Eric didn't come home that night. Andie waited up for him until about 4am when sleep overcame her allowing her to pass out on the couch until 10am the next morning. She lurched up when she eventually came around, and rushed to Eric's room. The bed hadn't been slept in.

It was a Saturday, but she went into the office anyway, thinking that she might find him there. But the security officer in the lobby told her that nobody had been up since Friday afternoon, and that she didn't have the clearance to access the thirteenth floor on weekends.

Feeling deflated, Andie wound up back home and spent the majority of the day on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, feeling terribly sorry for herself.

Why wouldn't Eric come home? More importantly, why was he always not coming home? Why was she always in the position of waiting for him to return? A hideous pattern that started six years ago and wreaked havoc on her mental health everytime...

When 8PM rolled around, Andie was sure she hated Eric. She was sure she had never hated anyone as much as she hated Eric. To him, it didn't matter that Andie was in an exceedingly vulnerable position last night. It made no difference to him that she was waiting up all night for him to come home, and then all day. Had he even considered how damaging his standoffish behavior was? Was he even aware of how much turmoil it had on Andie?

Yes, she hated him.

This was over between them, whatever this was. She was moving out. She was going back to Chicago.

With her mind made up at a quarter past ten, Andie found the little black dress she had discarded that night before, and slipped it on with the same pair of strappy heels. She was out the door within fifteen minutes, and on her way to the place where she could bet a million dollars she'd find Eric tonight.

A twenty minute uber ride later, and Andie was re-entering the establishment where she had lost all dignity the night before. The same doorman recognized from last night greeted her wordlessly, holding out the lacy black mask that she might as well not wear.

Slipping it into place over her eyes, she stormed down the old staircase with a firy vengeance that she could hardly wait to unleash on the man who had caused her such a painful degree of anxiety for the last time.

At the bottom of the stairs, Andie allowed the quiet man to remove her shoes. She felt a little less bold without them, because it took about three inches of height from her, but she was too fired up to back out now.

At first glance, Andie didn't spot him, and the storm brewing inside dimmed some. What a waste this grand gesture of loathing anger would have been if she couldn't even find him here tonight.

But then, behind the black lace of her mask, she spotted him.

He was standing across the room with three other gentlemen, a tumbler in his hand with some kind of honey-colored drink swirling inside. He was participating in a conversation that had him grinning, and it only drove Andie's rage.

With as much attitude as she could muster, she marched straight across the parlor, exciting the crowd around her who recognized her from last night. Closer to the group of men, she recognized one of the gentlemen beside Eric as Teddy, the only other individual here aside from Eric that didn't make her queamish. He spotted her first. And with his gaze fixed on her, he elbowed Eric to his left, who stopped speaking mid-sentence to follow his friend's gaze.

A storm brewed across his features when their eyes met. A muscle in his jaw twitched. The tumbler in his hand clattered on a nearby table as he left his friends behind and strode towards her in long angry strides.

"Oh, what the hell do you have to be pissed about?" Andie snapped before Eric could say anything. "Did I leave you in a state of anxiety for nearly twenty-four hours? No? Then you have absolutely no leg to stand on."

He stopped in front of her.

"Andie--"

"No, there's nothing to really talk about. I only came here to tell you that I'm moving back to Chicago," Andie said, turning around and walking back towards the stairs. "Goodbye and have a nice life."

A hand snagged her wrist and whirled her back around.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Eric growled.

"I'm talking about how you don't get to abandon me anymore! I am so sick of that feeling! I'm so sick of waiting around for you to come home while my mind convinces me that you're not! I'm over the miserable states of panic you put me in. Goodbye!"

Andie turned around, but the hand wrapped around her wrist yanked her back once again. And then Eric was pulling her through the throng of people that had gathered to watch their heated exchange.

On the other side of the parlor stood a wooden door nestled between a wall of books. Eric pushed it open by pressing his shoulder into it, and then he pushed Andie through, following closely behind. The heavy door shut with a bang behind him, startling a slight jump from Andie.

The room was an office with dark green walls and a large dark brown desk. A few cushioned chairs that looked over a hundred years old scattered aimlessly about the room.

"All right," Eric growled, raking a hand through his hair as if this whole thing exhausted him like nothing else. "What the hell are you going on about?"

Andie was fuming.

"You're a jerk," she hissed, stepping forward to shove Eric back against the door. "And I hate you." She tried to shove past him and remove herself from the same room as him, but he held her by her shoulders and forced her to remain in front of him.

"You hate me?"

The shock and hurt in his voice cracked Andie's armor. She clenched her jaw in an attempt to push her tears aside, but they came anyway.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Because I didn't come home last night?"

"Because you left me six years ago!" Andie snapped, her voice breaking. She shoved at Eric again, removing his hands from her shoulders. "You fucking left, Eric! And you keep doing it! It doesn't matter if you eventually come home now. Do you know what those hours of waiting for you to show up do to me?" She shoved him again, and he fell back against the door, baffled, the fight gone from his limbs. "You just leave me whenever you fucking feel like it, and I'm sick of it! So, yes, I hate you! I hate you so much! I hate you and I never want to see you again!"

"Andie," Eric breathed her name as he reached for her and crushed her to his chest.

"No, you can't fix this!" She yelled, struggling against his embrace. "I hate you!"

But Eric wouldn't let go.

Andie fought him, but all of her surpressed grief caught up with her as her exhausted emotions took place of her anger.

"No, I'm so mad at you," she whined pitifully, angry with her failing bravado.

"I know you are," Eric sighed regretfully, his hand smoothing down the hair at the nape of her neck. "And you have every right to be." He lowered them both to the ground, holding Andie close the whole way down so that she wound up in his lap. He held her there firmly as if he feared she might try to escape his embrace again.

But she didn't. She was too exhausted. Instead, she cried into her hands while Eric rocked her back and forth. She hadn't wept so hard since the night Eric left her. She wouldn't allow herself to weep like that again, but apparently she hadn't expelled it all that night, and it had bottled itself up inside of her, waiting for the right opportunity to burst.

"Andie, I didn't realize... I didn't understand..." Eric struggled to explain himself and Andie lifted her head, but kept her glaring eyes pinned somewhere else in the room.

"Didn't realize or understand the amount of damage you left on me?"

"God, Andie... I didn't mean to."

"Well, you did."

"Honey, look at me."

"No."

"Andie..."

"No, I don't want to look at you," Andie fussed, her voice cracking again, and a fresh wave of tears stinging her eyes. Eric didn't press her, but he also wouldn't let her go--not that she tried to get up. He smoothed his hand up and down her back as he spoke.

"I wanted to stay..." he told her.

"Wh-what?"

"Six years ago. I wanted to stay. But... I couldn't."

"But you could have taken me with you."

"Andie, no... I couldn't have done that either."

Andie lurched up from his lap, no longer desiring to feeling his arms around her. "Why the fuck not!"

"Because," he answered cautiously, standing as well and holding his hands up to keep her from barreling past him and exiting the room. "I didn't trust myself with you Andie."

She settled a look on him that said that he was full of shit, but he ignored it and carried on.

"The relationship that you and I started was like an ember in a forest of dead trees. It started out very small, but it caught fire quickly, and it was only going to get bigger," Eric explained, dropping his hands to his sides and sighing heavily. "I was your guardian, Andie. I was responsible for you, and every day I had to resist the urge to..." He trailed off, clenching his jaw in frustration. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Andie? I had very un-brotherly affections towards you, and I knew you had them as well. If one of us gave in, then we would be doing something highly inappropriate and very, very, wrong. I didn't understand the severity of what we were doing until the morning that..."

That she orgasmed over his knee, they were both thinking. Andie's face reddened painfully with the blush of utter humiliation.

"...that I left," Eric settled for, knowing that Andie knew the exact moment he was referring to. "I left that house shaking and sick to my stomach as if I had taken advantage of a child, because that's what you were, and that's what I did. And... I had to leave, Andie. I didn't want to--God, I didn't want to, but--what other choice was there? That ember would have burned down the whole goddamn forest if I stayed."

"You could have talked to me," Andie whispered, tears slipping lazily down her cheeks.

"You wouldn't have understood, sweetheart... And I'm not saying that to be cruel, but you wouldn't have. I barely did. But every instict within me screamed that I leave that very night."

Andie was crying again. "I loved you. You were all that I had. And you just left... And you never came back. Not for holidays or graduation or even my aunt's funeral..."

"I know, baby," Eric breathed, his voice nearly as broken as hers. "I know, and I'm sorry. I am so sorry, Andie. I will never forgive myself for what I did."

He reached for her, and after a moment of hesitation, she went willingly into his arms.