Fenny woke to the first few rays of sun as they shone in through the gap in the curtains. Snuggling drowsily back into the warm body behind her as she relished in the pleasant feeling of legs tangled with hers and arms pulling her close, fingers trailing across her bare stomach. She reached over to find her glasses so she could properly see the clock, and was startled to notice first the lack of glasses, then the lack of clock, then the identity of the arm tossed across her stomach as reality hit hard and fast.

“Oh god,” she breathed, flumping back on the bed. A glance at her watch revealed it was a little past six in the morning, and as she looked towards the window, she noticed something was wrong. Closing one eye, then the other, she realized one was clear and the other just as myopic as always. She’d lost a contact lens. That coupled with her night of passion with Danny and the fact that her husband was still MIA instantly gave her a throbbing headache.

She gently shifted out from under Danny’s welcoming, comforting embrace and threw back her half of the covers, carefully scouring the bedding for the tiny piece of plastic.

Danny let out a groan and opened his eyes mid-stretch. “Morning Fen,” he said thickly, the confusion obvious in his voice. “What’re you up to?”

“Lost a contact,” she declared, not daring to look him in the eye.

“Oh. Lemme help you look.”

“Thanks,” she murmured as he took the bedclothes off and shook them gently before dumping them on the floor next to the bed. They searched a moment in silence, both yawning occasionally.

“Found it,” Danny declared triumphantly, picking up the small sliver of transparent plastic from the corner of his pillow.

“You’re a god,” Fenny smiled as he slipped it into her hand. “I mean, you’re — thank you.”

He took a deep breath and finally managed to catch her gaze. “Look, Fen, if you’re upset about last night—”

“No,” she assured him quickly. “No. If your next question is do I regret it, I don’t.” And she didn’t. She knew that given the chance to go back and do it over again, she probably would. Anything was better than a night in that room that held so many memories. Alone with her own worries, paranoia, and pessimism that would only lead to a messy breakdown of some sort. As they sat on the stripped bed, naked, she knew that if she didn’t leave the room, she’d probably do it again without the benefit of time travel, which her already very heavy conscience didn’t need, although it would probably do wonders for other parts of her.

“But you are a married woman,” Danny pointed out sleepily.

“I know,” she nodded, not sure how to react to that. She wanted to thank him for being there when she needed someone, for rescuing her from herself, for comforting her, but it all sounded like a means of justification for a night of adulterous passion.

She leaned over, gave him a quick kiss, and scuttled off the bed to gather her clothes and wrap herself in a sheet. “I’m gonna take a shower, then maybe we can see about breakfast.”

“Sure,” Danny agreed, pulling the blankets back up on the bed and crawling under them again. Fenny cast one more glance over her shoulder, let out a breath, and slipped into the empty hallway, pushing down those all too familiar feelings of doubt and confusion that always seemed to accompany the contentment that she found with Danny.

She passed the room she and Brad had shared the last time they’d been there, and stepped inside, remembering the way that they’d held on to each other when the window had flown open, their talk of marriage… . She unconsciously twirled the ring on her finger as she clutched the sheet to herself.

“God, Brad, I hope you’re okay,” she murmured to herself as she hurried from the room towards the bathroom.

Greg flumped down in an armchair in the living room while he waited for the kettle to boil, thankful that the stove was gas and not electric and therefore still worked. He’d have to drink instant coffee, which wasn’t his favorite, but he didn’t know how to brew coffee without an electric coffeepot. Greg would drink tea if he had to; nothing would spoil his mood. He was safe, warm, surrounded by friends and as far from Don and his goons as he had been in what felt a lifetime. All he had to worry about now was Brad, who seemed to be well looked after from what he’d heard, and the annoying thing that was poking him in the rear.

He shifted his weight and pulled a cell phone out from under him as it beeped in protest. Turning it over in his hands, he wondered if it was Fenny’s and noticed it was full of messages, all from the same number. That could mean one of three things – it was either an insistent telemarketer, Brad had found a phone, or, he thought miserably, Don was trying to contact them again. He glanced at his watch – 6:30. No one would be awake at that hour; he wasn’t entirely sure why he was awake at such a godforsaken hour. He shrugged and listened to the first three seconds of the first message. Relieved to hear Brad’s voice saying he was safe and they needed to talk, but quickly turning the phone off as the voice began to prattle on about how worried he was and how much he missed her.

Greg couldn’t help but wonder how Brad would take it if he found out Fenny and Danny had spent the night together. Assuming of course that they had. No, he knew Fenny; she’d probably pounced on Danny the minute she’d climbed the stairs. Not that he himself had been much better, sleeping with Ritza the first chance he got. Although he had to admit that he felt better having confessed to Gina. That’d give the therapist something to think about. Just as he was considering sending Fenny and Brad to his therapist, the kettle went off and he hurried himself into the kitchen, anxious to get a caffeine fix.

Paul woke to the feeling of gentle fingers brushing hair away from his face and carefully running over the wound trying so desperately to heal on his forehead. Smiling to himself he took in a deep breath to let out a contented sigh, only to instantly regret it as the battered muscles around his ribs protested. He opened his eyes to see Gina’s face half illuminated by the harsh morning sun from the windows. Her eyes were filled with concern as she gazed at him and continued to run her fingers lightly over his face, tracing the bruises.

“Morning,” he murmured.

“Morning,” she agreed.

“What’s wrong?”

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks hon.”

“You know what I mean. In the daylight you look worse than you did last night. How are you feeling?”

“To be honest? I feel like shit, it hurts to breathe,” Paul whined.

“Aww, poor baby,” Gina cooed.

“Will you kiss it and make it better?” he asked in a baby voice.

Gina raised an eyebrow and regarded his battered body. “That could take all morning.”

“That’s sort of the point,” he smiled.

“I don’t want to start something you can’t finish, it’s just cruel,” she mused.

“That’s never stopped you before,” he shrugged, regretting it as the simple movement aggravated the wounds to his chest.

With a sympathetic smile, Gina leaned over and gave him a loving kiss, which he enthusiastically returned, trying valiantly to ignore the pain. “That’s all your getting until you can breathe without it hurting,” Gina said pointedly. Paul pouted sweetly at her, but she ignored him in favor of getting dressed. “Someone’s going to have to get some more food,” she said, thinking out loud as she handed Paul his own clothes, “I wonder if anyone else is up.”

“You take roll, I’ll be in the shower,” Paul said, grunting as he tumbled off the bed, not bothering with buttons or socks. He wandered out of the room and down the stairs towards the bathroom, hoping that a good dousing with hot water would soothe rather than savage his wounds. He was already walking like an elderly man who’d lost his cane and deemed too injured to have sex, he didn’t imagine it getting any worse than that.

Pushing open the bathroom door, Paul saw Fenny brushing out her wet hair in the mirror. “Oops, sorry Fen,” Paul smiled, backing out of the bathroom.

“Oh, hey, Paul, my contact-wearing friend, no, come back I need your help,” Fenny chirped. “One of my contacts fell out last night, and I know I’m an idiot, but I can’t figure out how to get it in again.”

He let out a sigh and hobbled back towards the sink. “You really are helpless, you know?” he teased. “How’d you get it in the first time?”

“Claudia snuck up on me,” she shrugged. “I just can’t bring myself to poke myself in the eye on purpose. That’s why Proops and I wear specs, we’re wimps and not into this whole masochism thing.”

“I’m the masochist?” Paul mused. “This coming from a woman who…” He trailed off, not wanting to upset Fenny by mentioning the fact that she was the one who’d spent the night with another man knowing full well that it would cause another of the patented Sherwood fights, which she and Brad were so close to perfecting. A cloud passed briefly across her face. “… Who wants an injured man to help her with her contacts. Sit down and tip your head back.”

She did as she was told and sat on the toilet and looked up at the ceiling, but now that she knew what was coming she flinched at every one of Paul’s movements as he fished the lens from the glass she’d soaked it in.

“Did you notice that spider on the ceiling in the corner?” he asked.

Fenny tipped her head further back and strained to see the far corner. “Whe—hey,” she chimed as the lens slipped onto her eye, making it water and she blinked furiously as the left side of the world swam into focus again. “Thanks, I owe you one.”

“No problem,” he shrugged. “Now get out, I need to shower.”

“You’re sure you don’t need some help or something?” she asked, genuinely concerned by the bruises that seemed to be covering his body.

“You volunteering?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“No,” she snapped. “I was just saying, because you look so injured, y’know, we could, I mean Gi—”

“Fen trying to get you naked again?” Greg asked as he came around the corner.

“Still after my buns of steel,” Paul smirked.

“I’m just gonna go downstairs and kill myself,” Fenny mused, rolling her eyes as she stepped out of the room.

Greg grabbed her by the arm as Paul, still chuckling to himself, closed the bathroom door. She looked up at Greg questioningly when he handed her the cell phone. “Call your husband,” he demanded and wandered back down the stairs, leaving Fenny to stare blankly at his descending form.

Brad sat hunched over a pad of nondescript stationery scribbling out abstract patterns he’d read in one of Fenny’s books was meant to relax you, but it certainly wasn’t working for him. He’d woken before dawn and spent the next two hours worrying about Fenny. Granted he knew that she probably wouldn’t be awake yet if she was all right, and Beven had assured him that Fenny and Gina were probably with Paul and completely safe, but he still didn’t understand why Fenny hadn’t called back yet. No amount of insisting to himself she’d dropped her phone or the battery had died could shake the image of Fenny being forced to do any number of insidious things for Don.

The cell phone placed on the dresser rang and Brad leapt for it in such a hurry that he slammed into the dresser, rattling the mirror against the wall and waking Beven. “What the—”

“Fen!” Brad all but screamed into the phone.

“Hi,” she said meekly. “Sorry about before, I think something must’ve happened to the phone, Greg found it earlier.”

“Yeah, fine, I don’t care, are you alright? Where are you?”

“I’m fine, what about you?” Fenny breathed, sounding just as panicked at he did.

“Me, yeah, terrific, I’ll be better when I can see you though, where are you?”

“Actually we’re at Betty’s,” Fenny said, and Brad could hear her smile in her voice. “She’s gone though, passed away a few weeks ago, it’s kind of depressing and eerie to be in this big empty place. Well not empty because there’s Gina and Paul and Greg and Ritza and Danny, but it’s dark and cold and we haven’t had any run-ins with the ghost. Maybe Betty did have him exorcised or she’s talked some sense into him or something, not that there was really, you know, anything for the ghost to get up in arms about. Assuming of course that ghosts even have arms they can get up to begin with, but there wasn’t anything going—”

“Something wrong?” Brad asked concernedly, interrupting her.

“Huh? Why would you say that?”

“You’re babbling again,” he smirked.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I was just so worried about you, and I’ve missed you and I, I want to go home,” she declared, suddenly faced with the emotions she’d been trying to avoid for the last few days. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too, Fen,” he said in an assuring tone. Beven let out a playful groan of disgust and Brad glared at him. “Look, I’m coming to see you, where are you guys exactly?”

Fenny reached into her pocket to pull out the bit of paper she’d written Betty’s address on earlier and rattled it off to him, and he in turn repeated it to Beven, who nodded. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour from here,” he shrugged.

“I’ll be there in an hour, sweetheart,” Brad cooed.

“Thank god,” Fenny breathed. “Be careful.”

“I will. See you soon.”

“Yeah,” she agreed excitedly. “Love you.”

“You too, bye,” Brad grinned, paused a moment, and turned off Beven’s phone again. When he turned to hand it back to Beven, he was laying back in bed with the covers over his head. “Get up, get up, we gotta get going, come on, up,” Brad enthused, yanking the blankets off the bed.

“I’m never getting involved with dragging around another lovesick puppy,” Beven grumbled, trying to hide a smile. “Up at the crack of dawn to reunite young lovers, sheesh.”

“Shut up and put on your pants,” Brad chuckled.

“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls,” Beven mused.

“I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” Brad laughed.

Fenny sauntered out of her room and bounded down the stairs to find Greg sprawled on the couch with a cigarette and Paul gingerly settling himself in an armchair, his hair still dripping from the shower. Just as she was ready to chastise Greg for smoking, Gina called her from the kitchen.

“Yeah?” she called back, sauntering towards her.

“You want eggs with your breakfast?”

“Breakfast? No. Where’d you get eggs?”

“I made a quick stop at the market,” Ritza declared, cracking another egg into the pan. “Gina’s making pancakes, too.”

“Oh, well I’ll take a couple of Gina McDermott’s world famous pancakes,” Fenny smiled.

“Thought you might,” Gina smiled proudly.

“Could you toss another couple dozen on the griddle for Brad?” Fenny asked. “Maybe a couple eggs, ov—”

“Over easy, I know,” Ritza smiled, eliciting a subconscious frown from Fenny.

“Brad’s gonna be here?” Gina asked, suddenly remembering that he was the one still out amongst the mafia.

“Yeah, he called half a dozen times last night to tell me he loves me and misses me and can’t wait to see me, only my ringer must’ve been turned off or something, Greg found the phone, I called him, he’ll be here in an hour.”

“Brilliant,” Gina smiled.

“Maybe things can finally go back to normal,” Fenny sighed, taking the kettle from the stove as it boiled.

“Actually I think this is as normal as it usually gets for us,” Gina mused.

“I know,” Fenny agreed miserably.