Chapter 50- The End

In case you haven't noticed, I am a huge Ingrid Michaelson fan. Seriously, all of her music just speaks to me and I've been to a gazillion of her concerts. So if you'd like music while you read this chapter, go youtube her and try to find the song "All Love." It's featured in this chapter (below) and even though the song is sad, it's beautiful and has a little bit of promise in it. So anyway, enjoy the last chapter. It's a long one just because I felt weird breaking the real ending up into parts.

Depending, there might be an epilogue. I haven't decided how I feel yet or whether or not these characters need an epilogue.

Other songs for this chapter: "The Chain"- Ingrid Michaelson

Eliza's POV:

"When I push the sheets away from your face
And watch you sleep all day here
And when I push you away
And say you simply cannot stay here


And it's all love, all love
It's all love, my stupid love


When I say you take away
The most important parts of me with you
When I've had the greatest day
You add more gray, it's just your way
It's true


But it's all love, all love, ohh
It's all love, all love, ohh
It's all love, all love, ohh
It's all love, my stupid love"

I was just starting to will myself back to sleep thanks to the music playing when my Mom walked into the room and snapped my laptop shut with a frown on her face. From my position under the covers, I could see how annoyed she looked.

"Honey, this needs to stop now." I knew that she was going to lecture me again about how I needed to call Max but what was the point? What was the point when it was just so much easier to lie here in bed listening to Ingrid?

"Baby, you have to get out of this bed eventually. The only time I've seen you move is to go pee." She sat down on the edge of the bed next to me and reached under the blanket to brush my tangle of hair away from my face. Part of me flinched at her use of the word "baby." Max called me baby and our baby was resting inside of me. The word had too many painful meanings right now.

"Come on, why don't you get up? I made your favorite soup." Her trick of trying to lure me out with food was working. I had barely been eating for the past few days and though I knew it wasn't good, I wasn't exactly feeling like myself right now either.

"If you're not hungry, at least eat for the baby. I won't have you hurt my grandbaby out of your own stupidity."

I guess she was done being nice and motherly to me. "I'm coming, I'm coming." I grumbled tossing the covers off of my pajama-clad body. I checked my phone and saw that I had 6 missed calls adding to a grand total of 40 missed calls over the past 3 days. Everyone in the office thought that I had taken time off to be with family leaving Emma, Vero and Mia to call repeatedly wondering what was going on.

"Eliza, this isn't funny. Marc heard part of the story from Max but other than that, he's not saying anything either. Both of you are being assholes. Call me."

I sighed deleting Vero's message and pressing "7" for the next message.

"Eliza, call me as soon as you get this. I'm worried sick thinking that something's wrong with the baby. Stop being a bitch and ignoring our calls." 

Jeez, were none of my friends supportive in just giving me space? Even Mia was badgering me and she was usually supportive, no matter what I did!

I put down my phone and resolved to call everyone back later and at least let them know that nothing bad had happened to the baby. After brushing my hair and piling it all back into a sloppy bun, I made my way downstairs to the small kitchen in my Mom's condo. After leaving the house three days ago, I had driven over here wanting nothing more than to fall into bed and try to forget any of this had ever happened. I hadn't told my Mom the whole story, I had just walked in and told her that I needed to stay for awhile and she had shown me into the spare bedroom she had, no questions asked.

Judging from the analytical look she was giving me while she fixed us both bowls of soup, maybe it was time that I started to explain what exactly had happened. Last time she had seen Max and I, we were perfectly fine and now? Well now I didn't know exactly what we were anymore.

I felt the tears well up in my eyes unexpectedly. Were we even still together? What was going to happen once the baby was born?

"So are you going to tell me what happened?" she asked sitting down across from me and handing me a bowl of her homemade brocoli and cheddar soup. "You've been here three days and judging by the number of times that Max has called, I'm guessing you two had a fight?"

"He's called here?" I asked suddenly wondering why I hadn't known that. Had I been that comatose to not hear the phone ringing.

"Eliza, he's called at least twice a day to see how you're doing. I haven't known what to do though so I just tell him that you're sleeping."

I still couldn't believe that he had called. "How does he sound?" I asked wishing that I could ask him that myself. Like it or not, I still loved him and not talking to him for three days had been painful. Combined with the other mixtures of pain I was feeling- I felt like I had been run over by a Mac Truck.

"No, I'm not telling you anything until you tell me what happened. I couldn't get Max to say anything at all so you need to start explaining why my pregnant daughter has shown up, estranged from her boyfriend, on my doorstep."

I laughed bitterly at her use of the term "boyfriend." Wasn't that the real problem here anyway?

"We had a fight." I regretted how stupid I sounded. Of course we had a fight, that was why I was here now. "We had a fight because I brought up getting married and Max didn't say anything other than 'people don't just decide these things.'"

I could feel the flood gates re-opening from the last crying jag I had and begin to blur my vision. I couldn't even see the bowl below me and that was making me upset too.

"He doesn't want to marry me so I packed a bag and left and came here." I finished wanting to return to bed where I could fall back asleep and pretend like none of this ever happened. Talking about this re-opened all of the wounds where I could feel them bleed the most. 

"Did he say specifically that he doesn't want to marry you or just that he doesn't want to get married at all?"

"He didn't say either actually. He just got mad that I brought it up and wouldn't answer my question." Remembering it now I could visualize the panic in his eyes at the thought of marrying me.

"But he didn't say that he doesn't want to marry you specifically, did he?"

Why did it feel like she wasn't on my side about this? I felt like she had turned the tables on me and was trying to prove some sort of point.

"Why do I feel like you think I'm wrong about this?" I was feeling defensive and just wanted her to tell me that I was right. Wasn't that what women did in these circumstances? They stood together about these things.

"Because I do think you're wrong, honey" she replied. "It sounds like you didn't listen to him at all or give him the chance to explain."

Was she kidding? I had stood there wanting to have a conversation about it and all he had done was back away from me!

"Mom, I don't really want to talk about this anymore." I said backing away from the table to set my bowl in the sink and go back upstairs to bed.

"Eliza wait." She paused taking a deep breath and looked down momentarily before meeting my eyes again. "I know that we don't talk about your father dying and that it's only been a year since the accident but in my eyes, this is important right now."

"I was married to your father for all of those years and even though we loved each other, you never fully appreciate someone until they're gone. You and Max will always be in each other's lives because of this baby but I don't want you to regret never having the chance to appreciate each other just because of one fight. Your father wouldn't have wanted that for you. We both always wanted you just to be happy and Max has made you happier than I have ever seen you."

"Is that really worth giving up? Can you honestly say that you can live without him now and lead as happy a life without him as you would with him?"

She gently took the bowl that I had been rinsing out of my hands and pecked me on the forehead. "Why don't you go upstairs and relax a little bit? I'll be up in a little bit and we can rent a movie."

I felt like my teenage self all over again listening to her as she slowly made a broken heart and breakup better for me. Only this time, I wasn't a teenage mourning over the loss of a crush. To complicate everything, her words had struck a chord with me.

Could I really live without Max? Some women were able to repair their lives after something like this and eventually learn to love again but I wasn't sure if I was one of those people. Yes, I would keep breathing, eating and caring for my baby, but would I ever be the same person again? Would I be as happy as I could potentially be with Max in my life- marriage or no marriage? Probably not.

Now I just had to figure out what exactly that meant.


Max's POV:

I was still pretty ticked off and it was only made worse because I had no idea how she was doing. Every time I called, her cell it went straight to voicemail and any time that I called her Mom, I got a "she's sleeping."

It was physically impossible for her to be sleeping as much as she supposedly was. Lizzy was the least lazy person I knew and she would go crazy out of boredom if she was sleeping that much. It just wasn't possible.

So really this just meant that I was completely and royally fucked. I had fucked up the best thing to ever happen in my life and all because of one lousy fight. Not that I would back down if I could have a do-ever. I still think it was wrong of her to ambush me like that and then not even want to talk about it with me. And she left.

If we ever spoke again, I was going to chew her ass out just for walking out on me like that. For someone that argued for a living, it was pretty ironic that she ran away from conflict all of the time in her personal life. Weren't we beyond all of the running now anyway? She should know by now that she'll never be able to run away from me and she never has been able to.

After she left, I stuck around for the rest of the night before deciding to get out for a few days and head home to Montreal for a little bit. If she was allowed to take time to cool off, than so was I. Not exactly a shining moment in my life but I needed time to think. No matter what, family had always steadied me and this situation wasn't any different. Nothing ever changed here and that was something you could count on but it was annoying in other ways. Like the fact that my Mom wouldn't get off my back and kept asking me what I did to make Lizzy so mad at me. When I told her that none of this was my fault, she had yelled at me to get out of her kitchen.

I needed an out and both Will and Frank were apparently too busy with their wives to bother with me.

"Maxime" my Dad said coming into the TV room. "Get up, we're going for a drink."

I got up thankful to have something to do besides watch "The Hangover" for the 20th time. Hopefully we were doing something alcohol related. We walked outside to his truck and he tossed the keys at me. "Drive down to the bar" he ordered getting into the passenger side. We rode through the town that I had grown up in in silence which was unusual because no one was ever quiet in my family. We were the types of people that talked more during silent situations just so that it wasn't silent.

I parked across the street from the bar where I had passed through so many milestones into adulthood. The bar where you first got wasted was pretty monumental in my book. My Dad got out of the truck and crossed the street leaving me to follow him inside. He was still pretty quiet and I didn't know what to make of that. I assumed that he wanted to talk to me about Lizzy and I really just wanted a beer. If he was going to gang up on me and yell at me like my Mom had for screwing it up with Lizzy, then I wanted to be as numb to it as possible. Wasn't it bad enough that I already felt like shit after being apart from her for three days? I was pissed off at her for sure, but I was also miserable without her. It was a lose-lose situation.

We grabbed a seat at the bar inside and ordered beers right away. I thought that maybe we were really just going to sit and watch the Habs game on TV and drink together when he spoke up.

"So, what happened?"

I needed at least another beer before I could answer that question and signalled to the bartender to get me another one.

"What do you mean?" I asked taking a gulpful and letting the cold foam settle in my stomach. It made me feel better momentarily before making me feel nauseous.

"I mean, why are you here in Lemoyne when you should be back in Pittsburgh with Eliza? She's pregnant, Maxime." He emphasized this but I was annoyed at him for stating the obvious. Did he think that I was just bailing on her? He had to be kidding me.

"We had a fight and actually she walked out on me."

He stared at me before turning back to the beer in front of him. "You know, I didn't think that you were this stupid Maxime. Maybe a few hockey pucks to the head over the years has gotten to you but I at least thought that you were a man."

If I hadn't been taking offense to anything before, I was definitely taking offense now.

"Don't you know that you never let the woman leave? If you let her leave, it just makes it harder to talk about what was wrong in the first place later."

I rolled my eyes thinking about how he doesn't know her track record for running off after an argument. "We had a fight because she wants to get married and-" I took another swallow of beer. "I guess I don't know what I want yet."

Not knowing what I wanted for the first time in my life was terrifying. I was that guy who always set a goal and went after it, no matter what. I didn't fail. I hadn't failed in getting Lizzy to come around either and everything had been exactly what I wanted until now. Marriage had never been something that I was even able to comprehend until now.

"You don't know what you want?" he repeated. I shrugged really wishing that the alcohol in the beer would kick in already.

"Well, you love her, right?" I nodded feeling annoyed that he would even have to ask me this.

"Of course I love her. That's why I came here. I couldn't stay in the house anymore."

"Well son, if you love her and want to be with her, then you better learn this quickly: do whatever it takes to keep her around."

That sounded like a crock of shit from where I was sitting but hey, he was the one who had been married for 35 years. What did I know?

"You want to know what I think? I don't think you dislike the idea of marriage, I think you're afraid of it."

"I'm not afraid to get married" I protested but my body betrayed me by clenching up at the word. "I just don't understand why she thinks we need to get married."

"Think about it Maxime. You live together, she's pregnant with your son or daughter and she loves you. Why wouldn't a woman like that want to marry you? You don't deserve her if you're too stupid to see these things. Maybe you're doing her a favor by letting her go because someone else will definitely scoop her up and fast."

Even though it was my Dad saying these things, it was still enough to make me angry with jealousy over the thought of another man having what was mine. They wouldn't appreciate her like I did or do a million other small things I liked doing for her. I needed to quit drinking beer and go for the hard liquor instead.

"Is that what you want?" he asked me. I shook my head no feeling, if possible, a thousand times worse now after this conversation.

"Stop moping around here and go home, Maxime. If you don't leave soon and fix this with Eliza, don't expect your mother to invite you home for any holidays any time soon. She's worried she'll never see Eliza or the baby again."

After awhile he left me to go home for dinner and let me think about everything in peace. I decided to walk home instead and cool off for awhile. I still wasn't sure what was going to happen between us, but maybe he had been right. Maybe I was never going to not be afraid of the idea of marriage but having the chance to love and support Lizzy outweighed all of my fears and doubts.

Just like that, it was that easy. Could I really picture myself going back to my old lifestyle of partying it up and enjoying the attention of different women?

Truthfully no. I would only be thinking about one woman and how I had passed on the opportunity to love her. Maybe that was what my parents and my brothers understood. Maybe all of this was forgetting about yourself and your own fears completely because it made the person that you loved happy.

Had I been selfish all of this time by overlooking what she wanted in the relationship? As I stood in front of the house where I grew up and heard my mom's laughter on the inside, I realized that this wasn't really home anymore. It would always be home in the sense that my family was here and that I had grown up here but it wasn't home if Lizzy wasn't there waiting for me. All fears and doubts aside, I knew that if I ever wanted to really make things right with her, I was going to have to go home-home and wait until she came back. I wasn't going to chase after her and make her come back but when she did, I would be waiting there for her.

I booked a flight that would get me out of Montreal and back home to Pittsburgh by tomorrow evening.


Eliza's POV:

It had taken me a total of 20 minutes to snap out of my Ingrid-induced haze and throw the covers off of my body. Checking my reflection in the mirror, I knew I looked like hell but I didn't exactly have time to worry about that right now. The best I could do was brush my hair and scrub my face clean of tear residue while throwing on whatever clean clothes I had left. Unfortunately that meant putting on jeans that were a little too tight for me now and one of Max's t-shirts.

Ironic that even though I had been trying to get away from him, I had still brought a piece of him with me. That just summed up basically everything that I had come to realize lately. No matter where I went or what I did, he was always going to be with me in some form. Not only that but we were having a child together. How could I just leave like that when we were having a baby together? It was the dumbest thing I had done in a long time and it was time for me to grow up, go back home and fix this mess between us. How had he felt having me walk out again?

God, I was stupid. And it would be a miracle for him to continue to put up with my shit after this but I had to try. I had to. What was I going to do without him? What if he found someone else to love? Someone who wasn't insane and who didn't made him run through hoops the entire time that they dated?

Fear of that alone propelled me to grab all of my stuff, hurriedly hug and kiss my mom goodbye and run out to my car.

The house was eerily quiet when I walked in and completely spotless meaning that Mrs. Rollins had been here and Max had not. I dropped my stuff on the floor and ran upstairs to the bedroom. His glasses case and shaving kit were gone meaning that he wasn't here at all. I panicked running to the closet to check and see if his clothes were still there but then I realized that this was technically still his house. Why would he move out? If anyone was going to have to move out, it would unfortunately have to be me.

If I let that happen. I ran back downstairs to find my cellphone and press the 1 button to call him. It went straight to voicemail and I cringed starting to worry. It wasn't exactly fair of me to expect that he would answer for me when I had been ignoring all of his calls for the past few days.

I realized that there was nothing for me to do but wait, painful as that was going to be. I decided to busy myself by putting all of my things away and start the small pile of laundry I had accumulated over the past few days. Once the laundry was humming in the machine, I turned on a few lights in the house giving it a more cheerful glow and went upstairs to scrub off the grime I had also accumulated on my body. It couldn't hurt to be clean and put together for when he eventually came home.

I made sure to use all of the bath products that he thought smelled good and rubbed his favorite scented lotion all over my skin. My hair was still wrapped up in a towel when I stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom in only my bra and underwear.

I nearly had a heart attack when I saw Max sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for me.

"Max!" I screamed propelling myself into his arms. I wasn't sure if he had opened them for me or not but they had surrounded me nonetheless as I squeezed him tightly into a hug.

He pulled away first and we stared at each other before I started to speak first.

"Max, I'm so, so sorry. I shouldn't have left like that and I talked to my Mom and she convinced me that I was wrong. I was so wrong and I shouldn't have pushed at you like that. We don't have to get married now. We don't even have to get married if you really, really don't want to. I just want to be with you and I want to have a happy baby that gets to spend time with his or her Dad. I just-"

Everything had come out in such a rush that I only had the chance to catch my breath when he silenced me by placing his hand over my mouth.

"Slow down" he chuckled eventually removing his hand. "What do you mean you don't want to get married?"

Instead of answering him, I leaned forward and captured his lips in a searing kiss. His arms tightened around my waist pulling me farther down onto his lap. Just the feeling of his hands rubbing my back again was enough to make me melt completely. How had I ever been willing to walk away from how he made me feel? I was absolutely insane.

He moaned as my tongue traced the outline of his lips and slipped inside. God I had missed him.

"Wait, wait. You didn't answer my question" he said pulling back and breaking our lips apart. "Why did you say that we don't have to get married now?"

I stared at him in confusion. "I realized that I shouldn't have made everything about what I wanted" I told him. "Shouldn't that make you happy?" I asked completely confused now. I wanted to give him what would make him happy and if that meant just being together without rings and a document between us, then so be it. At least I would still get to be with him.

"No" he said starting to laugh. "I want what you want. And if you want to get married, then I want to get married."

If I was confused before, then I was definitely confused now. He wanted to get married?

"But you don't want to get married" I told him wishing we could stop this discussion entirely and get back to making up.

"But you do" he retorted. It almost felt like we were fighting about this too but both of us were too confused to raise our voices to each other. Even though most of our arguments were stupid and pointless, this one took the cake.

"Okay hear me out" he said shifting so that there was some space between us. "I realized that it doesn't matter if we're married or not. I don't plan on going anywhere and I'm not letting you go anywhere so either way, we'll be together. If having a wedding and making it completely official makes you happy, then I want to get married too. I want whatever makes you happiest."

Tears formed in my eyes at his words and even though it wasn't at all how I imagined this scenario going, it was the most romantic thing he had ever said to me.

Maybe we really were perfect for each other. He was willing to sacrifice for me just as I had been for him.

"Why are you crying?" he asked his voice going soft as one of his big hands clumsily wiped my cheeks for me. 

"Did you just propose?" I asked trying to keep my voice from quivering.

He nodded still cradling my cheek in his hand. "If that's what you want" he said his lips getting closer to mine.

His blue eyes were reflecting back everything I had ever hoped to see in them. Honesty, strength and best of all, love. He finally closed the gap between us and I pushed him back onto the bed where he flipped us so that he was leaning over me careful not to put too much weight on the baby.

"Well?" he questioned looking down at me with a smirk on his face.

"What?" I asked really wanting him to just shut up already and get back to kissing me.

"After all of that, you had better say yes" he warned me still smiling. His hair was sticking up in the back in a cowlick and he hadn't shaved in a few days. In my eyes, he couldn't have looked more perfect.

"Yes Max" I said pulling his lips back down to mine.

Maybe life together was never going to be easy. Maybe we would fight and go through hard times like all couples do but he was still Max and I was still Eliza. As long as we remembered that, then everything was going to be okay.

We would be happy and that was enough for me. 

So I'm just going to conclude for now with a thanks. Thank you to everyone who read this and enjoyed what I was writing. All of your comments and encouragement have meant so much to me.

I can't believe that I actually finished this story because I started it on a complete whim in the middle of the night earlier this summer, and now it has blossomed into so much more for me. So thanks for being there. :D