Many thanks to my beta Drumchik Check out her work in the Rizzoli and Isles archive.
So this is what I came up with why Catherine turned Lou down.
Worth the Risk
Men are my weakness. They have always been my weakness.
It started when I was about 14; when Billy Riggins winked at me as I walked by. I'll admit I loved that. Not like I would ever give myself to him or anyone else at that age, but I did love the attention I got from him and the rest of the neighborhood boys.
Growing up in Sam's casinos the men would walk by and look right at me. Now Sam didn't approve, but I cherished it. I fed on it. I knew that they were looking at me and I loved how it made me feel; alive, wanted, and desired.
Watching my mom don her dancers outfit was also a big thrill for me. She would say that though it was skimpy, even by 1960's standards, it didn't mean she was for sale or that anyone could take advantage of her. It was to prove that she was a strong powerful woman who could dance and entertain without taking off all of her clothes.
Something I took to heart when I started my dancing career. I did not exactly follow in my mom's footsteps. I danced where men weren't as well behaved as they were in the casinos. Yeah, it wasn't pretty or glamorous like all young women think it will be, but it paid the bills, and unfortunately, brought on a serious coke habit.
Eddie Willows said he would take care of that, both my coke habit and my dancing career. The first man I fell victim to, the first man to be my weakness, Eddie.
He said all the right things when I was 22 and living on the edge. He promised me things; a life outside of the hell I was creeping into, a home, a family, all the things I thought I wanted and all the things I wanted to hear.
After my nasty divorce, was when I realized that I had a lot more power than I realized.
Those boys from my childhood helped me in a weird sort of way. I had control over my life, what I did and who I slept with.
Becoming a CSI, working with the police only cemented my thoughts. I did have power and control. Especially when I saw things like children dead at the hand of a parent, animals in canned hunts, young women lured into a life of glamour only to be murdered when they no longer were useful.
That's when I turned to men. They somehow filled the void of what my life had become.
Not like I would ever change that, but living on my own with a daughter who, more or less wanted little to do with me, was not the most fulfilling or what I had imagined my life would be like after leaving Eddie and that lifestyle behind me.
Men were easy. They only wanted one thing, to get me in between the sheets. Again, not like I complained. To hear my name repeated over and over as they had sex with me kept me going. It was a void that was being filled, fueled by my own desire to feel needed at the moment then nothing else.
It was the afterward that I didn't want. The empty promises of a life together full of love or whatever else they offered. No romantic notions of life long love or devotion. I didn't want or need any of it.
It was that conflict, my new found power versus my desire to be loved at the moment that created a huge difference in my behavior. Sara even accused that my sexuality clouded my judgment about a case. How dare she? were my immediate thoughts.
But then again, was she right? Had I become so sexualized that I couldn't see anything else?
Perhaps my jeans were a bit tight, my shirt unbuttoned a few too many buttons, but was that really so bad? It was who I am, or who I was.
Things happened, happened to me that made me start to change what I wanted out of my life.
I would ask myself; did I really want to be that woman? The one everyone wants to fuck but no one wants to love or build a life with?
Then he came; Louis Vartann. Or he didn't really come, he was there- I just didn't know he was there until he asked me out.
Funny thing though, after he did, he was all I would think about. Sara caught me once. Or more like put me on the spot about him. I blushed, I couldn't help but blush. He was on my mind more than I realized.
And oh, it was so easy. This beautiful man, it was so easy to spread my legs for him on our first date. Hell, it wasn't even a date because we never made it past my front hall. It was, and still is, so easy to have sex with him.
That's what we did, what we do, have sex, all the time. No promises of tomorrow, just the immediacy of the moment.
The sex, the sex is fantastic. Just the thought of his dick inside me makes me; well it makes me glad I'm a woman. He certainly knows how to make me come, that's for sure.
I can't say something changed because I'm not sure something actually has changed. Perhaps I did? Or we have grown into something without even knowing it.
Or has what I tell myself changed? Evolved? Like the idea that there isn't enough work in the world to take away losing Warrick, or my father, or Mike Keppler. There isn't enough red wine in the world to erase the fact that my daughter is growing up, leaving, leaving me by myself.
Once he left a T-shirt on the bed. I'm not sure if it was on purpose or accident, but I still have it. It smells like him. I have even put it on and slept in it. Just so I can feel him next to me.
It's the stuff like that, that scares me. It's the stuff that I seem to be falling for that frightens me out of my mind.
They say a woman can tell when a man has fallen in love with her. I knew it the night of our hotel room romp. I knew it when we had sex that night that he loved me, he didn't have to say it.
Now he wants a tomorrow. He wants me with him, in his house. I'm not sure I can do that.
It's that I don't want it fall apart. I don't want to be taken in with the 'promise of tomorrow' only to have him leave me. I don't want to give up my life so he can have his.
So I made up some crap about loading the dishwasher. That was all I could think of at the moment and the fact that we are both armed.
He laughed at that. God, I love it when he laughs. Lou has a great laugh.
He told me he was willing to risk the argument. He's willing to risk loading and unloading the dishwasher to have a life with me. I told him I wasn't.
Possibly I just want to have sex with him for the rest of our lives? I wonder what he would say to that. It's the best commitment I can come up with. It's the best compromise so neither one of us would go crazy.
The funny thing is that I think I have fallen so completely in love with him that I can't even find the words. That alone scares me even more.
And his smile. The way he smiles at me, I can't describe how it makes me feel. It's like I'm not another roll in the sack to him, he sees me. He sees me as a woman, a mother, the CSI Supervisor. Not just another hot chic with a tight ass and a nice rack.
Oh God, maybe I do want to risk it? Maybe he is; worth the risk?