Sam sat on his couch, drowning his sorrows in the bottle of whiskey he'd pulled from the cupboard, relishing the burn he felt as the alcohol slid down his throat. He silently accepted that he'd lost her forever, his own stupidity had cost him the chance of having a life with her.

Before taking another large gulp from the bottle, anger suddenly arose from deep inside him, replacing the self-loathing and depression he felt moments before. 'What the hell is wrong with me? God, I am so pathetic. The badass Sam Swarek, brought to his knees by his rookie! I finally admitted how I really feel about her while she's holding a damn bomb. Who does that? Look where it got me! She just walked away… Again. How are we so screwed up? We are the poster for failed relationships… A girl who runs off and has major abandonment issues, and a guy who can't tell her how he feels until she is holding an live explosive and could very well die right in front of him. What a joke!'

He tried to think back to how he got to this point. Ever since he was a kid, he avoided relationships because he knew things like this would happen. Letting anyone get too close would only be a set up for pain, so he learned to keep people at a distance. His mother was mentally unstable, and died when he and his sister were young, and his father was an abusive drunk, who spent part of their childhood in prison. If he couldn't even trust his parents not to hurt him, there was no way he could count on anyone else to be any different.

Somehow, despite all of the walls he learned to build up over the years, his rookie managed to break them down, and he fell for her, deeply and madly in love with her. He was terrified, as he never let anyone get so close before, yet he would not allow her into his heart completely. When he finally told her how he felt, he let fear overcome him, the fear that he would lose her. Ironically, it was his fear that caused him to lose the one person he feared losing the most. And here he was, left alone with a broken heart, and a half empty bottle of whiskey.

As memories kept flooding in, he drank more and more, hoping that soon enough they would just go away.

He couldn't remember the exact point he fell in love with her, or how she was able to make him feel things he never imagined. Always the ladies man, he had his fair share of women. They came and went, and he never stuck around long enough to form any sort of attachment, and he was never interested in doing so. That was, until he met Andy.

From the day she barreled into his life, he knew she was something else.

He had been so pissed at her, even though it really was Jerry's fault for blowing his cover. He had taken out his frustrations out on someone's locker, leaving a permanent shoe print in the process. Yet she managed to call him out on his crap. He had no idea how she did it, but she didn't back down until he'd told her everything he'd known about the potential shooter. She didn't flinch when he tried to throw her off by stripping in front of her, and didn't back down when he treated her like a complete idiot, and an utter failure.

As he recalled her second day on the job, he thought about how much she really surprised him that day.

She definitely saved his ass. When he'd gone after Emily, he hadn't really stopped to think about the consequences of confronting Hill and his associates. He would have left in a body bag if Andy hadn't walked in with the files. He hadn't expected her to ever drift outside the lines, but she'd virtually colored in an entirely different coloring book to save Emily. She continued to surprise him.

When she met a young man with a bullet lodged in his head, she saw someone who had made some bad decisions in the past, and worried about how a tricky surgery to remove the bullet would turn out. Her main concern was about Benny, and she treated him with respect, unlike Callaghan, who saw him simply as "evidence."

He should have known then how different she was, because of the fact he let her use his truck. Before that, he had never let anyone touch his truck. Even his best friends, Oliver and Jerry, only had the honor of riding with him once, as he would never consider allowing them to drive her. But with Andy, she simply asked, and without giving a second thought, he handed over the keys. Oliver realized the significance of the gesture, and called him on it, although Sam refused to see what was becoming obvious to everyone else. He smiled as he remembered telling Benny that she had a lion's heart. It was true. The genuine concern she had for others was remarkable, and it was one of the things he loved about her the most.

When she first shot someone fatally, she was devastated. To some, especially Callaghan, it was seen as a great thing, since by doing so, she saved the life of a little girl, her TO, and herself. But in her mind, it was a life that ended by her hands. He was surprised when she came to him that night, but it had turned from an act of comfort to something more, and the feelings that were stirred in him that night should have been a warning sign that he was travelling down a dangerous path.

Then there was the Laundromat incident, where she risked her life to protect a woman whose husband died in the building. It was yet another time where she put the wellbeing of others above her own, even if that put her in a dangerous situation. It had caused him to reach a level of fear that he never thought he was capable of. The thought of never being able to see her again petrified him.

Looking back at all she had accomplished and everything she had overcome, even if only considering her rookie year, he could not be more amazed, or more proud. Of course he noticed that she was a really good person from the start, but he never stopped to reflect on how extraordinary she was, until now.

He fisted his hands and brought them to his forehead. How had he managed to screw things up so badly? He finally found someone who truly wanted to know him, care for him, and possibly love him in spite of who he was, and he walked away.

Closing his eyes and mentally beating himself up for his idiocy, he kept drinking. Before long, the bottle was completely dry, and he was out cold.