Never Forget
Author's note: Thank you guys for being patient with me for this. I'm finishing up my latest story so instead of being a good girl and focusing on the other, I'm starting this. Hope the response for this is as phenomenal as it was for the last one. You guys rock, enjoy.
Chapter One: This Darkness
Haley smiled as Nathan, her husband of only a month, kissed her neck as she lay in his bed, waiting for the morning.
"Miss me?" she asked evocatively, turning around to face him. He kissed her lips.
"Always. What do you want to do today?" he asked. She smiled.
"What do you think?" She kissed his neck. "This."
The two of them got up and did the activities that were quickly becoming routine: making coffee, having breakfast, going outside for a walk. Returning, falling back onto the bed because they'd missed each other so much. Watching the news together as the evening fell, smiling whenever their own names came up from whatever reporter had caught them kissing outside of their house.
They had dinner, and Ryan and Jake came over, who were equally unable to keep their hands off each other. Brooke and Lucas called from California, one of their babies crying in the background though it dampened neither of their moods.
Haley and Nathan went to bed early, as they were quickly becoming accustomed to. They-
Haley awoke in alarm. Her dream of married life with Nathan had amazed her. She hadn't seen him in years. He hadn't mattered in years.
She propped herself up on her elbows and looked happily down at her belly.
"Baby, you in there?" came a voice. Seamus entered and smiled at the sight of his wife, her blonde hair mussed, her pregnant stomach covered by a camisole.
"Sleep well?"
"Yeah. I had a weird dream, but yeah. How've you been?" she asked cheerily. He came close to the bed and carefully set a tray down next to her.
"Made you breakfast." She frowned as she tasted the decaf coffee. "And don't complain. I'm not going to have our first born have three heads."
"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. "Want to get in here?"
Seamus smiled and sat down on the bed.
"Always."
As a horn sounded outside, Haley awoke again. Not again, she reminded herself. For the first time. Since her divorce, her dreams had been getting worse. Full of Nathan, full of love. Tonight's had been Seamus' first appearance.
She shivered as she stepped out of bed. She grabbed a robe from the hook in her closet and avoided looking at her empty bed. It was a sight and a feeling she never could get used to. It occurred to her that she should get over it. That she no longer belonged to Nathan. That she was free.
Haley wondered if Nathan had been with another woman since their seperation. She hadn't been with another man. She'd never been with another man, and Nathan knew it. She wished Nathan didn't know it, and didn't have the right to look confident in his belief that she still loved him every time they came into contact.
"Mommy?"
Haley looked up and smiled for the first time that morning as Nina and Eve appeared in the doorway. Her and Nathan hadn't yet worked out how to split their time with the kids, as both wanted them all the time, but one couldn't bear to be with the other.
Haley opened her arms, and the two girls ran toward her. She sunk down until they were all the same height, and held her daughters tightly to her.
"Where's Kade?" she asked. Eve slowly detached herself, but Nina settled into her mother's lap as she sat cross legged on the floor.
"Sleeping," said Nina, sounding sleepy herself. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and leaned comfortably against her mother. Haley wondered how much time her husband (ex husband, she reminded herself) spent with the children, or if he let Heli, the nanny, take care of them.
"What are you thinking about, Mommy?" asked Eve, settling down on the floor beside her mother and leaning against her.
"Nothing baby," she said easily, running a hand through her daughter's long dark curls.
"He misses you too," promised Eve, believing in her childish heart that it was just that simple.
And Haley, briefly, in her own heart, believed the same.