Ghost of a Chance

A/N: This one was inspired by a number of people, really. But one more than any other. It’s for you, Rich, wherever you are… And Nick: May you rot in hell. On with the story…

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Most people come to New York to follow their dreams. In some respects Felicia Randall was no different. Though unlike most she wasn’t looking to become a star and she didn’t believe that her move there would bring her fame or fortune. In fact she dreamed of the opposite. She came to disappear.

“You’ll never be better than a whore!” her father had screamed at her since daily from the time she was eleven.

“Bleed for me,” he rather recent ex-boyfriend had moaned every few nights to her as he threatened to fuck her with a fourteen-inch blade.

What had frightened her though had been that even in such an extreme case even he was a blessing compared to the torment she faced at home.

Every day had proved to be harder than the last and there was nothing she dreamed of more than escaping. With no job, no money, no friends and nowhere else to turn Felicia knew it was up to her to make it out of her own hell.

There was no white knight, there was no savior and divine intervention seemed to be no more than a fantasy. With that in mind she snuck into her father’s room late that night and took every bit of cash from his wallet that she found.

Not even a down payment for how much he owes me, she thought to herself as she stuffed the dollar bills into the pocket of her loose-fitting jeans.

Everything she felt was important to her fit snugly into an old backpack of hers. A dirty pair of jeans, three tops, a pen and journal that she felt contained her very soul. Well, what was left of it at least.

Clad in no more than a purple tank top, torn, ratty jeans that were easily three sizes too big and a pair of black vinyl boots that had been threatening to fall apart for months, she made her way to the bus station with her backpack slung over her slender left shoulder.

She didn’t have time to think about covering her bruises or her scars or even that it had been days since her last shower. She was out of options and literally running for her life.

Petite and slender, she knew her chances of protecting herself for much longer were slim. And lately her fantasies had been featuring someone she swore she would never see again. A man she had known when she was thirteen. It had been ten years since then, at least nine since she should have forgotten all about him but all efforts had proved futile.

“Last call for the bus to New York!” Felicia heard an older, heavy set man call just moments after she had taken a seat in the station.

It had been a day and a half on the road, at least, but all Felicia could think about was how close would she be when her father had realized his favorite punching bag had left for good.

Of course there was always the chance that he would try to find her, but then that was why she had chosen New York. The man she had known when she was younger had told her about a place not too far from where he had once lived that was perfect for those looking for an escape.

It was remembering what else he had said about that town that had kept her from even considering it before. What changed her mind though was finally realizing she had already faced worse. In truth it may have been all the same as what that town threatened, but the fact that it had come from those who were supposed to care for her and about her made each beating worse.

“You know this ain’t no Eager Beaver,” the older woman scanning Felicia’s ID at a dive strip club two days later stated. To her Felicia looked to be your average twenty-three-year-old looking for a way into the industry, hoping to make a splash and end up in Playboy or something of the sort. At least in the dim lighting of the currently closed club.

“Lady, would I be here if I wanted to be out in the open?” Felicia asked, her expression blank as her dark gaze locked onto the woman’s.

By that night the house lights went down and the stage was illuminated in a small sea of blues, whites, yellows, reds and pinks. The patrons, nearly each with a beer in their rough hands and a lit cigarette between their chapped lips.

Felicia was on last for the night. She took the stage wearing next to nothing, running a slender hand down the center of the pole as she looked out to the crowd. The lights were nearly blinding as she looked out, for which she was thankful. She had been degraded enough over the years and knew this would only further it.

She knew she wouldn’t be making much money here, but she wasn’t doing it for the cash. All she wanted was to disappear into the whole that had been created years before for her. Granted twirling around a pole in front of several drunken and drooling men, gyrating against it, furthering the symbolism of her willingness to do just that against the men in that darkened room wasn’t the best way to go about that, but it was too late now.

Too late, Rick Sugman echoed to himself as he took a seat towards the back of the club. That’s how he felt about his own life. In and out of jail since he was a teen, an alcoholic since even before. There wasn’t much he felt he had left and yet the world didn’t seem ready to be rid of him yet. He chose to believe the devil feared him and God was willing to feed him to the wolves. That was, if either truly existed.

Still as he nursed his long neck bottle of beer he kept his blue-eyed gaze on the new dancer. She had good moves, he decided, even if it was a little obvious she had never danced in a place like this before.

Rick only came here when he had the cash, which hardly seemed to be often enough and when he didn’t feel the need to bury himself in his work of fixing old cars and motorcycles. That also seemed to be hardly enough. But he wasn’t your typical grease monkey and most people looking at him didn’t figure him for much of a mechanic, though they were always right about him seeming to be a hard-edged trouble maker who never backed down from a fight.

The best part about this town, those who came here looking to disappear felt, was that they never had to worry about the cops. Never. The law here was handed down by those who truly ran this shady town, those who truly kept it going. As for the cops themselves, they figured those who came here could either handle themselves or deserved what they got.

They were right on both accounts.

Stepping down from the stage, Felicia caught a glimpse of the muscular, curly-headed blonde in the back but thought nothing of it. Damn hallucinations, she silently scolded herself.

For ten years she had seen him everywhere. It never seemed to end. She could change the station when a song came on the radio that made her think of him, she could hide his picture from view and of course look away from anyone who resembled him. But she couldn’t shut out the memories and she couldn’t ignore the scent when she would smell his cologne in the air. Part of her was convinced he had died years ago and deep down she knew she would be better off if that was the case.

Unfortunately for her she was about to see for herself just how wrong she was.

“New in town, I take it?” one of the men asked with a flash of his yellowed smile.

“That obvious, huh?” Felicia asked the weasel-faced man as she had made her way to the bar for an after-show drink.

“Well you do have that new stripper smell,” he commented, audibly inhaling her scent for show. “And I like it.”

Felicia knew she had seen this man before. From her past, perhaps. But she knew him in some way. That barely visible mustache, those cold blue eyes, that rail thin appearance.

Fuck me, no! she screamed in her mind. She knew now who he was. Was being the operative word. The man she blamed for Rick having taken off like he did. The man she nearly killed in a room full of witnesses nearly ten years before. The man she still wished she had killed.

“So how much would you charge for me to take you to my place?” he smiled while bringing an index finger to her bra strap and pulling it from her skin.

Quickly grabbing hold of his index finger in her left hand and nearly ripping it away her as well as from his hand itself, she replied, “Touch me again and you’ll be glad you used to be an EMT.”

With that Nick was stunned. How could she know his former occupation. “You know me, darlin’?”

Moving close, she nearly growled in his ear, “I could kill you where you stand for you’ve done to me. Leave no before I make good on an old promise.”

“What promise might that be?” he asked as he brought his fingertips over the bare part of her chest.

“To make you pay for what you did to him,” she answered before beginning to shake from the anger surging through her slim frame.

“To who, baby?” he asked, still refusing to take her threats seriously.

She brought her voice down lower, this time on the verge of hissing, “My lover-boy Rick.”

There had been a night, just over two months after Rick had been forced to leave, that Nick had assumed he knew why Felicia had become nearly mute around him. She still remembered his exact words even after all of these years.

“She’s at that age where she doesn’t want to be around adults so much anymore,” he had stated to her mother, mostly guessing, not wanting to believe she had wanted Rick more. Or even at all. A moment later he had peered around the older woman, pointedly looking to then fourteen-year-old Felicia and asked, “Or is it because your lover-boy Rick is gone?”

She had been stunned he would say such a thing, especially when they both knew it was the night before Rick’s twenty-third birthday/ Felicia had wanted to jump up, to rush the counter Nick had been standing behind and literally tear his throat out. Instead she’d had to settle for simply flipping him off. Now however there were no more rules and obviously no one was rushing to Nick’s rescue.

“Rick?” Nick choked out, the realization beginning to sink in. “I know you.” It wasn’t a question, he hadn’t thought of Rick in too long and yet it was coming back to him. He didn’t have a choice but to see the angry, bitter and jaded teenager in his mind again.

Only now she was standing before him and she had grown into a hateful, vengeful young woman who was still out for his blood. He could see it now as her own was beginning to boil in her veins.

“No. You knew me. Leave now while you can still walk,” she quietly demanded.

What she hadn’t seen however was this display had created a few spectators. One of which had managed to walk right up behind Nick without either of them knowing.

“Wanna move on and let the lady be?” another voice quietly asked behind the lanky man.

It was at the click of a switchblade knife that made Nick stand a little taller. “You her enforcer?” he asked, figuring they were in on this together. After all there couldn’t be the slightest possibility that there were two people in this club who were out for revenge where he was concerned. Or could there?

Felicia had wished this tall, muscular blonde haired man was her enforcer. Well built, attractive and far too familiar. He looked just like Rick and once again she mentally cursed her hallucinations. Was there nowhere she didn’t see him?!

“More like a man who wouldn’t even kill you for a quarter,” the man answered with a coldness in his voice that even shook Felicia. He was holding Nick in place with one strong hand as he dug the point of the knife into his back a little deeper with the other. If he were going to kill him, he knew, it wouldn’t be quick. Nick hadn’t earned a swift death for all the anguish he had caused.

Nick was shaking himself now. He knew he was trapped. Trapped between two people who obviously wanted him dead. He could only hope for a distraction.

One he sadly soon got in the form of a spotlight hitting the three of them from the stage.

“Last call for booze, everybody! After that you don‘t have to go home but you do have to get the fuck out,” Trixta stated over the microphone.

Felicia and her unintentional hero had been rendered stunned and temporarily blinded by the intense bright light in the otherwise very dim club just long enough for Nick to make his escape out through the front door.

“Fuck!” the blonde haired man cried as he glanced around once his pale blue eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting once more.

“Is this some kind of sick cosmic joke?!” Felicia demanded as her dark eyes darted around the club as well.

How Nick had been allowed to live this long was already beyond both of them, but this was just adding yet more insult to injury.

“What’s your beef with him?” the black-clad man asked.

“He betrayed someone I’ll never forget. Someone he deserves to pay for ruining.”

“And here I figured the law was on your ass.”

“Maybe that too. Maybe a killer or two to boot. Maybe I just came here because I want to escape some old ghosts. Why do you want him dead?”

Closing his knife finally, he answered, “He’s part of the reason I ended up back here.”

“Back here?” she asked before she could think. Only then did she move closer to get a better look at the already familiar-looking man. The strong smell of Curve cologne in the air, that short-cropped curly blonde hair, those pale blue eyes, those broad shoulders, that slim waist and those narrow hips. She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t let it be. She had come here to escape, letting his past be her guide, this wasn’t what she had meant. The one time she hadn’t gone in search of him and yet here he stood.

“I used to be able to leave,” he stated as he lit up a cigarette. “Now I’ll be here until I get myself killed.”

Marlboro Menthol 100’s Felicia realized. The green and white pack in his hands gave it away. Those weren’t just any cigarettes to her. They were Rick’s.

“I’d say the same if I wasn’t already dead. I’ve just yet to lay my body down,” she replied.

For the first time in too long, Rick chuckled. “You sure seemed lively up on that stage.”

No more need to play coy, she decided. After all she had just threatened Nick in front of him. “A man killed me nine years ago when he walked out of my life without so much as a goodbye. My mind forces me to see him every day, I smell his cologne, I comfort myself with the idea that he’s dead just so I can pretend that he’s a ghost that’ll never leave my side and is waiting until the day I’ll join him.”

“Try getting arrested for shit you didn’t even do every time you turn the fuck around. Try getting set up by people who claim to be your friends and have to disappear on the one person who’d literally do anything for you,” he shot back.

“Someone who’d kill for you? Someone who tried? Someone who’d literally do anything to stay beside you? Someone who died without you? Someone who thinks about you every goddamn day no matter what? Someone who turned herself into a whore just because she knew that’s what you’d prefer?” she fired. If he could go there, so could she.

There was a fire in her eyes and an honesty in her words that gave Rick pause. She was speaking from experience, as was he, but hers seemed directed at him without her trying to one up him. As though she meant all of this due to him.

“How’d you hear about this place?” Rick asked, beginning to remember there were a few women he had told about this darkness.

“The object of my obsession told me about it once. Said it was the perfect place for those who just wanted to disappear, to forget their past troubles and gain new ones. Guess I was a little hopeful I’d find him too. You?”

“Born and raised in this shit. Worse keeps finding me every time I leave so I figured I’d take the hint,” he bitterly replied.

Felicia decided then she was through with the bullshit. “So you’re still pissed you never could make NYPD and have decided that if you can’t join ‘em you’ll beat ‘em by coming here?”

“How the fuck did you know that?” Being NYPD had been his dream since he was a kid. The possibility of it happening had turned to dust with his first arrest however.

“You find it coincidental that we both want Nick dead? You don’t think it came from knowing him when you did? You don’t find it just a little odd that I know what I’m saying when I’d kill for a man who was betrayed by a supposed friend years ago?”

Taking firm hold of her upper arms, Rick demanded, “How the fuck do you know all this?!”

Despite knowing she would be bruised by how tightly he was holding onto her, she shoved the pain out of her mind and answered, “Because it’s always been you! You ruined me! A decade’s gone by and you’re still all I obsess about. All I’ve ever wanted has been the Big New Yorker who calmed in he wasn’t on the goddamn Pizza Hut menu!”

Yet another reference to their past, he knew. He still couldn’t place her, but he knew then where he had to have known her. He also knew then for himself just how long it had been.

“You are fucked in the head,” he spat.

“You’re how I got that way,” she replied on reflex before letting her anger take her completely over. It was then she quickly slipped out of his grasp and then the front door and up to her apartment above the club in what was essentially a women’s only dormitory that the owner of the club had arranged for her girls.

After all each one had someone they were hiding from. Whether it be the law, abusive people from their now supposed pasts, past enemies or even friends. Trixta knew in order to keep her dancers she would have to give them a sense of safety. What better way than having them know she was the only one who would know where they were, even if she didn’t know entirely who they were?

Rick could only remain dumbfounded by all that had transpired tonight. First Nick and now this semi-mystery chick. She had known him, there could be no denying that. Yet while likely because of his alcohol intake over the better part of the last twenty years, he couldn’t fully remember her. He vaguely remembered an obsessed underage girl from years before, yet he didn’t want to believe that was her. He didn’t want to care for this stripper and he had cared for that girl. Should he have to realize they were one in the same he knew he would never forgive either of them. Though he was perfectly happy to take it out on Nick should he see him yet again. Especially tonight.

Coming down the stairs the next morning after one of her worst nights of sleep in a long time, Felicia couldn’t help but smile slightly at the sight of the crowd in the back alley of the club. From the top of the stairs she could just make out the face of the obviously recently murdered man lying sprawled on the concrete. His almost sickly thin appearance always gave him away.

Taking the stage that night, Felicia felt a sense of freedom she hadn’t known in ten years. Yet ironically back then she never would have even considered doing what she was doing now.

Twirling around, remembering the dance moves she had learned years before, gyrating and grinding against the pole, making sure to have her hands running up and down every bit of it she could reach every chance she got, even crawling along the stage. Felicia felt like she was on fire tonight.

Standing back towards the bar, Rick felt very much the same. Nick hadn’t been his first kill, but had been one of the most necessary. There were still things he knew, things he had still threatened and while he still wanted to know more about why Felicia despised him, he decided he would have her tell him.

Granted it still sickened him to think this was the very same girl who went to see him every weekend for a year and a half ten years ago, but he knew if Nick was the cause of this then there may be a way to turn her back from the flames she was obviously heading towards.

In truth knowing that Nick was dead, his body burned just that afternoon and that Rick was there in the crowd only fueled Felicia’s performance. She wasn’t dancing for the scum who tried to touch her and stroke her as they slipped the few dollar bills into her g-string. She wasn’t dancing for the money and she didn’t care about her spectators. Outside of one at least. Nothing had mattered to her more than Rick and that wasn’t about to change now. Well, aside from wanting to punish him for what his leaving had done to her anyway.

The lights began to die down, applause rang out and Felicia descended from the stage. Quickly she made her way to the dressing room and put her own street clothes back on before returning to the bar to face Rick once more. She finally had him back, she wasn’t about to ignore that.

“How did you come to be this?” Rick asked, disdain rather obvious in his tone when he saw her.

“I’m not the girl you knew,” she stated.

“No shit. I remember when you wore actual clothes and respected yourself.”

Felicia was sick of all the hatred and rage and bitterness and anger she had been feeling towards him for all these years. It was time for her to take each out on him for a change, she decided. With that in mind she took a hard swing at his left cheek. And connected.

“Bitch!” he cried out. She may have been smaller and weaker than he was, but he was still surprised and it was still a bone to bone connection.

“You sound surprised. This is what you turned me into. So come on, hit me,” she replied, ready to take whatever he dished out.

“In front of witnesses?” he chuckled as he looked her over. He then shook his head and lifted her over his shoulder as he carried her outside and into the alley behind the club despite her loud shrieks of protest.

It was when he set her feet back down on the ground again that she let loose again. “Why did you even come back?!” she demanded before punching him again.

His pale blue eyes ablaze as he looked back to her, he answered, “Tonight?! I came back for you. That’s it, just you. I had to know it was you and I wanted to know how you could do this to yourself.”

“I had nowhere left to turn and all I ever wanted was to be wanted by you!” she screamed before getting him with another right hook.

“Do you want to fight? Is that it?!” he shot back as he took firm hold of her arms, holding her in place.

“Yes,” she hissed. “I’d say do your worst but you already did.”

“Really? So if I hit you back you wouldn’t consider that worse?”

“I’d expect it,” she replied, unflinching as she stared up at him.

“And if I raped you?”

She chuckled. “All you ever had to do was ask. Fuck me all you want, just do it where you killed Nick.”

“Shouldn’t I know how much you charge first?” he asked, wanting to see that fire blaze in her dark orbs.

“Not when yours would be on the house.” She wasn’t coming onto him really, but at the same time she wasn’t about to turn him down.

Glancing down to her arms as they were still in his grasp, he asked, “If I let you go, promise you won’t hit me again?”

“No,” she answered truthfully.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I never said I hated you. I just hate what you did to me. Besides, I always figured fighting was like foreplay for you.”

Rick smiled. “You might be right about that.”

“Then why wait? Fuck me where you killed Nick.”

“How can you be so sure that I’m the one who killed him?”

“Because I know I didn’t,” she smiled.

With that Rick pulled her closer to him, lowered his voice and asked, “Does it turn you on to think I killed him?”

“It turns me on to know you did,” she replied, letting her warm breath fall over him just as his had done with her.

Rick took his hands down from her arms and put his hands to either side of her slim waist. “Why didn’t you do it for me?”

“Too many witnesses,” she answered quickly, having had her answer for more years than she cared to admit.

Bringing his voice down a little lower, his tone turning downright seductive as he brought his mouth to the shell of her ear, he asked, “Did you watch as I drove that knife into him? Did you cum at the thought of how good it’d feel to live in a world he was no longer part of?”

He was getting just as turned on by this as she was, she realized. With a partial smile, she answered, “I wish I could’ve watched. To see you thrust it into him again and again, to be there to lick his blood off your hands, losing myself in knowing that our words were kept.”

Rick tightened his hold on Felicia’s hips and pushed her backwards slightly. With her eyes locked on his, she quickly realized he was moving her backwards and was moving with her. They only came to a stop when Felicia’s back was to a brick wall.

Glancing down, despite this hardly being enough light to really tell, Felicia knew where they were. Already they were in the alley behind the club and now at the feeling of being against this wall she knew she would get her wish.

“Last chance to say no,” Rick challenged.

“You left when I was thirteen. From them on I’ve dreamt of nothing but Nick’s murder by your hands or mine, of you coming back to me and of you claiming me for your own.. Why the hell would I let you off that easily now?”

“Maybe because it’s getting a little too real,” he replied as he ran a hand up her stomach and over a naturally large breast.

“Try not yet real enough.” she shot back as she let a slender hand of her own roam down over the forming bulge in his jeans.

“You sure you want this?” he asked, making sure to press himself into her palm.

“As long as we’re standing right where you killed Nick,” she answered, never taking her eyes from his.

Rick leaned down and whispered in her ear, “You’re standing in his blood. Is that good enough?”

“Maybe,” she smirked. In truth it was a dried stain from a puddle that had seeped from Nick’s body after Rick had stabbed and slashed him repeatedly the night before, but it was good enough for Felicia. “Just tell me you won’t run away again.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, pulling back just slightly so her eyes could meet his.

“I know we don’t have to worry about cops here, but I’m not gonna wake up one day and find out you jumped bail or some shit again, am I?”

“Why do you think I came back here? I’m sick of running and this is the only place where I don’t have to. Besides I never had a reason to stay before.”

Felicia smiled. “A reason to stay?”

“Someone has to make sure none of those creeps are gonna get their hands on you, may as well be me.”

“So now you’re my bodyguard?” she nearly laughed.

He nodded and moved close again. “I like the sound of that,” he stated as he ran his hands over her once more, “being the one guarding your body all day and all night.”

Part of Felicia hated to admit it given the sexist nature of it, but it was true, she would need a man’s protection here. It was ironic to her that it would be Rick, especially to have him offering but she was thankful nonetheless.

“Okay,” she breathed. “But if you’re gonna guard me, you’ve gotta earn it.”

“Then why are we still talking?”

“Because you still have yet to shut me up.”

With those words his mouth was like a magnet to hers and instantly they were locked in a lip-crushing kiss that quickly had their bodies pressing hard into the other’s.

Rick, as usual, wasn’t waiting. There was still a chance she would change her mind or try to fight him again and he wasn’t about to take that. Within another moment he was raising a hand beneath her ultra short black skirt to lower her panties which he soon discovered were non-existent. He paused just long enough to smile slightly against her lips as he enjoyed the notion that she was saving him a matter of seconds.

Felicia’s body was already showing its need as she moved close to the athletically built man as she could, beginning to run her own hands over his toned chest from beneath his shirt.

Rich enjoyed it, but he wanted to be the one in control. Between how he had seen her working the crowds inside and how she had let loose on him earlier, he knew he wanted to be the dominating one again tonight. With that in mind, he moved one of her hands out from under his shirt and as he ran his fingertips along the length of her arm, he raised it up to the brick wall behind her. Once repeating the same motion with her other arm, he put his left hand to where her wrists had crossed against the wall to hold her in place.

Felicia nearly laughed, she knew just what he was doing but it wasn’t about to relinquish all of her control just yet. Knowing the wall was supporting enough of her weight she raised her left leg first and brought it around his hip. She followed with her right and holding onto his middle tightly with her thighs she let her hot, wet cunt just brush against the seemingly ready to burst denim pouch just in front of her.

The tall blonde knew then what she was demanding. She didn’t want to feel his hands all over her, at least not then, she wasn’t in the mood to be teased, she wanted him right then and there and as hard and fast as they could go.

Still locked in their fierce, hungry kiss, Rick lowered his right hand to his belt and then to the snap and zipper of his jeans before letting them fall down around his ankles. Hiking Felicia’s skirt up higher with the same hand and holding her even more in place with the other he lined himself up and sank home in a single, slightly painful stroke.

Felicia quietly cried out, though her cry was greatly muffled by her lover’s mouth. Not caring how her bare shoulders were getting scraped by the wall behind her or how possible it was that her stiletto heels could draw blood given how hard she was digging them into his thighs, still the petite brunette moved with him. She had always wanted this and now that she had it she wasn’t about to waste this opportunity to prove to him what he had been missing out on. The fact he was filling her to near perfection and knew how to grind into her just right was just an added bonus.

They both did what they could to keep quiet, but already they were too hot and too close. It had been too long and it was beginning to show as Rick began to slam up into Felicia and she didn’t mind. Every time he was fully sheathed within her oh so tight warmth she was able to grind against him and as he was now tightly grasping her left breast through her flimsy bra, she was only getting closer.

They wanted to hold on, not wanting to rush too much more, but their bodies were hardly being cooperative at this point.

Rick could feel her slim body tensing as she slowly began to relinquish his lips, unable to keep up with the kiss through her breathless moans of pleasure. Normally he would have pulled out then and teased her more before letting her reach orgasm, but he knew he was nearly there himself and it was obvious neither of them were willing to wait. With that he bucked hard into her just a few more times before he heard her gasp and felt her shuddering almost violently against him.

By then Rick was lost himself, feeling for himself just how overtaken she had been by her orgasm that his own quickly engulfed him.

Still panting slightly, Felicia had regained enough of her senses to hear Rick’s satisfied groan and feel how he was shaking himself as he was now holding onto her wrists not to dominate her but just to keep from losing his balance.

It was still another moment before they could regain enough of their strength to untangle themselves but once they did they knew there was only one place left for them to go.

Spending what was left of the night in Rick’s apartment, they knew now this was where they needed to be. It had been a ghost of a chance that she would find him in that town and it had taken hard times to reunite them. It was an even harder place where they had found solace and now he finally knew what she had always known: That they were better together.

~~

The End