IT WAS SUPPOSED to be a happy day. Reagan knew that, had known that, even days in advance. Her and Dave were meant to be celebrating Gracie's together, just the three of them, on the last day of her spring break before she returned to school.

They'd already had the big blow-out party at the start of the month, closer to the day of Gracie's actual birthday, and Reagan was grateful that it had passed. She wouldn't have been able to cope with her emotions if they'd been wriggling under her skin during Gracie's initial party with ten other children running around and her family, flown down from Washington, watching her.

That didn't ease her pain, though. She and Dave had just spent the evening serenading Gracie over a homemade birthday cake, cooking her her favorite dish — Dave's damn fucking barbecue, of course — and giving her more presents that she was able to open privately, only in front of them.

Gracie had reveled in it all. The magic of what was happening, seeing her parents together as they'd celebrated her arrival at the age of nine, had pleased her beyond measure. Reagan had watched tortuously through her own agony as Gracie had smiled, showering her and Dave both with hugs and a boundless happiness that just kept on coming.

She wished that she hadn't waited so long. As soon as Dave had arrived back from Virginia with Gracie in tow, she should have addressed her conversation with Louise then. It would have at least gotten it out of the way and erased the heaviness of wanting to confront him on that day of all days, when they should have been marveling over how easy it had been to slip back into their old familial routine.

Reagan considered that maybe it was unnecessary. Maybe, even as bitterly as she didn't want to admit, it was useless to rehash the past with Dave when she'd made the exhausting uphill climb to push it behind them.

But he'd said things about her to Louise, things she had at once believed from the sincerity that Louise had confessed them with. Those things were acting as a massive roadblock in Reagan's path to letting him back in and as badly as she wanted to pretend that they hadn't resurfaced, the undeniable truth was that they were consuming her.

"She's out," Dave said cheerfully, bounding down the steps to the stairs where Reagan was waiting for him, her arms folded uncomfortably across her chest. "Didn't even last five seconds after I tucked her in. She had a big day."

He snaked both arms around Reagan's waist, pulling her in for one of those nightly kisses that typically set the mood for the rest of the evening. She discreetly angled her face to the side and let him kiss her jaw, which he accepted without complaint. She felt his mouth move to her neck.

"Dave," she said, wrapping her fingers around his forearms and gently pushing them away from her hips. "I . . . need to talk to you about something."

He bounced back, his face suddenly brightening with an eagerness that made Reagan's heart hollow. She already knew what he was thinking. He was assuming that what she had to say was positive, likely an update as to where they stood in their budding reconnection. He was waiting for it — the day when he could be Dave Grohl, the rockstar and the husband again, a combination title that most guys in a band dreaded, yet he yearned for.

He hadn't bothered to take note of the tightness in her voice.

"Yeah? What's up?" he asked. The hopeful sheen in his eyes didn't waver.

"I don't know how to say it," she said, pinching her upper lip under her teeth.

Dave's face fell. "That doesn't sound good."

Reagan couldn't cope with standing in front of him any longer, having to watch the fear dawn over him. Her resolve dimmed and she suddenly turned, walking towards the dining room table that was still littered with paper plates and shredded wrapping paper from earlier. She built a stack of the trash in her arms, avoiding Dave's eyes.

It was for the best that she got straight to the point if she was going to spare them both any more anxiety.

"I saw Louise in St. Louis the other day," she said, phrasing it offhandedly even though it was far grittier of a confession than she made it sound.

Dave froze where he stood, the flushed glow of his face draining away. "Saw her? Like, passing by?" he asked, each word drawled slowly from his mouth.

"No. I spoke to her."

He straightened and stuck his hands into his pockets, a default move that implicated how uncomfortably the mood had shifted.

"Why'd you do that?"

Reagan shrugged and added another icing smeared plate to her load. "I don't know. I guess I felt like it."

"You felt like talking to her? Of all people? Randomly, out of the blue?"

He was pressing for information without asking the real questions she knew he was cautiously averting. Dave was nowhere near foolish enough to think that her encounter with Louise had been as innocent as a mere hello and goodbye.

"I wanted to ask her a few things," she said, continuing to keep her eyes trained on the dining room table as she tidied up.

"What things?" His voice was rigid, brimming against the tumultuous number of demands he wanted to make — what did she tell you? Do you believe her? Are you pissed at me? Are we going to survive this?

Reagan ran her tongue over her bottom row of teeth and made the abrupt decision not to back down. The truth was that if he wanted her, if he wanted to reclaim her as a partner or even as a wife, he would have to confront the past once and for all, no holds barred. She didn't want the story that he'd initially spewed. It had been bad enough on its own, but to find out that it'd been sugarcoated on top of all that badness was devastating.

"We talked about Mexico," she said, finally looking up. "She told me what you said."

Dave's eyes bugged outwards and he leaned over in disbelief, laying a hand to his chest.

"What I said?" he demanded.

"Yep. You could have told me on your own that I was the one regret that you had in your life."

She spun away from him and strode towards the kitchen, balancing the trash in her arms and refusing to look over her shoulder. He followed and she heard the sound of every purposeful step that he took as he chased after her.

"I never said that," he disputed hotly.

"I don't blame you for not remembering. You were drunk, after all."

"Yes, Reagan, I was drunk. I didn't know what the fuck I was saying or what I was doing."

"That's such a bullshit excuse and you know it. You might as well say you tripped and fell right between her legs."

As Reagan opened her arms and emptied the contents of them into the trash bin, Dave grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her around to face him.

"You're bringing up shit that I thought we got past," he said angrily. "Don't do that. Don't ruin what we've got going."

"Are you kidding?" she said through an incredulous, dry laugh. "I find out that you told her we were actively going through a divorce, which was a lie, and you want me to drop it?"

"It was a fucking mistake. I was depressed as hell and I knew fuck all about what was going to happen between us. I'm sorry. I've been sorry. I always will be."

"Your apology would have meant more if you'd been completely honest from the start."

The rage that she'd whipped herself up into was overpowering. It burned at every single one of her nerve endings, erasing any will that she had to remain levelheaded. Confronting Dave had resurrected the old feelings of spite that she'd come to peace with and they'd returned to her with full force, mixing with her heartache to create a dangerous concoction. Learning about what he'd said and the way he'd gone behind her back, in more ways than one, had brought back those stinging feelings with a vengeance she couldn't ignore.

It made her internally repeat the same mantra she'd been chanting to herself since it had happened.

Why hadn't he just divorced her? Why had he not ended it all before making it inevitably worse?

"Look," Dave said, holding his palms up towards her and inhaling deeply. "I'm sorry. You caught me off guard and I'm sorry. We can talk about this calmly if you're willing."

"There's nothing to talk about," Reagan snapped. She tried to navigate past him and out of the kitchen, but he blocked her way with a quick side-step led by one Vans-clad foot.

"Yeah and there's not going to be as long as you've got your mind made up before even hearing my side of things," he shot back. "Can't you just hear me out?"

She did want to listen to what he had to say for himself, even if it meant enduring another round of blows to her heart. They had tepidly built their way back up to a level of trust between each other, and she supposed it was reasonable that she gave him a fair chance to explain his actions even if they'd maimed her all over again. She could give him that.

After a moment spent making sure that she wasn't going to attempt to escape him again, Dave settled himself into explanation-mode with a weary look.

"I'll admit, I may or may not have said whatever she told you I said," he started slowly. "I hardly remember anything from that weekend. All I know is that I fucked up. Whatever I said to Louise was just the collateral damage of that. She's an honest person and I don't doubt that she was trying to give it to you straight, whatever she told you, but I'm telling you now that I didn't mean them."

"You don't even know all of what she told me," Reagan said.

"You're right, I don't. I do know that it was probably some fucked up shit. She's got a better recall from that weekend than I do. But I'm sure that I didn't mean those things that I said because I was hurting. Really fucking badly. I was mad."

"Wasn't it enough that you fucked someone else? Did you have to go and shit on our whole relationship?"

She stifled the tears that were beginning to gather in her eyes, sucking them back with an inhale that ached in her chest. It was such a clusterfuck of an experience, having been the wife of someone as famous as he was. She'd never been so acutely aware of the insecurities she had until he'd gone and cheated on her, pulling the most predictable, yet so out of character, move from the book of tragic celebrity relationships.

And she wasn't even in a celebrity. Perhaps that was why it made her all the more paranoid. She would never even dangle by her fingers from the platform that he stood on. Who was she to compete not only with the stage lights, the feeling of a guitar in his hands, the chorus of people singing his songs, but also the women that came along as a perk to the whole gig?

If performing to him, if being the frontman of his own band, was better than any drug-fueled high in the world, then she was the antithesis to that. She was . . . Narcotics Anonymous.

"I didn't mean that shit, Reagan," Dave said, his voice low. "I swear to god that whatever I said that weekend was me talking out of my ass."

"You regret me? If you regret me, do you regret Gracie?"

It was the question she'd been waiting to ask him, the most painful one of all. If he regretted her, then by default he regretted Gracie, too. She made a move to cover her face, pissed that she could feel tears beginning to swell over, but he grabbed her wrists and jerked them back down to her side.

"Never," he said seriously. "I would never regret our child. I would never regret you."

He lured her into a hug then, one that Reagan couldn't fight against. Still locking her jaw in an effort not to cry, she slipped without protest into Dave's arms and let him hold her as he stroked one hand through her hair.

"I love you," he murmured. "What I said came from being in a bad place. I was just angry, angry at fucking everything. I didn't mean it. Reagan, I didn't mean it."

It felt cowardly, but she believed him. The realization that she did waved over her slowly at first, but before she knew it she was melting into his arms and burrowing her face into his shoulder. The wasted energy of being mad at him was a store that she couldn't spare and that she was too afraid to release. The thought of losing him again, although she was still hurt, was too much to bear.

There was no doubt that it would always scar her, split jaggedly across her heart like a botched tattoo. She didn't know exactly how she'd cope with it or move on, mostly because neither she nor Dave had ever spoken so horribly about the other. She still didn't want to believe that he'd actually said those things to Louise, but it was easier to fall limp against him and hold on to the strained hope that they could work through it rather than tell herself fairytales.

She'd missed him so terribly. Everything had gone so right since they'd reunited and although she finally had the whole truth about what he'd done, it couldn't hold a candle to the experience of not having him at all.

He scrunched his hand into her hair, grasping an arm tightly around her waist.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, Reagan."

It was an almost knee-jerk reaction to assure him that it was okay, but she reminded herself that it wasn't. She stayed in his arms though, fearful of what would happen if she took a step back. If she physically clung to him hard enough, Reagan was convinced that they would stay together, weathering the storm instead of losing each other within it all over again.

It still did little to soothe the second bout of pain he'd inflicted.

An electronic jingle made them both untangle out of the other's arms. Reagan used the back of her hand to dab away at some of the tears that had trickled down her face and she glanced towards the countertop.

"My phone," she said through a sniff. "It's probably your mom. She told me she was going to call tonight."

Dave went dutifully and got the phone for her, swiping it off the counter. He turned it over to check the screen and his eyes went flat. He stopped walking, freezing where he stood.

"What?" Reagan asked. She held her hand out, waiting.

His eyebrows furrowed and his mouth twisted as he stared at the screen before he slowly turned it around, meeting her eyes.

"Jesse," he said coldly.

Reagan felt her stomach flip-flop.

"What?"

"Jesse," he repeated, this time slapping the phone into her limp hand. "Your Jesse, I'm guessing."

The way he said 'your' was biting. She turned her cellphone over and inspected the screen and sure enough, it was Jesse's name and number identifying the caller. The phone continued to ring shrilly as she stared at it in disbelief.

Why was he calling? They hadn't spoken in ages. She hadn't even remembered programming his number into her phone.

And why, why had he chosen to call at that moment, wherever the fuck he was and whatever his intentions were?

As soon as ringing ceased, Reagan furled her fingers around her phone numbly. It couldn't have been anything urgent — Jesse wouldn't have called her for that. She had a feeling that she knew what the call likely pertained to, which made it all the more horrifying that it had occurred in front of Dave.

Dave, who was staring at her with narrowed eyes.

"Why is he calling you?" he asked flatly.

"I don't know," she replied. "I haven't spoken to him since the last time I saw him, and that was the night we . . . broke up, I guess."

"I can guess why he called."

A curl of anxiety-driven heat expanded in Reagan's chest.

"It's not like that," she said.

"You know it is. And I'm sure he'll keep calling. Because you refuse to tell anyone that we're back together."

He moved past her and into the living room, leaving her slack-jawed in his wake. It was implausible that the tenor of their conversation had shifted so suddenly. One moment they'd been trying to extinguish the flames of one argument, and now another had sprung up in the ashes.

And he was mad at her.

"You're making a big deal out of nothing," she said, keeping her voice calm as she followed him.

"It's not nothing," he shot back. "It's not fucking okay. Is that why we have to keep everything a secret? Because of him?"

"No," Reagan gasped, the sting of her offense burning white hot. "Dave, I don't even talk to Jesse anymore! I don't even know why he called!"

Dave paced several rigid lines, his mouth set into a firm line. The residual annoyance he'd had from her confronting him was spilling over into something greater, something that she couldn't control, and it was difficult not to be angered by it. He'd thrust her into the hot seat for no reason at all except pettiness, a blatant example of acting like a petulant little child.

"You know, I never understood how you got with him," he said sharply. "You see this guy again in New York while we're still married and a few months later, you're dating him? It never added up to me."

"You don't mean that," she said, pointing a quivering finger directly at his chest. "You're saying that because you're mad I found out shit from Louise. Don't turn the tables on me when I've done nothing wrong."

"Why's he still calling you, then?"

"I don't know!" Reagan exploded, throwing her hands up in the air and nearly hurling her phone at the wall. "I don't know why he called me, Dave! You don't have to create a fake cheating scandal in your head to justify it! I wasn't the one who cheated!"

He jerked slightly, like she'd struck him with her hand rather than her words. She watched his face change, the anger smoothing away into regret and sadness. His tongue ran itself over his bottom lip.

"You're right. I was the one who did that," he said.

"And I'm the one living with trust issues because of it," she added softly. It was a final dig that she only partially regretted, but she decided that he deserved it. She couldn't stand when his anger gave way to his immaturity and his jealousy, even if it was understandable, had no leg to stand on.

She didn't know why Jesse had called. She didn't want to know and she didn't care.

Reagan turned away from Dave to leave the living room. He'd told her predictably that he wanted to spend the night, but at that point she didn't quite care whether or not he made it upstairs with her.

Suddenly, she felt his arms hook beneath hers, pulling them up. She held them aloft in shock as Dave buried his face into her neck, giving her a squeeze around her midsection that took her breath away.

"Dave," she said, wriggling in his arms.

"Haven't you figured out by now that I'm an idiot?" His voice was muffled as he spoke into the curve between her throat and shoulder. "I'm sorry. For everything."

"It's fine," she sighed, knowing she didn't completely mean it. "Can you let g-,"

She was cut off the moment that she felt him kissing her, moving his mouth from her neck to her collarbone in a line of sloppy, sucking kisses that made her throat lock up. Her phone, which was still being held in the air, fell from her hand and to the floor.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Dave apologized between every kiss. He ran his hands from her rib cage, over her stomach and to her waist.

"You can't just do this," Reagan said, though she didn't sound convincing as she breathed heavily. "Don't think this is another one of those 'fuck and make up' kinds of situations."

"That's not what I'm doing at all." He spun her forward by her hips and kissed the very tip of her nose, his lips forming a crooked smile. "We're gonna' go upstairs. Watch a movie. I'll let you pick it this time. And I'll throw in a bonus prize — I'll rub your head."

She frowned frumpily. "You're using head rubs against me. It shouldn't be a 'bonus prize,' anyway. You owe me."

"Truthfully, I'll keep using them against you if it makes you not mad at me."

"Yeah, yeah."

Reagan nudged his arms off of her but was unable to fully hide the small smile that crept up on her. It was just easier to appease him because it also appeased her, deescalating another argument that danced a little too closely to the edge of their first downfall.

Some days, it was more acceptable to pretend that she hadn't done a perfect job of repairing the fissures that he'd blown into her.

"Are we good?" he asked gently.

She swallowed, making an effort to the shed the cloak of betrayal that had been thrown over her for a second time.

"Yeah," she said. "We're good."

a/n:
Can I be honest with you guys?

This story has been dragged out for like . . . way too long.

What should have taken me probably ten chapters to write succinctly, I've spanned across over twenty. But the truth is that I've found a lot of lost peace in writing this story and letting go of that is not something I'm exactly looking forward to. And don't worry, I've still got more in me to churn out, but I really do apologize if these chapters seem droll at times, or repetitive. I gave myself an inch when I started OOTR and turned it into a mile, but it's a great source of pleasure for me and I'm thrilled that people are still invested! So thanks a bunch for that. I'll keep trying to make things interesting because honestly, I don't know anyone who can ever get enough of Mr. Grohl.