Just A Dream
All he remembered about the long walk down the aisle between the church pews was the tightness in his chest, Sara's last words echoing in his head with every painstaking step toward the coffin. A coffin...in the very same church where three years ago she had promised him an eternity together. The pews were deserted now, the wake, over and done with, family and friends gathering at Sara's childhood home to try and find the words to help her parents come to terms with the loss of another child. The candles on the walls had nearly burned out, but the darkness, save for dim sunlight filtering through the stained glass windows, perfectly reflected Clay's mood. His thoughts were as jumbled as his emotions were fragile. As he walked, they flitted from baby Logan to the piercing memory of his wife's teasing smile seconds before she collapsed, all too rapidly to comprehend.
The seemingly eternal walk to reach the coffin finally came to an end. Clay recalled how the wooden rim of Sara's final resting place had felt beneath the desperate grip of his fingers. As if clinging to the coffin's edge would bring its occupant back to life with the glowing smile he loved more than anything in the world, as if her lids would fly open to reveal the warm hazel eyes their son had inherited just recently in the subtle shift from their blue-gray shade, typical of newborn babies. Her delicate hands were folded across her chest, her engagement and wedding ring glinting up at him. It was as if Sara was trying to taunt him with what could have been...what should have been.
Out of nowhere, a wave of bitter injustice almost choked the widower, pushing the past four days' worth of denial so far away that only all-consuming pain remained. He laid his hand on top of hers, suppressing the urge to flinch away when he felt how ice-cold her pale skin was. At some point, his eyes had squeezed shut, the corpse's lifelessness too much to bear. Blindly, he clumsily slid his wedding band off his finger and onto her motionless one, aware that he was nearing the point of hyperventilation only because his gasps echoed off the stone walls of the church. When all attempts to brace himself for the painfully icy contact failed, Clay calmed his breathing by counting to two, over and over, in a soothingly rhythmic fashion. "This is yours now, angel...and it always will be," he promised out loud, even though he was alone, and she couldn't hear him anymore. "I can't believe in love without you...I'm done!"
Hot tears of outrage and agony threatened to fall at a rate he no longer had the energy to control, and it was through this haze that he glanced at the corpse's head, where Sara's pale face should have been, surrounded by the halo of blonde curls that had always taken his breath away. His shocked yell shouldn't have been possible with how hard it had recently been even to breathe, but the lifeless face he saw in the coffin wasn't Sara's...
"No!" Clay yelped, jerking upright so fast that he hit his head on the low shelf fastened to the wall just above the couch. Black spots were still dancing before his eyes when Lil came into focus at his side, frowning in concern.
"Are you okay?" she asked in a low voice, watching him press one hand to the back of his head.
Clay stared down at his left hand and tightly squeezed the two-year-old wedding band to ensure it was still there. He mutely shook his head in response to his former mother-in-law's question. "Bad dream," he said shakily. "Where's Quinn?"
"Kitchen," Lil told him with a sympathetic smile. "I think she's having a moral crisis over a cup of coffee like that's the final step to making all this very real."
Even though his head was still throbbing painfully, Clay staggered down the hall to the kitchen, needing to see Quinn for himself. She was sitting at the kitchen table with both hands over her eyes. Wavy blonde hair spilled over her face like a curtain hiding her grief. Sam was fiddling with the hissing coffee machine, shooting her worried glances. But even in a distressed state, the sight of his wife eased the knot of panic that the nightmare had lodged in Clay's chest.
"Hey, gorgeous," he said softly, flashing Sam a quick smile to prevent more hovering concern. "What's this I hear about a moral dilemma involving coffee? You've been an addict for as long as I've known you, funny girl." Quinn faced him with a painfully blank stare, completely ignoring the lightly teasing words. She stood up and paced over to where he was leaning in the kitchen doorway, finally tilting her head wearily against his chest. "What's going on in that pretty head, baby?"
"Clay...I-I'm so, so sorry," she stammered, spluttering the words through a fresh round of tears. "I don't know why I snapped like that. I love Logan; you know I do."
"Of course you do," he sighed, trailing one hand gently through her tangled hair. "I know that, and you know it...but you also know that parentage is the one thing Logan is the most sensitive about. Whichever way you meant it, the words are out there now."
"Where is he now?" Quinn asked tearfully. "I don't know how I'm going to fix this, but there has to be something I can do to make it up to him."
"Don't worry," Sam interrupted, turning around with a coffee cup in each hand just in time to catch Clay's look of panic. "Your mother figured you could use as much sleep as possible after last night, so she took him to the cemetery after you crashed on the couch. Did the rest help?"
"Debatable," Clay muttered, and Quinn shot him a curious look, the tears clinging to her long lashes almost a permanent fixture at this point. "I...um, I had a nightmare of Sara's funeral," he said reluctantly. "Except when I got to the coffin, she wasn't the one in it."
"What are you talking about?" Quinn pressed, and her grip on his hand grew firm and comforting despite how upset she was.
"It was you," Clay gasped, and just saying the words out loud seemed to knock the wind out of him again, the very idea of losing her utterly unbearable. "I don't know how or why the memory of the funeral got warped like that. But it's not the first time I've had a nightmare of losing you," he confessed. "I can't live without you, okay? I can't!"
Quinn's pale blue eyes looked as shocked at that moment as the day he had told her about Logan's existence two years ago. "I don't like your imagination, Clay Evans," she said fervently, shaking her head slowly. His anguished gaze bored a hole in the floor until she gently took his head in both hands. "Hey, look at me," she said softly. "You're not gonna lose me, I promise. Till kingdom come, remember?"
"Right," he nodded. "I love you, Quinn." She pressed her palm flat against his in response, and something about the wedding bands they were both wearing rubbing up against each other made him feel better than any words could have.
"I love you too," she whispered back. "That's why...I think you should go after your mom and Logan. This dream obviously meant something; maybe visiting Sara will help."
"Are you sure?" he asked skeptically, and she nodded.
"Logan needs you," she said, lowering her gaze guiltily. "And you need her. Just...tell him again, I'm sorry, okay? Please." Without another word, she buried her face in the folds of his shirt and held on so tight that he knew precisely how hard it had been for Quinn to admit she had let her pain get the better of her.
Meanwhile, at a police station in Charlotte that put the Tree Hill headquarters to shame, Kevin Riley was frowning at the surveillance footage from a local convenience store. Robbery and unfortunate murder victims...this was the kind of thing that spiced up his job from time to time. But on this Christmas Eve, when most cops at the station were grumbling about working through the holidays, Kevin had something else on his mind.
"Any luck tracking the license plate of that getaway truck, Riley?" the local head detective asked, munching on a doughnut as he approached Kevin's temporary desk. "The surveillance video of the shooting is pretty grainy, and it still looks nasty, eh?"
"Murder usually is," Kevin muttered distractedly, repeatedly turning his cell phone over in his hand. It had remained annoyingly silent since he had taken this case. "And no, whoever pulled this stunt got out of there real quick; the search is a work in progress."
Kevin glared at the phone in his hand as the surveillance tape showed a masked thug shooting a young woman in the back of the head. "Expecting a call?" asked his local boss, watching the blurry video with morbid interest.
"My wife," said Kevin coolly, as their victim collapsed against the checkout counter on the tape, dead in an instant. "She knows how I hate missing our talks."
Nearly halfway back to Tree Hill from the clinic in Atlanta, the silence between Melissa and Bobby was tenser than ever. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard it was almost exhausting, just for the excuse of focus to avoid meeting Bobby's miserable gaze. "I'm sorry, kiddo," she said softly at long last. "You know going home is our only option now."
"I know," he sighed, staring at her cell phone in his lap to avoid looking at her. "That doesn't mean I like it. I wish Aunt Katie had just agreed to come home."
"Are you scared?" Melissa asked. "I told you, honey, I won't let your dad hurt you."
She could practically feel her son's piercing stare on her before he spoke, even without looking at him. "It's not me I'm worried about," he said dully, and Melissa thought he might as well have crushed her heart in his fist for all the defeat in his tone. "I already know he hates me...you're the one who keeps forgetting that."
Melissa had to swallow hard to be able to get any words out with the massive lump lodged in her throat. "Bobby Ryan, you listen to me very carefully, alright? You are the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me. Unfortunately, your father gets half the credit for your existence." She squeezed his shoulder firmly; "The only thing I'm thankful to him for is you, understand? I wouldn't give that up for anything in the world, including maybe not being stuck with him right now. We will be okay, I promise you."
"So you keep saying," Bobby said in a low voice, and his mother could tell that his spirit had been crushed the second they left Atlanta without Katie. "I just wish I could believe it." Before Melissa could say another word, the cell phone in Bobby's lap rang out shrilly and made her jump."We are so busted," he said dismally after a glance at the caller ID. "It's Dad."
"Ignore it!" Although Melissa's voice remained steady at the command when the eight-year-old glanced at her, his mother's face was white as a sheet, and her hands trembled on the steering wheel.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Bobby asked, and the way he sounded grown up and protective made the guilt stab her in the chest. "It's just gonna make him super mad."
"That's his problem," she said with much more confidence than she felt. "Don't answer that call. Just leave it, please."
"If you say so," Bobby shrugged. After tucking the phone into the car's glove compartment in front of him, he reached over and covered her tense hands on the steering wheel with his small ones. "You're scared," he noted softly.
"No, I'm not," Melissa lied too quickly, staring hard at the long road ahead. "I told you we'd be fine, didn't I?"
"Sure," the eight-year-old consented. "But I don't believe it, remember?"
"Bobby...," she started, sounding ridiculously worn out.
"Mom," he interrupted firmly. "We'll be fine...even without Aunt Katie." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small round object. "I found this under the couch when I got back from school the day Dad wrecked our Christmas tree," he said quietly. When there was a lull in the highway traffic, Melissa glanced at him and felt her breath catch painfully in her throat again. Nestled in Bobby's fist was the head of the Christmas angel Katie had given him all those years ago, the only symbolic remnant of their last shattered hope.
A / N I'm not sure how I feel about the OC part of this chapter, but the Clinn and Clara were super emotional but also fun to do. Enjoy! xx