He'd been sure he was doing the right thing when he told his wife their marriage was over. Derek had felt that certainty in his gut. He'd still been sure the day they signed the papers, the day he moved in with Meredith, and the day when he'd gone browsing at the jewelry store wondering what kind of ring his girlfriend might like if and when he was ready to buy one.

Derek Shepherd was absolutely positive he had done the right thing until he rounded the corner on Christmas Eve morning and saw his ex-wife standing at the nurses' desk, her chin resting in the palm of her left hand, her focus on the chart in front of her.

A square-cut diamond set in platinum sat on the ring finger of that hand, and Derek's stomach dropped as he realized it was not the diamond he had given her nearly 13 years earlier, the one he had basically goaded her into taking off a few months after she gave up his last name.

He was still standing there, speechless, staring, when Mark walked up behind her, slipped his arms around her waist and snuggled close to her. Addison smiled and turned in his arms, facing him, and Derek watched them intently as the happiness practically rolled off them in waves, reaching out and punching him, delivering a powerful blow to the gut that had been so sure walking away from Addison had been the right thing to do.

So again, Derek turned and walked away. He went to his locker, changed from his scrubs to his street clothes, paged Richard with a message that he had to leave due to a family emergency and then, Derek fled. He climbed into his Rover and drove as fast as he could toward his property and the lake and some hoped for peace.

It eluded him. He'd been avoiding the trailer since he and Meredith had reconciled. He had told himself it was because it was just easier for them to be at Mer's than it was to trudge out to the property every day. But the truth hit him the moment he stepped inside the trailer. It had stopped being "his" at some point. It had become "theirs"--this cabinet earmarked for a hefty portion of Addie's shoe collection, that drawer designated for his fishing lures.

She lived and breathed in the place he had come to escape her.

Addison had been the one to discover what became Derek's favorite walking path, the one that wound north around the lake and gave them the best view of the sunset. He walked it now, praying to anything that had the power to stop the crazy thoughts that were racing through his head to make them go away.

She was marrying Mark. Addison was marrying Mark. His Addie was marrying Mark.

And that, he told himself, was the insanity of it all... she wasn't his anymore because he had walked away. So what did it matter that another man was claiming her as his wife? She was no longer Addison Shepherd; she could marry any one she wanted to.

[i]"You really said yes?"

Addison looked up from the diamond ring he had spent two months picking out and smiled at him before she leaned in and kissed him, her fingers dragging slowly through his unruly curls.

"Of course I said yes, Derek."

"But you could marry any guy in the world. And you're really gonna marry me?"

She laughed and wrapped her arms around him more tightly.

"Yes, because when I see myself as an old lady waiting for my children and grandchildren to come home for Christmas, I'm sitting next to you, holding your hand, thinking about how lucky we are to have grown old together."[/i]

It was technically Christmas morning when he began ringing her doorbell, his fingers pressing into the buzzer again and again until Addison threw open the front door and looked at him with absolute fury.

"Derek, for God's sake, it's 2:00 in the morning. What is the matter with you?"

"Addie..."

His voice caught in his throat, and suddenly her anger faded and she looked at him as if she'd just seen something terrifying.

"Is it Mom? Derek, did something happen to Mom?"

He shook his head and walked by her, stepping inside the entryway of the townhouse she had bought not long after their breakup.

"No," he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you worry. Everyone's fine."

Addison shut the door and then pulled her robe closed tighter around her to ward of the chill the winter air had brought inside.

"Derek... what is going on?"

Her tone was now full of confusion, and he looked at her and his eyes fell on the ring again.

"Is... are you alone?"

She sighed and walked over to the living room couch, sinking down on it.

"Mark had to fly to New York this afternoon. His mother refused to come here for the holiday, so I told him he had to go to her."

"Is that why he gave it to you early?"

Addison wrinkled her brow as she looked at him and tried to figure out what he meant. Then she looked down at her hand, at the ring.

"Oh... yes. We celebrated Christmas last night. I tried to find you today to tell you in person, but Richard said you had to leave for some family emergency. That's why when I saw your face, I thought..."

Derek couldn't move. He nodded to acknowledge her explanation, but he couldn't make himself move off the spot where he stood, couldn't make his eyes shift away from the sight of her sitting there in the soft, cream colored fleece, her red hair tousled from sleep.

"Mom and the girls are fine. They weren't the family I was worried about."

"Then who is?" she asked. "Derek, seriously, I'm tired and I have people coming over today. I need to get some sleep. So whatever it is, please, can we just get to it?"

"You can't marry him."

She stood up instantly, furious anew. "Get out."

"You can't marry him," he repeated as he held his ground.

"You need to go home, Derek. Whatever fight you had with Meredith, whatever craziness you've dreamed up in your head, take it and go home and leave me alone."

She reached out to push him toward the door and Derek grabbed her arms at the wrists. Addison tried to pull away, but when he refused to release her, she stopped and stared at him.

"I'm not saying you don't love him, but it's not the same. You know it isn't."

"And you're some great arbiter of what kind of love it takes to make a marriage work?" she snapped. "Your kind of love ends, Derek, on a whim, with no warning, no explanation, and you don't even try to fix it, so excuse me if I don't consider you an authority on the subject."

She moved to pull away again, but Derek held firm, pulling her closer, drawing her body toward him so that her arms were trapped between their bodies.

"I thought I was sure," he said. "I was so positive. But I'm never positive about the right decisions, Addie. Remember? Mom had to practically lock me in my room to get me to choose between Princeton and NYU. You had to convince me I was right to choose Neuro because I was scared I didn't have the discipline. And when I asked you to marry me, I was terrified you'd say no. I'm never sure, Addie. I'm never sure... unless I'm wrong."

"You don't get to be wrong now!"

Addison screamed the words in his face, and Derek let her, taking her anger without flinching, refusing to react as her hands wound into his shirt, pinching flesh as they did.

"You left me, Derek. After I begged you to notice me, to care... after I flung myself on the rocks with Mark... and even after I begged you again, after I told you that if you walked out, you would kill us, you left me! You don't get to be wrong now!"

She was crying and yelling and the grip she held on his shirt was beginning to tear the fabric. But Derek stood there and refused to let go.

"Answer me one question," he said, his voice pleading. "When you look at your life now, down the road, what do you see?"

Her red hair swirled around her shoulders as she shook her head. "I don't know. I've stopped trying to look that far ahead."

"Well, I had, too, until today. And then I saw another man's ring on your hand where mine is supposed to be. And so I looked down the road."

"And let me guess..." Addison's voice took on a bitter tone as her eyes burned his with their intensity. "You saw yourself living your McDreamy life with Meredith. And what do I do, just stand around and mourn our marriage for the rest of eternity?"

"I saw myself," he answered, "looking at you... while we waited for our family to come home for Christmas."

Her eyes overran with moisture as the reminder of the day he'd proposed rang in her mind. Addison began to wilt under the memory, and Derek pulled her closer.

"I know I was an ass and that I wasn't there and I know you begged and I still ran away... I forgot somehow that in my heart, Addie, you're still the person I want--that I need to grow old with. I don't know how to make that happen or why on Earth you should want to even give me another chance, but... you can't marry him. Please. Please."

"I love him," she whispered, her face against his chest.

"And I love Meredith," he said. "But it's not the same, Addie. It's not the same."

She sobbed and when he finally let her arms go, she grabbed hold of him and clung to him as if her survival depended on it.

"No, it's not the same," she whispered.

Mark had placed the new, shiny diamond ring on Addison's finger, but Derek was the one who removed it. Neither of them were sure what came next or how they were supposed to become that couple they both saw in their future, still, after everything... grayed, content, together, sharing a Christmas morning. All that Derek and Addison knew as this Christmas dawned was that they were still, somewhere inside of them, "Derek and Addison."

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