I've Loved You Before

Chapter 43 - You're Still the One

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Looks like we made it

Look how far we've come, my baby

We might've took the long way

We knew we'd get there some day

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John parked his Jeep in the driveway of the house on Sycamore. He hadn't been there since helping Marlena move out months earlier, but he'd suspected Carrie was there after she'd rushed out of the pub when she'd found out Roman had left Salem without bothering to say goodbye. Glancing over at her car, he knew he'd been correct. He knew the house was locked up, so he walked around to the back yard, waving at Alice Horton as he went.

She waved back and then pointed towards the treehouse John had built nearly six years earlier in the oak tree. He nodded and then unlatched the gate. He couldn't help but smile. There were so many good memories in this place. Carrie and Jaimie's sleepovers, Sami forcing Eric into playing Barbie and having tea parties, and Eric's Cub Scout troop campouts. John wasn't surprised that when Carrie was suffering the most, she would return to the place she felt the safest.

He reached for the ladder and started to climb, saying to Carrie, "Hey, Punkin, I'm coming up."

"Go away! I don't want to see anyone," Carrie cried. "Just leave me alone."

"You know I'm not going to do that, Punkin', so I'm coming up anyway," he told her.

"Oh, G-d!" When he poked his head in she stared up at him with swollen teary eyes, and then quickly buried her face in her arms, which she had wrapped around her knees. It was a bittersweet moment for John realizing that she barely fit in there anymore. "I just need to be left alone!"

John pulled himself into the small space, and settled beside her, saying softly, "I think we both know that's not what you need right now."

Carrie started crying harder. Why couldn't John be her father? He never gave up on her, and he'd never abandoned her. "I hate him," she whispered.

"I imagine what you're feeling right now does feel an awful lot like hate, but if there is one thing Marlena taught me it's that emotions aren't always that straight forward." He bumped Carrie gently with his shoulder, "You want to talk about it?"

She said quietly with her face still buried in her arms, "Why did he have to come back?" She lifted her head and stared at John with blurry eyes, "Why did he insist on coming back and turn our lives upside down just to leave us again? It doesn't make any sense? Why make me love him and then do this?"

John didn't have the answers that Carrie needed. He had Roman's memories, and he had a strong feeling about the causes for Roman leaving. Pride. Sadness. Shame. Loss. But John knew it wasn't his place to assign emotions to Roman's actions.

"Everything was perfect," she said, leaning into him and resting her head on his shoulder. "Our lives would have been perfect... if he had stayed gone."

"Carrie..." John said softly. "You don't mean that. You're hurt."

"I do mean it," she said. "I do. This pain... it isn't worth it. It's not worth it that he forced his way back into our lives... that he hurt Sami and Eric, and cheated on Marlena... only to run away because he can't face being an adult."

She was right, and John couldn't find a defense for Roman.

"Dad?" Carrie asked.

He replied quietly, "Yeah, Punkin'?"