Jack and Jennifer arrived outside Dr. Baker's office five minutes before the scheduled start time. Jack had to wait outside her office before, but not like this, knowing what was going to come. Jack looked up at the ceiling; he loosened his grip on Jennifer's hands so that their fingers were barely touching at all anymore.

"Jack? Are you okay?"

Jack nodded. When Dr. Baker opened the door and gestured for them to come inside, Jack let go of Jennifer's hand entirely. "You know, I just remembered, Vern has a dentist appointment. He needs for me to cover for him at the office. I can't do this today." He motioned Jennifer in though, "But you go in. You gals have a great time." And then he winced; that was absolutely the wrong thing to say. "I meant, you great gals have a…time. Yeah, that's it. See ya."

"Jack?"

Jack was already halfway to the stairwell. "I have to go. Vern has an impacted tooth. Do you know the impact of an impacted tooth? It's a big impact!"

Jennifer relented, "Okay, you tell Vern that I hope he'll be okay. You tell him that I'll be thinking about him and wishing him well."

"Great, because yeah that nitrous oxide, that's…tough."

When Dr. Baker and Jennifer had shut the door, Jennifer looked forlorn and disappointed. "I'm okay with that. Really. I expected it actually."

"It must be a lot to think about—Jack's past when juxtaposed with what you're going through. It must be tough on both of you."

Jennifer nodded.

Dr. Baker continued, "Well, let's not worry about Jack today. I hope that you and what you need isn't getting lost in the midst of reconciling the present with Jack's past.

"No, of course not. Jack has been wonderful. He's been giving and patient and kind. The kind of boyfriend that any woman would hope to have in the aftermath. I have no qualms about Jack whatsoever."

"And yet…" Dr. Baker began.

"And yet what?" Jennifer asked. "I don't know where you're trying to lead me."

"I'm not trying to lead you anywhere. I just want to make sure that you are taking care of you."

"Of course, I am."

At that moment, Jack had come back and was standing outside the office door. He had been silently cursing himself for breaking his word. He had promised her many times that he would go to her counseling session with her. She deserved that he keep his word. It had only been five minutes, ten tops. He could go in there. He could get over his nervousness that sent him fleeing earlier. He balled up his right hand into a fist and dug his nails in the fleshy part of his palm and swung open the door.

From the doorway, he said, nearly breathless from his nervousness, "So I called and Vern's appointment was yesterday. So when he was grumpy this morning, it must've been his normal grumpiness. I'm sorry for the confusion. I'm here now. What did I miss?"

Jennifer gave a shy smile, stood up, took him by the hand and sat him down next to her.

Dr. Baked asked Jennifer, "We've already started your session. We can continue with that while Jack listens in if you like or we can switch it over to issues affecting both of you."

Jennifer looked to Jack, "Is it okay if we do what we'd talked about?"

Jack let out a long breath, "Sure."

"I just want to get it over and done with so it's no longer hanging over our heads as something that 'must be done' for us to get better."

"How would you like to do this?" Dr. Baker asked. "Jack can just start talking or if that would be too much for him to say and too much for you to listen, then maybe Jennifer could ask questions." She looked at Jack since he'd be doing most of the talking and confessing. "Jack?"

Jack looked over to Jennifer. "It's her choice." On this day more than others, Kayla's words and advice to him in his office weighed deeply.

"I think questions are better. Keeps it limited. Focused." Jennifer saw Jack looking up at the ceiling and bit her lip; she couldn't put him through this. "You know, let's not do this."

"Jennifer, we should. We've come too far now. I'm fine. Truly."

"No," she had already tested him and pushed him to the limit. How many ways did he have to prove that he loved her? She couldn't ask this of him. This conversation wasn't needed. What Jennifer needed was to know that he loved her—and he did. What Jennifer needed was his patience and support—which she had. What Jennifer needed was to know that there would be a life to build towards—and she knew that. She didn't need to know specifics of that night.

"Jennifer, I don't want to be scared anymore. And I don't think you want to be either…about anything. Let's do this for that reason and so that there is nothing unsaid or forbidden between us. There is so much that is forbidden and that can never be said between Kayla and me—and that's for very good reason. I don't want that with you and me. Now, if I recall, your first question to me that night at my house was 'Did I hear Kayla saying no?' Correct?" Jennifer reluctantly nodded. "Well, we should start there."

For Jack, Dr. Baker's presence faded away. He was aware of Jennifer and of his current self as he had to take his mind back to what he had been. He got up and stared at that painting of Dr. Baker's—the one he had focused on in earlier sessions and had wanted to haggle over buying it instead of dealing with his issues. He was staring at that picture like it was a portal into the past and he could see that night come into focus within the frame of that picture almost as though he were watching a movie.

"I—It's hard for me to think back to that night. It cut my life in two. Before that, I was nice, inoffensive, but I lacked a strong moral compass. People would have described me as a good person—not because I was actually good, but because I hadn't done anything bad…yet. That all changed that night. Did I hear Kayla say no? Yes, but I didn't care. I didn't care in that moment.

"I have thought a lot about that night since then—a lot. What I'm going to say will merely be what I've thought about in the wake of what I did. None of this is justification or excuses or trying to blame Steve or Kayla. It's just me trying to explain and expand on that answer of 'Yes, but I didn't care.' Trying to distinguish out my reasons. Not to find excuses.

"I was hurt, but I didn't want to hurt her. I wanted to hurt Steve. I wanted her to feel something for me. I wanted her to change her mind. I knew this was my last night as her husband. I had heard them down on the docks after the election. They were talking, almost teasing each other, about who would be the one to tell me that the marriage was over now that the election was over. I knew it was the last night of our marriage. My last night to be with her. My last opportunity to turn it all around and make her love me. I thought that if I was wild and dangerous like Steve, then I might be lucky enough that she would want me back. I was imagining that scene in Gone with the Wind where Rhett Butler carries his wife up the stairs telling her that for this one night she's not going to be dreaming of another man. Next scene, Scarlett wakes up singing and happy. That's how I envisioned it, the way that I—as an invincible Deveraux—could take a hopeless situation and just turn it all around and come out the victor."

"And at the time, I was so convinced that I was the better man—better family, better upbringing, better education, better job and he was just this one-eyed, two-bit pool hustler. I was such a fool. I didn't know the true worth of men and that he was a much better man than me. I didn't know their kind of love and I just didn't understand that kind of love just can't be denied. Despite how much better I may look on a job resume, I could never come between them. I see with better eyes now about the love they share and I—I know that love myself now too."

"I hoped that it would work out and she would want me. But if it didn't happen like that and she still walked out on me in the morning, then at least I would have had the memory of that one night—our last night—together as husband and wife. And that would hurt Steve too."

Jack paused; he needed to qualify his statements, "Don't think that it was just some huge misunderstanding or wishful thinking on my part that spiraled out of control. I pulled her down on the couch and told her many times 'I'm going to make love to you,' and the unspoken part of that sentence was 'whether you like it or not.'"

The whole time Jack had spoken, he was looking at Dr. Baker's painting and not at Jennifer. He was scared to turn around and see her reaction. He was worried he would see hateful eyes. He could handle sickened eyes or devastated eyes, but not hateful eyes, or worse the placating, complacent eyes that lovesick Melissa had when she had learned the truth.

Jack turned around and saw Jennifer's eyes were sad and distraught. He wanted to rush to her, kneel in front of her, and beg her forgiveness. He could never do that with Kayla, but he wanted Jennifer's. He wanted Jennifer to forgive him for not waiting for her like she had waited for him. He wanted to beg forgiveness of ever being that type of man with that past—about Kayla and the prostitutes and having Steve assaulted and using her cousin Melissa and helping Harper escape from prison and cheating Diana out of the Spectator. He should have been stronger and a better man without that dark past so that he wouldn't have to be subjecting her to this now. He wanted to be a man that had always been worthy of her. However, Jack stayed still and didn't run to kneel at her feet; he needed to maintain his resolve and objectivity to get through this. Looking at Jennifer, the judgment that he expected, the judgment he knew he deserved from her never came.

Jennifer looked up at him with pitying eyes. Her heart ached with compassion—not compassion that she freely doled out, but compassion that she knew he had earned. Earned from his actions and love that he had shown to her for such a long time. Earned because he was strong enough to speak of the worst of himself. Compassion that Lawrence did not deserve and probably never would deserve.

Jennifer finally spoke, softly but clearly "I have no more questions."

Jack cleared his throat and started speaking as before, "I'm not quite done. You asked 'Did I hear Kayla say no?' and that answer was yes. So you could ask, 'Hearing her say no, how could I go on?'"

Jennifer shook her head. She didn't want to hear more. She knew that what Jack had told her that night in the mansion when she first asked the question was correct. His answers wouldn't bring her peace about Lawrence. His answers would not explain Lawrence's actions. All the haunting questions that were torturing her about Lawrence could not be helped from his description of what he had done to Kayla. It was torture to him and to her and in the end, not provide any solace or explanation about Lawrence. Even Jack as he had been three years ago was far different from Lawrence. There never was and never will be any viable comparison between these two men. Regardless of how the world (or Jack!) might want to equate the two men because of their crime.

"I need to finish this. At least up to a certain point of what happened that night. After which, more detail would just be betraying Kayla's privacy. I stole knowledge from her that I had no right to and the very least I can do is to keep that knowledge to myself. However, there was a moment that night. I had pushed up her dress." He looked at Jennifer and said to her directly, "this isn't pretty." Jennifer nodded. "I had pushed up her dress and taken off my pants and I was on top of her, holding her down, pushing down on her left shoulder. She was looking away from me even as she was trying to push me off of her. I put my hand on her chin and forced her to turn and look at me. In that moment, all illusions were stripped away. I knew this was NOT a wild and crazy time for her that would make her re-evaluate her future and want to stay with me. I knew in that moment that she wouldn't be singing and smiling in the morning like Scarlett O'Hara. I had the opportunity to stop. To end it all, before I actually…penetrated…her. I would've been an even more pathetic loser, but not a rapist. I had the chance to stop, knowing the truth, and I didn't. From that moment on, it was definitely rape and I knew as it was happening, that it was rape. And I did it anyway. I will spend the rest of my life dealing and analyzing that choice."

Jack stopped there. To speak of the aftermath would be to tell of Kayla's reaction and that would betray her privacy. "I'm done. I've nothing left to say."

Jennifer wasn't ready to speak. She was trying to process it all. So Dr. Baker spoke first. "Jack, I know that was very difficult for you to say and Jennifer, I know that was very difficult for you to hear. I'd like to have individual sessions with both of you soon so we can discuss about what was said today. I would like to see if there was anything Jennifer would like to say now. I don't want to put you on the spot though. Jennifer?"

Jennifer was a torrent of emotions. She felt sorry for Kayla. She felt sorry for the Jack that he had been before that night. Most of all, she felt sorry that she had asked this of Jack at all. Now that she knew, she wanted to forget. She wished she had never asked. Wished she had never thought it necessary to travel down this road. Wished she had never asked him to put these images into her mind. Part of her knew he was right. She didn't want forbidden, unspoken words between them. Not if they were going to have a future together. But now that it was known, she was unsure of how to move forward.

"I love you Jack," she started. "That will never change. But that isn't really the issue at this moment, I suppose."

Jack nodded. Love wasn't really the issue. However, he could feel their future and their life slipping away.

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Before Jennifer and Jack exited out of the Dr. Baker's office, both promised to schedule individual sessions with her. Neither of them knew what to say or how to proceed. They both stood in the hospital hallway in an awkward silence. Jack wanted to escape. Jennifer was struggling with her conflicting and contradictory feelings. Both did have the same question running through their mind.

Where do we go from here?

Jack pointed at the stairwell, "Umm, I have to get back to the office now. We'll talk later?"

Jennifer nodded, "Thanks. Thank you again for coming with me to a counseling session."

Jack wasn't sure at all if 'thanks' was appropriate or necessary considering the circumstances. "Sure. Sure. You're welcome to come over later...of course…like always."

Jennifer nodded, but then she decided not to pretend that she would be over later just to make things easier in this moment. "Umm, Jack, I think…tonight…I'll stay back at my place…at the loft. Umm, Frankie's gonna think I've moved out entirely if I don't stay over every once in a while."

Jack knew this was coming. He had expected it and tried to act like he was fine. However, he still felt like he'd just been sucker punched in the gut.

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Jennifer couldn't handle going to the elevators; she would have to pass the nurse's station and bunches of people and she just wanted to escape and avoid seeing anyone. She ducked into the stairwell and collapsed on the concrete step.

She had her elbows propped up on her knees, her hands over her face. She had made a disastrous mistake. Images, unbidden and unwanted, were clamoring into her mind. She tried to block them, shake them away, but they just kept assaulting her.

To see Jack, her precious Jack, in that role. He had done it. She knew he had done it since long, long before there had ever been even a whisper of them together. She had always known it; before she came to work for Jack, before she befriended him, before she flirted with him, before she kissed him, before she loved him, before she told him she loved him, before she made love to him, before she agreed to marry him, before he had told her in some detail about what had been going on in his mind on that fateful night. So why did it change things now? She wasn't being fair. She knew it! But yet, things had changed, just like Jack had feared. Just like Jack had warned her. He'd warned her about Lawrence. He'd warned her about speaking of his past and she had been naïve and convinced herself that everything would be okay.

But things were different now in her mind. She wanted to apologize to Jack, say that she wished they had never gone down this road. She was sorry for being unfair. But unfair or not, she needed some distance from Jack at this moment. She needed to take a step back, reassess, and decide once more if she could take the leap with him.

Jennifer heard the stairwell door open up and she quickly swiped at her tears.

"Jennifer?"

She silently cursed. It was someone who knew her. She looked up and saw Dr. Baker; she'd switched from her high-heeled sling-backs into tennis shoes and had apparently planned to jog the stairwell for her lunchtime exercise.

Plans were changed now. Dr. Baker offered her hand to Jennifer. Jennifer took it and they walked back together the ten paces to Dr. Baker's office.

"Do you want to talk?" Dr. Baker offered.

"That's what people do in your office, isn't it?" Jennifer replied glumly.

"Not always. Some people go shopping. I had one patient who spent an entire session trying to buy that garage sale painting off of me." Dr. Baker indicated the one behind Jennifer.

"This one?" Jennifer rose up and stared at it. Dr. Baker smiled. No one else ever noticed that painting except Jack and now Jennifer. "I bet it was Jack, wasn't it?"

"Can't say. Patient-client confidentiality. Tell me about what I walked in on."

It was tough for Jennifer to get started, "I—I didn't want to go home with Jack tonight. We've been together every night for the past week or so—not intimate, of course, just together. And it's been wonderful. He makes me feel comfortable in my own skin—I wasn't feeling like that for a long time. I don't have nightmares when I'm with him. But I just couldn't…today."

"That's understandable. You heard a lot. It's a lot to take in; to see both the light and the dark. To hear it now with everything that you are going through. But tell me, if you had gone home with him tonight, what would it have meant? What would it have signified?"

"Betrayal," she blurted out and then she immediately tried to swallow that word back. "No, that's not what I meant."

Dr. Baker nudged her forward gently, "Betrayal of whom?"

Jennifer shook her head. "I shouldn't have said that. That's not what I meant."

"Jennifer, it's just you and me here. You need to be okay with your feelings. Admit them, analyze them, and then decide where you want to put them. Do you want those feelings up on a high shelf where you can look at them but can't reach them or do you want those feelings on your night stand and part of your everyday life?"

Jennifer's mind was cloudy and conflicted and she struggled with Dr. Baker's metaphor, "I want to feel whole again. I want to be with Jack. Those are my feelings that I want to be front and center. That's what I want for my life."

Dr. Baker looked pleased, like they were making progress. "Okay, we need to get there though. There are other feelings that you have. We need to deal with those first and decide where you want to place those. You can't decide without first analyzing and dealing with your feelings one-by-one. Can you do that?"

Jennifer nodded. "Can we do something first though. You were about to exercise in the stairwell when you saw me and you interrupted that. Why don't we jog the stairs together?"

Dr. Baker considered her request. It was unorthodox, but Jennifer was having a hard time opening up. Dr. Baker knew some of Jennifer's history. She had been abandoned by her mother in a bus station and her mother had been in an institution for years. Her father had put her into a boarding school in Switzerland instead of raising her himself. Jennifer probably always felt she needed to be lively and vivacious and to please people or they would abandon her. Admitting any slightest bit of weakness, any bit of need for herself instead of giving to others and she feared people would not need her and abandon her once more. Even now, she was subjugating herself in the aftermath of being raped. She had bottled up those feelings and hadn't willingly told anyone but her therapist. Dr. Baker knew that Jack had found out through other sources that learned by accident. She also worried that Jennifer prevented herself from getting too emotional or indulging too many of her feelings out of fear that she would lose control and become unhinged like her mother.

Dr. Baker suspected that if Jennifer thought she was too 'high-maintenance', too much emotional trouble or bother for someone, then she would lose that person just as she lost her parents. Therefore, she made her feelings and her traumas as unobtrusive as possible to everyone around her. Even with her therapist, Jennifer had 'inconvenienced' her by interrupting her lunchtime exercise and Jennifer, instead of focusing on her intense personal hell was worried about Dr. Baker's calorie burn.

"I'll tell you what," Dr. Baker replied, "we'll go jogging in the stairs if you consider my question and answer it when we come back to my office."

"Question?" Jennifer asked, dreading to be called to account for her heedless answer earlier.

"Who would you be betraying and why if you went to Jack's home tonight?"

"Oh, that question."

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Jack knocked on the door of Steve's and Kayla's house and silently prayed that Steve would answer the door. Fate, for once, smiled on him. Steve opened the door and Jack backed up to the edge of the porch. Steve smiled; he knew this would be a recurring theme for them for a long time.

"Porch swing?" Steve offered. Jack nodded. "What's going on?"

"Jennifer and I are over," Jack said forlorn.

Steve smiled again; almost chuckled.

Jack snarled, "I'm glad you find this so amusing. Thank you very much."

"Jack, Jack. Say 'we're going through some difficult times' or say 'sometimes…that…woman.' But don't say that you're over. Don't you understand by now that you two will never be over? You two are soulmates. She is the love of your life and you are the love of her life. Take it from one who knows. If I had a nickel for every time that I thought that Kayla and I were over then I'd be as rich as you. And you know what? We're not over and we never will be. And neither will you and Jennifer." Steve lightly punched Jack's chest. "That's why I was laughing, little brother, because you remind me too much of me."

Jack managed a weak smile merely for his brother's sake.

"So, why are you two over this week?"

Jack didn't want to say. His brother was in a teasing, jocular mood and he didn't want to ruin that. However, he didn't want to be infuriatingly and tiresomely vague once more either. "I went to Jennifer's counseling session with her. I offered to go and I went knowing that she'd want to discuss…my past. I told her everything…about me….about then. I was…brutally honest about the whole thing."

Jack was right; he watched his brother's mood change.

Steve knew this was inevitable. After what happened to Jennifer, he knew that Jack and Jennifer would both have to confront Jack's past. He worked hard to stay in the moment and deal with this Jack—and forget the Jack from all those years ago. After a long moment, Steve finally said, "I thought you didn't want to tell her."

Jack couldn't look at his brother. As much as he needed to talk about this with Steve and Steve was allowing the discussion, they were trampling on the past and through some very difficult painful times. Jack hated reminding Steve once more of who he had been. "I didn't, but then I was hoping we were everything that you just said—soulmates and such—and if so, then I couldn't hide myself away from her forever. I need to just say it and get it done so we could move on."

"And you can't move on now?"

"Well, she's not wanting to move on with me. She's been staying over at the penthouse," At the mention of the penthouse, Steve looked confused and Jack realized he'd need to go off on a tangent. "Yeah, moved out of Harper's house. Couldn't stay there anymore with the ghosts. Got a new place. 300 Devon. Forgot to tell you."

Steve smiled a little. That was such a typical guy thing. Move and forget to tell anyone. "I probably would have figured it out eventually."

"Anyway, she's been sleeping over at my place for more than a week, with me holding her. We haven't been doing anything more than that, but it just felt great having her there. She said it was keeping the nightmares away."

"That's good. And…?" Steve nudged.

"And now she back to sleeping at the loft. I guess she prefers the sleeping kind of nightmare instead of this living nightmare," Jack tapped his chest indicating himself as 'the living nightmare.'

Steve rolled his eyes, "Jack, everything I said earlier still applies. You and Jennifer are not over. But firstly, you need to accept your past and stop going around like some wounded puppy. Secondly, Jennifer loves you and will want to come back to you. Thirdly, until she does, keep yourself busy."

"Really? That's your advice? I'm a wounded puppy and get a hobby?"

"Yeah. If you wanted mothering, you'd have gone to Mama. By 'wounded puppy,' I mean that I don't think that you have really gotten past your past. Not just Jennifer, but probably also you. You're embarrassed by it, I know, but I also think you're scared. You're still too fragile and you don't have the confidence yet that you won't return to being that guy." Steve poked at Jack's chest, "You need to become strong within yourself. You need to be confident—like I am—that nasty Jack is gone forever. Until you are though, then it's going to be difficult for you to move on—to become a husband, to become a father. Think of yourself, twenty years from now, are things going to still be as awkward and tense between you and Kayla?"

Jack shook his head, "God, I hope not."

"And why not?" Steve pressed. Jack stammered, unable to answer right away so Steve answered for him. "Because sometime within the next twenty years, you need to deal with demons and put them to rest for good."

Jack looked down; Steve had hit too close to what was really bothering him. Steve recognized that too. "Want to talk about those demons yet?" Steve asked.

Jack remembered his dreams; the memory of them still haunted him. He shook his head.

Steve heard Stephanie crying and stood up from the swing to go relieve Kayla, "And as for a hobby, best hobby I can think of is you investigating Lawrence. How's that going?"

"Steve, please don't change the subject," Jack said plaintively, "I'm…., just really quick, because I don't want to keep you from Stephanie. Did I do the right thing? I never seem to know."

Steve took pity on him and patted his back, "If your motives were to try a build an honest and open life with her instead of giving her a reason to push you away, then, yes, you were doing the right thing." Steve paused and measured Jack's reaction, "But only you can answer that."