Sins – By Ms. Goldie

Chapter 1 – The Four Last Things

Marlena

The Four Last Things came first. Death, heaven, judgement, and hell. It’s odd really, that Roman’s death would change me so inexplicably. His death brought Stefano into my life in ways that continue to bring me trauma and horror every night when I close my eyes. His death brought me loneliness – an aching pain in my chest that sat there for months until Richard’s love helped dull the pain… until Richard was gone too. Richard Cates. I loved him, but did I really know him? It’s clear to me that I didn’t. I loved him and I trusted him. Roman’s death left me open to that. I trusted Roman, because he broke down the armour I had built around my heart after Don’s betrayal. And I wanted that again. I wanted trust and peace. I chose to trust Richard, but his lies circled around him, closing in and finally choking his life out. I don’t blame Abe. Richard killed Theo. Richard would have killed Abe… it’s possible he might have even been willing to kill me. I’ll never know, but the distrust that bloomed in my chest after his treachery still haunts me today.

Death is a strange bedfellow. Always lingering in the periphery. Always waiting for the end. Roman’s end. My end… perhaps John’s… 

I slammed the notebook closed, and threw my pencil across the room. I hated this. I felt like I hated everything. Rage bloomed inside me like a balloon ready to explode.  The pressure tore at my chest, but I was helpless to do anything. This was ridiculous! Glancing over at Dr. Fowler, I tried to rein myself in.  “I don’t think this is going to help me.”

“You don’t? Marlena, you were one of the best psychiatrists in the state when you went missing.” She looked at me over her desk with a raised eyebrow. “Writing things down in therapy can be very useful. It allows you to tap into those emotions you might be suppressing.”

I stared at her blankly. Suppressing emotions? Who did she think she was? I had experienced a lifetime of emotions over the past few months. The past ten years. I was not suppressing my emotions.  For a brief moment I hated her. I shouldn’t have come. The only reason I did was for my children. Carrie was struggling, and the twins were… the twins were mourning.  “I’m not suppressing emotions.” I told her in a calm monotone. “I don’t think that’s my problem. I understand what’s going on in my life.”

“How do you feel since you’ve returned from Mexico?” she asked me. Her intense stare was disconcerting. I’m used to being the one on the other side of the desk asking the hard questions and I didn’t like the way it felt to be on the receiving end. Mexico. It made me breathless even as she said it.  The memories flashed through my mind in a sequence of images that twisted my heart and caused me anguish. I didn’t want to think about Mexico. But even as I tried to push the emotions away, they swirled around in my head, in my chest. My hands felt numb as I curled them into fists.  

Helpless. Hurt. Lost. Alone. “I’m fine. I’m settled in with the children. Roman has an apartment, and John… John moved out.” A wrenching pain lanced my chest. Shit. I glanced away, not feeling comfortable with her seeing my pain, my vulnerability. “It’s a process, but we’re adjusting.”

“Marlena, that’s not what I asked you.” Dr. Fowler stood up, and rounded her desk, staring at me intently. Her flowing dress was covered in loud printed flowers. It was ugly, and her shoes were awful. I closed my eyes. I needed to stop being a bitch. I wasn’t upset with her. I was upset with myself. I was upset that I had to be here, that I couldn’t just be okay with everything and move on, like John so clearly had. She sighed. “Maybe I should be more specific… how are you handling John’s choice in Mexico? His decision to make a life with Isabella.”

I couldn’t answer that question just yet. Tears pricked my eyes, and I stood up, needing to escape from the pressure. She was too close. Too close to me. Too close to…  I turned away from her to scan the ground for my discarded pen. I should have kept writing. At least as I scratched words over paper, I could control what came out of me. I could keep it sanitized and logical. I saw the pen a few feet away, sitting near the door that could provide such an easy escape if I wanted it to. 

“Do you want my help?” she asked.

I retrieved the pen and turned to face her, feeling my hair slap my face. “Of course I do!” I hissed at her. The anger was easy. Anger at her. Anger at myself. The hard part was the fear. The fear was choking me. I felt completely alone in it. As though I was in a black pit of despair. I’d sent Roman on his way. John didn’t love me or want me. I had to make a new life work without him, and yet the thought of watching him everyday with Isabella would probably break my heart. And, G-d, that felt so stupid. How could it break my heart any more than it was already broken? And yet, I was scared it would. I was scared that seeing the two of them together, John laughing, holding their child, kissing Isabella, would destroy me completely.

Dr. Fowler sat down in the chair facing the couch. “Would you like to stop for today?”

Defeated, I felt myself weakly crumble onto the sofa. “I’m scared.” I admitted, finally. “Confronting my life… facing Mexico and where I go from here… I’m not sure I can do that.” I sighed. Mere words could not even begin to convey the depths of my terror. My anguish. How could this woman even start to understand what I had been through? “I was supposed to come home and get my life back. Nothing worked out as I expected, and I guess… in that respect, I can understand what Roman is currently going through.” I glanced at the clock. I still had a half hour left. Reaching for my notebook, I told her, “I’ll keep writing.”

All she did was nod. Her glasses slid down her nose slightly, and she pushed a thick strand of dark brown hair behind her ear.

My end came five years ago. Five years. I lost five years and when I came back nothing was the same. I once had heaven. I had heaven with John… when I thought he was Roman. For a few brief months I had him beside me in bed. I had his soft kisses on my lips. Our life together was everything to me. It was cut short, too short. Me in a coma, ISA kidnappings, and Orpheus destroyed everything… Stefano. Stefano ruined it all. My heaven was torn from my grasp and replaced with judgement and hell.

Isabella told me once that since I’d disappeared, I had no right to come home and try to claim what was mine. John was mine. At the time, I was angry. My life was stolen. My husband and my children went on, but Stefano DiMera took five years from me. Isabella’s judgment came from a place of fear. She was afraid that John would turn to me. I so desperately wanted him to. But he chose her.

As a child I was raised to believe that hell was a place where the sinners went. Hell is where I live now…

My pen stopped moving over the page, and I could feel Dr. Fowler’s eyes on me. Softly, I whispered, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life now. I understand why John chose to be with Isabella, but that doesn’t make the pain any less. I think he assumed I would make a life with Roman. That’s impossible. The love I felt for Roman died years ago… and I didn’t even realize it until I woke up to his face in San Cristobal.” I stood back up, and walked towards the window. Dr. Fowler’s office was in her home. She had the greenest, loveliest back yard that she’d seeded with clover. Small yellow flowers dotted the surface, and I smiled. I used to eat those clover flowers with Sam. I could still taste the sour burst against my tongue, and feel the heat of the sunshine on my cheeks. Turning towards where Dr. Fowler watched me, I said plaintively, “The moment I fell in love with John… that’s all there was. There was no one else for me.”

“Have you told him this?” she asked me. “After Roman’s return, did you tell John that? Or did you tell him before you left Mexico… did you tell him that you loved him?”

“I shouldn’t have to!” I cried with a loud sob. I swiped the tears from my face, furious that I allowed them to fall in the first place. Why would I have to continue to tell John I loved him, when it was so obvious to me that he didn’t feel the same way? Why would I tell him I loved him after Roman’s return? Of course I loved him! Love didn’t disappear on a whim. 

“You can’t expect him to know how you’re feeling if you don’t tell him–”

“ –and what will that do? He knows I love him. He’s known since I came back four months ago!”

I’d spent days, weeks, telling him how I felt. I’d had to suffer the indignity of thinking he would hold me or kiss me, just to have him turn away, awkward and ashamed. It had broken my heart every time he had turned his back on me. I’d grown tired of being rejected. How could he doubt my feelings for him when I had made them abundantly clear over and over?  

Dr. Fowler was quiet for a moment before she told me, “I think you might try to look at this from John’s perspective. Finding Roman in San Cristobal threw John’s world upside down, Marlena. He questioned who he was–”

“ –I know that!”

“Once that was confirmed, he lost everything. His job, his home, his children… and you. Do you think it’s possible that he questioned your love for him?” 

“What?” That one single word escaped me in a soft gasp. “No. Why would he do that?”

“Because he might have felt that the love you had for him wasn’t his either,” Dr. Fowler told me quietly. “He might have felt that once you knew the truth… that love was Roman’s as well.”

“No. No… I think. Well, as stupid as it sounds, I would think he would know that I still loved him.” I walked back towards the couch and sat down gingerly. He had to. Surely I had made that clear. I had sought him out on the pier, stopped him putting a gun to his head. I had kept Roman at arm’s length.  I had… 

I sat in silence as I recalled our life together. “It’s too late,” I whispered. “It’s too late. Isabella is pregnant, and I–I won’t be the one to break up his family. This is his second chance at a family, and he chose them. I have to accept that.”

“I wonder how fair it is to John, to make a decision like that without all of the facts?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked her harshly. Not that it mattered. John made a choice, I accepted it when he told me goodbye in Mexico. I let him assume I would make a life with Roman, but he hadn’t really asked me what my plans were, had he? I knew it was juvenile, but I was tired of everyone expecting me to have all of the answers. I lost five years of my life, I lost my husband, I lost my foundation. I lost my heart and the future I wanted. I don’t have any fucking answers. All I had was a life that would go on, and I had to find a way to muddle through it, at least to start. So that’s why I was where I was. I was living in hell. 

Dr. Fowler didn’t say anything else as she watched me gather my things to leave. Why would she? I was hostile, and I was defensive. As a psychiatrist I knew that when patients were overly emotional reasoning with them might not be possible. Shame washed through me, and I avoided her gaze as I mumbled, “I’ve got to go. I have to pick up the twins.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

I checked off the last crate on my list, and stared at the clipboard in my hand. The noise of the bustling pier surrounded me, but I was somewhere else in my mind. I had been for over a week. I was distracted, and I’d been distracted since Isabella and I had flown back to Salem. I closed my eyes, remembering when we disembarked our flight. I’d been surprised to see Roman standing there with Bo and Carly because we’d taken different flights. Isabella has insisted we had to fly First Class because she was so uncomfortable with her pregnancy.

I glanced around, hoping to get a glimpse of Marlena and immediately felt guilty when Isabella caught my eye. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. We both knew who I was looking for. Reaching for my hand, she said, “I’m not feeling well. I’d really like to get back to the loft.”

“That’s fine,” I replied softly. I knew she wasn’t feeling well. She’d vomited twice on the flight, and I was worried about dehydration. “I just need to check in with Roman real quick.” I needed to arrange a time to pick up my things… and say goodbye to the Twinners. My heart was breaking at the mere thought of it. Maybe arranging something would help with closure. I needed closure. I needed something, although I couldn’t say with certainty what that was. I saw the frustration in Isabella’s eyes, but she held back whatever she was thinking. 

Alarm bells went off as I watched her turn away from me. It was hard to understand. She knew how much I love them… all of them. Sure, I’d committed to her, but I wouldn’t deny my love for Marlena. That would be a lie. I’d let her go, and I would let my children go. I didn’t have a choice because Roman was back. I felt like a fucking thief, even though I hadn’t stolen anything.

I approached the group through a throng of people and the din of luggage and foot traffic, and I cleared my throat. Bo and Carly smiled at me, while Roman glared. It was what I’d expected. Roman still considered me to be a willing plant from the DiMera organization sent forth to ruin his life. I couldn’t find fault in that. I’d considered him to be the same thing a few months ago. Now the harsh reality of what my life was stared at me full of cracks and holes I had no memory to fill with. I was back to step one – only this time I had memories of a life well lived. I was losing that. It was slipping through my fingers, and maybe… that made the pain of not knowing who I was hurt even more.

“Roman, I, uh, I need to arrange a time to collect my things, and say goodbye to the Twinners,” I said roughly. “I was wondering–”

“ –you gotta talk to Marlena about that. If it was up to me, no one would ever talk to you again.” Roman turned and walked away, leaving me standing there in surprised silence. I didn’t understand what was happening.

Carly’s soft hand landed on my arm, and then Bo said, “Marlena didn’t come home with us. Actually, she… well, she told Roman that he needs to find an apartment, and, um, she’s not comfortable with him in the house alone with her and the children just yet.”

“What?” I was shocked. I’d thought… I’d fully believed that she would be starting her life with Roman. After all, he was her husband. I had so many questions swirling around in my head and I couldn’t ask any of them because I could feel Isabella’s eyes on me. Bo’s eyes narrowed as well. I could understand why. Isabella being his sister was the biggest one. The possibility of me breaking Marlena’s heart another, and then there was Roman. Bo was being pulled in only one possible direction. He had no loyalty to me now.

A loud shout pulled me from my reveries, and I ducked just as a crate swung by my head. “Get the fuck out of the way, Black!”

Shit. I turned and started walking towards the shipping office. My shift was over, and I needed to get the fuck out of there. I thought about going home to Isabella, but I wasn’t ready yet. A long walk on Pier 29 could maybe help reset my brain. That was a lie of course. I’d been ruminating for the last week and I didn’t have the guts to go to Marlena for answers. I’d let her go. I’d done the right thing, hadn’t I? Saying goodbye in Mexico was me releasing her from an obligation she felt she had to me. She’d only loved me because she’d believed I was Roman, and now Roman was back. Roman was alive, and that made me an afterthought.

I shoved my timecard into the slot, listening for the familiar sound of the printer stamping the time out in purple ink. I glanced at it to make sure it was clear, otherwise I’d have to write it in and find Hank to initial it. Satisfied that it was clear enough, I slid it back into my folder and I walked out without another word to anyone. It didn’t matter. I was an oddity there. The man who had once been Roman Brady but was now a man without a past known as John Black. Even my name held no meaning or history. 

A stiff breeze blew off the river as I walked by my nondescript car. It was nothing. It got me from point A to point B. Isabella had tried to purchase me a car. She’d even begged me to move into the loft with her. I might be a nameless man without a past, but I wasn’t one to take handouts. I had money. Not much, but I had some. I’d taken half of my savings and placed it into a separate account under the name John Black before we’d even left for Mexico. As much as I had insisted that I was Roman Brady, I didn’t believe it enough to trust myself. 

I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I was stressed about Isabella and the baby. Her blood pressure was high, and she was supposed to be resting, but she was so busy trying to keep tabs on me that she was pushing limits. I was starting to feel guilty. Maybe I should move into the loft, or take a job with Titan. Afterall, Victor had offered me a job. But something was stopping me. It felt as if I did those things, my life would suddenly be on a trajectory that I could not control.  One that wouldn’t lead me to happiness. The problem was I didn’t know how to find happiness. I was still trying to get legal identification, because all I had was temporary. I wasn’t Roman Brady, that much was true. But who was I?  It was a fight with the hospital, the ISA, and the social security office. The reality was, I had no idea who I was, and establishing an identity for John Black was not as easy as it seemed. 

I was at Pier 29 before I even realized how far I’d walked. I tucked myself deeper into my peacoat and tugged my beanie down over my ears before I buried my gloved hands deep into my pockets. Another gust of wind came up off of the river, and I couldn’t help but smile. This was the one place I could think clearly. I took a deep breath. I just needed a few minutes and then I could walk back to my car, and meet Isabella for dinner at the loft. 

I thought about Marlena. She hadn’t been home when I’d gathered my things from the house. That probably made me a coward. I’d left a short note telling her I’d been there, but I think we’re both avoiding each other at the moment. I hadn’t even arranged a time to speak with the twins. The thought of doing so felt so final, and maybe that made me a coward too. I’d made a choice. I’d made a fucking choice, and I was angry at Marlena for making a different one. If she’d come home with Roman… damn it! I guess, if she’d come home with Roman I might be more comfortable about all of this. I wouldn’t have all these questions swirling around in my head. I wouldn’t have all this doubt.

I descended the steps slowly. My heart was breaking, but that felt wrong. I shouldn’t be this depressed. I was starting my new life. I had a job. I had Isabella and the baby. The baby, which would give me a family that couldn’t be taken away because they were mine. That ache in my chest constricted even tighter. Isabella and the baby couldn’t be taken away from me, and yet I was avoiding that final goodbye with Marlena and the children. 

“Fuck!” I yelled to no one in particular. “Fuck!” I punched the pilings near the stairs, as I roared, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I couldn’t make a life with Isabella, even though she believed that’s what was happening. How could I do that when I couldn’t even let go of the family that wasn’t mine? A small voice inside me roared, they are mine! I punched the piling again, “Fuck!”

The wind picked up, and the soft scent of jasmine brushed across my face. Behind me, I heard a soft feminine voice, saying my name. No. Not here. Not now. Turning around slowly, I lifted my eyes to see Malena standing there in the middle of the pier. Her eyes were filled with tears and her cheeks were red with salty wet tracks. She was beautiful, even when she was in pain. 

“Doc, I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be moving out as soon as I get back to Salem,” I said softly, unable to meet her eyes. I finally turned to look at her, and her eyes were cloaked. She was trying to hide something from me, and I didn’t understand why. We’d always been so open with each other. “Is he a good father?” I asked.

“Yes,” was her only response.

I needed to know. “So the kids are going to be able to trust–”

“Yes,” she whispered.

My voice choked as I said, “Sami is still scared of lightning storms, you know that…” 

I’d never asked her how she felt about it all. I’d never asked her if she was planning to make a life with Roman. I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, and the sting of freezing cold wind against my cheeks, and then a sob tore free of my chest. “Doc!” Within moments she was in my arms, and we were sobbing in the shadows of the pier. As I closed my eyes I thought about how perfect she felt. What was my life going to be? I needed to grapple with everything Stefano had taken from me – my past, my children… my wife… How was I going to do that?

Chapter 2 – Vainglory/Pride

Marlena

It was happening more and more frequently. I would wake from a nightmare of Stefano. I was covered in sweat and I feared that I had cried out. I listened carefully trying to see if I had woken the twins. The only sound I could hear was the hum of the heating system and the tick of the clock on my bedside table. The house was silent. I fell back against my pillow with a sigh. I would have to change the sheets again, shower, and change my clothing. My skin felt cold and clammy, the sweat on my skin making me feel dirty. Stefano made me feel dirty. 

I closed my eyes, and focused on controlling my breathing. I felt like the more I dove into my lost years in therapy, the more the dreams came to me. Who was I kidding? Dreams? They weren’t dreams. They were memories, and I needed to face that. 

“Ah, ah, ah, Marlena. Are you sure you want to move your bishop there?” Stefano asked me with an arrogant tone. I stared at him with eyes full of hatred.

“Are we playing the game or not?” I asked him, refusing to look away.

His hands went up in mock defeat, and he smiled at me as if he were humoring a child. Slowly he reached forward arrogantly moving his pawn as if I was of little consequence. I was only sitting across from him because he’d threatened my family. He’d taken over where Orpheus had left off.  Every move I made inside his house was a chess move manipulated by him. I had no autonomy, no free will. 

I stared at the board in front of me, wanting to be free of his presence. I moved my next piece and waited, hoping, praying that he would make the move I anticipated he would. His arrogance would be the thing that allowed me to beat him at chess for the first time since he’d rescued me from Orpheus. I wanted to laugh. Rescue? I was as much a prisoner as I had been on that island with Orpheus. I watched silently as he moved his knight, and then without warning I took his King with my bishop. 

Stefano stared at the board in a quiet fury. I allowed myself a moment to enjoy it, and then I stood up, wiping my sweaty palms on my fine linen pants. “I assume you will leave me alone until dinner?”

He stared at me with cold eyes, and I stepped back in fear. “No. I think I would like you to have a drink with me.”

“I think I will have to decline,” I said warily. He was changing the agreement. The agreement had been that I play the game of chess, and then I would be free until dinner. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.

Stefano held out his hand to me as if I would readily accept it. “Come here, my queen.”

“I am not yours. I will never be yours,” I told him. But even as I said it, apprehension started to weave itself through my muscles. Did I really trust that he would let me go? “You said when I was recovered you would allow me to return to my family.”

Stefano stood up, walking towards me, a sly smile curling his lips. “I have grown quite fond of you, and I have never met a woman who was able to match me in intelligence–”

“You said I could go home!” I cried. I was furious but I was also scared. I saw the lust in his eyes and I stepped further back. “I won’t ever want you. Never. You have to know that!”

He laughed, as if what I’d said was humorous. “So many women have said that to me, Marlena, and all of them eventually fell into my bed overcome with desire.”

I rolled over and curled into a ball suddenly overcome with nausea. What had he done to me? What had I allowed him to do? There was a part of me that wanted every moment of those five years back, and there was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to keep them in the furthest reaches of my mind. Stefano had died a victim of his own vanity and his own arrogance, but he had destroyed my family in his quest for vengeance. A vengeance that none of us fully understood. 

The sun was just starting to rise, casting a silvery light over everything in the room. I turned towards the bedroom door when I heard a soft knock and Eric’s sweet voice, “Mama?”

“Yes, my darling?” I sat up in the large bed, feeling so incredibly alone, and I pushed the hair back from my face. I held my hand out to him, and he placed his small one in mine. I still couldn’t believe how much they’d grown. When I woke in San Cristobal I had no concept of the passage of time, although with these resurging memories, I realized I must have been aware. I had been in a panic to return to my children, and Roman. But it wasn’t Roman. I was in a panic to return to John. 

“I can’t sleep,” Eric whispered, climbing onto the bed next to me. “I had a bad dream that Mr. Patrick took me… I was scared.”

“Eric,” I said softly. I wrapped my arm around him and pulled him closer. Every time I laid hands on Eric or Sami it was marvelous. I had so much love for them, and yet I was still learning them. “Do you remember what I told you about Mr. Patrick?”

“That’s he’s my Daddy?” He stared at her, and then said with a small frown, “He doesn’t feel like my Daddy.”

“That will take time.” I knew even as I said it that my words sounded hollow and they lacked conviction. Roman may have been their father but he hadn’t yet arranged time to see them. His wounded pride was holding him back. At least, that was what I wanted to think, but in truth, it was his pride that held him back. The idea that he didn’t care enough for his children to make the effort to see them was not one I could countenance.

“What do you mean you want me to move out? It’s my house, Doc!” Roman cried, staring at me as if he were confused. The hut we were in was humid, and I was already overwhelmed. John had just decided to inform me that he was going home with Isabella. I hadn’t even had a chance to tell him what I wanted. I stared at Roman, unsure of what to say as he cried, “It’s my house, and those are my kids, and as much as you wish it weren’t true, you’re my wife!”

I took in a shaky breath. Legally, was that even true? Roman had been declared dead many years ago. And then I married John thinking he was Roman. Was I married to a dead man? Or the man that wore his name, if not his face? It was so confusing. “Roman, I–I need time. I need time to adjust to all of these changes. I’ve never lied to you. I told you that I loved John–”

“ –because you thought he was me!” he roared. His face was lit with fury, and as much as I wanted to take his pain away, I couldn’t do it at the expense of myself. Roman’s experiences with Stefano would affect him for the rest of his life. We still had no real understanding of what he’d gone through because he refused to discuss it. That was scary… and unpredictable. He pleaded with me, “We know the truth now. It’s time for us to put our family back together–”

“ –I can’t,” I whispered helplessly, wiping at my tears furiously. I could see the pain at war with anger in his eyes. He was someone I didn’t know anymore. That I couldn’t trust. I trusted him once but he’d been through hell. And so had I. There was too much at stake for me to trust him now. He stepped closer, reaching for me, and I stepped back quickly. I gasped softly, “I can’t! There’s too much that’s unresolved.”

“Because you love him?” he asked me with a sneer. I could feel the hatred bubbling under his words. He hated John. He hated me for loving John.

“Yes,” I replied softly. “I’ve never denied that.”

“What are you going to do, Doc?” Roman’s eyes narrowed as he tried to play on my fear and my vulnerability. “John has made his choice, and it was–”

“ –I know who he chose, Roman. You don’t have to be cruel and remind me.” It was cruel. It was manipulative. That wasn’t the Roman I remembered. That I’d wanted to remember, at least. “It won’t change how I feel. I told you. I need time, and I need therapy to process the simple fact that I have lost five years of my life.” 

Roman threw his hands up in frustration, “Therapy? Doc! You’re a psychiatrist for G-d’s sake! Why do you need a therapist?” 

Pride could destroy men in different ways. For Stefano it was his belief that he couldn’t be beaten. His belief that he was the smartest man in existence. For Roman it was his inability to accept that I loved someone else. My voice became soft as I told him, “Roman… you need to see someone too. You can’t continue to repress your memories and refuse to discuss what you went through when Stefano had you.”

His eyes narrowed, “I’m fine. I don’t need to discuss it, and I won’t discuss it.”

I hated to hurt him. He’d already been hurt so much, but the children were my first priority. “I can’t allow you to spend time alone with the twins until you do. I–I can’t take that risk, Roman.”

“What about you? What about John? You can’t be serious right now, Doc!” He stared at me with disbelief, but I’d seen his rage since he’d returned, and his hatred of John. I couldn’t be certain that he was safe to be around the twins. 

“Roman… please?” I pleaded. 

I was pulled from my reverie when Eric whispered in a small voice, “I just want my old Daddy back. I don’t want a new Daddy.”

It broke my heart. I’d gotten the note John had left when he’d picked up his things. After our accidental meeting at the pier, we’d arranged a time for him to come and see the twins. I didn’t want them to lose him completely, and I had no intention of barring John from their lives. That would be traumatic for them, and it would destroy John. I glanced at the clock again, and then I brushed a lock of hair back off of Eric’s forehead. “John will be stopping by after breakfast today… to visit with you and Sami.”

His eyes widened, and he popped up onto his knees to better see my face. “Daddy’s coming here today?”

I should have corrected him. I should have reminded him to call John by his name, as he was no longer Daddy, but the hope in my son’s eyes stopped me. “Yes. He’ll be here later this morning.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

I stood in my small galley style kitchen in the early morning hours and rubbed my palms over my face as I waited for my coffee to brew. Isabella had wanted me to stay with her the night before, but ever since I’d run into Marlena on the pier a few days earlier I’d been shaken. Her pain had been palpable, and I had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. All thought of Isabella and my life with her had left me, and my only focus, my only concern, had been the women in my arms. Since then, I’d been questioning everything. 

I was still trying to process what had happened in Mexico and I was haunted by Stefano. Him appearing out of the hazy darkness of the cave had been shocking. The sound of his voice had rocked me to my core. Even without seeing him at first, I’d known the deep tenor and the arrogance. It sat in the darkest reaches of my mind, taunting me in the crevices of my lost past.

The codices were clenched in my hands when I heard him. My head darted side to side, desperately trying to find the source of the reverberating sound. “That voice… I know it from somewhere.”

Stepping from the shadows, I heard him say, “Yes. You do, and let me say how glad I am to see all of you again.”

“Oh, my G-d.” I hadn’t seen him since he’d taken Carrie and kidnapped her, taking her to his small island off the coast of Greece. In truth, maybe I’d thought him dead.  Maybe I had desperately wished for him to be dead. But he wasn’t. He stepped from the shadows and a dull, aching sickness washed over me. I would never escape him. I would have to live my life constantly in fear for myself, or my loved ones, because of the monster that stood in front of me. 

I dimly heard Roman next to me say his name with barely concealed rage. We didn’t agree on much, but we agreed on our mutual hatred of Stefano DiMera. Stefano’s laughter echoed around the cavern like a macabre circus act. 

Behind me, I heard Lawrence ask, “What is going on?”

My muscles trembled. I might have lied and said I wasn’t scared, but I was. The sound of his voice brought things to the surface that I didn’t fully understand, but I couldn’t lie. It was a fear so deep that I knew at that moment that I would always have to contend with it. 

“You never met Stefano, Larry?” Bo asked sarcastically as he walked around us. “He’s the guy that’s been messing with our lives all along.”

Roman stepped towards Stefano, “I ought to kill you right now you filthy–”

“ –I think perhaps you should look behind you,” Stefano said arrogantly. “Before you do something you will regret. Say hello to my assistant Domingo.”

The sickness that had set up home in my stomach twisted and roiled around. Domingo. A man I had considered a friend. We all turned to see him enter the cave with his assault weapon pointed at us. I met his gaze and felt the treachery deep in my gut, but there was nothing I could do. I’d been an idiot. I hadn’t known of Stefano’s involvement. If I had, I wouldn’t have trusted anyone. Stefano’s pleased voice echoed over my shoulder, “I believe you have already made his acquaintance… 

Domingo sneered, “And while you are at it, you had better drop your weapons. Too many guns in one room make Domingo nervous.”

The sound of Domingo cocking his weapon met my ears as Stefano said, “Excellent. Now, Mr. Black, if you would be so kind as to hand over the codices?”

“And why the hell would I want to do something like that?” I asked him.

Stefano threw a handful of dust towards the cave floor and a pit filled with flames as he laughed, “Impressive, is it not? But wait, there are even more surprises in store!”

Roman took a step towards Stefano, “I’ve had enough of this–”

That was when I saw the satchel in Stefano’s hands and panic gripped me. I knew that bag. I didn’t know how. I had no memories of it, and yet a fear so strong it bordered on terror gripped me. I reached out pulling Roman back, “No! Don’t!”

“You are a wise man, Mr. Black.” Everytime Stefano said my name it was laced with condescension. John Black was not my name, or maybe it was, but the way he said it made my skin crawl. I stared up at him with wide eyes, waiting, wondering what his next move would be, and desperate to get my hands on that satchel. “Wiser in some ways than your alter ego, Roman Brady.” He saw the reality of it hit me in an instant. I was not Roman Brady, and my world collapsed around me in a matter of seconds. I could keep pretending I was Roman Brady, but Stefano had announced plainly that I was not. And he would know. He was the one that forged me from the flesh of bone of a forgotten man, “That’s right, that is not who you are, but you will be glad to know your quest is almost over. The proof of your two identities are here, in this bag.”

The heat from the flames hit my skin, scalding it, and I could feel the sweat start to roll down my spine. I didn’t move as I watched Stefano warily. What game was he playing? Because it was a game. They were always games when Stefano was involved.

“You have been searching for answers, Mr. Black,” Stefano said, his arrogance ringing around the cavern. “Contained in this bag, is all you will ever need. The key to your past can be yours right now. All you have to do is claim it in exchange for the codices.”

I stared into his dark, heartless eyes, and knew it was a bargain with the devil. It was a trick. It was always a trick and I would spend the rest of my life one step behind him. Defeat washed over me. I would never be free of him. I didn’t have the energy to keep fighting, but then I saw Marlena, and the twins… I thought about Carrie.  

“This is your last chance, Mr. Black!” Stefano roared over the sound of the flames. “Give the codices to me, and I will give you your name. I will hand over the only proof in this world of your identity.”

I clutched the codices closer to my chest. I wouldn’t give them to Stefano. I knew that if there was something he wanted that badly, it would come to no good end. Roman, catching my minute movement out of the corner of his eye, reacted. He grabbed at me, “No! No!”

Stefano watched me, “Make your choice quickly, my friend! The opportunity fades, and with it my patience! Decide!”

I was furious. Stefano had yet again backed me into a corner like an animal. The arrogance and vainglory in his face said it all. He was convinced I would give in, but Roman knew I wouldn’t. He grabbed me, screaming, “No! Listen to me! Listen to me! We can have it all! Just cooperate and give him the damn things!”

I finally took my eyes off of Stefano, and said to Roman, “I don’t know if I can.”

“I am still waiting,” Stefano taunted. 

I wanted to wrap my hands around his neck and strangle him. Stefano represented every pain I’d ever felt in my life. He’d taken my past and my memories. He’d taken Marlena. He’d taken the twins. He’d kidnapped Carrie. Giving him the codices would mean he’d won. Was learning the truth of my past really that important? I hated him with every beat of my heart. Looking up at him as he stood above us, I roared, “I don’t know if I want to!”

“Very well, Mr. Black. I take your silence as an answer!” Stefano held the bag over the flaming pit with a smile of superiority. 

I wasn’t sure what made me call out. Maybe it was my need for answers, or my own pride. “Hold on!”

Stefano’s eyes lit up with victory. “Ah! The man without a past has found his tongue!”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” I asked furiously. “What proof do you have? Do you really know who I am?”

“Semantics, my friend. Proof to one man may not be proof to another,” Stefano replied arrogantly. “But I do have a little story to tell you…”

I jolted when the coffee machine beeped. I glanced down at it in bewilderment, confused about where I was. I’d fallen so deeply into the past that I was disoriented. “Fuck,” I mumbled as I brushed my hands through my hair. Rubbing my palm over my bare chest I jumped again when the telephone rang. It was barely seven o’clock in the morning. Who would be calling me? Really, who did I have? Aside from Isabella, I was a man without a family, without friends. A man without a life to call his own. Maybe Marlena was right. It was time for me to find someone to talk to. 

I snatched the telephone off of the wall and I said roughly, “Yeah?”

“John?” Marlena’s soft voice was like a balm for my soul. It came so unexpectedly down the line and yet, it was almost as though she had known exactly what I’d needed. I had been lost in my thoughts, lost in my… my loss. And yet, here she was, bringing me the calm and the sweetness I didn’t even know I needed. I felt my muscles relax, and a soft smile came over my face.

“Morning, Doc,” I said in a softer tone. My pride had gotten the best of me until I’d run into her on the pier. A quiet stolen moment on a cold blustery night, and my pride was washed away. The only thing that mattered was what she’d been offering me.

“I was just calling to make sure that you were still planning to come by this morning?” she asked.

“I was.” Apprehension lit my skin, as I said, “Has there been a change?”

Marlena sounded uncertain as she said, “Well, no… I was wondering if perhaps you might like to come over sooner? Maybe to have breakfast with the twins? I heard you make great pancakes and well–”

“ –I can be there in fifteen minutes. Or is that too soon?” I asked eagerly. 

I didn’t want to seem desperate, I didn’t want her to know how much I hung on her every word, like sweet drops of honey feeding a starving man. But all I heard in her voice was relief. I could even imagine her smiling, “That would be perfect.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Roman

Abe sat across from me waiting for my response, and I wanted to explode. “So you’re telling me, if I want to rejoin the force, the commissioner wants a full mental evaluation, and I’ll be returning to the rank I was when I was taken by Stefano? How can I support my family on that pay, Abe? It’s unfair! If I wasn’t kidnapped I’d be at the same rank John made, or higher!”

Abe looked at me as if he were confused. “But you were taken, Roman! We can’t have you start at the rank John attained… it would look bad, and honestly, I agree with the commissioner. You were gone for seven years. We don’t know what happened to you and what effect that might have had on you. It could be dangerous to have you out in the field with a weapon when–”

“ –this is the same thing Doc is trying to do to me! She won’t even allow me to spend time with the twins alone until I see a fucking psychiatrist!” Everyone was judging me. They were all assuming that I was the one who would crack under pressure when they should be worried about the grenade planted in their midst by Stefano DiMera. I was dealing with everything that DiMera did. I was dealing with what he took from me, what I was not dealing with was knowing that my wife and my family were still standing by the wolf in sheep’s clothing. They refused to see how dangerous he was and it was making me more than a little furious. I was not the unpredictable one in this scenario, and I certainly didn’t need psychiatric help.

“It’s not personal,” Abe tried to tell me. “It’s procedure. Giving you John’s rank and John’s clearances would be unfair. The other officers would see it as favoritism–”

“ –I would have had all of that if I wasn’t taken and forced into a moldy cell in the G-d damned jungle!” I roared. Favoritism?  Fucking favoritism? Didn’t they understand what I had been put through? Didn’t they understand how unfair they were being? I was the one who’s life and family had been stolen.  I was the one who had been tortured, who’d had to watch as a fucking interloper stole what was rightfully mine. I stood up, knocking the wooden chair I sat in backwards onto the floor. 

“We’re back!” my prison guard said with false joviality. The hot, humid air laid over my skin like a blanket in the sweltering heat. He opened my cell door with a smile that made me wary, “It’s time for that little surprise I was telling you about.”

I stared up at him weakly. Another guard followed him in and they both hoisted me to my feet. I didn’t even have the energy to fight them as they tied a blindfold over my eyes. I wasn’t even sure what I was living for or how much time had passed. I knew it was years, but in the jungle the passage of time in a tropical climate could only be told by rainy seasons. I’d lost track of how many. I didn’t fight them as the other guard said, “Make it good and tight! We don’t want our friend to think he’s going to get away.”

Friend? I almost laughed, but I couldn’t find the energy. They pushed me out of the cell, their fingers digging into my flesh as one of them said, “Vamanos.”

Several minutes later my blindfold was removed in a brightly lit room. Everything was blurry. I’d been in the dark for so long, and yet I immediately realized where I was. Marlena’s room. But she was gone. The last time I’d seen her she’d been in a coma lying in the bed in front of me. “Where is she?” I demanded looking around the room. 

The guard seemed smug as he said, “Marlena is gone.”

I turned around, feeling dizziness overwhelm me. They hadn’t even bothered to handcuff me. I was too weak to fight them and they knew it. “Where? What have you done with her?”

The guard I hated the most smiled at me. “I’ll tell you later. When you’re back in your cell–”

“ –I want you to tell me right now–” I tried to push past them.

“ –!detenlo!” my guard yelled, and then I was on the ground being kicked and punched. I didn’t even have time to react. All I could do was cover my head and pray that wherever my wife was, she was safe. It’s all I wanted. Every kick of his boot into my ribs was accentuated with his words. “You’ll pay for that! Over and over again!”

I stared at Abe with furious eyes, and I leaned forward, banging on his desk. “I won’t do it. I won’t jump through all of these fucking hoops just to get what I deserve! What I earned!” It’s a fucking insult is what it is. They handed my life to that fucking maniac, gave him my job and my house. My fucking wife climbed into bed with him and let him fuck her, and now I have to start proving myself worthy to take back what is mine? I have to prove I am not the psycho with the memory problem and the unstable hair-trigger? Fuck that. Fuck them. 

Abe stared up at me sadly, and closed the file in front of him. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Roman, but I don’t make the rules here. I just enforce them. If you want, I can see about scheduling a meeting for you with the police commissioner.”

“Fuck the police commissioner! I’ll go back to working the fishing boat with Pop before I open myself up to this shit.” I slammed the door behind me on the way out, trying to ignore the stares I was getting from old and new officers alike. Bo reached for my arm as I walked by him, and I shook him off. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

He didn’t understand. None of them would ever understand. Ma would say my pride had gotten the best of me. Maybe it had, but I deserved better. So fuck them all.

Chapter 3 – Avarice/Greed

Marlena

“You should let him go,” Isabella hissed at me furiously.  Her eyes flashed and her expression held the hint of a sneer. “You have Roman. You don’t need John too!”

I tried to push past her, saying, “Excuse me.” I wasn’t sure what had provoked the attack, I just knew I didn’t want to get into this with her. Not here, not now. I was already exhausted, I didn’t need this on top of everything else I was feeling. But instead of letting me pass, she grabbed my arm, holding onto me tightly. I glanced down where she held me, and then I stared into her angry eyes, “Let go of me.” My tone was firm, my words slow and punctuated.

“Not until you listen to me!” she said, spittle flying from her mouth. She was clearly angry, but I really had no idea what had caused this. “Everything was settled in Mexico! John chose me, and then you went and changed all of the rules.”

“There were no rules, Isabella. John made a choice. I understand that, but I made a choice too.” I shook her hand off. I may have been tired but I was not going to let her intimidate me. I was not going to apologize. “I’m sure it would have been convenient for everyone if I had decided to come home with Roman and start my life, but I couldn’t do that. I made a choice.”

“And now it’s destroying everyone,” she replied rudely.

“Destroying everyone?” The bustle of people around me at Salem Place didn’t mean I wasn’t aware that people were watching. Why wouldn’t they? Dr. Marlena Evans-Brady back from the dead having a heated discussion with Isabella Toscano, the fiancée of John Black, previously known to the citizens of Salem as Roman Brady. We were all front page news, and I wanted to end this quickly. I leaned closer so that only Isabella could hear. “I will not have this conversation in public. As a matter of fact, I will not have this conversation at all. I’m not sure what you think or what issues you might be having with John, but–”

“ –I’m not having issues with John,” she said, almost a little too quickly. Her palm went to settle on her burgeoning abdomen and I felt slightly sick. For a moment, I had almost forgotten. I wanted to forget it. John’s baby. She was having John’s baby. As much as I wished it weren’t true, I had accepted it.

Greed was an odd thing. People often assumed that greed was about materialism and money. However, greed could also impact matters of the heart. Isabella wanted all of John. I wasn’t sure she would ever have that. I wanted all of John, but I knew I could never have that. As much as Isabella and I didn’t get along – I mean, how could we – two women in love with the same man? It made for an impossible solution. It left me with no solution, except to accept John’s choice and move on with my life. I was focused on my children and helping them heal, and I was focused on helping myself heal. I’d lost five years of my life, and although I wouldn’t admit it out loud, I felt that those were years I could have spent with John. And if I had, Isabella wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t have even looked twice at her. I knew it sounded cruel, but it didn’t change my heart.

“I really have to go,” I said, but just as I turned around, I found myself face to face with Roman. I groaned internally. All I’d wanted to do was find a few pieces of clothing that I could use to update my horribly out of date wardrobe. John had moved half of the savings account into my name before we left for Mexico. He’d told me in private, and part of me had felt guilty for keeping that between us, but in truth, it was his money. He’d worked for it. He could do what he wanted to with it. I was surprised when he’d told me though. 

“I’m here to make pancakes for the best behaved Twinners in Salem!” he said, coming through the front door. He carried with him two grocery bags laden with fruit and juice.

“I already have everything you need,” I laughed. I was so happy to see his beautiful face. I would have laughed anyway, even if he hadn’t been carrying half a shop with him. “You didn’t have to go to the grocery store.”

Eric and Sami came thundering down the stairs with squeals of delight as John sat the bags on the floor near the foot of the stairs and snatched them up in his warm embrace. “How are my two favorite people in the whole wide world?”

His presence immediately lightened the mood in the house. The twins had been so down since our return from Mexico, and they hadn’t had any time with John. Telling them that John wasn’t their father, and that Roman was, had broken my heart. I wished John had been with me, but I’d had to do it alone, because I’d worried that Roman would rush it, and blunder the whole thing.

I found myself wondering if, when Roman and I were married, he was always that insensitive? His reaction to my decision in Mexico had not gone over well, and his treatment of John over the last few months had been atrocious. Then there was the way he’d treated Caroline when he’d learned of Bo’s parentage. It was something the family had dealt with years ago, but I saw a side of Roman that I never hoped to see again. He’d treated his mother with such disrespect. Seeing that had left me with a feeling I wasn’t entirely sure of. It created a doubt that bloomed inside me. Roman’s treatment of Caroline that day made me believe that he would never fully accept me. Not really. No matter how much he begged. There was something in his eyes when he looked around the house the first time he’d come in. I’d seen his reaction when he’d seen me enter the master bedroom at night. He’d  pleaded and cajoled and when that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to pressure me. All it had done was push me further away.

My final decision in Mexico was made before we even left Salem. Whether John wanted me or not, I would not be coming home to start a life with Roman Brady. I sighed, watching the way the twins clung to John when he tried to set them down. They were desperate. Gently I said, “Hey. He’s staying for breakfast, remember?”

Sami’s eyes filled with tears, “You won’t leave again, will you Daddy?”

I could see the pain in John’s eyes as he glanced at me, so I said quickly, “He’s here for now, and after we eat we can discuss seeing him later.”

Eric held back a soft sound of unhappiness as he whispered, “Okay.”

“Hey you two,” John said with more happiness than either of us was feeling. “Do your Dad a favor–” He stopped suddenly realizing what he’d said, and then amended himself, “Do me a favor and take these bags into the kitchen and unload them. I need to speak with your mother really quickly.”

I watched the twins lift the bags and walk towards the kitchen. As the door swung behind them, I clasped my hand over my mouth to cover my whimper of distress. They were hurting so much. “Hey. Hey, hey, hey,” John whispered softly, stepping close to me. His hands cupped my cheeks and he wiped the tears from my face with his thumbs. “Don’t cry, Doc. We’ll figure this out. I can’t stand to see you cry.”

“They’re hurting so much,” I choked. “I don’t know how to help them.”

“If I’m allowed to see them, and spend time with them… we can figure the rest out,” he said softly.

I stare up at him. “I would never take them away from you. You have been an integral part of their life–”

“ –Roman has been clear with me… he doesn’t want me involved–”

“ –Roman’s not the one making those decisions. I am.” I stepped back and watched John’s hands fall helplessly to his sides. His touch was too much. Too intimate. Too personal. I wanted to lean into it, and I didn’t have that right. I was weak at the pier, but I couldn’t be greedy.

John watched me with curious eyes, and I could see the wheels of his mind turning. He wanted to ask me why I’d come home alone, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “After the DNA test results came in, I decided to make some quick financial decisions. I went to the bank–”

I was confused. “ –before we went to Mexico?” 

His eyes pleaded with me to understand. “You have to understand. I–I wasn’t certain how things would pan out, Doc.” 

I remembered his desperation when I found him on the pier with the gun. “I understand,” I said softly.

“I closed the savings account I had here in Salem, and I put half of it into an account for you. It has your name on it. It’s not much, Doc, but it’s yours–”

“John…” I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I put the other half in an offshore account under the name John Black.” He reached for my hand, and I forced myself not to shiver at his touch. He pulled some paperwork out of his pocket and handed it to me. “I want you to have it. It’s going to take time to get your license renewed and I want to know that you and the kids are taken care of.”

I stared at Roman trying to find my bearings, just as he said, “We need to talk, Doc.”  I couldn’t talk to him. How could I talk to him when all I wanted to do was run away from him? When all I wanted to do was run into John’s arms?

“Roman, I just told Isabella, I don’t have time to talk right now. The twins will be out of school soon, and I need to pick them up.” 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Roman

  Isabella was standing there watching us, so I glanced over at her saying, “If you’ll excuse us.” I pulled Marlena off to the side near some ugly potted ficus trees. “You wanna tell me why John Black was at my house this weekend?”

She stared at me in surprise, and then shook my hand off as if my touch was appalling. “He came to see the children and spend time with them.”

“I don’t want him around them, Doc! I’ve told you several times that he’s a grenade just waiting to go off! He could hurt them… he could hurt you!” Why wouldn’t she listen to what I was saying? I’d spent seven years with Stefano. I knew what he was capable of, what kind of monsters he could create.  I’d seen it, seen his soldiers, his mercenaries. Seen how soulless they were. He’d used me to train some of them, calling them off only when I was broken and bloodied. Only to set them on me again when my bones had healed.  

“John would never hurt me or the children! I know that, and they are hurting Roman. He’s the only father they’ve known–”

“I’m their father!” I’m so angry I’m nearly vibrating with the fury that courses through me. “I. Am. Their. Father. Do you understand that?” 

“Then I suggest that you arrange some time to visit with them, Roman. It’s very simple. You call the house, I say when they will be home, and then you come over.” She stared at me with hard eyes, and for a moment, my hand twitched and I pictured myself slapping her. I was immediately appalled that I’d even considered it. I didn’t hit women. Pop would beat my ass if I did. Marlena must have seen something in my eyes, because she stepped back slightly. 

“You’re making that difficult,” I said, my lips drawn into a tight line..

I knew what she was about to ask me before she even opened her mouth. “Have you made any attempt to–”

“ – you and fucking Abe,” I growled. I was so fucking sick of this. It was all an excuse, a fucking reason not to let me in. Stefano had stolen seven years of my life but now they were prolonging my agony. “I don’t need someone digging around in my head just to make me feel like shit. It’s over, and I don’t need to dig it up, Doc.”

“Roman,” she said softly. “What you went through would break any person–”

“ –it didn’t break me,” I told her. What I wanted to tell her was that while they might have broken my bones, the one person that really broke me was standing right in front of me. The moment she took John Black into her bed, she broke my heart and my spirit. “But you want to keep insisting I’m damaged goods.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, but Roman, you have to understand, the children’s safety is my first priority.” She was staring at me with sympathy and I wanted to fucking tear up the bench next to us. I wanted to punch my fist through the fucking stucco on the building walls. Those were my kids! It was my house! She was my wife! 

“I’m going to fight you on this, Doc. I don’t want to, but I won’t be forced into anything,” I said in low tones.

All softness left her eyes. “I won’t allow it. I can’t.”

“They’re mine!” I roared. They were mine, she was mine. And the sooner she figured that out, the better. “He isn’t their father!”

Marlena just stared at me for a moment and walked away.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marlena

Greed held our emotions in its clutches. As much as Stefano wanted power and control, Roman wanted dominance over me and the children. He hated John for the five years he’d lived as Roman Brady. He wanted me, not because he loved me, but because he would be taking me from John. He wanted the children, because taking them away from John would break him. 

I rounded the corner and tucked myself into the shadows just as a sob ripped free of my chest. I couldn’t do this here. Not now. Not in public. Since I’d returned to Salem, I’d found it harder and harder to control my emotions. They came at me in waves, and Dr. Fowler said I was masking. I was putting on the face I thought people wanted. I was telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. Somewhere in the mix I’d lost myself, and the worst part was, I realized, I’d started losing myself in childhood. Everytime I did something my parents wanted I was praised. Every time Samantha made a mistake she was compared to me. By the time I was ten years old I was someone else’s creation, but I certainly wasn’t Marlena.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

I heard Marlena before I saw her. If I’d ever tried to explain my draw towards her I knew people would think I was mad, but I knew. It was the way the hair on the back of my neck would stand up when she was near, or the way I would intuitively turn towards her when she entered a room. All I needed was the faintest sound, and I was changing direction and walking towards a shadowy corner near the back entrance of Ballistix. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching. Once I’d ensured myself that the coast was clear, I rounded some potted ficus and crept into the shadows. Marlena was tucked into a corner near some old shipping pallets just as the wind changed direction. She lifted her head immediately, and I was pulled in by her tear filled hazel eyes.

For the second time in two weeks we came together in a moment of high emotional energy.   I tucked my arms around her vulnerable body, and I fell back against the brick wall of the building behind us. She curled into my body, her hands warm against my chest where she tucked them beneath my black leather jacket. We stood there for what felt like eons, and I simply held her, breathing her in. When she finally lifted her cheek from my chest and began to wipe at her eyes, I knew I needed to step back. There was beauty about her. It wasn’t just her beautiful eyes that sparked with life and the secrets of the forest. It was the way her hair could be called blonde, but really it was honey, and wheat, and caramel. It was the rosy hue of her cheeks and the freckles dotted across her skin like constellations. There was a light inside her that spoke of love and kindness. 

Despite my knowledge that I needed to step back, still I reached for her, keeping her from moving too far away from me. Tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear, I asked her, “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

I saw the reluctance in her face. I saw it after we cried together on the pier. I realized we were both kind of lost. I didn’t think it would turn out this way when we left Mexico. I wasn’t sure why. I imagined that she’d find happiness with Roman and I would find happiness with Isabella the way I’d planned. Instead I was greedy. I craved these moments with her in the dark shadows of the mall and the pier in the evening. I saw the hesitation in her eyes. “I’m fine.”

I took her chin in my hand, and lifted up her head. I forced her eyes to meet mine. In the shadow, they were dark amber and gold and my heart twisted at the misery I saw in their depths. “That’s not what this was, Doc. You’re not fine. Let me be your friend.”

She pulled away from me, and then turned her back, pulling a compact from her purse. I watched her wipe at her eyes, and pull herself back together in silence. Turning back to face me, she stared up at me and then looked away quickly, “I said, I’m fine, John. I was simply overwhelmed–”

I took her by the shoulder and rolled her body so that she was pressed against the brick of the building. Her quiet gasp had my blood pumping as I asked myself what I was doing. I needed to let her go, but I was so greedy. I wanted this time with her, and it wasn’t mine to demand. I should have accepted her lame excuse, but I wanted more. “Stop lying to me!”

“John…” Her eyes stared up at me wide and wild. “I–I… it doesn’t matter. I’m not your problem anymore–”

“ –you were never a problem, Doc. Never. Please… just talk to me,” I pleaded. That was when the back door to Ballistix burst open and a teenager with greasy hair and a walkman on blast burst outside with a large bag full of garbage. We all jumped in surprise, and then Marlena slipped away from me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Isabella

I was sitting on a bench when I saw Marlena burst out from behind Ballistix. It was obvious that she was upset. G-d, that woman seemed to always be crying when she wasn’t playing the princess of Salem. One moment high and mighty, the next playing the damsel in distress so that all the men flocked around her. She made me sick. I finished my snack and stood up to toss the garbage in the trash can when more movement caught my eye. John. He stood in the shadows watching Marlena flee, and then he turned and stalked off in the other direction. 

I was right. I fucking knew it. She was trying to steal what was rightfully mine, and I wasn’t one to share. John belonged with me and our son. If Marlena had never come back to Salem, we’d be married by now. He’d still be Roman Brady and we’d be living in that house on Sycamore Drive, bringing up the twins and looking forward to our new baby. Marlena was the past. I was his future. He’d made his decision, and it wasn’t her. 

I sat back down heavily on the bench. What was I going to do? My hand settled on my abdomen, and I rubbed it gently over the child within. Doubt crept into my mind. Would he stay for us? I wasn’t sure. Being in our child’s life wouldn’t be impossible if we weren’t together, but I wanted a nuclear family. I wanted John. The thought of him with Marlena and her helping to raise my child made me sick. My fists clenched. No. No. Absolutely not. John was mine and I sure as hell wasn’t going to allow him to leave me because he felt sorry for the would-be wife who’d disappeared five years earlier.

Chapter 4 – Wrath/Anger

John

Whitney Baker’s office was a collection of eclectic and boring. I assumed it was because the hospital had provided all of the furnishings in beige, as well as the carpet, and she’d tried to make it more welcoming with a collection of bright, abstract paintings and sculptures. It wasn’t really to my taste. It was… it felt such a counterpoint to the way I was feeling. Calm. Cheerful. When all I felt was an all-consuming emptiness. An emptiness that was rapidly being flooded with an equally all-consuming rage.

             I wasn’t even sure I should be there. Whitney and I had… well, I wouldn’t say we had a past. We certainly had a flirtation that had never gone anywhere. She’d wanted more, and I hadn’t been able to give her that. At the time I had been trying to break myself of the habit I had of being attracted to women who looked like Marlena. 

Diana, Yvette, and of course, Dr. Whitney Baker. She’d had me running scared. While Diana’s fiery temper had reminded me of Marlena, it was Yvette’s way with Carrie that reminded me of Doc. Dr. Baker was blonde, she was smart, and she was forward. Her similarities to Marlena drew me in, and also frightened the hell out of me. I’d walked away. I knew what I was doing. I’d been searching for Marlena in every relationship I’d had since her death, and I knew it was time to break the cycle. 

That’s why falling in love with Isabella had been such a surprise. She wasn’t my type, at least not physically. Dark hair, and thick, unmanageable curls. But there were other aspects of Isabella that I couldn’t help but be attracted to – her stubbornness and her intellect. When I’d started falling for Isabella it had been a surprise. The problem was, it was a different kind of love. It was softer. Not that being a softer love was a bad thing. It wasn’t, but my love with Isabella was not that soul shattering, push her up against a door and fuck her into madness type of love. It never would be. And you might think that wasn’t really a problem, but it was. When you’d experienced a love like Marlena and I had shared, that intense, captivating, almost obsessive kind of love, everything else paled into comparison. Everything else was…. boring.

“John?” Dr. Baker asked me.

I shook my head, and looked at her with a bewildered expression. She’d asked me something, and I’d completely missed it. “Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?”

She watched me with curious and thoughtful eyes that made me feel uncomfortable. I was starting to think being there definitely was a bad idea. Standing up, she collected a pen and her notepad before she rounded her desk and sat in the chair beside me. A large, beige, overstuffed armchair. “I was saying, since this is our first session, perhaps you’d like to discuss why you came to me?”

I laughed sardonically and leaned back on the sofa trying to give the impression that I was comfortable, when I was anything but. “You haven’t been reading the newspapers?” 

Whitney stared at me for a moment, her gaze lacking the humor I’d tried to toss out.  It was penetrating. Intense. Disconcerting. “I’d rather hear it from you.”

“I don’t even know who the fuck I am,” I snapped angrily. I sat up, and then leaned over to rest my elbows on my knees for the sole purpose of being able to rest my exhausted head in my hands. Sleep had not been something I was able to get much of recently. I looked up at her, my eyes bleary. Bloodshot. “I thought I knew who I was… but that was taken away from me.”

“Let me ask you this,” she said softly. “Why me? I don’t understand why you would make an appointment with me, John.”

“Neither Dr. Miller nor Dr. Ang are accepting new patients. Dr. Hendershott looks like she’s about sixteen, and Dr. Fowler is already seeing Doc.” I sat back again, staring at her.  If she was going to challenge me, I would lob that right back at her. “You’re it.”

I saw her try to hold back her smile as she said, “So, I’m the last resort? You know there are therapists too… not just psychiatrists.”

I tapped the side of my head.  The gesture was supposed to be humorous but it felt more like an indictment of my sanity right now. I wondered momentarily if that was true. Was I crazy? Was I losing my mind? Did I even have a mind to begin with? A mind with no memories, no knowledge of its own.  Was I a person, or merely a collection of synapses and electrical circuits… nothing more than an empty page for DiMera to write his story on?

I pushed away those thoughts. “This requires a full medical degree, Dr. Baker. We’re probing into the recesses of my mind you know. There’s shit in here even I don’t know.” At least, I hoped there was.  Didn’t I? A story of my own. An identity that hadn’t been cobbled together by DiMera’s Doctor Frankenstein. I stood up in frustration and walked towards her window. Whitney’s office overlooked the less than picturesque parking garage and a couple of dumpsters. “Real great view you’ve got here.”

“You’re deflecting, John.” Her voice was even and calm. So different to the fury that I was swallowing down. I glanced over and watched her sit back, placing her notepad on her knee, while tucking her pen behind her ear. She was an attractive woman, and she reminded me of Doc. That was enough to make me decide that being there was a seriously bad idea. The anger was mushrooming, violently exploding inside me like an inflating airbag. I’m fairly certain she saw my face change, because she sighed, and said, “Why don’t you sit down?”

I sneered. Deflecting? What the fuck was I supposed to do? Let this all spill out, let all my frustration and ferocity explode all over her? All over this violently beige office? I reached for my coat, slipping my arms into it as she watched me helplessly. “I can’t do this today.” My body was shaking with rage as I told her, “I lost everything. I lost Marlena twice.” I stopped for a moment. The loss I felt was devastating. It kept scouring me out. Everytime I lost her, I lost a part of myself. This last time, I’d lost everything, including myself. And still the greatest loss was her.  “ – fuck! Who am I kidding? I lost her three times! I’ve lost my home, my job, and my children. Roman walks around this town looking down his nose at me.” I clenched my fist. I wanted to punch something. If I was truly honest, I wanted to punch Roman. That fucking asshole had taken everything and left me homeless and nameless but there was no empathy. No understanding. DiMera had fucked both of us over but to Roman, he was the only victim.  The only one that had suffered. “The family I thought was mine… “  I shook my head, trying to shake loose the pervasive anger. “The woman I thought was my mother looks at me with wary distrust, and I don’t know where to fucking start to build this new life everyone seems to think I should be so excited about.”

I saw the sadness in Whitney’s eyes as I continued to rant, “Isabella wants to forget it all, my time as Roman, losing… the kids…” I didn’t mention Marlena’s name again but it was there, even unspoken.  Like it was blinking in big fucking neon lights. “But I can’t!” I spun around and slammed the heel of my palm against the wall. It actually shook under my blow and I could sense rather than see Whitney wince behind me. “I can’t forget it!” I shouted. “I have this hollow empty space in my mind that should be filled with memories of kindergarten, and my first time riding a bicycle. I should be able to remember a childhood birthday party or my first kiss! I can’t remember any of that…” I stopped suddenly, feeling my rage turn to untrammeled fury. “But I can remember Roman’s birthday parties. I can remember Roman’s first kiss!” I turned and glared at Dr. Baker as I pounded my hand against the side of my head. I felt the tears stinging my eyes and my anger just grew. If I could have expunged those memories from my head by banging it against the wall behind me, I would have.   

“If Stefano DiMera weren’t dead, I would hunt him down and kill him with my own fucking bare hands. Because I have nothing, Whitney! Nothing! What I did have, turns out, wasn’t even mine! And what I lost… I’m not even allowed to mourn! Not allowed to feel anything about it.” I clenched my hands into fists to stop from… I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. Sweep all Whitney’s mementos off her desk? Throw a chair through a window? Instead I just let my shoulders slump.“How fucking unfair is that?”

I didn’t allow Dr. Baker the opportunity to respond. I didn’t even allow her to open her mouth. I just turned and stalked to the office door, throwing it open so that it bounced off the wall.

Whitney followed me out of her office, pleading with me to stay and finish the session, but I couldn’t. I came to a screeching halt when faced with her petrified secretary and two security officers. That’s what my life had come to. I was once a pillar of society, and Roman had turned me into someone that no one trusted. I hated him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marlena

I stared at the lined paper in front of me. It was taunting me with its pristine blankness. It offered nothing and I felt like I had nothing. Nothing except this maelstrom of emotions. This resentment and rage. I had no idea what to write but I put the pen to the paper and started – fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… what the hell has my life become? I’m going to have to find a way to process this anger, but I can’t be sure who I’m angry with. Myself? For not speaking up and telling John how I really felt in Mexico? Possibly. He held my hand. I said I loved him… kind of. But did I? Did I fight for him? For us? Not really. Am I angry with John for not really being aware of how much I care for him? Probably. Or Stefano for every G-d damned fucking thing he’s done to the people I love? Definitely.

If I’m being honest, as honest as I can be… I think I’m also angry with Roman for coming home, and that is such a horrible, awful thing to feel. I would never wish him gone. I wouldn’t, but a small voice inside me wanted more time with John. More time to convince him that a life with me was worth living.

I glanced up with tears in my eyes, and I told Dr. Fowler, “Writing down my thoughts and my feelings… it makes me feel bad. As if I’m a child again and my parents are going to be disappointed. I’m supposed to be the good girl. I’m not supposed to be mean or selfish–”

“ –do you feel as if what you’ve written does that? Do your emotions make you inherently bad?” Dr. Fowler asked me.

Rationally, I knew the answer was no. I would tell a patient that. I would tell a patient that emotions were just that, emotions. They are manifestations of our mind and we have no control over them. We only controlled how we reacted to them… and maybe even that was beyond our ultimate control. I thought of Samantha again. I could picture her screaming at Roman that she’d wished he’d stayed gone. But maybe I was picturing myself. 

“Whatever you say to me goes no further than us. You know that,” she said softly. “Marlena, you know this only works if you’re honest with me. With yourself.”

“I was writing and I… oh, G-d!” I felt panicked and breathless. “I feel so guilty for this, but I thought that if I’d had more time with John… if Roman had stayed gone–” My hand flew up and clasped over my mouth. I didn’t know why. Maybe to stifle a gasp, or stop myself from saying something even more damning. I didn’t want to say if Roman had only died. If I said it out loud then maybe it made it real. It made me truly that selfish. But, I’d thought about it, hadn’t I? Was I really that callous? Of course I didn’t want Roman to die. I glanced down at my notepad, and watched as my tears splashed and the ink ran. It was washing away what I’d written, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t written it.

“What you’re saying,” Dr. Fowler started to say quietly, “…is a natural reaction to those feelings of loss and helplessness. The rage you’re feeling and who it’s directed towards–” 

“ –that’s just it! I don’t know who it’s directed towards. It should be Stefano! Right? He would be the rational choice–” I started to choke as my body tried to force me to cry. I didn’t want to cry. I’d cried enough. And I wasn’t sad, I was fucking angry. I was fucking furious. And still, holding back the tears caused me to choke, and I again clasped my hand over my mouth. I started to panic, and I screamed, “I don’t know what to do!”

Samantha stared at me with wide eyes, and then leaned forward. “Do it!” she whispered. “Go ahead. We’re in the woods and Mom and Dad won’t hear you. You’re always acting so perfect, but it’s gonna kill you, Mar. It will. So do it!”

The perfect daughter. The straight A student. The beautiful girlfriend of the high school quarterback. State championship cheerleader. I hated it all. I hated it! I hated it! I didn’t want to be any of those things! It bubbled over as Samantha smirked at me and hissed, “Fucking do it, Mar! Let it out before you die.”

My eyes locked with Dr. Fowler’s as I remembered telling my parents I was sick. My throat was so raw it was red and swollen. My mother didn’t doubt my story. She had no idea that I had raged, and screamed at the afternoon sky as it shone in shafts through the pine trees behind our home. Martha Evans had no idea why I was sick, but she blamed Samantha for taking me out in the cold. My sister said nothing to defend herself, because she was used to it. That was the day when I first became jealous of her. While a part of Samantha hated me for all of my perfection, a part of me hated her for her ability to throw it all off and just be flawed and imperfect.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

The rain started to pour from the sky just as I stepped out of my car. I thought about turning back. I’d meant to drive back to my apartment after I fled the meeting with Whitney. Isabella wanted to have dinner, and I needed to shower and change. Instead I’d driven to the pier, even though the sky was already ominous when I left Dr. Baker’s office. After driving aimlessly for what seemed like hours, and wanting nothing more than to slam my fist through the window beside me, I was now descending the steps towards the river. Overhead the thunder clapped, and the first streaks of lightning flashed across the sky. My muscles trembled with frustrated rage and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. 

The lightning flashed again, and as I reached the bottom of the stairs, the thunder roared. I stopped suddenly at the sight that met my eyes. I was shocked to see Marlena standing there in the deluge with her head thrown back screaming into the storm. The river water surged against the pilings, and I watched in awe as she screamed for a long moment before she crumbled to the pier. Her hands lifted to cup her face and her body shook with the force of her tears, but I couldn’t hear anything over the wind.

Slowly I approached her. I’d never seen her like this. A lull came, and I said, “Marlena…”

Her head jerked up and she looked at me, her hair plastered in soaking streams to her face. I was surprised and a little hurt to hear her say, “You should go, John. You’re the last person I want to see right now.”

Falling to the pier in front of her, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, “Doc?”

“No!” she screamed, pushing me away, her hands icy and shaking. “No, John! You made your choice. You made your fucking choice in Mexico and it wasn’t me! So don’t try to comfort me now!”

I was shocked, but I wasn’t even sure why.  She was angry. She was as furious as I was. For different reasons… or possibly for the same reasons. Roman. Stefano. Ourselves. Her hands pounded against my chest and I allowed it. I took it all as if I’d earned every single hit from her curled fists. 

“I loved you!” she cried. The rain continued to pour, and the water ran in rivulets over her soft skin. She pushed at my chest again, sobbing, “I loved you!”

Something inside me broke as I realized what she was saying.  As everything crashed up against me. Losing her. Loving her. Leaving her in Mexico. Nothing had changed. Nothing. Not for either of us.  “You still do! Doc! Don’t do this! Talk to me, but don’t hate me!” My heart pounded in my chest. It ached with fear and rage and sorrow. And love. So much love. “I couldn’t stand it if you hated me!” I reached for her then, pulling her against me so tightly that she couldn’t escape.

“No! No!” She struggled in my arms, and I fell down onto my bottom, pulling her with me. I refused to allow her to run from this. “I don’t love you! Not anymore!”

“You do love me! You do, and I love you!” I whispered vehemently in her ear. It was all suddenly so clear to me. “You still love me, and I still love you!”

“I hate you,” she sobbed. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

But she’d given up. All of the anger was gone from her. She collapsed against me with her fists twisted in the saturated leather of my coat, and in the midst of the raging storm, she cried out her anguish in the most gut wrenching sobs I’d ever heard in my life.

Chapter 5 – Envy/Sadness

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Isabella

John wouldn’t give me what I wanted. I wanted to live together. I wanted to be married before the baby came. I wanted the life together that he’d promised me before she turned up to cause chaos in our lives, but still he held back. He told me he needed time to learn about his past, time to figure out his feelings. What was there to figure out? I had assumed that his decision to make a life with me was made that night he made love to me on the beach in Mexico. What I hadn’t expected was that Marlena’s decision to return to Salem alone would flip our whole world upside down. 

I had never been the type to pine over something I couldn’t have, or fight for a man who didn’t want me, and yet I found myself deeply bitter and envious of the beautiful and inestimably perfect Marlena Evans Brady. As much as John denied it, I knew he still loved her.  He still wanted her.

He would dream of her at night.  I don’t think he knew I heard him.  He’d whisper her name in his sleep on the odd occasion he would sleep over at the loft.  It cut me like a knife every time I heard him cry out or say her name and sometimes he would stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I would hear him bringing himself relief.  It made me rageful and scared in equal measure.  I wasn’t even sure who he was making love to when he buried himself inside me.

As time passed I knew with growing awareness that I hated her with a white-hot passion, and I’d never before hated anyone in my life. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marlena

Envy. I sometimes think that envy and sadness are one and the same. I certainly find that they are often interwoven. That thing that you want so badly that it causes a deep ache of sadness. For me that is John and the child he is expecting. I feel selfish writing this down, but Dr. Fowler insists that when I reflect on this, I will be relieved to have admitted it. I have fantasies that when I first came home, John and I made love. Maybe it was that first night.  Maybe he took me home and laid me down in our bed and made slow, wondrous love to me. Maybe it could have been the evening he kissed me so passionately on the beach in Miami, when we’d both forgotten ourselves for a moment and allowed ourselves to disappear into our emotions. Maybe he’d picked me up and carried me back to the hotel room and ripped my satin blouse from my body, showering me with open-mouthed kisses. Maybe it could have happened that night in the darkness of the monastery in San Cristobal. Spooning me from behind, nuzzling my neck, cupping my aching breasts, sliding between my legs.  There were so many opportunities for him to choose me, and he didn’t…

My hand settled on my childless abdomen. Isabella was having John’s baby. It wasn’t me.  It was never going to be me. Isabella was going to have that life with him. I set my pen down carefully and then stared at Dr. Fowler. “Last week, after our session, I was on the pier during the thunderstorm. I was raging at G-d, the heavens… I’m not sure who… out of the ether almost, John appeared.”

She watched me curiously, leaning forward. “Why are you telling me about this?”

“Because I was angry when I left here that day. I’d remembered a time when my sister had me rage to the sky when we were teens. It had been cathartic, so I’d decided to go to the pier–”

“ –the pier is very special to you and John,” she surmised.

I thought about it, and I replied, “Yes. That pier is a physical connection to John. I think, although I’m not usually superstitious, that the pier is John’s connection to me as well. How else would he know when I needed him the most?”

“You needed him then?”

“I didn’t think I did,” I said quietly, recalling the hollowed out pain I felt in my chest.  It was searing.  Debilitating.  Crushing. “I screamed. I beat his chest… “  Tears filled my eyes.  “I told him I hated him, and he didn’t run from that.” There was a depth of pain in that statement, pain and salvation, that scared me. I had never hated anyone in my life. Anyone except Stefano. But in that moment, I had hated John. I was furious with him, I was hurt beyond measure by his choice, his abandonment of me.  And I vomited all that rage over him. With my fists, with my words. With my tears. And he had faced it all. “He stayed there with me, in a raging storm, and he held me.”

“That means something to you,” Dr. Fowler stated as if it were a fact, and I realized she was right. It meant everything to me that he hadn’t run when I had pushed him away. He hadn’t denied my love for him, or even denied his love for me.

“We–we talked for hours that night.” I’d been dreaming about his soft eyes, and his warm body ever since.

The rain had slowed to a soft mist against our skin, but still John held me cocooned in his arms, as if letting me go would be watching me fly away. I unzipped his jacket partway, and slipped my hand inside along the soft cotton of his shirt beneath. John’s breath stuttered for a moment, but he didn’t say anything as I started to speak. “I had therapy with Dr. Fowler today… and I got so angry. I didn’t even know who I was angry at.” I had paused, trying to put it into words.  Trying to be honest, to stop holding everything inside. I deserved to speak my truth. “You, myself… Stefano. Even Isabella. But then I thought about Roman, and he did nothing wrong.” I paused again. I still felt guilty. My heart didn’t, couldn’t want what it was supposed to want. Instead, it wanted what was forbidden to it. My body yearned for the touch that belonged to another woman, not to me. “Yet in my mind, I wished that I’d had more time with you. I wished that he’d been gone just a little longer.” I looked away from him, my shame overwhelming me. “What kind of person does that make me? To be so envious of what you have with Isabella that I…” I stopped speaking, fearing I’d said too much.

John was quiet for the longest time. I started to disengage, but he held me tighter, saying in a choked voice, “I thought… I’d assumed that once you knew the truth about Roman, you would want to make a life with him.”

I didn’t have the energy to fight him anymore, so I started crying again.  He’d assumed.  Roman had assumed.  Who had asked me what I wanted? Twisting my fingers in his soft shirt, I whispered, my words like barbed wire “You didn’t have that right.”

“You didn’t tell me otherwise,” he said, his tone desolate.

I pushed him away and scrambled to my feet, feeling heavy and lethargic. “What was I supposed to say?” I cried furiously. I pushed my wet hair back from my face in frustration and flung my hands down, water dripping from my fingertips. “Was I supposed to beg you to want me?” I felt like I’d done enough of that when I returned. The constant brush-offs, the near-misses as he’d let down his guard and then the sudden withdrawals had broken my heart over and over. I had been tired of being pushed away, of feeling abandoned. “Did you want me to be the one to tell you that you couldn’t make a family with Isabella? John, that’s unfair!”

“Unfair is not telling me how you felt, and then getting angry at me because I didn’t know!” he replied, running his fingers through his soaking hair in helpless frustration. 

“You did know! I told you!” I felt incredulous at his apparent obliviousness. How could he not have heard what my heart was saying so plainly? He stared at me with blue eyes full of confusion, and I could barely think straight.“I’m so jealous it’s eating me alive, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” I told him angrily. “You’ve decided to make a life with Isabella and the baby, and all I want is to keep you for myself and the children. It’s unfair. It’s so unfair.”

“I thought…” He stepped closer, so close I could feel the warmth of him against my freezing skin. I started to tremble when he cupped my face. “I thought… I guess I assumed that the love you felt for me wasn’t mine. Nothing was mine.”

I stared up into his indigo eyes, getting lost in the whirlpools of emotion and I whispered, “I was yours. I still am, and now I have to learn how to move past that.”

I stared at Dr. Fowler for a moment, and then I said in a rough voice, “He knows that I still care for him… but I’m not going to be unrealistic. He’s made a commitment to Isabella.”

“Has he?” Dr. Fowler asked me carefully. I watched her with curious eyes trying to understand what she was saying.  She watched me back, and I could see that she was taking in everything I offered.  My silence, my body language, the narrowing of my eyes. And the anguish that lay beneath them all. “He has an apartment separate from her, and he hasn’t proposed yet. I’m wondering if he’s as committed to her as you say he is.”

“They’re having a baby,” I replied lamely. It was John. He was the baby’s father and my babies were not his. My children belonged to Roman. The real Roman Brady. John didn’t have a blood tie to the twins, but he did to Isabella’s baby. He wouldn’t walk away from the mother of his child. Would he?

“A child doesn’t mean they have to be in a relationship. In fact, if he were to rush into a relationship with her while still harboring feelings for you, that would hurt Isabella even more, don’t you think?” 

“Yes, but their child deserves… a family.”  I knew, even as I said it, that I was being ridiculously conservative and old-fashioned. I would never have counseled a client to stay with someone they didn’t love for the sake of a child. I, myself, had chosen not to reconcile with Roman, despite the twins. It didn’t mean we weren’t still a family. It was just a different kind of family now.

“Families come in many different forms, Marlena. You know that,” she said, as though reading my thoughts.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

I was yours. I still am, and now I have to learn how to move past that. I was struggling to get Marlena’s softly spoken words out of my mind. It was as though they had landed on my skin, scorched a hole through it and buried themselves in my soul. Sadness weighed on me like a massive stone. I’d made my choice in Mexico. I had to honor that, and yet I couldn’t stop dreaming about the life I’d had with Marlena and the children. When I’d let her go in Mexico, just the mere thought of her with Roman almost drove me mad. The look on his face, the smugness in his eyes – all of it had pushed me further and further away from her. They say envy is a sin, but I was so overcome with it I gave Marlena up. 

I rubbed my forehead and stared into my mug where the coffee had gone cold. When I truly thought about it, it seemed so idiotic. I gave her up because I was jealous?  Jealous of Roman?  But that was the truth. I was jealous of the man who wore Roman Brady’s face and had all his memories. Jealous of the way Mom and Pop’s eyes lit up when they saw him walk into the pub. I was jealous that Carrie, Samantha and Eric had his blood running through their veins. I was jealous that my job and my house and my name were all suddenly his. Most of all, I was jealous that he had made love to Marlena before me.  That he’d curled his body around her, run his hand over her soft skin, lapped his tongue over her stiff nipples and made her moan. I hated him for that. Hated him for every moment he’d had with her, every whimper he’d heard, every orgasm he’d elicited from her beautiful body. I’d wanted to think I was the only man that she’d ever responded that way to, the only man who’s name she’d ever cried out in ecstasy, but my stolen memories told me that wasn’t so. And I hated him for it. 

My mind was spinning in Mexico. Like a whirling dervish, it recycled thoughts and questions, haunting me with images, words and dreams. It had been doing that since Marlena walked out of the fog and into my arms on Pier 29. Where had she been? It was the question that took over everything, because it left me feeling so unstable, and once her dreams had started… I couldn’t be the same man I had been. She had been dreaming of ‘Roman’, and she’d kept insisting I was there. I wasn’t, I knew that for sure; but something inside me whispered that maybe someone else was. It was the same small voice that used to wonder sometimes if I was really Roman Brady. It had been ever present in the early days, especially once we’d lost Doc. But I’d pushed it aside for years. People might have thought that Roman’s appearance in San Cristobal was when I was confronted with the truth, but I think it happened that first night that Doc was home back in August and she woke up screaming in the night.

The G-d’s honest truth was, I gave Marlena up because I was absolutely certain she was going to do it to me. Afterall, I was the imposter, and for all they all knew, I may have even known that for years. The reality was I was sure I didn’t deserve her love or her empathy. It’s possible that breaking her heart was simply how I proved to myself that I was never the kind, loving soul the people of Salem had believed me to be. I was just a creation of Stefano DiMera’s, set upon the town to hurt people and tear families apart. Letting Marlena go had proved that.

And yet when it was all done, I was left feeling viscerally envious of everything I didn’t have.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Roman

Marlena sat across from me dressed in a beautiful sleek dress with lace across the shoulders. I couldn’t believe she agreed to dinner. She’d been avoiding me for weeks, but I must have worn her down. At least she was letting me shoot my shot, although I’d be the first to admit that I was frustrated that she didn’t immediately consider me as an option. After all, the only reason she was even with John was because she thought he was me. My mind invented images of her in bed with him all the fucking time, often at the most inopportune moments, and this was one of them. I imagined her head thrown back, her thighs wrapped around John’s hips, and I had to glance away when I felt the acid bubble in my stomach. 

I needed to focus on her, and getting into another argument or allowing my jealousy to take over was not going to get me what I wanted. What I wanted was my family back, and if I had to woo my own damned wife to get it, I would. I practically gritted my teeth as I smiled and said, “I made an appointment with the psychiatrist down at the Salem PD.”

She smiled at me but the light didn’t quite reach her eyes.  Marlena had a certain way of smiling where it lit up her whole face. But this smile didn’t. It didn’t reach past her lips. “I’m glad. I think it’s important that we all process through what Stefano has done to us.”

All? I was confused. “Does that mean you’re seeing someone too?” I asked her.

“Yes, and John,” she said quietly. “I think it’s important for the children that you, John, and I all try to tackle the horror that Stefano put us through.”

“I can’t imagine that you and John have much to say,” I laughed and the sound was more bitter than I intended. “Neither of you remember anything. I’m the one who remembers every damned detail.” She frowned at me. Shit. I’d have to be more careful, because that was obviously the wrong thing to have said. I sighed, “I’m not trying to minimize what you experienced, Doc. All I’m saying is that you and John can’t have much to talk about.”

Marlena was too calm as she replied, “I think it becomes problematic, Roman… when you try to compare trauma. John’s experiences aren’t completely lost to him. He has remembered some things, and I… well, I won’t discuss it now, but my own life experiences have been quite horrifying.” 

As she was talking, another image of her in bed with John came to me. I imagined her lips parted and her body arching underneath him. I felt physically ill. I didn’t have time to school my features before I replied, “I can’t imagine that you’ve been through anything like I have.”

Marlena reached for her purse and her wrap.  Her expression was stony, her golden eyes narrowed. “I think that maybe this was a bad idea. I’m going to call a cab and go home.”

She stood up, and I reached for her arm, stopping her as she tried to walk away. I felt panicked. I couldn’t mess this up. I had to get her to listen to me. To understand what I’d been through. What I needed. “Doc, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just saying that… you don’t remember things… I do. That’s all–”

She shook my hand off, glancing around to see that people were watching us. “ –we both know what you aren’t saying, Roman. So let’s not lie about that.”

My voice became louder as I demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean? I didn’t say anything!”

“Your face says everything. You can’t hide that. You never could.” She leaned closer telling me, “We have to find a way to work together on what is best for the children, but I will not cut John out of their lives. He is the only parent they’ve had while you and I were gone, and they can’t lose him.”

“We were gone because Stefano DiMera took us and replaced me with John!” I cried, not caring about who was watching us at that point. I was full of belligerent rage now. She wasn’t even prepared to listen to a word I had to say. She was so fucking focussed on John and what he was going through and what he’d lost that she couldn’t give a shit about the seven years of my life that I’d lost. Or the torment I’d suffered, both emotional and physical. Well, I wasn’t fucking having it. “John is nothing more than a cuckoo in the nest, Doc! Now, I’m trying to be patient and work with you on this, but I don’t trust the man, and I’m not going to lie and pretend I do!” She glared at me for a moment before she pulled her arm from my grasp and started walking towards the exit, which forced me to toss some cash on the table and follow her. 

Just as she exited the building, I reached for her again, pulling her back so that she would stop and hear what I had to say. This was not how the conversation was going to end. I had to get her to listen to me. “Doc! Would you just stop for a minute?”

She looked down at my hand, and when she met my eyes with her wide hazel gaze, there was something there that I didn’t understand. “This is the second time tonight that you have grabbed me, Roman. Let go.” She shook me off, and then said coldly, “Don’t do it again.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marlena

I stood outside of Lucky 13 tattoo shop feeling my abdomen quake with nervousness. Was I really willing to do this, and why was I willing to do this? Leaving Roman standing alone outside of the restaurant had been absolutely deliberate, but driving to the local tattoo shop had been unplanned. Samantha had gotten a tattoo at sixteen. She’d forged our mothers signature on a parental permission form, and the shop had never bothered to authenticate it. They were shut down within a week of our parents finding out about it. That was how my sister Samantha lived. On a whim and a prayer. 

Part of me had always envied her ability to live like that. Doing the things that made her happy while shoving off the expectations of our parents. I glanced at my watch. It was just after nine o’clock in the evening. The shop was open until midnight. Could I do this? Yes, I could. I knew I could. 

I slowly ran the hairbrush through my hair as I watched Roman dry off after our shower. My eyes settled on the tattoo on his shoulder. The phoenix. Placed there against his will and essentially marking him as the property of Stefano DiMera. I knew Roman hated it. The first time I’d seen it, it had struck fear so deep inside of me that I hadn’t been able to think clearly for days. But looking at it now, it brought me comfort. Odd really, that it had come to mean something so different to me. 

I laid the hairbrush down, and stepped closer to him. Sliding my palm over his shoulder, I whispered, “I knew that you would find me.”

“I didn’t.” He turned to face me with a look of sadness on his face. “Doc, I was scared to death. All these weeks of searching for you, only to find out it was the ISA that had you. I was so close… so fucking close…” His hands cupped my face gently. “And then Orpheus found you first.”

“I’m here now. With you.” I kissed the inside of his wrist gently, wanting to provide him with the same comfort his presence brought me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Something in his eyes flashed, and I knew he was still worried. Throwing the towel over his head he turned around again and rubbed it over his hair vigorously. I stared at the tattoo, reaching out to run my fingers over it again.

“I was thinking about getting my own tattoo,” I told him.

Roman spun on his heel to stare at me in surprise.  His blue eyes were wide and searching. “Doc, you’ve never struck me as a tattoo type of girl.”

I flicked him a flirtatious smile. “Well, maybe I am.” My lips twitched as I looked up at him from under heavy eyelids. I knew just how to turn him on and I knew it was working as he looked first at my lips and then at the expanse of cleavage revealed by my robe. “I think you might find it sexy,” I said, throatily. He didn’t say anything, but I knew I was right. “I was thinking of something small… on my right shoulder…”

He knew immediately where I was going with my train of thought. “A phoenix?”

“A phoenix,” I said with a quiet intensity that spoke both of my intention to get the tattoo, and my more immediate intention to get him beneath me in bed. “Because I am yours, and you, Roman Brady, you are mine.”

The thought of getting a tattoo on my shoulder made me even more nervous than the idea of getting a tattoo at all. I wouldn’t be able to hide it. Maybe I should get it somewhere else? But then I heard Samantha in my mind, Fucking do it, Mar! Let it out before you die!

Without allowing myself to think about it, I pushed open the door to Lucky 13 and walked inside to the jarring sound of the bell. The man behind the counter was burly, wearing a leather vest with motorcycle patches on it, and he was covered in tattoos. He looked at me quizzically. Refusing to allow myself to turn back, I said, “I’d like a tattoo of a phoenix on my right shoulder… with maybe some flames coming out of the tail feathers.”

He glanced behind me, as if he expected someone else to come in with me. “You look a little too classy for a place like this. You ever done this before?”

“No,” I said nervously. “And I probably never will again, but I’ve decided, and I’d like to get it done before I change my mind.”

“A phoenix, huh? Well, I’ve got a book with some samples… or, depending on how brave you’re feeling, you could just trust me and I’ll give you the prettiest little phoenix you’ve ever seen.” He waited for me to decide. Pictures were safer. I’d know what I was getting, but Samantha would say fuck it. 

There was something in his dark brown eyes that spoke of kindness. “I’m going to trust you,” I told him. I sounded far more assured than I felt.

He laughed, “You are feeling brave, lady. What’s your name?”

I smiled widely, “Marlena. Marlena Evans.”

I was done being an unwilling player in Stefano’s games. He was gone now, and I was reclaiming my life. From Stefano, from my parents, from Don and Richard… and from Roman. I was reclaiming myself in the only way I knew how.

When it was done, he showed me the result in a mirror and he was right.  It was the prettiest phoenix tattoo I could have imagined. Delicate black and red lines with orange and yellow flames bursting from its tail feathers, glittering sparks trailing behind. It hurt but he gave me instructions on how to take care of it and said it would take a week or so to heal.

At home, I closed my eyes and imagined what Sam might have said, had she seen it. Damn, Mar.  You went and got all rebellious! Just don’t tell Mama and Daddy, or you might lose your golden girl status.

And that was the thing, wasn’t it, I thought as I turned and looked at my naked body in the mirror, my phoenix looking for all the world as though it was going to take flight off my shoulder. I didn’t want to be the golden girl any more. I didn’t want to be Daddy’s little princess or Mama’s little helper. I didn’t want to be the pretty fool that trusted Richard Cates or the naive young woman that let Kellam Chandler into my apartment. I didn’t want to be the grieving mother that let my husband berate me and then cheat on me. And I didn’t want to be the woman who took back a man that I no longer loved because I felt guilty for moving on after his ‘death’.

I was done being all those women.  

The woman I wanted to be was the woman that John loved. But he’d chosen to make a life with Isabella Toscano, so I couldn’t be that woman either.

I had to be a new woman. A brand new Marlena. A Marlena, reborn, in a crucible of rage and envy and fire. A phoenix Marlena, rising from the ashes.

Chapter 6 – Acedia/Sloth

Marlena

I stared at the paperwork in front of me and then looked up at Tom Horton. My mind was reeling. It was possible that I was rushing this. I wasn’t sure I was ready to reopen my practice and start seeing patients again. I was barely handling my own life. I’d jumped through every governmental hoop and filled out every form the state gave me. I was legally alive again, at least in the eyes of the American government. I wasn’t surprised to learn that my marriage to Roman was no longer valid, but that also meant that my marriage to John wasn’t valid either. I was officially a single mother. If I wanted to remarry I was free to do so, and I knew once Roman realized we were no longer married he would increase his pressure on me to reconsider him. As it stood, he thought we were still married, and he was in no rush. He didn’t believe I would divorce him, although I would have if it had been necessary. 

While I was relieved to find out my marriage to Roman was void, conversely finding out my marriage to John was invalid was incredibly painful. I didn’t know why… or maybe I did. It shouldn’t have hurt me so much. At least that’s what I kept trying to tell myself. We’d already said goodbye in Mexico. We’d done that, we’d held hands, we’d shed tears and we’d put our past as a married couple, as lovers, behind us. Hadn’t we?
Besides, John and I had married believing he was Roman. Of course our marriage wasn’t valid, but that didn’t mean that a sliver of hope hadn’t resided in my heart. The small light of a dream that possibly he was still my husband. Finding out he wasn’t had been the point I had crashed. I think my heart really did break at that moment, and it still hadn’t recovered. I’d been struggling for days, struggling to think, to breathe, to face the world, and forcing myself to come to the hospital to fast track my way back into psychiatry was probably the worst idea I could have had. I wasn’t capable of fixing myself, how the hell could I hope to fix anyone else?

I took a deep breath and plastered on a weak smile, “Would it be okay if I took this home with me and returned it to you later?”

“Take as much time as you need, Marlena. You will always have a job here. You know that,” Tom said kindly.

“Thank you.” I gathered the papers and my purse, and then I thanked him again before I slipped quietly out of his office. It was too much, too soon. My chest tightened, and I looked for a corner to escape to. I needed to find a quiet space and calm down. I was struggling to breathe, and I was desperate for something to take my mind off of John. Rushing back into my medical practice wasn’t the way to do that.  

I could barely get myself into the shower at night and out of the bed in the morning. I was failing at being a mother, a friend, a functional human being. How on earth did I think I could be an effective therapist? I was staring at the ceiling for hours, lost in memories of what I could have done differently. I was losing track of time, of daily tasks. Instead, I found myself zoning out and daydreaming during the day. Once or twice I had even forgotten it was time to pick the children up from school. No, work was not what I needed. What I needed was to focus on healing my heart and reconciling myself to those lost years. What I needed, what I must do, was to focus on the twins. I had lost so much time with them, they had lost so much time with me and they needed stability, solid reliable parenting and demonstrable presence from their parents.

But even in deciding, knowing that, I found myself asking how much of this was truly sadness over those lost years and concern for the twins and what they had lost, and how much of it was my personal grief over losing John? I couldn’t be sure.

Whatever it was, I needed to shake it off. I took a deep breath and made a mental list of the things I could no longer put off – a haircut, laundry, and unloading the dishwasher were at the top. I needed to organize myself, and force my way into a sense of normalcy. That was it. I had to stop avoiding real life.  I had to make a list of the things a normal, healthy mother would do, and force myself to follow through until I was able to shake off this depression. It was the only way to move past this malaise, but even that thought weighed me down. It weighed me down so heavily, I feared I had lost the motivation to do any of the items on my list before I even reached my car.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

Preoccupied? Was I preoccupied? Of course I was. There was no way around it. I stared at Isabella helplessly for a moment. Everything she was saying was valid. I had been preoccupied with trying to find the truth behind my past. I had temporary paperwork issued to me by the ISA, but nothing permanent. My DNA had been run through every database the ISA could think of. I was a man who had no past, and I didn’t exist. How was I supposed to (re)start my life when I had no idea who I was? 

I was also preoccupied with Marlena, and I absolutely knew I shouldn’t be. I knew part of Isabella’s frustration came from that as well, although she wouldn’t admit it. She was too prideful. Instead she would latch onto something that didn’t make her so vulnerable – my focus on my past. 

I understood why Isabella was frustrated, and even though she had every right to be, I couldn’t find it within me to let my past go, especially not once Lawrence started sniffing around. He knew something, and I was going to find out what. “Isabella… I need to know who I am. Where I come from.”

“And if you never find out?” she asked me harshly from where she sat on the couch.

My eyes took her in. She needed me. I knew she needed me. She was on bed rest because of her blood pressure, and I hadn’t been as attentive as I should have been. I knew that, and yet I couldn’t find the motivation within myself to move into the loft, and take that final step towards commitment. Her engagement ring sat in a black velvet box in a drawer in my apartment. It wasn’t forgotten, but I couldn’t bring myself to propose. Every time I considered it, my chest would constrict and I would picture Marlena in the rain on the pier, our whispered professions of love, and her insistence that she had to move on from me. If I had known… if only I had known! Shit! I couldn’t think about that right now. But, if I’d only known. It would have changed everything. Wouldn’t it?  

When Marlena first returned to Salem I’d been unable to commit to her or Isabella. I’d been caught between them, frozen by a lightning bolt of my own fear. I’d ended up neglecting them both, and burying myself in the investigation of Marlena’s whereabouts for those five missing years. Focusing on where Marlena had been was a way of disassociating from my own pain and indecision. At least that’s what Whitney had said before I’d abruptly stopped seeing her. 

 I was still doing it, except now I was unable to commit to Isabella because I was obsessed with understanding why Marlena had turned Roman away. I should have asked her. She would have told me the truth. I know she would, but fear held me back. Fear seemed to rule me since Marlena had walked out of the fog the night of my engagement party to Isabella. Fear of what, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t allow myself to question the roots of it. Therein lay too much pain, too much shame. I was just suspended in this hesitance – an unwillingness or inability to move one way or the other. To tell Isabella yes we had a future, or hold my hand out to Marlena and pull her into my arms. There was also this deep, pervasive sadness in every thought and every action I engaged in. I couldn’t shake it, and I wasn’t even sure what it was. Depression? Apathy? Grief?

I sighed. Isabella was watching me, waiting for an answer to a question I didn’t want to answer. What if I never learned the truth of who I was? Would I be able to live my life without knowing? Or was I just using that as an excuse, when my real reason for holding back with Isabella was living across town in the house on Sycamore Street? Even as I stared at Isabella, with very little motivation for the conversation we’d been having, my heart leapt at the thought of running into Marlena somewhere. That should have been my answer, but as I stared at Isabella watching me with her hand laying lightly on our child, I was overcome with guilt. I should simply ask her to marry me and then everything would fall into place. Wouldn’t it?

I sighed deeply and rubbed my hands over my face for the third time that day. “I have to find out,” I told her wearily. “Otherwise, who am I, Izzy-B? Who is our child?” My rough hair scratched my palms. I needed to shave. The Catholic church says sloth is a sin. I’m not sure if it means completely giving up on personal care or completely giving up on life. Either way I am in a quagmire of self-pity and I don’t know how to climb my way out of it. 

She leaned forward on the couch, reaching for me, but I stepped back. She said forcefully, “You’re John Black!”

Why was she not even trying to understand? “That’s not who I am! Don’t you get that?” John Black was the man I was when I met Marlena.  He was the man that fell in love with Marlena, that would always love Marlena. I couldn’t be John Black, he had no past and Marlena was the star around which he orbited. John Black only existed as a construct in Marlena’s eyes. She created him… me… in seeing, in talking, in knowing me. I couldn’t marry Isabella as John Black. It didn’t make sense. 

I wouldn’t be able to make my way in life without my past. Again, I thought of Marlena. If I had her, I would be able to let my past go. That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. My gut felt like it was full of spoiled milk. I was lying to myself if I was saying that I wasn’t able to move on with Isabella, and yet I could envision a life with Marlena. 

I shoved it all aside, saying, “If I could just figure out these clues–”

“ –what if you don’t?” she asked me. “John, what if you never find out?”

“I can’t think like that,” I whispered. “Lawrence knows something. I know he does. He’s watching me. He’s waiting for something… if I only knew what. How is he tied into all of this?” 

“In the meantime, what about us? Me? Our baby?” Isabella wanted an answer I couldn’t provide.

“Doc says her license is going to be reinstated… I’m thinking about asking her to take me on as a patient. It’s not really working out with Dr. Baker.” I looked away, feeling guilty again, and unable to meet Isabella’s deep brown gaze. “I don’t trust anyone else.”

She was quiet for a moment, watching me with narrowed eyes.  I didn’t know whether she was jealous or whether she distrusted my motivations. “You don’t trust anyone else? Trust them to do what, John?”

I met her gaze, and I said the only truth I knew. “To believe in me.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marlena

I tossed the paperwork that Tom had given me on the table behind the couch, and stared at it blankly. When I’d first come home to Salem, I’d been so driven and motivated to reestablish myself at the hospital, and within the medical community. Now I could barely get through the day without a nap. I wanted to wake in the mornings feeling refreshed and excited about my life. Instead I was opening my eyes to a life that wasn’t anything like I had hoped for at all. I needed to find a way to get past my pain over losing John. 

I shrugged out of my coat, and opened the closet behind the front door so I could hang it up. Glancing at my watch, I sighed. I had a few hours before I needed to pick up the twins from school.

“Okay, Marlena. Change into something comfortable, and then get the laundry together.” I forced myself to ascend the stairs, still mumbling, “Change into something comfortable, and then get the laundry together.” As if repeating it over and over would somehow force me to get motivated and stay motivated. 

None of it happened. I entered my bedroom and stared at the bed longingly. I could lay down, and just give myself a moment or two to pull myself together. At least, that’s what I told myself. Stripping off my slacks, and unbuttoning my jacket, I folded them carefully and placed them on top of my dresser, climbing into bed wearing nothing more than my satin teddy. The cotton pillowcase rubbed against my cheek, and I sighed with relief. The coolness and the soft glide of the comforter along my legs was heavenly. I’d just rest for a moment, and then I’d get up and start the laundry before picking up the twins.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John

The scent of the river washed up along the dock as I leaned against the pilings eating my bologna sandwich. Isabella insisting that I give up the search for my past was pushing me further and further away from her. She wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t understand what I was trying to tell her.  All she seemed interested in was how it affected her. And of course, that was understandable. She was pregnant with my child and it was a difficult pregnancy. Of course she wanted me to be there, by her side, dancing attendance, being excited about the baby. But all I could imagine was running my hand over soft skin stretched taut over Marlena’s abdomen. Feeling my child moving in Marlena’s belly.  

I shook my head. My conversation with Lawrence a week earlier was on repeat in my head, and escaping it was going to be impossible.

“Why would you think this belonged to my mother?” Lawrence asked me with a look of surprise. His fingers ran over the intricate gold locket and the delicate chain that was attached to it. He knew something. I could tell by the way he’d instantly looked away while schooling his features. 

I turned to follow his path across the room, “What’s the matter? You don’t notice the similarities?”

He continued to stare at the jewelry in his palm, “So, they look the same. There’s probably plenty of pieces like it.”

I was furious. Why was he lying to me? I leaned over his shoulder, ripping the locket from his hand. “Not like these, pal!” Lawrence faced me as I told him, “They not only look alike, they are alike.” I opened it to show him. “These are two halves of the same locket. So, what do you know about that?”

I saw the realization dawn in his eyes with a mixture of confusion and sadness. “How did you get it?”

I stepped closer, holding the locket up so that Lawrence could see it more closely. “I already told you! It was in the satchel that I retrieved from the fire in the cave when we were in Mexico!”

“Why was it in there?” Lawrence asked in a louder tone, obviously starting to panic. Whatever his realization was, it was scaring him, and I wanted to know why. 

“I don’t know!” I cried. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here asking you! I don’t remember anything!”

Something cracked in Lawrence. I heard it in his voice, and I saw a flash of something in his eyes as he yelled, “Well, what’s the matter with you, dammit! Think!” 

Isabella wanted me to give up my search and focus on her and the baby, but I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. I mean… I wasn’t apathetic to her and what she was asking me for. Although… hell, maybe I was. She wanted me at her appointments. She wanted me to feel the baby kick. She wanted me to discuss names and nursery furnishings. She wanted me to want all those things. She wanted me fully invested, and I wasn’t sure that I was. I wasn’t sure what I was. 

I was in pain, although I wouldn’t admit that. Not to her, not to myself. Instead it came out as rage, anger, frustration… and I wasn’t sure what to do with any of it. I felt like I was being forced into a life I’d never asked for, and yet, before Marlena came back, hadn’t that been the life I’d been planning?

No. It hadn’t. In that life I was Roman Brady. I had a solid foundation, I had children, I had a family. Now I had nothing but neediness. Isabella’s. The baby’s. Mine.

I just needed to know who I was before I committed to anything.

Almost as soon as the thoughts entered my head, they were chased by the niggling thought that it was an excuse. Of course, it was an excuse. I could move on with Isabella if I chose to, but every time I decided I could force myself to push forward, I thought of Marlena and the children. Marlena had made a choice. She had made a choice that had untethered me and left me drifting in space, unable to move forward but somehow frightened to turn back. Maybe it was the negative space in the choice that she’d made that had discombobulated me. She hadn’t chosen Roman. 

I needed to choose. I couldn’t continue to hurt Isabella by being absent and apathetic. I needed to acknowledge that I was afraid. 

I was pulled from my thoughts by Lawrence. “John?”

I tossed the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth, and rubbed my hands together, ridding them of crumbs. I stood up straighter, giving him a look of loathing. “What brings you down into the land of the working man, Larry?”

He cleared his throat. “I needed to speak with you about something.”

“I can’t imagine what that would be,” I scoffed, my sarcasm and anger hiding my confusion and pain. “You shut me down pretty good the other day.”

“I needed… I needed to check something,” he replied weakly. 

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Make it quick, my lunch break is almost over.”

“When I was a boy, I had a brother. Did you know that? He died in a drowning accident in our family pool. I was eight. He was six.” Lawrence stared out over the Salem River. He seemed so unsure of how to proceed, and that was a version of him that I had never seen before. Lawrence didn’t do vulnerable. “I grew up in a family of secrets. It was cold… my father was… harsh. He demanded perfection at every turn… and my brother, Forrest, was soft. He was kind… he was sensitive–”

“ –I’m not sure why I’m getting the history lesson, Larry.” I stepped up beside him, and looked out at the river, matching his stance by tucking my hands in my pockets. I was hanging on every word out of his mouth, but I was feeling too vulnerable, so I was covering with quips and sarcasm.

“The locket,” he said softly. “I remember very clearly my mother giving my brother and I matching lockets. I have mine… Forrest’s was buried with him when he died. At least that was the story I was given by my Aunt.”

“Vivian?” I laughed sardonically. “You can’t believe a word out of that woman’s mouth.” But even as I laughed, I had a growing sense of unease in my gut.

“I wasn’t certain when I saw you last week…” He faced me, his eyes glancing over my face as if he were trying to find something. “I’m certain now.”

“Certain of what?” I asked.

“You’re my brother, John. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but my mother hid you, and…” His voice choked and he stopped speaking. “Maybe our father had beaten you one too many times…”

Pain flashed in my mind. My own fear, and the anger in a pair of the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. No! He was lying. There had to be a reason or a ploy. I didn’t have time to buy into whatever game Lawrence was trying to play. This couldn’t be the answer I was looking for, this couldn’t be my past.  An unwanted, forgotten Alamain?  My search couldn’t end here, on this pier. Not now. This had to be about the codices or something related to them. The horn sounded to end the lunch hour, and I swallowed thickly, feeling decidedly uncomfortable. “I’ve got to go.”

Lawrence reached out, grabbing my arm to keep me from leaving. “John… I’m sorry,” he choked out, and I saw tears in his eyes. What was he sorry about? There was a look of desperation in his eyes that I didn’t understand. “I had the DNA from your water glass tested. This is not a game.” I watched as he pulled a bundle of papers from the inside of his coat. Something inside me felt that whatever those papers contained… my life would never be the same.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marlena

“Doc?” I was pulled from the deepest sleep by the sound of John’s voice. I blinked my eyes, hearing him again. I rolled to my side feeling groggy and disoriented. “Doc? Is everything okay? I saw your car in the driveway… and the front door was unlocked.”

I sat up feeling confused, glancing at the clock. It was almost time to pick up the twins. How had I lost track of time? I heard John’s footsteps in the hallway, a soft shuffle against the carpet. He called my name again. Pushing myself from the bed, almost falling from it as I untangled myself from the sheets, I stood next to it in bewilderment, unable to gather my thoughts. I rubbed my hands over my face, pushing my hair back from my forehead. It fell back down over my face and I shook my head, trying to clear my vision, both internally and externally.

A light rap sounded on my bedroom door, and I looked up with wide eyes. As it opened slowly, I sank back onto the mattress heavily, perching on the edge as if I might flee the room at any moment. My head fell forward into my hands. I was so overwhelmed. My state of dress didn’t matter. My hair didn’t matter. The papers on the table downstairs crossed my mind, and then I thought about the laundry and the dishes. Why was I thinking about laundry? I couldn’t handle it all. I couldn’t handle any of it right now. A quiet sob choked me. 

It was when I felt the gentle slide of John’s hand along my spine that the emotional dam burst. The gut wrenching sobs that tore their way free of my body sounded as if they belonged to someone else. Surely they couldn’t have belonged to me? Everything over the last two months, ever since we’d returned from Mexico, came out in a flood of anguish. 

I shook as John’s arm slid around me, pulling me into him. I was surrounded by the scent of soap, leather, and his spicy cologne. I could feel the chill of the outside still on his skin and his hair, but it was his soft lips on my forehead, and his whispered words against my flesh that had me trembling in his arms.

“Hey. Hey… hey, Doc…” His hands stroked over my bare shoulders, and I slowly realized I was wearing next to nothing. The gentle caress of his hand across my skin was nearly my undoing. His finger slid underneath the thin strap on my shoulder, and his other hand pushed under the fall of my hair cupping my neck. I melted into him. I couldn’t stop the automatic way my body leaned towards him. I felt safer and more settled than I had in weeks.

When I felt his mouth near my temple, I sighed softly. If I could have him with me forever, I would. Reaching out, I gripped the sleeve of his leather jacket, twisting my fingers in it to hold him closer. His arm dropped and his warm palm skimmed across the satin fabric covering my hip in a dance I recognized from years before. He tugged me even closer with a soft grunt.

I closed my eyes. Oh, G-d, how I needed him. Not just physically, but I needed his calm, his presence that brought peace to my soul the way nothing else, and no one else could. I felt the tears, hot and wet, make their way down my cheeks as I lifted my face from his chest. I stared up into his deep blue eyes, and raised my hand to touch his jaw tenderly. “How is it that just having you near me brings me such serenity?”

“I feel it too,” he whispered, brushing his thumb alongside my neck. He leaned forward, dragging his soft lips across my forehead. Pulling back, he said in a husky voice, “I feel it too.”

John

I’d left Marlena upstairs to get dressed. She was all soft skin and floral notes. She was pink and gold and freckled and I wanted to lick her like an ice-cream. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. I could still feel the heat of her thigh under my palm. I rubbed my hands over my face. “Fuck. Fuck.” 

For days I’d been feeling low, and overwhelmed. I was floundering with the pressure from Isabella, combined with my fixation on finding my past, and a few moments with Marlena had erased it all. I heard her shuffling around upstairs. I’d almost kissed her. The last time I’d kissed her, really kissed her, had been on the beach in Miami. It would have led to much more if Abe hadn’t been expecting us at the airport. How would that have changed the trajectory of my life? 

Wasn’t that how it was? A single moment, a singular instance, a small decision… and everything changed. The road not taken closed forever by a single choice, a single hesitation. What if I’d taken her back to our hotel room that night and made slow, passionate love to her? What if I’d kissed her the way I dreamed of that night in San Cristobal? What if I’d run my hands over her skin, parted her graceful legs and buried myself inside her? I paused, thinking… what if I’d never made love to Isabella on the beach in Mexico?

“I can’t be thinking like this. It changes nothing,” I growled, as though hearing the words out loud might convince my fractured, bleeding heart. My fingers pulled at my hair. I needed a distraction. Glancing around quickly, my eyes landed on a pile of papers that had fallen from the table behind the couch. I heard Marlena descending the stairs just as I bent over to pick them up. A scan of them let me know that it was the official paperwork she would need to reinstate her license and reestablish her medical practice at the hospital. 

My eyes met hers when she reached the bottom of the stairs. I gave her a sheepish look, “Your papers fell off the table. I wasn’t snooping.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure what I want anymore, and I can’t seem to find the motivation to figure it out.”

“I think we’re both struggling right now.” I sighed, “I stopped therapy. It wasn’t working out with Dr. Baker, and I don’t trust anyone else enough to open up.” I shrugged, the casual timbre of my gesture belying the anguish I was feeling.

Marlena looked at me with concern, “Have you told Isabella?”

“Isabella thinks I’m fine. She doesn’t understand why I’m in therapy to begin with.” That was just a small part of the problem. Isabella didn’t, or wouldn’t, try to understand what I was going through. The concern in Marlena’s eyes told me that she did. 

“I could see you,” she whispered. “It would be unofficial, of course, since I’m not certain I want to renew my license… but I’ve helped you before if you remember.”

I remembered our conversation at the nurses station in the hospital all those years ago as if it had just happened. She’d said it was a friend helping a friend, but things were different now. We’d been married. We’d been lovers. There were things between us, unspoken. I said quietly, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Doc.”

“Why? You trust me, and I know you… so you wouldn’t have to spend additional time establishing rapport.” She watched me with intent eyes, and I felt the attraction. I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling it.

I shook my head. “No… no. I’m fine. I’m really fine.”

“John?” Her warm hand reached for mine, and I saw the pleading in her eyes. “John, let me do this… I need to feel… useful.” She glanced away and I could sense her tears, rather then seeing them..

“Hey. Hey, baby, look at me. What’s going on with you?” I took her chin in my fingers, tipping her face up to mine. “Talk to me. Please?”

She rapidly brushed the moisture from her face with the tips of graceful fingers and tried to laugh, but it came across wrong. “Aren’t I the one who’s offering to help you?”

“You are… but we’re friends, right? You can talk to me.” I wanted her to talk to me. I wanted to be the one she leaned on, and if that wasn’t the answer I needed, I wasn’t sure if there ever would be an answer that would satisfy me.. 

Marlena took a deep breath, and then glanced down at the papers sitting on the table beside us. Turning away from them, she said, “I’m not sure I’m ready to be back at work, but I have to find a way to support my family. The savings that you gave us won’t last forever… and-and–”

“ –you’re not sure you’re emotionally ready to hang out the shingle again just yet?” I finished for her.

The tears welled up in her eyes again, and she shook her head. The sadness I saw there said more than her words ever could. I’d seen the unfinished laundry, and the dirty dishes in the sink. I’d found her napping in the middle of the day. Marlena liked to live her life as if she were the strongest person in every room, but nobody was infallible. 

“It’s okay to admit you need help, Doc.” I wiped the tears that had escaped and made paths over her cheeks. An idea occurred to me, so I said softly, “You know a funny thing happened just before I came over here. In fact, it’s the whole reason I came. We just might be able to help each other out of these doldrums.”

I slid my arms around her shoulders and buried her against my chest. I wouldn’t think too much about how it felt when she tucked her hands inside my coat. I tried not to focus on the scent that surrounded me, or the memories it brought up. We were just two friends. Two good friends. Two best friends. That was all. 

But I was lying to myself. I’d been lying to myself since she found me on the pier in August. Now it was time to come to terms with that and make a decision.

Chapter 7 – Gluttony

John

I just needed a couple beers and a shot or two of whiskey, and then I would head back to my apartment. I didn’t live that far. Getting drunk just meant I wouldn’t have to call a cab. I pushed open the door to the Cheatin’ Heart, barely hearing the bell over the door because of the din inside. It was full of post-work revellers, in particular, truckers and fishermen, and the bar smelled heavily of beer and sweat.  The jukebox blared a country song I was unfamiliar with as I skirted my way around dancing couples, and pushed through groups of drunken, rowdy men as I tried to avoid the thickest areas of cigarette smoke.  After being jostled several times, I finally arrived at the bar and gave the bartender a quick nod. “A Guinness, and a shot of whiskey.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, but said nothing else as he drafted the beer, letting the foamy head settle as he poured me a shot of Jameson. Sliding the two drinks towards me, he asked, “You payin’ now or runnin’ a tab?”

“Open tab,” I said gruffly. I planned on being there for a while.

I caught sight of a small table in the corner that wouldn’t be noticeable from the door. I wasn’t looking to socialize, and if someone who knew me from work came in they’d want to talk. I was not in a talking mood. I wasn’t in the mood for anything but drowning my sorrows in a few drinks, and then a silent walk home.

I’d been dreaming of Marlena for days. I couldn’t help but hope she was dreaming of me. She consumed my thoughts – waking and sleeping. As much as I wanted to get my mind off her and onto something more… productive, my memories kept floating back to her. Lingering on the way her skin felt against mine, how soft her hair was under my fingers. How she tasted. I was waking from dreams so realistic I still had the taste of her skin on my tongue.

I sighed and shook my head. I needed to quit torturing myself like this. Maybe the whiskey would stop me thinking about her, at least for a few hours. I took a long swallow of my beer, and thought about Isabella. She’d decided to move in with Victor because it was easier to be on bedrest there. Earlier that day I had stopped by to see her, and Victor’s welcome had been less than hospitable. I could understand why. Isabella’s tears had made it all so much worse.

“Do you want a life with me or not?” she’d cried.

I had to stop lying to her and tell the truth. Whatever the hell that was. I was hurting her, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. “I– I don’t know, Izzy-B. I don’t know.” I rubbed my hands over my face, and then looked at her for a moment. “Finding out that Lawrence is my brother has thrown me for a loop… and I… I can’t deny that I still have feelings for Marlena.”  There they were, the words she didn’t want to hear. The words that sunk between us like a boulder in the river of our love. It was immovable and all our emotions had to flow around it because it wasn’t fucking going anywhere, no matter how much both of us tried to wish it away.

Her green eyes flashed angrily. “You resolved those!” She was hurt, and she had every right to be. “In Mexico! You chose me! You chose me, John!”

I wasn’t sure that I had. Fuck, I wasn’t sure about anything. Except that I didn’t want to face her like this. I didn’t want to cause her this pain. I didn’t want to utter the words that would tear her world apart. Isabella looked so small and vulnerable in the bed, and I knew I was about to break her heart. “That night on the beach, Isabella…” My voice trailed off. I wasn’t sure what to say, or how to tell her what had happened that night, but I knew I had to explain. I had to tell her something. This uncertainty was killing her. It was killing both of us. I couldn’t promise her something that wasn’t mine to give.

 “I was utterly broken that night, Izzy. Finding out that I wasn’t Roman Brady – I mean definitively finding out… I needed time to process that. To understand what it meant for me. It’s why you found me there alone on the beach. I needed time to come to terms with losing everything I thought I had… I thought I was. I had to come to terms with my life falling apart.”

She immediately became defensive, which was not what I’d wanted. I couldn’t tell if she was anguished or angered. Maybe it was both. “So, you’re saying I pressured you? Is that it?”

“No,” I said quietly. “I’m saying that I wasn’t in any frame of mind to be making decisions that night. Not life-long, permanent decisions. Not decisions that affected everyone. I shouldn’t have made love to you then… I should have waited.”

“But because I came to you, and stayed when you tried to send me away… that’s my fault? It’s my fault that you led me to believe that we had a chance?” She wrapped her arms around her fragile body, pulling her knees up to her chest, and started crying. “You hadn’t lost everything, John. You still had me. You had our baby. You have both of us, and you’re just throwing that away! I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of it!”

 I felt guilty as hell, and for a moment I wondered if that’s what she intended, but I shook it off.  Isabella was not manipulative like that. She was hurting, and that was only natural given what had happened between us. She’d thought I’d been the man she was going to marry. She’d thought I was Roman Brady, a solid blue-collared cop, a dependable man, a man who would be a good father to her baby. The truth was, I was none of those things, and I didn’t know what things I was any more. I couldn’t give her what she wanted because I didn’t know who I was or what I had to give. A night of comfort on a beach in Mexico hadn’t answered any of those questions. Not for me, anyway.

“That’s not what I said.” It was true enough though. I had tried to send her away that night. I knew I needed space and time to think, but she had insisted on staying. I hadn’t made any promises, but I knew that to her, they were implied. She’d kissed me, and I’d felt so alone. The taste of her had been so familiar. She’d been a safe harbor in a storm that had threatened to wash me away, and I’d clung to her like a drowning man.  Marlena had been my shore, my sanctity, but Isabella had been the life-preserver I had grabbed hold of to stop from drowning. “Izzy-B, as much as this hurts you… I can’t commit to you when I still don’t know what I want.” I shook my head, feeling like my own eyes were reflecting her pain. “I love you too much to hurt you like that.”

She gave me a hard stare, her eyes flinty, her mouth set in a sulky, unattractive pout. “Do you really love me? Or do you love Marlena?”

“I love you both,” I whispered. And that was the problem. I loved them both, but Marlena was the one I would give up everything for. She was the one who filled my dreams, and my afternoon fantasies. Marlena was the one who’s scent I craved. I imagined the feel of her skin, running my nose up the side of her neck as she whimpered, and I longed to hear her voice in my dark moments. Safety vs passion.  Comfort vs fire. Mellow versus soul consuming intensity. My love for Isabella and my love for Marlena were made up of very different things. 

“You can’t have us both!” Isabella wiped her face with fluttering fingers as she said, “You have to make a choice! It’s Marlena, or it’s me and our baby.”

The way she had phrased her final ultimatum had left me with a sourness in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t choosing between her and my child, or Marlena. My child would never be a choice.  My child was the one link I had to this world, the proof that I was a real, flesh and blood man, walking around like every other man who had a past. My child would keep me tethered to this life, prove to me that I existed. The only other place I definitively knew I existed was when I saw my own reflection in Marlena’s beautiful hazel eyes. I had given up Marlena once… I wouldn’t give up my child. I would always love them and play an active part in their life, and yet Isabella had made it sound like it was one or the other. If I chose Marlena would Isabella attempt to keep me from the baby? I’d never imagined that she held that type of bitterness within her, but now I wondered.

The waitress came by, and I asked for another beer and another shot of whiskey, even though I still had the first shot sitting in front of me. 

Despite Isabella’s insinuations… her threats, if indeed that was what they were, I still had to make a decision. I couldn’t let her make it for me this time. So, what was holding me back? 

I stared at the dregs of my Guinness before I lifted the shot glass and threw back the Jameson’s, almost hissing as it seared a path down my throat. A conversation with Doc. I needed to have a completely open, no holds barred, conversation with her. I slammed the shot glass back down on the table and almost laughed. When would that happen? One or the other of us was always covering our emotions. It was Marlena pushing me away behind Ballistix, or running from me after our conversation on the pier. It was me trying to smile through my pain and confusion because I didn’t want to cause Marlena or Isabella anymore pain. But I had to be honest. We were all in pain. We were all shattering, and I had no idea how to stop the collapse. Equally, I had no idea how to be honest with her.  How could I be when I couldn’t be honest with myself? Everything was a constant dance of what if, eyes too bright, smiles too broad and then fucking tears and breaking hearts.
When the fuck would the charades stop?

Marlena

I shouldn’t have been on the pier alone that late, but after dropping the twins off at the Fish Market to spend the night with their grandparents, I’d gone for a walk. Usually when I felt drawn to the pier, I’d run into John. Perhaps I’d expected that to happen. It didn’t. Instead I found myself standing outside the Cheatin’ Heart. The noise and the music drifted out from the windows, the walls, and the large crack in the door and through it, I could see people dancing through the haze of cigarette smoke. 

I wasn’t even sure why I was there. I’d only been there once before with Carly. We’d gone there once when Bo and John had been working a case – before my life fell apart. I remembered laughing as we drank beers and played pool. Well, I didn’t really play pool, I’d awkwardly hit balls and sunk the white more than I sank the colors. It wasn’t a typical night out for me, but the novelty of it had been entertaining. So while it was unfamiliar, and I wasn’t sure all together safe, I didn’t want to go home.  And maybe there was a part of me that hoped, since he was working down here at the pier again, I’d run into John.

I hadn’t seen him since his soft lips had kissed the corner of my mouth as he left my house the other day. I could still recall the way I’d licked my tongue across my lips hoping to taste him after he was gone. I was so pitiful. I could just kiss him and save myself the trouble of wondering if he wanted me to, but when I imagined it, thoughts of him pushing me away chased after the soft kiss in my mind, and it was too much to bear. I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle his rejection. While I left the questions unasked, the words unspoken and the kisses unkissed, I still had a little hope to cling to. So instead, we continued to dance around each other, and I knew it would eventually backfire.

The door burst open and a couple stumbled out. The woman wore a short skirt and a studded leather waistcoat, her dyed black hair piled up on her head. He wore dirty, faded blue jeans, brown cowboy boots and a red bandana around his neck. She was laughing loudly as the man looked at me in surprise. They stopped suddenly and skirted around me. The woman glanced over my clothes with a cocked eyebrow. “Sorry, lady. We didn’t see you standing there.”

Admittedly, I wasn’t dressed for a place like the Cheatin’ Heart. It didn’t seem like pink plaid dress suits and matching wool scarves were what people wore to such an establishment, but I took a deep breath and pushed the door open anyway. I hadn’t had a beer for a while. Maybe it was time for one.

John

Every eye in the Cheatin’ Heart turned towards the door and the room became quiet for a moment. The only sound left was the jukebox blaring out a Conway Twitty song from years before. I was already three beers and two shots of whiskey into my gluttony fueled alcohol binge, so I was a little confused to see Marlena standing there. Marlena, a golden goddess, in the goddamned Cheatin’ Heart.  My seat rattled to the floor when I stood up abruptly. She was fucking gorgeous, and I knew that every single man there was trying to calculate his chances with her. Their chances were fucking zero. I would stop that pendulum before it even had an opportunity to swing into motion. 

I was across the room in moments, reaching for Marlena’s hand as she stared at me with wide hazel eyes full of surprise. She smiled at me, long dark eyelashes fluttering as her sweet, pink, lickable lips curled in a way that invited me to taste them, and I swear my heart melted. I dared any man to even approach. She was mine and my claim was made in public. I led her back to my table in the corner. 

“You wanna tell me what you’re doing in a place like this?” I whispered in her ear as I helped her into a chair. Her soft blonde hair brushed my cheek, and I allowed myself the chance to breathe in her floral shampoo and her sweet, musky scent.

She looked up at me with another smile. “You know, John, I came here with Carly once… I’ve been here before.”

Her skirt hugged her body, and those heels said high-class. I fingered the soft scarf wrapped around her shoulder and then trailed my fingers across her neck. “Were you dressed like this?”

“No,” she said softly. “No. I was, um, dressed more casually that time.”

“Every man in here is watching you,” I told her. I calculated my best angle to survey the bar’s less salubrious patrons and decided that across from her, facing the room was my best bet. I could drink in her gorgeous face, and keep tabs on the creeps eyeing her up at the same time. I rounded the table, then sat down, lacing my fingers through hers across the table-top. Catching the waitress’s eye, I waved her over. To Marlena I said, “You want a beer?”

“Do they have wine?” she asked me. I cocked my eyebrow at her, but didn’t answer.  They might have wine, but if they did, it wasn’t the kind of wine my Doc would want to drink. Places like the Cheatin’ Heart served wine that would strip paint off the table beneath our hands. Marlena laughed, “No. I suppose they don’t. Yes. A beer would be fine.”

The waitress looked Marlena over, and I noticed that she was less friendly to me than she had been. Jealousy was surprising. I hadn’t even noticed her interest in me until that moment. “Can I get two beers, and two shots of whiskey?  I’ll have another Guinness, the lady here will have a Bud. Thanks.”

“John, I can’t drink too much. I have to walk back to the fish market and drive home–” Marlena started, as though she was suddenly questioning whether she should be there at all. She was right to question. That dive wasn’t the kind of place a knockout like Marlena should be seen dead in, but once she was there, and I had her so close to me, I wasn’t going to give up the opportunity to spend some time with her.

“ –my apartment is a five minute walk from here. Don’t worry about it.” Her skin was so soft against mine, and I wanted to feel more of it. I wanted to hold her against me, feel her softness against the weathered skin of my face, of my hands. Suddenly I had an idea. Standing up, I pulled some coins from my pocket. “You want to dance, Doc?”

“Dance?” She beamed up at me. I knew she couldn’t say no. It was one of things she’d loved to do when we were married. She’d told me once that it was a change in my personality that she didn’t understand. Before my death I hadn’t wanted to dance at all. Now we all knew why.

I rattled the coins in my hand. “Whatd’ya say? Dance with me?”

Marlena

The words to the song started, and I found myself lost in John’s eyes. I may not have been dressed for the venue, but I melded against him as if I’d always been meant to be there.

It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart

Without saying a word, you can light up the dark

Try as I may, I could never explain

What I hear when you don’t say a thing…

John’s hand slid low on my back, settling just over the curve of my bottom, and I could feel the pressure where he pulled me closer. He pulled my hand up on his chest where he always held it, and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I sighed, feeling emotionally safe for the first time in days. My cheek rubbed against the soft cotton of his shirt, I inhaled the scent of him, and I nearly purred with happiness as our bodies swayed together.

“You gonna tell me why you were wandering around the pier this late?” John asked me softly, his chest vibrating under my cheek as he spoke.

“I was looking for you,” I said only loud enough so that he could hear it above the hubbub of the bar. “I mean… I wasn’t looking for you. Not on purpose…. but I was… I was hoping you might be on the pier.” I left him to think about that as we turned together on the dingy bar floor. I could feel the peanut shells crunching under our feet, but it didn’t matter. 

“Hoping to find me, huh? Well, I guess you’re lucky I was here.” His face rubbed over the top of my head, as he said quietly, “Every man in this place wants you, you know. You came walking in here like a fucking vision, and I had to snatch you right up.”

I wish he’d snatched me up when I first came home, but I’d already told him that on the pier in the rain. Repeating it wouldn’t change anything. 

All day long I can hear people talking aloud

But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd

Old Mr. Webster could never define

What’s bein’ said between your heart and mine…

John

She didn’t say anything, and I was pretty sure I knew why. How many chances had I had to tell that I wanted her in my life? I took a deep breath allowing the scent of her perfume to burn and scar my lungs. I spun her in a circle, enjoying the way her whoop of glee filled me up. The song finished and I couldn’t help thinking that it would forever be the song I associated with Marlena.

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me

There’s a truth in your eyes sayin’ you’ll never leave me

The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if I ever fall

You say it best when you say nothing at all

I led Marlena back to our table tucked in the corner, and for a long while we were silent as we nursed our beers. Once I saw her start, as though she was going to say something, and then she stopped herself. I saw her start to fidget, her finger drawing random shapes on the frosted exterior of the beer stein and I could already predict she was ready to run. 

I couldn’t allow it. Not this time. “Let’s go back to my apartment,” I said quickly, grabbing her hand as though she was about to vanish into the ether and my physical grip on her was the only thing that would stop it happening.

She looked up at me in surprise. “What?”

There was a growing sense of desperation inside of me. We needed to talk. We needed a span of uninterrupted time, and I was just drunk enough to want it without too much thought of the ramifications. I needed an answer to the question that had stumped me since our return from Mexico. Why not Roman? “C’mon,” I said. “You don’t have to be home, and I’m not ready to let you go. Just let me pay the tab, and we’ll go.” 

I let her go momentarily, picked up the last shot of Jameson still sitting on the table and knocked it back quickly while staring Marlena down, waiting for her answer. Then I offered her my hand again, this time letting her make the choice, but I could see her hesitation. Was she willing to take what I was offering? Slowly she lifted her arm, and I nearly sighed with relief when I felt her fingers slide over mine. Her softly spoken, “Okay,” was all I needed to hear. 

I helped her from the chair, and rubbed my nose along her cheek whispering, “Let’s go, Doc.”

Marlena

John opened the door to his apartment with one hand while clutching a brand new bottle of whiskey in the other. In paying his tab at the Cheatin’ Heart he’d decided he needed another bottle of Jameson for the road. I followed him in, still unsure of my decision. A Bud and a shot of whiskey already had me making questionable choices. I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it, studying John as he walked towards his galley style kitchen. My eyes wandered over his muscular body as he reached into the cabinet, and pulled down two shot glasses. He held the rims between his forefinger and thumb as he turned around and glanced at me while saying, “Kick your shoes off, and then go into the bedroom and change. Grab whatever you want. You look uncomfortable.”

My first instinct was to argue with him but I immediately curbed it. I wasn’t uncomfortable necessarily, but the thought of sitting on the couch in a pair of John’s sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt was very appealing. And if I was going to be drinking more, I wanted to be comfortable.  I wanted to be surrounded by John.  

He sat heavily on the couch and started pouring two shots, and I took off my shoes and walked towards his bedroom, which was just off the living room. He was watching me. I could feel his eyes on me, raking over my body as if it were his hands caressing me. I shook my hair out of the French twist it had been curled into all day, and I entered his bedroom. The room was so John. Simple. Understated. Comfortable.

I reached for the top right drawer and pulled out a pair of sweatpants, and then I walked towards his closet and found his folded sweatshirts on the top shelf. I glanced towards his open bedroom door. I knew I should have closed it, but I didn’t. I left it open, a silent invitation for something. Maybe I wanted his eyes on me again, burning and branding me as his own. I started to disrobe. I was a glutton for punishment, hoping that he saw me. I wanted him to watch me. I wanted him to remember what I looked like naked, to recall the way my skin felt under his hands, how my thighs wrapped around his hips. I wanted him to remember how I felt as he slid into me, his hard length throbbing inside me. I unbuttoned my jacket, and shrugged it from my shoulders. I folded it, and sat it on the end of his bed. Almost immediately, I felt a change in the air, and glanced up to find him watching me intently, his lips slightly parted, his pupils dilated and black. 

My eyes locked with his as I slid my skirt over my hips, and carefully added it to the pile I’d started with my jacket. I stood there for a singular moment dressed in a rose colored satin camisole and a pair of pretty satin panties. I could take them off. I was running on alcohol fueled bravery, and it was a bad idea, but I wanted something. Some reaction. I wanted to push the envelope. I turned around, forgetting about my tattoo until I heard John’s sharp intake of breath when I pulled the camisole over my head. His footsteps sounded on the floor, and then I felt his fingers soft on my skin, tracing over the phoenix tattoo on my shoulder.

My heart started to pound in my chest, and I crossed my arms over my breasts feeling incredibly vulnerable. I’d completely forgotten about it. His fingertips danced over my skin, and his voice was rough when he asked me, “Doc… what is this?”

I tried to be careless. Nonchalant. Instead my words came out sounding choked, “I would think that was obvious.” I felt more exposed at that moment than I ever had before. I was partially nude, and with John’s fingers against me, my soul was bared. The phoenix on my skin was a permanent connection to him, and it represented everything we’d ever been through. Not just what we’d experienced at Stefano’s hands, but our connection to each other.

John was quiet for so long, and then he said, “When did you do this?” It felt so good, the way his palm slid across my skin. He had to know what he was doing to me, my whole body trembled underneath his rough hand.

“A few weeks ago,” I whispered. “It was after a rough therapy session… and another argument with Roman. I felt as if I needed – I needed to wrest back control of my life. So before I could change my mind, I decided to do it.”

“I remember, in Stockholm…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t have to say anything more, because I remembered too. I felt his soft lips on my skin as he leaned forward, kissing my shoulder. His other hand slid over my ribs, and my hip. “G-d, Doc… sometimes I think I forget how fucking beautiful you are…” And then he was gone from the room. I finished dressing in silence.

John

I wanted her. I forced myself to leave the room, but it didn’t do anything to stop the desire that burned in my veins. It burned like it was fuel, the spark from the tail of the beautiful phoenix on her shoulder igniting my fingertips, and tearing through my circulatory system within seconds, exploding simultaneously in my chest and in my groin. 
She’d fucking done it. 

How long ago had we had that conversation in Stockholm? I silently tabulated the dates, and then closed my eyes. Almost five years exactly. 

Realizing she’d taken that step did something to me. She’d chosen to not make a life with Roman, and she’d chosen to put a phoenix on her body. The placement wasn’t lost on me either. Her right shoulder. Did it mean what I thought it meant? It had to mean something. Branding herself with the mate to my own flaming moniker. It was hardly an insignificant decision. 

  My hands were shaking when she walked out of my bedroom. I lifted the shot glasses full of whiskey and handed her one. 

“I haven’t been drunk since I was sixteen and Samantha and I got into my mothers cherry cordial.” She took the glass from me, and then clicked it against mine. “Bottoms up,” she said, tossing the shot back quickly.

My eyes were watching her every move. The nervous way her eyes tried to avoid mine. The way her small hand trembled when she held the glass out for me to refill. “Doc… look at me.” She did what I said without hesitation, and I felt a surge of desire. I reached for her face. She was so beautiful. “Doc…”

She leaned into my palm, and we stood there for a moment. Finally she asked me, “What were you trying to forget tonight?”

“What makes you think I was trying to forget something?” I whispered.

“You were well on your way to forgetting when I arrived.” She kissed my palm, and then turned to sit on the couch. “It’s okay… I want to forget some things tonight too.”

I reached for the bottle of Jameson, and tipped some back into my mouth. Marlena chuckled, and then reached for the bottle, her fingers brushing mine as she took it from me.  She lifted it to her mouth and I watched her throat move and studied the way her lips wrapped around the mouth of the bottle. Fucking gorgeous. 

I reached for the bottle, trying to ignore that I was hoping for a taste of her to spread over my tongue before the whiskey hit it. “What are you trying to forget?” I asked her.

“If I answer your question, will you answer one of mine?” She sat forward on the edge of the seat, her forearms balanced on her knees and her graceful fingers interlocked.  She stared at me and waited.

I shrugged, trying to figure out what she might be going to ask me and whether I would (or could) answer honestly or not. But the request was fair and I would try to be honest. After all, it was what I had been ruminating over earlier. Our inability to be straightforward with each other. Maybe the lubrication of the Jameson’s was what we needed to unlock our truths. “Sure.”

“I found out that my marriage to Roman isn’t valid anymore, but neither is my marriage to you.” She was quiet for a moment. She turned sideways on the couch and pulled her legs up beside her, and then she said, “For some reason… finding out that our marriage wasn’t valid… I don’t know. I guess there was a part of me that was hoping it was, that maybe I would still have that connection to you.  That it would maybe change the landscape between us. Make it…”  She sighed, allowing her head to rest on the back of the couch. “It sounds silly when I say it out loud. Then the next thing I know I’m mourning a marriage and wondering where my wedding ring is.”  She sounded so desolate it broke my heart a little bit more. I hadn’t thought that there was any part of it left intact enough that it could be broken more. “It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?”

Her tongue was looser because of the alcohol. Had she been sober, Marlena wouldn’t have said as much. Not if she thought it could hurt me, or make me question my own choices, and definitely not if she thought it would leave her vulnerable to my rejection. I took a long draw off of the whiskey bottle, and then passed it into Marlena’s outstretched hand. 

Marlena

The whiskey burned on the way down, but it had become almost pleasant. I felt nicely numb, my chest aching a little less, my head a little lighter. Most importantly I had found the courage to ask the question I most wanted the answer to. Maybe it was liquid courage but the words were coming out of my mouth and that was all I needed. My heart was racing as I stared into John’s blue eyes, and I asked him, “In Mexico… why didn’t you come find me?”

“Come find you?” He seemed confused. “When?”

“After you and Roman saw Stefano die in the cave… why didn’t you–” My fear overtook me again, the prospect of his rejection freezing me before I could say anything more. I broke our gaze and looked away. “Never mind.”

John reached for my hand, uncurling the fingers from where my nails were digging crescents into my palms, and then slid closer to me on the couch. My breath caught in my chest. “No, Doc… what do you mean?”

His fingers were warm against mine, his thumb stroking across the back of my hand, sending tremors of want through me. He wanted to know. I could do it. I could ask it – I needed to know the answer. “Before making love to Isabella, John,” I told him. “Why didn’t you talk to me before making that decision?”

“The truth?” He sighed, looking down at our joined hands. “I–I didn’t think you’d want me. I assumed you’d be with Roman–” 

I leaned forward, taking the whiskey bottle from him, and took another large swig, noting briefly in my somewhat fuzzy mindd that we’d somehow managed to drink nearly half the bottle. 

John reached for it, whispering, “We’ve probably had enough.”

“I’m not sure it would ever be enough,” I told him quietly, the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. The ache was back and it was intense. I wanted to scream. Instead, I said, “Why does this hurt so much?”

He set the bottle on the floor beside the couch, and then he was quiet for a moment before he said, “Doc, I really believed that you would move on with Roman. I thought–”

“ –you didn’t have that right! It wasn’t your choice!” I cried, pulling my hand from his. He’d believed. He’d assumed. After everything I had said, after all my pleas and my patience, he hadn’t asked.  He had just made up his mind about how I felt. I was tired. Exhausted really, and the alcohol in my system was exacerbating that. I stood up quickly, but immediately knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere when I wobbled on my feet.

John wasn’t doing much better than I was. He stood up, reaching for me, “Whoa… whoa. Don’t leave.”

I started crying. My hands flailed as I cried, “It’s so unfair!”

“You didn’t even try with Roman.” The look in John’s eyes nearly broke me.  It was a look of betrayal. Like I had thrown a match onto the bonfire of his expectations, and burned down every plan he’d made for his future. I didn’t understand. How could he be angry at me for not wanting to be with Roman? How did he not understand that my heart was his, it had always been his. It would always be his?

“I’d been telling you for months what I wanted! You knew what I wanted! I wanted us! I wanted our family, John!” I felt sick and I felt breathless. I felt as though he’d abandoned everything we were to each other, the vows we had made standing, facing each other in St. Luke’s. The marriage might not have been legally valid, and I might have said the wrong name, but I had meant every word I had said to him.  And I had said them to him, not to a nostalgic memory of the husband I had lost. I had loved the man standing in front of me then, as much as I loved the man standing in front of me now and it scoured out my heart that he didn’t seem to feel the same way. If he did, he surely never could have made love to Isabella on that beach.

 I tried to push past him, although I had no idea where I would go, but he reached for my arm, stalling me. I stared up at him with tear filled eyes, “I wanted you, and you knew that!”

His next words left me speechless, “I knew you wanted Roman, Doc! And I wasn’t Roman!” 

And that was the truth of it. He’d assumed my love for him had been rooted in my belief that he was Roman. I’d assumed that he understood that I loved him for him and that the ‘old’ Roman was a distant memory. We had a gulf of miscommunication. 

We found ourselves in his apartment, well after midnight, drunk and feeling lonelier than either of us ever had. Overindulgence in alcohol had achieved nothing more than to open our wounds up wide enough for the other to see clearly. In Mexico, he hadn’t given me the chance to choose him, and I hadn’t had the chance to tell him that I loved him for him… not who we’d thought he was. 

The hot tears fell from eyes in fat droplets and scorched a path over my cheeks. I wiped at them furiously, as I cried out again about the unfairness of it all. John’s arms slid around me, pulling me close to him, and my fists twisted in the soft cotton of his t-shirt, holding onto him like a lifeline.

John

The room was darkness ribboned with rivers of silver light, and all I could hear was the soft sound of Marlena’s breath when she asked me, “Will you stay with me?”

Looking at her in my bed with the moonlight caressing her golden skin, caused an ache, not just in my heart but in my whole body. I wasn’t sure I could keep my hands off her if I spent more than a few minutes lying next to her. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Doc. I can sleep on the couch.”

“Please?” Her whisper was breathy and needy. “Just for tonight. I’m not too proud to beg. Just give me this, and I’ll hold it in my heart for the rest of my life.”

I still had misgivings but I couldn’t deny her. I loved her too much. If I was going to sleep with her, I needed a shirt, but she was already reaching for me… and I took her hand, allowing her to draw me into the bed beside her. I groaned softly when her palm slid across my chest. I said in a warning tone, “Doc…”

“I know I’m greedy… just, please, John. Let me lay with you tonight. I just need you to hold me.  To remind me…” Her breath wafted across my skin, a mixture of toothpaste and whiskey. I held myself over her, staring down at her, my own breathing a little labored and unsteady. 

The moonlight was reflected in her eyes, turning those beautiful gold flecks a glistening silver, and I wanted to kiss her so badly. If she was greedy, I was a G-d damned glutton, because I wanted her. I wanted all of her. And it would be so easy to take her right now. So damned easy. But it wouldn’t be right.  She was drunk… we were both drunk and falling into an intoxicated fumble with her wouldn’t solve anything for any of us. It would only make things more complicated. I couldn’t give her what she wanted until I was sure. I just… the problem was, I still didn’t quite know what it would take to be sure. 

 I brushed her hair from her cheek, and then I told her, “Roll over, baby.”

I saw it register in her eyes. She knew what I was fighting. Marlena was fighting it too. “Okay,” she whispered, accepting my decision, even though I knew she wanted more.

My palm slid over her hip, and underneath the hem of the sweatshirt she was wearing. The feel of her soft skin under my hand had me making a murmur of pleasure as I slid closer, and tucked her body against me. My cock was already half hard and I had to fight hard not to roll my hips so that it would slide against the sexy satin of her pink panties.  But I was almost certain she could feel me pressed against her.

 But despite my restraint, I still wanted to kiss her, and I couldn’t fight it forever. Tipping her face up to mine, I brushed my lips over hers like the softest whisper. “Get some sleep, Doc, baby.”

Chapter 8 – Lust

Marlena

I couldn’t sleep. I’d been staring at the ceiling of my bedroom for over an hour watching the shadows move with the moon. It had been about a week and a half since I’d seen John, since I’d smelled his sweet skin, or felt his arms around me. I’d woken up the following morning after our drunken conversation to find myself alone in his bed with a note on the nightstand. A note. He’d gone to work. 

I was heartbroken that he hadn’t woken me before he left. The night before I’d felt like something significant was happening between us. As if we were making progress towards an end I didn’t fully understand. Then there were his soft lips on my shoulder, and his fingers trailing softly against my skin… I thought we must be heading towards each other, right? But he’d left me a note that hadn’t even hinted at the near-intimacy of the night before. With an aching heart, I had dressed, left his apartment, and gone home. 
He  hadn’t called, and he hadn’t stopped by. He’d seen the twins at the fish market. They’d told me every heartbreaking detail. He’d also had lunch with Carrie a few days earlier. I was left confused and unsure of where I stood, or even if I had any ground at all, and I needed answers.

Running into Abe that afternoon had taken all of those small, fragile hopes I’d built up in my mind and tossed them into the stormy waves of the Salem River. What were we to each other, John and I? I wasn’t sure, but I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be John’s best friend, his lover, the mother of his children. I wanted a life with him. Even knowing it would break Isabella’s heart, I couldn’t deny my own truth, but after my conversation with Abe earlier, I didn’t think I would be getting any of it. 

“Abe,” I said with a pleased smile. I wrapped my arms around myself to ward off the chill. “I’m surprised to see you out here. It’s so cold.”

“Sometimes I cut through the park during my lunch hour to grab egg drop soup from Peking. The soup is amazing and the price… well the price is unbeatable.” He gave me a warm hug. “I just saw John a few hours ago.”

“You saw John?” I brightened immediately. I wasn’t sure why I even asked that. Of course he’d seen John. I just wished I’d been the one to see him instead. I seemed too eager, and Abe recognized that.

He placed his hand on my arm in a gentle way, and he said softly, “You know Marlena, I think John is getting ready to take that next step with Isabella. I know you love him, but you need to let him go.”

My heart started racing. Did he know something I didn’t? “Why?” I asked quickly. My eyes were too bright, my breathing too shallow. I could hear the concern in my voice. “Why do I need to let him go? Because it’s easier? Because it’s what everyone expects, even if it makes me miserable? Even if it’s the wrong choice for John?”

“That’s not what I meant.” He tried to backtrack, but the words had already cut me deeply.

“I let him go in Mexico, because I thought it was what he wanted… now I’m not so sure.” I looked away quickly, remembering my emotional conversation with Abe when we were at Chichen Itza.

“Has John given you any indication that he wasn’t planning to make a life with Isabella?” He asked me. Abe didn’t know how John and I had been circling around each other getting closer and closer over the last several weeks. We were like two orbiting stars set for collision. 

Softly, I replied, “Not directly, but–”

“ –Marlena,” Abe said quietly, pulling me away from the path where there were several people walking. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up, because I think you’ll be hurt. This won’t end the way you hope it will.”

“Then what?” I asked with rising frustration. “What? John and I continue the way we are, and have an affair in a year or two?”

Abe gave me a concerned look, “You don’t know that would happen.”

But I could still feel John’s lips on my shoulder, and his fingers on my skin. I could feel his warm hand cupping my breast when it slid underneath his gray Salem PD sweatshirt. I gave Abe a serious look, “I’m almost certain it would… because we never truly said goodbye.”

I rolled to my side, and turned on the lamp. Trying to sleep was hopeless. Lying there, thinking, wishing, wondering was driving me crazy. I needed answers.  

I could go to John’s apartment. The twins were with Bo and Shawn D on the boat for the weekend. There was nothing keeping me from going to John directly, and asking him if there was any chance for us. I sat up, and pulled my hair up in a messy ponytail at the back of my head. I could go to John’s apartment right then, and settle it for good. I could tell him what I wanted… and I could clearly and boldly ask him what he wanted. That same old fear reared up, and I pushed it away. No. I couldn’t live my life that way anymore. He wasn’t going to tell me anything unless I pushed him. He wasn’t going to know how I felt unless I told him. Otherwise, what was going to happen? He would drift away from me and into an ill-fated marriage with Isabella, and I would stand by and watch it happen, adrift and miserable? I couldn’t continue like we were, and I was fairly sure neither could John.

I tore my nightgown over my head, and reached for John’s sweatshirt that I had worn home a week earlier.  Grabbing a pair of jeans from the hamper, I slid them over my hips, and ran down the stairs, barely stopping to grab my car keys, purse, and shrug into my white wool coat. I was going to see John. I needed answers, and he had them. I’d never get a good night’s rest again without them.

John

Isabella’s engagement ring sat in its velvet box on my coffee table staring at me, as if it were demanding I make a choice. I’d been telling myself for days to simply do it. Go to Victor’s home, and propose to Isabella. I could make a life with her, afterall it was what I’d intended to do when I bought the ring in Miami. But that was when I’d believed that Marlena was dead, and I would never love a woman the way I’d loved Marlena. I’d accepted that long ago. Marlena was the standard to which no one else would ever measure up, and I had accepted that after she’d died. There was no equal. I had been happy with Isabella. What we’d had was a sweet, soft love. I’d loved her in my own way, and she’d been so good with the children. She would be an excellent mother to our own child, but in the back of my mind a small voice whispered, but Marlena isn’t dead anymore. It also wasn’t lost on me that I was already thinking of our love in the past tense.

The problem with making the choice to marry Isabella was that I could still remember waking up to the feel of Marlena’s breast resting in my palm a few days earlier, and her gentle moan of pleasure when my thumb had rolled over her peaked nipple. I’d felt as if my skin was on fire, and before I did something abrupt or lacking thought, I’d fled the scene of the crime. If those hazel eyes had fluttered open, and stared into my soul as the early sun of dawn cast the room in a soft pink haze, I would have made love to her. Instead, I’d run away like a criminal. I hadn’t committed any crime, not really, but I’d been guilty ever since. 

I continued to stare at the ring, recalling my quiet dinner with Isabella the night before at Victor’s. It hadn’t gone well. I was too quiet, too broody, and she’d asked too many questions. She wanted too many answers. Isabella wanted answers to questions I didn’t have. But I was realizing as I sat there, I did have the answers, it’s just that those answers would hurt her. She wanted to know if I’d made a decision. I said no, but I knew the answer was yes. My heart had chosen Marlena, so what was holding me back?

Marlena had walked away from Roman with so much confidence. I was floundering in a sea of self doubt. I was standing on a rocky precipice while the world crumbled around me, and I had to choose. Stay where I was, or jump? That small voice whispered, jump. Jump? So many fears came with a small, one syllable word. I pictured the house bombing, Orpheus’s arrogance, Marlena’s plane going down in Miami, and years worth of nightmares. Always reaching for something and searching for something that was Marlena. She was here in my life, and I was pushing her away because of fear.

And it was real, visceral fear. It probably sounds stupid that I couldn’t make a decision. I loved Isabella and she was having my baby, but I was in love with Marlena. Desperate, soul-crushing, burn-everything-down love. To accept that, to welcome Marlena back into my life was to risk losing her again. It had almost destroyed me the first time. And even more the second. I had been a man walking around in a daze, living with only half a heart. My ability to feel, to love, had been numbed until the moment she walked back into my life like a mist-wreathed angel. I could marry Isabella and be a father to our baby, and be content and unafraid of the future. Or I could enter the storm, the fire of loving Marlena and feel everything, every moment of joy and passion and excruciating pain. And if I did, I would live with the terror of losing her again every day.

I stood up quickly, pulling at my hair in frustration. “Stop over thinking this! Make a decision! Who do you want for the rest of your life? Who do you want to wake up next to? Who do you want to have breakfast with, and argue, and make love?” I probably sounded ridiculous, wandering around my small apartment while talking to myself. It was a real choice, and a hard one. Comfort versus intensity. Safety versus passion and fear in equal measure.

But in the end, none of it mattered, because when I stopped moving and closed my eyes, I would swear I smelled lilacs, and a soft breeze kissed my skin. I could feel the satin brush of honeyed hair across my cheek, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the most gorgeous hazel eyes staring back at me from my open apartment door.

Marlena stood there wrapped in a white wool coat with windswept hair, a haphazard ponytail, and cheeks of rose staring back at me with wide eyes. “Doc,” I croaked. Thunder blasted outside, followed by a flash of lightning and then another crash of voluminous thunder. Was I dreaming, or was she a vision from heaven? Like that night on the pier when I couldn’t determine if she was real or an angel descended from on high to save me from myself? 

I was scuppered for a long moment, unable to form coherent thoughts, much less a sentence. I stared at her for long moments, my gaze captured by her hypnotic golden eyes. My hand burned where it had held her breast mere days ago. My lips tingled where they had skimmed the tattoo on her shoulder.

Her phoenix, burning in flames of passion and rebirth.

Finally, I blurted out some words. Not the words I wanted to say which were Doc, I love you.  I  love you beyond time and space and knowing. My heart belongs completely to you, it always has and it always will.
Instead, I said, “Why’d you come here?”

Marlena

I’d heard him when I’d opened the door. He was struggling to make a choice and I… I needed to lay it all on the line, fear be damned. He could reject me, or he could tell me he loved me with the same overwhelming intensity with which I loved him. 

“I needed to clarify something,” I said softly, turning to close the door behind me. I turned the lock on his door, a soft click that sounded so final. “When we were speaking the other night, I don’t think I fully explained myself.”

John chuckled but it was a sound of confusion and despair. “And so coming here in the middle of the night was your way of remedying that?”

“Yes… no… I’m not sure,” I said quietly. Suddenly I felt unsure, reticent. The risk I was taking was huge. And yet, if I didn’t take it, the results might be equally disastrous. I took a deep breath, trying to stop myself from turning and fleeing. Instead, I kicked off my wet Nikes, and walked towards him, tossing my purse on the end of the couch, and then I took a deep breath as I stepped closer to him. “I need you to know, I didn’t come home with Roman because… I wanted you, and I should have told you that. I didn’t want the version of you that we believed was Roman. I wanted and I loved you, John. I should have clarified that, and instead I allowed you to walk away thinking that I wanted to move on with Roman.” 

He stared down into my eyes, and I placed my hand on his bare chest. He was so warm underneath my cold hand. I spread my fingers wide, closing my eyes briefly just to give myself a moment to ground myself. I could feel John’s heart racing beneath my palm. 

Opening my eyes, I realized his face was inches from mine. I whispered, an edge of shaky fear in my voice, “I’m asking you now, John. What do you want? Because I… I want a life with you. I want to wake up next to you. I want to make breakfast with you… and argue, and make love–”

His voice was rough as he said, “Doc…”

“I’m so scared,” I whispered. My eyes filled with tears, and my fingers closed and tightened in the hair of his chest. This might have been the most scary thing I had ever done. I was opening myself up to devastation, making myself so vulnerable I might be stripped of all my hopes and the prospect of the future I so desperately wanted. But I knew I had no other option. “I’m scared for all of us, and yet I can’t let you go. I can’t imagine my life without you. I don’t want to imagine my life without you! I want you in my life.” My voice choked with pain, when I cried softly, “I need you.”

John

Our conversation from the other night had been painful, but it had been fueled with alcohol, and as painful as it had seemed, it had been dulled by the whiskey. I was now thinking that maybe a sober conversation was worse. The pain Marlena was feeling was raw and motivated by fear. I knew it well. Fear could impel many things – pride, greed, anger, and envy. In the last couple of months I’d felt them all to varying degrees. Watching her stand there with her fingers clenched in my chest hair as she begged me to love her was almost too much. 

“I do love you,” Marlena said softly. “You came along… and falling in love with you was so easy. It just happened. Before we even considered that you might be someone else, I already loved you.” She reached up, trailing her fingers across my jaw, “But I wanted it to happen. I really wanted to love you… And I do love you. I never stopped.”

It was that easy. The words I needed to hear, while not even knowing it. But as soon as she said them I knew what I wanted. There was no doubt. My heart slammed against the inside of my chest. I slipped my arm up, threading my hand into her messy hair with a sigh. I closed my eyes, absorbing every single word, every nuance of every phrase. I hadn’t been aware of how badly I needed her words. They seemed to take the broken parts of my heart, and meld them back together with her tears and her warmth. She leaned forward, resting her tear covered cheek against my bare chest, and she whispered, so softly I could barely hear her, “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Doc.” I reached for her face, tipping it up to mine. Needing to reassure her, I whispered, “Don’t be unhappy.”

“Say something!” she cried, slapping at my chest. She pushed me away, so scared and brimming with vulnerability, need and passion. “Aren’t you unhappy?” she cried with tears trickling over her rose-pink cheeks. “Am I the only one who feels like my heart is breaking into a million tiny shards?”

I reached for her, pulling her back. My hands caught her lapels in my fists and I held her, no longer able to control myself. Every fear, every nightmare, every hope I’d had over the last five years all tied back to her. I loved her, I desired her. I needed her. She was my beginning, my middle and my end.  Standing in front of me, her tear streaked face, her golden eyes huge and desperate, she expanded to fill my whole consciousness, my whole world. I was a wreck, and I’d hid that from everyone, burying myself deep inside the shell of a man. That shell had been cracking and breaking apart for months, only for Marlena to burst into my apartment begging for a life with me… begging me for everything I’d always wanted from the moment I lost her. From the moment I met her. 

I choked on my words, “I’m past unhappy, Doc! I’m freefalling! With just the idea that I might never be with you like this again. That I might never see you laugh in those intimate moments just after making love to you… or smell your perfume when I run my nose along your neck… that I might never touch you again.” I pulled her closer, breathing in her scent. “So many nights over the last five years I’ve dreamed of you… holding you, kissing you… and then those dreams would turn to nightmares and I’d watch you die–” My voice caught in my chest,  a chest that was completely filled with physical sensation, aching with pain, love, fear and hope. I rubbed my face alongside hers feeling my tears mingle with those streaming from her eyes. I sobbed as I told her, “I watched you die over and over again. Almost every night for nearly five years I remembered and I dreamed–”

“ –and then I came back,” she whispered with a dawning realization. “I came home and you–”

“ –I closed down… I shut down.” My lips traced over her forehead and down her temple. “Everytime I wanted to reach for you, my body would seize up with fear. I wouldn’t allow myself to dream of a life with you because those dreams could be torn away in a moment–”  I wanted, I needed her to understand the extent of my fear, my devastation, my terror. The way the back and forth had tortured me. My need and my fear in opposition. My all-consuming love and lust and obsession for her. The dread of the prospect of losing her again.

“ –I can’t live like that!” she cried, trying yet again to wrench herself away from my grasp. I stared down into her tear filled dark sage eyes suddenly overcome with every memory I’d ever had with her.

You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die? Well my life flashed before my eyes then. Meeting her in the hospital, shaking her hand in Shenanigans, Gauley Valley, praying beside her bedside, watching her walk down the aisle towards me, her hand wiping away the tears and snot as I said my vows, seeing Orpheus shoot at her in Stockholm… seeing her walk out of the mist on Pier 29, kissing her on the beach in Miami, lying next to her that night in San Cristobal…

 I couldn’t let her go. She was my beginning and my ending. She was my life and my reason for living. 

Maybe she saw something there because she sobbed, “Oh, G-d!” And then her fingers were in my hair, tugging it so hard I felt the sensation travel down my spine. It was pain and want and lust. It was need and passion. Her lips took mine roughly, intent on eliciting some sort of response from me, and as soon as the flavor of her burst over my tongue, I was undone. I was cracked wide open, and there was no way I could hide from her anymore. She had bared her soul to me, and I had no choice but to bare mine as well.

Marlena

I felt the change in him, even as I grabbed at him and kissed him with unbridled desperation. His muscles loosened, and though my lips on John’s were gentle and pleading there was a desperation in him that I felt in the tremble of his muscles. I felt it in his shaking fingers, and the tremor of his body. It was in his gasp, so close to my face that I felt the moisture and heat across my lips. I kissed him with a sense of frenzied emotion. I couldn’t walk away again, and I couldn’t allow fear to control us both. My lips were seeking his, whispering across his sensitive skin, begging him to break wide open and provide me – provide us – with what we both needed. My fingernails scraped across the nape of his neck, and over his shoulders, entreating him to react. I didn’t want soft and gentle. I wanted what we had been building up to since our reunion on the pier in August.

Sliding my mouth across his, I whispered, “I love you… I need you.” John stared at me, breathing hard. His eyes held so many questions, and I knew we would have to talk, but not right then. I arched closer, biting his chin, licking the rough stubble there.  The taste of him spread across my tongue, and I moaned. “Please…John.”

His thumb flicked the button on my coat quickly, as if he’d done it a hundred times. Clenching his fists in the lapels he tore it open, wrenching it off of my shoulders as he jerked my limp body against him. A gasp escaped me as I stared up at him with lust-filled eyes. There would be no question about what I wanted, because I wasn’t hiding it anymore. Both of our faces were wet with tears. John looked down at me with parted lips, his chest rising and falling rapidly with his growing arousal. He barely choked out, “Doc… I–I–”

“What do you want?” I cried in desperation. I slid my palm over his warm skin, the friction of his chest hair against my palms warming my frozen hands.  I dug my nails into him, begging him, “Tell me!”

He stared at me softly, and then brought his face alongside mine and my breath caught in my throat. He rubbed his cheek against my hair before burying his face in my neck, biting at my sensitive skin while he growled, “As if you have to ask.” I could feel his teeth, his tongue hot and slippery against my throat before he pulled back and fixed me with his intense indigo stare. My coat was pushed roughly over my shoulders, and fell to the floor, crumpling in a pool around my feet. His eyes never left my face. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice raw and desperate. “I love you. I have always loved you, Marlena. I will always love you.”

I stared into his eyes, feeling for a moment as if I was falling into his soul, into the bottomless depths of his desire for me and I felt breathless and almost dizzy. Reaching for his face, I pulled his mouth to mine, gasping against his lips, “Show me! Please… John! Please, show me!”

His fingers laced through mine, squeezing tightly as he led me into his bedroom. His grip was tight and his pace fast, as though maybe he thought I might suddenly change my mind. But there was no going back for me. This was what I wanted. What I had wanted for months. What I’d always wanted from the moment I’d realized I was in love with him. Long before Gauley Valley.

Once in the bedroom, almost immediately he pushed me back against the wall by his door. His eyes locked with mine and our breath mingled, each of us waiting for the other. I stroked his face, and slid my other hand up his abdomen slowly, pleading with him, “Make love to me.”

John

I was instantly transported to the bedroom of the house on Sycamore more than five years earlier. The way Marlena had stared up at me with those pleading hazel eyes after I’d just unbuttoned her jumper baring her shoulders. The way her nipples peaked, and she’d whispered those same words to me – Make love to me. My breath caught in my chest as I stared down at her. Her hair was longer now, but she was the same woman I’d loved so intensely all those years ago. I think I might even love her more than I did then. My hands shook. My heart thundered against my ribs. My cock ached where it was trapped inside the constricting cotton of my boxer briefs. Our eyes locked as I lifted the hem of her sweatshirt. It wasn’t lost on me that it was mine. She’d taken it with her a week ago, and that shook me even more. Just knowing that she wore me so close to her skin. Gruffly, I said, “Lift those arms, baby.”

The room was silent, filled only with the distant sound of buoys leaving a gentle echo in our souls. I would forever associate that sound with Marlena. Our reunion on the pier, and our many meetings there when I first met her – when we’d first met and started our friendship, we’d been drawn to the pier. I’d chosen an apartment there, when I could afford a nicer one closer to Isabella. But it wasn’t the closeness to Isabella I was buying it for. I’d chosen the sounds of the pier, and when I went to sleep at night the clanging of buoys was like Marlena’s soft fingers against my skin.

My palms pushed against her, cupping her ribs on the glide up. I moaned deep in my chest when I encountered her untethered breasts. Soft and warm, malleable, conforming to my hands, I couldn’t hold back my rumble of pleasure. I wanted to memorize every single inch of her. Blood rushed to my cock, causing an ache deep inside me as Marlena’s arms slid up the wall, and her eyes continued to watch me. Pushing the hem of the sweatshirt up over her breasts I watched as they fell, voluptuous and free, her rosy nipples already hard and pebbled. I groaned for a moment as I just stared at them, as though committing the sight of them to memory. Then, with a tiny shake of my head, I tugged the sweatshirt up and over her head watching the tendrils of blonde hair flutter around her face where they had fallen from her hair tie.

 The back of her hands slid down the wall. With one hand I reached for the band holding her hair up, and with the fingers of the other, I skimmed the sensitive skin of her upper arm, pushing it back upwards. “Your arms. Hold them above your head.” I told her, my voice practically a feral growl. I was so turned on I was practically in pain, but I needed to see her, to remind myself of the absolute beauty and sexiness I’d been denying myself for all these months. “I want to look at you. I want to study the way your breasts lift, and your nipples beg for my mouth.”

I needed to really look at her. I needed to be reminded of her puckered, rose-colored nipples, and the smattering of golden freckles across her chest. I needed to memorize every single curve of her in the moonlight. Wrapping my fingers around her wrists, I held her arms aloft as I rubbed my face in the fragrant skin of her neck and shoulder. 

“Oh,” she whimpered.  “I’ve missed you so much.” 

I held her in place, pressing the length of my body against her – the naked flesh of my chest against the naked flesh of her breasts. Her nipples dragged across my chest, soft and warm and I groaned in my throat as the ache in my groin intensified. So many memories came back to me. I stared down at her for a moment, getting lost in deep forest green with the golden flecks of sunlight, and then my lips took hers again. Slow, languid kisses that I wanted to last forever. I couldn’t get enough of her, licking long silken strokes of my tongue across her jaw, and down the curve of her neck. I bit at her sensitive skin, sucking it in and pushing my tongue against it, causing her to cry out begging me for more. I made my way lower, my hot breath wafting over the skin of her breasts and I watched in awe of her in the silvery moonlight as she arched towards me, little moans and whimpers spilling from those beautiful, swollen lips. I knew what she wanted. She wanted my mouth on her breasts, sucking and pulling at her tender buds. With a heavy growl, I latched onto one pulling it into my eager mouth.

Marlena cried out, her voice ringing in my ears as a combination of want and desperation. I could feel her struggle to free her hands, but I tightened my hold on her wrists. Pulling my mouth off of her nipple, I rasped, “Stop fighting me, baby.”

“I want to touch you,” she begged, wiggling underneath me. 

Her breast brushed my lips again, and I bit her gently, swiping my tongue across her sensitive reddened pebble. “Fuck… you taste so good.”

“Oh, G-d, John!”

I released her arms, and then gripped her shoulders holding her against the wall. With a deep groan, I kissed her again. “I can’t get enough of you… I knew this would happen. One kiss. One taste… you’re like a G-d damned drug, Doc.”

It was true. A single taste, a fix and I was falling off the wagon, headlong into my addiction to her. The truth was, she’d ruined me for any other woman. No one else would, could, make me feel like this. Like a man possessed. Simultaneously the most powerful man in the world, and also the man who would kneel at the feet of this goddess and do anything she asked of me.

Sliding my hands lower, I felt the ridges of her ribs as I sank to my knees in front of her, kissing my way along the terrain of her abdomen. My tongue circled her navel, and I popped the button of her jeans. Staring up at her, I kissed along her hip as I pulled the zipper lower, and slowly started pulling the denim over her rounded bottom. I skimmed my hands over her soft derriere, pushing the rough material down over her thighs, and I leaned forward, running the tip of my nose over her satin covered sex. She smelled of floral shower gel, and musky arousal. I bit at her mound gently, breathing deeply.

“Fuck,” she moaned. I heard a dull thud as her head fell back against the wall. I couldn’t help smiling against her warm skin. “I am going to taste every single inch of your delectable body.”

Marlena

My skin was on fire. Every soft touch, the trail of John’s fingers, the bite of his teeth… I craved it all, and I wanted more. I didn’t want him to be soft. I wanted his touch to match my level of desperation. I wanted fierce, desperate, stinging pain that brought me to the edge. I dug my nails into John’s shoulders, whispering, “I need more.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he told me.

I was almost near a panic, “You won’t hurt me. I need you. I feel like I’m craving something… so deep inside me. I need–”

“ –what do you need?” But he already knew the form of the answer, if not the details. He knew it as soon as he felt my nails scrape roughly across his shoulders and then bury themselves in his hair. He knew it with the sting of his scalp as I pulled his hair.

He looked up at me and my tears splashed on his face, as I cried, “I don’t know!” I didn’t know exactly what to ask for, but I knew he would know. He had to.

Quickly, he finished stripping my jeans off, and then, still on his knees, he gripped my hips roughly, turning me to face the wall. His fingers tangled in the sides of my panties, yanking them down so fast I could hear the popping of stitches as they slipped over my hips. I could feel his hot breath against my bottom. He bit me, a stinging pain in my skin, and I moaned loudly against the wall, pushing my hips back towards his seeking mouth, “Oh, G-d, yes!” 

His fingers gripped my thighs so hard I feared I would have bruises the following day. And I didn’t care. The pain simply spurred my desire for him. He growled, “Spread your legs, I want to see you.”

My skin heated, and I felt a blush rise up my chest and into my cheeks as I moved my bare feet against the carpet, widening my stance. John reached forward, touching my most private regions, spreading me wider. I rested my cheek against the wall, and then felt him slowly lap over my heated skin. His wet tongue slid over my inner thigh. I exploded with sensation, pushing my sex back into his mouth, gasping out his name over and over again. One hand gripped the door frame while the other helplessly scratched at the wall. I was untethered, feeling as if I were floating free and needed something to ground me. I wanted John’s weight against me, holding me down, making me feel real. I wanted something to make this moment feel visceral.

“John!” I gasped.

His palms slid up my calves and over my thighs, squeezing and kneading my muscles. His hot breath wafted over me, and his lips continued to bite and nibble at me. When his palms reached that apex where thigh meets buttocks, his fingers dug into my flesh, and I cried out again. He bit my ass, and then said in a commanding tone, “I know what you want, and I know what you need. Tell me you know that.”

I did. I think he was the only person I’d ever trusted in my life to know that. Not simply to appease me sexually, but to know what I needed in life. Emotionally. Physically. “I know,” I gasped. “I know. I know. I know.”

Rough hands spread me wide, and then John’s hot mouth was on my sex. My forehead rested against the wall and a low, deep moan escaped me as blood rushed to my center and an almost painful ache echoed under his lips. His tongue stroked me. He lapped over my skin repeatedly bringing me closer and closer to crescendo, and then I was lost. He pulled my hips towards him, and then pressed his palm against my back pushing me forward. His mouth clamped onto my clit, sucking me – deep, pulling pressure that left me nowhere to go. An explosion of color lit behind my eyes as I sobbed against the wall. My hand fell behind me, lacing into John’s hair, and holding his seeking mouth against me as I pushed against his tongue, my body stiffening and convulsing as I cried out my release. 

John

I needed to see her face. I would say I was almost frantic to see those beautiful eyes staring down at me. Gripping her hips, I turned her sated body. She stared down at me half-lidded, and I slowly made my way back up her abdomen, kissing and licking across her fevered skin. “I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so fucking much it hurts.”

“I love you,” she gasped softly, just as my mouth latched onto her nipple sucking deeply. Marlena’s fingers tugged at my hair, and held my face to her breast, her head rolling back against the wall. “I’ve loved you since we argued over my protection all those years ago.”

I lifted my head, trying to find the truth in what she was telling me. I’d been John Black then. I was John Black now. She looked down at me, her amber eyes shimmering with intense honesty.  She meant every word. Although she’d been telling me as much since August, I think that moment was when I truly understood it. Her love for me transcended any connection she may have believed I had with Roman.

Tears filled my eyes, and her fingers stroked gently across my jaw, as she said, “I loved you when you told me you couldn’t remember your past. I loved you when we laid together that first night on the run. I loved you when… when you jokingly offered to let me shower with you, and when you held me in the cave that night in Gauley Valley. I’ve loved you through it all… and John… John, darling, I love you now, just as much as I ever did. That hasn’t changed.”

My cock swelled and lengthened inside my sweatpants as her fingernails scraped over my chest. “Aww, fuck, Doc.” My head fell back slightly, and I closed my eyes when her fingers danced down the plane of my abdomen.

“I want to taste you,” she whispered against my ear. “But first, I want to taste myself.” I opened my eyes to see her licking her lips with the pink tip of her tongue, and I was reaching for her with a haste that bordered on rough, but sometimes Marlena liked it rough. Wrapping my arms around her naked hips, I jerked her body against mine and took her mouth. I didn’t know who led who as we spun towards the bed, but when my knees hit the edge, I stopped. Her fingers tucked into the elastic at my waist, and she started to push my sweats and briefs down haphazardly, saying in panting breaths, “I have to taste you.”

How many times had we done this dance? I wanted her gorgeous lips on my length so badly my hips jutted forward, bumping hers almost as soon as I kicked my sweatpants to the side. The room was littered with clothing and that image would be burned in my mind. My thundering heart slammed in my chest. One moment she was rough, the next she was tender. My skin stung where her nails had raked it, and my mouth throbbed with kisses that seemed to consume me. Placing her small palm against my chest, she pushed me so that the back of my knees pressed against the edge of the bed and I almost lost my balance. Falling back onto the bed, I balanced myself on my palms as I watched an angel slowly lower herself to the floor in front of me, as if she were about to worship my cock the way I’d just worshipped her. My hips bucked again, this time into her hand as she wrapped it around me. 

Marlena

I settled my knees on the carpeted floor beneath me, and I stared up into the same deep ocean-blue eyes I had dreamt of a thousand times. My love. My whole heart. Sticking my tongue out, I leaned forward, lapping over the head of John’s cock with a long, languid stroke. His eyes widened, and his hips bucked as he begged me, “Please, baby… put those gorgeous lips on me.”

“I’ve fantasized about wrapping my mouth around you so many times,” I said softly. I swirled my tongue around him allowing his flavor to burst on my lips. Salty. Tangy. I licked from the base to the tip, staring up at him. “I’ve woken up from dreams with your essence still in my mouth.”

John moaned, lifting his hips slightly while his fists clenched in the blanket covering his bed.  His voice was strained, almost wild, as he grunted out his pet name for me. “Doc…”

Sliding my palms along his thighs, I lifted myself slightly, and then took him into the slick heat of my mouth with a soft moan. G-d, he tasted so good, and the deepest recesses of my brain started firing as I sucked on him. His skin was soft under my hands, and I pushed myself higher so that I could take more of him into my mouth, allowing him to bump the back of my throat. My eyes fluttered closed, and another soft sound of pleasure escaped me. I pulled back, scraping my teeth ever so slightly along his sensitized length.

John sat up, lacing his fingers through my hair tightly. Stinging sensation lit through my scalp as he pushed even deeper into my mouth with a muttered, “Aw, fuck, baby!”

Suddenly, he pulled out of my mouth, and I stared up at him breathing heavily. I needed more. Licking my lips, I begged him, “John, please.”

I tugged trying to take him back in my mouth, but he groaned, “I want to, baby. I want to lose myself between those sweet lips, but I’ve got plans, and they don’t include coming in your mouth like a teenage boy. Not right now anyway.”

I allowed him to draw me up by my hair. Smiling at him, my heart pounding with want and hope, I said, “Not right now… but maybe later?”

“Fuck,” he growled. “Yes. Later. Definitely later.” My stomach fluttered at the anticipation of his promise. His mouth took mine and his hands roamed my body with greedy fervor. I welcomed every touch, every groan and moan, every nip, lick, and bite. He pulled me towards the center of the bed with desperate hands, and I followed him like a cat. 

He was going to lay me down, but instead I gripped his shoulders, pushing him down onto his back on the bed. His cock jerked, and his eyes burned through me. Sitting on my haunches near his feet, I slid my hands up his calves, kissing my way up his body. Over his thighs my palms went and I couldn’t help the long, slow glide of my tongue along his engorged length. John’s hips bucked towards my mouth, and I couldn’t resist sliding him between my lips. The taste of him caused me to moan, and my eyes closed.

His head arched back, and he cried out into the dimness of the room, “Oh! Doc… Marlena! My G-d!”

John

Her hot, moist mouth felt so fucking amazing. I was seeing stars, and I could feel my release building at the base of my spine. I rolled away from her, pulling my cock from her mouth while breathing deeply to pull myself together. She didn’t give me any respite. Her teeth pulled at my nipples, and then she slid over my body, straddling my hips. I stared up at her in awe. It was perfect. With her it was always perfect. Holding her body above mine, she laced her slender fingers between my thick ones, lifting my hands above my head. I could feel the heat of her sex mere inches from my cock, and I lifted my hips allowing my tip, followed by my length to glide through her folds with a needy groan. The feel of her was heavenly. She was practically dripping with moisture, the hot, creamy embrace of her around my throbbing length almost sending me into paroxysms of pleasure. She gave me a satisfied moan, and leaned forward kissing my mouth. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since you found me on the pier and kissed me for the first time in five years. I love you.”

“I’m not going to last long, baby.” My body was on the verge of releasing all over my abdomen. Her teasing kissing, the soft sway of her breasts across my chest, and the warm, slick glide of her pussy along my aching length was only making it harder. 

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“More than anything,” I whispered.

“Then I don’t care if you come as soon as you’re inside me,” she said softly. Her teeth tugged hard at my bottom lip and the metallic tang of my blood echoed on my tongue, and then she said, “I’m yours, and you… you are mine. You’re mine, John… because you have always been mine, and as much as you were afraid of losing me again, we can’t continue to deny our own happiness because we’re afraid to live.”

“I’m yours,” I gasped. 

“And I, my darling, I have always been yours.” She settled her weight on me, allowing the folds of her sex to wrap around my length, once again. She slid forward bumping her clit against the head of my cock. Her eyes closed briefly as she did it a second time, relishing the pleasure she was giving both of us with the teasing roll of her hips. “Say it again,” she commanded, opening her eyes to stare down at me with blown pupils. “Say that you’re mine.”

I pushed up when she rolled back, and I slid into her. She was slippery and hot. So welcoming.  She was tight around me and the velvet heat was almost too much. The pleasure I felt was off the charts.  I had forgotten just how fucking amazing being buried so deep inside her felt. How the pulsing of her walls around my dick brought me to a crescendo quicker than anything else ever could. I groaned, “I have always been yours, and that scares the hell out of me.”

Pushing me deeper, she whined, “Oh! G-d! You feel so good.”

I couldn’t think anymore. Freeing my hands from her grasp, my hands gripped her hips, the pads of my fingers digging into her soft flesh, and I lifted her. Pulling out, I slammed back into her almost as if I lacked the ability to restrain myself. She cried out, tensing around me, pulling me deeper inside her and then we were both lost in each other. Our bodies rocked, and our breath mingled as we made frantic, desperate love, like two people trying to recement a connection that we had feared lost for so long. 

Comas, ISA kidnappings, Orpheus, Stefano, and then fear. Maybe fear had been our biggest hurdle. Understanding that no matter what, Marlena and I were inevitable. Stefano had thought to bring us together and tear us apart, but when two souls meld the way ours had there was no other ending but being together. Neither of us would ever be content, or happy without the other.

Pushing myself up into a sitting position, I pulled her against me and I kissed her. My lips moved over hers, and my tongue swirled around hers. I held her against me, letting her roll her hips over mine, as I whispered to her, over and over again, “You are mine, Marlena. Mine. Always, mine. Mine… Mine.”

Her head fell back, and her breasts lifted. Her fingers laced in my hair, tugging it so hard I could feel the sting in my scalp. My mouth took her nipple, sucking deeply, and then she started screaming as the walls of her pussy constricted and squeezed my length. I took her other nipple, and she gasped and sobbed my name. It was that sound, the sound of her sweet voice crying my name as she came that finished me. I started coming, bucking my hips against her, filling her with my release. My body spasmed and jerked, and I wrapped my arms around her holding her as close as I could. 

Marlena

In the shower, John’s hands slid over my skin in soapy ecstasy. I leaned into him, allowing my head to fall forward and rest in the curve of his neck with a soft groan. “That feels so good.”

His chest rumbled with a low reply, “You feel good, Doc. I plan to never let you go.”

I looked up at him quickly. We’d said that we loved each other, and we’d declared that we belonged to each other, but hearing John say he was never letting me go triggered something deeper. “Really?”

He wrapped an arm around my waist, and leaned me back against the shower wall. The cold white plastic felt shocking against my skin, and my wet hair stuck to my cheek. He stared down at me, saying softly, “Really.”

His soft lips took mine, and I sighed into the recesses of his mouth. Even as he kissed me, I had misgivings. What about Isabella? Had he spoken to her? Was I breaking up a family? But then I wondered, what about our love? The love that John and I shared. Was it so inconsequential that we should ignore it?

“You’re thinking too hard,” he moaned, lifting his head to stare into my eyes. “I can hear that brain of yours working.” 

His palm slid over my abdomen, and then up the front of my thigh. My body instinctively responded as my legs parted slightly, and my hips pushed towards his seeking hand. I groaned when he cupped my mound squeezing me just as he slipped his middle finger into my slit and over my clit. “John!”

His words were soft and gentle, as he told me, “I already told Isabella I love you… I love you both, but Doc, what I feel for Isabella bears no comparison to what I feel for you. What I have with you is a thunderstorm. It’s full of lightning and wind and drama and passion. There is no comparison.”

He continued to softly rub his finger over my clit while massaging my mound, and the ache inside me started to grow. Memories of our meetings on the pier came to me one after another. I could remember being huddled together in the thunderstorm, gripping each other as if we were afraid to let go. It was quite the symbolism for our love.

“I have never, and will never, feel for Isabella what I feel for you. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you, Doc. In my world, you are my first love. You are the one who taught me what love is, what trust is… and what family is.” He pushed a finger deep inside me, causing me to cry out, and still he spoke soft words in my ear. My eyes closed and my hips pushed against his hand seeking more. “Baby, you are the only woman that has allowed me my darkest fantasies. The trust you’ve shown me, and the trust I have in you… you are mine. You will always be mine, and I just needed to push past my fear to see that.”

I pulled his mouth to mine with a whine. My gasps and my sharp moans filled the small space of John’s shower. “I love you,” I told him. “I have always loved you… from our first dance at Carrie’s birthday party, you have been mine.”

“And you are mine,” he groaned, leaning down to bite the skin of my neck. He lifted my left hand over my head, pinning it to the wall, and he stared into my eyes for a moment. I could feel his throbbing length against my hip, as he growled, “You own me, Marlena. No matter how this played out, it would have eventually been you and me.”

It was essentially what I’d said to Abe only hours earlier. Hearing John say it helped appease some of my guilt. Whether we came together now or later, John and I were inevitable. He slid another finger into my swollen sex, and I bucked towards him, whispering, “Make love to me. I can’t wait.”

John

I released her arm from the wall, and I slid my hand down her spine and over the curve of her waist. My fingers continued to plunge into her heated depths, while my other hand cupped her rounded ass. I squeezed her flesh tightly, the way that caused her to cry out and ache so deeply inside. There was a rush of slick moisture over my fingers. “Do you like that, baby?”

“You know I do,” Marlena gasped.

My finger dipped into the crevice between her cheeks, rubbing over her the puckered ring of her anus gently before pushing inside. She pushed back, and then forward trying to get the sensation of both of my hands. She was almost limp against the shower wall, being braced up by me as my hands assaulted her. My fingers plunged into her pussy, while my thumb rubbed mercilessly over her clit, and in her backside, I buried two fingers. Marlena’s head fell sideways against the shower wall, and the water was beginning to turn cool, but I wouldn’t stop until I saw her over the edge, and she was close. So close. I pushed deeper with a growl, tugging her body closer to mine, and I rubbed my engorged cock against her hip. “Come for me. Please, baby. Come for me, because once you do, I’m going to bury myself inside you.”

“I’m close,” she whispered. “Oh, fuck John… I’m so close.”

I could see it, see it in the rosy tint of her cheeks, the drowsy half-closed eyes, the parted, swollen lips. I could feel it in the way her fingers dug into my shoulders as her pelvis rode my fingers. I could feel it in the way she tightened and loosened around my digits, and the moisture that dripped down into my palm. I could feel it in the way her ass tightened as she bucked back, trying to get more of me inside her.

“Oh fuck!” she whimpered again, pushing the wet, dripping strands of hair from her face, her head rolling back against the white plastic. “Oh G-d, that feels so fucking good. Oh, oh…”

A little pain would push her over the edge. I kissed her mouth, crushing my lips against hers, and then I trailed my lips across her cheek. And then I bit her, my teeth latching onto the soft skin of her jaw, applying just the right amount of pressure to sting, but not enough to break her skin. She gasped and cried out in momentary pain, but it was quickly eclipsed by the onslaught of the climax which hit her with an intensity that surprised both of us. She cried out bucking back and forth against my hands as my fingers slid in and out of her willing body. And I feasted on the sight of her, my Doc, always so in control, completely coming undone and losing all semblance of it in my arms.

 I barely gave her time to recover before I shut off the shower and lifted her limp body out with me. I faced her towards the sink, my eyes catching hers in the mirror, and then without preamble, I thrust hard into her. I lifted her right knee onto the edge of the vanity, and I buried myself in her slick heat. 

I wasn’t going to last. Marlena started coming again when I slammed into her. Her walls rippled and squeezed over my engorged length and I was lost. I pushed into her almost frenetically, holding her against me as tightly as I could, and I roared out my release while she sobbed as another orgasm took over, shaking her body. The whole time those hazel eyes locked onto mine in the steamy bathroom mirror.

Marlena

The sun was just starting to rise when I woke up to the smell of coffee and pancakes. I rolled over, knowing the space beside me would be empty, but there was relief in the fact that I could hear John puttering around the kitchen. He hadn’t left me this time. He hadn’t left me a note, and I hadn’t dreamed the night before. My muscles ached with deliciousness, and I closed my eyes recalling every touch, bite, and sensuous kiss from the night before. 

Slipping out of bed, I grabbed a button down shirt from John’s closet and I put it on. The soft cotton brushing against my thighs and the cool fabric against my sore nipples was just another indicator that I had been well loved the night before, and even though I should have been satiated, I wasn’t. I craved him even then, feeling the ache start to build inside of me in reaction to the soft scent of John ingrained in the fabric wrapped around me.

I stopped in the doorway of John’s bedroom, and watched him at the kitchen stove. The muscles of his back rippled, and his sweatpants hung so low on his hips that one simple tug would bring them down. I wanted to taste him again. He’d promised me I could. I approached him slowly, my bare feet whispering softly across the floor. He startled slightly when my fingers traced over his spine, and came to stop at the top of his ass. “You’re a beautiful man, John Black.”

He flipped the pancake in the pan, and then glanced over at me. “You are a beautiful woman, Marlena Evans.”

“You promised me something last night,” I whispered. I reached over, turning the heat off on the stove, and I pushed the skillet to the back, taking it off the burner.

“I did?” he asked me with a cheeky grin.

My fingernails scraped over his chest, and I slowly sank to my knees in front of him. “You did,” I said, tugging at his sweatpants. His cock came free, and he was slowly becoming aroused. “And you wouldn’t want to be a liar now, would you?”

John moaned, slipping his fingers into my loose blonde hair. I gently cupped his balls, and then lifted his cock to my lips, breathing hot moist breath over him, before I slid him into my mouth. He rolled back, hitting the counter with his backside, and he growled, “Awww, fuck, Doc!”

John

One moment I’m making pancakes and the next Marlena is on her knees in front of me on the kitchen floor with my cock in her mouth. I was assaulted with sensation. Heat. Wet, slick heat. Her soft moans vibrated over me. Her fingernails scraped along the back of my thighs. I could barely recall what I’d promised her, but I knew I wasn’t going to last long in her mouth. Holding her head in my hands, I pushed into her welcoming mouth with a moan as she stared up at me, and then I pulled her off. “You’ve got to stop.”

“You promised me,” she gasped, reaching for my cock with her small fist. Her tongue lapped over the tip, and she whispered like she was begging, “You promised me.”

I had. I had promised her, but the thought of being buried inside her hot, wet, core was more appealing, and the thought of tossing her onto the kitchen counter and burying my face in her pussy was even more of a temptation. Her tongue swirled around me, and I groaned, “Doc…”

She sank onto my length. Her mouth engulfed me, and then she pulled off, staring up at me with wide hazel eyes, “Please?”

I gave up. She felt so good, and while I’d never been a selfish lover, her pleading eyes and the sensations she was creating were too much. I rested against the countertop, balancing my weight on my palms, and my head fell forward as I watched her lick me. Blood rushed to my cock, making me feel as if I were impossibly hard. I didn’t answer her pleas, but she knew when I gave in. With a sly smile Marlena made love to my cock with her mouth. She sucked me, licked my length, and she lapped over me. There were moments when she allowed her teeth to scrape my over sensitive skin, and I bucked into her mouth, hitting the back of her throat as I did. Every sensation was a gift, and when I finally came, it was all in her mouth. I watched her throat work, swallowing me down and before she even had time to pull back, I was lifting her to her feet with my fist in her hair, taking her mouth furiously.

My essence exploded in my mouth, and I bit at her lips. Even my cock bobbed as if my body wanted more. 

“I thought you wanted breakfast,” she whispered teasingly while my shaking hands worked the buttons of my shirt free. Marlena standing before me in a red plaid shirt belonging to me was too much. Knowing she’d just sucked me off, while kneeling at my feet in said shirt, had me feeling out of control. My fingers trembled, and a button hit the floor with a soft ping.

“Shut up,” I growled, lifting her into the counter. I stared at her, practically growling, “The shirt stays on.” She leaned back on her palms, watching me. Her breasts were exposed, and the soft plane of her abdomen was covered in marks from our lovemaking the night before. Leaning in I sucked one of her peaked nipples between my teeth, causing her to arch up and cry out. I knew they were sore, and I knew the combination of pain and arousal would only push her higher. “I was making breakfast for you,” I told her. “Now you wait.”

I pushed her legs wide, staring at her open before me. She was ready, already swollen and puffy, glistening with desire. I leaned forward, lapping over her arousal with a moan. I would never get enough of her. 

That was what had scared me the most. Her coma all those years ago had lasted for six weeks. Six weeks when Carrie and I worried that we’d never get her back. It had been a pain I couldn’t fully understand at the time. Then there had been Marlena’s kidnapping by the ISA, followed by what Orpheus did. They were all deaths, moments in time where I was forced to see her mortality and how easily she could slip away from me. Every time, my panic and my fear consumed me. Getting her back five years later, had destroyed me. It brought back those memories. Every tear, every nightmare, every memory of us together, all mixed into an eddy of fear that pulled me away from her.

Nipping at the inside of her thighs, I whispered, “I love you. I love you… and you are mine.” I wasn’t going to allow fear to control me anymore, not when I had what I wanted most, alive and warm in my arms. Pushing her away, not having her because I was afraid I wouldn’t have her forever was lunacy.  I knew that now. I was never going to push her away again.

 Wrapping my arms around her thighs, I pulled her to the edge of the counter and sank to my knees before her. She was an angel, a fucking goddess spread open before me. She was mine, and I was about to worship her.

Chapter 9 – Death, Hell, Judgement, and Heaven

5 Years Later

Marlena

When John and I came together it was fate. We were inevitable as I’d thought so many times, but it destroyed Isabella. Bo was furious and Victor was angry. Shawn and Caroline felt that I hadn’t even given Roman a chance to prove himself, and John and I… we took it one day at a time. It was slow at first. So many people felt as if we’d destroyed them, when in truth, we may have saved them even more heartbreak. We knew what we were to each other, and there was no reason for us to keep fighting it.

I sighed softly to myself. We certainly hadn’t expected everything to fall out the way it had. But then, no one can determine the future, can they? Within three months of John and Isabella’s son’s birth, Isabella was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Sudden. Unexpected. It sent John into a tailspin of depression, self hatred and doubt. The two of us, so new in our relationship – we almost didn’t make it. I understood his pain, and I loved him through it. Whether he had chosen her, or chosen me, the outcome would have been the same.

When Isabella wanted to spend her last days in Italy with her son, John and I made that happen. We packed up the children, and we went together with her. Victor came as well. It was unconventional, and it surprised a lot of people, but none of that mattered. John needed closure, and Isabella needed peace of mind. I took on the role of being a second mother to Brady, and I encouraged John to seek therapy while we were there. Isabella and I had long talks, deep into the night sometimes where she whispered about how much she’d hated me, but near the end… she said she loved me. It’s all we could do. Life had a way of throwing unexpected dips and turns. 

Isabella’s death came when Brady was five months old. It brought with it a whole host of emotions we had to work through.

I glanced up from the bathroom vanity I was staring at when I heard Brady’s small voice and a knock on the bathroom door. “Mama?”

Opening it, I smiled at him, “Yes, my little man?”

Brady took a deep breath, “I wanted to watch Powerpuff girls, but Sami said I gotta wait until after she’s done watching some dumb soap opera, but then after that Powerpuff girls won’t be on, and that’s not fair, so can you tell her ta let me watch Powerpuff girls, cause she already watched another soap opera, and that’s not fair if she watches those all day and I gotta miss Powerpuff Girls again, cause yesterday–”

“ –whoa, whoa… take a breath, Brady.” I wanted to laugh, but I held back. I didn’t want to diminish those deep feelings he was having. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go shopping with me today, and we can get a little television for the kitchen?”

Brady’s eyes lit up, “Really?”

“Absolutely, really, really,” I told him. I ruffled his hair, and kissed his forehead. Brady fell against me, hugging my waist so tightly. I whispered, “I’ll even let you pick it out.”

Brady spun on his heel quickly. He was appeased. As he ran from the room, he tossed over his shoulder, “I’m going to get ready to leave now!”

I laughed, “We have to eat lunch first!” But he was gone in a whirlwind of five year old energy. 

Walking back into the bathroom, I stared down at the pregnancy test that sat all alone on the vanity, and tears filled my eyes. It was positive. After five years, John and I were having a baby. It had taken me nearly three months to notice I was missing my cycle. Truthfully, when I’d first realized I was late, I’d thought it was menopause. My cycles were so irregular, and honestly I was content with Carrie, Sami, Eric, and Brady. Those children were our life. John and I wrapped them so tightly in our love that nothing could touch them. 

Maybe a part of me believed that John and I would never have our own child. I won’t lie and say I didn’t wonder if that wasn’t our punishment for what we’d done. G-d’s judgement for Isabella’s death, and the emotional pain she’d been in before her diagnosis. If John had married her, if he’d made a life with her and I’d simply waited… but, I couldn’t think like that. G-d always had a plan, and the life we were living was a part of that plan.

In Isabella’s last days, we all came together in Naples. It was what she’d wanted. She’d wanted time with Brady, John, and Victor. She’d wanted me to bond with Brady. And I know it was painful for her, but I also knew from conversations with her that she needed to know that her son would be loved after she was gone from this world. Watching me with him helped her with that. How many conversations did we have in those quiet evenings when John would go running, and it was just she and I with Brady as he fell asleep for the night?

“I can see how much you love him,” she said in a soft, weak voice.

I was quiet for a moment, and then I asked her, “John or Brady?”

Isabella gave a quiet laugh, “Both… but I was talking about Brady… and that brings me peace. To see how much you care about him. It makes me feel like I can rest when I leave this world.”

I ran my fingers over Isabella’s head where it rested in my lap, and I watched where her hand stroked her son as he slept on the bed near us. It had become a routine. Isabella was too weak to hold him, so I held her, and she stroked him as he lay nearby. John would be home soon, and put Brady to bed, and I would help Isabella get settled for the evening. Softly, I said, “Brady will be loved as if he were my own child… but he will always know that you are his mother.”

“I know that,” Isabella whispered. “I know that you will love and care for both of them…”

I tossed the pregnancy test in the trash can, and exited the bathroom. Wiping my tears away, I lifted the telephone receiver and called John at the police station.

John

The phone at my desk rang, and I wanted to ignore it. I was behind on paperwork, but I wasn’t going to work late and miss time with my family. That was one thing I was always particular about. I would be home, at the dinner table every night unless there was some emergency I couldn’t miss. Otherwise, Carrie, Sami, Eric, Brady, and Marlena were my number ones. Always. 

With a sigh, I finally picked it up on the fourth ring, “Commander Alamain.” My name rolled off of my tongue as if it had always been easy to say, when in fact it wasn’t, but I had accepted that it’s who I was. Legally I had changed it to John Forrest Alamain four years earlier. No sense in fighting against who I was, and I had no real connection to John Black anyway.

“John.” Marlena’s gentle voice was like a salve for my overworked soul.

Immediately I felt myself soften, as a gentle smile spread across my face. “Hey, Doc.”

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered in a tear filled voice.

My heart started to race, and my mouth was suddenly dry. “What? You’re pregnant? We’re… we’re having a baby?”

She laughed quietly, “We’re having a baby.”

Fuck the paperwork. Screw the reports. None of it mattered right then. I dropped my feet to the floor, and scrambled from my desk chair. “I’ll call you from my cell phone,” I said quickly. “I’m coming home.”

Marlena laughed again, “John, you don’t have to come–”

“ –I’m coming home, baby!” I felt my eyes sting with tears. “I’m coming home, and I’m staying home for a few days.” I shrugged into my leather jacket, and jerked my office door open. Glancing at Stella Lombard, my secretary, I said, “I’ll be out the rest of the week. Have Abe cover for me–”

Stella looked confused, “ –but you have that appointment with the commissioner tomorrow.”

“Reschedule it,” I said. I bumped into her husband with an armful of flowers on my way out the door. “Hey, Roger. How’s the art?”

“Good, good… I’ve sold five more portraits. It’s going well,” he said.

“I’m glad. I’m glad.” I gave him a quick smile, and then said, “I gotta go.”

I’ll admit that Marlena and I had thought we might never have a child of our own, but she loved Brady like he was hers and my love for Carrie, Eric, and Sami knew no bounds. We’d thought our family was complete, but admittedly, at least in the first few years, I knew Marlena hoped. She wouldn’t tell me she was sad or disappointed, but there were moments when she seemed as if she were somewhere else and a sadness filled her eyes. 

I shoved my key in the ignition, and thought about Isabella. Was she watching me from above? Did she feel my joy at that moment? I’d found some peace in her last conversation with me the night she died, but admittedly, I’d struggled with her death.

“I think this is what G-d wanted,” she whispered softly. “He wanted you to be with Marlena… because you’ll need someone after I die. G-d didn’t want you to be alone, and he wanted… he wanted our son to have a mother.”

“Izzy-B,” I said softly.

“No, John. Listen to me.” Her voice was weak, and yet there was a command in it. My eyes met hers, and I saw her truth there. “This is the way it’s supposed to be. I can’t be here… but I found my peace in knowing that you are loved beyond all imagining, and my son… our son, will be loved by Marlena as if he were her own. That’s why I needed us all together in Naples. I needed to see… to know…”

Soft music started playing outside the window, and Isabella gave me a weak smile. “Dance with me?”

That was our last dance. She’d died in my arms that night and broke my heart, because I did love her. I can’t deny that. Having Marlena with me, and having Victor’s strong stoicism to handle the arrangements was what I needed, and Isabella knew that. She knew that each of us brought something to her last moments on Earth, and even in death, she found forgiveness and love. 

Marlena

It was less than twenty minutes later when John opened the front door, and tossed his leather jacket over the back of the couch. It smacked Sami in the head where she was curled up on the couch completely invested in whatever soap she was watching. “Hey!” she cried, looking behind her. “Oh, hi, Dad. I didn’t expect you home this early.”

His eyes met mine where I stood near the dining room table, “You didn’t tell them?”

Sami glanced between us with the narrowed eyes of a newly minted teen, “Tell me what?”

I smiled, saying softly to John, “I only told you.”

John rushed forward, falling to his knees in front of me, and he slid his large palm over my abdomen while his other arm pulled me closer. “Do you have an idea of how far along you are?”

I smiled, running my fingers through my husband’s hair, enjoying the feel of its silky texture against my hand. “I wasn’t sure, but I’m guessing three months. I was sick this morning, and I thought I should take a test–”

Sami’s eyes got wide, and she jumped off of the couch, completely forgetting her soap opera for a moment. “A baby? No way! You’re having a baby?”

“Who’s having a baby?” Brady yelled coming down the stairs. He reached the bottom with a frown on his face and his little fists balanced on his hips. “Mama said I’m the baby!”

I smiled when John lifted the hem of my shirt, and nuzzled my skin. I looked up from his black hair, telling Sami, “Yeah. Yeah we’re having a baby.”

“Oh, my G-d! Mom!” Sami looked around the house, and said, “I’m excited, but how are we all going to fit in this house? I mean Eric’s already sharing a room with Brady, and I guess I could share a room with the baby, but babies cry an awful lot.”

John stood up. “We’ll get a bigger house.”

“But I love this house,” I exclaimed looking around. It was the home I’d had with John when we thought he was Roman, and it was the home I’d had when he’d finally come home to us after that night of passion in his apartment. I wasn’t willing to give up the house.

John’s face lit up. “We’ll build an addition. I have the money. A master suite for us downstairs… with a nursery, and a walk in closet, and–”

“ –John, we don’t have to–”

“ –it will have a bathtub with spa jets built for two,” he said. I smiled shyly, wondering how he could still make me blush after all this time. His palms slid up along my spine, as he whispered seductively, “And an enormous shower.”

Sami walked away from us, and back to the television. Plopping herself on the couch, she scrunched her nose, “Ewww, you two are so gross.” But even as she said it, she hoped that someday she could have a marriage like her parents did. 

John

Marlena was able to get a doctor’s appointment the next day where it was confirmed that she was pregnant with another set of twins. We were elated, although to be fair, I knew Doc was nervous. Starting over was scary. Two more children. When Eric and Sami would be going off to college in five years, Brady would be ten, and we would have a set of kindergarteners on our hands. We’d both be in our fifties. None of it mattered to me. None of it. 

I came out of our bathroom after my shower to find her standing in front of the floor length mirror wearing a bra and panties as she stared at her body. The pregnancy wasn’t evident yet, but her hands cradled her abdomen knowing that precious lives resided there. I stepped up behind her, sliding my palms over her hips to rest on top of her hands. I laced my fingers through hers. “Are you excited? Scared?”

“It’s everything I ever wanted,” she whispered. “Everything.”

“Victor and Lawrence will be elated,” I murmured, kissing her neck softly. Our relationships with Victor and Lawrence had changed with Isabella’s death, and learning that Lawrence was my brother. Lawrence was content to run Alamain Enterprises and happy enough that I allowed him to do it. Victor had struggled when Isabella was first diagnosed, but we’d come to a truce. I’d say they’d both softened, although in business they were still shrewd. 

“I need to apologize,” Victor said quietly to me one night as I entered the villa in Naples after a run.

I knew immediately what he was trying to do. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to go back to that time. Sometimes it was best to leave the past in the past. “This isn’t necessary, Victor. We don’t need to rehash something that happened eight years ago.”

“But we do,” he said. “Because I viewed you as a commodity. It was easy to barter with a man’s life when I didn’t know him as an individual. I didn’t know my daughter would love you, or that you’d end up the father of my grandson… and I need to apologize for that. For not viewing you as someone who had the right to a life outside of the game Stefano and I were playing… I’ve changed, you know.”

I watched him warily, “We’ll see. I hope so… for Brady’s sake. He needs his grandfather in his life, especially since he won’t have his mother.”

“I don’t have any anger about you choosing Marlena. There was a love between the two of you that I recognized all those years ago in West Virginia.” He smiled, “I don’t know if she ever told you, but I found her in the woods in Gauley Valley, and she lied to me. She lied to protect you. She said she was taking me to your location, and instead she snuck off and back to you – even though she was afraid of who you might be, she trusted you more than me.”

“Are you surprised?” I laughed.

Victor smiled, “Not surprised. I just knew when she returned, that the love you and Marlena shared would trump the love you might have for Isabella–”

“ –it didn’t trump it, Victor… but my love for Marlena… it’s a storm, a hurricane, a tornado… the love I feel for Isabella is calmer, softer–”

“ –you don’t have to explain,” Victor told me. His eyes took on a faraway look as he said, “I understand.”

He was thinking about Caroline again. Maybe Caroline was that type of love for Victor. That wild all consuming love that burned down everything around them.

Turning Marlena to face me, I cupped her cheeks with my hands. “I’m ready for anything that G-d sends our way, Doc. I’m ready for anything as long as you’re by my side.”

Tears welled in her eyes, and she whispered, “I thought G-d was punishing us. It’s been five years–”

I immediately knew what she meant. “ –aw, no, baby. G-d doesn’t punish people for loving each other. He punishes people for doing things maliciously… our only crime was being soul mates. Being unable to function or move forward without the other. That’s not wrong.”

Marlena

I don’t know how John managed to find a company to build a master suite and a nursery onto the back of the house in six months, but he did. He also bought the lot behind us when the family sold their house, and I’m almost certain he bought it for well above the market value. It had a smaller cottage style home that backed up against a wooded area. John was ecstatic claiming that we could now talk Carrie into moving back home. She’d been talking about it now that she was finishing college in Chicago. She could do medical school at Salem University. I wanted my family all back together, and that would always include Carrie.

There were times when I felt sadness over the fact that Roman had chosen to walk out of the twins’ life for a second, third, and fourth time, but I had no control over Roman. Realizing that he had no chance with me… well, he’d simply decided to leave. He’d been working for the ISA ever since, and every time he surprised us all by making his way back to Salem, his relationship with the twins was more and more distant. They called him Roman, and he was visibly frustrated that they referred to John as Dad. But Roman made that choice, not me. I begged him to stay the last time, and he walked away.

“You don’t have to keep doing this!” I sobbed. “They need you.”

“They don’t need me!” He gestured towards the window in what was now known as the Brady Pub. “None of them need me! John does everything around here. He’s a hero. Police Commander. Built my Pop his dream business. Not to mention that Sami and Eric barely notice I’m in a room.”

“Because you’re not here, Roman! You’ve abandoned them all, and then blame them for moving on with their lives. It’s unfair! You need to stay, and build those relationships!” I cried. But it didn’t matter. Roman left again, and it barely registered on the twins’ radar.

John took my hand, leading me through the door on the backside of the dining room that opened into the master suite. He’d kept it off limits during construction because he wanted to surprise me. Sami, Eric, and Brady all bounced with excitement wanting to see my reaction because they all knew what to expect. John had shown them and been giving them updates for weeks.

It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. A large bedroom with a sofa and chair in one corner for reading. A desk and vanity. The closet was a massive walk-in, and then the bathroom. John really had outdone himself. A Marble lined shower big enough for two, even with my advanced pregnancy. But it was the nursery that had me crying yet again. Soft pink and rose colors in the fabrics, and their names painted over their cribs. There were two handmade wooden cribs against each wall, and then two bassinets in the middle of the room. An antique rocking chair, and a bookshelf full of nursery rhymes and board books was arranged in one corner.

Sami took my other hand, whispering, “Eric, Brady, and I picked out all of the books, Mom. Books you used to read to us when we were younger, or books we remember loving.”

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“I did the artwork, and the girls’ names on the wall,” Eric told me. 

I stood there in awe. The nursery held a part of all of my children. I pulled them all towards me, hugging them tightly, as I cried softly. “This is the most wonderful gift.”

Brady wrapped his arms around my hips, giving me an extra squeeze, and I felt a small pop and then the slight trickle of water. I looked up at John with wide eyes, and he knew instantly. “The babies?”

“My water just broke,” I said.

John

Izzie and Bella Alamain were born almost five hours later within two minutes of each other. It was funny that they both came out with my deep blue eyes, and the most beautiful auburn curls. Marlena laughed that they looked like small versions of my Aunt Vivian. Little identical angels that I couldn’t seem to stop marveling over. While Bella slept in her hospital bassinet next to Marlena’s bed, Izzie laid in my arms staring up at me with the most awed expression. “Hey there, baby girl. I’m your Daddy. Your Mama is very tired. It’s been a long day. In fact it’s almost midnight.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and then opened back up as if she’d found a window into my soul.

“Your brothers and sister are incredibly excited to see you tomorrow morning, and I have a feeling that with all this red hair you two are going to run circles around us all.” I stroked my finger across her forehead gently, whispering, “But don’t worry, we’ll love every minute of it.”

“You’re awake,” Marlena murmured, rolling her head towards me.

“Just having my first father daughter talk,” I said. “Bella is next, as soon as she wakes up.” Izzie started to fuss in my arms.

“I think she’s hungry.” Marlena started to lower the shoulder of her hospital gown and then reached for our daughter. 

I was again struck with her beauty. I probably always would be. “Who’s our hungry little monster?”

That moment was everything I’d wanted with Marlena. The children. The love. The life together. She was my wife, my lover, and my best friend. She looked up at me and laughed, “Monster? John she’s anything but a monster. They’re beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful, Doc.” I stroked my thumb across her cheek as she got Izzie’s mouth settled at her breast. “This life I have with you, baby… it’s everything.”

Bella started to sniffle in her bassinet, and I gently lifted her into my arms. I kissed her soft skin, and traced my fingers gently through her bright red curls. Marlena said, “I never would have imagined they’d come out looking like Vivian.”

“You already said that,” I groaned.

“Have you told Lawrence?” she asked me with a soft laugh.

“I did, and he said it was a recessive Alamain trait. Apparently Philomena had red hair as well.” I was quiet for a moment as I stared down at Bella. When I looked at Marlena, I told her, “Then he laughed and said good luck. He’ll be by to see them tomorrow, and probably bring some gift that is exorbitant in price, and has no usefulness at all.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then softly she said, “Probably… but you are a man with a name now. A man with a family. A man who is loved.”

“Do you know how happy you make me?” I asked her, scooting closer to her.

“I think I have an idea,” she whispered.

Lacing my fingers through hers, I could hear the emotion in my voice as I said, “I love you Mrs. Alamain.”

She let her head fall back against the pillow, and stared at me with love filled eyes. “I love you Commander Alamain.”