Count On Me

Part Forty Five

A/N WOW! Loving the love for the last chapter! Keep it up guys, hope you love this one too...not an easy place for either of them!

Chapter Forty Five

Lizzie threw herself onto the bed, face down in the pillows, praying that they'd hide the sound of her sobs. All that she'd feared had come true. THe very moment that she put her heart into things, the very moment that she let down her last defence, he hurt her, thrust the knife into her heart and twisted it a dozen times. She was broken.

But tomorrow she HAD to get up and deal with Nate, pretend that his father hadn't broken her heart. But she was nothing if not a good actress, she'd been in worse situations where she had to suck it up, and she'd do it again, but tonight...tonight she was going to cry like a baby. It wouldn't make things any easier, but she might feel a bit better for it when the morning came around.

Oscar couldn't dwell on how upset Lizzie seemed, Krystal had turned the waterworks on at the drop of a hat, he wasn't going to fall for that again. He was angry, she could blame her sister, she could argue, but he wasn't about to fall for it. She had denied him, denied him his role as father, she COULD have made things better, and he wasn't going to fall for it.

He paced the house, restless. It was silent upstairs, Lizzie so upset that she'd gone straight to sleep. He fumed, his fingers curling into fists, desperate to punch something, the wall, a door. Something to take away the pain. She'd hurt him, she'd let him down and he felt as though he was sinking in quicksand, with every step, hands clawing, dragging him down.

He couldn't stay there.

Grabbing his coat, he headed for the car. He could sleep at the hotel. Once he'd drunk himself into oblivion.

Oscar rolled over, the room slowly coming into focus, and rued the previous night. He glanced at his phone, out of charge. Plugging it in, he headed for the shower, he needed to sort himself out, that was a given. Clean he felt a little better, but the aftermath of his actions left a bitter taste in his mouth.

His phone had been off since he'd met with his solicitor...when it all changed. There were many missed calls, mainly from Lizzie, but there were a few this morning from his sister. Looking at the clock he realised it was almost midday...a disaster.

Groaning, he ignored the texts, and the answer phone message, instead he called his sister. Several calls meant something was wrong, so he dialled a little anxiously. The rest he'd deal with later.

"Hey Frey," he offered a little more enthusiastically than he felt when she answered.

"Oscar Stephen Wicker! What the HELL are you playing at?"

He groaned, the last thing he needed was his little sister treating him like a naughty school boy. Before he could reply, she carried on, "I have been sat awake ALL night waiting for morning in your time zone to tell you my news!"

"You're pregnant again?" He offered when she took a breath.

He heard her grunt, "No! Coop has been offered a coaching job, for a year trial at a hockey team...in Manchester. Can you believe that?"

He tried to process that, "you're coming here? That's amazing!"

"Well I THOUGHT it was, that's until I spoke to Lizzie. I don't know what's wrong, but she sounded so awful that I couldn't even share my news. She said nothing, only that you weren't there; she wasn't sure where you were. Then as she hung up I heard her cry...she CRIED Oscar, actually sobbed. What the hell have you done to her?"