When they arrive at the facility, most of the press corps has gone and Coach has them ushered into his office right away.

"Are you alright?," he asks Nico.

"I'm fine," Nico answers, his usual stoic self again. "Didn't get much sleep last night, but I'll live. And before you ask: don't worry about the charge. It's a hoax. Devin says it probably won't even make it to trial."

"Yes, well, I'm afraid a possible trial is not the only thing we have to worry about," Coach says.

"What are you talking about?"

"I just got off the phone with Mark Cuban. He said to tell you that, although the deal with the Hawks is still on, he's withdrawing the offer he made you, since, and I quote, this legal hassle with the Pitmans is bad for business."

"Oh my God," Dany moans, face going colorless with shock and her eyes round like dinner plates.

Nico storms away with his mobile pressed to his ear before Dani has time to blink, and she looks wearily at Coach. "You know, it could be just me getting paranoid, but I doubt we've seen the end of our troubles with the Pitmans."

"You don't have to tell me, Dr Santino" Coach groans. 'I'm pretty sure my ulcer's just woken up again."

Dani leaves Coach's office in search of Nico, but he's nowhere to be seen, and Dani guesses she can understand that. What she can't understand is the text Lindsay then sends her, which has her hurling through traffic again, for the second time that day.

"Ray Jay is leaving… Tonight!"

"He packed his bags, mom, he's leaving tonight," Lindsay says as she's coming down the stairs, just when Dani sets a foot inside the door. The bag that sits on the hallway carpet predicts nothing good.

"Ray Jay, what's going on?," Dani says, playing it as calm as she can muster.

"I've made my decision and I'm going."

"No. You can't just take off."

"Mom. Juliette has a private jet. She wants to get out of town tonight. I don't have a choice."

"Yes, you do," Dani says, pleading. "Honey, I've been where you are. Head over heels, heat of the moment. But you can not just throw away your life in a snap second because of a girl. Okay? So, just put that down, let's take a beat, we'll talk."

"There's nothing to talk about. Dad already tried. I made up my mind, I'm going."

"Ray Jay, I love you, you know I love you. But I don't support this. I can not support this, you are making a huge mistake."

"It's my mistake to make," Ray Jay says, and Dani needs to fight back tears and fight back the urge to grab Ray Jay's ear, the way she used to do when he was five, and drag him up to his room, have him stay there until he comes to his senses.

Yet all she can do is withdraw when Ray Jay kisses her and tells her he loves her, playing one last card that she knows won't make any difference. "If you walk out that door, you're on your own."

"I know," Ray Jay says, and it shocks Dani to see that the little boy Ray Jay once was is gone. It's a grown man, albeit a very stupid one, giving her one last solemn look and then walking out the door. Lindsay storms of towards her bedroom, leaving Dani standing alone in the hallway. It feels like someone's pressing against a bruise over thin skin: a deep, rounded ache that flowers open in her chest. She just stands there, crying quietly in the hallway of the home she can't seem to keep together, until her face is a disaster zone of tears and running eye makeup.

In the middle of the night, Dani wakes up to loud knocks on the doorframe that send her heart rate skyrocketing. For once, she prays it's Nico. That he's somehow managed to swoop Juliette's jet out of mid air, made Ray Jay and Juliette see the error of their ways and have them come home. When she does open the door, it's to Matt, looking queasy and serious. Dani wonders just how much worse a day can possibly get.

She lets Matt maneuver her into her office, sitting her down on the couch, and Dani's so tired she's hallucinating.

Matt won't look at her. He touches his forehead, slides one hand into his trouser pocket. "Noelle…," he stammers, "I… She…"

Dani feels a creep of sickening, knowing suspicion roiling her stomach, but she waits for Matt to get it together enough to say it.

"She's pregnant, Dani. Noelle…"

Dani blinks. She should be feeling pain right now. Crippling hurt even. But instead it's just a cold numbness that takes root in the base of her spine. She's probably cried all her tears before. "I see," she says, voice level. "Is it yours?"

"Yes," Matt whispers. "She swore. And I believe her. Dani, I don't know what to do…"

Dani takes a deep breath. "You do know what to do," she says, echoing Dr Gunner, "you just don't want to tell me."

This moment, this room, Matt staring at the floor between them, it feels surreal now, like it's happening to someone else, like Dani's watching herself from a distance. Dani knows all too well that the sensation is basically a defense mechanism to being stuck in an emotional roller-coaster.

"She wants to keep it. And I can't… I can't not be a father to this baby, Dani. A real father. Not one who visits every once in a while."

Dani stares at the wall. This is her room, she thinks, where she helps people uncover what's hiding in their unconscious, where she comforts and holds the hands of grieving men and women. The room looks and feels exactly the same now that she's the one grieving, although what it is exactly she's grieving for the most, she can't say. In 24 hours she's gone from hoping that happily ever after was within the realm of possibilities to a place where everything has disintegrated. Where Ray Jay is gone, and Matt as good as, and Nico… Somehow her heart aches at the thought of Nico and she finds herself wishing he was there, taking care of anything that upsets her the way he used to. Her mind is a muddled mess in which nothing is very clear except one predominant desire: to have Matt leave, now. Suddenly her floor looks very enticing again, but she reminds herself it's not over yet, that she can't fall over into the deep end. Even with Ray Jay and Matt and Nico gone, Lindsay and T.K. still need her, the team still needs her. It's a funny thing to realize at the bottom of yourself, when you're entirely spent, that there's something hidden away for emergencies.

Dani exhales, all the air whooshing out of her. "Maybe this is the universe telling us something, Matt," she says. "You got what you wished for. Just not… Just with a different woman. Maybe… Surely, it's for the best. Because I lied when I said I wanted to have your baby. I never have and I never will."

The last color on Matt's face goes away, and Dani knows it's brutal, but somehow it feels important - burning every possible bridge, every possible way back. Dani gets up and moves to the door. She stares at a point somewhere above Matt's head, who's still gaping at her with his mouth hanging open. "It will take some time, Matt, before we'll go back to anything resembling normal. We'll get there eventually, I hope. But now, I would very much like you to leave." Matt gets up too, looking lost. At the door he leans into her, just briefly, sounding choked when he says, "I'm so sorry, Dani. About everything."

"Me too," Dani whispers, as she closes the door forever on the man she thought she was going to grow old with.

§

Nico does his own disintegrating, by himself in his loft that very same moment. He's been drinking all evening, something he never does, after the phone call with Mark Cuban made it clear that Cuban wasn't going to reconsider. From the way Cuban flustered and tutted, Nico is pretty sure Gabrielle somehow managed to get her hooks into Cuban and is calling the shots behind the scenes. Very well, then. So he stays with the Hawks for the time being.

Dani again weighs heavily on his mind, having him almost sick with worry. First there was a text from Juliette, informing him they were on their way to Paris. 'They' could only mean Ray Jay had indeed not come to his senses. Nico can only imagine the despair it must have thrown Dani in. He wants to tell her, but he won't, not yet, that she shouldn't worry - already he's put someone in play in Paris, to watch over them so they don't get into too much trouble.

Just a minute ago, one of his little birds informed him Donnally had just left Dani's house - tires screeching and everything. That same little bird had told him Donnally had met Noelle Saris earlier, and from the way she was eyeing Donnally at the press conference and the fact that Donnally and Dani's relationship had apparently ended again, not a day after their reunion, Nico can make an educated guess. The reporter's pregnant. And Donnally's a total idiot.

Nico contemplates going over to Dani's house, but it's getting close to morning and by now she's hopefully asleep. He thinks about how lost she must be feeling, wonders if she's spread herself out again on the carpet in her office, like a drowning angel. How everything managed to turn itself inside out in the course of one day, he'll never grasp. Still, the desire to go over to Dani's house is so palpable he can taste it. Instead, he pours himself yet another whiskey, trying to drown his own ragged emotions in more alcoholic stupor. With the state they're both in, it doesn't take rocket science to figure out where they'll end up, and while the thought of emotionally fraught, desperate comfort sex isn't completely unappealing to Nico, he also knows it's a bad idea. A very bad idea. Things have changed between him and Dr Santino. He can't just show up anymore, whenever he thinks she might need him. This time, it really is her move or nothing.