AN: Sorry about the delay! I can't believe I started this story over the summer and it's still not done. This season's plots just threw me for a loop! Back on track now, though.
You stand against the railing looking out at the water. In your pocket is a ring. If you were honest with yourself you would have to admit that you bought it for all the wrong reasons. You bought it because Sweets—the frickin' baby duck—was ready to marry Daisy. Because a kid who'd always looked up to you suddenly had this disdain for your life. He saw you as an old man who'd never been married, and in that moment you'd felt old. Sometimes, Sweets would look at you with pity, like you were making a mistake. And Bones would look at you like…whatever. You didn't want to think about it, so you bought a ring: huge, sparkling, savings-emptying.
But Kate had left, and now all you have is an empty apartment, a Bakelite phone and a diamond in your pocket. You grab it, look at it one last time and cast it into the Potomac. You do not take aim.
Alone at the table, Booth looked through the window and saw Bones standing alone in the street. For once, he let himself watch her without worrying about what it meant or what others would think. She had just accepted a shell from her father and embraced him. After Max departed, she lifted the shell to her ear, listening to the rushing of a false ocean.
It was a stack of improbable things occurring all at once: Dr. Temperance Brennan hadtrusted her father, shown him affection, and indulged in a misperception.
Booth didn't know the science behind hearing the ocean in a shell, but if he still placed bets, he'd have wagered big that Bones would lecture her father about it when he handed her the gift. Instead, after he was gone, she held the shell to her ear and smiled.
She'd been changing slowly since the day they met, and faster while they were apart.
A year ago, Booth gave up on a future with Temperance and started building a new life with Kate. Now he didn't have any of it. Kate was gone. The dreamlife with Brennan had faded. His old ease with Bones is gone. And now she loved him. Now.
Part of him wanted to run out that door, kiss her, jump into the cab they should have caught all those years ago. Another part of him was angry. For so many years Booth protected her feelings and worked damn hard getting her to trust him, trust herself, trust love.
Back then, Booth trusted love completely. He'd been sure that she was his future. Cam warned him once not to break Brennan's heart or she would never let anyone in again.
No one had been worried about his heart.
It was something he and Bones had in common, actually: they both hated change. Giving up on Bones had meant changing the way he saw himself and the world. "I'm that guy," he'd told her. "I know." Moving on meant rejecting the part of him that felt so sure.
When he met Kate, the thought, Maybe all those people are right: there's no such thing as soul mates or destiny. There's just the things you choose and the things you don't. Now Temperance was expecting him to go back, somehow. In the car that night, her eyes had begged him: Believe in us. Love me. You're the one who was supposed to love me no matter what. You're the one who was never going to leave. And now you're within reach, but you're so far away.
Bones had broken his heart. Kate had broken his heart. It was time to begin again, but Booth didn't know how. Last time he left, but he couldn't do that again. Booth had accepted a call to duty that he would have accepted if Bones had never been in the picture. Achieving the distance necessary to heal had been a bonus. But he'd been fooling himself: Parker had missed Booth more than they anticipated, and Booth had new deaths to atone for. If he went back feeling this way about serving, it wouldn't be honorable. It would be running. Whoever Booth now was, he wasn't a coward.
He threw down money on the table and walked out to talk to her, but he was too slow. Her cab was pulling away. He shook his head at the taillights and the latest event in almost a decade of bad timing.