She was dead. She was so, so, so dead.
Ryan couldn't stop her thoughts from ranting away in her mind at the many ways she planned on killing Lois.
She was going to kill her, and then bring her back to life just so she could have the pleasure of killing her again.
This was a new low even for Lois. She had always been sneaky, but to actually set this up like this? That was just wrong.
The stranger smiled at Ryan nervously. "Hey" he said.
She didn't respond. The only thing she could do was stare at him, ranting away in her head over Lois, while those thoughts were mixed with ones on how good he looked to her at that moment.
"I know what you're thinking." he said, smiling at her.
"What?" she finally replied.
"You're trying to think of ways to kill Lois for setting us up like this." he grinned slyly.
Ryan was about to protest, but when she opened her mouth to respond, nothing came out.
Damn it. Even after all this time, after all he had put her through, he was still able to make her speechless.
The bastard.
Turning to face his body towards her, Justins smile fell.
"I'm sorry." he said, sincerely. "And you are wrong."
"About what?"
"About me not noticing that you were gone." he said. "I noticed about an hour or so after you left, but Lois wouldn't let me come and see you. She said you needed time to think things over, and needed time away from...." Justin paused as he looked down at the grass between the panels in the bench. "Time away from me."
Ryan could see the pain in his eyes at having to say those words. She never thought she would ever have to escape him, and obviously neither did he.
"And you're also wrong about me not caring about you. I do. I care about you so much it drives me insane." He was looking at her so closely, Ryan could swear that her heart skipped a beat.
"That was one of the reasons I wanted to get my life back together so badly. I wanted things to get back to normal between us, and I didn't want you to worry about me so much anymore." Stopping, a small smiled pressed his lips. "But all I did was make you worry about me in other ways."
"I know you didn't mean for all this to happen Justin," Ryan said, finally finding her voice. "But what I don't understand, what none of us understand, is why you wouldn't just listen to us when we tried to talk to you. All you did was push us away, lie to us and hide."
"Because I thought I could handle this on my own. I figured that I would be able to work it all out without your help, and that everything would be fine. So when ya'll started telling me what I was doing wrong, I just got mad. But not so much at you guys. At myself. I felt like I couldn't even take care of myself properly, and hated the idea of you all thinking that you had to watch over me like a child."
"We never thought of it like that, Justin." Ryan said, leaning her body towards him.
'I know." he whispered, returning his eyes to the grass beneath him. "I know that now, but then I was just so mad at everything. At myself, at the accident, at you for not believing me, at JC for questioning me, at Chris for being Chris, at Wade for trying to ease up on me thinking I wouldn't notice. I was just mad at everyone and everything."
Ryan didn't know what to say in response to that, so she mimicked his gaze and watched the grass under the bench at their feet.
She had been so shocked when she had come out and found Justin sitting here, that she was certain that she was going to have to kill Lois.
But now, talking things over with him, she understood why she had done what she did.
They needed this. Even if Ryan would have liked it to be later rather than now, either way this conversation would have happened.
"So, Lois tricked you, huh?" Justin said, his smiled facing the grass under him.
"Yeah." she replied. "She's dead later."
"Ill help ya! She called me at four am this morning to tell me about this little plan of hers. Now I know why she gets so mad at me when I call her in the middle of the night." Justin said.
Ryan laughed. "I called her at three, and felt so bad about it."
"Yeah, I know. I had just gotten off the phone with her right before you called." Justin answered, picking at the bench. "We talked for a long time, and came up with this whole plan to fix things between us. But we didn't know how to actually get you here without getting suspicious." Justin smiled. "You should have heard Lois when she called me back to tell me that she already set it all up. She was so proud of herself. She wants cookies for being so smart."
"Yeah, well, no cookies for her. She's lucky I'm not gluing her hand to her ass for this."
Justin looked up to stare at Ryan confused. "Whaaa?"
Ryan laughed. "Nothing. Inside joke."
Justin raised an eyebrow before clearing his throat. "So, um, I have something I wanted to say." Looking up to her, Justin scooted along the bench to sit directly beside her. Staring into her eyes, he finally did what everyone had been telling him to do. "Ry. I need help."
She smiled.
"The other night after our fight, I went to JCs and we spend most of the night talking. We hadn't talked like that in a long time, and he made me see things clearly. I know that Ive been an asshole, but I know that I was wrong now and I'm willing to work on fixing everything I screwed up. Everything! I'm going to back off on myself, and I'm going to go to Dr. Hughes tomorrow and have him check everything out to make sure I didn't cause more damage by pushing so hard. I'm going to take a couple days off of rehearsals to rest and eat better. I'm going to do it right this time."
Again, she smiled at him.
"And I'm going to do whatever it takes to fix things between you and me. I wouldn't know what to do if I lost you."
"You're not going to lose me, Justin." Ryan said, placing a hand on the side of his face. "You could never lose me."
"I honestly thought I already had. With you leaving and all."
"I only did that to make you smarten up." she grinned. "It was either that or letting Lois kick your ass. And I didn't think that was the best way to help you recuperate."
Justin laughed. "Oh, no wonder she wasn't all for this plan of yours to begin with. You took away her ass kicking privileges."
"Yeah, she wasn't too happy about that." Ryan smiled.
They watched each other for a long while, both mentally thanking Lois for being such a pain in the ass and always scheming. Only she could have set something like this up.
Maybe they wouldn't kill her after all.
"So," Justin said, breaking the silence. "What's it gonna take?"
"What's what gonna take?"
"What's it gonna take for me to make things right with you?" he asked, smiling across at her.
Ryan grinned, diverting her eyes to look out at the water beside them.
She realized just then that this was the place where Doc had met his wife. He had never really elaborated on their first conversation, but she knew that it wasn't anything like the one she was having with Justin right then.
But even so, it made her feel close to him. He had met his soul mate at this very spot all those years ago. And now here she was, rejoining hers.
"So?" Justin repeated, leaning across into her gaze.
"So," she said. "Its gonna take more than the Timberlake grin."
Justin laughed out loud. "That what JC said."
"I knew I liked him best." she smiled.
"So, the grin isn't gonna cut it this time?" he asked.
"I don't know. Lets see it."
Justin have her his best Timberlake grin, and elaborated with a little wiggling of his eyebrows.
Ryan laughed. "Well, that's pretty good. What else ya got?"
Justin grinned evily at her, before leaning across the short distance between them and kissing her gently.
Across the park, Lois smiled excitedly from her place behind a tree. Knealing on the ground, she was practically crawling across the grass for a better view.
"Move over!" Joey whined. "I cant see anything but your butt from here!"
"Then what are you whining about? That's the best view in the place." she said, not bothering to divert her eyes from the two across the park.
It had worked. She knew that if she could just get them together and Justin admitted he was a jackass, that everything would work out the way it was meant to.
She knew that Justin was serious about making things right. Both with his health and with Ryan.
And she knew that this time, he was going to do it right.
"Move! I wanna see whats going on!" Joey whined, as he tried to peek over her shoulder and around the tree blocking his view.
Turning to face him, Lois pushed him back, causing him to fall on his butt. He gave her a pitiful look before she knelt down in front of him, smiling happily.
"You don't need to see what they are doing." she said. "Ill show ya."
Joey raised an eyebrow in confusion, before smiling wickedly as she leaned in and kissed him.
After a moment, Lois pulled back and matched Joeys evil grin.
"Welp, I gotta say, that was a whole lot better than watchin' whatever they're doing." he said.
"Well thankee." she smiled. Turning around to peek back at Justin and Ryan, she smiled before standing up and helping Joey to his feet. "Lets go." she said, heading back towards her car.
As they emerged from their hiding place, Joey glanced over his shoulder at his two friends on the bench.
Smiling, he wrapped his arm around Lois and held her close. "You did good, Lois." he said. "You did real good."
