Rating: R possibly (but only for language).

Disclaimer: They belong to Guiding Light, not me. Of course, we all know what they would be doing if they belonged to me (hehehehe!)

The wind was soft, a slight whistling echoing around him, the chill a cooling balm for his feverish emotions. The pier creaked and groaned beneath his feet and he had a longer-than-momentary wish that it would just give away beneath him, take him out of his misery once and for all. And then her face flashed before his mind's eye and he took the wish back. Life was worth living, even this miserable excuse of one that was his, if it meant seeing her eyes light up a room, her golden and honey hair curl about her face. It was worth living for .... even if she wasn't his anymore.

Anymore. He had to smile at that and he said the word aloud, "anymore," a fair dose of sarcasm gracing its syllables. As if she was ever his to begin with. And that very point had been driven home to him time and time again, first by his mother and now his darling, baby sister had joined the act. He'd never expected Pilar to turn on him. She'd always been closer to him than Mick and such a romantic: a holpless, lovestruck romantic. To be honest, a part of him, had believed that she would have seen his life-saving gesture for Michelle as very romantic ... very dashing.

Yet another example of what a complete fool he was; had been since Michelle Bauer Santos -- he vehemently enunciated in his mind, she was still his wife, damnit! -- had entered his life. And as many mistakes as he had made -- with Michelle, his mother, his sister, the business ... and as big a fool as he had been, he could find it nowhere in himself to regret meeting her, marrying her, loving her. And as disloyal as it was, he could not regret Mick's death in the equation; he would gladly give up his brother's life in exchange for Michelle's in his in the instant of a heartbeat again and again if given the choice.

He loved her that much; had loved her from the moment he had first laid eyes upon her. And he knew, as he stood here, lived and breathed, that he would her love until the day he died. The funny thing was that he had never believed in true love, had never believed that he would ever feel anything stronger than affection, passion for a woman and now ... now, his life was falling into shambles before him because he had gone and fallen in love with a mere slip of a girl who did not love him; want him in return.

It was ironic. In his life, he'd known so many women, so many had wanted him, either for his money, his power, his looks, his sexual prowess or any combination of all of the above. He had never been in the position of wanting and not having, unlike Mick. And then along came Michelle. The first time he had seen her, his heart had literally stopped beating for a moment and his breath had actually caught.

He had known then, intuitively, that he had loved her -- of course, he had denied it; denied that his attention resting so solely on her had anything to do with her. He'd told himself that Michelle was the weak link, the way to find out the truth. He hadn't spent every moment he could with her, simply to be with her. No, he had insisted to himself that it was merely an attempt to lower her defenses, break down her guard. He had denied any feelings for her ... not because she was involved -- somehow, someway -- in the death of his brother, but because she had not wanted him. At all. And so he had denied wanting her.

How transparent he had been, even then. Then just as now. He could deny to mama, to Pilar, to every person he crossed that Michelle was out of his life, out of his mind, out of his heart, but he was lying ... lying through his teeth. Lying with a false smile and false bravado. Back then, it hadn't hurt as much, back then, he hadn't known what it felt like to hold her, to kiss her, to see her smile and hear her say his name. He hadn't felt the satiny softness of her skin, smelled the fragrant scent of her, memorized the gentle sway of her hips, the curl of her hair, the lilt of her eyes.

And so it had not hurt ... as badly. It had not hurt as much knowing that she hated him, wanted nothing to do with him, had been involved in his brother's death. And how. All the time he had been searching for the identity of Mick's killer, he had never believed that she had a hand in it. It had been Bill Lewis or Jesse Blue -- she just knew the secret and was protecting one of them. She wasn't responsible, not Michelle. Not his Michelle. She couldn't do something like that. She was all that was good and right in this world -- the perfect definition of class and stability. No, not Michelle.

Bill or Jesse, that had been his conclusion, and if he was being honest with himself -- and he was being honest with himself --, he had prayed, hoped that Jesse Blue had been the answerable party. It would have made it easier -- not easier, but that much less difficult -- fulfilling his contract ... his first contract to commit murder; avenge his brother's death. If it had been Jesse, he might have actually gone through with it. Of course, then his soul would be safely ensconced in hell, alongside Mick.

He stepped off the pier and onto the sandy beach. He didn't know why he was here. It certainly hadn't been his intention. The last time he was here had been with Michelle -- Michelle with her desperate, clinging cries to spare her life, her tortured intensity, as she confessed how she had killed his brother, the sheer terror in her eyes when he held the gun to her -- the sheer relief when he pulled her out of the water ... wet, but very much alive. All of this ran through his mind like a videotape on fast forward and he paused every now and then to recapture the look on her face, the trace of tears, trying to see when it was, at what moment did he decide to spare her ... put her, not just above the memory of his brother, but also above the reality of his family? When did he decide that she would come first in his mind, in his heart, in his life?

He didn't know. He couldn't know now. Too much time had passed, too much had happened in the short months that they had been married. He had made the decision to save her life and had come up with a solution -- the only solution at the time -- that not only spared her, but also, in essence, gave her to him. Michelle Bauer would be his ... that had been the clinching detail, the final key that decided upon proposing the idea of marriage.

He had to laugh now at the notion that by simply marrying her, giving her his name, his ring, that she would be his. Love did not work that way. He knew that now and so he had let her go, set her free. He thought of the old adage, 'if you love somebody set them free. If they come back, they're yours forever. If they don't, they were never yours to begin with.' Of course, he hadn't expected her to come back. He knew that she wasn't his. He knew that she had never loved him.

Still, he had convinced himself that night that his love would be enough for the two of them, at least until she gave her heart to him -- he was sure that she would eventually fall for him. He would make her fall for him ... or so he had thought. He had thought wrong.

Less than two months later, the fact that they were awaiting annulment papers to sign their marriage away into oblivion, proved that. But back then, that night and the days, even weeks that followed, how he had believed that it would happen --- that she would be his in every sense of the word. He thought of their wedding day and he recalled how he had truly believed that things were changing between them and he'd even confessed that belief to her, fool that he'd been ... fool that he still was.

Fool that she had played him for, but he didn't even have it in him to hate her for that. He had taken her life, her freedom, her love from her ... all because of the Santos Family Code. He shook his head -- no, he was being honest now --, he had done all of those things because he wanted her. Plain and simple ... the unvarnished truth. He, Daniel Santos, had seen, had wanted and so had taken Michelle Bauer. So that she would be his. The truth.

He wondered where she was now. Not with Jesse, now there was a fool, if ever he'd seen one -- with Drew Jacobs when he could have had Michelle. And she wasn't in Europe. He had checked. He had sworn that he would not, he would stay out of her life, her business, but he had not been able to. Her aunt had told him that she had never left, but he hadn't had the courage to walk straight up to her door at the Bauer's. So he had gone to Millennium. He had gone to the hospital. The diner. Hell, he'd even roamed the lawns and hallways of Springfield University. No Michelle anywhere.

And now he was here at the beach where his life had changed so momentously. He didn't know why he was here, he'd just been driving, driving along to every love song on the radio. 'Lover's Night' the DJ had said. And he had seen Michelle in every word and had understood and appreciated the sap and corn of every line because he was in love ... painfully, miserably, hopelessly in love with his wife.

God, how he loved her. He loved her so much, but she was gone ... she was gone from him forever, the papers were just a formality, a technicality, like their marriage, just a technicality ... a matter of convenience, or inconvenience as their case was. She had told him once that there would be no happy-ever-after for them, theirs was not a love story, not even a one-night stand. She had been right. And he had been wrong ... wrong in believing that a fairytale of love ever after could ever come out of the nightmare that was their marriage.