Written in 59 minutes.

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Jason didn’t really know why he’d gone back to Elizabeth’s apartment after the uncomfortable conversation with Justus, or why he’d offered to take her on the bike when she’d made it clear more than a few times that what she really needed was space.

But maybe she didn’t really understand it either because she had reached for the helmet, offering him a half smile that almost seemed pitying — as if she didn’t believe anything would really help, but since he was trying to be nice—

She gingerly wrapped her arms around his chest, and there was still space between them. Maybe this had been a bad idea, Jason thought, but if he could just get out of town, to the roads without traffic lights or other drivers—

Her body was stiff, almost like concrete —

Until the first sharp turn on the cliff road that climbed towards the highest point in the city—Jason leaned in and took the turn just a little faster than he should have, and her arms tightened around him—he picked up speed, the wind rushing past, roaring in his ears, slapping at his cheeks—

By the fifth and final turn, Jason heard Elizabeth laughing, her fingers digging into chest, her nails curling into the soft fabric of the t-shirt he wore. She’d scooted forward, leaning against his back, leaning in with him to the turns so that she could feel the difference, the adrenaline rush as the black pavement of the road beneath them came closer, almost as if they were going to fall over—

Then they were out of the turn, and Jason pulled the bike upright again, the danger gone—all that was in front of them now was the final access road that led up to Vista Point. When he glided the bike into one of the parking stops, he waited, wondering what her reaction would be—

Elizabeth stumbled off the bike, falling slightly as she pulled her leg over the back of it. Then she tore the helmet off, her hair tumbling around her face, the flush in her cheeks and sparkling in her eyes visible beneath one of the lamps illuminating the parking lot.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! How fast were you going? I thought we were just going to—” She made a swooshing gesture with her hand. “Fly right off the side off the cliff, and then I thought we were going down, but then we didn’t—” Her hand was shaking as she dragged it through her hair, her breathing rapid. “You’re crazy, you know that? There’s no way that was legal!”

Jason switched off the bike, set it on the stand, and slid off the bike. She backed up a step, but she was still smiling, mouth slightly parted so he could see the flash of her teeth. A real smile, he thought. Not a closed-lip, I’ll put up with this smile. “Is that a complaint?” he asked, tipping his head.

“No. No!” Elizabeth bit her lip, sat the helmet down on the seat of the bike. “Just—I couldn’t think! The first time you went into a turn, and you picked up the speed—” She shook her head. “It all just stopped. Everything went away, and all I could think about was how loud the wind was, and the world was just blurry—” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “It all stopped,” she repeated, but more softly. “You said it would. Thank you.”

“It helped me when I first left the mansion,” Jason said. “When I was angry, or frustrated. Every time I lost a job or got kicked out of where I was staying—” He jerked a shoulder.

“Found out you had a secret wife?” she asked with a hesitant smile. And he nodded. “Yeah, I could see how it would be nice to put it all away. Even for a little while.” She folded her arms, then wandered over towards the observation deck overlooking Lake Ontario. He followed, watched as she rested her arms on the metal railing. It had been painted some color of orange years ago, but the paint was flaking off in some spaces and had been worn away by weather in others.

“I haven’t been up here in years,” Elizabeth murmured. “Vista Point. Where the high school kids went to make out if their parents were home.” She flicked her eyes to him with some amusement. “Did you know that? During the spring and summer, you can’t get a parking spot up here.”

“Uh, no, I did not.” He leaned his back against the railing, facing away from the lake. “Did…did you come up here?”

“Mmm, yeah. With Lucky Spencer. Luke’s son.” Elizabeth moved away from the railing, went down the set of two steps to the bench, and he joined her. “We dated until senior year, and he got into MIT in Boston. It was never forever,” she added almost wistfully. “Everyone went away. On to something else. Better and brighter things. Emily went to Stanford, Lucky to Cambridge. The one in Massachusetts, that’s where MIT is,” she said. “His brother Nikolas was already at the real one in England.” She folded her arms, closed her eyes, tilted her head up to the sky. “And I went to work at Kelly’s.”

Jason waited a long moment. “Are you sorry about that?”

“No. Mostly. I wanted to go to art school in New York. I got in, too,” she said. “School of Visual Arts, one of the best in the country. But my parents didn’t want to pay the tuition, and wouldn’t help me get loans.” Elizabeth sighed, dropped her head back down to look at him. “I didn’t qualify without their help, so here I stay. It’s okay. I probably wouldn’t have done anything with my degree anyway. And I’m good at the bar.”

Jason didn’t like that, and wondered why if he’d had all that money before the accident, why he hadn’t given her some of it to go to school. Why had she been working while he went to school— But he didn’t know how to ask that. Or if he even had the right to. He could still remember the way she’d looked at him, with her back to that room in the apartment, refusing to even look inside.

“And you can’t beat Luke as a boss, honestly. He basically lets me do what I want.” Elizabeth shrugged. “So it all worked out.”

He wasn’t so sure about that, but it was her life so who was he to disagree with her. “If you say so.”

“I do.” She turned her body slightly, angling so that she could face him. “Tell me. Justus’s back up plan. Did he say what it was?”

Jason shook his head. “We don’t have to talk about that. That’s not why—”

“I know. But I’m asking. He has one, doesn’t he?”

“I—not one that he’s ready to put into action,” Jason said finally. “He said he had to make phone calls. Pull more records—it’s fine. Now that I know what’s going on, I can handle it—”

“But it still involves me.” Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Did Justus tell you why I was hesitant? I didn’t tell him no, Jason. Did he say I did?”

“No. He just said you didn’t seem that enthusiastic about it.” Jason shoved himself to his feet, restless. “And when he told me you could have been out of this weeks ago, and maybe they wouldn’t be trying to evict you, but—”

“But I was stubborn. I told them I wouldn’t take a dime of their money, but they could have whatever they wanted from me if they just ended the conservatorship.”

When he looked back at her, she was watching with careful, guarded eyes. “You didn’t have to do that. Your lawyer quit.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking about representing myself the next time. Costs less money and my client would talk back less.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Jason, his plan means we’d have to go to court and lie. I don’t want to do that.”

Jason frowned. “No. It’s not a lie. I mean, Justus said we’d tell the judge that I don’t want the divorce.  I don’t. That’s not a lie.”

Her lips parted again. “What?”

“I don’t—” He grimaced, then sat down. “Look. I don’t know that I want to be married either,” he said carefully, and she exhaled slowly. “I don’t know what I want. And maybe you do want the divorce. That’s…that’s okay. You should get that if you want it. I’ll give it to you. I just…they’re taking away the choice. That’s what he did when I lived there. He took away the cars, so I bought the bike. So he took away the checkbook. And then he wouldn’t let me out off the estate.” Jason’s jaw clenched. “Edward literally had them close the gates so I couldn’t leave.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t know that.”

“He said I didn’t know what I was doing. That everything I did just embarassed the family because I didn’t know how to act. I wasn’t being a good Quartermaine,” Jason bit out. “I told him I didn’t want to be a Quartermaine—so he said until I could behave myself, I couldn’t go out and damage their reputation anymore than I already had.” He shook his head. “And no one stopped him. Not anyone who said they were my family.”

“I’m sorry. Emily—she’s the only person who told me anything. And she never—”

“No, they wouldn’t tell her.” Jason scowled. “But it’s all they know how to do. They tell you they’re your family and that they love you, but all they know how to do is put you in a box. This is who you are, they told me, and anything I did that didn’t fit in that box wasn’t allowed—” He looked at her. “They kept you away from me because they don’t think you fit in the box, do they?”

“No, they don’t.” She smiled faintly. “That never bothered me, though.”

“Well, I don’t think they should be in charge of who I am or what I do or anything else.” He exhaled slowly, some of the tightness easing from his chest. “So I want my choices back. I want to be in control. Not them. I went to Lila today. She told me I had the pieces now. I knew all the things I’d been before, and I could pick what I wanted to keep.”

“Pieces?” Elizabeth echoed with a slight shake of her head. “I don’t understand.”

“They said I was a medical student, a perfect son,” Jason bit out, “but it wasn’t all that I was.   And they — even Lila — they all decided which pieces they were going to give me. I don’t want the life they picked for me. But I don’t—” He hesitated.

“You don’t know if you want the life they kept from you, either,” Elizabeth finished softly. “That’s fair, Jason—”

“But maybe I—” He met her gaze, her steady blue eyes that seemed to know him, even when he didn’t understand himself. “I don’t know. I don’t know where we end up. I just know it shouldn’t be up to them.”

“That’s what Justus said,” Elizabeth said with a sigh, looking away. “That even if we did…go our separate ways, it should be our choice. And the only way we get it back is to fight for it.” She closed her eyes. “I just…the idea of going into that court and telling the judge that you don’t want the divorce — how do we even know he’ll listen? That he’ll believe you? Or me?” She snorted. “Knowing Edward, he already knows you’re at Luke’s and he’s working on a whole new way to make me miserable. He probably thinks I put Luke up to it. What if he makes the judge believe I’m taking advantage of you or something?”

Jason scowled. “I can make my own choices—”

“I didn’t say that I could do it — only that Edward might—I don’t know. I’m just tired of fighting, Jason.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Jason promised. “I’ll do it. Justus will take care of everything. He said that you just have to agree. I know you tried hard to make this go away. But I think I can do this. It’s my turn to fight.”

Elizabeth bit her lip, then rose to her feet, returning to the observation deck and the view of the lake. “I just need some clarification on something,” she said finally looking back at him. “You said you don’t know where we end up. Does that mean—” she swallowed hard. “No. Never mind.”

“It means that I don’t know what I want,” Jason said, reaching for her hand on the railing and taking it in his. “But I know that I keep showing up at your door even when I shouldn’t. I don’t know what that means,” he added, and she bit her lip again. “And maybe that’s not enough. I know it’s not enough—”

“It’s…more than I thought I’d ever have. I just don’t know if I can bear to live with the possibility that—” A tear slid down her cheek and her voice faltered. “It’s like you’re offering me a chance to have my husband back so that I’ll help you and I know that’s not what you’re saying—” she rushed to add when he opened his mouth. “But it’s how it feels, and it’s what it means, doesn’t it? Because if I say no, Edward gets this finalized in a matter of weeks, and I’m out of the picture. But if I say yes, this all gets bogged down for weeks and maybe months, and it’s time. So maybe you don’t mean to offer that to me, but you’re doing it.”

Elizabeth pulled her hand back, stepped back and he nearly reached out to stop her, to hold her in one place because she was slipping away again and he didn’t know how to stop her or why he wanted to.

“What do you want me to do?” Jason asked finally, forcing the words out. “You wanted me to go away, and I did that. I can do it again—”

“Feels like we’d just end up here again,” she murmured. She looked down at her hand, at the wedding ring she still wore. Elizabeth twisted it around her finger. “Time,” she repeated. “It’s something I used to pray for. More time with…just more time. And you’re offering it. Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe you won’t love me again. And maybe I won’t love you anymore. Maybe it’ll go away. But it’s time. And I can’t turn away from it. All right. Tell Justus to do whatever he needs to do.” She met his eyes, smiled faintly. “Can we take another ride? I think I need the world to go away again.”

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