She was never going to stay, is the thing.
Swarek had no illusions about what this was, from the beginning (three months after "normal" sent her to North Bay). She'd been responsible for too much too early – drunk dad, absent mom, bills to pay, legacies to uphold – and she'd been a good little adult her whole life. The next steps of that – the job, fiancé, playing house – they hadn't really gone her way and finally, finally, she had stumbled into a good old fashioned rebellion; selfish, impulsive choices (if you're not doing anything in the next couple of hours…) that led to secret affairs with authority figures. It was textbook - it was his own fault for thinking that it was fairy tale.
She didn't want normal is the other thing. She ran from it and he can't blame her. Not really. She's not ready for real; hasn't ever just had fun, easy, exciting. She wanted him to be that for her, chose him for that and he was what she needed him to be, even if she'll always be more than that to him (all I wanted was you).
He realized all that the day she got back – when she blocked him from leaving her apartment, all wet hair and worried eyes; sorry that she'd hurt him but not sorry that she'd done it. And he saw the split right in front of him, almost as if she was two different people –one pleading and the other standing strong and she seemed to need him there while she knit them together into a whole.
That's who he'll be for her, when she looks back at her life – a bridge from playing grown up to being an adult. The one who was there in the time of before and after – the consummate TO. It makes a certain kind of sense to him – that this amazing woman who looks for the good in everyone she meets, but who trusts almost no one, needs him for that. Because she trusts him. (She trusts him. God.)
So. She'll make all the moves and he'll follow her lead. But while she does, he has to remember to that she's not going to stay.
-0-
Here's another thing. You can want something wholeheartedly, especially when it's out of reach. There's a fullness to wanting. But if you get it and know that it's only on loan? The instant you have it in your hand, there's a countdown clock to when you have to let go. You have to hold back, you can't grip too tight.
Undercover work taught him some rules about holding back, about how to deal with situations that aren't real. She doesn't make it easy but he tries to follow them – leave first in the morning, evade questions, keep it light, don't show need…
It gets messy. Long lost mothers, Epstein's investigation and Ollie's home life all bleeding into his previously comfortable day-to-day. But he can handle it. He knows his role.
…She really doesn't make it easy (ice cream trucks, sleepy eyes, you and me it's not the same, food fights and bare skin on white sheets).
-0-
He can't think about the time in the truck after the psychic. (He thinks about it all the time.) But it's a turning point.
-0-
There's only so long that he can hold himself back from what he really wants before he starts resenting that he has to. It's easier (it was never easy) to say what's the rush and you won't get rid of me without a fight when he knows that she's the one who'll leave but when she insists on dangling herself in front of him, talking about mothers-in-law and Nash's wedding and saying what she said in the truck…
But more than that, she starts to change him; makes him question the one thing that he knows – how to be a good cop. He lets her have all the power, make all the moves until it blurs the line. Her being snippy with him means letting Nash move the car, giving her the keys to the truck means letting Nick drive, apologizing for doing a check on Claire means letting Izzie slip through the cracks. And it means that he hears her voice instead of his own gut and somehow Jerry pays the price.
And now all he knows is that the anger and the loss and the yearning and the pain centers around her and he's lost.
He's lost.
She was never going to stay. (He was never going to leave.)