Never Fade: A Rewrite of The Rubiam Drama in the Gas Station.

"In our case, why not?"

My eyes drifted up to his, and it was over. His lips caught mine in a hard kiss, driving them apart with the force of it. There was nothing gentle about it. I felt the door rattle against my back as he shifted, pressing me against it, taking my face between his hands. Every thought in my head exploded to a pure, pounding white, and I felt the dark curl of desire begin to twist inside me, bending all my rules, snapping the last trembling bit of restraint. I tried to pull away. "No," he said, bringing my lips back to his. It was just like it had been before--I slid my hands under his jacket to press him closer. The low groan at the back of his throat, a small, pleading noise that set every inch of my skin on fire. Then, it changed. I pulled back, gasping for a breath, and when I found him again, it was deeper, and softer, and sweeter. It was a kiss I remembered, the kind we used to have when it felt like we had all the time in the world, when the roads streched out for us. I gave in to that feeling. I didn't care what it made me--weak, selfish, stupid, terrible. I remembered that tiny bit of warm peace before I had ruined him, throwing his mind into a jumble of desperate confusion. There was so much darkness to it now; the clear, bright corridors of memories had collapsed in on themselves. I fought my way through, tearing down filmy sheets of black and burned brown. I was drowning in it, in him, and it was so different, so strange, that I didn't recognise the fact I was in his mind until it was too late. Stop, stop, stopstopstop--                              I shoved him back, breaking the physical connection between us. We both stumbled, my head screaming with pain as I crashed down onto my knees. Liam fell back onto the nearest work table, sending the hundreds of little tools and bolts stacked there tumbling to the ground in a shower of peircing noise that seemed to go on and on, echoing the final snap that whipped through me as my mind broke away from his. Shit, I thought, gasping for breath. I felt sick, physically ill, as the world bobbed up under me. For several terrifying seconds, the burning in my mind was bad enough that I couldn't see at all. I allbut crawled, feeling for the gun I had dropped as he grabbed me. I tried to haul myself back onto my feet using one of the shelves of hubcaps, but I only succeeded in tearing it off the wall and sending them showering down over me. Finally, I just gave up, leaning back against the wall, drawing my knees up to my chest. The ache had trickled down the back of my neck, dripping bit by bit into the centre of my chest. Shit, shit, shit. I dug the heels of my palms against my eyes, sucking in another reagged breath.

"Ruby."

I looked up from my hands, searching for his face in the darkness.

He swam into my vision as he staggered across the room back towards me, "Leave me alone!" I yelled. "You don't want to be near me, trust me."

"Ruby, I. . You-" 

"Stop." I whispered harshly, wriggling out of his grip around my wrists.  I walked to the nearest work table, the one that had had so many things on it but was now completely clear around the edges from me knocking Liam into it. I walked round to the other side, as far away from Liam as possible, and jumped up onto it. I lifted my legs up and crossed them, placed my elbows on my knees, and buried my head into my hands. "Ruby," he paused, "Ruby, talk to me, please." His voice was pleading and I wanted to give in--but silence was the treatment I had to give him, otherwise I might say something I would most definitely regret later down the line. He understood the silence I had bestowed apon him and took it. He walked back over to the car in the middle of the garage and looked back down in the engine and reached in. After a few minutes of fiddling and cussing under his breath, I heard his footsteps round the corner of the table and come towards me--I still kept my head down, even though I so badly wanted to embrace him. He leant against the opposite wall and croseed his arms over his chest, not once taking his eyes off me. He stood there for a good twenty seconds before pushing himself away from the wall and bending down so that his head was level with mine. A tight squeeze on my wrists was what made me look up and stop crying. A hand came up and brushed the hair out of my eyes, but he didn't pull away, he leaned in closer and wrapped his other arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him. The hand that brushed the hair out of my eyes slid down to the back of my neck and Liam rested his forehead on my shoulder. Instinctively, I tilted mine so that it was on his."I love you," he whispered."no matter what. Not even whatever happened in that safe house." Whatever happened, he really had no clue what had happened for him to forget who on Gods green Earth I was. I still didn't know how in actual Hell Liam remembered things about us and things that we'd only told each other--like at Nashville when he said. "This is a place where we don't have to lie."  There was no way that he could just have randomely said that back in Nashville, nevertheless when he was ill, practically unconscious and on the brink of death--something must have triggered him to remember some part of me, but how? I had completely erased any traces of me from his memory, unless Jude, Vida or Chubs had slipped and said something by accident, like when Jude was about to tell Liam that the leather jacket he was putting on was mine--even when he had been the one to give it to me. But they would have told me if they did. Right?