Six dates.

There have been six dates since the night she kissed you in the coat closet at your boss's wedding.

That's your count anyway.

You don't add in the coffee you shared the morning after, heads still heavy with champagne.

Or the movie a week after that.

Or the lunches and dinners, and somewhere in-between, a stolen moment when you pressed her up against the wall of an interrogation room, panic in your eyes and fire in your fingertips. One beautiful moment when you kissed her, over and over again. Until your lips were swollen. Until her breath was hot, and heavy, and ragged in your ears. Until finally, finally you could face the unknown that lay waiting for you. For your friends.

You don't count any of those.

No.

None of those were dates.

You start counting a week after the shooting at the station, a week after she kissed you in her bathtub and held you through your nightmares. You start counting from the first time you said stuttered out the words, "will you go on a date with me?" Since the first time you slunked into her office at the morgue and, swallowing against the lump of anxiety in your throat, thrust a badly crumpled bouquet of flowers at her and spoke so quickly and so quietly that she'd had to ask you to repeat yourself.

She said yes.

Someday, when someone asks when you knew you were gone, when you knew she was the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, you'll tell them about that moment. How carefully she accepted the flowers, how she ran her fingers along the bent stems, the messy petals. You'll tell them about the shy smile, that secret, private one that comes straight from the most delicate, most precious corner of her heart. How her voice was quiet when she answered, a soft little "yes," almost breathless, before she caught herself, a look of surprise in her eyes, and said it again, louder, stronger, more confident.

"Yes."

Years from now, when Holly's explaining something sciency to Leo, how to weigh things on her fancy digital scale as they prep for some nerdy experiment, you'll watch as she demonstrates how to tare the scale, how to set the scale to zero so that everything he adds on after will be measured precisely down to the milligram. And you'll remember that moment, the way she said "yes" before she even realized what she was saying, like her heart couldn't take the chance that her head would turn you down.

And you'll realize that in that moment, that slight breadth of a second, the scales of your life were finally, finally equal. Your past on the one side. Your future on the other. And how every moment since, and every moment ahead, is laden with her, with Holly, your love. And you'll laugh. A happy laugh. A content laugh. An "I never thought my life could be this beautiful" laugh.

Leo will look at you weird, and Holly will ask you what's funny. But you'll just swat your nephew on the back of the head, and kiss your girl on the nose, and tell them to get on with their nerdness, you want to see a rocket launch today.

Despite the chill of the mid-autumn Toronto wind, you'll be warm with love all afternoon.

There'd been five dates after that first one. Since you showed up at Holly's home in a pair of jeans and a loose sweater. You hadn't told her where you were going, hadn't even given her any hints, to the curious doctor's great frustration. And when you pulled up in front of your destination, she'd laughed. Racuously. Joyously.

"Bowling," Holly'd said to you, her eyes amused and her tone full of disbelief.

But you'd just stepped out of the car and moved to open the door for her before sticking your head into the trunk and pulling out your old bowling bag.

"Hey," you said back to her, "Toronto All-City Co-Ed Junior League champ here, three years running."

She laughed so hard she slipped on the grass and landed on her butt, and you'd pretended to be offended for a good minute or two before sticking out your tongue and your hand and pulled her up.

In between dates there were … encounters.

That's probably the best way to describe them.

There are nights when you don't leave her home but sit on the couch and eat homemade mac n' cheese while watching whatever movie the two of you can agree on for the night. Jurassic Park one night, because Holly has a thing for blondes, you've discovered. A John Hughes marathon another, because his bored, sarcastic aching for parental and social and societal validation have always struck a chord within you.

And always. Always—what begins as a quiet night in slowly, slowly ends with the two of you tangled into each other, struggling for some last bit of self-control, chests heaving with the effort to bring fresh air into your lungs after so long sharing the same breaths.

Then there are the moments when you find yourselves alone at work, either by happy coincidence or by deliberate mischief. The times you make out in the old freight elevator, the one no one uses anymore, at the far back of the medical building. Or when your paths cross at a crime scene, and though neither of you would ever compromise an investigation, you feel her eyes on you as you interview witnesses, and you know she feels yours on her. On the long line of her legs, on the sexy curve of her ass in those tight, tight jeans. As you stare at her in her light jacket and imagine the skin just above the waistline, the skin you've had your hands on.

You walk around with lips that are almost permanently bruised, permanently "just been kissed," and the flush of arousal that creeps up your chest, that colors your neck and cheeks and even your ears is almost always visible.

The other day Traci actually asked if you were feeling okay, and half-lifted a hand in that mom-way as if she was going to check your forehead for a fever. Everyone else just smirks at you, like they know. Like they can see right through you.

And maybe they can.

Maybe they can see the ache. The constant, constant aching that you feel for her. For Holly. For this woman who has taken over your thoughts and your life, in all of the best of ways.

God, you ache for her.

Sometimes it's this heavy wanting that comes from deep, deep within you. And others, others it's the loss of her as you walk back into reality, as you pull your mouth away from hers, your hands from her hair, and feel Holly do the same. Because it's never enough.

Never.

There have only been six dates. But there have been countless hours of exploring each other, mentally.

Emotionally.

Physically.

You know the sound the doctor makes when your hand accidently brushes over her tight, tight nipple, even through the fabric of her bra, her shirt. You've held yourself precariously over her on the couch, and shuddered with the effort to keep from lowering your body back down onto hers, and you've felt your fingers curl, and clench, as you struggle not to pull her back into you, to pull her back to where she was pressing you against the wall, the floor, and let her keep going.

You've felt yourself hover on the brink with her and never once let yourself topple over.

You've jogged miles to run the heat out of your body, running yourself exhausted until sleep is the only thing on your mind.

Your showers now are quick and icy as you try to shock your nerves into submission.

And when all else fails, when you find the arousal too strong to control, too powerful to tamp back down, you've thrown the lock on your bedroom door, slipped out of your clothes, and taken care of business, so to speak.

Your roommates may no longer be complaining about you using up all the hot water, but the jokes they're making about the noises coming from your room almost every night are becoming too much for your ragged edges to handle.

You want her.

You know it.

You're just … it's just …

This is new for you.

All of it.

You'd slept with Nick on the first date. Way back when you were still thinking about running away from all your mother's expectations and your fears of not being enough.

With Chris there hadn't even been the prelude of a date before you pulled him into the backseat of his truck and unbuckled his belt.

But with Holly, you're cautious.

You're unsure.

And it's not because she's a woman. You may not have always understood it, you may not have always had the words, but you've known for years that you are attracted to women. That the sight of a woman could make your palms sweat, make your tongue seem heavy and lazy in your mouth, make desire pool low and liquid in your belly.

You've felt it for years but wrote it off as nothing, as immaterial to who you were.

Gail Peck.

Screw-up daughter.

Cold-hearted cop.

"Not girlfriend material."

But then there was Holly.

Then there was your dark-haired girlfriend with her laughing eyes and her sexy-librarian glasses. Her big brain and her bigger heart. Then there was this woman who cared about you, was interested in you, wanted you. All of you. The broken parts of you and the whole ones. This woman who looked at your scars and loved you all the more for them. Who made you want to be better, made you want to be the kind of person who deserved the kind of love that she gave.

Holly has changed everything.

Or maybe Holly just opened the door to who you always were, the person you were always supposed to be.

Before the boys, the parents, the job, the losses.

Maybe, of all the gifts that Holly has given you, love and courage and faith and so much more, the greatest of them was the gift of you, of letting you be yourself. Just Gail. No demands and no expectations.

Just you.

You're on new ground with her, with this beautiful, kind, loving woman. Entirely new territory. Nothing with Chris or Nick or any of the other men in your past felt as deep, as welcome. Nothing ever has. Not even, and you've thought about this for a while, not even the women you remember having secret, hidden desires for.

No one has ever made you feel the way Holly does. The way she makes you feel with just a look, just the slightest touch of her fingers to your palm. The way your name in her mouth sounds, or how safe you feel with her, how at home, how loved and cherished.

There have been six dates, yes.

But tonight, tonight you're ready to cut through the rope that's been holding you to shore, to the old and familiar.

Tonight you're ready to cast off with her, to take a leap of faith, to be with her, body and mind, heart and soul.