Hi Angels!

Nope, your eyes aren't deceiving you, I really have posted a new chapter! Finally! Hope you enjoy.

Lissie

Chapter 29

“You did good, Brenda,” Jax said as he came up behind her and wove his arms around her waist. She stood gazing out the
window watching the plane that carried her friends taxi away from the terminal towards the runway.

“You really believe so?” Brenda asked and turned her head to gaze up at Jax, expectantly.

“Yes, I do. You know why?”

“Why?”

“I saw the look in Mary’s face when she found out that she could all the clothes she wanted from Wyndams. And I saw the
look on Carol’s face when she found out that the dream house her husband had started before he died was finally going to be
finished, and that not only was Mary’s education going to be funded but so was the continuation of her own.”

“The look on their faces was priceless, wasn’t it?”

Jax nodded in agreement before continuing, “You know what else I saw?”

Brenda shook her head no and turned back to gaze out the large terminal window. The plane was almost out of sight now.
“What else did you see?”

“I saw the look on your face. You were just as happy and excited as they were. That’s how I know that you did the right thing.
You got just as much enjoyment out of this as they did.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

The plane was out of sight by now. She gave one last longing look out the window before she regretfully looked away and
turned around in Jax’s arms. “I’m ready to go home now.”

“We can visit them, you know. You don’t have to feel like you’re choosing me over them.”

“I don’t feel like that.”

“You don’t?” Jax raised in eyebrow. “Come sit with me,” he said and dragged her to a couple of empty plastic airport chairs. “I
know you Brenda. You don’t let go easily, especially when you don’t want to. You don’t have to let go of your friends for me
or because it’s what you think I want.”

“But I haven’t really. I talk to Mandy almost everyday, “ Brenda said while Jax sat down in one of the chairs, pulling her down
into the chair next to him.

“I know, but you must have had other friends.” Jax kept a firm grip on her hands as he spoke. The more he spoke the more
reluctant he seemed to let go of her hands. “I didn’t know about Carol until a week ago. Honey, you were gone for months.
You had to build a new life for yourself. You don’t need to drop that whole other life for me. You can tell me about it. You’ve
only told me extensively about Mandy and Brian and a little bit about Carol and Mary. I know you volunteered a lot at a place
for the hungry and that you sang on the weekends at a little local restaurant, but I know nothing about what you felt, thought,
cared about, I want to know the you that I missed when we were apart.”

“I...I didn’t know you really wanted to know about the other me.” Her voice was just above a whisper. She hadn’t realized she
had hurt him by not sharing her life with him, she had thought it would hurt him even more, so she kept it to herself. She hadn’t
wanted to remind him of the pain he had gone through in the past year.

“And why not?” he asked, sounding strangely concerned.

She looked down at where their hands were joined together before looking him in the eye and giving her answer. “I saw the
look on your face you told Brian and Mandy that I was dead. You were so hurt and I didn’t want to hurt you anymore by
reminding you of your pain with stories of my other life.”

“What hurts me more is that I don’t think you trust me enough to share your other life with me. I love all of you, not just what’s
right here in front of me. I love everything that makes you, you.”

“Jax, I trust you more than anyone. I’d love to...” She had to make him understand, but he cut her off.

“Do you really trust me?” he asked, sounding desperate.

“Of course. Why?” She asked concerned that she knew where this was going. He still hadn’t forgiven himself for what
happened when it wasn’t his fault.

“I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust myself to keep you safe.”

“Honey, just being you makes me feel safe.” She freed one of her hands and ran it comfortingly down his. “What happened
wasn’t your fault.” She sat closer to him and looked him straight in the eyes “How many times do I need to tell you this?”

He looked away from her momentarily, sighed, and continued.“As long as it takes for me to stop believing in miracles. I look at
you and I can’t believe that you’re here. Somehow I think that if I do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, you’ll vanish again
and I’ll be left all alone. Brenda, I don’t think I can handle that again.”

“Jax, you won’t have to. I’m real. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. There is only one thing that you can say or do that
would make me vanish.”

“What?” he asked sounding worried.

“If you ever stop loving me. If you ever feel like you don’t love me anymore, just tell me and I’ll leave. I won’t fight it. My
parents had a loveless marriage and I’m not going to make our daughter go through with what I did. And I’d never deny you of
Jean, but if you need me to back out of your life, I’ll find something that works for all of us.” She had meant to reassure him that
his worst nightmare of losing her was not going to happen, instead she voiced her worst nightmare – he didn’t love her, but the
idea of her back in his life.

“Brenda, you’re scaring me here. Do you love me?” His eyes intently searched hers. She hoped he found what he was looking
for – she loved him more than she could say.

“Of course I do, I’m just saying that if anything were to happen, I can deal with it.”

“Are you saying this because you’ve already lived away from me?”

“Partly. And partly because...”

“Because of what?”

“I’m giving you an out.” She didn’t just say that did she? The look in his eyes was something that she didn’t want to see. She
hoped it was because he didn’t like the idea and not because he was considering the out.

“An out? You have to know that there’s no way in hell that I’d consider taking whatever ‘out’ you have in mind. I love you. I
love Jean. I love us. I love the family we’re becoming. I don’t care where you’ve been or who you’ve become because I love
you and I know that when I look in your eyes that you love me too. Or at least I believed that you did.”

“She breathed a sigh of relief before she reassured him that an ‘out’ was something that neither one of then wanted. “I do, oh I
do, more than you can imagine. I just get scared and confused and I’m afraid that I’m not me anymore and once you figure that
out, you’ll be gone and I’ll be the one whose alone again. And Jax, I don’t think I can handle that. I’m just trying to make it
easier on my heart in case I wake up and find that it’s broken and...and I’m not doing a very good job of it, am I?”

“Of protecting your heart? You’re doing a good job, but I’m not the one that it needs to be protected from.”

“I know. But Jax, we’re so close to having everything we ever wanted, and I’m scared that it’ll slip away from me just like it
has all the other times.

“I’m scared too. I’m doing my damnedest to make sure our dreams come true this time. I just need reassurance from you that
you love me.”

“I love you.” She whispered in his ear.

“Thank you.” He pulled her close and kissed her. “ You ready to go home now?”

“Anytime as long as it is with you.”

The two walked away from the airport hand in hand. They both breathed a little easier that for the time being that their worst
nightmares weren’t going to come true. If either one of them had a say in things, they would never come true.

***

“Jax, I thought we were going home.” Brenda asked as they missed the freeway exit to the Port Charles Hotel.

“We are.” Jax affirmed.`

“But this isn’t the way to the PC Hotel.”

“Of course it isn’t. We’re going to our permanent home. Do you really think that we would live in the Port Charles Hotel
penthouse forever?” Jax asked while giving her one of those smiles that usually meant he had a surprise for her.

“Well no, but I figured it would do until we could go looking for houses or something.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve already done that.”

“We have? When? Oh Jax, you can’t mean to say that we’re going to my cottage?”

“Give the lady a prize!”

“Oh you didn’t!” She cried in happy disbelief. “How’d you do that? Robin said she rented it out to Nikolas Cassidine when she
went to Paris.”

“She did, but he vacated it when he went away to a university somewhere in Europe. Robin let me buy her out since she
doesn’t really need it anymore. She spends so much time in Paris now, and when she’s home she stays with Mac. So the house
is yours now, I’m giving it back to you. Since I missed Mother’s Day this year, think of it as a late Mother’s day present, or an
early wedding present, either way, I want you to have it.”

Brenda sat in silence next to him. She didn’t know what to say. She felt like crying. This was just too perfect. It couldn’t be
real.

“Say something, please.” Jax urged her. “Brenda?” he asked her sounding more concerned than before. “Oh don’t cry, please
don’t cry.” He took one of his hands and tried wipe away the tears that had started falling down her cheek. “I’ll give it back,
We can turn around and we won’t go there.”

“No, Jax, it’s not that. I’m too happy to do anything but cry.” She smiled at him through her tears. “I never thought that this day
would come.”

“Seeing your cottage? I’m sure you would’ve seen it again, eventually.”

“Well, yes that, but this day. Everything is coming together. I have a real life.”

“And you didn’t have that before?”

“Oh I did. I took what I had before the accident for granted. I knew you loved me and I loved you and we would be together
forever, like in one of those girl hood fantasies I had when Harlan used to leave me alone and not care about me. I actually
thought that nothing could ever break us apart, we’d been through so much together already, I just figured fate wouldn’t be so
cruel to harm anything.”

“Brenda, you had a good fantasy. It was real, and it’s still here. It hasn’t changed, it’s still within your reach. Our reach. Our
fantasy. I want it too.”

“I know you do, that’s what I’m trying to get at. When I woke up in that hospital, I was lost. I felt like the world was huge
place that I didn’t belong in. That I didn’t have a place in. I didn’t have an identity and as nice as Mandy and Brian were, they
couldn’t help me either. They made me feel part of their family and helped me to create an identity for myself so that I would be
able to care for my daughter, but I still wasn’t me. I never told them this, but I felt like I was always trying to fit in and never
quite making it. Don’t worry, no one never said anything to me, they all treated me as part of the family, it was just me. I
couldn’t help but wonder if I had a family, where my family was, where I belonged, but I didn’t know where to start. When I
was in the hospital, Mandy and Brian had the police involved but they couldn’t turn anything up so, Mandy said they were
taking me with them. They’d saved my life once, they didn’t want to see me lose it because I was lost to the world and didn’t
have any direction to go in.”

“Brenda, I’m sorry, I should...”

“No you stop right there. I’m not going to listen to you demean yourself again. You believed what you had to survive. It would
have killed you to know I was alive and you couldn’t find me.”

“It kills me now to know that you weren’t dead and if I only looked harder, farther, longer, I don’t know, something. I’m
sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to know that I love you. That you are the one that made me feel complete again.
When I first saw you again in the lobby of the PC Hotel, I felt that there was something special about you. It was that night
when I realized that it was you that I was looking for. It was you that was my family, my home, and it was with you that I
belonged. I’m the one that feels sorry for being selfish.”

“Selfish?”

“I know I have no reason to feel that way, but when I saw the kindness and the love in your eyes for Brenda when I was
Chrissy I wanted you for myself as well as for Jean. I wanted a father for my daughter and a husband for myself. I didn’t even
bother to find out if that was what you wanted, I just assumed that you would. And when I got my memories back I didn’t want
to face the fact that I may have lost you when I was gone because I had missed you and wanted you so bad that I couldn’t bare
to lose you.”

“Brenda, you never lost me and you never will. I missed you just as much as you missed me, maybe even more because I knew
what I was missing. But I can’t pretend to know the agony of not knowing who your own self because I haven’t been there. I
wish to God that I was there with you.”

“Please promise me that neither one of us will ever feel the agony that we’ve just been through the past year.”

“I’ll do everything in my power to keep anything from harming my family ever again.”
 

***

“It’s just as I remember it Jax!” Brenda exclaimed as she hurried out of the car and rushed to the front of the house. She stood
and admired the front for a few seconds before rushing to the front door. “Is it okay to go in?”

“Yeah, here’s the keys.” Jax tossed to her from the steps. She tried to catch them but they landed on the front porch instead.
“Guess I’ll be the one to teach Jean to play catch.”

“Maybe If I knew they were coming, I woulda caught them. I wasn’t ready.”

“Sure you weren’t!” he closed the gap between them and had her in his arms as she turned the doorknob and opened the door.
“I bet you’re not ready for this either,” he picked her up off her feet easily and carried her over the threshold. He kissed her on
the lips as he continued to walk into the house.

“Jax!” she screamed as he dropped on the sofa in the middle of the living room and started to tickle her sides. “Stop it!” she
yelled as she laughed uncontrollably.

“Never!” he told her as he tried to hold her down as she squirmed around on the couch. “I’ve got you the way I want you Ms.
Barrett soon to be Jacks!”

“Really and where is that?” she asked as she managed to squirm out from beneath his hold and curled herself up into a ball in
the corner of the couch with her hands outstretched to ward off an attack.

“Smiling and laughing.”

She gave him a heartfilled look before she found herself being tickled again. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. She
couldn’t stop laughing. She was having the time of her life by just being herself.

At some point the tickling sensation stopped and the feeling of Jax laying on top her replaced them. “Don’t ever stop laughing
and smiling Brenda.” He said and looked deep into her eyes that were pooling with tears from so much laughing. “That’s what I
missed the most about you. When I see you smile and hear you laugh I know that all is right in the world.”

“Jax, I don’t know what to say,” she said as tears started falling down her cheeks even more, “except that I love you and that I
live to see you smile too. I live to see you smile at me because when you do I know that we’re right. We’ll always be right.
Everything is right in the world when I see you smile because I know the world can’t tear us apart anymore.”

“It sure as hell can’t if I have anything to say about it.” He said while he caressed her face with his fingers and leaned his face
down to meet her lips in a kiss as hot as the scorching noon day sun in the middle of July.

TBC...

***

The next chapter will be the last! The number of replies determines how fast it will be out *w* Thanks to all my readers.

Lissie :)