I sit here, waiting wondering, hoping, that I'll make this right
'Cause all I think about is your hands
Your face, and all these lonely nights
There's a feeling that's screaming in the back of my head
Saying over and over
I want to hold you love you in my arms and then
I want to need you 'cause I need to be with you 'til the end
Then I hear myself reply she'll never let you in
This time, tonight
If only I had the guts to feel this way
If only you'd look at me and want to stay
If only I'd take you in my arms and say
I won't go 'cause I need you
Please don't go, 'cause I need you now.
                                                                  ------- Hanson--“If Only”

     It was 3:48 AM.  Aliesa Montaine couldn’t sleep again.  Her thoughts were consumed.  She kept on running the whole thing over and over again in her mind like she had for the past three days.  That girl.  Shane.  That girl.  Shane.  She had to stop thinking about this.  It was nothing.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing. It wasn’t anything.  But if it wasn’t anything, why was she still thinking about it?  Aliesa grabbed the pillow next to her and flattened it across her face, screaming into it.  She needed to stop thinking about Shane and that girl he was talking to.  Leslie.  Oh GOD.  She still remembered her name.  This was just getting out of hand.  There had to be an explanation for this all, a very rational explanation. 
     It was all that PDA stuff.  That had to be it!  Kissing was the reason why she was suddenly possessive.  She should never have agreed to it.  There was a reason why they didn’t do it in the first place.  And she was sure that this had to be one of the reasons why.  It was too involved.  And they weren’t involved.  They just weren’t.  And they never were going to be.  It wasn’t even an option.  They only had to deal for seven more months.  Seven months.  A possible seven months of living in the same space, of being down the hall.  Seven long, long, long, long, months.  Shane.   Those lips.  OH GOD.   Did she just think about kissing Shane for no reason at all?  What was wrong with her? 
     She couldn’t possibly be jealous because she was attracted to him?   No way.  No way in hell.  She was just hormonal because she was just not admitting any attraction to him whatsoever.  No way.  No way.  He’d left her high and dry in Las Vegas.  He didn’t care about her or what had happened at all until his career was in jeopardy.  I mean facts were facts.  Up until a couple of weeks ago they hadn’t really even been friends.  And now.  God.  This was just stupid.  She was jealous over something that wasn’t real.  Why was she thinking about this?  Why? 
     She flipped the pillow off her face and on the floor.  Why did she care?  This was just Shane.  She could totally handle this.  She’d been handling this for five months.  Her hand flopped against the mattress in frustration and the huge diamond sparkled.  It was like it was mocking her.  She stared at it.  Maybe that was why.  He’d bought her a ring, an extremely expensive beautiful ring.  Maybe this whole thing was her sick twisted subconscious way of thanking him for the fact that he was thoughtful enough to buy her what she was wearing on her finger. That’s why she liked kissing him.  Agh. 
     Did she just admit she just liked kissing him?  She did, didn’t she?  Aliesa groaned.  Who was she kidding?  She liked kissing Shane.  Of course she did!  Who wouldn’t?  The boy had lips like you wouldn’t believe.  That was totally why just the thought of it made her tingly and sent shivers to the center of her being.  There was a perfectly rational explanation for it all.  What was it?  She was weak.  Yes.  Good explanation.  She was just weak and hungry for affection.  That was even better.  She was hungry for affection.  He was just tempting because he was there.  She was on the re-bound god damn it.  Yeah. 
     Oh yeah.  That totally explained the urge to go down the hall and knock, no pound, on Shane Filan’s door until he answered it and demand that he never kiss her like that again so she could never be jealous.  It also explained why at the exact same time she wanted to kiss him senseless just to prove how much better she was then Leslie what’s her name.  There it went again.  Why was she thinking about that stupid girl and Shane?  She was absolutely insane.  They would be coming for her now in a straight jacket.  She knew it.  She just knew it.

“Fuck!”  Aliesa cried out as she pushed her covers off and jumped out of bed.  She didn’t care what time it was.  She needed some sense of mind.  She needed to know she was better somehow.  She needed to justify why she was feeling like this.  Without a thought to what she was wearing or the lack thereof, she swung open her door and treaded down the hallway two rooms down to Shane’s.  She didn’t knock.  This was not a time to be polite there was just too much going on.  She just sauntered in, cursing upon the realization he was sleeping soundly in his bed.   “Damn it.  Why can’t you just be the type who can’t sleep either?”  She sighed as she shut the door behind her and made her way over to his bed.  His back was to her.  He had to wake up.  She had a point to prove.  And damn it if she couldn’t get any sleep, neither was he.  She tapped him.  “Shane.” 

He grumbled.

She leaned in closer.  “Shane.”

He turned, still asleep.

That was it.  No more gentleness.  Desperate times called for desperate measures.  Aliesa climbed on his bed and stood up.  And then she proceeded to bounce up and down.  And then Shane moved again.  And she wasn’t expecting that.  So she tripped.  And she fell.  She fell right on top of him.  Her face within an inch of his, her legs tangled with his, her hands gripping his broad shoulders to steady herself.  And of course that’s about the time Shane Filan decided to wake up.  His brown eyes shot open in alarm, settling on her. 

His voice was raspy and sleep thick in confusion.  “Ali?” 

Somehow she managed to keep her reaction even despite the precarious position she had gotten herself into.  “Hey.”

Aliesa felt his hands on her bare legs and then on her waist.  “You’re on top of me,” Shane commented drowsily. 

 “Accident.”

“Then why are you still on top of me?” he asked groggily.

“Oh.  Right.”  Aliesa planted her hands on his pillow, and scooted herself off him, laying herself down on the mattress.  She stared at his ceiling trying hard not to notice that he was half-naked.  “Shane.  We have to talk.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow morning?  I just got to sleep,” he yawned shutting his eyes back closed.

“But I can’t sleep.”

“Uh-huh…” Shane’s voice drifted off.

Aliesa flipped to her side, propping her elbow up, and resting her chin on the palm of her hand.  “Shane.”

He muttered something that she couldn’t decipher.  She poked him in the stomach.  His tired eyes opened briefly.  “Later,” he mumbled before shutting them again.

Aliesa sighed.  She couldn’t wait until later.  She needed to be reassured now.  “Shane,” she whispered as her fingers trailed their way across his bare chest.    His sheets shifted around him.  “Wake up.”

He didn’t.  And she pondered for a minute, and then two, and then three about what a girl had to do to get some attention.  And after the fourth minute she decided something. 

     Aliesa sat up and looked over at Shane’s resting form contemplating the action.  But that would be wicked wouldn’t it?  To do it just to nurse her bruised ego?  She watched the rise and fall of Shane’s chest, knowing that he was probably already back asleep and she couldn’t just ask him if he thought she was attractive enough.  This was the only way.  It was wicked but she didn’t care.  She had to know if he wanted her as much as he could want Leslie.  So she did it without another thought.  Her lips descended against his.  And Shane woke up.  He woke up to find her half-off and half-on his body, tracing the outline of his lips with her tongue.  She nibbled the corner of his lip sensing the change in his breathing and lifted her eyes to meet his.  “You’re awake.” 
     She smiled against his lips, when she suddenly found herself crushed beneath him, pressed so tightly against his body that she was certain she’d melt into his skin.   Shane didn’t know why she’d suddenly decided to kiss him, but he wasn’t about to lift his lips from hers and ask her why.  He just continued his assault, kissing her with a ferocious intensity, and Aliesa felt like she was burning.  His hands were everywhere, around her waist, on her back, underneath the silk slip that she’d decided to use as a nightie, his mouth devouring hers.  Her heart was beating so fast, and her breath became ragged as she just kissed him over and over and over again, each time deeper and more intimate than before. 

“Shane,” she murmured in between breaths, her fingers wandering into his hair.  She knew she was losing complete control. 

Speaking his name only seemed to embolden him, and she felt her slip rise higher and higher.  It took every last bit of strength in her to reach out to grab his hands and intertwine them with hers to stop their path.  It took even more to break herself away from his mouth.  If she had any denial in her head before about liking to kiss him, it was now obliterated.  She more than liked it.  She drowned in it. 
     Both of them were still breathing hard, trying to regain some sort of composure, when Aliesa brought her eyes to his and gazed into those brown depths to see something that she’d never dreamed existed.  That tiny spark of need she saw in his eyes disproved every doubt that he could ever want her. Staring up at him, their breaths the only sound in the room, she fought the urge to reach out to touch him, but checked herself.  There was something about them in that moment, something untouchable, unreachable.  So instead she turned her head away, breaking their eye contact, letting her hand lay across the pillow as she tried to gather her thoughts.  There were so many things she needed to figure out.  Starting with why she had done this all in the first place. 
     Shane watched her intently in the darkness.  He opened his mouth to speak, but discovered he had no words.  There were no words for a moment like this.  Because he was coming to grips with something he had already begun to realize.  He wanted to kiss her.  Not that he wanted to.  He needed to.  He needed her.  He really needed her.  Needed her to be more than just something they pretended to be. 
     Not moving from his position on top of her, he lifted her chin so she was looking directly at him.  His brown eyes glowed as they burned into hers and it made Aliesa wonder if that intensity was due to emotions he didn’t know how to express in words.  What she did know was that he was waiting for some sort of explanation.  But the truth was she didn’t know how to say what she was feeling.  She only knew what was reality. 

She took a deep breath, and uttered one of the racing thoughts in her mind.  It was blunt.  “Why’d you hate me before?”

     The first thing he did was break eye contact.  That’s how she knew that their mood had suddenly taken a deeper dive into serious territory.  The second thing he did was lift himself from her, shifting both of them so that they were sitting up.  And that’s how she knew it wasn’t a good thing that she had decided to bring up an even more serious topic than the one at hand.  Because when his gaze finally settled back on her his expression was one of obvious confusion. Aliesa couldn’t be sure if he was looking at her like that because her statement was so obvious or because he objected to her choice of words.  Either way, he chose to answer her slowly.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean it plain and simple.  Why?  Why did we fight?  Why is it so easy now to talk when it used to be that we couldn’t stand to be in the same room?  Why do we seem to be finding ourselves in positions like this when a couple months ago we’d both cringe at the near mention of having to touch each other?  There has to be a reason why you hated me.”

Shane sat up a little.  “Okay first of all I never hated you.  I just disliked you very much.”

Aliesa sighed.  “Fine.  Why did you dislike me?”

He responded back softly with the same question.  “Why did you dislike me?”

“I asked you first.”

He searched her eyes a moment before answering.   “I don’t know.  A whole bunch of reasons I guess,” he replied uncomittedly.

She waved her hand for him to be more specific.  “Like?”

“Does it really matter now?  I mean we’re friends.”

“Is that your off-handed way of telling me that your reasons are THAT terrible?”

“No.  It’s just that I don’t think it would help us to bring up the past that’s all.”

“You want to know why I hated you?”  She didn’t wait for him to respond.  “I thought you were a jerk because you walked out of the room the minute you realized we were married.  You just left me there.  And when you came back…it was only because it was about the career.  You were just so cold.  You treated the whole situation like it was some sort of disease and that all you had to do was take a shot and it would go away.”  Her gaze lowered as she continued to give voice to feelings that they had never talked about.  “It made me feel cheap somehow.  It was like my life wasn’t as important as yours.  And it just made me wonder why.  Wonder what possessed me in the first place to end up there with you.  Because your whole attitude…you had words.  So many words,” she finished quietly, wondering as soon as she had if she had made a mistake by confessing it to him.  She jadedly lifted her chin up to gage his reaction.  He didn’t seem to be reacting. 

And when he finally did it wasn’t something she was expecting.  “Why’d you kiss me?”

The words tumbled from her mouth, the answer indifferent. “The same reason you kissed me back.” 

Shane shook his head, breathing in.  “No.  No I don’t think so.”

She stared at him. 

“You don’t know what you want.”  It was a cruel statement, condescending to the extreme, but he was beyond caring because it was the truth whether she liked it or not.  “And that’s what our problem is.”

     It was easy to ignore something you didn’t want to talk about.  And like most of the things that made up Aliesa Montaine and Shane Filan’s relationship, the night before was treated in the same way they treated everything.  It was ignored because it was convenient.  They’d been doing it for months now, and things weren’t about to change.  So Aliesa had just gone back to her room.  She tossed and turned some more, and when morning came acted like everything was normal.  There was no need for awkwardness when you were ignoring whatever it was that would have made you uncomfortable to begin with.  It was simple.  It was a solution.  It was an easy way out.  Because of course there were some things that couldn’t be ignored.  Things like keeping up appearances.  So Aliesa went to rehearsal, losing herself in preparing for her tour.  A tour she reminded herself that would kick-off in less than three weeks.

“Hey I’m back,” Aliesa called out setting her bag down in the entryway, dropping the car keys on the table before strolling into the kitchen.  “Did you stop by the grocery store by any chance?”  That’s when she heard it. 

A giggle. 

Not just a giggle.

It was a girl’s giggle. 

Aliesa backed up.  She walked through into the living room.  Nobody.  She peered out through the patio doors.  Nothing.

“I’m losing it.  Joan has worked me so hard I’m hearing things,” she said to herself as she made her way up the stairs.  She frowned.  Where was Shane?  He had to be home by now.

She saw a flash of brown hair.

Okay now she was seeing things.

Another giggle.

Okay she was not going crazy. 

And just when she thought she was, another giggle sounded in the air.  This time Aliesa knew it was a girl.  And she heard two voices.  And it was definitely coming from inside Shane’s room.  So that’s where she went.

Aliesa walked in.  And then stopped suddenly in the doorway as she was greeted with the scene before her.  She gaped. 

Astonishment.

Shock.

Disbelief.

Her eyes settled on Shane.  “Do you mind telling me what is going on here?” 

The words out of his mouth were one of surprise.  “Hey you’re home.  I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Obviously.”

A large pair of brown eyes stared at her intently, peeking from behind Shane.

It was a familiar face.

Her smile was bright and big as a pair of arms reached out to her.  “Auntie Awwie”

Aliesa scooped up her three-year-old niece from Shane’s back where she had been piggyback riding and cascaded her with kisses.  “Lily bear,” she greeted as she lifted her up to her chest.  “How’s my sweetie?” she cooed as she rubbed noses with the little girl before turning her head to face Shane.  “Does this mean?  Is Kara here?”

“She was.”

“And she just left Lily here?”

He nodded.  “I offered to baby-sit so she could run some errands back in town before coming back here.”

“She’s doing what?”

“I insisted she stay with us while they were in town.  I thought it was stupid for her to stay in a hotel when we have plenty of room here. More comfortable too,” Shane explained as he tickled Lily.  The little girl giggled in Aliesa’s arms.

“You invited my sister whom you’ve never met before to stay with us?”

“I met her,” Shane corrected.  “Almost an hour ago.”

“How did…” 

 “She was waiting at the gate when I got home, and introduced herself.  I recognized her from the pictures,” he cut in answering.

“I can’t believe this.  I’ve been trying to avoid her calls like the plague so she wouldn’t come.  I can’t believe she just dropped in without even a warning.  Is Dave with her?  Oh my god.  My parents?   Are they here?” Aliesa rushed out.

 “Don’t worry.  Your parents aren’t here.  Just your sister and this cute little thing,” Shane 
answered calmly, winking at Lily.  “Apparently Dave is in Manchester for a business trip, 
which is the reason your sister detoured here.  Since we’re not too far, she thought she’d stop by for a visit, she thought she was overdue.  We had a nice conversation.”

“Oh god.  Not this nice thing again.  We both know what nice means,” Aliesa bit her lip worriedly.

He raised his hand at her.  “I like her.”

Aliesa bit her lip harder.  “What’d you two talk about?”

“You know.  Just small talk.”

“And that already has me worried.”  Aliesa hugged Lily closer to her. “You don’t know my sister Shane.  She’s probably already reporting back to Mom and Dad what you’re like.” 

“Don’t worry I was good.”

Aliesa groaned.  “Shane you know if she’s going to stay here that we’re going to have to…”

“Play house?”  He finished for her.

She caught his eye.  “Yeah.”

“I know.  I started to move your things back in here.  But Lily here,” Shane made a face at the girl in Aliesa’s arms making her laugh.  “Woke up from her nap and we got a little side-tracked.”

     Aliesa fought the urge to fall down on the floor and beat her fists against the carpet like a child throwing a temper tantrum.  Of course this had to happen.  Of all the times it could.  She’d just moved back into the room down the hall, and now this.  With what happened last night, sharing a room was going to mess with her psyche.  She really didn’t need any more of that.  Her mind was already befuddled enough as it was to be more so because she was going to have to be that close to Shane.  But there wasn’t an alternative was there?  What else could she do with her older sister around?  Kara.  Kara would access everything and would be able to tell something was wrong in a heartbeat.  She was going to be worse than Bryan to convince that this marriage was for all the right reasons.  She kissed Lily’s check comfortingly, smoothing out the shiny brown hair that had escaped from her pigtails.  She hadn’t seen her niece in months.  And if anything, just being able to see that innocent smile for a couple of days was enough to get her through this.  She gave Shane a half-hearted smile.  “I can finish moving the rest of my stuff back.  You want to grab Lily some cookies or something?” 

“You got it,” Shane replied taking the little girl from her arms.  Aliesa tapped her fingers on her niece’s small nose.  “Miss you Lily Bear.”

“Miss you,” Lily replied back as Shane headed out the door.

Aliesa sat herself down at the edge of the bed.  She was going to have to fill in Shane on some things.  Because if she knew anything about Kara she knew this, they were going to be in for it now.

Chapter 23
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