"Liz?"

She jumped up and looked away from him.

"Max. What are you doing here? I thought I was alone."

"Liz, what's going on? What are you hiding from me? Why are you crying?"

Liz lifts her head to the sky and wipes the tears off her face. "Nothing's going on, Max. I'm not hiding anything. And I'm just upset about what happened in Copper Summit."

"Liz, that's a lie. I can't take anymore lies from you. What's going on?" He reaches for her and grabs her arm. He sees a flash of Kyle and Liz getting into bed together and talking.

"Liz, I saw that. Tell me what's going on. Please." He pleaded with her.

Liz sighs heavily. "I can't, Max. I can't tell you." She pulls her arm away from him and starts to walk away. He follows her and stops her.

"Liz, this is tearing you appart. Tell me."

"You know what you're right. I can't take this anymore. He isn't even here anymore..."

"Who isn't here anymore?" Max asked, clearly confused.

Then, changing her mind again, "No one. Never mind, Max. Nothings going on."

"Liz..."

She turned and looked at him. Looked into his soulful brown eyes. In there she saw all the hurt that she had caused.

"Fine. Sit down this is kind of a long story."

They both took a seat at the picnic table sitting on oposite sides.

"It all started last week. Maria took Alex and me to go see a psychic." She looked at Max and saw the disbelief on his face. "I know. It sounds crazy. But that's Maria. Anyway, she told me that the man I love was a very important man and that he had a destiny. I agreed. Then she told me that you chose love over your destiny." Seeing that Max was getting ready to interupt she held up her hand. "Just let me finnish, Max. It gets worse."

She took a deep breath then continued. "I was so happy. I couldn't believe it. It was what I had always dreamed. That you would choose me. I went home. I was up in my room," she smiled at the memory, "pretending to marry you. Suddenly, there was this flash of lighting outside my widow and a man appeared on my balcony. It was you, Max. From 14yrs. in the future. I couldn't believe it, at first. But then you... he told me about you singing to me. Why you did it and how it took you two weeks to learn the lyrics. I was so impressed. But then he told me the reason he was there. He needed my help. He needed me to help you fall out of love with me. Because in the future our planet was taken over by our enemies. Tess left. But you needed her. She made the group complete. Without her you were weakened. I tried so hard, Max. I said everything I could think of to make you turn away from me. But nothing worked. You still loved me. Then he told me that 25 minutes before he came he held Micheal in his arms and he was dead and that Isabel died two weeks before that. I found out about what Micheal did to Maria. Then I payed a visit to Kyle. He agreed to help. That's what happened. You have to be with Tess. There's no way around it." She stopped there because she couldn't go on. If she did, she knew the tears that she was holding back would spill over.

Max sighed and closed his eyes. "Liz, I don't know if I believe this. A vist from the future? How can that be possible?"

"We, that is the future you and me, used the granelith. So you could travel back to change the future. A future friend of mine, Serena, showed you how to modify it."

"That's not what the granelith was intended for." Max shook his head. "I'm not sure what it is inteneded for but it can't be that."

"You're right. It wasn't intended for that. But we modified it."

"Still, Liz, time travel? That's still a little unbelievable. How do you know he was telling the truth?"

"Easy. He knew things, Max. He knew how long you spent learning that song. He knew that as you through the roses up that I liked white roses better than red." Liz paused and looked him straight in the eyes. "And he knew that you had a condom on you the night you came to see me to take me to the concert."

"Wow. But, Liz, why would that have anything to do with Tess leaving? I talked to her. She said that she was okay with it."

"Because he said that after we... You know. You didn't treat her very well, Max. She got tired of it and left."

"Liz, there has to be some way around this. Someway we can still be together without Tess leaving."

"I tried to think of something. I tried really hard. I couldn't come up with anything."

Max was silent for a moment. "What about Kyle?"

"What about him?"

"What if we got Tess and Kyle together. Then she would stay and we could be together."

"That won't work, Max. Kyle told me that they were starting something before this all went down. Nothing came of it because of you. Because you were free. She didn't even care that I slept with him. All she wanted to know was if he was good or not."

That's enough, Max thought. He stood up and grabed her hand. "Come on, Liz." He pulled her along behind him.

"Max, where are we going?"

"To see Tess and Kyle."

"What?!!?" Liz exclaimed and pulled him to a stop. "Why?"

Max smiled. The first genuine smile for as long as he could remember. "You'll see." He said then pulled her along again.

A few minutes later Max was pounding on the Vallenti's door.

Sherrif Vallenti opened the door. When he saw who it was he groaned. "Please tell me there's not any trouble."

"No,but we do need to talk to Kyle and Tess." Max said.

"Fine. Come in. I'll get Tess. Kyle's on the couch in the living room."

Max shook Kyle's shoulder. "Kyle, wake up."

Kyle groaned and sat up in his make-shift bed. "What now, Evans?"

Sherrif Vallenti pulled a sleepy-eyed Tess into the living room behind him. "Keep it down. I'm going back to sleep."

"Yes, sir." Max said with a mock salute and a smile.

Sherrif Vallenti shook his head and left the room.

"What's going on, Max?" Tess asked as she sat down on the couch next to Kyle.

"Well, Liz told me something tonight." He looked pointedly at Kyle.

Kyle shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It was her idea."

"I know. But what's going on is more serious than you pretending to sleep with the woman I love." Max said and started to pace the small confines of the living room.

This gave Tess momentary pause and she looked from Max to Liz in shock. "What? Pretended? What's going on?"

"Liz recieved a visit from me. From the future. And it seems that our future depends on you, Tess."

"On me? I don't understand."

"Time travel?" Kyle groaned. "Can this get any more bizzare?"

Max paused in his pacing to stand directly infront of Tess and looked her eyes. "Tess, you are a wonderful person. And during the past couple of days I've come to care about you a great deal, but I don't love you. I don't remember our past. I"m sure it was great and that we were very happy. But that's the past. I don't love you like that now and I don't think I ever will. But I'm not willing to let the entire planet be taken over by evil aliens just because of that. I'm know Liz feels the same because of what she did. She figured the only way that I would turn away from her to you is if she cheated on me. And that worked like a charm. Now, it's up to you, Tess. You get to decide what happens here." He looked away from Tess and went to stand next to Liz. "You know how I feel on this."

Kyle ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Max. "If this all depends on Tess, why did you wake me up?"

"Because Kyle, this involves you, too. If I'm not mistaken you and Tess have became rather close since she moved in here." He looked pointedly between the two. "I've always said that you should choose your own destiny. No matter what happens next, it affects you too."

"I don't know what to say, Max. You want me to choose between the two of you? I don't understand." Tess looked at Max and Liz. She saw the love and hope shining in both their eyes. "I don't know what to do. I don't know if I can make this decision in a second. The only thing that Nasado ever taught me was that we had one destiny. To be together and to save our race."

"Tess, I saw how you looked at Max. How you helped him after what he saw. Can you really put what you think is your destiny above his happiness? Max is right. We choose our own destinies. But if you decide that you have to be with him to stay, I'll leave. I'll make the choice easier. And about what you said eariler, I don't hate you. Maybe I did at first because you were so single minded in your pursuit of the man I love. But Max is right. You are a good person and I have no reason to hate you. In fact I think if we tried we could be friends."

"Liz, why are you saying this?"

"Because, Tess, I do like you. And I want us to be friends. But that can never happen if you still feel like you have to be with Max. Because I can't watch the two of you together. Because I want everyone to be safe. And if you leave that can't happen."

Tess began to cry. "I want the two of you to be happy. But I was afraid if I didn't have Max that no one would accept me. As Max's bride I had a place here. Besides a member of the Royal Four. I could be his girlfriend. All Nasado taught me was destiny. What do we if not each other?"

"We still have each other. Truthfuly, I think of you more as a sister than a mate." Max said. "I do believe that the four of us are ment to be together. I just don't believe that we're ment to be couples. That may have been the past but it's not the future."

Liz sat down next to Tess and put her arm around her. "Could you settle for being our friend, our family and," she looked at Kyle with a gleam in her eye, "Kyle's girlfriend."

Tess looked up through her tears and hugged Liz. "Yeah. I think that would be great. But I don't know about being Kyle's girlfriend."

Kyle groaned. "Can I go back to sleep now, Evans?"

"Sure. Liz and I should leave anyway." Max grabbed Liz's hand and pulled her out of the house.

"What do you think will happen between them?" Liz asked Max as they walked down the street hand and hand.

"I don't know. I just know that things couldn't get any better."

"Hey, Max?"

"Yes."