What's a Girl to Do? (Season 4)

Chapter Two: Before I Fall

"The doctors said you could stay longer," Nicholas said, watching as I continued moving around my room, gathering up the things that Ian and Fiona had brought for me, and shoving them into my duffel bag. "You don't need to just go home and rely on pain pills..."

"I need to go home, Nicholas," I replied, forcing my voice to remain patient with him as I kept on putting things to rights. "Iana hates coming here—she senses my anxiety of having her here and she reacts to that badly. I have to go home. I have the medications I'll need, plus Allie's okay to work from home for a few weeks while I continue my recovery."

"It's not because of Josh, is it?" he asked, and I hesitated for a moment, midway folding a sweater Fiona had loaned me, that I'd promised to wash before bringing back. "I mean, does it make you uncomfortable that he was overseeing your care?"

I sighed, finishing up the folding process and looking up at him. "I don't know if you're asking for your sake, or for mine," I replied, and Nicholas looked away from me, as if he'd been caught in a lie. "I mean, does it make you uncomfortable?"

He continued staring at the floor. "I'll admit, I didn't like it."

"Jesus, Nicholas," I said, turning around and straightening the comforter of my bed, despite the notion that they would strip it and wash everything. "For Christ's sake, you're almost thirty-years-old! Stop this teenage boy behavior, please."

"Yeah, and you're almost twenty-four," Nicholas threw back at me, and I turned around to look at him then. "Life's short, Murphy."

I sighed, nodding. "I know that. There were only two things on my mind when I fainted—well, three."

"Three things?"

I pursed my lips, crossing my arms. "Three people, and Fiona will be pissed that she's no longer the third most important person in my life... Well, I guess she still is."

"Iana's the first, I hope," Nicholas put in.

I smiled. "Of course she is."

"So, two people are tied for second?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Who are they?"

I moved to sit down on the bed, and felt relieved when Nicholas moved to sit down beside me, and I took my hand in his. "You and Ian are tied for second," I replied. "Ian's my best friend and my twin, but you're my boyfriend. I care about the both of you, but the equality runs into a gray area, considering that I met you before I really knew the truth about who I really was, but Ian and I got along better than we did at first."

Nicholas nodded, absorbing what I was saying. "I was a jackass."

I nodded back at him, a laugh escaping my lips. "You were a total jackass, but it takes a man to admit that he was wrong."

"I was the textbook for behaving badly," he replied. "I don't think I'll ever be able to apologize enough for my douchebag behavior."

"Hey, you had a rough past, plus Charlotte had just taken a turn for the worse," I replied, putting my head down on his shoulder. "I mean, once you knew my full story, you could understand when I was a total bitch sometimes, right?"

Nicholas's lips morphed into a smirk against my forehead, before he turned fully to kiss me there, and I felt a rush of something flowing through me at the touch of his lips. "You were never anything but appropriately on the offensive," he replied quietly. "You were just reacting to my negative behavior, and I quite enjoyed your methods of doing so..."