Calleigh struggled to pull herself together after she left the detention center.
Part of her seethed at the system… at the lack of justice towards her partner.
Her friend.
Her lover.
She sighed softly.
Another part of her seethed at Eric for hiding it all from her.
As close as they'd gotten since ….
She sighed again.
All of this really started after she'd been kidnapped. She knew that.
More importantly, he knew that.
As confused as she'd been over a month ago, she was more and more clear about things now.
Nothing really had sparked … noticeably sparked between them until the hotel. When she'd taken him home with her. One night.
One night only they swore to each other… they'd slipped right back into the simple joy of a midnight tiptoe.
Only…
She'd almost died and he declared them even.
And made her promise that she would never almost die on him again.
Which she turned on him and demanded the same promise.
They'd made love that night. She'd made him. He wanted to treat her like a china doll that would break in a million pieces if he touched her. She'd told him that she'd break into a million pieces if he didn't touch her.
So he'd touched her.
Really caressed her and branded her with gentle kisses and claimed her for his own.
As she drove back to the lab, she pondered what she was going to do with him. She couldn't just let the love of her life be deported for pete's sake.
Only she used a much stronger word than Pete's Sake.
A word that would have her genteel womenfolk on her mother's southern side rolling in their dainty little graves.
And would have caused her mother to wash her mouth out with soap.
There were so many things to get done before he was deported… she wondered if she could really stop it all from happening. She was so angry… So frustrated over things right now.
Which is why she didn't really take the next idea seriously when it popped into her head.
Until she really thought about it.
She could marry him.
It's not like she hadn't considered it as a possibility before. She'd just had a much more romantic setting picked out for it … and she'd marry him now before deportation as long as she could get someone to buy them enough time for the waiting period to pass.
Calleigh's eyes narrowed as she stepped on the gas pedal a little harder than usual in her hurry to make it back to the lab. She was sure that H would take it as face value and not read too much into it when she volunteered to marry Eric. Then again, he was a perceptive little … Calleigh laughed, choosing to not voice her sometimes nickname for their supervisor.
** * ** * **
She wasn't why she was so disappointed at the tooth thing.
She loved new techniques and ideas being used in the lab to solve a problem.
But it felt like a bit of a let down.
Dissolve the tooth and find out that his father was a US citizen the entire time.
And let H and his father go tell him that he was free to go.
Calleigh was practically chomping at the bit in her excitement to see him. She couldn't believe that H made her wait outside.
Her eyes lit up when she saw him and she immediately cherished the look on his face when he saw her and hurried his steps towards her.
"Hey…" She greeted him with a smile. "You missed out." She told him, delighted when a look of confusion surfaced in his eyes at her words.
She shook her head. "I was going to marry you, but then your father came through…"
Eric laughed softly and smirked at her.
In that instant… Calleigh knew that it might certainly happen someday for them. But she needed to just be glad that Eric Delko would have the chance to make his marriage proposal in his own time… when he wanted to … and not just because she needed to marry him to keep him here.
With her.
~fin~