Callie walked into her home exhausted. This had been a very messed up day. She felt bad for Eric; she knew how bad he felt about 'seeing' Tim. She really felt bad for herself though. For just a fraction of a second she had actually allowed herself to believe that Tim was still alive and now she felt almost like she had lost him all over again. She sighed as she put down her purse and turned around. She almost did a double take because she couldn't believe what she was seeing, or more who she was seeing, sitting on her couch.
"Hey Callie," he calmly said, "I should have known that you wouldn't change the locks."
"Oh my God, I'm hallucinating like Eric," Callie cried.
"No, baby, you're not hallucinating, neither was Eric. It's really me, I promise," Tim told her soothingly.
"But how," she questioned him confused, "how is this possible? You're supposed to be dead Tim, those guys in the jewelry store, they killed you."
"No, baby, they didn't. The government killed me. It was all fake Callie."
"What, what the hell does that mean?"
"Do you remember that case I handled where Fish killed that guy in the park; the one with Wally?" He asked her thinking about that kid who, as much as he didn't want to admit, really got to him.
"Yeah, of course I remember," Callie told him earnestly, "and from what I remember that case hit you pretty hard." She had always known Tim better than he knew himself.
"Wally asked me if I was scared to testify against a guy like Fish, I told him no, but the truth is that I should have been. A couple of months after the trial was over I started getting these phone calls. The caller never said anything but they came everyday at twelve o' clock exactly, it was pretty unnerving. Then the letters started. I got one every week, each a little worse than the one before it. They told me that I was going to die. I thought that I could handle it myself. The last straw though, was the pictures. The last letter had pictures of me and you with it. That was like a wakeup call for me. When I realized that they could get to you, I decided that I needed to do something and I needed help. I went to the FBI and I told them what was going on. They figured that the best thing to do would be to fake my death and put me into the witness protection program."
"So the jewelry store, the coffin, the whole funeral, it was all fake?" Callie asked him trying to get it all straight.
"Yeah, it was," Tim told her with regret in his voice, "the last couple years I've been living in New York under an assumed name."
Callie sighed and sat down as her knees were losing feeling. "This is just a lot to take in Tim. I mean I thought you were dead. I ran your gun that day. I went to your funeral. I trained Ryan to fill your spot. I tried as best as I could to deal with your death and move on with my life."
"I know Callie and I'm sorry. Believe me baby leaving you was the hardest thing that I ever did. There hasn't been a day gone by that I haven't thought about you, missed you."
"I never stopped thinking about you Tim and not having support from the lab didn't make it any easier. I mean we all supported each other in the loss of a friend, but since nobody knew about us, nobody knew what I had lost. It wasn't just about losing you either Tim; it was about losing all of it. When you 'died' Tim, all of our plans for the future died too. That was hard for me to handle."
"I know that it was hard to handle Callie; I had to handle it too. These last years have been full of regret for me. All that I could do was wait for the day they would catch the guys and I could come home. I just kept hoping that you wouldn't move on," Tim told her sincerely.
"It's been three years Tim. Do you really think that we can just pick up where we left off; or just start over like nothing ever happened?"
"I'm not necessarily saying that it's going to be the easiest thing in the world to do, but it isn't like we haven't had to fight some battles in our relationship before. All that really matters is one simple question; do you still love me?"
"What?" was all that Callie could manage to say?
Tim laughed a little and looked deep into the eyes of the only woman that he had ever truly loved. "Do you still love me?"
Callie smiled, "Of course I do, I always have and I always will."
"Then that's all we need Cal," Tim told her with all the love in his heart. "As long as we love each other we can get through anything."
Callie was so overwhelmed and happy that there was nothing else that she could think to say. As she looked at the only man that had ever been able to take her breath away, she did the only thing that she could think, something that she had wanted to do for three years. She kissed Tim with all of the love that she had, the loved that had built for the last three years.
As they pulled apart, neither could stop smiling. "You do know that everyone is going to freak out when they find out you're alive," Callie told Tim.
"Good," he smiled, "it will cushion the shock of finding out about us."