Disclaimer: Not mine, not now, not ever.
She always fell for the wrong man. In high school, it had been the star quarterback of the football team. He was tall and strong and popular. Everything she was not. So when he asked her out she said yes and when he pressured her to go further than she wanted she had said yes. And when she found out that he had used her to fill a quota, used her as another notch on his totem pole of virgins, she had beat him to a pulp. No one would believe she had done it when he tried to turn her in. Sweet little innocent Teresa Lisbon could never beat up a football player twice her size. She had made sure he knew that she would come after him if he ever did something like that again. And she had. Her first arrest as a CBI agent had been of a guy who had been preying on teenage girls—the quarterback. She had taken great pleasure in throwing him to the ground and jabbing her knee into his back.
In college, it had been her ethics professor. He was young and attractive and she had a crush on him from the first day she walked into class. It started one day when she went to his office to talk about a question she had on an assignment. She hadn't meant to do it, but he was just so attentive. She craved the attention that she got from him. The affair lasted all semester and into the next. It ended one night when she walked in on him with his most recent young conquest. This one was barely 18, fresh from the farm by the look on her eyes, afraid to say no. She had waited until she graduated before turning him in. No physical violence this time, but she still made his life a living hell. She had collected the names of all the girls she could find that he had slept with and went to the dean. She laughed from the comfort of her apartment when she watched him being handcuffed and led away. The last girl on the list was still a minor.
After that, she found that she preferred the one night stand to the serious relationship. She had work to fill the void that should have been filled with love and attention from a healthy relationship. She never let the people she worked with know how much she wanted to be one of the girls sitting, giggling happily at lunch talking about their boyfriends or showing off the ring. She had kept up her stone face and tough demeanor.
No one saw through it. That is, until the day Patrick Jane joined her team. She didn't know what to do with him. An excellent investigator and a serious trouble maker. He never listened to orders and, for the first time since that college professor, she felt something for him that was not just a fleeting feeling. She knew he was broken, but so was she and so she didn't say anything the first time he showed up at her place, drunk and sloppy. He had told her he just needed something for tonight, someone to hold on to.
She had gladly let him, knowing she needed the same thing. She figured that's how he ended up at her place—he knew she needed it, too. She didn't say anything when he kept his eyes closed the whole time, not bothering to look at her naked body beneath his. He let his hands and mouth do all the "looking" for him. She didn't say anything when he called out his wife's name instead of hers.
She hadn't expected him to come back again. "Just one night" was all that he had promised. She had found that she was seeking out more one night stands, trying to fill that void that had been created from that one night. She knew it was ridiculous. She didn't feel anything for him, but it was still true. So when he showed up again, this time not as drunk and sloppy, she didn't try to stop him like she had promised herself she would. It was the same as before. His eyes stayed closed and he called that other name, the name of the woman he really loved, the one that she was standing in for.
It became a habit for both of them. His showing up on her doorstep, late at night after the bars closed. It happened more and more and yet, he still wouldn't open his eyes and he still called out her name. She knew it was ridiculous to be jealous of a dead woman, but she was. She took to leaving the bed right after that brief moment of ecstasy. She would go to the bathroom, get in the shower. She didn't want him to see her tears, to know she was mourning for what she could never have—him and his love. Because she always fell for the wrong man.