I just can't seem to leave this one alone. Enjoy. And please review. Musie has been a little disappointed in reviews lately and, trust me, we don't want her upset. It's never pretty. Thanks, T.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Booth lay in his lonely bed for the first time in three weeks, hands behind his head staring at the ceiling, still trying to wrap his brain around Brennan's accusations. He would admit that in the past he had been a little flirty with women but not in quite some time. Not since he had developed eyes for only his partner, but he had been so stunned by Brennan's words that she had already kicked him out of her apartment before he could defend himself. And some part of the good little Catholic boy inside told him that she had every right to view him that way. He just considered it ironic that she had chosen tonight, of all nights, to confront him. Hell, it was more than ironic, this thing was turning into a freaking Greek tragedy.

With a sigh, he finally gave up on the hope of sleeping and pulled himself up against the headboard. Ok, one problem as he saw it was that Brennan thought he had been stringing her along for the last few weeks. Yes, he had used the damn dictionary and looked up the word just to make sure he knew the definition she had been referring to and it painted a singularly unflattering picture of a tease. Unfortunately, based on his recent behavior, he couldn't really blame her for believing that and he couldn't believe that he had thought she would just fall into bed with him now that he had decided it was time. He sure as hell hadn't been thinking with his big head and that was the entire problem. He was so hot to get laid by his partner that he had been holding out on her for weeks. How twisted was that? But that was his problem and he had that one worked out if she would just give him the chance to prove it which might just be a problem if tonight was any indication.

The bigger problem, as he saw it, was that she flat out hadn't believed him about their night in Bali. He tamped down the irritation that rose at the thought of her thinking he would lie to her and admitted that he was also a little hurt. He had thought she trusted him implicitly and he knew that she had. Three weeks ago. He didn't know if her disbelief stemmed from her anger or he had truly destroyed some of her trust in the last few weeks. He found neither reason adequate. It was simply unacceptable that she didn't trust him in all things and that he had to fix, pronto. How could he tell her he loved her and wanted to be with her always if there was the possibility that she wouldn't believe him?

The simple answer was that he couldn't and the saddest part about all of this was that the whole mess could be laid directly on his doorstep. Yep, if he had only told her about their night together the morning after, there would have been no reason to hold back and he would now be sleeping soundly beside his Bones instead of worrying about how to fix this mess and fighting the urge to return to her apartment and pound on the door until she let him in. He didn't imagine that would turn out well so he refocused on the problems he was trying to work out and suddenly the answer was shining right in front of him, so clear that he couldn't believe it had taken him this long to see it.

He wasn't the head person. Brennan was the head person. He was the heart person and for what now seemed like forever, he had been using his head to guide him with Brennan, holding his heart in check out of fear and it had led to nothing but misunderstandings and anger. With her head and his heart, they made an unbeatable team, professionally and he had to believe personally as well. It was time to put his brain in neutral and his heart into overdrive. And with that decision, it was as if a weight had lifted off of his shoulders. He didn't know how he was going to do it yet but he didn't doubt for a second that he would figure it out. Yes, she was…upset at the moment, but he wasn't going anywhere and he would be here when she decided she was talking to him again.

Brennan shifted quietly on the sofa, trying to avoid disturbing the snoring Angela who had fallen asleep on an air mattress in the floor. Brennan had tried to talk Angela into taking the guest room but Angela had refused to leave her and Brennan had no intention of going anywhere near her bed that night or any night soon, so they had dragged out the air mattress Brennan carried on her digs and settled in for the night. Surprisingly, Angela hadn't tried to get Brennan to talk about what had happened with Booth which was good because she had no idea what to say. She had no words to describe how embarrassed and appalled she was by her behavior and Angela had been so proud of her hissy fit, as she had termed it, that Brennan couldn't bring herself to burst Angela's bubble.

Dear God, what had she done? She had taken leave of her senses, obviously. She had spent so long with her emotions in turmoil and they had finally overwhelmed her, which is exactly why she shouldn't judge anything with her emotions. She just wasn't any good at it. She found the whole process confusing, frustrating and illogical. She much preferred her world of science and facts to the world of feelings where you had to judge the minutia of someone else's emotions. How the hell were you supposed to do that when you couldn't judge your own feelings? The simple answer was you couldn't. It was irrational to even try. Tonight had brought that home to her.

Sitting up with a sigh, she dropped her head into her hands. She hadn't actually accused Booth of lying to her but she had certainly implied it by her actions and words and she knew that had upset him. At the time, she hadn't cared. Now, she did. She knew Booth wouldn't lie to her and she should have let him explain what he was trying to tell her in a more sensitive manner which she had, admittedly, made impossible.

It had hit her about three hours after she slammed the door in his face that in her recurring dream of Bali, the details never once changed and that was more indicative of a memory than a fantasy or a dream and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. She didn't feel like Booth had taken advantage of her. It was pretty clear from her little snit tonight that she wouldn't have said no but she was a little concerned about why he hadn't just told her but even that she could understand. I mean, considering what had been going on at the time, she could see how he wouldn't want to upset her even more. Booth was like that, he tried to protect her from the world. What really worried her was that maybe she was remembering it wrong because in her dream, it had been spectacular between them but surely if it had been that good, he wouldn't have been able to turn away from her every night for weeks. Logically, she could only conclude that it hadn't been that good for him, certainly not something he was anxious to repeat and she had essentially told him to put out or get out tonight. It would be funny if it wasn't so freaking pathetic.

Oh, God, she had to fix this, but how? How did they go from tonight back to being them? Because she missed that, she loved the physical closeness she had with Booth lately but it was driving her insane at the same time and she missed the easiness of them just being together and being Booth and Bones. She had to admit that this whole mess was her fault. She had been so focused on her own needs and desires that she hadn't even considered that maybe Booth loved her as his partner and best friend but she just didn't do it for him sexually and that wasn't his fault. Your sexual responses were controlled by the release of hormones in your body and were unconscious. You couldn't make yourself desire someone. And you couldn't make yourself not desire someone. No, but you could control what you did about those feelings of desire, she thought as her head came up.

That was it. She could not lose Booth from her life entirely and if she didn't lock away all those pesky feelings somewhere deep and dark and let them get back to being them, she would surely drive him away and that was unthinkable. It was time to put her heart in neutral and her brain into overdrive. That was how she was made, how she functioned best. It was how she had always lived her life. Yeah, before Booth, but haven't things been better since Booth came into your life? Yes, they had been better and that's exactly why she had to do this. To keep Booth in her life. Talk to him, her inner Angela urged. She would talk to him but not about this. No, if she told him about this it would defeat the whole purpose. You don't know for sure how he feels until you ask him, Bren, inner Angel whined. Stop it! Snapped Brennan, knowing this was just her apparently inexhaustible hope that she and Booth would happen but her hope was exhausted. She was exhausted and she was done. She would survive this, she promised herself, ignoring the sharp pain in her chest that questioned her assessment of the situation. Your heart can not literally break she repeated over and over but had to acknowledge that the physically impossible still hurt like hell as tears tracked down her face and she said goodbye to her dreams.

Booth couldn't believe how slowly Saturday was passing. Parker was out of town with his mom and Booth had spent the day in his solitary apartment, missing Brennan and thinking. Plotting was actually more like it and he didn't feel a bit bad about it either. His gut told him it would be a very big mistake to leave Brennan alone until Monday. It would just give her time to build her defenses against him he already had too many strikes against him to allow that to happen. So what was the brilliant plan? It was more like a series of little plans. Since he had allowed his heart to take over, he couldn't believe the mistakes he'd made with his partner in the recent past and he was done with that. From here on out, it was the truth. They both deserved that.

And he knew just telling her that he loved her and wanted to be with her at this point might work but she would always wonder about his motivations and he didn't want there to be any doubt about why they were together. So he would give her what any good scientist needed to assess something. Evidence that he wanted her and not just in his bed, but in every facet of his life, by his side every day for the rest of his life. Hell, it shouldn't be that hard. It was the same thing he'd been doing every day for years. Now, he just had to find ways to point that out to her.

It was actually the showing her that he wanted her in his bed that gave him pause when he thought back to her accusations of the night before but the longer he thought about it, the funnier it seemed until he was laughing so hard tears were streaming down his face. He could just imagine how embarrassed she had been when she had finally calmed down, if she had calmed down yet and since he hadn't received any panicked calls from Angela he had to assume she had. His oh so calm, rational Bones throwing a temper tantrum and calling him a tease. God, that was just priceless….and potentially useful. It gave him all kinds of delicious ideas on how to live down to her perceptions of his actions. He knew it would be playing dirty pool but, hey, his lack of physical desire for her seemed to be one of her big issues and he had to clear that up, didn't he? He really didn't have any choice and he knew just how to start.

Angela felt like she and Brennan were on the run from the mob. Brennan had dragged her out of bed at eight freaking o'clock on a Saturday morning insisting that they needed to go somewhere, anywhere except the lab and they should spend the day out then she would spend the night at a hotel. By this time Angela had figured out that they were actually only on the run from one FBI agent and if Brennan wasn't planning on running any further than downtown after her little freak out last night, then Booth had a pretty damn good shot of pulling this one out of the crapper so they might as well see just how good Special Agent Seeley Booth was. Angela was in.

Brennan was exhausted by 4 PM. Angela had gotten into her plans of spending the day out a little too enthusiastically and had dragged her into all of her "favorite" shops. As far as Brennan could tell, that was every one with an open sign in the window but Brennan had found a couple of cute outfits that had her inner Angela whistling and her best friend Angela raising a brow so she couldn't complain too much. Well, she could but she didn't. She tried to convince Angela to let her just check into a hotel under her own name but Angela had come up with this elaborate plan to make reservations under Brennan's name at several places then check into one under a false name so Booth couldn't find them. Brennan had stiffened and denied that she was hiding from Booth but gave it up when Angela stared her down and suggested that in that case they invite him to dinner with them. At that point Brennan had turned the planning over to tornado Angela.

At 8 PM a laughing Angela pulled open the door of the room without checking the peephole, fully expecting it to be pizza delivery. Her laughter froze and her eyes narrowed as she raised a brow at the visitor standing in the hallway. Damn, he was good. If he went to the trouble of tracking them here, there was hope for him after all and her nod told him so. His nod acknowledged that.

"Bren, it's for you," Angela called gaily, blocking Brennan's view of the visitor until she was right behind her.

"For me?" Brennan queried in confusion. "But, Ange, no one knows we're here." Angela laughed and stepped aside and Booth's eyes drank in the sight they had been missing all day. God, he couldn't believe how much he had missed her last night and today and, from the way her eyes were roaming over him, he didn't think he was the only one suffering from separation anxiety. "What are you doing here, Booth?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest to keep from reaching for him. Dammit, the very reason she had come to a hotel was to keep from seeing him. Did the man not understand that when she ran away from home, he wasn't supposed to follow her?

"I'm looking for you, Bones," he told her easily. With a sigh, Angela grabbed his arm and jerked him inside the room, closing the door on the nosily staring people down the hallway.

"Continue," she decreed royally when they both gave her strange looks.

"Do we have a case?" Brennan asked suspiciously. Angela doubted that either one had noticed that Booth had backed Brennan against the door and was leaning over her with one hand propped on the door just above her head. How the hell these two had kept from jumping each other so far was beyond her. They were making her sweat from across the room and she suddenly felt the need to make herself scarce.

"I think I need to run out for a few hours," she said brightly, grabbing her purse and waiting for them to let her out of the room. Neither one spared her a glance but Booth did deign to answer her.

"You're in your pajamas, Angela, and I'm not staying," he told Angela as his big hand came up and cupped Brennan's cheek, his thumb rubbing over her lower lip, his eyes never leaving hers.

"You don't want to stay?" Brennan gasped and dare he hope there was just a smidgen of disappointment in her voice?

"Oh, I very much want to stay but I'm not going to," he told her huskily as his head descended until his mouth paused only a couple of inches from hers. "I missed you today, Baby," he whispered just before his mouth brushed over hers. He meant to keep it light but this was all about the truth and the truth was he wanted to devour her inch by delicious inch. He wanted Angela to take off so he could pull Brenna to one of the beds and act out the seemingly endless parade of erotic fantasies that had been streaming through his mind for weeks and for this to work, she needed to know that, to feel that from him. With a sigh, he surrendered his last reservation, one he hadn't even realized he was holding on to. From now on, he was all in and he wasn't holding anything back. Not anymore.

Settling his mouth more firmly over hers, his hand threaded into hair that was still damp from a shower. God, he loved how soft and fresh her skin was when she came out of the shower. How her hair and skin smelled like warm vanilla. His lips nudged hers apart and his tongue flicked out to lick over her bottom lip. Brennan gasped and arched against him, her unbound breasts pressing so firmly against his chest that he could feel her hardened nipples through her thin pajamas and his t-shirt. Losing himself in the taste and feel of her, his kisses got deeper, hotter and wetter until she was whimpering against his mouth and writhing against his body and he knew he needed to stop. Now. Feeling her teeth scraping his throat, his hand clenched in her hair and he pulled her head back a little more roughly than he had intended. Her eyes flew open to meet his and he let her see just how much he wanted her, how much of a struggle it was to keep from picking her up and striding to one of those beds, how much he wanted to strip her and bury himself deeply inside her welcoming body.

Pressing tightly into the cradle of her spread thighs, he let her feel how much he wanted to do all those things to her and looking into her eyes, he told her why he wasn't going to do any of those things to her. Well, most of those things. For the moment anyway because he wasn't counting on his willpower to hold out very long when she kissed him back and moved against him like she just had.

"Things got all messed up between us, Bones. I know it was mostly my fault and I want to make things right but I can't have you thinking I don't want to take you to bed when it's all I think about anymore. I'm sorry I hurt you," he told her softly, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand up and down the soft skin of her cheek, "but I have always wanted you, Baby. Don't ever doubt that. I was just too stupid to do anything about it until now." He didn't miss the flash of doubt in her eyes, but he also saw the hope and knew it was time for him to say the rest of his piece and get the hell out of here while he still could, before he encouraged Angela to be on her way and took Brennan to bed.

"I miss going to sleep with you in my arms and waking up the same way. I miss my good morning kisses and my goodnight kisses which I'm not willing to give up, by the way. I will even go so far as to track you down for them. I want to be back in your bed more than anything in the world but I can wait until you trust me to be there. Just understand that when you invite me back into your bed it will be a hell of a lot harder to kick me out the next time and I can't promise I won't be trying to influence your decision," he told her with a sexy grin as his hand moved to her hip and shifted her against his erection.

"Booth, did you really track me down just for a goodnight kiss?" she asked on a moan as his hands slid around and cupped her bottom, lifting her harder against him.

"Yeah, Bones, I really did track you down for a good night kiss and to tell you that every time you run away from me, I'll be right behind you." Booth could see that she was pleased with his words despite herself and he had to bite his tongue to hold back the I love you trembling there, but his gut told him that he had given her enough to think about tonight.

"Ok, then. Goodnight, Booth," she grinned up at him and he knew it was going to be ok. Maybe not tonight and maybe not tomorrow but it had to work out. It just had to. The alternative was unacceptable.

"Goodnight, Bones," he grinned back. "Kiss me goodnight," he invited and saw her eyes narrow as he usually did his best to be the one in control of their kisses because she made him nuts when she got aggressive. Taking full advantage of the invitation, she curled her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and proceeded to knock his socks off, in Angela's quaint terms.