Goren returned to the living room and sat heavily on the couch. His hair was damp and so was the front of his t-shirt. His appearance was the last thing on his mind, and he knew it didn't matter to either Eames or Logan, anyway. Eames moved closer to him and gently touched his ear. He turned his head toward her, reassured when she smiled. "Feel better?"

"Tell me how better is supposed to feel."

She leaned forward and gave him a soft kiss. "Like that?" she offered.

He finally gave her a soft smile. "Then I feel better."

"Before you two start in," Logan interrupted as he nudged Goren's shoulder. "I need to talk to you."

Goren drew his attention from Eames, but he settled his hand in her lap, where she took it in both hers. "About what?"

"About your sister's adoptive parents."

Goren tensed apprehensively. "If they weren't good parents, I'm not sure I want any details right now."

"By all the evidence I could find, they were excellent parents. Nice home up in Darien, Connecticut. Father's a banker. Pictures of the kid all over the house, and she sure doesn't have that haunted look that abused kids get. They were devastated. She was a teacher at St. Michael's Academy, and we'll follow up on that after the father comes down to ID the body."

"I want to be there for that."

Logan nodded. "I'm okay with that. I don't know if he'll bring his wife. He kinda acted like she was fragile. But she did say she wanted to meet you."

Goren arched a brow in suspicion. "Why?"

"Because I told them you were a good man. Frank didn't make a very good impression."

"If they remember him after all these years, he had to make an impression of some sort."

"Maybe it was the stress of dealing with the baby's birth or your mother's protracted illness after it."

"It could have been both or neither. Maybe it was just an excuse for him to get high."

"Like he needs an excuse," Eames muttered, and Goren squeezed her hand.

"Well, whatever his excuse, they seemed glad to have taken the baby from her sick mother and junkie brother."

"What else did you tell them?"

"Just that you didn't react well when you found out about the sister you never knew existed, that you would have stepped up and been responsible for her if you'd known."

"That was why my mother never told me. It would have been a constant reminder of her failure, and she would have hated me for it. On some level, maybe she did hate me because she knew that I would have taken care of the baby and she couldn't. She probably blamed me because she had to give her up...before she convinced herself that she never existed in the first place."

Eames squeezed his hand in a comforting gesture, and he felt grounded. He took a deep breath, fidgeted, and added, "My mother was very religious in her own way. She was thrilled when I told her that Frank had found God, all proud of him. The only way she lived with the secret without throwing it in my face was to convince herself that it was all a delusion, that the pregnancy and birth were a concoction of her sick mind."

Eames slipped a hand free and pushed her fingers through his damp hair. He closed his eyes and drew in another deep breath, drawing stability from the contact. Logan clapped his hand on Goren's shoulder. "I'm going home. I need to, uh, water my houseplant."

"That thing's not dead yet?"

"Not quite. There's still some green on it, I think. I never professed to be a gardener."

"Good thing you never got a puppy," Eames quipped.

"Last I looked, puppies weren't green. See you guys in the morning."

Goren called his name, then quietly said, "Thanks."

Logan nodded. "Sure thing. Good night."

When Logan was gone, Goren turned to his partner. "I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?"

"Uh, about last night. I...I got lost. I was so...angry, and I had nowhere to focus that anger."

"So you turned it inward."

"Kind of."

"Do you remember last night at all?"

"I do, but it's fuzzy."

"How did you get to the cemetery?"

"I think I walked. I stopped by to tell my brother that he's worthless and then I went to a bar I know near the cemetery. I kind of lost track of what was going on."

"It's dangerous when you do that."

He nodded. "Thank you for coming after me."

She smiled. "That's what I do."

He drew her into a hug, and she gently poked his ribs. "I think it's amazing that you walked to the cemetery because you didn't do very well going from the car into the house."

"Uhm, did I do anything I should apologize for?"

"Why would you think you did?"

"Alex...I...I'm losing control over my life. I'm unraveling, and I can't reel it back in."

She moved, sliding herself back onto his lap, where she'd been when Logan arrived. She could feel the tension in his body. Tenderly, she cradled his face and softly said, "I know this is hard for you and I can only imagine the grief and betrayal you feel, but it's going to be okay. You have to believe me on this. You'll get past it. I promise."

He placed his hands lightly on her hips. He was unable to see the light at the end of the long, oppressively dark tunnel through which he was traveling, but she made him believe that the end was ahead, somewhere. Maybe it was even close.

She slid her hands toward the back of his head as she leaned forward and kissed him. He moved his hands gently up her back, pleased by the tremor he felt beneath his fingers. His tension began to slip away as she deepened the kiss, and he started to believe her; that somehow, it was going to be okay.

She broke the kiss only long enough to lead him down the hall and remove her clothes. When they crawled into the bed, he drew her into his arms and loved her. Afterward, she fell asleep in his arms.

He watched her sleep for awhile before slipping gently from her embrace. He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a pastrami sandwich on rye. Sitting at the table with a beer, he ate, but his mind wasn't on the food. It was still in the bedroom with her.

She was unique in his life. He'd had plenty of girlfriends, plenty of lovers. Initially, he chose them because he wanted to sleep with them. Sometimes, deeper feelings developed. More often, they did not. If he enjoyed the sex, he stayed in the relationship until she moved on. If not, then he was the one who moved on. His lack of emotional investment didn't mean he didn't care about them. After all, he'd ventured into homeopathy for Lola's cat. But he was unwilling to take risks where his heart was concerned. He could play the game. He could say the words without completely meaning them. He could fool almost anyone. He'd learned from the best of them; he was William Goren's legacy.

And then came Eames. During the very first days of their partnership, he was intentionally difficult. In some ways, he resented having a female partner. He didn't have much experience with female partners and knowing she'd worked vice had not helped matters any. Deakins gave him about as much choice in the matter as he'd obviously given her, that was to say, none. She seemed even less excited about being his partner than he was to be hers. So their first six months or so were pretty rocky. The hard-nosed vice cop versus the unstable maverick from narcotics. They butted heads often and he was stubbornly unyielding over even the most minor points. She was Eames and he was Goren, and to this day, he could not say when he had become Bobby to her. She was still Eames, but her name was now spoken with warmth and respect instead of disdain. And he was learning to call her Alex.

It came as no surprise to him that she had written a letter requesting a new partner. And he had been honest with her when he told her he was lucky she withdrew the letter. They'd never spoken of it again, though he often wondered why she withdrew it. Maybe someday he would feel himself in a place where he could ask, but now was not that time. With all that had happened over the past year, from her kidnapping to his mother's death to the results of the paternity test that confirmed for him the horrifying truth that he was the son of Mark Ford Brady, he felt like he was walking on quicksand, like the ground beneath him could give way at any moment.

His relationship with Eames grew, and with time, he came to respect her, to trust her, and finally, to love her. She was the only woman in his life who entered his heart before she ever climbed into his bed. By using the depth of his feelings for her as a gauge, he could honestly say he had never loved a woman before. She filled nearly all the empty spaces in his heart and was as close as anyone had ever come to being a salve for his wounded soul. He had tried not to taint her with his life, but she would have none of it. She pushed and pushed and pushed until the door popped open and she was in his heart, past all his defenses, beyond all the walls—and he knew of no way to get her out, so he welcomed her.

In his mind, he always made strict distinctions, especially about relationships. He seduced women, and he knew it. But Eames had somehow seduced him. He didn't think she knew it or that it was what she ever intended, but the fact remained—that was exactly what she had done. In bed, he always fucked a woman. Always, except with her. He never fucked Eames. With her, it was always love. In his mind, in his heart, with his body, always he loved her. She was the only woman with whom love came first, before their first kiss, before they ever got into bed. First, there was love. And it made him dizzy, giddy almost, and he liked it. For the first time he felt that he'd done something right, and he was trying like hell not to screw it up.

Day after day, he watched her. He'd been watching her for years. She'd warned him once against profiling her, under pain of some yet-to-be-discovered penalty, a vague threat he took very seriously, but he couldn't help it. It was what he did. So he tried hard not to be obvious about it. He knew when she was dating, and he could always tell the next morning when she'd had sex the night before. He felt troubled over the jealousy that crept up from God only knew where. He was very uncomfortable with those feelings, knowing they shouldn't be there, that he had no right to feel that way. He also knew when it was over, and he cursed himself more for the feeling of relief that came with it. He wasn't sure how she felt about the men she dated, but he felt fairly certain she hadn't been in love. The pain of losing Joe was still too raw. Over time, he saw less of her grief, but he knew she still missed him and that was only right. Unlike him, Eames had found love. But she'd also lost it and that made her reluctant to give it another try, to open herself to that pain all over again, especially with another cop, where the likelihood of loss was so much higher.

Yet, from time to time, he would catch something, something fleeting, in her eyes, something he never saw before and couldn't interpret. He was hard-pressed to admit he didn't try very damn hard, because on some level, he knew what the flash of something was, and it made him very uncomfortable. It increased with frequency over time. It was there when he said something that amused her, and it was there when he did something that made her laugh. It was there when he was in pain. But most surprising of all, it was there over the past year as he watched his mother die, more steady, more frequent, more pronounced, until finally it never went away. Still, he tried to pretend it wasn't there, but he knew because he felt what he saw in her eyes, and he knew it was love.

He finished off the last bite of his sandwich and the last swallow of beer. As he set his dish in the sink and dropped the bottle into recycling, she came up behind him. Her arms were cool as she slid them around his waist, and her face was cool where she rested it against his back. "Eames," he said softly.

"Alex," he corrected.

She hummed an answer; he felt the vibration of it against his skin, and he smiled. "I love you," he whispered, almost hoping she didn't hear him because he'd never said those words before and meant them. He'd only ever used them as a tool to get what he wanted. Except for his mother, he'd never loved anyone else, but he loved her, and he meant the words.

She pressed her cheek into his back. "I love you, too," she replied after a moment.

She'd heard him, and she believed him. She dragged her nails lightly over his skin, and a smile played at the corners of his mouth. "Come back to bed," she invited.

He didn't need her to ask twice.