In all the years she'd lived she had never let herself cry for a man. She had shed a single tear when she found out Sully was leaving, but when she looked at Booth through the interrogation room's two-way mirror after convicting a suspect, she had wiped it away. And that was it.

She was good at compartmentalizing. Actually, that's an understatement. She mastered it. It was something she saw in herself to be a big strength. It didn't matter how many times she'd heard from Angela that letting yourself cry once in a while was a good thing. She found that irrational. A waste of time.

But tonight, all of that had changed.

"I'm the gambler" she had kind of smiled at him, before realizing where he was going with his statement "I believe in giving this a chance" Now she understood exactly where he was going and her eyes had widened "Look, I wanna give this a shot"

"You mean us?" She wanted to erase all doubts that he was infact confessing something to her. And he nodded. She tried to find the quickest, simplest, most rational reason to get out of where this conversation could lead to… she found it "No, the FBI won't let us work together as a couple-" And it failed.

"Don't do that, that is no reason" he had pulled her into a desperate kiss, and for a few seconds she kissed him back. She missed the feel of his lips on hers; she had only felt them twice. And the second time hadn't really counted. Although she liked it, but would never admit to it. But once she processed what was happening, she had pushed him away.

"No! No!" She could barely bring herself to look into his eyes.

"Why? Why?" She could sense that his eyes were filling with tears.

"Y-you thought you were protecting me but you're the one that needs protecting"

"Protecting? From what?" His voice was shaking.

"From me! I… I don't have your kind of open heart!" She knew she wouldn't be able to bear breaking his heart and risking his happiness wasn't worth achieving her own.

"J-just give it a chance, that's all I'm asking!" His voice was pleading. She wasn't able to think so she decided to quote him, using his own words to keep him at bay.

"No, y-you said it yourself. The definition of insanity and doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome"

"Then let's go for a different outcome here, all right? Let's just, hear me out, all right? You know when you talk to older couples who, have been in love for thirty or forty or fifty years, all right? It's always the guy who says 'I knew'" Her eyes began to fill with tears of their own by now. For the first time in her life she felt like a man really needed her. And it was too much because she knew she wouldn't be able to love him the way he deserved to be loved "I knew, right from the beginning"

"Your evidence is anecdotal"

"I'm that guy, Bones, I'm that guy, I know" All she had left was tears and the truth.

"I- I am not a gambler. I'm a scientist. I can't change! I don't know how..." His face was full of pain "I don't know how" She could tell he was struggling to calm his face but failed "Please, don't look so sad!" What a ridiculous thing she had said.

She hated that she had said that because she knew he had every right in the world to be sad. She knew she had crushed or broken (or however you phrased it) his heart. And at that moment she began to regret her decision. Everything had happened so fast and all she had prepared was the thoughts she had pushed far back into her mind, hoping she would never have to use them because she knew she wasn't good enough for him.

He had told her they could still work together but that he had to move on. Now she couldn't look into his eyes, even if he had asked her to. She regretted all the words she had just spoken to him. And she knew she couldn't take them back. All she could do was link arms with him as they walked off together as her own way of apologizing what she had just put him through. And now that she had more than ten seconds to think, it was for no good reason.

She wasn't positive that she regretted her overall decision to turn him down, but why did it hurt so much? She felt as though she had lost him. As a best friend and as a partner. Even though he had said he would still work with her, she couldn't help but feel she'd pushed him away. She knew she felt something for Booth, but it was so new she didn't know what to think of it.

Now it was some amount of time past midnight. For all she knew, it could be 1 or 2am. All she knew for sure was the last time she looked at her clock, it had read midnight. And since she had got home, put on her robe and laid down on her bed, the tears had not ceased to fill up her eyes and flow down her cheeks. Nothing like this had happened to her since her parents disappeared and even though that had hurt her deeply and haunted her for the rest of her childhood, she knew she felt more pain now than she could ever remember. She was starting to fear she might drown in her own tears. She blinked to clear her vision and looked up at the clock.

'12:32'… 32 minutes had become an eternity.

As she cried alone in her quiet apartment, she began to think of how Booth was feeling. She knew he was alone right now, too. And if she had hurt herself this much, she couldn't even begin to think about how much she'd hurt him. She thought of him crying alone in his apartment like she was. That thought ripped through her entire body forcing out more tears as she trembled beneath her covers.

Part of her knew Booth was too strong to cry the way she was, but another part of her knew that she believed for the longest time that she was too strong for this as well. The very possibility of him being in this situation was enough to force her out of bed, to her car, and on her way to Booth's apartment.