234's Lifelines

39. One Way.

 Song: Heartless - Kanye West       

Rachel: "He should have been awake by now. They told me Nathan saved my life, how is he?"
Haley: "How is he? He's devastated Rachel, and it's all your fault. I saw you in the limo with Cooper. You were arguing with him weren't you?"
Rachel: "It wasn't what it looked like."
Haley: "You ruined everything. You caused a huge scene at the reception. You stole the limo, and now everybody's life is worse because of you. Does it even matter to you a little bit? Are you going to change one single thing because of it? Nathan doesn't need your thanks and neither do I. So why don't you stay the hell away from us. All of us." - One tree hill.

Happy Easter! He is risen :)

***

   Later that night, after planning and discussing every possible outcome and how to get out of it especially in regards to Shakespeare, Hera was seated in the car next to Jess in front of a restaurant. They'd left Shakespeare in Jess' home under the care of her secretary who was more than happy to help for the extra money.

"Jess I can't do this," Hera says fear in both her voice and her face.

"There's a difference between can't and won't or in your case don't want to. You can, you just don't want to, but you will as without going in there we may never get answers or know what his motives will be," Jess says.

Hera bites her lips.

"If you run away to Nigeria and he later realizes Shakespeare is his brothers child or already knows and tells Lexis then Hera you'd be in a worse situation as not only will they hate you for whatever they were told by Peter five years ago but they'll hate you for your current actions,"Jess says calmly.

"She's right Hera. You have to go in, you deserve answers as do we all. That way as your legal counsel we are better equipped to protect you in future should the need arise,"Jamie replies from the phone.

"So we're partners now?"Jess says to Jamie smiling.

"You can't run away from this, not now," Jamie says ignoring Jess.

Hera exhales heavily and nods.

"Okay," She says picking up her bag and connecting the call to Jess to make it a conference call. She places the phone in her jacket pocket and walks out of the car heading to the restaurant.

Once she gets in she looks around and notices Nathan seated, his eyes focused on the cup of coffee in front of him.

Hera hugs herself taking in a deep breath, she draws in her lower lips, exhales, releases her arms and walks over to the table.

"Hey," She says forcing a smile as she stands next to him.

Nathan looks up.

Hera sits down on the opposite end of the table and stays silent like Jess had told her to do.

"Just sit there and stare at him quietly, he'll explode, trust me, I'm speaking from experience," Jess had said.

And so Hera did just that, sits quietly and stares.

"I got your number from Maeve,"Nathan says after a while.

She'd guessed as much or rather Jamie had while also commenting on the horrible employee privacy protection rights for her number to just be handed out, hence she stays silent.

A waiter brings over water and hands them a menu but Nathan asks him to give them space for a couple of minutes giving him a large tip.

After the waiter leaves, Nathan looks at the quiet Hera and balls his hands into fists.