Lerdo123
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(3/12/04 5:48 am)
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Full Circle (Chapter 4)
A/N: Thank you to everyone who's been reading this story; I hope you'll continue to enjoy it.  Please feel free to leave comments, gripes, or questions. Back chapters are HERE. Also, I used a couple lines of Liason dialogue, so thanks to The Canvas for their wonderful transcripts.
Chapter 4
Elizabeth glanced around the penthouse, taking in everything. Gone was the leather couch. In its place was an overstuffed monstrosity upholstered with a pink cabbage rose print. The florid blooms seemed to overpower the room. White lace doilies covered the coffee table and nearly all the other available surfaces. The effect was nauseatingly, cloyingly feminine--like Laura Ashley on steroids. It was hard to believe Jason lived there. Elizabeth bit her lip to stifle the laugh that threatened to bubble forth. She gestured at the room. “It looks...different.” And so not you, she added silently.
Jason nodded. “Yeah, I guess it does.” He shrugged off his jacket and opened the closet to hang it up, but then seemed to think better of it, tossing it over the back of the sofa instead. “Courtney said the place needed a woman’s touch.”
Her gaze lingering on the ghastly couch, Elizabeth replied, “I see.” When she looked up, she found Jason watching her. The thought of him sitting on that couch had her lips twitching with mirth.
“What?” Jason asked, his blue eyes trained on her face.
Elizabeth shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. Then Jason sat down, and he looked so funny against the backdrop of garish pink flowers that she could no longer hold back the laughter that had been building since she first stepped into the penthouse. She threw her head back and laughed long and hard, the happy sound ringing through the otherwise quiet apartment. She laughed until her stomach ached. Just as she almost got herself under control, she risked a glance at Jason, who was regarding her with a quizzical expression that set her off into a fresh round of laughter. “You just... I...” She tried to speak, but she was rendered incoherent.
Surrendering to it, Elizabeth shook her head helplessly, sending her curls flying ‘round her face. Finally she flopped back on the couch a few feet away from Jason. The peals of laughter finally faded into silence, and she sighed loudly, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d laughed like that. It had felt good. It had temporarily drawn her mind away from her troubles. Unfortunately, her troubles were still there, she thought with a frown.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Jason asked.
Thinking he was talking about her laughing jag, she shook her head and flashed him a tiny smile. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I meant, do you want to tell me about why you were standing outside in the cold wearing a wedding dress?” he replied.
“Oh.” She glanced down at her left hand and noted with a pang just how bare it looked without her engagement ring and the wedding band that Ric would have slipped on there that very day. Some things just weren’t meant to be. Like her and happiness--the two just didn’t mix.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just remember you used to like to talk when something was bothering you.” The quiet calm of his voice was reassuring, and the tight knot in her stomach loosened just a little.
Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “Aren’t you sick of listening to me think?”
“It’s interesting,” he replied.
“Don't you mean pointless and confusing? All I do is run around in circles.”
His mouth curved into a slow, crooked smile that made her heart do somersaults. “That’s ok.”
She drew strength from the steadiness of his gaze. How many times had they sat, just like this, talking? And always, always there was that quiet acceptance in his eyes. It was there now as he looked at her.
She reached for the Kelly’s bag and methodically set its contents on the coffee table, careful not to spill anything on the white lace doilies scattered there. There was silence as they each unwrapped their sandwiches. After the first bite, Elizabeth sighed with pleasure. “I didn’t realize till now just how hungry I was.”
“Do you want anything else?”
She shook her head and waved away his question and took a sip of her hot chocolate, licking whipped cream off her lip when she felt the weight of Jason’s stare there. With warm food and drink in her stomach, she felt the tension in her body ease another notch. She scratched her shoulder; the lace of her wedding dress was making her itch.
As usual, Jason Morgan’s eyes missed nothing. “Do you want to change?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
*******
When Elizabeth came back downstairs wearing the t-shirt and sweat pants he’d loaned her, he had to fight back a smile. Even though the sweats had a drawstring, they still pooled near her ankles, and the black t-shirt hung close to her knees. Her petite body was practically swimming in his clothes, and she almost looked like a little girl with her freshly scrubbed face and wide, blue eyes. For just a moment, Jason forget where he was, seeing instead the image of a little girl dressed like Elizabeth, with her sable curls and midnight eyes. His heart clenched painfully. It felt like someone had punched him in the gut, and he thought of Michael and of the child he would have had if only Courtney hadn’t--.
“Are you ok?” Elizabeth was standing in front of him peering at him with a concerned frown.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” He mentally shook himself, trying to clear the image from his mind. Still, he didn’t think he would forget it anytime soon.
“If you say so.” She sat back down on the sofa, gracefully tucking her feet underneath her till only the tips of her candy apple red toenails peeked out. She reached for her hot chocolate, curving her small hands around the foam cup.
Jason wasn’t an artist--he didn’t see colors and shapes the way Elizabeth did--but even so, he was aware of the easy, languid grace of her every movement. She was strong, too. Not in the obvious, larger than life way of Courtney, who he realized was all too quick to let her fists fly first and ask questions later. But strong enough to take back her life when Lucky appeared to be dead. And strong enough to stand by Ric when everyone in her life wanted her to do otherwise.
Jason knew with every fiber of his being that Ric didn’t deserve Elizabeth’s strength and loyalty, but he still respected her for giving it. If he was honest with himself, he was even more than a little jealous. Once upon a time, he’d been the recipient of her loyalty. She’d defended him to Nikolas, to Taggert, to Audrey--to anyone who hadn’t approved of him.
“Ric and I were supposed to be married today.” Her voice was steady and matter-of-fact. “But I just couldn’t go through with it, Jason.”
“What changed your mind?”
With one hand still wrapped around her cup, she toyed with her hair with the other. Not quite meeting his eyes. “He was standing there, smiling, saying his vows...And all I could think was that I was right back where I’d started--marrying a man who claimed to love me. He claimed I was first in his life, and Jason, I wanted to believe him, but so many things he’s done prove that he loves the thought of getting revenge against Sonny even more. The list of people he’s hurt goes on and on. He let Faith Roscoe poison me. He fed me the birth control pills that led to my embolism. He kidnapped Carly.” She shook her head incredulously. “My God, he kidnapped his brother’s pregnant wife and chained her up in that tiny room. Right under my nose. He was going to give me their baby--like I’m so stupid, so naive, that I wouldn’t wonder where it came from.”
Jason sighed. He knew Elizabeth hadn’t married Ric again; her bare ring finger and the fact that she was waiting outside the church, alone, attested to that. But it was a relief to hear her recite the litany of his crimes. He felt...vindicated. Suddenly, having to listen to her defend Ric when he’d try to warn her about him, having to face the business end of a gun she was holding, well, all that was ok. Because ultimately it had led to this, and how he could be sorry for that? Part of him felt a twinge of shame because though he certainly didn’t want Elizabeth to suffer, he was human enough to feel a smidgen of satisfaction that she’d finally come to her senses and accepted the truth about who Ric was...and who he wasn’t.
Elizabeth shifted, drawing her knees up and settling her chin on them. “Elizabeth, none of this is your fault. You’re not responsible for what Ric’s done.” He sighed and shook his head. “You didn’t know he’d kidnapped Carly.”
“I didn’t want to know,” she whispered tremulously. Her eyes were dark with misery. Her pain tugged at him, as it had when they’d first met and she was struggling with Lucky’s death. It was now as it had been then--he ached to comfort her. So when her bottom lip trembled and her beautiful eyes turned glossy and wet, he did the only thing he could--he took her in his arms.
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