These days, this is an AU fic written a while back. Less insane and more tragic than my usual stuff.

I disclaim.

Standing In the Doorway

Chapter 1 I'm Sure Gonna Give You A Try

It was the night of graduation day, and the sky sparkled with fireworks and stars. The smell of beer and barbecued meat filled the warm air as Bo grilled hamburgers in the back garden of his suburban house and the Horton, Black, Brady and Kiriakis families gathered to celebrate the graduation of their children. Chloe, Nancy and Craig were there too, though they had receded into the shadows compared with the raucous Alice and the boisterous playfulness of Jack, Jenn and Abby Deveraux.

Shawn wrapped his arm around Belle’s slender shoulders, holding her as closely as he could to him. Tonight was going to be special, he knew that, though at the time neither of them realised its consequences on the rest of their lives. He wanted to ask her something, but he couldn’t do it here, and he didn’t know how to extricate her from their families’ loving watches to get her where he wanted. He had loved her for years, and she knew that now, he showed her how great his passion was every day, but he was such a fool that it hadn’t been until their summer adventure in the Caribbean that he had brought up the courage to kiss her for the first time, some seventeen years after he had first fallen madly in love with her. He had tried before, chickening out most of the time, but on that beautiful night in a moonlit lagoon, he had finally succeeded in showing his best friend how deep his emotions went. Their love was so strong, so powerful and so all consuming that it was remarkable that it had taken him so long, but it had always seemed that Fate, with a capital F, was conspiring against them. Even now, they had to fight against her father’s overprotective nature and Brady’s tendency to interrupt them as soon as they started to move beyond French kissing.

Belle’s beautiful blonde head leaned against his shoulder, so she was comforted by his warmth and the way he kissed her forehead as they watched the water rippling in the moonlight. She was remembering their dance on his parents’ wedding day, when they had been so close to kissing only for him to notice that damn can beneath the ice behind her head. That can had helped to bring them together, but at the time she had hated it more than anything else in the world.

Shifting beneath her on the swing seat, Shawn wondered if now was the moment to ask her, to tell her. He started moving out from under her, and Belle moaned softly in protest. She didn’t want to move, to leave their quiet sanctuary, to return to their families and the future that awaited them.

Shawn’s movements were arrested by his great grandmother’s voice calling out to them. He loved her dearly, but at that moment, he wished she would just shut up and let him be with Belle in peace.

"Shawn, dear, come back over here with your charming girlfriend," Alice’s voice came to their ears high and reedy. Shawn silenced his own groan, but heard Belle mutter something under her breath.

He took her hand in his, rubbing gentle circles with his thumb, and led her back to the group. "We’re here, Gran."

Alice turned with a smile on her face and stared openly at her grandson and his girlfriend. "Everyone has to dance tonight, and it’s your turn now."

Shawn inwardly groaned, keeping his smile fixed, because though he and Belle were famous for their dancing, he wanted to keep her to himself. He put an arm around Belle, drawing her closer to him, and twirled her about. "Dance now to get them off our backs for later." He whispered in her ear, tickling her with his warm breath. She nodded her agreement, pressing her slender form closer into his.

The music was fast, so they danced a rumba to it, Ricky Martin’s Living La Vida Loca blasting from the stereo. They moved gracefully, swiftly and with ease as Ricky’s voice was pumped out around them.

"You remember ‘Rhythm Divine’?" Shawn breathed in his girlfriend’s ear, watching the hair around it flutter.

She smiled and her eyes became like two sapphires in the night, the torch light turning her hair from blonde to richest gold. "How could I forget?"

"I wanted to tell you then," he chuckled, "but I was too scared, Belle. You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t believe that you wanted to dance with me. I was such a stupid kid."

She laughed then, and his heart burned brighter than the moon that hung above them in fullness and peace. "Shawn, I wanted to tell you that you were the handsomest guy in the world to me. Honey," and her voice dropped to a husky whisper that wiped all other thoughts from his teenage brain, "John Travolta had nothing on your hips."

He wanted to kiss her there and then, but his parents, and more importantly her ex-mercenary father and well built brother, were on the sidelines, watching as the loving couple twirled.

Instead he dipped her, making her laugh uproariously with one of his better jokes, and started leading her, still dancing to Ricky’s fast lyrics, off of the torch lit dance floor.

The adults watched, amused, though John and Brady were less amused than the rest, as the kids danced further and further into the darkness, ending the dance with Shawn pulling Belle out of the garden altogether and running with her down the path into the woods.

"Where are we going?" Belle’s strapped high heeled sandals and knee length filmy blue dress was inadequate for hiking through the woods at night. She would have fallen if he had not been holding her hand, guiding her through the darkness with an ease that at another time she would have suspected.

"You’ll see," was his cryptic answer. He led her deeper and deeper, the moonlight shifting through the trees and reflecting off her golden hair in a way that made him think she was more beautiful than ever. His heart was racing for two reasons that night.

At last they came to a clearing with the moon illuminating it from between the trees and Shawn sat Belle down on a fallen log that was covered in green moss. The smell of the woods was pungent, a glorious aroma of night and the animals rustling softly in the night.

"Close your eyes, Isabella," he murmured, seating her on the log and kissing her hand gently. She nodded solemnly, but with a smile dancing across her pink lips. Taking out a candle and a cigarette lighter from his pocket, Shawn lit the wick, then lit all the other candle wicks in their secret clearing. Then he reached over and pressed play on the carefully concealed tape recorder.

"Now just listen," he whispered, putting the thickest white candle between Belle’s hands, he went down on one knee and looked up at her. His voice was shaking with nervousness, and he could barely hold her look, but he got the words out somehow.

"Everytime our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Baby when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away
I've never been this close to anyone or anything
I can hear your thoughts
I can see your dreams
I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you, it just keeps getting better
I wanna spend the rest of my life with you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby I'm amazed by you
The smell of your skin
The taste of your kiss
The way you whisper in the dark
Your hair all around me, baby you surround me
You touch every place in my heart
Oh, it feels like the first time everytime
I wanna spend the whole night in your eyes
I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you, it just keeps getting better
I wanna spend the rest of my life with you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby I'm amazed by you
Every little thing that you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I wanna spend the rest of my life with you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Oh, every little thing that you do
Baby I'm amazed by you." His voice was strong at the end, and as he stared into Belle’s eyes, he saw tears of joy melt down her cheeks, destroying her mascara and glinting as they fell from her jaw.

He took a deep breath in and took her hand in his, careful not to upset the candle that turned her face heavenly. In a voice that shook and trembled, the words came, "Belle, I have loved you for as long as I can remember, and I can’t imagine my life without you, you are everything to me. I know we’re young, and I know we’ve only been together for less than a year, but I am so happily in love with you and I just want to spend the rest of my life adoring you. Isabella Marie Black, would you do me the honour of marrying me?"

Belle’s eyes were full of tears. She had not expected him to propose, she had been half worried that he was going to break up with her. He was leaving in September for the Merchant Marines, and she was going to college. She resisted the temptation to run away, to tell him that they were too young, too inexperienced, and were going to be too far apart in the autumn, that they would be unhappy, and realised what he was trying to give her was a lifetime of happiness with her one true love.

"Yes," she sobbed out, blowing out the candle and throwing her arms around him. "I will marry you!"

He kissed her then, and it was a kiss different to any that they had ever shared before, because this kiss was a promise, a promise between them as binding as any wedding vow to love each other forever.

"Come on," it was Belle’s turn to lead, to take Shawn even further away from the party, the lights, the music, and their parents.

He didn’t ask where they were going, happy just to be with her. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, his Perfect Girl, and she was going to be his wife. He was surprised when she led him not only to the penthouse, but up to her bedroom, kissing him sweetly and fumbling with his shirt, but lost in the blue of her eyes, he was too delirious with happiness to think about what they were doing. They had waited so long, and the kiss they had shared in the woods was as good as a marriage ceremony to them.

"You promised me the stars and the ocean," Belle sighed happily as she opened the door to her room. "You promised me a Someday that I would remember forever."

"And," Shawn whispered seductively, kissing her neck, "I’ll give it to you. Someday."

"That’s where you’re wrong, Tough Boy," she breathed huskily, "because tonight, Shawn, I’m giving it to you."

Leading him into her still dark bedroom, she turned on the soft light, which above changed the ceiling above them from a dark blue to the night sky, and pressed play on her tape recorder. Above the sound of waves, in the room painted to look like a tropical paradise, Shawn whispered Belle’s name in love and amazement.

The male vocalist’s voice rang out, slow and deep and strong.

"Just a perfect day
drink sangria in the park
And then later when it gets dark
we go home
Just a perfect day
feed animals in the zoo
Then later a movie too
and then home
Oh, it's such a perfect day
I'm glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
you just keep me hanging on
Just a perfect day
problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own
it's such fun
Just a perfect day
you made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
someone good
Oh, it's such a perfect day
I'm glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
you just keep me hanging on
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow."

The passion of a lifetime was built up between them, and making love was the release. Sleeping in each other’s arms afterwards, they were happier than they had ever been before.

Shawn snuck out of Belle’s room at half past eleven, walking through the dark streets back to his own home whistling softly to himself. He was so happy that unhappiness seemed like a half remembered dream, distant and unreal, cruel fate an impotent force for as long as Belle was in his life.

 

Song Credits: 'Amazed' by Lonestar and 'Perfect Day' by Lou Reed.

Chapter 2 She’s taken almost all that I’ve got

Neither the next day, the next week, or the next month did they tell their parents they were engaged, Belle wore the diamond ring Shawn had given her on a chain around her neck, hiding it under her top. They wanted to scream from the rooftops how in love they were, and how, when Belle had finished college and Shawn was working, they would get married. Shawn whispered his plans of his life with Belle into JT’s ear every night, rocking his baby brother to sleep, and Belle would inform her Buddy Bear of everything she wanted to do, to say, to be when she was with Shawn. Then he would sneak over to her bedroom, being careful to avoid her brother and father, but their passion was always interrupted before it could extend beyond desperate kisses. Some nights they lay silently in her bed simply holding each other. Watching the other sleep was precious, too easily denied by what Brady had termed his ‘midnight raids’ on his sister’s bedroom to check that her boyfriend-fiancé was not in fact there. More than once, a moment of passion that could have had dire consequences for their future relationship if discovered was interrupted by Brady’s premature arrival, and Shawn was beginning to know all too well how to sneak undetected out of Belle’s bathroom and into the hall at night.

Yet the risks were worth it all, every close call, every time they knew they had barely escaped Marlena’s, Brady’s, or worst of all John’s detection, gave urgency to their love. They both knew September was approaching fast, and that then, they would have to separate, to part not forever, but for all the months that Shawn would be at the Merchant Marine academy. Belle saw it as a barely endurable separation, but she understood why Shawn felt he had to go. It was his dream. She could not deny him his dreams. That would be too selfish of her, and if there was one thing Belle Black wasn’t, it was selfish.

The passion between them smouldered with every fresh glance, and sometimes Shawn wondered how he would ever survive the frustration of not loving her beautiful body once more. Sport became an outlet for his excess physical energy, and he played every moment Belle was otherwise busy, or most commonly of all, shopping.

It was a month and a half after graduation, when Shawn was playing basketball shirtless with Philip, his fit body being deeply tanned by the warm summer sunshine, that he was discussing with his uncle Phil what they would all do in the fall. "So Chloe’s going to Juilliard?"

"Yeah, after all she’s done to get there, I really think she deserves it." Philip said the words with a straight face. "Not! That girl can’t sing, can’t tell the truth, and I don’t think she’s ever actually felt a real emotion other than self pity or greed in her entire life. You know what she did to Brady?"

"No, Belle just said he was really depressed for a while, then he seemed to get over it." Shawn made a three point shot and Philip, who wasn’t paying attention to the game in his righteous indignation against Chloe, went on.

"Yeah, well Chloe decided that having Brady under her thumb wasn’t enough for her, so she went after Henry and Jason." Philip tried to steal the ball from Shawn, but Shawn slipped past him, making an easy lay up, and coming down with a big grin. "Jan wasn’t having any of it though, and Brady found Chloe entangled with her in this huge cat fight and when he realised what she’d been up to, he dumped her. That and the fact she offered to sleep with one of the music professors to get into Juilliard."

"Bitch," Shawn stopped paying attention for a minute and lost the ball to Philip. "I knew Chloe was a bit off, but doing that to Brady is beyond bad."

"Makes me feel lucky that I got out when I did," Philip answered him, and was about to say more when three very beautiful girls walked up to the side of the court. He felt his jaw drop and made no effort to retrieve it. He nudged his nephew, and stuttered, "Um, Shawn, man, eyes left, dude."

Shawn obediently twisted to see Mimi, Belle and Penelope walking towards them. On Penelope’s arm was a humbled looking Brady, but the humility of his stance did not stop a wicked grin spreading over his handsome face as Penelope gave his well muscled arm a squeeze.. For a minute the girls just stood and stared at Philip and Shawn’s chests, not believing how good they looked, but then Shawn moved forwards and kissed Belle, to Brady’s disgust, and as if they were all broken from a trance, Mimi rushed forwards and threw her arms around Philip while Penelope shyly drew closer to Brady, who was more than welcoming to the girl’s blushing embrace.

"Shawn," Belle whispered into his ear, "I need to talk to you."

"OK, I’ll just finish my game with Philip. Dot Com in an hour?" He kissed her on the forehead, ready to return to his game, when he noticed her blue eyes clouded by worry. "Belle?"

"No, make it the woods, our place." She kissed his lips again and sauntered off. He wasn’t sure, but he thought her backside wiggled a little bit more than usual.

"Man, those girls are hot!" Philip watched as Mimi definitely wiggled her backside and sashayed away from them. "What did Belle want?"

"Nothing much." Shawn took the ball from his uncle’s hand and shot it through the hoop before Philip could turn around. "As soon as I’ve kicked your ass at basketball, I’m meeting her."

That, naturally, started an argument that went on until Shawn proved that he could beat his uncle at basketball, and made him late for Belle. She was sitting alone on the same log as he had sat her on the night he had proposed. Coming up quietly behind her, he could see she was playing with the engagement ring on its chain. Twisting it in her fingers, and letting the light catch it, Belle’s eyes were fixed on the ring.

"Oh, Shawn, how can I tell you this?" she said to herself, not realising he was standing behind her.

"Tell me what?" She jumped and Shawn put a comforting hand on her shoulder, coming around to face her. Their were tears on her beautiful face, and he felt instantly guilty, thinking he had caused them. "Belle, why are you crying? I’m sorry I’m late. Phil was being his usual self and…" the words trailed away as Belle slammed her lips against his in a hot and heady kiss.
"No, it’s not that," she breathed as she released him. "Shawn, I think you had better sit down." He obeyed her, holding her gaze. "Shawn, do you remember the first night you brought me here?"

He smiled, his trademark grin spreading slowly across his handsome face. "How could I forget?"

"Well, do you remember what happened afterwards?" Belle could see that he did, his brown eyes were burning with passionate desire. "It’s about that I wanted to talk to you."

The bottom fell out of Shawn’s stomach. They hadn’t been together like that since that night. Their parents or Brady had always been home, or making sure that one of them came home alone, or something else had always stopped them. He was suddenly terrified that she was going to say it had all been a mistake, that they should never have done it, that she didn’t love him anymore, and hated him because he had taken her virginity.

"Shawn, I went to Dr Bader today, and she confirmed what I suspected. I don’t know how to tell you this, Shawn, but…" Belle held his face in her hands and gazed deep into his eyes, allowing him to see all of her fear, and her worry, but also all of the love in her heart. "I’m pregnant."

Shawn fell over backwards. He had heard about how easy it was to fall off a log, now he was experiencing it for himself.

Sitting back up, he stared at Belle, "You’re what?"

"I’m pregnant." She repeated more loudly, worried by the look on his face.

Then he did what she had never expected him to: he lifted her up in his arms, swinging her around and around in circles as the sunshine streamed through the trees and laughed. Putting her down he grinned and answered her with a kiss. "Belle, I love you, and I will love this baby until the end of time. How could I not? It was made of our love!" He kissed her again, and she lost her breath as he started striding up and down the clearing, waving his arms around and grinning ecstatically. She had never dreamed he would take it so well. She had been terrified for days, ever since her period had been late, that he would reject, ask her to get an abortion, or just leave her in his dust, pregnant and alone, while he became a Merchant Marine. She should have known better. "Belle, I know I already asked you to marry me, and I know we wanted to get married after college, but I think we should have the wedding before the baby comes, which means telling our parents."

She nodded. She knew it wasn’t the kind of secret you could keep for long, and now that he was happy, she was happy, more than happy, overjoyed. They would be parents, and it would be hard, but they would do it together. She only now dreaded what her father and brother were going to do to Shawn when they found out. She hoped it wouldn’t be a repeat of the episode when they had discovered Shawn and her kissing outside the door, and had dragged them inside for a question session that would have honoured the Spanish Inquisition.

"So I guess," Shawn said, walking behind her and unhooking the chain around her neck. "We’d better put this here engagement ring on you finger."

Happiness blossomed in her chest, and bloom came to her cheeks. Belle couldn’t speak, only nodded as the love of her life shifted the ring from the chain to the fourth finger of her left hand, and kissed it.

"Belle, I want to spend the rest of the day with you. We can tell our parents tonight. I want to be just us for now," he kissed her lips, gently this time, and led her away to the Fancy Face 2.

"What are you doing, Shawn?" Belle watched from the dock as Shawn fiddled with the sail.

"Didn’t I mention that we were going sailing today?" He looked at her with wide, innocent, brown puppy dog eyes.

"No," she grinned at him. He whirled her off the dock and onto the deck of the boat, holding her close in his arms, savouring the feeling of having her there. "You didn’t."

"Well, we are." Then they were off, gliding through the beautiful blue water out into the dark sea, with a cloudless sky above them and a cool breeze at their backs. That had been one of the most wonderful days of her life, and one of the worst.

Swimming in their underwear in their favourite cove without her swimsuit, Belle wished it could last forever, that the day would never end. It did, and as the sun began to go down, Shawn wrapped a fluffy towel around her shoulders, rubbing her dry, and place gentle kisses all over her upturned face and slender neck.

"It’s time to go home," he whispered in her ear.

She groaned. "Do we have to?"

"I don’t want to face your father and brother either, baby, but we have to go back." He unwrapped his arms and set sail, watching Belle more than the sea as she lay quietly on deck, contemplating what they would tell their parents.

It was well past dinner time when they arrived back at the Brady house, and not only his parents but hers and Brady were waiting for them. The moods were black, and Shawn drew Belle close into his arms as they walked in. The thought flashed across his mind that Dr Bader had told them about Belle’s pregnancy, but he dismissed the idea. They were over eighteen, their parents no longer had the right to hear about it from the doctor.

"What’s wrong?" Belle stammered out, staring at the most important and beloved people in her life all looking ready to kill each other.

"Belle, Shawn, I think you had better sit down." The last time that had been said to either one of them, it had led to happiness. They couldn’t know that the day was about to become the worst of their lives.

"Why?" Shawn stiffened, Belle could feel his protective arms around her tighten too, and became more afraid of what was to happen. If Shawn was worried, it was going to be bad.

"Sit down, Tink," Brady’s voice was deep, and seemed as worried as she felt. Shivers of fear traversed Belle’s body. Even Brady was looking serious.

"What? What is it?" Belle sank into a chair, but Shawn stayed standing, his hand on her left shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly. "We have something to tell you too."

"Belle, you really need to hear this first." That was her mother, her voice that was so usually calm was now shaking.

"Do you remember when your mother and I married and went on our honeymoon?" John asked his daughter. Belle nodded, not understanding what her parents’ honeymoon had to do with anything. "Well, when we were on honeymoon, Princess Gina turned me back into Soldier Black, Stefano’s mercenary, and we made love in her submarine."

Brady choked. "You and Gina had sex on a submarine?"

Belle looked towards her father, confused by the shattering of her image of him and why any of this had to come out when they were with the Bradys. "Why are you telling me this?"

JT gurgled in his playpen, the two year old happily watching all the people around him.

"Because of JT," Hope said gently. "You see, I thought I was Gina then." From the look on Shawn’s face, he had guessed the truth before she could say it. "JT isn’t Bo’s son. He’s John’s."

"No," Shawn said it so quietly that it was more like a whisper in Belle’s mind. "It can’t be true."

"I’m sorry, baby," Hope reached out her arms to him, but Shawn ignored her.

"Dad?" The word came slowly, drawn out in the boy’s fury. Enraged, Brady turned to his father, anger and blood flooding his face. His big fists clenched, and his jaw went tight. "How could you keep this from us?"

Belle never heard her father’s reply. She stood up slowly, walked a step towards the adults, and screamed in pain, clutching her stomach.

"Belle!" Shawn said it first, but it echoed around the room as everyone charged forwards. There was blood on her clothes, and she was in Shawn’s arms being run out to the car before she regained consciousness. He wasn’t speaking to the family, only to her, whispering words of comfort into her ear, trying to give her something to hold onto, so she wouldn’t slip away from him forever.

"Belle, baby, it will be alright, it will be OK, just hang on." He laid her across the back street of his father’s car, gunning the engine as Brady leapt into the passenger seat beside him, and driving like a maniac to the hospital. He could only pray he was in time.

Breaking so many traffic laws that at a less desperate time, Bo would have had to arrest him, he reached it in record time, and as fast as he could, Shawn picked up Belle and carried her, still unconscious, into the emergency room. The nurses and doctors took over from them, whisking Belle away on a gurney and firing questions at the distraught Shawn.

"She’s six weeks pregnant, and she had a bad shock, and she just stepped forwards and screamed and then there was all of this blood." Shawn stammered out, horrified by the blood that had soaked Belle’s silvery dress and his shirt.

When they were left alone, and Shawn had sunk into a chair, Brady turned on him, eyes blazing with fury. "Belle’s pregnant?" he spat.

"That’s what we were trying to tell everyone. We’re engaged, we have been for six weeks now, and when she told me that she was pregnant, I said we ought to tell everyone, and get married before the baby came. Then we came home, and found out about JT…" Shawn’s already shaking voice trailed off as John, Marlena, Bo and Hope came rushing in after them. He scowled, and buried his head in his hands, tears coming all too easily as his anger drained away.

At any other time, with any other boy, Brady would have been pounding Belle’s seducer into a pulp, possibly using a baseball bat. Now, none of that mattered. Shawn, Brady knew and had known for years, was the only boy that Belle would ever love. It wasn’t really his fault she was hurt now, it was their parents. All of their parents, for he did not imagine that any of them were innocent in their dealings, were to blame.

He dragged them over to one corner, leaving Shawn to brood in peace.

"What’s happened to Belle?" Marlena’s eyes were full of fear and worry, and for all his doubts of her, Brady knew that she truly loved her daughter, or had done.

He growled, he didn’t want to talk to any of them, but this was for Tink’s sake. "Shawn and Belle had an announcement of their own to make, and if they had managed to get it out, you would be expecting another Brady / Black baby in seven and a half months."

"Belle’s pregnant?" Marlena gasped.

Brady nodded briefly, and growled out his reply, "They were getting married, now Belle’s probably lost the baby."

The shocked faces of the people around him confirmed that they had been as without suspicion as he had.

"Lost the baby?" Hope stammered out, horrified by everything that had happened.

"Why do you think she was screaming and bleeding?" Brady snarled, before returning to the stricken Shawn, animosity forgotten in their shared devastation. They hung onto each other like the survivors of a shipwreck, and waited for news of Belle with fear in their eyes.

"Oh, God." Hope whispered, collapsing into Bo’s arms. "Oh, God. What have I done?"

It was hours later, an eternity to Belle’s lover and her brother that seemed to be dragged out endlessly, when the doctor came out with news of Belle, his face drawn and pale, haggard from the trauma of dealing with tragedy for a girl so young, so full of life, and to know now that her life was so blighted. "Are you family?" he asked no one in particular.

"I’m her fiancé and this is her brother," Shawn stepped forwards quickly, cutting off John and Marlena before they could say a word.

"Did you know that Belle was pregnant?" They nodded slowly, and Shawn had to resist a groan as he heard the word ‘was’. "I’m sorry to tell you," the doctor went on, "that she lost the baby."

Shawn fell apart inside, but managed to choke out a question, his face the palest shade of grey Brady had ever seen. "Can I see her?"

The doctor shook his head. "She’s resting now. You can see her later."

Then he was gone, leaving a broken Shawn in his wake. John and Marlena attempted to comfort each other, and even Bo and Hope were together again briefly as they held each other and JT and cried. Brady sat next to his cousin, and together they alienated themselves from their families and found solace only in each other’s misery.

Chapter 3 I Still Want You By My Side

Belle waited quietly in the hospital room, praying that the doctor’s news would be good, that she hadn’t lost the baby after all. The ache in the pit of her stomach was still there, though, and her head ached horribly. She felt as she had when she had come out of her coma, drugged and groggy. The feeling of her thin hospital gown and the heavy blankets were familiar in a horrible way. She knew them too well. The tears streamed down her face as she thought of all that she had lost. Her baby was gone, she knew that, and so had her trust in her parents. They had betrayed her. They had lied to her. For God’s sake, she shared a brother with her fiancé. She never wanted to speak to any of them ever again.

There was a gentle knock at the door, and she clutched at her blankets in fear, releasing them only when Brady came in alone. He had left Shawn in an exhausted, fitful sleep, and her parents were waiting outside for Belle’s permission. They both looked pale and strained, but neither of their conditions were comparable with Belle’s.

"Brady?" her voice came out small and broken. Completely un-Tinkerbell like. It was all he needed to hear. Wrapping his muscular arms about her tiny body, Brady rocked his little sister as she wept. He could barely understand what she was going through. He had never lost a child, but he had nearly lost her, the one thing in the world he loved above everything else, and that feeling was the worst he had ever had. He could only imagine what she must be going through. She needed him, and that was all that it took for her to have him comfort her, love her with his entire heart.

"Shawn’s outside," he whispered to her after a few minutes. "So are John and Marlena." Belle noted that John was no longer ‘Dad’ and Marlena wasn’t even ‘Doc’ to him anymore.

"I don’t want to see Mom and Dad," the words choked in her throat. She didn’t want to see her parents, but she couldn’t deny that they were her parents.

"What about Shawn?" Brady was so gentle, so loving, so kind, that Belle felt safe enough in his arms to face her fiancé and to tell him that their child was gone, that she had lost it.

Belle nodded, not able to speak. Brady let her go very gently, easing his arms from around her and settling her back on the pillows. Stepping into the hall he gave an angry shake of the head to John and Marlena, who stood waiting outside the door of Belle’s private room, in the corridor that smelled of disinfectant and sickness. The fluorescent lights shone harshly on their faces, and the wrinkles that were usually so well hidden were grossly exaggerated and all too clear. Brady’s stomach turned as he stared at them, the people who had destroyed Belle’s faith and had effectively killed her baby.

He walked over to the prone form of Shawn, and prodded him in the side cautiously. Shawn jerked awake, jumping into the air. "Is she awake?"

Brady nodded slowly. "She’s asking for you."

Afterwards, Brady thought that if Shawn could put such a turn of speed on the football field he could play in the nationals. He had never seen him move so fast.

"Belle?" Shawn shot through the door to her side, desperate to see her again.

"Hey," Belle held back the tears for two seconds before they flooded down her cheeks once more. His arms were around her, embracing her, holding her close to his chest, letting her tears soak into his T-shirt and attempting to comfort her. "I… I… I lost…"

"Shh," Shawn whispered into her ear. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Every sentiment of comfort seemed a cliché and meaningless. "I know, I know."

She pushed him away as hard as she could, the tears standing out clear in her eyes. "No, you don’t. This baby to you was something unreal, something that was going to happen months in the future… You only knew you were going to be a father, I already was a mother." Shawn tried to reach out to her again, but she went on, pushing him further and further away. "I can’t talk to you, Shawn. When I look at you, I’m reminded of everything that I’ve lost. I look at you, and I remember when life was good, when I was going to be a mother, and my parents were perfect to me. They lied to us, Shawn! Our parents lied to us! JT’s our brother. How can we be together when we share a brother? My God, that’s sick, it’s like incest…" She wouldn’t let the tears come while he was here, it would show too much weakness when she needed, so desperately, to be strong. The next words tore her heart almost as badly as they did his, but she said them with a clear voice and a resolute expression. "Maybe it’s best our baby died."

"No!" Shawn tried to take her in his arms again, to tell her that it would be all right, but he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be all right. Nothing would ever be all right again. "Belle, honey, we would have loved that baby so much…"

She stopped him there, eyes dull and mouth set. "It wouldn’t have mattered. Our parents loved us once, I believe that, but they lied to us too. Could you imagine explaining to our baby how JT was both Mommy and Daddy’s brother, or to JT how his brother and his sister could get married, have kids? No, no, it’s best this way." She wasn’t crying anymore, and there was a look in her eyes that scared him more than everything had ever done before.

"Belle, we could have worked it out, JT would have understood, and our baby would have too, we would have been so happy, we still can be, only Belle, don’t push me away." Shawn tried to keep her attention, to keep her focus on him, but something had happened to Belle since the night before. He had lost her in some way that he could not understand or even conceive.

"Shawn, I’m sorry," Belle lifted her hand, pulling her engagement ring off with an effort, and pressed it into his unwilling hand, touching him as little as possible. "I can’t marry you. I can’t see you ever again. I can’t love you." There was a hitch in her throat, and she had to squeeze the words past it. Her voice dropped, and her eyes lowered as she murmured, "I don’t believe in love anymore."

"Belle…" all the words in his memory faded away as he gazed at her. He had never seen such desolation in her eyes. Suddenly, she sat up very straight and a familiar flame of anger licked at her features. She was furious.

"Get out." There was no question of arguing with such a command, but Shawn tried anyway. He wouldn’t give up so easily.

"No, Belle, we need each other." He caught her stare, and felt something shrivel inside him. There was something deeply and fundamentally wrong with Belle.

"I mean it, Shawn Douglas Brady, get out now before I scream for Brady." Belle’s voice was cold, hard and as harsh to Shawn’s ears as anything he had ever heard. They had fought before, but nothing ever like this. She opened her mouth, and Shawn reluctantly headed for the door. She wasn’t finished though, and the next words pierced him to the heart as nothing else had ever done. "Do you honestly think that I could bear to be in the presence of the son of the woman who destroyed my parents’ marriage, a man I must hate above all other things, a man who took my virginity and destroyed my heart?"

At another time, with another person, Shawn would have argued vehemently, but with Belle, he felt the justice of the words bite into the fabric of his soul. The sins of the parents were being visited upon their children, unto the third generation. Belle went on, the words relentlessly pounding at Shawn’s mind.

"Do you think I could ever love the brother of the bastard child of our parents’ illicit affair? You must be mad." Belle’s blue eyes were black, though not with the anger Shawn felt was directed at him, they were black with the utter despair of one who had seen that true love could never be. Shawn didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, and even as Belle threw the words at him, purposefully driving him away, she knew that she was killing the love between them, murdering the hope of a reconciliation. She felt no hope, no possible faint trace of love between them possible in the future, so as long as she was killing their adoration in his heart, she had better stamp on it good. "I could never feel anything but hate for an arrogant, stupid, punk, retarded, bastard Brady."

She spat those last words with such feeling that her conscience prickled her. She stamped on it as she had just stamped on Shawn’s heart, grinding her high heel into it to kill it properly.

Shawn’s brown eyes, full of tears, watched her fall apart, an ache piercing his heart. He wished desperately to take her in his arms, to wrap her in cotton wool, or put her into a bubble that could never burst. Anything to stop her hurting so badly. He couldn’t though. Whatever she was going through, she couldn’t be with him, couldn’t find solace in him. Reluctantly, a shattered heart in his chest and a hand bleeding from his tight grip on their engagement ring, he left her room, physically forcing himself away from her.

He turned to Brady, the scalding wet heat in his eyes reminding him that he was the closest to crying he had been since he thought JT was dying, and stared at him fixedly.

"There’s something wrong with Belle’s mind." His voice was as cold as Belle’s had been, emotionless because if he let himself feel everything that was boiling inside of him, he doubted he would be able to hold himself together enough to speak with Brady.

"What?" That was Marlena, racing from her seat with John at her heels. "What’s wrong with my baby doll?"

Shawn ignored her. Marlena, John, Bo, Hope, none of these people existed to him anymore. They had lied to him, caused Belle to miscarry, and broken her trust in human nature. He kept his eyes focused on Brady. "She’s not acting herself. I don’t think she should be alone, but she doesn’t want me with her."

Marlena shot straight into Belle’s room, but ran straight back out again as Belle screamed and threw the vase of flowers at her head. "Get out you lying bitch!"

Brady started, shocked at the words coming out of his little sister’s mouth, the girl who had always been as good and perfect as a princess in a fairy tale, and had even apologised for using the word hell.

"I see what you mean," he stuttered out. Shawn nodded his head slowly, and patted his cousin on the shoulder.

"Good luck, you’re going to need it." He couldn’t bear to stay after that. Not when Belle didn’t want him anymore. He couldn’t even summon up the passion to give an icy stare to John and Marlena, but just walked straight past them and his own parents who were waiting patiently in the hallway. Half of Salem was there, but Shawn ignored them all.

Brady watched him leave, his head hanging so low as to touch his chest, then turned to his baby sister’s room. "Ready or not, Tink," he warned her, "I’m coming in."

Whatever Brady had been expecting to see, it wasn’t the sight that confronted his eyes. Belle had tears streaming down her face, and her little body was wracked with sobs. She was beautiful though, beautiful with a tragedy that would have become a Juliet without her Romeo.

"Oh, Brady," Belle sobbed brokenly as she threw herself into his warm arms, "I’ve lost him. It’s all over. I’ve really lost him this time, and I don’t even know if I want him back…"

Chapter 4 I Would Have Given You All Of My Heart

The bite of January was in the air. The New Year celebrations were over and life returned to the cold monotony of winter, without the pleasure of being able to look forward to Christmas. It was Shawn’s last day in Salem. He had had enough, and the Merchant Marine Academy beckoned. He had spent months trying to win Belle back, sitting outside of her bedroom door at Brady’s apartment for the first three months as she refused to come out, talking to her, singing lullabies to her when it was time for her to go to sleep, though he knew she wouldn’t, and would lie there crying her heart out, passing notes and love letters under the door, watching her mourning her baby and her loss of faith in everything, refusing to talk to him, and then watching in despair as she ran around with every other boy in town. He saw her kissing them in Dot Com, wearing black leather mini-skirts, stiletto heels and mid-riff tops to go to ‘the cinema’. She didn’t lose her reputation, just tarnished it a bit, but it was too much for Shawn to take anymore. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to forget everything that happened, make new memories to cover the old ones, to erase the emotions that had been so real the year before. She was trying to forget their love. Trying to kill that love, and it was killing him too, because somewhere along the line, and he would never know when, she had become a part of him, and without that part, he was incomplete.

Shawn sat in the Brady Pub for the last time, eating the last of his French fries and slurping chocolate milkshake, watched by his ever loving grandparents. It was almost time for him to go. He didn’t want to leave Salem, but if he stayed, he would be destroyed by Belle. He loved her, he doubted he would ever stop loving her, but now he had to let her go or he would never be able to live his own life. Perhaps, in the far distant future, he would even find someone else to love, but he doubted it. She had all of his heart, even if she didn’t want it and could no longer bear to look at him.

He took his empty plate into the kitchen, kissed the cook on the cheek and said goodbye to them all. He had told few people that he was going, only his immediate family, until an hour ago when he had told Mimi Lockhart and she had announced it to the town.

He noticed the time and raced out of the front door of the Pub. Outside, everyone was waiting for him. Half of Salem, or in other words the Brady, Horton and Kiriakis clans had turned up to wave the prodigal son off. Shawn kissed so many aunts, grandmothers, nieces, and other relatives of the female persuasion on the cheek that he lost track. His friends were there too, or as many as had remained in Salem. One person was missing though. Belle. She hadn’t come to say goodbye, she really didn’t care. Forcing back the tears as he hugged his baby half brother goodbye, watching the tears flood down his mother’s cheeks, Shawn wondered if Belle even knew he was leaving. He had to forget her, or he would drive himself mad.

Chloe wasn’t there, neither were Brady, probably absent out of sibling loyalty though he and his cousin had never been closer and Penny was with him, Philip, who was studying at Stanford, Kevin, who was doing his nerd thing at MIT and Susan had made her way to a very fine cosmetics and business school on the east coast. Jan and Jason were there, as in lust as they ever had been, and Mimi was dancing around in the cold air as she had done every January of her life for as long as either of them could remember. There were tears shining in her brown eyes. She knew what had happened between Shawn and Belle, and seeing him leave without her being by his side was like seeing Romeo without Juliet, Laurel without Hardy, Angel without Buffy. She sighed in despair.

He missed them, missed them more because Belle rejected him and he had been lonely. He wouldn’t be lonely where he was going though. He would be alone, but also he would be away from everything associated with the people he had loved the most. In the taxi, as he drove away from his oh so loving family and his friends that cared as much, the radio was on.

Leaning his head back, and unsuccessfully trying not to think of Belle, Shawn listened to the music.

We’ve already said - goodbye,

Since you’ve got to go,

Oh, you’d better go now,

Go now, go now,

Go now

Before you see me cry

I don’t want you to tell me just what you intend to do now

Cause how many times do I have to tell you,

Darling, darling, I’m still in love with you now whoa

He wondered if Belle would ever be in love again, or if her serial dating would end with her alone and still living with Brady, and Penny or whatever woman he chose in the end.

We’ve already said - so long,

I don’t want to see you go,

But oh you better go now,

Go now, go now,

Go now

Don’t you even try,

Telling me that you really don’t want it to end this way

Cause darling, darling, can’t you see that I want you to stay?

Ye-ea-ah

She did want to end it this way. That was the problem. She wanted his heart broken, not because she was cruel, but because she needed him to understand her pain and there was no way he could comfort her anymore.

"Bye, Belle," Shawn whispered to her, though she could not hear him. "You’ll always be my Perfect Girl."

Since you’ve got to go,

Oh you better go now,

Go now, go now,

Go now

Before you see me cry,

I don’t want you to tell me just what you intend to do now,

And how many times do I have to tell you

darling, darling, I’m still in love, still in love with you now?

I don’t want to see you go, but darling you’d better go now!

The DJ came on, the radio crackling slightly as the song ended. Before the next song was introduced, though, Shawn caught his own name being spoken. "That was ‘Go Now’ by the Moody Blues for Shawn Douglas, from his Isabella."

The rest of the words were lost on Shawn, but he knew what he heard. Belle was telling him to leave, that she knew he was leaving and that she was going to miss him, perhaps? Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Shawn pushed the thought away. He couldn’t think about Belle like that anymore. If he did, he would go insane.

The Merchant Marines were to be his home for as long as he cared to stay. Perhaps, if he really liked it there, he would chose never to come home, never to face Belle and her boyfriends again. Then he would never have to see JT, to be reminded of what had happened between their parents to create the boy, but he would never stop wanting to see JT, never stop wanting to be able to play the big brother role as he had longed to do for so long, to be part of the family he had wanted his entire childhood. He had read stories his entire life of sailors who found a better home at sea with their shipmates than they ever did on shore, and if he could find the same home there as they had, perhaps he would never set foot on land again, family or no family in Salem.

Belle watched from behind a corner as Shawn’s taxi pulled away, tears streaming down her face. She had known that the longing for the sea in him was powerful, and that she was pushing him into ‘her open bountiful arms’, but she had never expected him to leave forever. She had been about to run to him, to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay with her, to make a life with her, to marry her as he promised to do all those months before, but just as she had steeled herself to it, he had turned and climbed into the taxi, and it had been too late. She had lost him again. Suddenly Belle was terrified that, after months of running from him, hiding her feelings behind a veil of short lived flings with other boys and rejecting her Tough Boy again and again, and knowing that he would come back every time that she pushed him away because he loved her, that he had finally had enough and left her forever. She wept, more for herself than for him, and if he could have heard her calling him back at that moment, she thought she would scream in vain. He was gone.

It was eight months since he had left Salem, eight long and lonely months. He had missed it more than he would ever be able to say. It was more than missing the place, his family, JT, his friends, it was missing Her that was driving him to distraction. His friends on board the ship had noticed and as tonight was their first shore leave they were determined to get him ‘laid’ as they put it. He didn’t mope, or sulk, or talk about Belle all the time, but he was neither as jovial or as bouncily happy as they all were. He would wander the decks at night, insomnia haunting him, and look up at the stars, remembering the stars on her ceiling the night of graduation, the way she had felt in his arms, the smell of her hair, and the promises they had made each other, promises that would now never be fulfilled.

Mark, Shawn’s bunkmate and best friend on board, especially noticed that Shawn was ‘quiet’, and he was determined to find himself a beautiful Spanish senorita in the port of Cadiz and a slightly less beautiful one for his friend who would make him scream in the night. He might be a good Samaritan, but he wasn’t a selfless saint.

"Come on, Brady," Mark whacked Shawn around the back of the head with the letter he was re-reading. It was Shawn’s letter really, one from his great grandmother, but Mark had practically adopted Alice, writing to her more than Shawn did, and read the old ones she had written to Shawn to get a better idea of her. Shawn didn’t care. Great Gran only wrote about Salem business, what was happening with JT and other family matters, and she had not once mentioned his Belle. "You are coming with us, have a few tequila shots, a little dancing with some hot girl and then you are going to find the biggest assed whore in the whole of Spain and take her to bed and not come back until Sunday. Whadda ya say?"

Mark shot a grin at him that nearly rivalled Shawn’s own trademark smile. Shawn groaned, sat up, and after six preceding hours of similar comments and innuendo, finally agreed. His one hope was to get drunk and unconscious fast, so Mark couldn’t set him up with some girl for a one night stand that he would regret for the rest of his life.

Cadiz was a beautiful town, in the old Spanish style, and it took Shawn and Mark all of sixteen minutes to find the rowdiest, noisiest, coarsest, most dangerous, whore filled bar in the whole place.

"Isn’t this place great?" Mark called to his moody friend between taking body shots off a dark haired waitress who seemed to like his short blond hair as much as he loved her curvaceous figure. "Where else can you get drunk, laid and sing songs from ‘Jaws’ without getting kicked out of the place?"

Shawn raised his shot glass to his inebriated friend and knocked it back fast. It had little effect. He was reaching for the next in the line of them when a slender brown hand descended and grabbed it first. Turning, Shawn confronted a girl of about twenty, with beautiful black brown hair and almond shaped brown eyes. She wasn’t beautiful as Belle had been, but she was pretty, and had a mouth that was an artist’s dream.

"Excuse me," Shawn’s voice wasn’t slurred yet, but if he had anything to do with it, he wouldn’t be able to walk straight or say tongue-twisters by the end of the night. He wasn’t about to let any of his drinks pass him by, not even for a pretty Spanish girl.

She knocked it back fast and turned to look at him fully, her eyes dilating as she took him in. "Yes?"

She raised a well shaped eyebrow at him, and for a moment he became lost in her brown eyes, then Belle’s image floated before him and he snapped out of it. "That was my drink," he informed her, his chocolate coloured eyes gazing deeply into hers, with more liking than hostility.

"Sorry, I didn’t think you were going to manage another one." Her voice was low and throaty, and her English had a strong Spanish accent to it. "Drowning sorrows?"

"Is it that obvious?" Shawn signalled to the bartender for another round of drinks.

"Only to me. I have this psychic talent, I know when there is a broken heart in the same room as me." She smiled at him.

"And? What about mine, is it broken or just a little bruised?" Shawn dropped his gaze to the bottom of his glass.

"Hmm, let’s see." She took him by the chin and turned his face to hers. She stared into his eyes and then dropped one incredibly steamy kiss onto his lips.

"Go Brady! Thank God for that! I was beginning to think you were gay," Mark slurred from his place next to the busty Spanish girl with the tequila bottle.

The girl with the brown eyes released him. "Brady, huh?" she asked in that growling voice of hers.

"Shawn Douglas Brady at your service," Shawn saluted her with a mocking smile on his full lips, then asked the obvious question. "Why did you kiss me?"

She shrugged, hair cascading over her shoulders. "I wanted to see how your heart was, Shawn Douglas Brady."

"And?" He raised his eyebrows at her, wondering if he was wrong and his heart was only bruised.

"Completely shattered. Worst case I’ve ever seen. My name’s Christina, by the way. Chris to you." She stared at him hard, memorising his features. "You know there’s only one cure for a broken heart."

"And that is?" Shawn reached for another drink, but Chris’s hand descended on his wrist, clamping it tight and stopping him.

"Not the demon drink." She smiled a smile full of white teeth, and licked her red lips lasciviously. "Another woman."

"I don’t think so." Shawn shook her hand off and gulped down another shot, turning his head to catch sight of Mark leaving his Spanish senorita and staggering drunkenly towards them.

"‘Take me to bed or lose me forever!’" She threatened.

"Yeah baby!" Mark attempted to take her up on her offer.

"No thanks," Shawn answered her, as Mark fell down into his arms as Chris pushed him away from her.

"Good, you passed my test for crazy, sex mad bastards without consciences. Come on, we’ll take your friend home and then you can tell me all about the girl who broke your heart." Chris smiled at him again, with less teeth and with more warmth, and Shawn decided that there were worse things than talking to a pretty girl all night.

"Can I bring my drink?" He asked her with only half a hope.

"Of course, now come on before he starts harassing Martina," she nodded towards a huge, bearded woman of approximately sixty who sat with a bottle of gin and a deck of cards in one corner of the bar.

Shawn smiled his trademark grin at last and slung one arm around Mark’s waist, half supporting and half carrying him out of the bar and down the street.

"Farewell, and adieu to you," Mark started singing, "fair Spanish ladies."

‘Eh, why not?’ thought Shawn through the haze of drink while Chris watched amusedly as the two merchant marines staggered unsteadily down the street and sang the old song.

"Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain," Shawn joined in, and together he and Mark made a fairly respectable job of it, especially considering they had had an extraordinary amount of tequila between them. "For we’ve received orders to sail back to Boston, never to you or Spain again…"

Shawn had dumped Mark into his bunk and wandered back out to find Chris still waiting for him.

"Ready?" she asked him patiently. "I think this broken heart of yours is going to take some mending."

"Really?" Shawn asked sarcastically. "and there I was thinking that it was only a little bruised by her high heel."

"Quit the sarcasm, sunshine, or I’ll show you a high heel," Chris raised her foot slightly and aimed it at Shawn’s most sensitive spot. Jumping backwards, Shawn laughed and conceded victory to her.

"Right. Now what’s this girl’s name and what exactly does she look like?" Chris was business like about it, but she could see a world of pain behind Shawn’s chocolate eyes.

"Her name," Shawn sighed softly, "is Belle, and she has hair with sunlight in it…"

They talked all night. Not just about Belle, but about Chris and her broken heart too. She had to admit that Shawn had undergone worse than her, but wouldn’t let him feel sorry for himself. The fire that had kept her going was to stoke his spirit into a burning passion and she wasn’t letting him go anywhere until he decided the ultimate answer: could he still love Belle enough to return to Salem and fight until he had her back, or should he just view her forever after as a dream like figure who had broken his heart once, but had never really been true love?

 

Song Credit: 'Go Now' by the Moody Blues.

Chapter 5 But There's Someone Who's Torn It Apart

It was in Cadiz that the mail finally caught up with the ship, and there were disappointments and elation as letters failed to arrive or came earlier than expected. Shawn, for once, was one of the lucky ones.

"So, Brady," Mark, who had had a single letter from his mother and three from various girls around the world, stared hard at the large package in his best friend’s hands, his light brown eyes bright with the excitement of anticipation. "What’s in there then?"

Shawn chuckled, the first time Mark had heard him even come close to laugh when he was sober. "Grandma’s latest batch of cookies. Why?"

"Just wonderin’," Mark’s mother sent him fruit cake that was as hard as a brick, or fudge that had mould on it by the time it arrived. Alice’s cookies, on the other hand, in their vacuum sealed containers, were always as fresh and crunchy as they had been when she had first taken them from the oven. They were the envy of the entire ship. If Shawn was ever losing in a card game, all he had to do was put up even a single cookie and it would see the highest bid. They were like gold dust, only better because they were edible.

Shawn grinned and opened a box of oatmeal and raisin ones. "You want one?"

Mark’s hand moved so quickly through the air, Shawn didn’t see it pass from one place to the next. "Thanks," he answered, through a mouthful of cookie crumbs. "Damn these are good."

Shawn, another cookie in his mouth, nodded. "Says here," he added, glancing down at the rose scented paper his grandmother always wrote to him on, "she won the Salem Bake-Off."

"So it’s official, these really are the best cookies in the world!" Mark joked, reaching out for another, this time one with white chocolate and orange zest.

There was a shout that interrupted the laughter and Shawn’s reply. "Brady!"

He brushed the cookie crumbs from his fingers and grinned. "Duty calls."

It wasn’t duty, however, but Chris who was yelling. She stood on the dock, hands on her hips, and smiled up at him, looking as fresh as the morning sun. "You ready?"

With tired, dark circles under his brown eyes from little sleep, Shawn nodded. She had promised to show him the sites of Cadiz. "Tired, but ready."

"Hey, beautiful!" Mark had followed Shawn up, now he stood with an enormous smile on his face, staring down at the beauty on the docks. "How you doin’?"

Chris sighed, and tossed her dark hair over one shoulder in a gesture of boredom. In her heavily accented English, she replied, "I’d be doing even better if your friend would get down here."

"Shawn," Mark slapped the guy’s shoulder. "You got laid!"

Chris spat something at him in Spanish, and Shawn removed his friend’s hand from his shoulder. "I did not get laid. I got a friend, and right now, my friend and I are going to see the sights of Cadiz."

"Dude," Mark said more quietly this time. "She is hot."

Shawn glanced down at Chris and then back up at his friend. By Salem standards, she was no better than average, and in Shawn’s heart, compared to Belle, Chris was just another woman, and could have looked like one of Cinderella’s step sisters for all he would notice or care. "Your point being?"

"You’re telling me," said Mark slowly, as if talking to a backwards child, "you don’t want her?"

"Get a grip on your libido, Mark," Shawn patted his friend, and ran down the gangway, then linked arms with Chris. "You’re beginning to sound desperate!" he yelled, letting Chris kiss his cheek and giving her a slight squeeze of his hand.

"So what if I do?" his shipmate shouted down, "At least I know how to find a woman!"

"And who," Chris jumped in, "is walking away with a beautiful Spanish senorita and who is still on board ship all alone?"

Mark had no answer to that.

"Hey!" He lifted his head when Chris’s voice reached him. "Are you coming or are we going to stand in the blazing sun until Gorgeous here turns as black as his hair?"

Shawn laughed as Mark shot down the side of the ship to them. "Aye, aye, el capitan!" he yelped as he ran. He put his very stylish sunglasses on the end of his nose and threw his arms around the shoulders of his two companions. "So where are we going?"

Shawn glanced at Chris and she smiled back. "Well…"

Fifteen minutes of walking through the baking heat of Cadiz in the summer, and Mark was sweating, while Shawn and Chris looked as cool as if they were in England.

"What the hell are we doing here?" Mark whined, earning a quick slap around the back of his head from Chris.

"Don’t swear," she hissed, "this is the market place, and my baby brother’s right over there," she pointed to a small youth with her dark eyes and hair, and the cheekiest grin Mark had ever seen, not having seen Shawn’s. She carried on in a light hearted tone, "I don’t need him learning American from sailors or swearing scum like you that pass yourselves off as sailors. He knows enough Spanish swearwords already."

"We’re here to buy my Grandma a present. I promised her one from every port I stopped in," Shawn explained staring down the busy market street and wondering if they sold jewellery.

"Well I promised my brother I’d leave a girl in every port remembering my name and the tattoo on my ass," Mark shot back, and gave Chris a lascivious look, "so when do we get back to the bar?"

"Four fifteen," she answered swiftly, picking up a cantaloupe and smelling it, then deciding it wasn’t ripe enough. "First we buy Shawn’s grandmother a present, then we have lunch, a siesta, and a walk to see Alcazar, then we get drunk and Shawn and I drown our sorrows, while you, you American sailor fool, you find a pretty girl to talk to and kiss for a night."

Mark grinned, brown eyes sparkling and hands shoved into his pockets. "Have I mentioned I love this plan?"

"Come on," Shawn muttered, moving forwards, trying to block the memory of stolen kisses in his Dad’s old pick up truck, and hide from the pain. "Alice’s present is waiting."

Mark stopped in his tracks. "The present is for Alice? As in ‘I send my grandson boxes of cookies’ Alice?"

Shawn ran an exasperated hand through his dark hair. "Yes, so?"

"If it’s for Alice," Mark said confidently, "then it must be perfection. The perfect present for the perfect girl."

Shawn’s heart stopped in his chest. It was a silly phrase, but it conjured immediate images of Belle that could not be dismissed as easily as the others that had been summoned by his friends’ teasing speeches. Mark did not notice Shawn’s paled face, but Chris did, and guessing the cause as she remembered his lover’s nickname, diverted Mark’s attention.

"Shawn’s grandmother is hardly a girl," she argued. Then picked up a necklace of tiny pearls. "For your Honolulu whore," she held them up against her brown skin where they seemed even whiter and more beautiful, and Mark grinned.

"How about," he offered in return, holding up a gold ring with a single, tiny ruby set in the middle, "for my newest Spanish lover?"

Chris snorted and dropped the necklace back into the stall owner’s hands. "How do you Americans put it? Oh yes," she gave a sparkling, fierce smile as full of teeth as that first lascivious one she had flashed on Shawn. "In your dreams, man."

Mark grinned in return, enjoying the flirting. "Only in the best of them, only the best."

As their playful banter continued, neither noticed Shawn fingering the ring Mark had offered to Chris, nor saw him buy it for an exorbitant price, and slip it deep into an inner pocket as an impossible dream. Chris could not read his mind as well as she could read his heart, or she would have known that to Shawn, that ring was to represent the hopeless fantasy of the day when Belle would come to him with words of penitence on her lips, love in her heart and serenity in her eyes, and he would slip a gold band, with a ruby set in the centre so reminiscent of that first ruby that had brought them into such peril on their tropical island, and make his one true love his wife.

Alacazar was a strange building, but Shawn liked it, lunch was delightful, he had found Alice the perfect gift, and Chris’s siesta had allowed him to write his grandmother a postcard and post it. Now all that was left to do was find a bar, get supremely drunk and hope the ache of missing Belle in his soul would be soothed by alcohol.

"Brady?" Belle stared across the Loft floor to the couch on which her brother had been sleeping. "What the hell are you doing there?"

"What I’m always doing when you go out looking like that," Brady gestured to his sister’s blatantly revealing outfit, "with the boys you know are no good for you."

"Brady, I go out every night," Belle threw down her purse and stretched upwards, her halter top stretching not quite as far with her, exposing a flat stomach that showed no signs of the child she so briefly carried, "with boys you think are no good for me."

Her brother winced. "I know."

"And I know you’re not here on the sofa every night," she added, unhooking the clasps of her shoes, and dropping the high heels on the floor as she brushed her fingers through her wild mane of golden hair, releasing pins and clips as she went, "because I usually sit on it while I undo my latest hairstyle."

"I know that too." Another wince.

"Then are you going to explain to me what you’re doing on our couch in the middle of the night?" Belle remained patient, she couldn’t get mad at her brother when he was trying so hard to be her protector, and she needed one so badly.

"Because you need someone to watch out for you, and I spend every night lying awake in my room waiting for you to come home so that I know your safe." Brady ran a strong hand through his unruly blond hair. "Tink, I know Shawn’s gone, but this is not the way to deal with it."

"It’s the only way to deal with it," his little sister bit back. "I’m not going to wander around the Loft in a daze just because my lover left me! I will not do it!"

"Tink," Brady stood up, towering over his small sister. "Shawn didn’t leave you. You drove him away."

"He ran away," Belle forced tears back, trying to make the anger take away the pain, "he ran away from me and JT and the whole god damned messed up situation, leaving me to deal with it by myself."

"No, Belle," Brady took one step forwards and grabbed her by the shoulders, "You drove him away, and now he’s gone, you’re punishing him for leaving."

Belle’s back straightened, "I’m not punishing him for loving me!"

"Belle," Brady felt the small weight of his sister’s body trying to pull away from him. "I didn’t say ‘loving’. You did."

"Bwady," Mark slurred after his fifth Tequila slammer. "Man, this is go…od stuff."

"You know what’s better?" Shawn’s voice was almost as incoherent as his shipmate’s but not quite, though he was on his sixth shot.

"Wha?" Mark tossed back another drink, avoiding the tequila for a moment as he tried to count his friend’s heads, and stared at him blearily.

"Whiskey," Shawn answered slowly, "my great-great-grandfather’s," he waved his shot glass in the air, and Chris, almost as inebriated as the two boys, licked the liquor off his wrist as it spilled, "Irish whiskey, on the rocks."

"Ain’t got none," the rather surly bartender replied. Though overweight, balding and well past his prime, he had a crush on the young and lovely Christina, and viewed her blossoming friendship with Shawn and Mark as a blight upon his own chances.

"But you should," Chris added in Spanish. "Add it to your stock."

She poked Shawn’s arm, and he turned to stare at her. "I didn’t know your great- great grandfather was Irish," she stated more clearly than he could have.

"He was," Shawn grinned, "Only he was really Greek, cause my Granda ain’t my Granda, see?"

"Nope," Mark burped, "but I’m ready for a woman, how about you Shawnie boy?"

"Not drunk enough yet." He licked the salt off of Chris’s hand, chucked down his tequila and sucked the lime quickly, not even bothering to splutter. "Chris?"

The senorita was staring off across the bar. "That bastard!"

Through a drunken haze, Mark managed a "What?"

"Who?" Shawn asked more correctly, and in a slightly less drunk voice.

"My ex…" Chris searched for the word then remembered a Janet Jackson song she had loathed. "Honey?"

"Aww, sugar," Mark slung an arm around her shoulders and laid a kiss on her lips. "I knew you’d come round to my way of thinking."

She pushed him back so that he fell off his barstool and hit the floor laughing.

"Who?" Shawn asked again, searching behind the bar for the tequila bottle so that for a moment, all Chris could see was his back in its tight white T-shirt and the back of his legs, in their tight fitting jeans.

"Er…" She paused, then caught sight of her old lover once more. "The son of a bitch is my old, American, bad boy boyfriend."

"And the obvious idiot’s name is?" Mark asked, pulling himself off the floor with the help of the busty waitress he had flirted with the night before, and who was still distinctly interested. "And who’s the very hot bimbo on his arm?"

"He is Eddie J. Wheeler, wannabe singer and all round jerk, but I don’t who the girl is," Chris took the bottle of liquor from her friend and poured herself another shot.

"Let’s go introduce ourselves then," Shawn moved forwards, feeling as though he was still on board ship, and linked arms with Chris, mostly to keep his balance but partly for show, so that she was forced to leave Mark to the tequila bottle and the busty waitress and confront her past.

"Christina?" Eddie moved forwards jerkily, and Shawn could scent the alcohol on his breath even more strongly than on Mark’s. "Is that you?"

"Got it in one, Edward," she snarled, and then turned to stare down at the blue eyed, dark haired girl sitting in the chair opposite to her ex-boyfriend’s.

"And who’s this?" Eddie, ignoring the intended insult as Chris used his hated full name just as he had used hers, pointed at Shawn.

"Shawn Brady," Shawn said in a friendly voice and then looked past Eddie to the girl. "Chloe?"

"Hello to you too, Shawn D.," Chloe replied, being as deliberately offensive as Eddie had been.

"You two know each other?" Chris was shocked, she thought her Shawn had better taste than to hang around the low life opera wannabes Eddie liked.

"We met in high school," Chloe smirked.

"Unfortunately," Shawn bit out, and wondered if he could legally break a bottle over Chloe’s head and stab it into Eddie’s heart for hurting all the people they had.

Chloe was staring at him, wondering if she could make him forget about this girl Christina and Belle back in Salem enough to lure him into her bed. "So how are the Merchant Marines? A good escape from that cheap little tart of a girlfriend of yours?"

"Even better as an escape from your kind," there was a red mist in front of Shawn’s eyes, and Chris could feel his heart rate increase in the pulse of his arm that she gripped more firmly than ever.

"Christina," Eddie drawled, "I see you found yourself a new piece of meat to hook up with."

"He’s no piece of meat, Eddie, he’s a real man," Chris snapped back furiously, and then it was Shawn’s turn to calm her down. "More than you could ever be."

Chloe caught on to this and cattily asked, "Forgotten Belle already, did you, Shawn? God," she swore, "you two were so high and mighty in high school. The new Romeo and Juliet was what they reckoned you were back then. Well guess what? R & J crashed and burned, and from the looks of you, so did you two."

"At least Belle and I broke up before I started going after people," Shawn’s fists clenched, he didn’t know how much longer he could keep his temper. "Unlike you."

Eddie jerked his head at Shawn. "You serious about him, Chrissy?"

"As serious as a heart attack," she lied, using one of his favourite expressions. "What about you?"

"I’m just fooling," Eddie answered. "We had a concert here last night, and figured, why not have a fling? So we did. And if you’re wondering, she’s better in bed than you ever were."

A slow hiss escaped Chris’s lips, and she squeezed Shawn’s arm until he nearly winced from the pain.

Chloe wasn’t listening, but continuing her own fight with Shawn. "Really? Haven’t you heard the latest from the Salem Gazette?" Chloe’s face was suddenly full of a wide eyed innocence far more dangerous than any straightforward malice. "It seems your little Miss Perfect is pregnant, and even she doesn’t know who the father is!"

"You lying bitch!" Shawn’s hands reached for Eddie’s throat, not Chloe’s, because as if by mutual consent he and Chris swapped fighting partners. She got a hold on Chloe’s still luxuriant locks and Shawn felt his fingers close around Eddie’s flannel shirt with a sensation of pleasure as his right hand balled into a fist connected with the guy’s nose.

What should have been a simple bar fight between drunk patrons, Manuel thought sadly from his hiding place behind the bar, had turned into an all out slanging match as everyone in town had shown up to see Christina Milliera slug it out with her new boyfriend’s old enemy and the new guy, who incidentally had a very sizeable set of muscles, attempted to murder Chris’s old flame. Now her family was taking sides and half were blaming Chris for ever believing that Eddie was ever good enough for her and the other half defending her because her taste in men had so evidently improved since that last disastrous relationship. Barstools were flying, tables crashing over, fists were going everywhere, and Chris had been hacking handfuls of hair off the head of Eddie’s new girl, and Manuel couldn’t blame her. He only wished he had a bottle of tequila as well as a camera and the drunken American Merchant Marine sprawled behind the bar with him and Rosa, his favourite waitress.

He lifted his head in a moment of calm to see if it was safe to come out yet and was greeted by the sound of smashing crockery. Someone had started on the plates already. Damn.

"One tequila," he muttered, quickly fetching the bottle from one of Chris’s uncle’s hands before they threw it at another of Chris’s uncle’s heads. "Two tequila," he added, pouring a second into a shot glass next to the first. "Three tequila!" He gasped as a chair whizzed past his head and threw back the first two shots, holding the third and last tenderly in his big hand. Then as the police entered, looking stern and completely sober, he knocked it back and dove back down behind the bar, yelling as he did so, "Floor!"

Chapter 6 Help Me Dry The Tears That I've Cried

Chris opened one eye slowly, and winced as the light hurt her. "Shawn?"

"Yeah?" the voice came from across the room and to her left.

She sat up slowly. "Do you remember what happened last night?"

"Don’t you?" He sounded tired, and more than a little drunk still.

"Not all of it," Chris put a hand to her head. "Mark, you there?"

"No," Shawn answered, "he didn’t get arrested."

"We’ve been arrested?" Shawn wanted to laugh at her surprise, but his head hurt.

"Yep," he felt around in the pockets of his leather jacket and found the small tequila bottle he had secreted there.

Chris groaned. "What for?"

Shawn couldn’t help laughing then. "You don’t remember?"

"Just tell me," she heard him take a sip of tequila and added, "and give me a damn drink while you’re at it."

"Brawling and disturbance of the peace." Shawn quoted, "but you’re going to have to come over here if you want your drink."

"Why?" Chris looked up, her eyes finally adjusting to the level of light in the room. "Oh."

Shawn was on the other side of the bars. They were both in cells, separated by an iron grille, and both were seated on prison bunks.

"Where’s the bitch?" she asked, standing up hesitantly and walking over to him slowly.

"Not in here," Shawn took another sip of tequila before handing Chris the bottle. "She managed to convince the cops that she was the injured party, so they let her out on bail. A classic Chloe move. Always the victim."

Chris took the bottle, and without wiping the top, sipped at it, finally taking in the barrenness of her surroundings and the tone of her friend’s voice. "You sound bitter, has she done this kind of thing before?"

Shawn turned his head so it rested against the bars and his dark hair was smoothed along them. "Making herself into a victim? Constantly. That way she could not only play the ‘poor me and my terrible childhood’ card, as if anyone in Salem had ever had a good childhood without something terrible happening at some point, but also get all the guys flocking to her rescue."

Chris looked at him meditatively, "But not you?"

"Even me, at one point," he laughed slightly. "Even Belle once. Then Chloe fell in love, or claimed she did, with both my Uncle Philip-"

"The one who’s actually younger than you?" Chris interrupted.

"Yep, and my cousin Brady." Shawn finished.

"The one who is also Belle’s half brother but on through their father, so she’s not a blood relation to you?" Chris’s face expressed her depth of concentration. She didn’t know how they kept it all straight. Computers probably were needed to tell any engaged couple in Salem if they could legally be married, or if it was some kind of incest.

Shawn nodded sadly. "Yeah, so Chloe claimed she loved both of them…"

Flashback

"I love you, Chloe, I always have." Philip touched that beautiful hair of hers, letting the strands run through his fingers, knowing that he was losing her but unable to let go.

"I know, Philip," Chloe let tears come into her big blue eyes, "but we’ve changed, I’ve changed. When I first came to Salem, and I’d only just found my mother after my long and terrible childhood, I needed someone to be there for me. After my Ghoul Girl phase, you were there for me, Philip, and for that I will always be grateful, but can’t you see that we don’t need each other anymore?"

"I need you, Chloe," Philip was practically begging now.

"Oh, God, Philip," Chloe pulled away slightly, and put a hand to her forehead. "I love you, but I can’t be with you. It’s too hard. Too much has happened. Philip, I love you, but this is goodbye."

Philip’s head dropped, then he raised it slowly, his blue eyes more sad than angry. "Is it because of Brady?"

Chloe nodded slowly. "I love him too, and I have to give that love a chance. Philip, Brady understands my singing, he can help me. I don’t think we’re helping each other any more, Philip. We’re just hurting each other."

"I can’t let you walk away from me, Chloe. I love you." Philip was desperate now, and he took her hand in his, begging her to stay, not to break his heart.

"I’m sorry, Philip," Chloe allowed a single tear to roll down her cheek, and Philip caught it on his finger before it fell. "It’s over."

She walked away from him then, and into Brady’s open arms. "Brady, take me home. Please. I’m tired."

End of flashback

Chris looked unimpressed. "So boy lost girl to other boy, where’s the tragedy in that? Happens all the time."

"That wasn’t the end." Shawn put out a hand. "Give me back the bottle and I’ll tell you the rest."

"So tell me." She looked down at the face of her watch. "It’s at least an hour until sun up anyway."

"That was how Philip lost Chloe to Brady, but Chloe wasn’t satisfied with just having my uncle and cousin, oh no, she wanted all the boys in Salem High as well…"

Flashback

"Brady," his hand was in her hair, his lips on her neck, his earthy smell surrounded her and her own fingers were locked in his short blond curls. "I love you."

He pulled back for a moment and blue eyes stared into blue eyes. "I love you too, Chloe."

End of flashback

"Sounds nice to me," Chris tried to remember the last time she’d been in that position with a guy, realised it was Eddie and reached for the tequila bottle once more.

Shawn’s brown eyes were clouded with sarcasm. "Real nice, except two days later…"

Flashback

"Hi Henry," Chloe’s top was short and low cut, so low cut that Shawn could have sworn that Jan Spears had refused to wear it as it would look too slutty.

The boy was focused on Belle’s backside as she walked away, not realising Shawn was watching him watch his girlfriend. "Hi, Chloe."

"Henry," Chloe purred seductively, "I was wondering if you could help me."

"Huh?" His eyes flicked back, first to her face, then down, then after a long moment, back to her face, his lips now bearing a wide smirk.

"Yeah, uh," she shifted her arms to in front of her, so her already revealed cleavage became even more accentuated. "Just follow me."

End of flashback

Chris sighed. "Let me guess, she didn’t want help with her homework?"

"More like removing her bra straps," Shawn sounded bleak. To his disgust, Chloe had attempted to go through most of their senior year. Some had resisted, but others had fallen into her honeyed trap, and Brady had been hurt.

"Bitch," his new friend handed him back the tequila bottle. "How long until we get the hell out of here?"

"Forty-five minutes after sunrise, which is in," he stared at her watch through the gloom. "Ten minutes."

"So finish you story," Chris urged. "What happened? Did Brady find out?"

"Did he ever!" Shawn snorted, remembering that last day, when, in front of every regular of Dot Com, Brady had had his blue eyes opened. "Poor Brady."

Chris was on edge, the alcohol raising her spirits rather than dampening them. "So what the hell happened?"

"You really want to know? It’s sordid, nasty and doesn’t reflect well on the human race," Shawn teased.

"Just tell me," Chris sighed, settling back down and staring out of the small window that showed a sky just beginning to lighten as the dawn came.

Flashback

"Hi guys," Henry was grinning like a well fed tom cat.

"Henry," Shawn remembered all too well what he had seen in the Salem High halls, and was none, but unwilling to interfere in any business between lovers.

"Hey," Belle murmured, settling more closely than ever into her boyfriend’s side. Shawn kissed her temple, and worried.

Brady didn’t notice his girlfriend’s extra toothy smile as Henry came closer to her in the booth from where he was standing or his grin that told Shawn everything he needed to know.

"Hi Henry," Chloe purred, and leaned forwards a little to show her front off to its best advantage. "How’s life treating you today?"

"Mighty fine," Henry replied in a fake Southern accent. "And you, little missy?"

"Just perfect," Chloe’s smile widened further. "Would you care to join me?"

Belle noted the singular case, and felt a reassuring squeeze on her hand. Shawn had to, but it wasn’t their place to get in the middle of this.

"I sure would," Henry slid into the seat next to Chloe, the seat that Brady usually occupied, and, ignoring the couple opposite, started flirting more heavily with the brunette by his side.

Feeling more and more uncomfortable with Chloe’s behaviour, Shawn pulled Belle out of her seat and over to the CD rack, pretending to ask her advice about what to buy for his cousin Abby’s birthday, but in reality trying to get away from the adulterous pair in their usual booth.

Brady, just as Belle was suggesting that her boyfriend should give his cousin the Goo Goo Dolls’ album rather than that of Four Star Mary, walked back to their shared table, and found his girlfriend with her hand high up on Henry’s thigh, and Henry with his hands hidden somewhere under her coat.

"What the hell are you doing?" Their always volatile relationship was due for another volcanic explosion. Brady slammed the cups of coffee down, spilling the contents over his hands and not noticing the pain as Henry shifted guiltily away from Chloe, and she attempted to look innocent. "Answer me, damn it!" He barked, sounding uncannily like his father.

"Nothing, Brady," Chloe cooed trying to soothe him, "just talking."

Brady counted to ten before answering, remembering all of his anger management classes and what his therapist had said after he had been shot. It wasn’t helping much. His blue eyes burned with sapphire coloured fire. "It didn’t look like talking to me!"

"Is he your boyfriend?" Henry whispered to the panting Chloe and edgily eyeing Brady’s bulging muscles. "Chloe, you didn’t tell me you were involved with someone!"

"Chloe!" Brady was starting to see red. Nothing he had done in therapy had prepared him for a cheating girlfriend or her lies. "I’ll ask you again, what the hell have you been doing?"

"Just messing around," Henry babbled, "I swear, Brady, nothing serious. Just a little over the panties action."

"What?" Brady had been yelling, drawing the attention of the whole of Dot Com, but now his voice was dangerously low, and it sent shivers down Belle’s spine even though she knew her brother wasn’t dangerous, only occasionally misunderstood.

"Um, Henry, man," Shawn had come over as soon as Brady had begun to yell, and now jerked his head at his peer. Now, though understandably furious at Chloe, hurt for Brady, and ashamed "You’d better leave."

"Sure," Henry scooted as fast as he could past Brady, leaving Chloe by herself in the booth. "I swear man, I didn’t know!"

"Go!" Brady growled, fists clenched, colour rising up his neck into his cheeks and a vein throbbing in his temple. "Now Chloe," he started with admirable restraint, "are you going to tell me what the hell is going on or do I have to work it out for myself?"

Chloe stood up and tossed her hair over her shoulders. "I don’t have to take this from you!"
"That’s where you’re wrong, Chloe," Brady didn’t move, but his very presence was a threat. "You owe me an explanation, and I want to hear it now!"

End of flashback

Chris wondered if she could get a bowl of ice cream in the heat of the jail, but decided that she would never get service, so reached out for the bottle instead. "What did the bitch have to say for herself?"

"Not a whole lot that was interesting," Shawn was staring into the distance, watching his cousin’s heart break again and again as Chloe’s lies unravelled. "Everything came out then, about how she’d been chasing various boys at school behind Brady’s back, how she’d lied about where she’d been and what she’d been doing, and how she was still playing Brady and Philip off of each other. The usual stuff."

"Messy," Chris wondered what else to say. "So is Brady OK now? No longer heartbroken I mean."

"He’s dating again," Shawn thought about his cousin and then added, "The whole story about JT kind of hit him hard. He could accept that Marlena had clay feet, but not my mother and not John. They were meant to be perfect. Grams wrote last that he was dating a different girl every week since Penny left him to go to college. None last, but I guess that’s healthy for a guy barely out of his teens. So are you going to tell me about Edward?"

Chris laughed. "Oh, how he hates that name. I call him that just to irritate him. What is it about wannabe opera singers and messy relationship endings? They just seem to go together."

"That wasn’t an answer." Shawn put on his best psychiatrist voice, "Now tell me, what’s the story?"

Chris remembered an American quote she’d heard once. "Boy meets girl. Boy says he loves girl. Boy takes girl to bed. Boy gets drunk one night and hits girl. Girl walks out immediately. Boy sobers up and begs girl to come back to him. Girl refuses. Boy starts another fight. Both end up screwed up and miserable."

"You’re not screwed up," Shawn’s heart throbbed in sympathy. "Eddie was a git."

She considered this, and wrinkled her nose in disagreement. "You really think he was a pregnant camel? I mean, could anyone be that horrible?"

Shawn grinned, then made Chris laugh. "I don’t know, but I’ve met some pretty mean camels…"

"I did not say ‘loving’, Brady," Belle tried to be angry, but could only feel hurt. It was a bad hurt too, not a gentle one she could dismiss like a bad word said to her, but the feeling her soul was being torn into two pieces and she had only half left in her. It was like having the worst physical cut ever combined with the most hurt she had ever felt, and then multiplied until it was a thousand times worse than either.

"I know what I heard, Belle," her brother wouldn’t let go yet. He didn’t trust her not to keep running away from her feelings. "Tink, this isn’t healthy. None of these guys will make you forget Shawn."

She felt the tears in her eyes, making them look even bigger than usual, but refused to let them fall. "What makes you think I’m trying to forget him?"

"Because you haven’t any photos of him anywhere in our Loft, though all your other friends are on the walls, on the fridge," Brady chuckled, "heck, you even have a picture of Mimi and Philip on the bathroom mirror. Damn thing gives me a fright every time I start shaving."

"So maybe I am trying to forget him, he’s done a good job forgetting me." Belle felt the anger come at last, and used it to push down the pain. "He’s gone, and he left me here all alone. He wouldn’t do that if he still cared about me."

"Tink," Brady couldn’t believe his little sister really thought Shawn didn’t care about her anymore. Their parents encouraged it though, telling her that she couldn’t have a relationship with a man that was her half brother’s half brother, not caring that she and Shawn already shared a host of relations including Brady and her twin siblings. "He loves you. Damn it," he ran his long fingers through his blond hair in another helpless gesture of anger and misery, "you two were in love from diapers to dances. He hasn’t forgotten you, he could never forget you. He loves you, Belle, can’t you see that?"

"Then why did he leave?" Finally she let the tears come and in them found release at last. "Why did he leave me, Brady? Am I really so completely unlovable?"

He wept then too. How could she think she was unlovable? Everyone who knew her loved her, and because Stefano Dimera had messed with their father and Hope’s brains, his baby sister couldn’t believe she was worthy of love. "Tink." He hugged her tightly to him, unable to say more for a moment.

"Oh, Brady," Belle held him tighter than ever, finding consolation in her brother’s warmth. "What’s wrong with me?"

"Nothing’s wrong with you," Brady kissed the top of her head, then bent a little, his blue eyes seeking for hers. "Shawn just couldn’t stay here, Tink. He just couldn’t. You were…"

How could he say it? How could he tell his little sister that she had behaved horribly, and had worried him more than ever before with her wild behaviour.

"You were gone, Tink," he said at last, feeling another sob pass from her chest into his. "Shawn couldn’t stay when you were gone, Belle. There was nothing here for him, and it was hurting him too much. God, you only had to look at him to know that. It was killing him, Tink, being here, watching you, knowing that he couldn’t reach out for you the way he once had. He was losing weight, not sleeping," Brady remembered the terrible way his cousin had left before leaving. Haunted, empty, and, worst of all, completely lost. He had never seen anyone so lost. It was as if his leading light had gone out, and all he could see was the darkness that enveloped him. Choking back a sob, he went on, "You made it clear you wanted nothing more to do with him, Tink, and now he’s just obeying your wishes."

"But I want him back, Brady!" Belle wailed into her brother’s chest. "I can’t live without him!"

"I know, Tink," Brady’s tears mingled with hers. "I know."

"How do I get him to come back to me, Braid?" Belle was desperate, her tears had stopped and her little body quivered with fear and remorse.

Brady hated doing this to her, but she had pushed Shawn away again and again, and now he was gone, no longer at her beck and call. "I don’t know that you can, Tink."

"What?" Belle was shocked into disbelief. "I have to, I just have to!"

"Isabella," she knew he was being deadly serious as he used her full name, "it isn’t up to you anymore. It’s up to Shawn. You can beg and you can plead, but if he doesn’t forgive you there’s nothing more you can do."

"I can wait," Belle pushed out her chin, and with a grim determination in her heart, let her gaze meet her brother’s. "I can wait until time runs out and eternity ends and the seas turn to dust, but he will come back to me. He has to."

Brady shook his head. He could only hope she was right. He couldn’t bear to see her like this.

"You need to see a therapist, Tink," he sighed, "and not your mother. You never grieved for your baby."

The chin quivered, but became firm again. "Not yet," she answered him, "but I will soon, very soon."

Shawn leaned his head on his hand and stared up through the small window to the fading stars of the night sky. It was almost dawn. Chris was on the brink of a sleep induced by alcohol. The stars were brighter than ever, calling to him as the horizon began to turn a yellow grey as the sun slowly rose. Chris settled more comfortably, and slept.

"Are you listening, Belle?" he whispered, "Can you hear me, love?"

A slow smile spread across his handsome face, one tinged with bitterness and regret. "If you’re listening, Isabella, hear me tonight. "Whoa! My love, my darling,
I hunger for your touch,
Alone. Lonely time.
And time goes by, so slowly,
And time can do so much,
Are you still mine?
I need your love.
I need your love.
God speed your love to me.
Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea,
To the open arms of the sea.
Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me,
I'll be coming home, wait for me.
Whoa… My love, my darling,
I hunger, hunger!, for your love,
For love. Lonely time.
And time goes by, so slowly,
And time can do so much,
Are you still mine?
I need your love.
I need your love.
God speed your love to me."

Shawn Douglas Brady watched as the sun rose over Cadiz and felt pain insufferable in his heart, and wept.

At the same moment in time, though in a different country and in the middle of the night for her, Belle’s heart thumped louder in her chest in response, and tears, bitter and regretful tears, flowed down her beautiful cheeks.

"Come back to me Shawn," she whispered into the loneliness of the night. "I need your love…"

 

Song Credit: 'Unchained Melody' by the Righteous Brothers.

Chapter 7 'Cause When It Comes To Being Lucky She’s Cursed

The plane ride home had been easy on Salem’s ‘We Go Anywhere Anytime’ Airlines, and the wait for the luggage on the carousel had been a short one. She could see Brady’s blond head across the reception area, and pulled harder on the luggage strap.

"Welcome home," a deep, masculine voice said and she was embraced by a pair of warm arms that gave her comfort as well as love. "How was you trip?"

She grimaced, blinking her blue eyes and looking up at him almost coyly. "Not too great."

"I’m sorry," he let her go, and ruffled her hair a little. "Ready to go home?"

She smiled, showing white teeth between rose pink lips. "Definitely."

"Shawn?" Mark thumped his bunk mate’s bed. "Wakey wakey boy!"

Shawn shot straight up in bed, moving from sleep to full consciousness almost instantly. "What?"

"Your turn for the watch," Mark rolled into the bed and started snoring immediately.

"Thanks," Shawn murmured, groping for the edge of the bed, then swinging himself out to dress. It was going to be a long night in the middle of the Atlantic, one where thoughts of Belle would not be kept far from his mind. Shrugging on his clothes, Shawn went in search of coffee, trying to think of Chris’s smile rather than Belle’s lips, and knowing he would never succeed.

"So are you back for long?" Brown eyes met blue. She smiled, showing white teeth.

"Not long, I’m going to New York soon," he smiled back. She ducked her head a little, "How have you been doing? I was worried after I heard from Hope about Penny’s engagement."

He shrugged. "I’m OK. I mean, it’s not like we were still together. We agreed to be just friends."

The unthinking words sent the smile shivering off her face, to be replaced by a fake grin.

He grimaced. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories for you."

"It’s OK," she sighed, "high school is over, I just have to keep reminding myself of that."

"Have you seen him recently?" He smiled as her eyes sparkled.

The white teeth flashed again. "No, but his mother said something about his coming home at Christmas."

"So how do you feel about that?" She shrugged. She missed her high school boyfriend. It would be good to see him again. Anymore than that was in the lap of the Gods.

"You sound like a psychiatrist, Brady," Chloe meowed from behind them. "Although, you always did need a therapist, Mimi."

"Look what the cat dragged in," Mimi tossed bouncy brown curls over one shoulder and stared up at Chloe, her eyes narrowing as her enemy moved closer to Brady.

"Lockhart," Chloe acknowledged.

"Lane," Mimi looked her up and down slowly, making sure that neither of her hands touched Brady. "It’s been a while."

"Not long enough," Brady put on a fake smile to greet his ex-girlfriend.

Chloe leaned forwards a little, anger flashing in her eyes and hurt in her tone. "Brady, is that anyway to talk to an old friend?"

"No," Brady’s smile changed to a wicked grin. "But it’s a great way to talk to a slut like you."

Mimi didn’t even try to suppress her laugh. Chloe’s face turned red, then paled.

She flounced away, back to Craig who stood watching them, fury burning within her. "I’ll get you yet," she swore under her breath, "and your little sister too!"

"Hey, Brady," Mimi murmured, "you OK?"

She laid a reassuring hand on his larger one.

"Fine, Mimi," Brady’s smile became real and warm. "I was a little worried that when I saw her again, I’d feel sadness, or regret, or something equally inappropriate, but all I can think of now is how pleased I am to be away from her."

"That a boy," Mimi grinned, happy that Brady didn’t still want Chloe. "So how’s Belle?"

The smile on his face wavered a little. "Not so great. The whole mess between our dad and Shawn’s Mom, JT, and then losing Shawn, it really screwed her up. She’s still in love with him."

Mimi nodded slowly. "It would be stranger if she wasn’t."

The night was cold, colder than Shawn had expected, and he shivered as he moved along the deck of the ship. Coffee, that’s what he need, coffee, and lots of it.

He moved towards the machine, and with a mental thrust pushed back Belle’s image.

"The receipt’s in the bag, thank you," the shop assistant in Ballistix handed over Belle’s bag, and smiled. The small blonde in front of her was one of their best customers, and the daughter of John Black who’s company designed an entire line for them.

"Thank you," Belle smiled back, and turned to leave the shop, but before she could, she came face to face with someone she hadn’t ever wanted to see again.

"Stefano," the word came out curtly, but Stefano in his turn was the soul of politeness.

"My dear Miss Black," he practically purred, "it’s so good to see you."

"I’d say ‘likewise’," she shot back, "but I’d be lying. What do you want, Dimera? I can’t believe you’re here for the clothes."

"No, Isabella, I’m not." He smiled at her sickeningly sweetly.

"Then what?" She almost pushed past him, but he put out a hand to stop her.

"I’ve come to tell you the truth," his smile faded into a serious expression. "I lied."

"There’s a surprise!" Belle muttered.

"John is not JT’s father," the bombshell hit Belle with such a force that every sassy remark she could think of was wiped from her mind.

"Pardon?" Belle’s ladylike demeanour held up under incredible strain.

"I said, Isabella, that your father is not the father of JT." Stefano fixed a pleasant expression onto his face. "It has been lovely seeing you, but I must rush. Goodbye."

He left Belle reeling from the shock.

In which state Chloe found her having been dropped off at Salem Place to do a little shopping by Craig.

"If it isn’t Little Miss Too Perfect to be True, Belle Black," the brunette drawled as she stalked from the doorway of Dot Com towards Belle.

"And if it isn’t Miss ‘Screw Me, I’m Salem’s Biggest Ho’, Chloe Lane," Belle retorted quickly, incensed by her meeting with the Stef.

Chloe’s jaw dropped. "How dare you?"

"How dare I? How about how dare you, you opera singing, self centred, breast baring, boyfriend screwing, cheap perfume wearing whore?" Belle was fairly aloof, spitting the words rather than yelling them, and her effect on Chloe was spectacular.

She turned first pale, then pink, then scarlet. "At least my ex-boyfriend didn’t leave me for foreign parts and foreign bitches!"

"No, he dumped you because he couldn’t stand the sight of you after you went after practically every other boy in Salem High," Belle spat back.

"I…" Chloe tried to find an argument against that, and found it to be too true to refute. Knowing that the best defence was offence, she changed tack. She dropped her voice and leaned forwards. "I saw Shawn the other day."

Belle stiffened, her jaw went out and her blue eyes narrowed.

Shawn felt his blood begin to run hotter in his veins, but put it down to the caffeine in his hand.

"Where?" The word came out with more longing in it than Belle had intended.

"Wrapped up in the arms of some gorgeous young Spanish senorita," Chloe told her, an expression of mockery on her face, "and looking very happy about it."

She didn’t mention that Shawn had leapt to the defence of his ex-fiancée, that he had been landed in jail for the fight that had ensued, or that he had broken Eddie’s jaw.

"Very cosy, in fact." Chloe gave her that feline smile again. "That’s just like a sailor, though, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I suppose you’d know all about him having a girl in every port."

"As opposed to going after every guy in town?" she snorted back. The remembrance of Brady and Philip’s pain when she was in high school was still strong.

"He told me he loved her," Chloe’s smile became real then. Belle looked devastated.

Belle’s heart was confused. How could he come back to her if he was in love with someone else? This was all wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

Shawn clutched a hand to his chest suddenly. The sudden, strange pain was back. He knew what it was. It was Belle. She was hurt. He didn’t want to push her image away anymore, he didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want to forget her, he just wanted her. "I love you, Belle," he whispered to himself, and the pain eased.

Belle’s heart did a little jump as her brain became logical once more.

"You’re lying."

"What?" Chloe was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this. Belle had believed her a moment before, what had happened? Her wonderful plot of revenge had gone wrong. "It’s the truth. I’m not lying."

"Oh give it up, Chloe! I’m not a boy that you can pout and flutter your eyelashes at, and I know what you just said isn’t true. He doesn’t love her, he loves me!" Belle took one step forwards, and smiled cruelly, "And do you know what, Diva? I am loved in a way by him even when we’re apart and alone that you will never be by anyone, no matter how close you get. And do you know why, Chlo?"

Chloe was suddenly afraid. Everything was turning to dust and ashes around her. What she had seen as her perfect life was crumbling. First she and Eddie had lost their concert tour in Cadiz because of the brawl in the bar, then Eddie had been landed in the hospital by Shawn’s steel right fist and her bed had been emptied, then Brady had thrown her approaches back in her face, and Mimi, Mimi the girl she had lorded it over in high school, had taunted her, and now Belle Black, who ought to be as the sand beneath her chariot wheels, wasn’t afraid of her or her bullying ways. Where had she gone wrong? "Why?" she asked at last, afraid of an answer that might be all too true.

"Because, Chloe, you’ve made yourself unlovable. Sure, you’ll have poor saps trailing after you for a few years, but when your looks fade, and you grow old, haggard and thin, you’re going to be alone. I’m not. I’m going to have Shawn. That’s the difference between us. I’m going to have my happy ever after life, and you," Belle looked her up and down as if she was a piece of rotting meat, "You, my dear, are going to find out what loneliness really means."

With that, Belle turned on her heel and stalked away through Salem Place, leaving a devastated Chloe in her wake.

In the middle of the Atlantic ocean, as the dawn began behind him, Shawn Douglas smiled. Things were going to be all right, maybe…

Chapter 8 But When It Comes To Being Loved She's First

Belle read and re-read the letter Shawn had sent his grandmother Caroline from Cadiz. He was happy at last, and his letter was full of praise for Spain, his friend Mark who apparently did nothing but woo girls and drink, and a beautiful Spanish senorita called Chris. Presumably the girl Chloe had seen him with that night. Christina, according to Shawn, was perfect, pretty, intelligent and fun to be around. Belle occasionally felt a pang of jealousy in her heart, loath as she was to admit it, but the memory of Chloe’s words acted against, rather than for her jealousy. He loved her. She felt that now, though their connection was tremulous sometimes, she believe he loved her still. As she loved him.

She picked up his latest letter to Alice, written on board the ship he lived on, and scanned the lines adoringly. He was half way across the Atlantic, working hard, and had risen in the ranks in those long two and a half years apart to lieutenant.

The last lines made her heart beat faster. He was coming home, Shawn was finally coming home. Belle’s loneliness was terrible. Having lost their baby, their families, and having half their friends travel across the country, it felt good to know that, after so long, she was getting her Tough Boy back. Perhaps he could forgive her for everything she had done to him, and she could forgive him for leaving her. Perhaps they could find love again. She wanted that so badly. Needed it, in fact. Her therapist told her that she had unresolved issues. She knew of only one unresolved issue: Shawn’s love for her. She needed closure or continuance, this limbo hurt. Therefore, knowing that he was coming back was a balm to her wounded soul. She smiled happily and put the letter away again.

Hope was happy too, happier than the whole of Salem had seen her since that fateful summer night. Her eldest son, her first born, was coming home. Her marriage with Bo, rocky for so long, was back on track, and JT and Isaac lived with them, a happy family once again. The only thing missing was Shawn, preferably with Belle.

Shawn ran down the gangway of the ship and out onto the dock, his large bag banging on his back as he raced past Mark and his other shipmates, hurrying to catch his plane, heart full of hopes and fears. Salem was calling, and so was Belle. It had been too long.

"Going somewhere Brady?" Mark bellowed after him.

"Home!" Shawn yelled back, knowing full well that Mark had known where he was going for the past three months and was only starting the conversation to wind him up.

"Not Cadiz, then?" Mark smiled his crooked grin at him and Shawn nearly laughed. His long standing friendship with the gorgeous Chris had led to much ribbing on board the ship. She was his life line. They exchanged letters almost daily, phone calls whenever he was in port, and since that first stop in Cadiz, he had seen her five times in eighteen months. Yet both their hearts still ached, and Shawn’s friendship with Mark was the lighter hearted of the two relationships, if the less deep.

"Salem, you idiot." Shawn turned around and began to run again, throwing over his shoulder just as he turned the corner, "Drop in sometime, but warn me first! I don’t want my great grandmother finding you stone drunk on the front porch!"

"Bye Brady! Kiss Alice for me!" Shawn ran for it. If he stayed with Mark, he would never get home to Salem, or possibly he would take home a whore that he would never bed and a bottle of whisky.

He landed in Salem and wondered where to go first, and if Belle would be the same as he had left her. He hadn’t realised the memories would be quite so fresh, so raw, and as he wandered across Salem Place remembering everything that had happened to him since he had last been there. Remembering everything he had lost, Shawn felt his eyes fill with tears. It had been two and a half years, but still the images that had haunted him then remained with him. He kept seeing himself and Belle as happy parents, watching a tiny baby boy grow into a bouncing, rambunctious toddler, and JT progress, as the child of his parents and not Hope and John, into the finest baseball player in the family. No matter what the ghosts showed him, he was always with Belle, whether she was laughing or crying, she was always there with him.

So wrapped up in his memories was he, that when Shawn first glimpsed a beautiful blonde in a light blue sundress walking along with a small boy holding her hand tightly, he half believed he was dreaming of Belle and their son again. Then he saw a tall, elegant woman with brown hair and a model’s figure, bring another small boy of the same age along behind the blonde, and he realised he wasn’t dreaming. It was his mother, his brother, his adopted brother, and Belle. He could barely believe it. The boys were so big, and his mother looked younger than ever, but Belle had changed the most. He had left a girl who ran around town in a leather mini skirt and red strapless top that exposed her midriff, and had returned to find an innocent looking girl in a blue sundress that fell to her knees with a high, sweetheart neckline. The breath caught in his throat as he stared at her, drinking her image in. Then she turned, the sunlight kissing her hair and highlighting the blue eyes he had missed almost as much as he had missed her warm voice. Shawn had to lean against a wall as he watched Belle smile and laugh, as he had so often dreamed she would do with him, and his knees half buckled beneath him.

Then he couldn’t help himself, he stepped into the sunlight and crossed Salem Place. He stopped short though, as he saw a blond young man ran up to Belle, flinging his arms around her and swinging her around. She laughed, kissing him on the cheek and holding him closely to her. Jealousy shot through Shawn’s body like fire in his blood. She had forgotten him after all, gone on without him. The undying love she had sworn to him had died. He wouldn’t cry, he wouldn’t allow himself to despair. He couldn’t expect to be able to waltz back into Belle’s life and sweep her up in his arms as if nothing had happened. He had left her behind. She had had to go on. He had been so stupid to leave her, but then he had had no choice. It was his life or hers, and he had chosen his own. Perhaps it was the wrong decision, it didn’t matter anymore. It had been made. Now there was one last choice: did he fight for his Belle or did he let her go?

Belle turned her head and thought she glimpsed Shawn as he wandered through Salem Place, but dismissed the idea as he wasn’t due home from the Merchant Marines for another week. Her imagination had been running wild, coming up with every conceivable scenario for his return, from finding him engaged to a pregnant and glowingly happy Chris, to his begging her to forgive him and them setting off on a round the world cruise aboard his boat, ‘The Perfect Girl’. Then Isaac tugged her hand and she was brought back to reality, dismissing her fleeting vision of Shawn as nothing more than her mind playing tricks on her.

The Brady Pub was a buzzing hive of activity when Shawn strolled in, his leather jacket more beaten than ever slung lazily across one shoulder and his bag, filled with souvenirs from every port he had stopped in for the past two and a half years, clutched in his hand. The earring that had so infuriated his parents on his return from boarding school so many years before was still there, glinting in the light, though he had had to remove it when the Merchant Marines had parades or had been called up for inspection. He wore it now as a tribute to his predecessor sailors, whose earrings were not for show, but for the price of their funerals if they drowned at sea and were washed ashore. He was older, firmer around the edges, more muscular and with a face that belied his sufferings. Only his eyes showed that life had not always been a perfect delight to him.

"What’s a guy got to do to get a double cheeseburger with a side of fries and a chocolate milkshake around here?" Shawn called out jokingly. Caroline dropped a plate, spinning around to see her favourite wandering grandson returned in spectacular glory.

"Shawn D.? Is that really you?" Her hand flew to her mouth and she gasped. He had never looked so much like his father.

"Hey Grandma," Shawn said softly as he wrapped his gentle loving arms around her. "I missed you."

"My darling boy," Caroline’s arms gripped him hard, calling at the same time for the rest of the Brady clan. "you’re home, at last you’re home."

Shawn was cuddled and kissed and slapped on the back by more people than he could count. He accepted his father, his mother, the once believed situation between her and John Black, and the various confused lines of their family tree with equanimity and grace. They had expected an angry young man, even the return of the rebel Shawn, but instead found a gentle, kind young man who was as willing as his parents to set things right. His maturity surprised them, but Shawn could have told them that from his friendship with Mark, it had become necessary for him to quickly mature or get trapped into a vicious circle of being a moronic jerk only interested in girls and drink, without Mark’s charm, for the rest of his life.

He had eaten, half starved after his trip with only air plane food, the most disgusting concoctions imaginable, to sustain him, and now he wanted to see his mother and his brothers, but most of all his Belle. He had to stop thinking like that, she was no longer ‘his’ if she ever had been. She was her own person, possibly with a boyfriend and a new life, a new life he had no part in. Burying his emotions deep, Shawn stepped away from his family to make a phone call, but as he made his way past Caroline and Shawn senior, the door of the Pub swung open and in walked his mother, JT, Isaac and his beautiful Belle… on her arm was a handsome guy of about twenty five, with dark blond hair and very good looks. They said their farewells to Hope, and stayed for just long enough for Shawn to watch their comfortable touches and movements and feel ill.

Reaching the phone and dialling up Chris’s number, his heart breaking inside his chest as he pretended not to see Belle grasp her new beau firmly around the waist and smile up at him, Shawn prayed she would pick up quickly. She answered his call almost instantly and her first words put his trademark grin back on his face.

"If this isn’t Tom Cruise or my favourite look alike Tom Cruise, I’m going back to my soap opera," she growled lazily into the mouth piece.

"Hey Chris," Shawn said with more happiness than he felt. "How are you?"

"I’m good baby, how are you? Back in Salem mooning over that girl again?" Chris was reading the Spanish subtitles of ‘Hours of Our Existence’ while talking to him, rooting for her favourite two characters, Izzy and Douglas, to finally admit their feelings to each other.

"I’m good. I’m not mooning as such, more just feeling my heart break again," Shawn sighed as the blond guy walk back out of the Pub with Belle under one arm. There had been a time, for about five minutes when he had got exceptionally drunk with Mark, when he thought he could replace Belle with Chris. Now he knew it was a fantasy. There was no one but Belle for him.

"What?" Chris half yelled. "What did she do this time?"

"Moved on without me." Shawn allowed just a little of his emotion to enter his voice, and instantly regretted it.

"I’ll see you tonight," Chris barked into the mouthpiece. "Bye."

"Chris, baby, wait!" Shawn half shouted at her.

He slammed down the phone and turned to face his family, his smile fixed back into place. "Hi Mom," he said softly as his mother turned around to face her baby boy all grown up.

"Shawn? I thought you weren’t back for another week yet!" Hope hung back, unsure if he wanted her to hug him or not after all that had happened before he left, but her fears were dispelled when Shawn’s warm arms were flung about her, and he rocked her in his embrace. He had forgiven her, and that was all she needed to know.

Releasing her reluctantly, Shawn knelt down to the level of JT and Isaac, "Don’t you two remember me? Doesn’t your big brother get a hug?"

"Shawn D.!" They yelled together, rushing to him and latching onto him like limpets. "You’re home!"

Shawn felt a little better when his brothers were in his arms, and his mother’s heart was warmed to see her children becoming so close. It had been a long separation, but now that Shawn Douglas was home at last, perhaps happiness was not too far away. She held Bo closely to her, happy once more in her love for him, and could only pray that Shawn and Belle would be able to reunite as joyfully as her family had done.

Chris walked down the steps of the plane from Cadiz, belonging to the We Fly Anywhere Anytime Airlines, patented to that small mid-west town, and finished the short trip to America quietly plotting how to put Shawn and Belle back together and meet the rather gorgeous Mark again as well. She liked Shawn, but it was very evident that his heart belonged to Belle and always would. If she couldn’t find Mark, then perhaps Belle’s new beau would do. Now there was an idea…

Shawn was there waiting for her. She had called him from the plane, asking him to pick her up from the airport so she could brief him on her plan. She hugged him gently, noting the pain in his face as he told her of Belle’s new boyfriend.

The hello and how are you greetings over with, Chris didn’t waste any time telling Shawn exactly what she thought they should do. "Pretend I’m your girlfriend, that we’re madly in love and make Belle insanely jealous. We could even pretend that I’m pregnant."

"What happens if Belle doesn’t get jealous? If she’s really happy with this new guy of hers, whoever he is, and she just says good on us?" Shawn started gnawing at his lower lip and Chris quickly rethought her plan. "Then what do we say about the baby? I don’t even want to think about what it felt like to lose a child last time."

"I’ll seduce the new guy." She said at last, as Shawn drove Bo’s car back to Salem Place.

"No!" Shawn protested instantly, pushing away the image of Chris slinking her way towards the blonde bimbo Belle had fallen for. "I know you’re trying to help, but that is an even worse idea. I can’t let you prostitute yourself and if she really loves this guy, it would break Belle’s heart."

"Shawn, you’re a sweetie, but if we’re going to get you back with Belle, you can’t be so moral." Chris pinched his cheek and went back to her thoughts. "How about I just drag Belle into one corner and convince her that you and her are meant to be together?"

"It’s better than your other plans, but still no!" Shawn was beginning to become desperate. Chris’s plans were wild, but not so wild that he would not give them a second thought.

He pulled up outside of the Pub, running around the front of the car to open Chris’s door for her, and led her inside to show her his home town and his family.

"Is this it?" Chris asked impatiently. "Where’s the Princess?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Shawn asked her petulantly. "I’ve been out for the past hour picking you up."

"Come on, sweetie," Chris put her arm through Shawn’s. "Let’s make an entrance."

Shawn muttered under his breath, but allowed himself to be carried along by Chris’s tide of enthusiasm. Entering the Brady Pub once again, this time with the Spanish girl on his arm, Shawn searched desperately for Belle. He could see the back of her head, and her shoulders with the blond guy’s arm resting across them.

"Kiss me, Shawn, make the girl jealous," Chris said quickly as she watched his eyes change from their usual chocolate colour to emerald green.

"No, I’ll just go say hello and if she cuts me dead, I’ll introduce you as my girlfriend and see her reaction, OK?" Shawn stared intensely into her dark eyes for a moment, and she closed and opened her eyes slowly to show her agreement.

Shawn released her, and walked slowly over to Belle and her new beau.

"Hello Belle."

She spun around, her blue eyes intense and focused on him.

Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t expected him for another week. She wasn’t mentally prepared to face him. She was trying not to drool as she answered, "Shawn…"

"How have you been?" He asked her uncomfortably, shifting around as he stood.

"Fine… Um, you remember my brother Eric, don’t you?" Staring across, with clear vision at last, Shawn felt incredibly stupid. He had been such a fool. He was jealous of her brother!

His face turning a little pink, he managed to say without a stammer, "Of course, hi Eric."

"Shawn, sweetheart," the word made an expression Shawn wasn’t sure how to read flicker across Belle’s face. It couldn’t have been jealous anger, could it? "Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?" Chris moved up behind him and rested her chin on Shawn’s shoulder, smiling down at Belle and Eric.

"Yeah, uh, this is Belle and her half brother Eric," Shawn stressed the word brother, but he needn’t have bothered. Chris was totally enchanted by Eric’s eyes, and probably would have gone after him even if Belle had been dating him. "Eric, Belle, this is my friend Chris. She’s from Cadiz in Spain."

Chris stuck out one hand to shake Eric’s, but he took it in his and kissed it gently. She nearly fainted clean away.

"Uh, Chris," Shawn started, taking his eyes off Belle just long enough to give her a knowing glance.

"Mm?" She replied dreamily, still staring into Eric’s eyes.

"Chris, if you don’t let go of Eric’s hand, he can’t finish eating." Shawn gently moved Chris’s hand out of Eric’s, but she wasn’t paying attention. He jerked his head at Belle, and they left Chris and Eric staring at each other like they had just found their soul mates.

"So is Chris your girlfriend?" Privately, Belle hoped the answer would be no, almost as much for her brother’s sake as for her own.

Shawn shook his head, and smiled a little. Belle didn’t hate him completely if she was talking to him. It was a start. "No, she’s just a friend."

Something in those five little words struck to Belle’s heart. A memory from high school of Shawn’s constant repetition of the phrase galled her. "Like we were just friends?" She spat abruptly, taking Shawn by surprise.

"No, Belle, Chris and I are good friends, but not like we were." Shawn didn’t know what had gone wrong.

"Clear off, Shawn! You can’t just waltz back into my life and expect me to welcome you with open arms!" Belle’s blue eyes burned with a fury that was fuelled by jealousy. He had left, found new friends and travelled to exotic places, while she had remained in Salem, lonely and dissipate. Her therapist would have been disappointed in her, but the wall of anger and hurt she had so carefully constructed and then tried to destroy was not so easily overcome.

"I don’t expect you to do that," he was trying to be gentle, trying to take her hand and get her to look into his eyes when he should have realised they needed one massive argument to clear the air between them. They had left so much unresolved, though neither would admit it. He had left her, she had pushed him away, both were to blame, and neither wanted to admit their own share in the downfall of their relationship. The hurt both had felt needed soothing, but the anger needed to be run through. They were both proud, and because love had not been enough the first time, now they wondered if it could ever be enough.

"Well don’t even think about it!" Belle turned on her heel, not even sure why she was angry anymore and stormed out of the Pub. Shawn chased after her, trying to explain if he could why he wanted her back.

Feelings neither had expected were brought forth as they moved. It was easy to love one another when they didn’t see each other, when they weren’t being reminded of impassioned words and the hurt that had come later. Realising they had failed in their love was hard, seeing the pain of the failure in the other’s eyes was harder still. After all they had been through, a simple ‘I love you’ wouldn’t solve things.

"Belle, please," he began, stopping in the doorway as she paused at the curb side.

And, worst of all for their love, neither had found comfort in the other at the loss of their child. All they saw now was the memory of the worst time in their lives, and to share doubled the pain, not halving it as it should have done. She saw in him the man who had abandoned her when she needed him most, who had taken her virginity and left her wounded and broken. He saw in her the woman he had once loved more than life itself, but who had rejected him time and again, and perhaps had never loved him as he had loved her.

"No, Shawn." Belle looked at him with no love in her eyes, only hate. Her wounded pride was taking control, burying her heart’s real feelings behind a wall that he would have to break through if he was ever to win her back. "You left. You ran off and had adventures. I had to pick up the pieces of my shattered life here. You can’t understand what it’s like to have a broken heart and no one to care."

She didn’t wait for his answer, running away from him. She didn’t hear his last uttered words. Perhaps if she had, everything would have been different.

Shawn’s chocolate brown eyes were dull with pain, and his vision was blurred by the tears that rose in them unbidden, unwanted and unheeded by her. His voice was low and husky, not sexy but broken and raw with emotion, "But I do, Belle. I have a heart, I know I do, because you broke it, and you were the only one who really could care. You took my heart, you took my everything, you left me a shell, and now you don’t even want that."

Chapter 9 Baby, I’ll Try to Love Again, But I Know

How do you win back the girl of your dreams when both your hearts are shattered into a thousand pieces possibly beyond healing? Shawn repeated the question to himself again and again.

He had hoped Chris could help, but she had fallen madly in love with Belle’s half brother Eric at first sight. Forgotten were her friend’s problems, lost in the depths of a pair of blue eyes. He was happy for her, he really was. Chris was a good person, she deserved love, and Eric, after the Hell he and his family had been through, deserved someone to love and to be loved by, but it made Shawn feel isolated and lonely. When he had felt like this in Salem before, he had run to Belle. When he was at boarding school, he had isolated himself, putting up the barriers and walls that had turned him into the rebel that Belle had hated so much on his return. Shawn smiled a little, but it was a sad and bitter twist to his lips. There was no memory he had that he did not connect to his Isabella in some way. She was his world, his reality, his life, and now she hated him with a greater passion than he had felt possible for such a loving girl. He had to change that hate to love, or his heart would die within his breast as surely as if struck with a sword blade.

He had tried the previous night to forget her. He had gone to the Cheatin’ Heart Bar, drunk something and wrapped his arms around a tall woman who couldn’t have looked less like Belle. They had danced, but he couldn’t remember the song. It had been slow. He knew that. He had held her close, smelt her hair, felt her fingers tease the back of his neck, and her arms slide against his, but it had meant nothing. He still loved Belle, she was the love of his life, and no matter how much he loved her and hated her, there was still only one of her.

Wandering through the chilled air, he saw his beautiful Belle sitting on a park bench, alone and disconsolate, a breeze fluttering her soft hair around her face, and the sunlight reflecting off it so it looked like the finest spun gold thread. Shawn walked over to her slowly, his leather jacket keeping his body warm, though his heart felt cold. He had waited two days for this, and he hoped she would not be in a fury with him still.

He flopped down into the seat beside her. "Belle, I need to talk to you."

Her eyes narrowed, and she took on the aspect of a wet and hissing cat, "Well I don’t want to talk to you. You can not come back and expect me to fall into your arms, Shawn, because it’s not going to happen. You broke my heart when you left. I can’t forget that."

"You aren’t totally innocent in all this either Belle!" Shawn exploded at last, against all of his better judgement, his Irish Greek temper getting the better of him just when he knew he should have stayed calm. "If I’d stayed, what do you think would have happened? You were dating every guy in town, getting drunk, for all I knew you were on drugs. We lost our baby and you lost your mind. I tried to help you, but you wouldn’t let me near you, and it was breaking my heart to see you like that. Would you have changed or would you have still been the same even now? Belle, can’t you see, I had to leave, otherwise I don’t know what would have happened."

She stared at him coldly, an ice maiden again, her heart locked up tight. "You left because you couldn’t cope. I was here by myself picking up the pieces of a life that had been ruined. I lost my baby, I don’t remember you having anything to do with it except for that cheap encounter we had in my bedroom, when you took my virginity and left me pregnant."

Shawn was desperate to say the right thing, but when he looked at Belle and heard her words, he heard the truth. He had left her when she had lost their baby. She had carried it, not him, and the effect on her was far more devastating. He forgot all the reasons why he had left and remembered only abandoning his best friend, his soul mate, in her hour of need. It was his fault. It had to be his fault. Perhaps he should stop trying to win her back. He had done nothing but cause her pain for so long. Perhaps it was best if he left forever, cut his ties and returned to the sea leaving Belle to enjoy her new life alone. He stood up slowly, feeling as if he had taken a huge weight upon his shoulders, and walked slowly away from Belle, head bent in despair.

Later, when she had gone home and found the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream she kept specially for when she started thinking about Shawn, Belle flipped her blonde hair over one shoulder and thought about what she had done, all of her rage drained out of her.

Then she started banging her head against the pink painted wall of her bedroom. She had been so stupid. She should have realised that Shawn was trying to make amends, to get back together, and she had thrown that chance away, twice. He still loved her, or had done when he had come back for her, but she might have killed that love now. She banged her head a little harder, the pain from the blows to the wall nothing compared to the pain in her heart. She would go to him, get down on her knees if she had to, and beg him to listen to her. She didn’t care about dignity anymore. She didn’t need her pride, it had never done her any good. Perhaps it wasn’t even pride, perhaps it was vanity. She had been suffering from prejudice too long. She should just go up to him, tell him that she had always loved him even though they shared a brother, and kiss him like there was no tomorrow. Scarlett O’Hara’s words echoed through Belle’s mind, ‘Tomorrow is another day,’ but then so did Rhett’s, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ She was praying to God that he didn’t tell her that. Yet would he have returned to her if he didn’t care anymore? Maybe he had just come to see his family again, there had been no contact between them for two and a half years, perhaps he had found he didn’t really love her. Perhaps…

Brady opened her bedroom door with a hard push, interrupting her thoughts. She switched her radio on and pretended the banging sound had come from her dancing hard on the wooden part of the floor. It had to be a song about heartbreak that played first.

"I would have given you all of my heart
but there's someone who's torn it apart
and he's taking almost all that I've got
but if you want, I'll try to love again
baby I'll try to love again but I know…"

She scowled at him, "Don’t you ever knock?"

"I’ve been knocking for the past ten minutes, Tink, you just weren’t answering." Brady tugged her blonde hair teasingly and Belle stared into her brother’s ice blue eyes with tears in her own. Brady finished more seriously, "So I hear a certain Shawn Douglas Brady is back in town."

Belle nodded her head slowly. "I saw him earlier."

"So?" Brady raised an eyebrow at her, giving her one of those looks.

"The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest"

Belle tried to lie to him, she really did, but the words wouldn’t come.

"'cause when it comes to being lucky he's cursed
when it comes to lovin' me he's worst
but when it comes to being loved he's first
that's how I know,"

Brady saw the torment in his baby sister’s eyes, and hated it. With a single step forwards, he came within reach of her, and he held out his arms to her offering comfort if not solace.

"The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest
I still want you by my side
just to help me dry the tears that I've cried
cause I'm sure gonna give you a try
and if you want, I'll try to love again
but baby, I'll try to love again, but I know…"

"Brady, how can I tell him that I never stopped loving him when I hate his guts at the same time?" Belle collapsed onto her brother. "I get lost in him, I think he’s my soul mate, the one I’m meant to be with, but he left me. For two and a half years, I didn’t get a single letter, a phone call, nothing. He wrote to his great grandmother more than he wrote to me!" Belle started to cry again, the tears making little rivers down her cheeks, spoiling the make up she had contrived so artfully to cover the tracks of her tears so Shawn would never know she had wept bitterly for him. "I can’t turn my emotions on and off like that. He can’t go off and come back, without a word in between, and expect me to be the same, for me to open my arms to him and take him back so easily."

"The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest
'Cause when it comes to being lucky he's cursed
when it comes to lovin' me he's worst
but when it comes to being loved he's first
that's how I know
The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest."

Brady seemed to be suffering from a coughing fit, a very prolonged coughing fit it seemed to her. Moving away from him, back as straight as a poker, Belle stared at him boldly. "Brady Victor Black, what do you know that I don’t?"

"The whole ‘not a word’ thing?" He was looking rather guilty. Belle stiffened and her stare became harder.

"What about it?" Belle looked ready to throttle him if he didn’t say what he meant soon.

Brady sighed. "Not true. There’s something you probably ought to see." He took Belle by the hand, leading her out of the bedroom and into the guestroom. He opened the closet and reached up to take down a box. "Marlena sent these over when she found out Shawn was coming home. Apparently they thought it was best if you didn’t read them."

"Who? Who thought it was best?" Belle eagerly snatched at the box, suspicion in her voice.

"Dad and Marlena. They told me not to give them to you until Shawn left again." Brady sighed. "Honestly, Tink, I didn’t know that they existed."

Belle opened the box to find letters, postcards, and packages postmarked from all over the world, all addressed to Belle Black, and the address was always written in Shawn’s familiar scrawl.

"Shawn must have written to me for two and a half years, and I never knew to reply," Belle sunk down to the floor, Brady beside her. She began sorting through everything, reading the old letters and opening the tiny parcels that held souvenirs from every part of the globe. There was a letter dated from the Sunday of every week, each lovingly written with details of his life, his plans, his future dreaming, and stuff about his friends too. Chris came up a lot, but so did Mark. Whatever Shawn felt about the Spanish girl, it was not the pure and consistent adoration he felt for Belle. Every line was saturated not with the sappiness of a teenage lustful crush, but with the soul searing agony of desired and denied true love, and she had thrown that love away. The tears began to flow again, more freely now. She had destroyed the one person who had loved her more than anything else in the world.

"Oh, Brady," she sobbed out slowly. "I have to find him."

"I thought you might say that," Brady jingled his keys and pulled her to her feet. "To the Black Mobile."

As they hurried outside and ran to the car, Belle said innocently, "I thought it was called Brady’s Love Machine."

"Well, um," Brady stuttered out, slowly turning bright red at his younger sister’s comment, "um, oh look, there’s Hope! Hey Hope!"

"Hmm." She was fairly sure that the change of subject had been deliberate, but the name of her darling’s mother sent Belle spinning around to see Hope and her two younger sons walking to Salem Place. With a sudden flash of hope and the sense that wishes could perhaps come true, she ran to her. "Please, do you know where Shawn is?"

Hope looked at them with a bleak and despairing expression on her lovely face, while her boys looked distraught. "Didn’t you hear, Belle?" she asked mournfully. "Shawn’s leaving Salem today. He wanted to visit his other relations before he returned to the Marines. I’ve just watched him get a taxi to the airport. The We Fly Anywhere Anytime Airlines flight is leaving in a few minutes. I felt sure he would have said goodbye to you."

"What? He can’t!" Belle screeched, suddenly seeing the love of her life leaving forever.

"Come on, Tink, it’s Brady to the rescue once again," Brady rushed Belle into the car, flung it into gear, and was off, racing to the airport.

"Step on it, Bray," Belle ordered as the brakes squealed as they took a corner fast. Switching on the radio and taking out her mobile phone, Belle started praying that she would be in time.

"Come on, come on," she muttered as the phone began to ring.

"Tink, I don’t think Shawn has a cell phone," Brady pointed out gently.

"I’m not calling him!" Belle barked back. Then she started speaking so quickly to whoever was on the other end that Brady couldn’t catch what she was saying.

Sighing with exasperation, Belle slammed her phone down. Time was short, chances were that they wouldn’t make it to the airport on time. Mrs Horton hadn’t known when the plane took off, but she did know that they didn’t have long. Urging Brady onwards, Belle sought distraction in the scenery flying past and the music playing on the stereo.

"You’re a bitch, but…"

Brady changed the station. As much as he liked ‘Bowling for Soup’, the song brought up unwanted memories of Chloe for him. He stopped at a slow golden oldie.

"You’re going to reap just what you sow…"

Belle put her hand down and changed the station. The song had too many beautiful, terribly memories accompanying it.

"I’ll be your cryin’ shoulder…"

So did that one. Next station:

"Every time our eyes meet, this feeling inside me…"

Tears rising in her eyes, she changed it again.

"All I need is a rhythm divine…"

And again.

"You’d better go now!"

She certainly didn’t want to listen to that one, not now.

"A thousand tears…"

"Damn it!" She flicked it again.

"Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea,
To the open arms of the sea…"

Infuriated and fiddling with the knob of the radio, Belle listened for the station that had helped to break Shawn’s heart two and a half years before.

The same radio DJ as had played ‘Go Now’ for her still crackled away on the same station. Belle’s heart leapt as she heard, "This is SYH Radio, here for Salem’s Young Hearts, and our next song is dedicated to Isabella, from her Shawn Douglas, who says he’s sorry for everything that’s happened, but he’s leaving. This is Bob Dylan from his recent album ‘Time Out of Mind’…"

The rasping, sad voice began to sing, and Belle could only pray that Shawn knew that she was listening, and that she didn’t want their relationship to end as Bob’s had.

"I'm walkin' through the summer nights
the jukebox playing low
yesterday everything was goin' too fast
Today it's movin' too slow,"

Shawn took the ticket hadn’t to him by the airport employee and began to move away from Salem. He couldn’t stay there anymore. The ear-piece of his radio played the song softly, and he wondered if Belle was listening, if she could understand what he was saying to her.

"I got no place left to turn
I got nothin' left to burn
Don't know if I saw you if I would kiss you or kill you
It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow
You left me standing in the doorway cryin'
I got nothin' to go back to now."

They were over. Not even Roy Orbison could fix this one. Shame was in his heart for being so weak as to love her still, with tears in his eyes, Shawn turned away from her, and walked on.

"The light in this place is so bad
Makin' me sick in the head
All the laughter is just makin' me sad
The stars have turned cherry red
I'm strummin' on my gay guitar
Smokin' a cheap cigar
The ghost of our old love has not gone away
Don't look it like it will anytime soon
You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'
Under the midnight moon."

He was wrong, Belle knew, he had to be wrong. Yes, she had left him standing crying out for her, standing in the doorway of her hospital room the first time and the Brady pub the second, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t love her anymore, or that she couldn’t love him.

"Maybe they'll get me and maybe they won't
But not tonight and it won't be here
There are things I could say, but I don't
I know the mercy of God must be near
I been ridin a midnight train
Got ice water in my veins…"

Brady winced. He knew the song, knew the next lines to come, and wanted to reach out to turn the radio off, but knew Belle wouldn’t want that. So he let her hear, and hoped it wouldn’t break her heart.

"I would be crazy if I took you back
It would go up against every rule
You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'
Sufferin' like a fool.
When the last rays of daylight go down
Buddy you're old no more
I can hear the church bells ringin' in the yard
I wonder who they're ringin' for
I know I can't win
But my heart just won't give in…"

Shawn thought of Chris, was glad she was happy, but knew his friendship with her wouldn’t be the same. She had her love, he lost his, and as he waited for his plane to board, he wished her all the happiness he had lost for himself.

"Last night I danced with a stranger
But she just reminded me you were the one
You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'
In the dark land of the sun…"

Belle remembered Chris too, and realised how stupid she had been to ever think Shawn loved her as more than a friend. Chris was as unromantic to Shawn as Philip was to herself. With tears running down her face, she leaped from the car and ran for the airport, trailing Brady in her wake, with the last words of the song coming softly to her ears.

"I eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm dry
And live my life on the square
And even if the flesh falls off of my face
I know someone will be there to care
It always means so much
Even the softest touch
I see nothing to be gained by any explanation
There's no words that need to be said
You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'
Blues wrapped around my head."

The song finished, the DJ put something less melancholy on, and Belle raced through the airport in record time. She had an idea that Brady had just broken every speed law in existence to get her there, but that wasn’t important, she would thank him later. Running through to the departure gate for We Fly Anywhere Anytime Airlines, Belle searched desperately for the sight of her Tough Boy.

Shawn with a sad smile handed his ticket to the airline stewardess, picked up his carry on luggage, and started to walk into the tunnel that led to the plane. His heart burned in his chest as he left Salem, but without Belle, it was for the best. With tears in his eyes, and a pain worse than anything he had endured for the past two and a half years, Shawn turned his back on Salem and everything in it. It was time to go.

She saw him then, and screamed his name out before he could go a step further. "Shawn!"

He turned, slowly, and saw Belle hurtling towards him, arms outstretched. He dropped his bag in shock, and felt Belle’s tiny body, so dear to him, press into his own and he wrapped his arms around her cautiously, holding her up. "Belle, what are you doing here?"

"What do you think she’s doing here, you idiot?" Yelled Brady coming to a stand still yards behind them, panting hard. "She doesn’t want you to leave."

"I’m so sorry, Shawn," Belle wept into his shoulder, her whole frame shaking. "I don’t want you to go. I need you."

It was then Shawn did something unexpected even by himself:

He let go of her, took a step back, and stared at Belle full in the face, his expression stony and cold. "It’s too late. I came back, and you sent me away too many times, Belle. It’s over. You’ll just change your mind again, decide that I’m not what you want or I’ll screw up and you won’t be able to forgive me, or Stefano will do something and all of this will be gone again. I can’t take the heartbreak anymore, Belle. Goodbye."

"No, Shawn, I love you, don’t go, please. You said you’d love me forever." Belle was almost on her knees, and it seemed like the whole airport was watching their drama play out. The stewardess was wiping tears from her eyes, and reaching out to close the door to prevent Shawn from leaving. "Eternity wasn’t long enough for us."

"Belle, I will love you for as long as I live, but I can’t do this. It’s too hard. Belle, without you, I’ll never love again, but with you, there’s only heart break. I can’t stand the aching anymore, Belle. I love you, but we can’t be together," he ran his fingers through his dark hair and tears came to his dark eyes and spread themselves over his thick lashes, "Don’t you see? We only hurt each other and that’s not good for either of us. Goodbye, Isabella," Shawn turned away from her, hoping she didn’t hear the tremble in his voice or see the tears in his eyes, and Belle collapsed into Brady’s arms, weeping inconsolably for her lost love. This time, he was the one to leave her, standing in the doorway crying, suffering like a fool.

 

Song credits: ‘Amazed’ by Lonestar

‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed

‘Go Now’ by the Moody Blues

‘Unchained Melody’ by the Righteous Brothers

‘The First Cut is the Deepest’ by PP Arnold

‘The Bitch Song’ by Bowling for Soup

‘I’ll Be’ by Edwin McCain

‘Rhythm Divine’ by Enrique Inglesias

‘A Thousand Tears’ by

‘Standing in the Doorway’ by Bob Dylan

 

AN: Only read the epilogue if you don't like ending this here. Otherwise, this is the true ending of the story. If you really don't like it, then by all means read the epilogue.

Epilogue The First Cut Is the Deepest

"That’s not the end of the story, is it Dad?" the little boy looked up at his father with wide dark eyes.

His twin sister, sitting next to him, looked up too. "That can’t be the end," she stated firmly.

Their father chuckled softly. "Oh, it’s not the end, it was just the beginning. You see, I turned away from your mother, but not from Salem. I couldn’t leave my little brothers, your Uncles JT and Isaac, so I stayed. Slowly, over a very long time, Belle proved she wasn’t about to break my heart again and that I could really trust her. Stefano came back, of course, and there were all kinds of trouble with him, but even when your mother thought I was dead and I was sure she was gone forever, we still loved each other enough to find the strength to make it through. Eventually, we found each other again and got married."

"And then we were born," finished little Adelaide Caroline Alice Brady.

"Yes," Belle agreed happily, picking up her blonde haired, brown eyed daughter and kissing her on the cheek.

Shawn added, "And we had lots more fun with Stefano and your Grandpa John who wasn’t really sure if he liked me very much after what happened the first time around."

Marcus Aurelius Philip Brady screwed up his handsome face in concentration. "So where do Abby, Will, Greta and Uncle Mike fit in?"

"Now that’s a whole other story," Shawn said with his trademark smile as he settled down to tell it. "It was the night of the annual Horton Brady Picnic, and it was also…"