Her One True Love

Chapter 1.

Sophia had just passed the bar and was a very new lawyer, but for now she was about to embark on her very first case with Liberty as the lead. Not only that their client had also employed trial consultant Dr. Jason Bull. And with being so new to everything she was feeling very nervous about everything that was about to come her way. Even so in a way she was also hoping that the case would show her that she would enjoy being a lawyer, because in her heart she really truly didn't want to be a lawyer, she'd felt pressured into doing it because it was what her family wanted her to do in being a lawyer, so that she would eventually join the family practise of lawyers.

When they arrived at TAC the whole place took her breath away and she was certainly amazed by it all and that was just from seeing the main area. After Liberty had introduced her to Marissa, she took them through to the mock court area and Sophia was even more amazed. Liberty had already tried to explain to her about what Bull did, but even with her own experience with psychology she still didn't really get it. They also found that their client was also there, then when Liberty introduced her to Bull the two of them shook hands. As he went onto ask her if she knew what they did there she explained that Liberty had tried to tell her about her, but when he explained it all to her she found that she now understood it all a lot more.

Their case itself revolved round them trying to prove that their client wasn't guilty of the murder that he'd been charged with. The only trouble was that he kept telling them all that he was innocent, but wouldn't actually give them an alibi as to where he really was at the time of the murder. Even before the client had bought Bull onto the case, each time she and Liberty had met him, she just couldn't put her finger on it, but there was something about him that really gave her the creeps. Strangely though by the end of that first day of prep she could see by some of Bull's body language and with some of the looks he was also giving her that he was feeling it to.

As they were getting closer to their case beginning in actual court from all the prep they'd done and also from what Bull's team had dug up about their client, Sophia had started to get a feeling that with the murder victim being their clients ex-wife, it may have been possible that with the end of the marriage he'd started to see someone else. But because from all of the evidence they'd got they knew that the couple had still remained close and also did still each other quite a lot, despite the couple having had no children during the marriage. So Sophia had started to wonder if it was possible that the new person in his life had got jealous of the relationship that he still had with his ex and she'd killed the ex not realizing that she was setting him up to take the fall for it. On the night before as they'd been doing the final prep before they started in court, Liberty had called it a night about an hour before leaving just herself, Bull and Cable working on things. It was also that night that she realized that she and Bull were going to become friends for a very long time to come. She was trying her best to help Cable on the trail of who his possible new girlfriend was. She was also enjoying helping them with it all as well, seeing as before her parents got in the way about being a lawyer she'd actually wanted to be a criminal psychologist or a cop. One of her best friends Lee-Ann was a criminal psychologist herself, so on the quiet she had helped her to get her criminal psychology degree on top of her working towards getting the bar to become a lawyer. During that time she had shadowed Lee-Ann on a few of her cases, and she had also picked up a few contacts of her own while doing it as well. So leaving she and Cable beavering away Bull had disappeared out to go and get them all something to eat. When he came back with it they all took a break and Cable disappeared off leaving the two of them alone together. Of course this then gave Bull the opening he needed, as yes the two of them had had the odd conversations here and there while they doing the prep, but they hadn't really had a chance to talk properly. Not only that she also had a feeling that he also may have done his own background check into her as well, and even though she had buried certain things about her life pretty well so that her family wouldn't find them out, but she had a feeling that his check would have gone deeper and he would have dug those out as well. While he'd been out getting the food she had also E mailed Lee-Ann asking her if there was a chance that their client may have crossed her path at all or any of her contacts path, or even just knew something that they may find useful. Bull had come back with the food just after she'd sent it so even though she decided to have a break as well she didn't disappear off and stayed there with her laptop, just in case Lee-Ann E mailed her back again. So it was then as she was eating that Bull all of a sudden said "You're not happy being a lawyer are you?"

She sighs and answers "No, I hate lawyers and hate being a lawyer. But when you come from a family like mine it's the only thing that you're allowed to be. As the idea is that I now work for this practise for a couple of years or so before I then have to join the family practise, which I really don't want to do. I just wish that there was a way out of this, but I really don't think there will be. I mean I don't really care if they cut me off and things like that, if I did get the courage to turn round and say that I didn't want to do it. Especially as I did manage to get them to agree that I could have my own bank account, but over the years I've taken bits and pieces out of there and have got a separate well hidden account that they don't know about and I've got more than enough if I was then cut off. Plus I do also get some support from my best friend Lee-Ann. I know that this is probably the wrong choice of words considering our current case, but if it hadn't been for my little brother Marco getting away with murder and doing whatever he wanted with himself, I may have ended up being able to do what I wanted with my life."

He replies "I hope that you end up being able to do what you want and if you want any help or just need to talk at anytime just give me a call."

She says "I will do and thank you Bull."

Just after she says it her computer then bleeps to say she's got a message, so she then puts her food down to open the E mail. As she starts to look through everything that Lee-Ann has sent her she all of a sudden says "Oh my."

Bull then puts his own food down and comes to lean over her to look as well, he then looks at her from over the top of his glasses and says "Don't tell me you're thinking what I'm thinking?"

She smiles back at him and says "I think Dr. Bull that I may be thinking it to."

He then says "So how much have you there?"

She replies "Loads by the look of things."

He says "Ok print some of that out for me to look at and then forward some onto Cable as well. I'll then get Danny on the trail of this Sam in the morning."

After carrying on working for a little while longer and just as Bull's about to tell Sophia and Cable to call it a night, Sophia all of a sudden says "I think I've got it. Jeremy won't tell us the truth about what his alibi is because he doesn't want Sam to know the truth that he's seeing someone else behind her back. Yes he did meet the ex earlier on in the evening, but then he met the mystery man at Carlista's restaurant a bit later on and the table was booked in his name only. Looking at these stills he was with the mystery man at the time of the murder. I know that area pretty well myself and unless there's a short cut that I don't know about, there's no way he can be in two places at once. We know that he's openly admitted to being with Sam before he met his ex, but the police have proved that they weren't together at the time of the murder. So I think that he may be protecting the mystery man because he suspects that it was Sam who murdered his ex and thinks that she may do the same to the man he was seeing, especially if he goes onto drop her later on."

Bull says "I think that you could be onto something, but we need the proof. Cable in the morning see if you can get onto Sam's trail for that night, check the restaurant CCTV that he and the ex met at as well as Carlista's, as well as checking the street camera's. Check and see if she could have followed them into the restaurant by sitting in the bar area or something or that she just watched them from out in the street. Then see if there's anyway that you can pick up on Sam following the ex back to her house again. If you find anything while we're in court either give us a call or we'll be in again later on, if we're not there until late that is."

Cable replies "Will do."

After that Bull says "Ok let's now pack this up for the night, come on all of you home and get some rest."

As the case then continued in the next few days or so, Sophia started to learn that no she didn't want to be a lawyer at all or in any way, and was certainly glad that Liberty had got the lead for the case. She especially also knew it as she was helping the team more and more with their detective work on the case, and she was finding that she would really like to do something like that more. She was also very right about her and Bull's friendship, because with each passing day the two of them seemed to be getting closer and closer. Not only that she was also starting to find that the two of them could be holding conversations with one another without uttering a single word and were doing it non-verbally. That had started while there had been a witness on the stand, because she all of a sudden though of something that Liberty wasn't asking them. So in the end she wrote the question down in her notebook and then pushed the book towards Bull without her letting their client see it, he looked at her to say it was a good question. He then went onto getting Liberty's attention and showed her the book and she then went onto ask the question.

The other thing that Sophia didn't know about was that after finding out about Lee-Ann being her best friend and realizing that she was also one of their contacts as well, Bull had gone to see her to talk about Sophia. Where even though he had already known about her criminal psychology degree, he never realized that she'd done it at the same time as doing the bar exam. He was also quite surprised to learn that the real reason behind her not wanting to be a lawyer and go into the family business, was because she came from a very traditional Italian family and it was rumoured that they could be involved in some pretty shady dealing, and she didn't want to be involved with that. She was the fourth child in the family of five children and because of her being the youngest girl, her brothers and sister could be quite protective of their baby sister. But because of there being her younger brother they had given her a lot of independence because of him being the one that they expected to tow the family line instead, which had been why she had wanted to go into criminal psychology or to have become a cop. Bur her younger brother Marco had gone and rebelled against it himself and had got himself into a very bad crowd, he'd then managed to get himself arrested, charged and found guilty of the crime he'd committed, blowing all chance of becoming a lawyer, so everything and been turned round and Sophia had been forced into things instead. Lee-Ann admitted to Bull that at the time the pressure had ended up getting too much for her in the end and she had ended up disappearing for a time. It was also then that Lee-Ann got the impression that it was her father that held all of the power over the whole family, especially the amount of times he came to see her when she was missing, because he was certain that Lee-Ann knew where she was when she didn't know a thing. But that had also been the reason why she had wanted to do psychology because while she was gone she had done just a taster course and she had really enjoyed it, especially as she then got some insight into the mind games that her father would play on them to keep them all in line with what his will was. By the end of their conversation Bull said that if it was what Sophia really wanted then he would do all he could to get her out of the situation and Lee-Ann promised that she would also help them as much as she could as well.

As the case was heading towards it's conclusion, they got the confirmation they needed to prove that Jeremy was bisexual and that he and Sam had been seeing each other, but the surprise for them to come was that his alibi wasn't what they thought and was a woman called Lucy, and when Danny went to see her, it turned out that she and Jeremy had been seeing each other as well for months. From all the other evidence that they were able to get together they were also able to prove that Sam had been the killer of Jeremy's ex, it was his jealousy that had made him follow them both to see what they were both up to, as he suspected that they were still sleeping together. But of course Jeremy was keeping it quiet that he was really seeing both Lucy and Sam at the same time.

Because of them not getting the evidence together in time though the trial had to still come to it's conclusion, so because of something that had also happened in that couple of days and the mirror jury having heard a conversation that Sophia and Liberty had had, on the night before the final day Bull decided that even though she did really hate being a lawyer so much it should be her that did the closing argument. Even though he did also have the confidence in her that she could do it, he also wanted to do it as his test for her to see just how much she did hate being a lawyer. So that night he got Benny to write it and then took Sophia back to the mock court so she could practise doing it on him alone.

When Bull had told Sophia about there being the one to deliver the closing argument, in a way she did really want to do it, but in many ways she really didn't feel like she'd got enough confidence to actually do it. So to start off with as they started to go through it, Bull just sat at the back of the jury box to watch her, giving her some pointers just every now and then when he felt she needed it. Then when they got back to it again after having a food and drink break, he took it down to its bare bones and took each part just gradually. As they did it like this she also found that as Bull came behind her and would give her shoulders and back a massage because of the way she kept tensing up did really help her, before he would then pull her shoulders back, before putting his hand into the centre of the small of her back. He'd then tell her to close her eyes and take deep breaths in and out, once he could sense that she was calm enough he would then once again get her to go through the speech again, while he left his hand in the small of her back. Then he started to let go of her at points and go back to sit in the jury section again. Even though she was doing it really successfully in the end and with some feeling, it was at that moment where he would change the place he sat in each time that Bull realized that she'd got a problem with making and keeping eye contact. So after another time of doing the speech, he took her hands in his and got her to sit next to him, he then said to her that she didn't have to tell him anything if it was too hard for her or to personal, but he just wondered why she had the problem with making eye, but he didn't want push her into anything. At first she just stayed quiet, but he discreetly watched her eyes as he could tell that she was trying to work out how to put it in her own words. She then eventually said quietly as she bit her lip nervously "It's because of the way that dad would always punish us when we were kids and also that bit older too. It was like being at school and being taken to the heads office when you were in trouble. He'd order us to his study, but we would have to stand outside and wait for the order to go in. Although it never happened to me, but a few times the boys did end up being dragged in there as he pulled them along by their ears. Before he decided on what punishment he was going to inflict on you, we would have to stand in front of his desk and explain to him what we'd done wrong. We had to look him in the eye as we explained it to him, if we lost the eye contact; he would then grab our chins in his thumb and finger and forced to keep the eye contact up."

As he saw the tears spring up in her eyes and they start to roll down her face, he took her into a hug. Even though he doesn't really want his head to go there, and even though she never explained what the punishments were, because of the look of fear that was in her eyes before he took her into the hug, he guesses what forms they could have been, but he knows that he won't force it with her and she tell him if she wants to in her own time. As she begins to settle he kisses the top of her head and says just quietly back "I won't push it, but have you ever talked with anyone about it?" With her head still in his chest she shakes her head saying "no." So he then adds "I'm always here for you and when you're ready I will listen, call me whenever you need me day or night."

She then lifts her head just as quietly as before she replies "I will do, I promise."

As he starts to run his fingers softly through her hair he then says "You need to get some rest, we've got time before we have to be in court so we'll come here and do it one more time, before you have to do it in court. All I will say about looking the jurors in the eye just try to make it look like you're looking them in the eye, look at the wall or something on the wall behind them. Or just choose one them that you may be able to keep contact up with. If at any point you feel yourself getting stuck, then take a deep breath and look at me before you start again."

After that he tells her that he'll take her home and then will pick her up again in the morning, but they then as they walk back out into the main area they find Cable waiting for them and she hands Bull something she's printed off but that he has to see. So in the end they both head into Chunk's room and sit on the sofa in there while he reads it. By the time he's finished reading it the exhaustion has got the better of her and he finds that she's fallen asleep against him. So he just ends up taking a chance with things and carries her to the bed he uses when he ends up staying at the office rather than going home, he lays her gently down and somehow also managed to remove her shoes and jacket, before he does the same thing with himself as he lays down next to her.

The next morning when Sophia wakes up to find herself in Bull's arms, she finds herself surprisingly comfortable and safe being there. Not only that she just knows that for the first time in her life, she has got a man in her life that she can truly trust. As she also lays there with her head on his chest hearing him both breathing and his heartbeat in her ear, along with drinking in his scent, she starts to wonder if it's possible that she may have found a man that she could fall in love with for the first time in her life. As her eyes flicker shut once again she places her hand gently over his heart and finds herself saying a little prayer asking that if he was meant to be a big part of her life to send her a sign that it was meant to be. This time as she fell asleep again it wasn't to be for very long, because as she awoke again a little while later, it was to Bull kissing the top of her head and gently stroking her face with his fingers. Once they're both awake properly he takes her home so that she can do a quick freshen up, then on the way back to TAC again he buys her some breakfast and coffee, before they go and do the final run through of her speech. This time somehow with the new developments in their relationship over night, she was at least able to keep her eye contact up with him. So in that moment she decided that she was going to imagine that it was him sitting in the jury box instead of one of the actual jury members instead. By the time she'd done it this time she was also very surprised when he gave her a standing ovation and also told her that if she did it just like that, then she would have the jury eating out of her hands.

When the time came for her to finally deliver her speech, what she also found really helped was because of Bull having been sitting only just behind their table, he took her hand and gave it a squeeze, along with giving her a silent look of "You can do this" at her as she got up from the table. As she first started off she knew that she probably started off sounding shaky and nervous, but then she took a deep breath and turned to look at Bull, who gave her a slight nod. After that she then started to imagine things as they had been the night before, as he'd massaged her shoulders and neck, then with her standing straight and him having his hand in the small of her back. Then as she turned back to the jury she did the thing she said she would in her head and started to imagine Bull sitting in front her instead of a jury member, and with that she soon found that the confidence was growing inside of her. Although by the time it was all over she was feeling really wiped out and as she went to take her seat again she flopped down into it. But she also welcomed the hand of Bull on her shoulder giving it squeeze while the judge was doing his speech to the jury before clearing the court and it then coming down to them having to wait for the verdict to come in.

It took the jury just a couple of hours to come back with their verdict, and as everyone took their places within the court, Sophia had to admit that she was feeling quite nervous about it. But it ended up being relief all round when the jury came back with a "Not guilty" verdict. Within a few minutes of the judge dismissing the court, it went to the court being a scene of chaos and leaving Sophia fighting for her life. Because just as Bull and Jeremy were shaking hands with one another, Sophia looked up just in time to see a woman pointing a gun at the two of them, just as the woman fired the gun she yelled "Bull!" and pushed him out of the way. The next thing she felt was the pain in her shoulder as the bullet hit her, her then hitting the floor and the blackness coming over her. As she was between consciousness and unconsciousness, she felt even more pain as pressure was being applied to her wound and Bull sounding very far away from her as he kept saying over and over to her " Come on Soph, stay with me, I need you to open your eyes, I can't loose you."