Written in 59 minutes. I’m a little annoyed. I was hoping I’d have time to do add a quick Liason scene that wasn’t in the outline after the Luke/Jason scene in the beginning, but I ran out of time. It’ll be there in the edits, so just imagine Jason going home to Elizabeth that night, lol.

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“Thought you were gonna sit out tonight,” Luke said when Jason joined him behind the bar later that night for his regularly scheduled shift. “You bring Lizzie with you?”

“No, she’s still at home,” Jason replied, then got to work.

When the night’s featured act took the stage, there was a lull in the drink orders, giving Luke a chance to dig in a little bit more. “How she taking it?”

Jason hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know. She told me to come to work, and not to leave you short handed. I think she wanted some time alone.” He took a tub of dirty glasses, then returned from the kitchen with a rank of clean ones.

“For what it’s worth, I meant what I said earlier. This isn’t real. I don’t know what the doc is cooking up, but I don’t buy any of it.” Luke paused. “But you didn’t want any part of that old life, so maybe it doesn’t matter to you—”

“You think I don’t care that they’re using me to hurt her again?” Jason demanded, his eyes flashing. “Because they ran out of everything else, now they’re dragging up things she said—” He stopped. “Monica knew things that only…that she have only learned from him.”

“From you,” Luke corrected, and Jason glared at him. “I’m not in the mood for your bullshit about not being Jason Quartermaine. It’s a copout. Lets you walk away from all the people and things in your life, acting like none of them existed. But they did. Just because you don’t remember it—that don’t erase what you did or said. Maybe that works on Elizabeth, maybe that’s how you get her hooked again—”

“Do you have something to say to me?” Jason cut in sharply. “Because this is none of your business—”

“The hell it’s not.” Luke grimaced when his tone and volume caught some eyes. He jerked his thumb towards the back office. “Let’s go. Claude,” he called to the man at the end of the bar. “Take over for a bit.”

In the office, Luke headed straight for his chair and box of cigars. “Don’t you ever tell me what happens to Elizabeth isn’t my business. Who do you think scraped her off the damn floor when your family locked her out of your life? When they stole her money? Tried to evict her from her home? You don’t get to ride in here like the white knight after me and Sonny and Mike did the hard work of keeping her in one piece—”

“And you don’t get to take credit for what she did. You stood by her, and that’s great. But getting up and still fighting? Elizabeth did that, not you.”

Some of the flush faded from Luke’s cheek, and he squinted, tipped his head. “She did. No one’s disputing that. But—”

“I get that you don’t want me in Elizabeth’s life. That you only brought me here so she’d see that I didn’t remember her, so she’d move on. But I’m not going anywhere until she tells me to.”

Luke sat down, lit his cigar, then leaned back. “When Lizzie first took up with you, I told her — that one will only bring you down. Edward and Alan will never see past her lack of college education and polish, and no one will ever be good enough for Monica’s golden boy. She told me she didn’t care and went on her merry way. I never liked you.”

“I don’t think that much of who I used to be either,” Jason said, some of his own anger fading. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that despite knowing you’d bring her nothing but pain, I changed my mind about you a little after you lost that baby.” He sat up, had to take a minute. “Christ, the way that accident would have leveled even a strong man, and I figured you were such a weak-willed Mama’s boy that you’d crumble under the pressure, and how could anyone blame you? You’re barely grown, and you got a wife in the ICU who might not live, and that angel who never had much of a chance to live—who would have blamed you if you’d been like your brother and crawled into a bottle?”

Luke tipped the ash from the cigar into a nearby ash tray. “But you didn’t falter. You sat with Elizabeth until she woke up, until they knew she’d recover. And you found the strength to tell her that awful news. Maybe it’s good that you don’t remember that part.” He waited a beat. “And you stood up to your family when they wanted to blame her. That’s the part Doc isn’t remembering. You stood in that hospital and told them off when Monica started going in on Lizzie working here, bringing Cady here. You knew she was only coming by to show that darling off to her family. Because me and Sonny, we’re her family. You knew that, Jason. You said it before Elizabeth ever woke up from that accident.”

Jason leaned forward, realizing where Luke was going. “So why, two months later, did I write in divorce papers that I blamed her all along?”

“Exactly —” Luke gestured at him with the cigar. “And that’s crap about suicide threats — you brought her to us that day. You sent her off with Sonny, and you sat in this office—” His voice faltered, and he looked away. “You told me what she’d said. And that you were worried that she meant it. Because she couldn’t live with the guilt. You knew she blamed herself, and you were scared she’d never accept the truth. That the only person to blame was the damn driver they never found.”

“I told you that,” Jason said slowly.

“You did. And you asked us to sit with her while you cleaned up things at home. You’d put everything in her room because Elizabeth would be ready one day, and you’d be there when she was. But until then, you had to protect what was left of your family.” Luke looked at him. “So when I say there’s not a chance in hell that you went to some cheap ass lawyer to sell Elizabeth up the river, I’m telling you it as a fact. I gained more respect for you in that single conversation than I had in all the time that came in front of it. Monica is working some scheme. I don’t know how she knows about those threats, but you told me. You might have told someone else who passed those on to her.”

“They know they’re going to lose in court,” Jason said. “That’s why she’s doing this now. The probate hearing is coming in a few weeks.”

“You do yourself a favor — you get to the bottom of this divorce thing, and you go into that hearing and you show just how relentless that family has been to get her out of your life. It goes back so much further than you know. This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to use the law against you and her. Did she talk about the business about a prenuptial agreement? How they tried to force it through ELQ, freezing your trust fund and putting your medical school tuition at risk?”

“She mentioned it.”

“You put that together with the bullshit about the power of attorney, this conservatorship, the divorce they filed, and now this—this is the nail in the coffin. So do yourself and Elizabeth a favor — find out what the hell you were doing at that house before the accident.”

—

“Jack J. Bingham.” Justus scowled as they looked at the sign above the dingy building and pot-holed ridden parking lost. “It just sounds like an ambulance chaser.”

“Sonny said this guy was cheap, used by the strippers he knew at the Paradise Lounge.” Jason folded his arms. “You think Monica paid him off?”

“I think there’s always a possibility, especially since these were never filed, so it’d be tough to prove an ethical violation.” Justus pulled open the door. “Let’s go find out.”

Inside, the lobby looked even worse. The carpet was threadbare, with patches of subfloor peeking through. The walls were peeling, and the chairs didn’t look like they’d support a small child much less a grown adult.

A woman with blonde hair sat behind the receptionist desk. Her eyes were wide when she saw Jason and Justus. “Oh. I didn’t have an appointment on the books.”

“This is going to sound like a strange question,” Justus began, flashing a bright smile. “But my client here, Jason Quartermaine, was in a car accident that damaged his memory. You might have read about it in the papers.”

“Oh.” Her voice was breathy, and somehow high-pitched at the same time. “I did! But if he’s your client—are we representing the driver?”

“No. Recently, my client was made aware of some divorce papers created on his behalf. There’s a claim that he directed Mr. Bingham to file them. We were hoping to confirm that and have a conversation about it.”

The woman accepted the papers Justus handed her. “Well, that’s our letterhead. I’ll go get Jack. See if he can take a minute.”

She disappeared behind a door, and Jason sighed. “Why the hell would I do this?” he muttered.

“We’re going to find out.”

The woman reappeared. “Jack says come on back.”

They followed her back through the door and into an office that wasn’t much better than the lobby. A tall man, with a receding hair line and a bulge around the middle got up from his chair, came around the desk. “Mr. Quartermaine, can’t say I expected to see you again.”  He extended his hand, but Jason just stared at him.

“So I was a client.”

“Yes, well…” Jack Bingham shifted uncomfortable. “I suppose you don’t remember.”

“No. Not until Monica Quartermaine gave these to my wife—” He gestured at the papers in Justus’s hand. “Are they real?”

“Well, that would depend on your definition.” Jack gestured for them to take a seat, and reluctantly Jason did. “You came to me a few days before Christmas and asked me to draw up divorce papers.”

Jason gripped the arms of the chair tightly, his stomach rolling. “I did.”

“You never intended to file them,” Jack continued, and Jason released his first easy breath in twenty-four hours. “It’s not unusual for a spouse to draw up papers as a threat, so I was happy to do it, but you wanted me to know that your wife was never supposed to see them.”

Jason straightened slightly. “She wasn’t?”

“No. And if you remembered that, you’d be very angry right now,” Jack said. He went to a filing cabinet, pulled out a thin green hanging folder with white hooks. He set it down and flipped it open. “You’d been collecting newspaper articles since your wife and daughter were in an accident.” He slid the file across to Jason, but Jason didn’t touch it.

“Why would I do that? Why would I create a divorce that Elizabeth would never see?”

“Because you were hoping it would be enough leverage so that your mother would admit she’d been the leak to the press,” Jack said. “For weeks, there had been editorials and news coverage about the accident. About the search for the driver. About the funeral. Every little tidbit. And they were full of information that no reporter could have known without a source. The final straw for you to come to me was the reporters outside your building.”

Justus frowned, looked at Jason. “I knew you were having issues with the press, but I didn’t know they came to the apartment.”

“They knew where you lived. And they had been lying in wait for your wife outside in the hallway,” Jack said. “And shoved a camera in her face the first day she was going back to work.”

Jason scrubbed a hand down his face. “The reporter. Luke said I punched one.”

“Yeah. And the reporter was going to file charges until you threatened trespassing charges. Suddenly, he was full of information. And had no problem revealing the source came from your family. But that was far as he was willing to go.”

“So you put together papers that would convince Monica everything she ever thought about Elizabeth was true. So she’d admit the truth.” Jason grimaced. “And I must have gone to the house with them.”

“I heard about your accident later and just assumed you never had a reason to use them. But I suppose you got as far as talking to your mother—”

“She’s not my mother,” Jason interrupted. “She’ll never be my mother. This isn’t what mothers do, is it?” He thought of Elizabeth, the way she’d talked about their daughter, the loving way she’d packed Cady’s things, the way she’d looked in photos, holding the baby— “She made Elizabeth’s life miserable.”

“I’m sorry. I tried to talk you out of it,” Jack said, “but—” He gestured at the office. “It’s not like I can turn down a paying client. I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you hoped.”

“No, it really didn’t.”

—

Elizabeth had gone to the club, not wanting to sit around the apartment waiting for Jason to get back from meeting with the lawyer. She’d busied herself doing scut work and redoing the inventory she’d never finished.

But it was impossible to put it out of her head — to stop wondering if everything she’d thought about her life had been nothing more than a lie—

“Hey, darlin’, any word?”

Elizabeth turned, saw Luke sliding onto a bar stool, a glass of whiskey already in his hand. “No. No, not yet.”

“You shouldn’t worry so much. I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass when I tell you whatever those papers are, they’re not real.” Luke raised his brows. “And you know how I felt about that husband of yours, so I ain’t lying.”

“I know. I know. But—” Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re not real. Maybe Monica cooked them up or Jason had a plan—I should know, right? I should be able to be one hundred percent certain that my husband loved me—”

“And you think because you got some doubts that somehow it messes up everything else?” Luke shook his head. “You forget how chaotic it all was. How messy and rough it all was. You and Jason were finding your way after a traumatic, terrible event. Maybe you didn’t handle it well, maybe he didn’t confide in you — but that doesn’t have to change what you do know.”

“It shouldn’t, but—”

“Do you know why I wanted to bring Jason here to work?”

“To jolt me back into the land of the living,” Elizabeth said with a half smile. “To show me that I was just standing still—”

“You were holding onto the dream that if you and Jason saw each other, somehow you’d be the exception to all the rest of it. That he’d see you, and he’d feel something. Maybe he still wouldn’t remember, but what you had, it mattered enough to survive whatever that rock did to his brain.”

“I was wrong, and I needed to see that—”

“You were right,” Luke cut in gently. Startled, Elizabeth’s eyes flew to his, and he grinned. “You know how much I hate to say that, but you were right. Maybe it took some time for it find root again. But from the moment that boy knew who you’d been to him, when he found out about his daughter — something was there. And now look at you—”

“Luke—”

“I sat with him in my office yesterday after that whole scene, ready to tear him a new one because as far as I was concerned, he was doing nothing but messing up your life and making it impossible for you to move on. But he did the ripping. Came at me for acting like me and Sonny did all the hard work of keeping you in one piece. Because as far as he was concerned, the only person that deserved that credit was you. And he was right. You took hits that would have leveled someone twice your age—and you kept taking them. But you got back up again. And you kept trying. And he saw that. He wanted to make sure I did, too.”

Elizabeth blinked, holding back the tears stinging her eyes. “Luke.”

“You don’t think there’s a little something to wonder about how out of every one in Jason’s life, you’re the one he’s let back in? Whatever dumbass thing your husband was doing at the Qaurtermaine house that day, I can’t picture him turning his back on you. Not then, with all you’d been through. And not now. There’s something about you that he can’t let go of. Even when he doesn’t remember anything else. You don’t have to doubt that, Lizzie. Not anymore.”

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