A/N: Hi there! Happy Monday and happy almost summer :) I cannot believe this is the 10th chapter already, thank you all so much for sticking around despite the angst - it's meant a lot to me. I'm also really glad so many of you liked the last chapter specifically. I hope you feel the same about this one :)


Hailey hated the silence that existed over the apartment. After Jay had snapped at her about being ready for the conversation and lying to each other, and she'd sent her own comments right back, they barely talked.

Living her life felt awkward.

Their short couples days in which they did talk to each other before it ended gave them the foundation they needed to get into some sort of silent groove. Jay still kept the bathroom door unlocked as he showered, and Hailey still helped him get his shirt on when he got dressed. They didn't need to talk to know what the other wanted.

Hailey made all the meals, and Jay said nothing about any of it. He simply got their drinks and pulled out plates for the food. It was sad, and Hailey almost preferred when she ate meals alone. At least then she could listen to music or have the TV on without an underlying feeling of guilt washing through her.

Even when the third day of silence came around and Jay's first doctor appointment arrived, they didn't talk about going to the hospital. Hailey just put her shoes on then knelt next to Jay to tie his as well. Putting a hand on his back, she led him out to the elevator so she could drive him to the appointment.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his knee bouncing against his seat. She frowned and wet her bottom lip. It was the first time since they'd outwardly gotten mad at each other that she felt the need to talk to him. When she'd noticed a look of pain on his face, she had still reached over to him and rubbed a hand on his back. She didn't need to say anything to comfort him, he'd just needed to know she was still there for him. She had no idea if it'd helped or was even appreciated; it'd been mostly for her own benefit.

She knew he was nervous, and she knew exactly why.

"You're going to be okay," she said softly, "You've been taking your medication and keeping the burns clean. Nothing bad is going to come up."

"You're lying again," Jay mumbled.

Hailey sighed and glanced at him. "Jay, are you kidding me?"

He shrugged while looking out the window.

She brushed her fingers over his shoulder and said, "Can we please talk?"

"Now?" Jay asked incredulously, "Now we can talk? In the car on the way to Med?"

Pursing her lips, Hailey shook her head. "Not what I'm talking about."

"Of course it's not," Jay said, "It's never what you want to talk about. I want us to move forward with our lives and attempt to have some type of normalcy again, but all you want is to suffer in silence. You never want to talk."

"Because you do?" she snapped, "You want to talk about things? The last thing we'd even been talking about on the phone before all hell broke loose was the fact that you, once again, were hiding things from me – just like you had been all last summer. You were suffering on your own, and now suddenly you want me to spill everything I've been feeling to you? As if you'd do the same?"

"Maybe I would, but you're really not giving me the chance to do it, are you?"

"You're not ready for the conversation."

"You know what I need?"

"I know you didn't need to go to Bolivia to find yourself."

Like her conversation with Kim days before, it slipped. The words hung in the air like storm clouds just waiting to break. While wanting to hold the conversation back and avoid hurting Jay's feelings, she managed to do the exact opposite. She couldn't keep her true feelings hidden for long.

If she thought the silence that had lasted for well-over forty-eight hours was bad, the silence that was echoing throughout the car right then was deafening.

Hailey felt her chest grow tight against the seatbelt, and suddenly the usually short drive to Med wouldn't end. She needed to get out of the car. She needed air.

She needed to be alone.

The truth was that she had two reasons for not wanting to talk to Jay about the last five months. The one that she'd acknowledged about hurting his feelings was the larger part – the biggest reason. The one that was harder to wrap her head around was the fact that she didn't really know what exactly she wanted to say.

She'd told him back at Walter Reed that she'd wanted to yell and listen to his apology and tell him everything she'd felt during their time apart, but there weren't real words to put to those feelings. She didn't know how to phrase any of it. They were complicated and confusing, and she'd barely been able to word any of it on her own in the quiet of the night when she'd lie in bed thinking about his absence. She'd missed him, yes, but their occasional texts and even fewer phone calls had aided that ache. They'd done nothing to cure her sadness or anger.

That was all still bubbling within her, and, apparently, starting to boil over.

Jay had no response to her. He didn't even make a noise acknowledging her words. He just stared straight forward out the windshield and waited for her to arrive at the hospital.

It was the some of the most painful, awkward seven minutes of Hailey's life.

Upon arriving at the hospital, she parked her car then got out to wait for Jay. She chewed the inside of her cheek and lightly scratched her nails over her jeans as she waited for him to join her at the front of the car.

"You don't need to come with me," he mumbled while passing her.

She shook her head and easily caught up to him. "I'm coming with you," she said quietly, "I'm mad at you, but I still care about you."

It was the most perfect, shortest summary she could think of to describe the last five months of their marriage – actually, probably the last eight or nine months.

Jay scoffed in acknowledgement, but stopped trying to out-walk her; he slowed his clumsy steps and fell into an awkward rhythm with her. It was nothing like how they used to work, but at least they were entering the hospital together.


"Go sit down," she said quietly upon reaching the office for his appointment, "I'll check you in."

"I've got it," he replied and tried stepping in front of her only for her to reach out and grab the back of his coat.

"You're limping, so go sit down," she repeated once he turned to face her, "I told you not to wear jeans today."

"I can't live in sweats forever," Jay said, but finally did as she asked and sat in one of the nearest waiting room chairs.

She sighed and shook her head before stepping up to the counter and writing his name on the sign-in sheet. "Jay Halstead," she said when a nurse looked up at her, "My husband is here for his appointment with Dr. Simmons."

The woman smiled at her and said, "Great, thank you. One second, I'll grab you a short form to fill out."

Hailey highly doubted it really would be short, but still nodded and accepted the clipboard she was handed a moment later. Glancing down at it, she sighed again and grabbed a pen. She knew she didn't even need to ask Jay for any of this information, so she merely stepped to the side and started answering all of the questions on her own.

"Hailey."

She shook her head at Jay's voice in the empty waiting room and continued writing down the list of surgeries he'd recently had.

"Hailey, bring it here."

She scanned the list of pre-existing conditions then drew a line down the 'no' side, stopping to mark that his dad had died of a heart attack and his mom of cancer. It was the first time she felt the pen waver in her grip.

Pat and Amelia Halstead were dead, and their youngest son had almost died as well just a couple weeks before. None of it should have happened.

"Hailey!"

She dropped the clipboard.

Jay had never yelled at her, or, at least, he hadn't yelled at her in years. There was one time in which he had yelled at her, but they weren't dating and his dad had just died, and she'd always excused it no matter how painful it had been. Since then, he'd yet to ever raise his voice at her.

Now, it sounded even louder than it probably was within the silence of the empty waiting room.

Hailey closed her eyes and took a slow deep breath, her hands shaking against her sides.

She heard Jay make his way over to her and grunt as he bent down to pick up the clipboard. His body was against her side a second later, and he whispered, "Can we talk?"

She finally looked at him and shook her head.

"Now," he breathed, dropping the clipboard onto a nearby chair. He didn't wait for an answer before grabbing her hand with the pen still shaking in her grip and pulling her away from the desk.

"What are you doing?" he whispered once they were out of earshot from the nurse, "You can't-"

"I can," she hissed, "I'm your wife. I'm trying to make this as quick-"

"You can't control me," Jay snapped, "You can't. Get that out of your head. This is my life, my mistakes, my choices that brought me here. Let me deal with it how I see fit."

The double-meaning behind his words stung her. She hated them.

Blinking her eyes quickly, she stepped back from him and pulled her hand from her grip. "Don't touch me again," she said shakily, "And do not ever yell at me."

Jay's face softened, and he said, "I…Hailey, that's…I'm sorry."

"Whatever," she replied, "Just go fill out your damn forms so I can take you home."

Jay opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and walked to where he'd left the clipboard. He picked it up before sitting in that same chair and finishing it off.

Hailey knew he basically just needed to sign his name along the bottom, so she remained where she was at with her back to him. Staring at the wall, she tried taking deep breaths to calm down.

She knew there was no part of Jay that would physically hurt her. He hadn't really grabbed her hand that hard and had certainly not yanked her away. He wanted privacy, and she understood that. It'd just been the combination of that with his voice with those damned words that followed that made her not want to look at him right now. It all reinforced that she needed air. She needed to get out of this office, this building, and go walk around. Where she would go, she had no idea, but she needed a break.

It'd been close to three weeks now of nothing but Jay. Every second of her day was spent worrying about him. When she was awake, she was worrying if he was in pain or needed food or if he was tired. When she slept, she had dreams that he was dying or that he'd leave her again. She would pay good money to have five minutes to only think about herself for once.

She almost felt like she needed to go back to work, and that scared her. She was terrified of what that meant for her relationship with Jay and her relationship with her future kids. If she was without work for three weeks for a very good reason, what was she going to do when she got pregnant and took maternity leave or had to go on bed rest before she even had the baby? It all made her terrified of having a family again, just like when Jay had told her about the guys he'd worked with in Bolivia. On one hand, the baby's father could leave them at any second because he needed to figure himself out; on the other, the baby's mother could hate being home with them for more than a day at a time. What kind of family was that?

She felt like she could throw up.

"When I go back, can my wife come?"

Hailey wiped the tears from her eyes and turned to see Jay handing the clipboard back to a nurse.

"Of course," the nurse replied with a smile. She looked past Jay and met Hailey's eyes. Tilting her head to the side, she said, "It shouldn't be much longer now."

"Thanks," Jay murmured then sat in the nearest chair.

Hailey's eyes followed him and watched as his knee began bouncing again. Her stomach twisted.

She hated how he'd made her feel, but she could never and would never stop worrying about him. That was the cycle of love she'd found herself in. It was no longer about getting physically hit and hearing an apology and the words 'I love you;' it was about loving someone unconditionally and struggling to accept their mistakes and still wanting to help them even when they hurt you. She couldn't remember necessarily feeling like that with her family in the past. The love she'd felt for them seemed more like a necessity and the rules; loving Jay was a choice she'd made, and she wasn't sure she could ever choose not to love him. She needed to love him because he completed her and because she wanted to. She wanted him more than she'd ever wanted anybody else in her life.

It's why the pain of his choice to resign and go to Bolivia numbed her. It'd been unbearable, and it seemed to be exactly what she needed to tell him.

She loved him and needed him, and the thought that he hadn't felt the same way last summer absolutely killed her.

She swallowed the words and decided they were how she was going to approach their conversation later that day before rubbing her hands over the sides of her jeans and walking to sit next to him. He looked up at her as she sat at his side, his own eyes looking as watery as hers felt. She nodded and set a hand on his knee.

"Right here," she whispered.

Jay nodded quickly and blinked his eyes a few times. "Thank you," he whispered back.

"But we are talking at home," she said.

Jay nodded again and set his right hand on hers. "Thank you," he repeated.

Before Hailey could reply, the side door opened and the nurse said, "Jay?"

Hailey stayed behind Jay as the nurse led them to a room. She tried listening to the small talk the woman was attempting to make, but she was even more concerned with remembering what she wanted to say to Jay when they got home.

She loved him.

She needed him.

She felt like he didn't feel the same way.

It killed her.

Four things. She could remember four things.

She loved him.

She needed him.

She felt like he didn't feel the same way.

It killed her.

"You can take a seat," the nurse said as they entered the exam room.

Hailey held back a smile, knowing full well that there was no way Jay was going to sit on the table. He'd rather stand in hopes of a quicker getaway than hoist himself up on a table like a child - at least that's how he'd always described it in the past.

Instead of standing, though, he bypassed the table like expected and opted for a chair in the corner of the room. As he sat, he shook his coat off and huffed quietly at his sling.

The nurse stepped forward and said, "I can-"

"My wife can help," Jay interrupted.

Hailey raised an eyebrow at now being called his wife twice so easily and without a joking matter like he'd done in the past, but stayed quiet as she walked over to him. Working quickly, she eased the sling off of him and couldn't help but gently shush him when the stiffness of his shoulder reminded him of what had happened.

"Take a breath," she whispered before stepping back and hanging both his coat and sling on a hook on the wall.

Jay glanced up at her and gave her the slightest of nods.

Once he breathed in slowly, the nurse sent them both a smile similar to the one she'd had in the office and began asking all the questions Hailey was convinced she'd just answered on the forms back in the waiting room. As Jay gave all the same answers she'd just provided, she leaned against the wall to listen. Perhaps she was just imagining it, but his voice almost sounded hoarse from its lack of use over the last few days. Then again, they'd just argued in the car on the ride here and again just five minutes before, so he'd had a recent opportunity to use his voice in preparation for the appointment. She figured it could count as a warm-up.

It was certainly one for their conversation they were having when they returned home in an hour or two.

Because she loved him.

Because she needed him.

Because she felt like he didn't feel the same way.

Because it killed her.

That coming conversation was all she could think about for the next five minutes as the nurse talked with Jay and took his vitals. It scared her beyond measure, but she had to look at like her uncle always told her: if it was scary, it meant she needed to persevere and battle it head on. Only after she completed something would he ever allow her to look back and call it scary. He pushed her to overcome her fears. This conversation with Jay was surely not as "dangerous" as the ferris wheel on Navy Pier given that her two feet were going to be on the ground when it was had, but she needed to look at it that way. She needed to step on the ride and accept what was to come. She could get through it no matter how twisted her stomach felt.

Soon enough, the nurse was replaced with Dr. Simmons, a man who couldn't have been too much older than either of them and seemed all too comfortable with making jokes about seeing Jay again for a work-related injury. His smile quickly faded into a more serious look as he began asking similar questions as the nurse. Not quite to Hailey's surprise, but to her once again boiling anger, Jay's answers remained rather clipped and short.

All she needed was for him to be open and honest about what had happened. He needed to tell the doctors as much information as he could to get the best care they could give him. He didn't seem to understand that, and it pissed her off.

So she began intercepting and adding details to Jay's story that he seemed to be conveniently missing.

"I started therapy while I was at Walter Reed," turned into "He mostly stuck with an occupational therapist, but did talk with a physical therapist before he was discharged. His first appointment here, in Chicago, is tomorrow."

"Right now? A five. I didn't take anything today," was really, "Jay, you were just in pain from the sling coming off, but, yeah, he didn't take anything for pain today - just the usual medications to prevent infection."

And "Pretty sure I've told you before that the questions make me irritable," became "It's been a rough couple weeks wrapping his…our…our heads around everything that happened."

Jay didn't seem too happy with that one, but didn't argue. He couldn't. She knew he couldn't disagree with her. They were both struggling to accept what had happened to him. She saw no reason to hide it from the doctor who was asking his required – and necessary – questions.

The suggestion for therapy was something Hailey expected. Had the doctor not said it, she would have gone out herself to find someone for Jay to talk to. There was no way it was mentally and emotionally okay for him to continue living his life without consulting some sort of professional. She loved her husband more than anything in the world, but she had to accept that she was not a trained therapist. She did not have a psychology degree or whatever doctorate was needed to properly listen and treat people – especially people who'd been medically discharged from the military.

It wasn't any easier to watch Jay undress in front of her and then have the doctor look his stitches, bandages, and burns over. Her eyes scanned his healing chest, and she felt them burn in their own way. She'd been helping him get dressed and shower, but there was something incredibly unsettling about staring at all his injuries under the florescent lights.

Again, she felt like she was going to be sick.

She didn't even have any satisfaction when the doctor unknowingly backed her up by saying that Jay should stick to looser fitting clothes as his burns healed. She physically couldn't smirk or even make a noise at the comment. Instead, her mouth ran dry at the skin beginning to peel alongside his waist and thigh. Any moisture that'd been in her mouth seemed to go up to her eyes in the form of tears.

Her once put-together, healthy, strong husband had been reduced to someone who couldn't wear jeans or run or even bend down to tie his shoes. Nothing was fair. Nothing at all.

The appointment ended without all the tension it had when it began, but with much more emotion than the beginning. Hailey was still blinking back tears when Dr. Simmons said he'd be seeing them both in another two weeks after all the therapy he was expecting Jay to attend started.

The second the door closed, she sucked in a breath and whispered, "Oh my god."

There was a beat before Jay turned and kicked at the chair he'd been sitting at over half an hour before. It crashed against the wall, and he grunted in pain at the quick movement.

"Dammit," he said, "Dammit, dammit, dammit."

Hailey shook her head and quickly walked over to him to place a hand on his pack. "Don't," she whispered, "Do not hurt yourself."

"Right because I'm already broken," Jay snapped, "Already done."

"Don't act like that," she replied softly, "Please. Please don't even think that."

Jay picked up his shirt and shook his head when she stepped even closer to try and help him. "If I'm not broken, then I can do this, right?" he asked, "I should be able to get dressed on my own."

"Needing help does not mean you're broken," Hailey corrected, "It just means you have some setbacks and speed bumps." Again, she tried reaching forward to grab his shirt, but he pulled back quickly.

"I need to try," he stated.

She took a breath and nodded. Her gut told her it wasn't going to work, but she at least understood what he wanted.

For a solid minute, Jay struggled to get his left arm to straighten the way it needed to. He was determined to get the shirt on by himself, and he'd be damned if he couldn't.

To both their surprise, he did succeed in getting the henley over his arms and head. He actually smiled once it was on enough.

Hailey smiled as well and reached out to gently tug the back of the shirt down. "Look at you," she said softly, "I'm proud of you."

"Thanks," he breathed. He grabbed the sling off the wall and stared at it for a moment before shaking his head and blushing.

He didn't need to ask her for help putting it back on.

When she finished with the strap around his back, she finished by rubbing her hand down his spine. She wet her lips then whispered, "Before we go and talk at home about us, I want to talk about you."

Jay stopped from grabbing his coat and turned to look at her. "What do you mean?"

She nodded toward the chair and knelt in front of him once he'd sat.

The home conversation needed to be about just that: their home and their feelings around it. Right now, when all their feelings surrounding the injuries Jay had endured were so fresh and in their minds, they needed to talk about him. He needed to swallow his pride, and she needed to accept that she was afraid about what was to come. The doctor's office was their future – home was their past.

"You are in pain," she began softly, "Both physically and…and up there."

Jay's frown deepened when she placed her hand on his cheek. "Hailey," he whispered.

"You are," she said, raising an eyebrow, "Don't lie. We…we don't do that, right? At least, we shouldn't do that. We can't lie to each other, not now when we're trying to be better. And we are trying to be better. I know I am, and I know that was why you wanted to leave in the first place. I don't think any of that has changed. Has it?"

"No," he said quietly, "I still…I want to be a better man for you."

Hailey nodded and rubbed her thumb along his jaw. "And I appreciate that, I do, so, because of that, I'm asking that you please follow what the doctors and therapists tell you to do. You will go to all the appointments, you will wear what they tell you, you will accept help. This is our big talk like what we had back at Walter Reed. This is me asking you to promise me that you are going to do as you're told all while accepting that you are not a broken person. You're not broken for needing help; you are growing. There is nothing wrong with that. Understand?"

Jay held her eyes as she spoke, his face reflecting the seriousness of every word she said. Sniffling, he slightly nodded in her hold and leaned his head into her hand.

"So promise me," she whispered, tears forming again in her own eyes, "Promise me that you'll do that for me."

Jay's lips formed the words first before he nodded again and croaked, "I promise."

Hailey didn't know how to reply. She simply nodded and continued rubbing her thumb over his jaw. She felt those same tears that had been forming slip down her cheek.

Jay sniffled and put his hand over hers. Taking a deep breath, he said quietly, "I don't know if I can do a good job, though."

"Hey, hey," Hailey whispered, using her left hand to wipe at her face, "I don't need perfect. I'm not saying you can't ever complain or tell me you're hurting – that'd break Rule #2, right?"

Jay laughed slightly and whispered, "You're so weird."

Hailey laughed with him and brushed her thumb against his warm skin again. "I am not; I'm just telling the truth. Rule #1 was that you eat food, I think, and Rule #2 was that you tell me when you're in pain."

"Pretty sure I also made a rule about you sleeping in a bed," Jay said.

"Doesn't sound relevant anymore," Hailey laughed softly.

Jay smiled and shrugged. He slipped his hand to her hair and rubbed his own thumb along her ear.

Hailey let the soft feeling calm her down before continuing her earlier statement: "I'm not asking for perfect or even normal. I'm asking for an attempt. Play along. Do the exercises. Go to the appointments."

Jay let out a breath and said, "Okay."

Hailey hummed and moved to set her hand on his thigh. As she stared at him, she felt like something was still missing. He'd made the promise she asked for, but he hadn't talked much himself, and that didn't feel right in her gut. She wanted this to be a conversation just like the one at home was going to be. While she might have had some right to do the most talking there about how his absence affected her, here, they were doing all of this for him. His recovery had to be for him at its core, and he deserved to have a say in what they did going forward.

So she brushed her thumb along the stiff fabric he hadn't worn in close to a month and asked, "What else would you like to add?"

Jay raised an eyebrow and said, "What?"

"Talk, please," she replied softly, "How do you think that appointment went?"

Jay scoffed and shook his head, looking away from her.

"You kicked the chair – you clearly have thoughts," she said.

Jay chewed his lip then glanced at her. "I told you," he began quietly, "I feel broken."

Hailey felt her heart break as she nodded. "You did," she said, "And I told you that you're not. Why'd you say it, though?"

Jay sighed and shook his head. "I don't want to talk about this."

"Not an option," Hailey replied, "We're talking about it. Home is about us, the hospital is about you."

Jay stared down at her, and his frown deepened as he chewed the inside of his lip.

"You've heard how I feel," she whispered, "You know that I want you to keep trying and pushing forward. I don't know why exactly you think that you can't."

"I…I don't either."

Hailey felt her heart stutter at Jay's quiet words. His lips had barely moved and yet the words still found a way to drift to her ears.

"I don't know why I don't think I can, but I do," Jay continued so softly that Hailey almost thought she was imagining them, "I just feel like I've failed everything else the last six months that there's no way I can get through this. That's my only explanation. Everything feels like a dead end, and I hate it."

Blinking quickly, Hailey nodded. She also hated the words that he was saying, but she could see where he was coming from. He had tried to do multiple things in the last six months that he thought would improve him or be the better option only for everything to literally blow up in his face. As painful as it'd been to hear, she knew she needed him to verbally tell her what he was going through, and he probably needed to admit his fears aloud as well.

"I want to try for you, I do," Jay said, "But…I don't want you to get your hopes up. I'm probably not going to be hopeful myself."

That bothered her even more than what he'd originally said.

Pushing herself further up on her knees, she moved both hands to the sides of his face and whispered, "You cannot lose hope. You can't."

She didn't.

She had wanted to. Sometimes, it seemed much easier to lose hope and just accept his absence as a new normal that was never going to end. She could have given up on him long ago, but she didn't. She hadn't been able to let go of the man she loved.

And she didn't want him to let go either.

"Hope is all we have," she said softly, looking in his eyes with all her own hope she could muster, "If we don't hope, then we're just accepting and being compliant to our situation. We don't want that. I certainly don't. I just said I want you to try and get better, and that requires hope. Please."

Jay's head moved slightly in her hands as her words sank over them. Finally, he murmured, "I can try, but…it's a long road."

"That we'll walk together," she whispered, "I promise you. Just like I've said before: it does not matter how I feel about our past and what happened when you left – I'm not leaving you. Really, I'm not."

Jay let out a watery laugh and pulled away from her, disgust written across his face. Shaking his head, he breathed, "Oh my god. I'm a horrible person."

"Hey, what-"

"You don't remember?"

Jay's words caused her to freeze for a moment. She stared at him, silently begging him to explain what he was talking about, but she had a strange feeling that he wasn't going to say anything more.

So she continued watching him, wracking her brain for any possible conversation they had that could have stemmed her own words. She combed through memories of their recent arguments and old promises of forever. It was close to a minute later when realization hit her like a ton of bricks, and she, too, sat back on her heels away from him.

He'd once stood in front of her in her apartment and made that same exact promise: he wasn't going to leave her after she admitted to wanting to love him and become a better person than her past and her parents. He'd said he wouldn't leave her and that they'd figure out their relationship. They loved each other: he'd told her that morning and she told him soon after his promise.

That he broke.

Closing her eyes against an onslaught of tears, Hailey shook her head and tried forcing the memory to leave her mind, but all she could see was Jay standing there in front of her promising something he was going to break almost two years later. He left her. He didn't stay.

Who was to say they even figured it out?

"I think…I think we need to go home and have that talk," Jay said quietly.

Hailey scrunched up her nose then nodded before opening her eyes. A couple tears leaked down her cheeks, and she wasn't surprised to see that Jay was fighting back his own. They'd reached the point of no return in his recovery.

It was going to be hard and painful and, no doubt, emotional, but it needed to happen. There was no avoiding their biggest roadblock yet: what their love really could overcome.

So she stood up, wiped her eyes, and grabbed Jay's coat to help him back in it before they walked out of the exam room together.

It was no surprise to her that the day they were faced with Jay's road to recovery was the same day their bubble of ignorant bliss popped. The future was here, and it was scary. They could no longer put off what they'd been avoiding.


The car ride was silent like it'd been after their quick argument on the way there, but, this time, Hailey held Jay's hand tightly in hers.

She was scared and suspected he was too. As they'd said, she knew their marriage wasn't going to end within the hour, but it was going to be put to the test. They were going to have to face their pasts – both before and after they'd met – and admit any wrongdoings. It was not an easy task.

At the apartment building, Jay gently pulled Hailey over to the mailboxes like he'd been doing whenever they found themselves on the bottom floor. As much as she'd wanted to go up to their room and have their big conversation, she knew the mail was important to Jay: he had still yet to get his letters.

Thankfully, they'd received a notice that a package was waiting for them behind the front desk. They were both frozen in anticipation as they waited for the concierge to retrieve what ended up being a medium sized white box with Jay's name addressed right in the middle.

Hailey held it in her hands as they rode the elevator together up to the eighth floor. Jay couldn't take his eyes off of her anymore. She had a feeling he'd forgotten what their coming conversation was going to be about, but she didn't exactly blame him. She was pretty interested in what was in the box too. It was much bigger and heavier than it needed to be for just three letters.

Jay quickly unlocked their front door and led the way to the kitchen island without a word. He grabbed a pair of scissors from one of the drawers and waited for her to place the box in front of him. She watched as he quickly cut through the tape and struggled to get the flaps open, but didn't help him. She knew this was something he needed to do on his own.

Finally, Jay got the box open and began pulling everything out of it. First came a slip of paper that he glanced at and slid to the side. He then pulled out his baseball cap, a sweatshirt, two picture frames, a small stuffed bear, a short stack of pictures, a deck of cards, a bag of poker chips that caused him to smile slightly, and then finally a manila envelope.

His fingers shook as he worked at the clasp of the envelope, and Hailey knew what was inside:

One letter wishing him luck and sending him all her love.

One letter celebrating their anniversary with a list of wishes for their future.

And one letter telling him all about her Christmas that was decorated with a mixture of stars and hearts to match the anniversary one he'd sent her.

A couple cards and two other pieces of lined paper slid out from the envelope, but it was the three signed Your Wife, Hailey that Jay grabbed and carried to the couch.

He sat staring at them there on the cushions and finally let his tears fall as he began rereading everything she'd sent him.

She watched with tears of her own blurring her vision. He could finally breathe again. Physical reminders of her love had made it back to Chicago where they'd originated. He could be whole.

Or at least work on becoming whole.

Hailey made her way to the couch and gently set a hand on his right shoulder. "Jay," she whispered, not wanting to completely burst his bubble.

He sniffled and glanced over his shoulder at her, making a quiet noise of acknowledgment.

"How about we take ten?" she suggested softly, "I'll go in our room, you stay here, we'll figure out what exactly we want to talk about. Sound good?"

He nodded and wiped at his eyes.

Hailey tried to smile then placed a kiss to his forehead. She let her lips linger against his warm skin before reluctantly pulling back and making her way to their room. Once she closed the door, she let out a quiet sob and hurried over to her bedside table.

Like Jay, she wanted to relive her letters.

Sitting on the bed, she began rereading each letter Jay had sent her while he was gone. She needed to feel that love that she'd been craving in his absence. She wanted to relive what she'd gone through while he was gone so that she could properly be ready to discuss how she'd first felt when he'd left.

As much as his leaving had killed her, she didn't exactly want to kill him right now with her words and emotions. She needed to tread carefully.

Then again, she also needed to be honest for herself. While it might not have been fair to yell at Jay and scream at him for decisions he'd made months before, it would not have been fair for her to keep all her feelings inside. The point of this conversation was to clear the air. She needed to release some of her original anxieties and fears and frustrations. She couldn't keep holding them in and living in the past. If she let them out, she could finally move on, and moving on perhaps meant the true end to her nightmares.

While she hadn't been jerked awake from nightmares since falling asleep at Jay's bedside at Walter Reed, she still woke up every once in a while feeling restless from lack of sleep or worrying about Jay throughout the night. She just wanted one night where she could lay in bed and stay asleep for longer than four hours at a time.

That was something she figured she should tell him: her nightmares. Not to taunt him or blame him, but for him to understand what she was going through. That's what this conversation needed to be: an explanation of her feelings as much as an explanation of what his feelings had been as well. She needed to know why he'd done what he'd done, and he needed to know what his decisions had done to her. They needed to grow from this and recognize their mistakes. They needed to make sure they didn't happen again.

Taking a deep breath, Hailey placed the letters back in her drawer and ran a hand through her hair. It'd been over a week now since they planned to have this conversation, and the time had finally come to have it. She needed to buck up and face the music.

She pushed off the bed and padded back to the living room. Standing in the doorway, she waited for Jay to look up to ask, "Ready?"

He wiped a hand over his face then nodded. "Yeah," he said softly.

She smiled as much as she could given the situation and walked over to him.


A/N: Are you ready? I think I am. See you next week!