Chapter Eighty-Five:
Three Little Words

Carly woke up to the soft brush of her husband’s lips against her temple.

“I’m going for a run.”

She turned her face towards him and struggled to open her eyes. He was lying on his stomach beside her, in full running gear and on top of the covers. She blinked, bringing him into focus, and with it, the full weight of everything that happened the night before swam to the surface. She felt her insides shudder.

“Ok,” she croaked, and let her eyes fall closed again. Nikolas nuzzled her neck.

“You ok?” he murmured against her ear.

“Uh huh,” she wasn’t terribly convincing. He kissed her forehead and promised to be back soon, before pushing himself off the bed and leaving her alone. With her thoughts.

Her first thought was “go back to sleep”. The sun was up, but it wasn’t even seven yet. Her second thought, louder and more insistent, followed immediately:

“You dummy. You fell in love with him.”

She groaned and tried to argue that point as the nausea rolled over her. She cited Jason, but it was a limp gesture and her mind skittered away from it. It had other things to deal with, namely the breathtaking depth of her stupidity. She could barely stand to be in her own body with this newfound knowledge. She loved him – desperately, hungrily, greedily. It was so enormous she knew it couldn’t possibly have turned up last night, in the middle of their conversation. It had been there – the possibility of it – lurking in the shadows, all along. And last night, he had stumbled across it, thrown back the veil, and now she was sunk.

And all things being equal, she was going to have to tell him. She had, maybe, an hour before he’d come back, and then… What? It seemed a bit ridiculous, to make some big pronouncement. “Nikolas, you will be happy to hear that I have finally deigned to love you back. Cue confetti.” The idea made her sick. On the other hand, it was nothing short of cruel to do anything else. He had to know – deserved to know – and right away. Because, ridiculous of not, she knew it was important to him. He might be absurdly willing to love into a void, but he wasn’t exactly indifferent about it, either.

Realizing that she wasn’t going to get anymore sleep that morning, Carly lifted herself into a sitting position. Her head felt full, which, she supposed, it was. Excellent planning, brain, unveiling The Great Hidden Love for the non-Prince Cassadine on the heels of last night’s confession. She’d consider it a coping mechanism, if she didn’t find it so fundamentally life-threatening.

Resigned to her fate, Carly pulled herself out of bed, and stumbled towards the shower.

Nikolas cut his usual running time by half. It wasn’t having the desired ‘head-clearing’ effect he relied on, and he could not shake his concern about what was going on back in the Brownstone. He felt off-kilter, being away from Carly. That was a common occurrence since their marriage, when she’d somehow assumed the role of his magnetic north, but today that sensation was particularly pronounced.

He hadn’t expected anything about last night. It felt like a profound luck that calling Kevin had worked, had produced a desired effect – though, seeing the man go to work, he was more than passably relieved that this was the man he had chosen to work with Carly; he wasn’t messing around. When he had left, he expected Carly to be angry at him, or shut him out, but to his endless relief, she’d turned towards him instead of away. He’d been grateful for every minute she’d spent wrapped in his arms last night. It had been hard to watch her pain, but he was glad to have seen it. It felt important – more comprehensible than some of her other meltdowns, less threatening to their relationship. In fact, it had provided a missing link, an explanation for her screaming insistences that Nikolas didn’t understand, that he was wrong about them, about her, about their marriage. Now he saw the whole picture, and he understood her to his bones. He had always known, from that first night, that he and Carly were the same. Now he knew what had gotten in the way of her seeing that, too.

The part that was harder to understand was her expecting him to care about this revelation, for it to make a difference in how he saw her – he had already known that she could be described as “high maintenance”. High maintenance worked for him. He probably preferred it. Her week of low-maintenance had nearly killed him.

The advantage of jogging up the steps to the house at 6:30 was that the house was still quiet. He stole through the first floor towards the apartment, and made a beeline for the bedroom, just in time to scare the hell out of Carly as she stepped from the bathroom. She let out a shriek, and leapt out of the hallway

“Hey,” he stepped back, arms out. “It’s ok. It’s just me.”

Carly nodded, leaning her head against the bathroom door and closing her eyes. “I know, I know. I just thought you’d be longer.” She was fresh from the shower, hair damp and a towel still wrapped around her.

“I thought you’d still be asleep.”

She shook her head, sending a few droplets of water flying. “I couldn’t. I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”

It took him a second to figure out what she meant, then he grimaced. “I slept last night.”

She smiled slightly. “Yeah, you always say that.”

He always did sleep – some. Not as much as she seemed to strongly feel that he should. He started down the hall towards their bedroom, pointing out “I slept at least six hours last night so your concern, while appreciated, is unmerited.”

“That hardly seems possible,” Carly followed him down the hallway, pulling on her robe.

“You didn’t notice. You were asleep.” He dropped down on the bed as she appeared in the doorway, still towel-drying her hair.

“So that’s the answer to soothing my husband’s inner turmoil,” she observed from under the towel. “More emotional meltdowns.”

She had a point, but he didn’t like it. Yes, alright, he hadn’t been sleeping that well. And he’d been off his game at work in a more pronounced way elsewhere – there was an inevitable impact, given that he had thrown himself into his work in the past year in a way that just wasn’t going to happen in the Post-Carly Universe. That could be taken care of with strategic delegation, something Cece was more than willing to undertake on his behalf. He hadn’t been raised to steer the ship, anyway. He’s been raised to tell everyone else where they were going.

That was where he was uncharacteristically adrift. And that wasn’t about Carly. That was about his father. His father, who never made miscalculations, never admitted defeat, never let go of a position, had made a retreat. Possibly, the first of his life. And he understood why – he even appreciated it. They were at an impasse. There was no next move, not for either of them. Nikolas didn’t trust him; Stefan couldn’t change his mind. And he seemed to know that, given the number of times he’d tried. The current running total stood at zero. For that, Nikolas was grateful. On that score, at least they understood each other. But it meant neither of them had any means of closing the gap or dissolving the tension between them, and he couldn’t get out from under the knowledge of how much his father must be suffering right now. He wanted to end it. He just didn’t have a means, as long as Carly stood to be hurt by him. And so, instead, he was sleeping less and missing key details a little more often.

Last night… Well, last night, somehow, progress had been made. If nothing else, that supported his position. Hollow victory, but he had quieted his demons for one night.

“That is most certainly not the answer to my alleged inner turmoil,” he found himself saying, despite the fact that she had absolutely made a direct hit. “And don’t worry about me, you have enough to think about.”

She emerged from under the towel with a look of dread on her face. “I know.”

“I didn’t meant it like that.”

She shook her head. “No, you’re right. It’s a brave new world, what-fresh-hell-is-this, all that stuff.”

Nikolas reached out his hand for her and she moved almost dutifully towards him. He reeled her in, eyes searching her face for a clue as to what, exactly, she was fretting about right this minute.

“You’re going to be alright,” he assured her. She nodded.

“I know,” the short hiccupping little gasp she gave put him in doubt of her sincerity. “But I have to tell you something.”

“Ok.”

He wasn’t sure, but she looked like she might be losing color. He raised his hand to her cheek encouragingly, trying to meet her eyes, which were now skittering across the bedclothes.

“I think,” she took a gulping breath. “I think…” Her mouth moved, but nothing was coming out.

“Carly,” he murmured, letting the concern creep into his voice.

“I feel sick.” The word came out in a whisper.

“Really sick, or—”

He was cut off by her sudden and thoroughly unexpected kiss. Clumsy and abrupt, her mouth quickly softened against his, and her body nearly sighed as she twined her arms around his neck. Nikolas wasn’t in the habit of resisting physical affection, and as unhinged as Carly seemed, he couldn’t quite convince himself that he needed to pull back from her. Her kiss was sweet and aching, and when it came to an end, she didn’t pull away from him.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, finally.

“Don’t be.”

She straightened up, biting her bottom lip and fixing her eyes on the floor. “I think I just… I don’t know. I’ll probably make more sense after I see Kevin.”

For the first time ever, Carly sat in Kevin’s office and found him helpful in an immediate and comprehensible way. He told her she was alright, he told her she was finally “doing the important work”, that everything else had just been the gentle and necessary chipping away to get to the heavy lifting. And of course she was uncomfortable, of course this felt horrible – because her coping mechanisms were breaking down. They had to. Her coping mechanisms were what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

“Don’t beat yourself up about this,” he advised. “You did what you had to do to survive. All of this – everything – you reacted like your life was on the line, and in many ways, it was. But it was unconscious, and there was a price. It’s been a pretty high price for you – and none of that is fair, Caroline. Fair doesn’t really belong in this conversation. So do yourself a favor. Go easy on yourself. Don’t overstretch. Don’t try to stop feeling what you’re feeling. It won’t last forever, I promise.”

“I expected you to hand me a prescription or something.”

“I can do that,” Kevin admitted. “Xanax wouldn’t be a completely outrageous suggestion.”

Carly’s mouth figured out how to twist into a smirk. “That’s kinda like the 21st century valium.”

“I thought you might say that. And I can’t say that I give it my whole-hearted recommendation. But if you find you can’t sleep, if you find that the anxiety is taking over – if it starts to interfere with what we’re doing here – then, yes, I will want you to try a prescription. I promise, we’ll make the decision together.”

“But not today.”

“That’s up to you.”

She thought about it. She wanted what he was saying to be true – this stuff about mechanisms failing, breaking down – it sounded awful, it felt worse… but it also sounded temporary, and… positive.

“I think I’ll take the week off work.”

“I’ll gladly support that choice.” He sat back. “And maybe, for this week, you should come see me daily. We don’t have to do a full hour – just keep an eye on things, work on what comes up.”

That was comforting. More than the prescription might have been. She didn’t feel pressured, and she did feel like she was being left alone in this place. She found herself nodding.

“Alright. Sign me up.”

Taking a page out of his father’s book, Nikolas opted to work from home that afternoon. He’d set up in Bobbie’s living room where he could keep an eye on the front door. He’d expected Carly home sometime after lunch, but she’d called to let him know she was running some errands. She sounded fine. He was having a hard time tracking her emotions since the night before – an even harder time tracking his own. He should be more concerned, probably. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that, after last night, things were better. Not minute to minute, maybe – but overall. Fundamentally.

Or possibly he was kidding himself. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He heard the door to the front of the house slam and looked up to see Carly, looking vacant and tired, standing in the foyer.

“Hey.”

She started, then gave him a weak smile and came into the living room, her arms laden with bags from Wyndams. She dumped them in the middle of the floor before throwing herself down beside him on the couch.

“I went shopping,” she announced from her supine position.

“Clearly.”

She rolled her eyes in his direction. “I’ve inexplicably gotten over worrying about what people will think if I spend your money.”

He smiled at the computer screen as he marked off completed tasks in his Outlook. “Good.”

“And I can’t find my favorite jeans and it’s ticking me off.”

Nikolas ordered the laptop to shut itself down and leaned back into the couch beside her. Carly let out a long breath, and then turned with a degree of resignation, to lift his arm and drape it over her shoulders. He couldn’t help it – he started to grin. Carly looked over at him, frowning.

“What?”

He tried to quell the weird and possibly inappropriate tide of happiness that was rising up inside him. He just… liked his. He liked it when she treated him like she had expectations. But he cleared his throat and asked the question most people would probably ask on a day like today. “How’re you doing?”

“Pretty terrible. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“You were, in a manner of speaking.”

“You say that like it wasn’t a truck you hired.” She sighed in such a way that he knew wasn’t actually angry about that. “I called Lucky and told him to give away my shifts this week.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“Kevin thought so. He was all ‘be with your feelings’. Which I am, and I have to tell you, it sucks.”

“It’ll get better.”

Carly looked up at him, darkly. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Ah…” He bowed his head, a smile breaking again. “Ok, I don’t know that. But it seems like it’s probably true.”

“Well,” Carly groaned, sitting up. “For your sake, I hope you’re right.” She twisted her body around and tucked one leg underneath her. “And, also…” Deep breath. “I…”

Her voice trailed off. Nikolas took her in as she gazed at him uncertainly. She didn’t look miserable, that was the problem. She looked troubled, yes. But she also looked healthy, and alive, and her eyes were clear… She took another deep breath, her eyelashes fluttered and she tried again.

“I…”

He couldn’t help it. He leaned forward and kissed her. And just like that morning, she melted right into him. God, he loved how that felt, her body coming to rest against his, the soft sigh she made as her fingers slid around his neck. He felt like he could kiss her forever.

Though, probably not in the living room of her mother’s house because people were likely to come in and break the mood. Much like Bobbie did, right then, with her typical flare. The door swung open, the light poured in from the late afternoon sun, and Carly vaulted off of him like she was spring-loaded.

“Oops!” Bobbie chirped, making it abundantly clear that she knew she’d walked in on an intimate moment. She always said that – and she always grinned like it pleased her. The interrupting or the fact that there was something to interrupt, he wasn’t totally certain. “Bad timing again, I see. But I’m glad you’re here – what are you two doing for dinner tonight?”

Carly stood in front of the couch and turned to her mother, opening her mouth and drawing in her breath – then she froze. Bobbie cocked her head to one side, her face composing itself into an expression of concern.

“Carly?”

Carly pivoted on the spot, grabbed her bags and fled.

Ok. Things were not going that well, as it turned out. Bobbie gaped after her daughter, then turned on Nikolas, eyes wide and demanding answers.

“What just happened?”

Good question. He had a better chance at an accurate guess than she did, but it wasn’t his place to enlighten Bobbie. Instead, he stood and started to pack up his papers.

“She’s going through something,” he allowed. Bobbie dropped her purse on a chair and her hands went immediately to her hips.

“Nikolas,” there was a distinct warning note.

“Trust me,” he said it quietly, and without looking at her. That seemed to stop her, so he added, “She just needs a little time.”

“Why?” Her voice sounded thin and scared. Nikolas didn’t have much difficulty putting himself in her shoes at that moment. He picked up the laptop and forced himself to look back at her.

“She’ll explain.” Eventually.

“And you can’t.”

“It would be a bad idea.”

That didn’t seem to be the best thing to say, as Bobbie’s eyes widened into a look of terror. “Is she alright?”

“I think so.” Hope so? Want so? He shook his head. “She will be. She just needs to come to you about this in her own time.” That sounded awful. He tried again. “I mean, she needs – not because of you, just –“

Ever merciful, Bobbie cut him off. “She’s going through something. I got it.”

Thank God for small blessings. And having a mother-in-law that actually trusted him. He made a none-to-subtle move towards the door. “I’d better –“

“Yeah,” Bobbie was nodding, more than was necessary. “Yeah, you had better.”

He didn’t make her point that out more than once.

He found Carly in the bedroom, determinedly pulling things out of shopping bags and putting them into drawers and on hangers. He watched in silence a moment before moving into the room. “You ok?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Carly threw up her hands, tossing a summer blouse onto the floor. “So apparently I can’t be around my mother right now.”

“I noticed.”

She sat down on the bed, head falling immediately into her hands. “Did she freak?”

“A little bit,” he made a helpless gesture. “She’s your mother.”

“Yeah,” Carly spit with surprising venom. “She’s also the woman who gave me up to an emotionally bereft father and a drug-addicted mother.” Even Carly seemed unnerved by the tone of her voice and she leapt up from the bed, attacking one of the shopping bags again. “And just for the record, I know that’s not fair, and I know you could give me a very detailed list of reasons why Bobbie is fantastic and I am very lucky to have her, and I KNOW.” She stopped for breath, her face flushing. “But my head is not running the show right now is SO many ways, you have no idea.”

“I’ll deal with Bobbie,” Nikolas assured her. “I’m good at dealing with Bobbie.”

“Yeah, you are.” Carly gave him a half-smile and then burst into tears. Ugly, wrenching, sobbing tears. Nikolas moved towards her immediately, pulling the bag from her hands and wrapping his arms around her. She buried her face against his chest without resistance.

“I just can’t, I can’t talk to her yet. I don’t want to talk to her, I don’t want to talk to anyone, I just need to be alone.”

“Ok –“ He started to pull away, only to have Carly’s fists close on his shirt.

“No! I don’t mean you. Everyone else. You, I want to stay.”

Alright then. “I can do that.”

“I always want you to stay,” Carly almost sounded angry at him. “Even when I don’t, I really do, underneath it all.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

She sniffed. “Thanks for not treating me like I’m about to fall apart.” She lifted her head. “Even if I am, I really hate that.”

“Duly noted.”

“We really need to talk about something.”

“Anything in particular?”

Her eyes were deep and sad and needy. He really wanted to kiss her again. “I think I’m going to be a bit of a nightmare for the next few days.”

“I don’t care what you are. You’re talking to me. For that I’m eternally grateful.”

She smiled at him unsteadily, then leaned in and kissed him. Nikolas wasn’t entirely sure how to explain it, and he felt a bit evil acknowledging it, but… there was something about her today. Vulnerable, unsteady, a little tortured, yes. But beautiful and soft and … new. There was something new about her. Things felt intimate. Maybe that was just him wanting more from her, straining to see something tangible and real… But the way they kissed – Carly had always had a seductive edge, sometimes more than others. Right now, that sense of knowledge, or purpose – it was gone. It was just Carly, in his arms, open and yielding and…

Helpless.

It got to him. It made him feel protective and powerful and let in. He pulled back, and Carly looked up at him, eyes unfocused, lips parted. He slid his hand along the hem of her t-shirt, then ran his fingers lightly across the skin of her abdomen.

She shuddered.

That was it. Nikolas ripped the t-shirt over her head, and she practically leapt into his arms. He carried her the two steps to the bed and they tumbled together onto the mattress. Their kisses were deep and hungry and he didn’t want to pull away. But he had to, she was trying to get his shirt off and frustration was about to set in.

“God,” he sighed, as he settled his body over hers, his shirt firmly tossed in the corner. “I love you.”

He wasn’t entirely certain, but he thought he heard her murmur “Show-off” before her lips found his again and they stopped talking entirely.

Carly lay with her head directly over Nikolas’s heart and stared into the black. It was maybe 9:00. Only just dark, and she could hear movement in the house. Nikolas was dozing lightly, his hand lying heavily against the small of her back. She listened to his heart beat. He certainly seemed content. Not as concerned and controlling as she’d expected him to be – and definitely not damning her, absolutely not worrying about what he had gotten himself into. No. Nikolas was obviously satisfied with the status quo – If only he knew what that was.

She had meant to tell him. Twice, she had meant to tell him. The unsettled feeling in her stomach was normal, Kevin had said. Fine. Good. So all she had to do was fill the day until he’d be home, and then get this conversation over with. It was like ripping off a band-aid. Not a romantic image, but this wasn’t the most romantic of circumstances.

She could not get the words out of her throat. She just couldn’t. She would look at him, and the full weight of it would hit her yet again and she wouldn’t be able to say a word. There was no way he could love her like this. She hated it – this feeling of longing while he was right here, the neediness, the desperation of it. The tips of her fingers ached with it – it was everything she didn’t want, everything she’d tried to avoid, while knowing that if she did these things, if she slept with him, married him, told him the truth about herself, that this was exactly the fate that awaited her.

And he had felt some of it, that was hard to deny. She could remember, right after their wedding, how he’d been tense, told her it “couldn’t be normal to want to kiss someone this much.” The intensity, the determination. She had tried to dismiss it as circumstantial, like his feelings were a trick of the light. But it hadn’t been. No, that had been her, thinking she could resist him, thinking that the sheer volume of her fuck-upedness would protect her from loving him with everything she had in her. And she was surprised –honestly surprised – with how much that was turning out to be. She’d thought she was hollowed out, a husk of what she’d once been. She’d thought she wasn’t capable of feeling anything close to what she’d felt for Jason, ever again. What she had she gave to Michael, and everything else was used up.

Apparently that had been a flawed position, because this felt every bit as overwhelming and terrifying as it had ever felt with Jase. And, God, Jason… She didn’t even know what to say about that. Jason was still messy and complicated and all over her soul. And Nikolas… Nikolas was this gorgeous welling up in her chest, he was butterflies in her stomach and this constant magnetic pull to touch him, to be as close to him as she could possibly get.

As much as she raged against it, her heart was laying itself open to him. She just wanted to feel him, to be close, to hold on to how new and perfect things were between them. That was something she and Jason had lost a long time ago. She and Nikolas belonged to each other, and there had never been any betrayal of that. Oh, a few bumps, a few extremely misguided actions here and there – but fundamentally, they kept faith with each other. It was almost like having her innocence back. At least, as long as she was just lying here in the dark, listening to his heartbeat.

“Nikolas?”

She felt her stomach turn over as he stirred beneath her and answered “Hmmm?”

“If you are ever unfaithful to me, it will be a bloodbath.”

“What?” He was fully awake, now, trying to push her up so that he could see her. She refused to let him.

“It’s just fair warning. I thought you should know.”

“I… I haven’t – “

“I know. And you wouldn’t. But if you somehow did? Bloodbath.”

“You’d kill me.”

“No,” she considered this. “I don’t even think I would leave you. I think I’d stay, but I’d probably also go a little crazy.” After a moment, she admitted, “I might kill her. That seems likely.”

“What brought this up?”

“I’m a volatile woman,” she said, flatly. And I cannot believe how much capacity you have to hurt me. She blinked, finally, and raised her head. “What about you?”

She couldn’t quite make out his expression, but she imagined it was pretty closed.

“Let’s talk about almost anything else.”

“I want to know. What would you do if I cheated on you?”

His heart picked up speed and Carly felt herself flush hot. Oh. Ok. She dropped her head and pressed her lips over his sternum. “I’m sorry,” she murmured against his skin. “I’m freaking you out.”

He didn’t say anything to that. Carly tried to take that idea in, the same vague and distant way she was examining everything else. She could feel it, concretely, beneath her hands – the very idea of her with another man had an undeniable physical effect, the kind of effect she associated with cold hard terror. She wanted to tell him she understood. She wanted to tell him she felt the same way – it was that scary, to lose him. Even worse to lose him like that. The stuff of her worst nightmares.

But she wasn’t really feeling things right now, and the idea unraveled around her. Instead, she dragged herself up his body and fell against his mouth. His arms came around her waist, holding her tight against him. She deepened the kiss, closing her eyes and letting her body do what her brain simply would not give her the words for. She adored him, she really did.

“Just don’t,” he spoke into her mouth, finally. “Just… Don’t do that.”

“Never,” she promised, moving to straddle him. She really meant that. In that moment, she couldn’t fathom of a circumstance in which she would ever ever do that to him. But life is made up of moments, and she wasn’t dumb enough to trust that this one would last. But, God, she wanted to be that kind of woman. She wanted to say never and deliver never. And she was going to try. She was going to find a way to be the wife he needed, the wife he deserved.

Just as soon as she figured out how to be honest with him about how she felt about him. That would be a good start.

“There is something seriously wrong with me,” Carly announced almost the moment she sat down with Kevin the next day. He blinked.

“Is this a change of topic or a direct rejection of everything I’ve been telling you this week?”

She shook her head, impatiently. She had only barely managed to stave off panic all morning. She had to tell him – she had to. Every minute that went by when she didn’t, she felt like a window was closing. Psychosis was on thing, but cruelty was another and she just… She HAD to tell him. “What would you think of a patient who couldn’t tell someone how she felt about them?”

“What someone? What feeling?”

“Does it matter?”

“To a degree. Otherwise we’re merely discussing the human condition. People live their lives trying to figure out how to tell someone something they feel. It’s perpetual.”

A laugh kicked up in her chest, tight and unsettling. “I don’t really involve a lot of guess work. You sort of look at me and pretty much know what I’m feeling, you know?”

“But in this case…”

“In this case, I’ve actually said that I don’t feel the way I feel.”

“This is Nikolas.”

“That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”

“And you’ve told him you don’t love him, only to discover that you do.” He sat back in his chair. He liked to do this when he came to a conclusion, she’d noticed. “I disagree that you aren’t demonstrative about your feelings for him. But I can understand why he might not be in on the joke, himself.”

“Sometimes, you are a deeply creepy man.”

“Why would you tell him that you didn’t love him?”

“Because I didn’t.”

Kevin raised his brow and Carly immediately felt her stomach turn over. This was awful. She had loved him. She had probably loved him all along. She had probably loved him from the moment he followed her into that alley. Or pulled her out that window. Or looked at her like she was worth something on the night she most felt like something that had been thrown away with the trash. She hadn’t even known him, but … She’d never said she wasn’t easy. She’d slept with him a second time, she’s gone to the yacht, she’d told him she loved him, for God’s sake… It seemed idiotically simple. Now.

Except for one thing.

“I wasn’t over Jason,” she nearly shuddered. And there it was. She looked up at Kevin with more than a small degree of terror in her eyes. “I’m probably still not over Jason.”

“And yet.”

“That’s it? ‘And yet’?”

“Well, let me ask you. What would constitute being over Jason?”

“I don’t know. Not breaking into a cold sweat at the sight of him, maybe.” She forced herself to consider the question. It made her head hurt. “I don’t think about him as much. It still really hurts when I do.”

“You probably aren’t over what happened with Jason. But you love your husband.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re sure of that.”

She gazed into space, revisiting their evening together. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

“Good.”

“This is really stressing me out.”

“Then you’d better tell him.”

“I can’t. I open my mouth and … the only thing that comes out is, like… vomit. Not literally. Well, almost literally.”

“What are you scared of?”

It was a good question, one she’d been asking herself continually all morning – along with “WHAT is WRONG with you? “That everything will change?” she ventured. It was a working theory. She didn’t have that much faith in it, but she couldn’t come up with anything else.

“How?”

She shrugged.

“Do you worry he’ll start to take you for granted?”

She laughed at that. The thought hadn’t even wandered across her mind. “I’d have to actually DO something for him to take me for granted.”

“And you don’t.”

“I have nothing – I have nothing to give him. He puts a roof over my head and he changes my therapy and gets me a new lawyer, and feeds me and clothes me and – I don’t have to do anything.”

“Not even love him back.”

“All I have to do is stay with him. I don’t even really have to be nice about it.” She lifted her eyes to his. “That’s not normal, is it?”

“You’re deflecting.”

“Which I’ll take for a yes.”

Kevin lifted his chin slightly. “What do you think is going to change?”

“I don’t know. That saying it out loud will jinx it.” That seemed weak, too.

“Do you worry his feelings aren’t as strong as yours?”

“Yes,” Alright, that was part of it. “But that’s probably ridiculous, because his feelings are pretty strong.”

“From what I’ve seen, I’d venture that’s true.”

“I just… I don’t get it.”

“Well,” Kevin prodded. “Try talking about it. You might see something.”

She didn’t WANT to talk about it; she wanted him to give her the magic answer to her problem. But she rolled her eyes and allowed “I didn’t exactly want to fall in love with him. That hasn’t gone so great in the past.”

“And is he like the men you’ve been with in the past?”

Alright, no. That was a fair point. “Not really. He’s more… demonstrative, I guess. He’s attentive, and he’s invested, and he’s there when I need him.” She took a breath. “He doesn’t talk down to me, or treat me like I’m a lunatic – which is more than fair, because a lot of the time, I act like a lunatic.” She cringed. Probably not something she should say to Kevin, but she continued. “I don’t know. I can be with him and I’ll feel calm and peaceful and safe – and then there’s this part of me that is completely and totally consumed with how much I need this to never go away. It just feels so easy and quiet and perfect. And I will ruin it.” Tears came to her eyes quickly. Right. Here it was. “It’s what has happens every single time, and I will find a way to wreck this, somehow… God, I promised myself I was never going to feel this way about someone again. And I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep that promise if I married him, but…” She wiped at her eyes, impatiently. “It was just so hard to say no.”

“Why’s that?”

“He wanted it so much.” Her throat tightened. That wasn’t entirely true. “I felt like he understood me.”

“That’s a pretty powerful thing, to be understood.”

She nodded. It had been. And… “He accepted me. I told him things hardly anyone knew about, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to be with me. And I kept telling myself that it wouldn’t last, but… I wanted to believe it would, you know?”

“Yeah,” Kevin nodded. “I know. It’s just like thinking, maybe this one time, I can make a difference. I can help someone. Get my job right.” Carly looked over at him sharply. He shrugged. “I hold on to that faith. And you, despite your affection for negative self-talk, hold on to it, too. Or you wouldn’t have married him.”

“I have to tell him,” she insisted.

“Remember what I said about taking it easy on yourself this week?” Carly scowled in response and Kevin mouth quirked into a smile. “This would not count as going easy on yourself. So my prescription? Stop driving yourself crazy and trust that when it’s time, you will get those words out.”

Carly crossed her arms over her stomach and stared down at the carpet for a good minute before speaking again. “I could try getting drunk –“

“Carly.”

“Ok, fine. Forget it.”

For the rest of the week, Carly concentrated on basic survival with Kevin's blessing. When she was with Nikolas, her moods vacillated between feeling safe and cared for -- and feeling wildly, uncontrollably guilty. The guilt was a fresh experience, coming, for once, from inaction rather than grievous mischief. She tried to reassure herself, pointing out to herself that it wasn't like she was cheating on him or anything. When that didn't work, she told herself that he was (mostly) happy, and that it was only fair to get her head on straight before making any rash confessions.

Ok. Any other rash confessions.

There was no need to muddy already opaque waters was the point, and she clung to that like a life raft. When all else failed -- which it regularly did -- she fell back on sex. Nikolas certainly had nothing to complain about on that front, and frankly, she found it comforting. That was not a word she could ever remember associating with that area of her life, but that week, it was the only time the war inside her silenced itself. She could be honest in the physical side of their relationship. She had nothing to hold back, and it seemed so simple when she was kissing him. She'd only panic if she thought too much about the waves of absolute adoration that would well up inside her. She tried not to pay them too much attention. Contain the nervous breakdown: That was job #1.

A key part of that plan, as it turned out, was avoiding her mother at all costs. She knew Bobbie was upset and she definitely suspected something, but Nikolas was keeping her at bay with earnest assurances that Carly just needed a little bit of space. Not the kind of space that involved actually moving out of the woman's house -- but space, nonetheless. Carly stopped coming to breakfast, and she stopped going back to the Brownstone if she knew Nikolas wasn't going to be there.

This left her with a lot of afternoons to fill. Initially, she tried shopping and bad summer movies. On Thursday, she found she could not face Wyndams yet again, and after wracking her brain for options, somehow found herself pulling open the front door of Luke's.

Her luck, such as it was, held and the place was empty with the exception of Lucky, who was sitting at a table with his back to her, fiddling around with his guitar. He stopped, leaning back in his chair and craning his neck around to see her. He frowned. "You have the week off."

She shrugged. "I'm bored."

Lucky sighed and put down the guitar. "I don't have anyone for you to serve."

"So I'll roll silverware. I don’t care -- I just need something to do."

He stretched as he stood up. "Knock yourself out. You know where everything is."

When she'd reappeared, Lucky was back behind the bar, pouring over his laptop and a ledger. She set up where she always did -- end of the bar, on the customer side. They worked in silence until she finally asked "What's with the guitar?"

Lucky shrugged and didn't look up. "I was taking a break from the books."

"Not a fan?"

He tapped a few keys before deigning to answer. "It's like laundry. I like the end result, but the process doesn't offer a lot of surprises."

"And when it does, they're not a good time."

"Exactly."

Carly smiled slightly. "Trade ya."

"No."

"I'm not kidding," she pointed out, starting to fold another napkin. "I used to do the books for this place all the time. It was how I earned my keep."

Lucky glanced up. "At Jason's."

"There was a limited amount of help I could provide on the business front. So -- Luke's."

He furrowed his brow and she realized he was giving this some real consideration. Finally he took a step back, holding up his hands. "Alright. Go for it."

She couldn't help it. She grinned. You had to take pleasure in the little things. She hopped off the stool, rounded the bar, and hit Lucky in the middle of his chest with a finished silverware roll. "Enjoy."

"Show your work," Lucky murmured to him as she took over at the laptop. She hadn't really expected him to take over on the silverware front, since they probably already had enough for the rest of the day, but he ambled over to her station, and picked up where she'd left off. They worked in a silence that could be described as companionable until Lucky had exhausted his supply of napkins, and Carly glanced up to find him openly assessing her. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Stop watching me."

"There's nothing else to do."

"Go play your guitar."

Carly heard him slide off the bar stool and drifted across the room where hee settled back into his chair, picked up the guitar, and began to play. It was mostly random chords, and Carly shut it out as she continued with the books. She decided she sort of hated Quicken. Math could be calming, but this was making things far too straight-forward and, given that Lucky seemed to have already done the lion’s share, she was coming dangerously close to being done.

Also, speaking of Lucky, his fiddling around had given way to actual rhythm and melody. She stopped what she was doing and listened. His playing was intricate, and evocative and she straightened up, looking at him with no small degree of wonder.

He caught her eye and smirked. "Stop watching me."

"You're really good," she failed at keeping the surprise out of her voice. "Why don't you ever play?"

Lucky stopped playing abruptly and held up a callused hand. "I play all the time."

"I mean play here."

"Why don't I play here... What? On stage?" He snorted. "At my father's Blues Club?"

"Why not?"

"Offhand? Because it's my father's blues club."

"You're right. Much better to just tend bar and torture the wait staff."

"I think I liked you better when you hated me."

"Who says I stopped hating you?"

"You're many things, Caroline Cassadine. A difficult mark is not one of them."

She would have argued with him, but the warm flush she felt at the name he used made his point for him. Ok, so yes she was. One solid gesture of kindness, and she had completely given up the animosity she’d been carrying towards him for years. Which was not to say he couldn’t be irritating. She rolled her eyes pointedly and turned back to the laptop. Lucky strummed a few chords, and then, responding to an interested audience, started playing something a little more upbeat. By the time Carly finished her task, their banter had devolved into Lucky playing random hook while Carly guessed their source. It was a frightening thing to admit, but… she was beginning to have fun. She even agreed to pour a couple of cups of coffee when a couple wandered in around three o’clock. She poured another for herself, and drifted over to Lucky’s table.

“Who comes to Luke’s for coffee?” she made a face as she sat down. Lucky just raised his brow and continued his playing. “I don’t know this one.”

Lucky stopped dead. “You are pathetic. Really. We shouldn’t let you in the door.”

“So, blues, obviously.”

“The Thrill is Gone. It’s the blues song that people who know nothing about blues know.”

“I know the song,” she complained. “You were playing it weird.”

“I’m not BB King,” Lucky admitted. “Maybe I should try some TJ Hooker.”

“Shut up.” She took a sip from her mug. “You know, you’re not Boyzone, either. And they played here --”

“And when you say I’m not Boyzone…”

“It’s a compliment.”

“Thank God.”

"I just mean... it's not like this place is the hot musical destination it used to be. You'd probably be doing your dad a favour." She scowled. "My Sharona. You're not even trying."

Lucky gave a slight smile started playing notes at a glacial pace.

"My father's interest in the place has waned."

"What about yours? Ruby Tuesday."

He shrugged. "It's not my long-term plan."

"Which is?"

"Not slinging drinks for college students for the rest of my life."

"I don’t know, Lucky. You might want to try being a little less specific. You don't want to limit yourself." She took another gulp of coffee. It was hot and sweet and surprisingly comforting. "AC/DC?"

"Ask me no questions..."

"It's... whaddayacallit. Thunderstruck. See -- even this is better than the bands that are playing here."

"Claude will be devastated."

"Yeah, but you agree with me, come on. And you're stuck here until Darling Elizabeth finishes school, right? Why not make the most of it?"

Lucky stopped playing entirely. "Who knew you were such a frustrated guidance counceller."

"Who knew you were such a chicken?"

It was possible that her heart actually stopped beating for a second as Lucky’s head jerked up in surprise. Shock bolted through her – not so much what she’d said, but the fact that, apparently, she now cared about being somewhat nice to Lucky. And, apparently, she was really bad at it. Still – she didn’t think they were at the apologizing-to-each-other stage, and that meant she was probably going to have to let that comment stand.

So it was no small amount of relief when Lucky cracked a smile and started strumming the opening notes to a Tom Petty song.

“You might want to consider that I’m your boss.”

“Your father is my boss.”

“You think so? You wanna try this gig out without me running interference for you?”

She found herself grinning back. She felt a bit lightheaded, giddy – high off something. Connection? Music? The fact that Lucky was being just that little bit generous?

Probably. He was right. She was an easy mark. And with that thought, the phone in her pocket rang out with all the subtlety of a freight train. She jumped as Lucky drawled “Damn. Saved by the bell.”

She fished the phone out of her jeans pocket and checked the LED. Nikolas. Like it was ever anyone else.

"Heeey," Carly tried to keep a laugh from bubbling up into her voice. "Nikolas, hi."

There was a pointed pause before her husband spoke. "Where are you?"

Loaded question. She cleared her throat and shrugged at Lucky. "At Luke's. With your brother."

"My brother?"

"I don't have an explanation for it."

"You didn't want to go home?"

"Ok, maybe I do have an explanation for it. Luke's not here -- we were just hanging out, don't worry."

"Alright," he wasn't taking her advice -- or maybe he just didn't like the idea of her 'hanging out' with his brother, because she caught the edge in his voice. "My last meeting has been postponed indefinitely. Do you want to go down to the Marina?"

The Marina. The Zephyr. The scene of a crime she didn’t care to revisit today.

“Sure, if you want to.”

“Your enthusiasm is breathtaking.”

“Right now you take what you can get.”

“I know,” his voice warmed. “I could come down and pick you up. Does that work?”

It did, as it turned out, and she said as much. Hanging up the phone, she turned her attention back to her cousin.

“Here’s the thing,” she sat back in her chair. “I think you want to play here. You just haven’t come up with a good enough excuse. And it’s Free Falling, I’m from Florida, remember?”

He gave her a grin and continued the song. “I’ll leave that one with you. You need a project.”

She smiled back, figuring he probably didn’t actually mean that. But she tucked the idea of it away for future consideration and the possibility of another week of hard rain.

“How are things with Nikolas?”

Carly shifted in her chair. It was Friday morning, the end of a long and exhausting week, but Kevin wasn’t apparently in the mood to let up. “That… feels pretty personal.”

“A lot of this is pretty personal.”

“I know. But … more than usual.” She rubbed her arms, feeling chilled in the air conditioning of the office. “Finally off the topic of my parents, I guess.”

“I go where I’m needed.”

“It’s alright,” she allowed. “If you ignore everything I’ve already said. I mean, he seems to be ok with what happened on Monday.”

“And you didn’t expect him to be.”

“I didn’t expect anything,” she shot him a look. “You know that. I had absolutely no intention of talking to anyone about that in my life, ever.”

“Any particular reason for that?”

Carly thought about this a good thirty seconds before cautiously murmuring “I don’t know. It kind of wasn’t about me.” She caught Kevin’s raised brow and shook her head. “No, I mean, obviously it’s about me. But… You don’t tell people that your mother is stoned out of her mind most of the time. You just don’t.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, I guess it took me a long time to really get what was going on. I mean, when you’re a kid, you don’t really understand pharmaceuticals, you know?”

He nodded.

“And when … when I messed up – when she had to deal with something I’d done – that’s when it would get worse. I mean, a lot of the time she was just kind of … fuzzy. Vague, I guess. But if I did something –“

“She would use more if she was under stress.”

“Right,” she fumbled slightly at his use of the word “use”. He talked about her mother like she was an addict – that was a concept Carly was still trying to wrap her mind around. Sweet and nervous Virginia Benson: drug fiend. “I was most of the stress,” she pointed out, not for the first time.

“Yes, so you’ve said,” Kevin looked down at his lap, as if he expected to find his notes there or something. “You were a good student, weren’t you?”

Carly cocked her head to one side, truly evaluating whether or not she’d heard him correctly. “I was a what?”

“Weren’t you a strong student? Before your friend Carly died, wasn’t school something you excelled at?”

“A bit. When I was younger. I did ok.”

“And you rode horses competitively.”

“Yeah.”

“And you were a cheerleader.”

“Briefly. Because of Carly,” she blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I was more into gymnastics, that was my big sport as a kid.”

“So if you were to look at it objectively – and that is my job -- You were a pretty active and successful child.”

It was like he was speaking Latin. Carly shook her head. “I was a brat,” she spelled it out for him. “I was demanding, I was loud, I was argumentative – “

“And you could take care of yourself.”

“I don’t get –“

“Caroline, I know – this isn’t how you saw yourself growing up. You look back, and you see all the stress and trouble you caused your mother. You don’t see the things you did that were special – that made it possible for you grow up in that house.”

Carly stared at him. “I can turn a cartwheel. That doesn’t make up for what I put her through.”

“You put her through your adolescence. That’s actually in the brochure. Parents are supposed to see that one coming.”

It was strange, when she could step back from the conversation, she could see it herself – but she felt a need to defend Virginia from him. From everyone – Virginia was sweet, she was nice. She’d cut the crusts off her sandwiches when she was in grade school, she’d made her lemon and honey when she was sick, she’d let her lie with her head in her lap when she’d had a bad day and had never asked any questions. That was the biggest difference between her mothers. Bobbie would have cut off crusts – not the teenaged prostitute, probably, but the mother who adopted Lucas years later. She would have done all sorts of things. But she wouldn’t have been ask accepting of Carly’s distance as Virginia. Bobbie allowed her some secrets, but they were all the ones she’d been keeping for years. She would not let a thing like being fifteen minutes late from the corner store slide. Virginia had been a great one for privacy, for secrets. Virginia knew that what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

“Kevin…” she stared down at her wedding band, watching it blur as tears filled her eyes. “I killed her.”

Kevin sat back in his chair. “Ah.”

“I’m not being dramatic,” she said, carefully. “I know had pretty poor health, she’d had a stroke, and I was gone… Mostly, I was gone, and living far away, where she couldn’t find me, under another name –”

“Your mother died of a stroke, didn’t she?”

She blinked, letting the tears fall, splash down on her hands. Taking a deep breath, she raised her head and looked Kevin in the eye. “She died because she found out what I did. She found out that I took Carly’s name, and I ruined Bobbie’s life, and it killed her.”

She thought it was a pretty convincing indictment. From the moment Virginia had collapsed at the Grill, Carly had felt, to her the absolute depths of the soul. Virginia had never been able to handle what Carly had inside her, and seeing it – seeing just what her daughter was capable of? How could it have done anything else but killed her? But Kevin wasn’t having any of it. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, like he always did when he wanted to make sure she was absolutely hearing him.

“Caroline. Years of substance abuse killed your mother. Years of using a drug instead of getting the help she needed – that is what killed your mother. And it’s sad, and it’s tragic – but it is not your fault.”

“She wasn’t equipped –“

“Maybe she wasn’t. But has Michael always been an easy child? Has it always felt simple to be his mother? You had post-partum depression, didn’t you?”

“That wasn’t about MICHAEL, though –“

“No. Michael was a baby. He was only concerned with baby things. You were a baby, a child, a teenager – you were growing up, that was your entire job. Your mother’s drug use wasn’t about how you chose to do that. It wasn’t about you, and it does not mean that you have to live some sort of half-life to punish yourself –“

“That’s not what I’m doing –“

“Your mother died, and you threw yourself into a relationship with a man who – in addition to living a lifestyle that had you both in constant danger for your lives – was in love with another woman. When that ended, when you were on your own, you sabotaged your life so thoroughly that you lost custody of your son. And then, when the stress and profound loss that you experienced upon losing your child resulted in your sinking into a severe depression, you refused to seek any medical treatment for it. You resigned from your life, Caroline. You use a dead woman’s name, and you fight tooth and nail with me to avoid addressing the central fact of your existence, which is that you believe you are someone who destroys the things you love. You decided that when you were a child, and you acted it out when you were a teenager and a young adult, and now you are trapped – TRAPPED – in a complicated prison of your own making. Where the simple act of falling in love with a man who loves you is a life-threatening event. And despite all of this, you have managed to forge a clear, well-marked path out. You have chosen to have enough hope and faith in the human race to take some help. You’ve come this far, Caroline. I’m asking you now. Are you willing to take it?”

Kevin’s words would not leave Carly alone. She’d barely been able to keep her thoughts together through the rest of the session, and had left the building in a near fugue state. It was a simple question – did she want out? Yes. Now. Please.

Was she willing to do what it would take? Was she even capable of it?

That got scary. That got hard to think about. It was too much, all of this. Too much… hope. Too many people insisting that life could get better. It was just about the most threatening thing possible,

The worst part was that she was beginning to believe it.

She was very nearly surprised – as near as she was anything right then – to find herself at Barrister’s Wharf, watching the launch dock. Downright shocked to find herself floating across the dock and down to the skiff. She jus stared at the captain when he asked if she was coming aboard.

Was she? She knew what was out there, and that meant she had to stay here – stay on the mainland. With all these people. People who thought they knew her – knew about what she’d done or what they’d read that she’d done, and were absolutely convinced of their position. The people who really knew her were few and far between. And the people who agreed with Kevin’s versions of events? Even smaller.

And then there were the people from her old life, the people who had known her before this, before Port Charles and Jason and Bobbie Jean Spencer. They were all dead – or so gone, they might as well be dead. Carly, gone, so quickly and completely and so long ago. Virginia, unable to survive that one last shock to her system. Everyone else, she’d kept at a distance. The Roberts had known a little about Carly’s home life, by virtue of being adults, but they had vanished from her life almost immediately. Their mutual pain had been too much for either side to bear and they were incapable of comforting each other, so the entire relationship had vanished.

There was only one thing left from those days. And that thing was on Spoon Island. Being held hostage by her father-in-law.

Enough of that. She knew what she wanted to do that afternoon, she knew what would make her feel real again. She nodded at the captain and stepped smartly off the dock and onto the boat. Even tossed her hair back and turned her face into the wind as the boat flew across the lake towards Wyndemere, the guest house, and Cinnamon.