Six weeks after arriving in Arizona things have become routine. Much to her surprise Temperance actually begins to enjoy teaching. Booth enjoys the more laid back nature of being a body guard, but misses Parker. They don't give into temptation anymore, but they don't talk about what happened either. They make a few new friends at work, and with their neighbors a few doors down. Little do they know it's the calm before the storm.
On Saturday evening Temperance is at the grocery store getting groceries for the next week. She gets a roast for their dinner after church. She still couldn't believe that he had persuaded her to go to church. Luckily it wasn't a Catholic church, it was much more relaxed. She has begun to warm to 'their' nondenominational church. She starts down an aisle in search of some moisturizer. She rolls past deodorant, feminine products, and a wall of hair ties when she suddenly stops, and comes to a terrible realization.
When she gets home Booth is tidying the office of their clutter. She hastily puts away the groceries. She slips by the bathroom quietly and heads up the stairs with one very important purchase. Ten minutes later Booth wanders into their bedroom, looking for her. He finds her laying in bed with her hand on her fake stomach. He notices her red eyes.
"Something wrong?" he asks politely as he sits down on the edge of the bed, next to her.
"I don't know," she shrugs.
"Have you been crying?"
"Why does it matter?"
"I'd like to know what's bothering you."
"I think that we may be in trouble," she tells him.
"Why would you think that?"
"This isn't going to work."
"What, why wouldn't it?"
"I...I'm stupid."
"Temperance you're brilliant,"he reminds her.
"You're enjoying this whole marriage thing way too much."
"It's easy."
"How?"
"You make it easy."
"How?"
"Cause you're you."
"What are you saying?"
"I wouldn't mind being married, if I were married to someone like you."
"Stop. I do not want to talk about marriage with you right now."
"You know we should start pretending to get excited for the baby. We could paint the nursery."
"Slow down."
"What's bothering you? Am I making you uncomfortable?"
"Extremely."
"Why?"
"This is all too real."
"We're just pretending to be..."
"We're pretending to be married, but it's almost as if we don't have to pretend."
"What are you saying?"
"I've totally blown this case. We're going to have to... I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know how to fix this."
"Fix what? Can I be honest with you?"
"Of course."
"I don't think we need to fix anything. This works, we work."
"What are you saying?"
"I love you."
"What?"
"I love you," he repeats.
"No... no you don't."
"Yes I do."
"Why would you say that? Are you trying to be convincing since we're undercover?" She doesn't give him a chance to answer before she continues, "Because you don't have to. It's just the two of us, and I know that the neighbors can't hear us."
"Shut up," he tells her.
"I..."
"Temperance I love you."
"I don't think that I can handle this."
"Handle what?"
"I can't do this. I can't... pretend to be married to you."
"Temperance calm down."
"Calm down? Are you going to take it back? Because you can't."
"I know, I wouldn't take it back. I meant it."
"No you didn't. I'm... we're incompatible. And I... I don't want to ruin our partnership because we were projecting or..."
"I'm not. I love you. I've known that for a while."
"Booth it doesn't matter, you can't love me."
"Sure I can."
"No you can't."
"Why not?"
"I screwed up, and I put our investigation in jeopardy and, I can't fix this. They'll separate us, and you're going to hate me. Things are going to be so awkward, and..." she rambles.
"Could you just tell me what's going on? Coherently?"
"No. I don't want this, I can't do this. We're not supposed to do this we're co-workers and..."
"I love you. I'm sorry if that freaks you out. I'm sorry if you're not ready to hear that, or if you don't want to hear it. If you don't feel the same that's fine, but I need you to know how I feel about you. Things could get bad really fast with this, and I don't want something to happen to one of us and you not know how I feel about you."
"Please just stop. I... I'm having an emotional overload here."
"You don't have those, you compartmentalize."
"All of my compartments just exploded."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," she shakes her head and walks away. He follows her out of the room flipping off the light.
"Where are you going?"
"For a drive."
"Do you want me to..."
"I want you to let me go. I need some space."
"Are you ok? Are you hyperventilating?"
"No, I just need some water, and some air."
"Temperance you shouldn't go anywhere when you're this upset."
"I'll be fine, I'm a grown adult."
She leaves the condo, and gets in her car. She turns it on, but goes nowhere. She looks down to put her bottle of water in the cup holder. She picks the receipt out of the cup holder. Halfway down the list her eyes stop. She crumples up the receipt and tosses aside. She loses it. She begins crying hysterically. She starts to dial Angela, but then decides not to. She could do this. She could do this on her own. Who was she kidding? She didn't know how to do this. She begins to call Sweets, she dials ten of the eleven numbers and then clears her screen. She's staring at her phone when it begins to ring.
"Hello?"
"You don't have your purse. If you plan to go very far you should come back and get it."
"I..."
"Are you crying?"
"Yes," she admits.
"Where are you?"
"In the parking lot."
"Temperance come inside. I want to talk about this."
"Fine," she huffs, dreading the awkward conversation they were about to partake in.