It had been five days since he had seen her last, since he had come home to find it empty, since she had given him back his promise. He sat at the island in the kitchen and twirled the piece of expensive metal in his fingers, eyeing the message inscribed on the inside of the band, A Ma Vie De Coer Entier, My whole heart for my whole life. He chuckled to himself, how wrong he had been, he had given her something important and she had thrown it back in his face and yet again here he was alone. Yet again he had failed, his life had crumbled around him and he had nothing left to do but pick him self up, dust himself off and carry on like he was okay. He had gotten pretty good at that over the years so why was it so different this time? Why did it seem to hurt so much more then it ever had before? Why hadn’t he slept for more then a few hours over the past few days?

He knew the answer to each and every question. It was because of Adie, he had never loved anyone like he had her. He thought she had been the one but obviously he had been mistaken, if she loved him for him then why did she leave? Why wasn’t she more understanding about his past and his issues? Why did she constantly pressure him to open up? He sighed as he dropped the band on the side with a small clink, she wasn’t the only one to blame here, he knew he had been in the wrong. If he loved her why didn’t he trust her enough to open up? Why couldn’t he get passed all his issues? Why, yet again, had he let his past ruin his future?

He didn’t get much time to contemplate his questions because the doorbell ripped through the haunting quietness of the house, making Layla’s ears perk up and tail wag in anticipation and if Nick had been a dog he knew he would look like she did. What if it was Adie? Had she realised what a mistake she had made? Maybe she was at the door now, her stuff in boxes, ready to ask him to take her back, to tell him that she wanted to work on things if he could find it in his heart to take her back. He would, he knew he would in a heartbeat and that was why he felt his chest ache when he opened the door and was greeted with her sister instead.

Rachel said nothing, just wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him as close as she could, her rounded belly making it slightly more difficult then usual. He wrapped his arms around her and stared off over the drive in a vain hope of seeing Adie not to far behind but all he saw was Alex pulling out a suitcase from the trunk of the rental car.

“You okay?” She asked softly shaking her head at herself for asking such a stupid question. “I don’t know why I asked that, that was stupid of course you’re not okay.”

He smiled at her before saying, “It’s okay. What are you doing here?”

“We’ve come here to kick Adie’s ass.”

“Rach-” Alex said in a warning tone as he neared the door.

“What? Nick…She had no right to do what she did,” Rachel told her husband raising her eyebrows to him before turning back to Nick. “We’re here to help you guys sort this mess out.”

He smiled as she walked into the house, he even managed to keep that fake smile plastered to his face when he came face to face with Alex.

“You can drop the lame ass fake smile and happy exterior, that’s what got you into this mess,” he said as he dropped the suitcase at his feet before pulling Nick into a bear hug. “For the record I did try and come by myself but I have learned you never ague with a pregnant lady.”

“Thanks,” Nick whispered finally letting go.

“Anytime. Come on lets go and work this out.”

***

She could put up with the verbal abuse, with kids lashing out at her, with angry parents. Being puked on, peed on, and bleed on didn’t bother her in the slightest, if you were a nurse it was expected. The one thing she couldn’t stand was catching something off of one of her patients, especially if it meant hurling your guts up which was what she seemed to be doing.

Once she stopped emptying the entire contents of her stomach in the toilet she leant back against the side of the bath and closed her eyes in exhaustion, she didn’t think that she had ever felt this tired. She just felt completely drained all the time but it was no wonder really, she was sick, she had been working her ass of to get some more money together so she could buy her own place, and she had…she had just broken up with the man she loved. Was it wrong that she was upset that he had made no effort to talk to her in five days? She had not seen nor heard from him since she shut the door in his face, since they day she handed back the ring and had broken his heart. She had wanted it, so why was she so sad that he hadn’t tried to fight for her that little bit harder?

Then again why should he? She had made it perfectly clear, it was over, she hadn’t been happy and had wanted a clean break and he had respected her wishes. She hadn’t expected him to do that, she had been ready for him to hound her, to keep on calling, to keep showing up, she hadn’t been ready to not see or hear from him.

She heard the door slam shut and even managed to push herself up from the floor but the movement must have been too quick for her stomach and she found herself bowing down to the porcelain bowl again, dry heaving.

“Oh Sweetie, still feeling like crap?” Chelle asked as she quickly placed her bag on the floor and grabbed a wash cloth, which she then ran under the cold tap before handing to Adie.

“I don’t think I have anything left in me to barf up now,” she whined feeling sorry for herself as she placed the cool cloth on her forehead and rested back against the bath.

“It’s been four days now, are you sure it’s just that bug? You sure you’ve not got a case of food poisoning or something?” Chelle asked as she offered Adie her hand and helped her up of the floor before guiding her back to her room.

“I don’t know, maybe, I mean you have been cooking for me,” she joked.

“Bitch! You know I could have just left you in the bathroom on the floor,” Chelle teased back as she threw a pillow at her best friend who was now snuggled under her duvet.

“I know I know, I owe you. How was work? Are they busy? I’m hoping I can go in and at least do the afternoon,” Adie said.

“I don’t think so. Chris is not going to want you infecting all the patients and the rest of the staff, you need to learn to look after yourself and get better before you start thinking of others you know. So…” she said sitting down on the edge of the bed and Adie knew this was going to be the conversation she had been dreading.

“So what?” Adie replied looking at her nails.

“You’ve been here for almost a week now and apart from Tuesday when Nick turned up…I hate being out of the loop Aid you now that.”

“It’s over,” she shrugged trying to play down how much she was actually hurting.

“It’s over? Just like that?” Chelle asked completely unconvinced when Adie tried to nod her head in affirmation. “But…it’s over?” She asked again.

“Yes,” she whispered looking away from Chelle, she could almost feel the bile travelling back up as she admitted that. To say it to Nick was one thing but to admit it to someone else, to talk to someone else about it was a whole different matter, it seemed to make it more real, more final and maybe that was the reason why she hadn’t told her parents or her sister, that and because she knew they would all be against her decision. Even Chelle had questioned her about it when she had called to see if she could stay so did that mean that it was the wrong decision? Surely she should not be getting as upset as she was if it was the right thing to do?

“You don’t sound so sure,” Chelle said softly as she brushed a stray piece of hair out of her best friends face. “You still love him.

“Yeah I do but he…he doesn’t love me,” she said sniffing back the few tears that threatened to fall.

“Yes he does,” Chelle told her taking one of her hands in hers.

Adie shook her head in disagreement, “No not like I deserve, he doesn’t trust me.”

“He has his issues,” Chelle tried to defend.

“I’m sick of hearing that…everyone has issues and I understand people have really hurt him in the past but that doesn’t mean I’m going to. I’ve been hurt in the past and I would never ever think of doing it to someone else intentionally, you know I trusted him enough to wait for him to open up, I trusted him enough to take him back, but he still won’t…he won’t…”

“Won’t what?” Chelle coaxed.

“Trust me enough to let me look after him, to let me see his weak side, to be venerable around me,” she said.

“Some people just can’t do that though hon, they are so used to being the strong one or they’re used to having to hide their emotions that it’s difficult for them. You said…” Chelle hesitated before carrying on, “You said that you wouldn’t ever set out to intentionally hurt him but that’s what you’re doing thoug-”

“I knew I would be the bad guy, I knew people would see it that way,” Adie angrily spat back.

“Hold up, I’m not saying you are the bad guy at all. I’m just saying that you want him to open up but by doing this, you’ve done what everyone else has in the past and you’re just proving to him again that…he’s going to build more walls because of this you know,” she pointed out.

“Look it’s over, can we talk about something else?” Adie asked turning her face away from her friends.

Chelle was quiet for a moment before conceding to her best friends wishes, “Okay, you up for eating anything?” She asked as she got up off the bed.

“I could go for some cheetos.”

“Cheetos? You hate cheetos with a passion. What’s with you lately? Tomato soup yesterday, cheetos today it’s all the stuff you hate,” Chelle questionably joked.

“Just fancy it I guess,” Adie shrugged.

Chelle shook her head with a laugh, “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were pregnant.”

***

She stared at the calendar in front of her, the sinking realisation hitting her hard as she flung the wad of paper to the floor and placed her head in her hands. How the hell did she miss it? All the signs had been there. The sickness, her rollercoaster of emotions, her sore breasts, the tiredness, she had put it all down to other things though. Blamed the start of the sickness on the food she had eaten in England, and when it continued on a bug she must have caught from someone. The tiredness in the beginning was from being jet lagged, and now from not sleeping properly since she had left, bursting into tears at the drop of a hat was obviously because she was still cut up about leaving, about the wasted three years of her life and the sore breasts were merely sore because she was due on her period.

A period she hadn’t had since March.

She wiped at the tears that were falling angrily and tried to pull herself together but it was futile really. All this time she had been wanting to fall pregnant, to have a family with him and now? She had wound up pregnant at the worst possible time, her life was in shambles, and she found herself ironically wishing that she wasn’t carrying Nicks child.

Then again, maybe she wasn’t. Maybe this was just a complete false alarm and all of her other symptoms could be explained. This had happened before anyway, when she had been sitting her nursing finals she got so stressed out, she stopped eating properly, had hardly any sleep and her periods stopped because of all the stress she had been putting herself through. Adie couldn’t deny that the stress was definitely back again, it had been for a while, it had taken her so long to come to the agonising decision she had made. “That’s all it is,” she tried to convince herself.

She would go to the store, buy a test and it would come out negative and that would put an end to it.

***

Nick stared at the pictures flashing slowly before him on the laptop, trying to work out when and where things had gone so horribly wrong. In every picture he had viewed they seemed happy, content and most of all in love, so when had that all stopped? When had she fallen out of love with him? Why had she fallen out of love with him? He just couldn’t understand it.

The slide show came to an end and he double clicked on another file that contained pictures of them from the first year that they were together, they had been so happy, their relationship so fresh and new, so full of fun and he just wanted to get back to that, to be like they had been then. He knew that would never happen though, even if they did get back together, which he was sure wasn’t going to happen, things were so different now, they were older, their relationship had progressed, they both wanted different things and neither were willing to compromise.

He managed a small smile when a certain picture flashed onto the screen, quickly hitting the pause button on the slideshow. It was the first time she had met his brother and sisters, a totally unplanned situation, full of emotion, tension and upset but they had all taken to her instantly, even Angel which was so rare and that was when he knew that she was the one. When he thought back to that time in his life he realised how much he hadn’t really changed, he thought he had but he was still just as insecure, still unwilling to trust when, after what she had done for him over those few days, proved he would be able to trust her with anything.

He closed his eyes and sighed, she had been so great during that whole experience, managing to put Aaron, who had been absolutely petrified, at complete ease within ten minutes of being there. She explained everything to him, what they could do, what they were probably going to do, what the worst case scenario would be but how that wouldn’t happen to him. She spoke to the doctors, made sure they everything had been done properly, made Nick sleep when she found him up at three am. She had been like his rock and in essence everyone else’s because they all looked to Nick and when she was with him, he could rely on her and in turn the others could rely on him to be strong for them. He opened his eyes again and looked at the same picture still on the screen.

The picture itself was of her and Aaron, Nick’s head sticking out of the sand because they had buried him in the sand, Aaron’s revenge for Nick insisting he couldn’t surf after his accident, Adie the person who had come up with the plan for Aaron’s revenge. It had been such a great holiday after that, well apart from Aaron acting like a brat when they had gone out to dinner but even then she had been able to play mediator and that was when she had won Angel’s respect. Anyone who could break up a Carter argument with a cool head and not shout back when someone was screaming at them was someone that Nick needed to keep around was what she had said.

“What are you doing?” He heard Alex’s gruff voice ask from behind him and he quickly closed the lid of the laptop as if he had been caught looking at something he shouldn’t have been.

“Just working on some tracks,” he shrugged as he swivelled round in the chair.

“Stop lying you ass. You’ve been in here for two hours and I have yet to hear any kind of sound come out of here. So what are you doing?” He asked as he leant against the desk placing a sandwich down for Nick.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re going to eat it. I slaved over that sandwich,” Alex told him looking over the top of the sunglasses he was wearing.

Nick picked up the limp looking piece of bread and scrunched up his nose before looking back to his friend, “It’s peanut butter Jay.”

“And?”

“You hardly slaved over it,” he said as he took a bite just to placate Alex.

“I beg to differ. I had to get the bread, walk all the way to the fridge to get the butter, then walk all the way back to the cupboard to get the jar of peanut butter, find a knife and then a plate, there was a lot of walking involved,” he informed making Nick shake his head and smile as he chewed.

“Where’s my drink?” Nick asked between mouthfuls.

“Do I look like your girlfriend,” he replied before thinking immediately apologising after. “Sorry dude…I didn’t mean….sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he mumbled.

“So…have you seen her, spoken to her since you got back?” He asked and Nick inwardly sighed. He didn’t want to go through this, he didn’t want to relive it again, he had been doing that enough for the past few days, speaking to someone else just made it that more real. She had left him and she wasn’t coming back.

“Yeah I went round to Chelle’s but… she gave me back the ring…she said that she feels like she doesn’t know the real me, that I don’t even know the real me and you know what? The more I think about it the more I think she’s right,” he admitted.

“How so?” Alex asked.

“I just…I used to be so sure of myself about what I wanted, what was important but now…everything she wants scares the crap out of me. I mean am I always going to be like this?” he asked fiddling with the pen that was on the desk and he reclined some more in his chair, avoiding eye contact.

“Like what?” Alex probed.

“An fucking insecure mess who won’t let people in. I know I do it, I know she’s right, Jesus even Angel called me on it and I ignored her. You know she actually asked me how long it would be till I managed to sabotage this relationship, guess I should ring her and tell her huh?” he said trying to make a small joke but Alex didn’t laugh.

“Look you’ve just told me where you’re going wrong, you know where you are going wrong so do something to fix it.”

“What if I can’t?” He whispered.

“There’s always a way Nick. It might not be an easy way and it might hurt like hell to open up to her and tell her about stuff that you’ve kept buried but you need to do it and you don’t need to do it for her you need to do it for you. If you keep all this stuff buried inside it’s going to eat you alive and you are going to end up a lonely old man and I don’t want you living in the apartment above mine and Rachel’s garage,” he joked ruffling Nick’s hair, even managing to make him laugh.

“I could be crazy man Carter who collects dung beetles or something,” he joked back.

“Yeah you definitely wouldn’t be living with us if that was what you were collecting. I know you probably don’t want to talk to me about stuff, maybe it’s better you if do it in therapy and have more structure, but I am here if you ever want to talk about anything. And I think I can safely say that goes for Rachel and any of the other guys as well,” he told him seriously squeezing his shoulder.

“I know that. Kev called,” he told Alex.

“Really?” He replied trying to act innocent.

“He told me you told him.”

“Busted. What can I say? He’s old man Kev who usually gives good advice but if you tell him I said that I will have to kill you.”

“Thanks Jay, where’s Rach?” He asked noticing her absence.

“She went out. Said that she was going to visit her folks but she was so lying through her teeth because I wasn’t allowed to go.”

“So she’s gone to see Adie then?” Nick asked already knowing the answer before Alex nodded and Nick chuckled as he said, “Poor Adie.”

***

She sucked in a breath when she saw the unmistakable tattoo on the, rather puffy, foot that could only belong to her sister. The foot had a flip flop attached to it and the other leg was resting next to it as Rachel sat on the porch step, Adie couldn’t see the rest of her though as she was obscured by a bush, but maybe that was a good thing, if she couldn’t see Rachel and Rachel couldn’t see her and she would be able to leave and come back later. So she quickly and quietly turned on her heel and began to walk away but stopped abruptly when she heard her sisters voice from behind.

“Don’t be a fucking coward again!”

Adie took in a deep breath and turned coming face to face with her sister. She obviously knew, that was the only reason she could possibly have for being in Nashville a week and half earlier then expected.

“Hi,” Adie smiled.

“Don’t smile at me. I can’t believe you,” she said crossing her arms over her large bump as she shook her head.

“Don’t get involved in something you know nothing about Rach.”

“I know nothing about? Yeah I know nothing about because you knew that I would be against what you did. How…why would you do that to someone? How could you do that to him, a fucking note. He gets home and finds your stuff gone and a note? What are you in the fifth grade or something?” She asked as she stepped closer to Adie, almost invading her personal space.

Adie made sure to keep a tight grip in the bag in her hand, she knew if Rachel found out about it’s contents Nick would be round in a matter of minutes demanding to know if she was pregnant. He’d probably accuse her of planning it again, say that he had been right in London and that she had been lying to him and right now she couldn’t deal with that. God she couldn’t deal with Rachel right now, not when she had so many other thoughts rushing through her mind and with Rachel being pregnant… what that be what she would look like if she was? Would she get the swollen ankles? Would she look as hot and un-comfy as her sister did right now?

“Look I don’t want to get into this now,” She tried.

“Tough. Nick didn’t want to walk in on a empty home and some crappy note but you didn’t give him that choice did you?” She retaliated.

“You’re going to raise your blood pressure, it’s not good for the baby.”

Rachel shook her head, “I’m fine but you seriously need your head checked Adrianna.”

“Don’t call me that, don’t try and act like Mom or Dad and scold me like some small child. This is my life, it was my decision and if you want to choose to be on Nick’s side over this then that’s fine he can have you, all I want is a clean break,” she said as she walked towards the door.

“A clean break?” Rachel seemed to laugh. “You’re kidding right? Your brother in law is one of his best friends, he’s one of my best friends now there is going to be no clean break. Are you going to avoid me and Alex in fear that you might see Nick?” She asked as she followed her sister who remained silent. “Well are you?”

“Look I’m sick okay? I can’t deal with this now, you should go I don’t want you to catch it,” she said as she looked pleadingly at her sister.

“Fine. I just hope you know what you’re doing and I hope you realise before it’s to late.” With that she turned and walked towards the car parked on the road and Adie sighed heavily as she watched her pull away before she looked down to the bag clasped so tightly in her hand. She took a deep breath in and released it slowly before she headed inside to find out whether it was even going to be possible to have the clean break that she wanted from Nick.