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"When Maria first started to get tired we thought nothing of it really. We'd been so busy with going between our families and spending time with friends that we just figured we needed to slow down."

Tara sat silent, unsure why he was telling her all of this but feeling like he needed to talk it through.

"So we cut back and for a week or so Maria felt like her normal sense until one day" he inhaled a shuddered breath "one day she didn't and within a few days she could barely keep her eyes open. That was when I'd had enough of her saying she was fine and I dragged her to the doctor and we" his voice faltered as the tears flowed freely down his face, Tara crying with him.

He exhaled loudly "we found out that Maria had cancer. A severe form of cancer that took over body rapidly. She" he choked "she didn't have a chance. We were too late."

He quickly wiped his face with the back of his hands.

"That's why Tara. That's why I took you the way I did. I promised her..." he sunk to the ground with his back against the railing and his arms stretched out across his knees "I promised her I would never love anyone else. I promised her I'd never get married and the only way I could make what I did ok was to not care" he looked up at her with pleading eyes  "I couldn't care Tara. I felt like I was betraying Maria by marrying you, by having children with you. I had to hate being with you."

Tara stood up.

"I'm sorry Tara. So damn sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm fucked up in the head. I used you. Maria would be so ashamed of me right now and you know what Tara?"

She shook her head as she moved closer to the doors.

"She'd be right. I'm fucking ashamed of myself. Ashamed of the way I treated you. You didn't deserve this Tara... any of it! Your fucked up father screwed us both over and I took away your fairytale."His voice lowered to a whisper " I took away every little girls dream of their first time. I'm sorry. So damn fucking sorry."

He started to stand as she was almost through the doors, her eyes, red and puffy from crying, never left him.

"I can't take it back Tara. I wish I could. I wish" his voice dropped to a whisper "I could. Please forgive me."

She shook her head as he stretched out a hand to her, the only way he could think to offer her some form of comfort.

"No" she hoarsely whispered as his face contorted in a mass of pain.

She couldn't take this any more. She had to get out. This... this was too much. She had to get away. She needed... something!

She took hurried steps backwards before turning and running to the door, pulling it open with such force that it pushed past the small rubber stopper that was designed to prevent the door from hitting the wall. The loud bang echoed though the hallway making those downstairs jump to attention and ready to move.

She ran.

Her mind crazy with visions of what had happened and of Lucas' face as he told her of his betrayal of a dead woman. How much he loved her, planned a life with her.

How he didn't care about her.

"TARA!"

He was following her as she raced down the stairs. His voice echoing through the house.

"TARA! STOP PLEASE!"

At the bottom of the stairs she looked around her with an anguished expression.

What way did they come in?

"Tara" A soft voice called to her, a females voice, she turned to see Maggie standing a few feet away from her. Compassion shone through gentle eyes as arms stretched open and in a flash engulfed her as she flung herself into them. The arms held her close as she gripped onto the edges of the shirt that Maggie was wearing. She held on as she'd never held on before, reliant on someone else for comfort, it was a feeling, a wish, that she never wanted to feel ever again. She'd been alone for most of her life, never feeling the warmth of a hug and this feeling was so foreign to her that it scared her very inner being.

She cried. She howled. She screamed noiselessly. She let out pain she'd held in for years. From losing her mother, her fathers abuse and to now... being married to a man who never wanted her in the first place. She was simply a human incubator. A device to help him produce an heir. She was nothing, a nobody.

Her heart and mind were completely broken as she heard soft words she didn't understand and humming. She felt shattered, broken into thousands of pieces with no way of gluing herself back together. Maybe it was better this way?

Even within the warmth of these arms she felt completely and hopelessly alone. They promised things she knew she shouldn't wish for, a promise of so much more than she deserved.

She wasn't aware of the crowd that started to gather watching with their own feelings being tested as Lucas stood at the bottom of the stairs watching Maggie as she tried to console the younger woman. His gut wrenched as much as his heart as he cried with tears that matched hers as he hated himself with a passion for doing this to her. For pushing her beyond limits that she should never have had to set in the first place.

Raw emotion flickered over the crowd as a small voice, muffled into a comforting cuddle, was the undoing of men who thought nothing of taking the life of a man in front of them begging for mercy.

"Why can't someone just love me?"

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