Sookie's POV:

I must have fallen asleep right away last night, because I didn't remember or hear Alcide coming to bed last night. I open my groggy eyes and feel a heavy arm draped over me and very warm body against me. I was laying on my side towards the nightstand. I look at the clock, 8:30 am. I lay still for a minute and listen to the deep breaths of Alcide who was still fast asleep behind me.

The previous nights' events come rushing back to my mind. I start to feel suffocated. How could he come to bed with me after what he was doing with Debbie Pelt? Anger starts building up inside me. But I wasn't angry at what he had done, I was angry that he had the nerve to climb into bed with me like nothing happened.

I move slowly underneath his arm and climb off the bed as quietly and quickly as I could. I scamper to the bathroom and take care of my needs. The anger begins to subside a little and confusion begins kicking in? Maybe I had hallucinated what I saw last night? Maybe it wasn't Alcide who I saw with Debbie? I start feeling antsy. I needed to calm down, so I decide to take hot shower.

I turn the faucet on and close the shower door. I stand underneath the hot water and close my eyes for several minutes. Christ, I needed to do something. I know I needed to talk to Alcide and find out what was going on. It starts to dawn on me that I wasn't as upset as I should have been feeling. I still wasn't feeling hurt, like the sadness that a woman should feel when her man was cheating on her. I was actually feeling a sense of relief, maybe anger too.

I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn't hear someone coming into the bathroom. The shower door opens and Alcide jumps in the shower with me. He stands behind me and pulls me close to him. I gasp out in surprise as I feel his erection against my lower back.

"Morning," he says as he moves my hair to the side and kisses the back of my neck. The sensation before would always send me into a horny frenzy, but this time it caused me recoil from him. I turn around to face him.

"Alcide…." I say in a surprised tone.

"Is there something wrong?" He asks me with a puzzled look on his face.

I stand there and stare at him silently. Yeah, like the fact I caught your ass with your miserable bitch supposedly ex-girlfriend last night!

"I don't know, you tell me," I reply back, trying to remain calm and neutral.

"If this is about last night, Sookie, I'm sorry. I thought you'd be happy," he says as he puts his hands on my bare hips.

I really wish we weren't having this discussion in a shower, butt naked right now.

I watch the water drip down the sides of his face, through his stubble on his chin and down through his brown chest hair. He continues to rub my hip with one hand while the other one begins rubbing my behind.

My brain starts turning to mush and visualizes the things that we could be doing right now in this shower. The wanton needs of my body were betraying me! But I had to stay strong.

"I love you," he whispers against my ear. "Sometimes, I forget how lucky I really am, to have you in my life. And when we're married, I will spend the rest of my life making you happy. You're my life, my best friend, you're my everything."

A tear escapes my eye. I knew that Alcide loved me. I loved him as well. I just wasn't sure if it was enough for the two of us to create a long happy life together. I knew that when I would marry, it would be for life. There was no such thing as divorce for me, if things didn't work out with my chosen husband. That's why I knew I would need to make sure I was choosing the right man to marry, the man who would be the father of my children.

I lean against him and give him a hug and he hugs me back.

"We need to talk," I say in a low tone.

I turn around to turn off the shower and open the door. Alcide watches me in confusion as he follows me out. I grab one of the towels and begin drying my body. I thought about putting on a bathrobe so that we could get to our talk more quickly, but decide against it. I didn't want to have a serious conversation about our relationship while naked under a bathrobe. I reckon Alcide had the same notion, as he dries off as well and puts on some clothes. I put on some cotton summer shorts and a striped tube top, which was the closest thing I could find in my bag. My hair was still wet as I make my way out to the living room area of our villa. Alcide follows soon after.

"So, there is something going on," Alcide says with a knowing look on his face.

I take a deep breath. I needed to know what was going on with Debble Pelt, so I dive right into that topic.

"What is Debbie doing here?" I ask in a calm tone.

Alcide looks at me blankly. His face changes to something like he didn't know what I was talking about. "I told you, I don't know."

I let out an irritated sigh. "Don't bullshit me, Alcide. You know why she's here."

"I didn't know she would be here. The last time I spoke to her was that night weeks ago. I found out yesterday that she was here with Compton. I told my agent and manager that I didn't want her here, but they said it was out of their hands. She was a guest of Compton and the studio paid for her to come," he says.

"Why would they pay for her?" I ask.

He stares at me again, this time even longer.

"Well?" I ask impatiently.

"Because she's going to be in the movie. She is playing my love interest," Alcide says.

I look at him with my mouth agape. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Look, I know you're not happy with that, but like I said, I don't make the choices," Alcide pleads.

"Bullshit Alcide! I've sat with you at your business meetings with your agents, lawyers, managers. There are a lot of stipulations and agreements you make for everything in your career! You have the choice too. You can tell them that you don't want to make a movie with her!" I yell.

"That's not how it works! You don't understand!" Alcide yells angrily. "There's a fucking process that studios go through. They chose Debbie to be the female lead for various reasons!"

I grunt at him in anger as the thought of last night's events starts bubbling up inside me. I wanted to throw something at his head. "Is that why you saw her last night?!"

He looks at me like as though he'd gotten caught with his hand inside the cookie jar. In this case, maybe his hand was inside Debbie Pelt's stupid black dress.

"Don't fucking deny it Alcide! I saw you!" I retort angrily.

"How did you… it was raining…," he says as he tries to find the right words.

"I….. saw…you….. You were with her inside her villa," I say, trying to keep my tone calm. I knew that getting angry again wasn't going to help me find the answers that I was searching for.

"Yes, I was there," he says in a defeated tone. "After my short meeting with Compton and the others, I headed out to come back to the villa. I only walked a few minutes before Debbie stopped me. She cried and pleaded with me to come and talk to her. She wanted to talk about her and I, about you. She said she needed closure in order to move on with her life. That's what I wanted too. She's always been messaging me and trying to call me ever since we broke up. When she first heard about you, the calls and text messages from her started to get worse. I wanted to file a restraining order against her, because she was really harassing me and I started worrying about whether or not she may try and hurt you somehow. I did take the steps to get one, but I called it off."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because I didn't want to hurt her. I didn't want this to ruin her career and life if I got the law involved. For several weeks she hadn't bothered me until last night."

"What happened last night?" I ask him. I needed to know.

"Like I said, I thought that if I talked to her then she would finally leave me alone. I was stupid to believe that. First, she was calm and collected, we talked for awhile about mundane things, like our old house in Ireland and some of the good times we had throughout the years. Then after a while, she started to get handsy with me. I told her that she couldn't do that anymore. But she wouldn't take no for an answer. She just kept on pleading and begging me to come back to her. I wanted to leave, but she wouldn't let me. She kept saying how sorry and how wrong it was for her to cheat on me. That she made the biggest mistake of her life. I told her how much hurt she caused me. I told her that I wanted her to be my wife and my life partner, but that she ruined everything. It got pretty heated and intense," he says as he takes a seat on the sofa. I could tell from the look on his face that he was starting to get worked up about it again.

I go to sit beside him and my hands on my lap. "I saw you with her from the beach. I was standing out there in the rain. Though the two of you were far away from me, you were still within my sight that I could see what you were doing."

"What was I doing?" he says as he puts his hands over his mouth.

"You were embracing her, like comforting her," I huff.

"I…. I don't know.. Like I said, things got heated. I may have leaned close to her, but I swear Sookie, I didn't touch her after that. I didn't kiss her nor touch her intimately," he says. "I think I got back here maybe about 15 minutes after that? When I returned, I came here in the living room and just sat down."

"If what you are saying is true, then why did you not tell me this right away?" I add, still not feeling 100 percent sure of Alcide.

"Because…." He says with a sigh. "I didn't know how I was going to tell you, or even if I would tell you. Like I said, things are over with Debbie. There is no more us anymore. I just wanted to put that dark chapter behind me and never look back."

"But you aren't putting it behind your back as you say. You're making a movie with her!" I retort, still pissed about that fact.

He leans back, frustrated. "I just told you….. Okay fine, do you want me to cancel this job?"

I get up and stand by the window. "I hate that you are trying to make me the bad guy by trying to force you to quit a job that you really want to do. There is no win for me, no matter what I say."

He gets up to come stand closer to me and touches my shoulder. "I told you Sookie, I would do anything to make you happy."

"Make the movie," I state somberly. "I don't want to stand in the way of your dreams."

He breathes in deeply as he leans in and puts his hand around my waist. He leans his head against mine.

"What were you doing outside in the rain?" he asks as he continues to rest his head.

Oh shit, I thought to myself as the memories of my brief time with Eric last night replay in my head. It wasn't like I planned to see him or spend time with him last night. Maybe what I did wasn't so great last night either. I had a feeling I was going to be accused of hypocrisy.

"I couldn't sleep last night after I came back from the lodge. So I thought a walk would do me good. I walked along the beach. I wasn't even paying attention, when I realized I had walked far from here," I say. Alcide still had his hands and arms wrapped around my waist. I wasn't sure if this was a good position to be in when I told him the second part of my story.

"I seen someone from a distance. I got scared for a second, but I realized that it was Eric."

I could feel Alcide's body stiffening up behind me and his breathing was starting to pick up.

"I apologized to him for what I said on the boat and we talked for a little while. The storm got worse and he escorted me back here. He walked me up to the lodge and he went back to his place."

"You were with Eric last night?" Alcide says in a low growl.

Shit…

"And after all the shit you gave me about talking to Debbie, and here you were, with Eric last night!" he says angrily as he lets go of me and walks away.

I turn around quickly.

"You were at his fucking shack last night?!" he screams as he picks up a chair and tosses it against the wall. The sound causes me to tremble.

Last night I had said to myself that I never saw him that angry, but right now, I was seeing it with my own eyes.

"Nothing happened!" I yell out, trying to defuse the situation. "I didn't go inside his house! I talked to him outside! I wanted to make things right with him! Because I didn't want things to be…" I say as my voice trails off.

"What?!" Alcide says in a steely tone.

"Because I didn't want things to be strained between us, because of you and because…. I care about him," I say. "I loved Eric and for the longest time I was angry with him. I was so hurt and angry with him, but I knew that I could not live a normal life if I harboured that resentment towards him."

"Do you still love him?" he asks me as he walks closer to me again, his blue green eyes piercing me. He was standing less than a foot from me. I wasn't scared of him, nor was he making me fear for my safety. I knew Alcide would never lay his hands on me like that.

I take a large gulp and swallow my saliva. Did I still love Eric?

"He was my first love," I answer in a calm tone. I wanted to be honest with Alcide. "I loved him with all my heart and if he had asked me, I would have followed him to the end of the earth and back. I would have done anything for him. But that was a long time ago. Time heals wounds and changes feelings for people, especially towards people who disappear from your life. The love I had for him has changed. I still care about him and love him, in a way, but that doesn't mean I would fall right back into his arms again so easily. If you think that I would, then you never really knew me at all."

He looks at me like he was trying to decide whether to believe me or not. A minute later he takes a step back.

"What do you want to do now?" he asks me all of a sudden.

I take a deep breath. At least I knew the answer to that question. "Let's go home."