace was, the holy kind that's hard to find. She looks so tired, she's trying to keep up her mask and keep going. I want to help her; I used to just know…I want to talk to her. I want her back. I want her to know I love her. I want us to survive."

He looks to Cam afraid of what he will see after laying his truth bare. "This is a start Joey." She gifted him with a tender smile.

-/-/-

She stands in the aisle carrying all manner of contraceptives and pregnancy tests. Lucy taps her shoulder with more force than usual. "Yes." She said glancing over shoulder.

"Pick a box." Lucy signed and if Sage could hear she knew the tone would be dry, impatient, perplexed. "Either you are pregnant or you aren't so take a goddam test before you end up on "On I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant: Grieving Widow Edition!" She said.

Before Sage can even think it through she's responding loudly and without bothering to sign anything. "You're right either Am or I'm not but what you're forgetting is that my baby could have the same horrible fucking thing that took Luca from me! If that happens I'll be ten times more wrecked than Luke's entire family combined because I will be widowed and eventually childless so excuse me for being afraid to pee on the goddamned stick Lucy!" She explodes all over her best friend.

You can hear a pin drop throughout Rite-Aid. She knows because she can see the shock on her fellow shoppers faces. Operational ears not being a requirement.

AN: I own nothing but the OC's Tatum is a drop in from another Verse if you can name which story and chapter in which she makes original debut you will get a surprise next chapter! If you liked it tell me! Thanks as always, to you the reader and my silent partner in crime…-MM