AN: At dinner last night the conversation turned to first loves and one true loves and broken hearts and what we wish we would have said. And of course, my first thought was "that would make a great story!" Apparently, everything comes back to fanfiction.

I hope you enjoy it. :-)

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Brennan hurried out of her small home office when she heard the front door slam, followed by the heavy thud of feet stomping in a rush up the stairs. She reached the hallway just in time to look up and see Christine's bedroom door thrown shut so hard the pictures along the wall outside bounced. Turning to Zach, she raised her eyebrows in silent inquiry.

He tossed his overloaded backpack at the nearest chair and headed for the kitchen. "Preston broke up with her," he said, as he opened the refrigerator to peer inside. "Did Dad eat the rest of the cherry pie last night?"

"I saved you a quarter section. It's in the vegetable crisper." Distracted, Brennan stared up toward the second floor. "Is she all right?"

"I don't know. She was mad and crying and beating on the steering wheel all at the same time." Busy rooting around in the fridge, Zach gave little thought to the trip home from school or his sister's heartbreak. He crowed in triumph when he found the plastic-wrapped plate lying on top of green peppers and zucchini. "Jackpot! Way to go, Mom! Dad would never look for pie in here."

He grabbed a half-full gallon of milk, then silverware from a drawer and settled down at the island to tuck into the pie. When he lifted the milk as if to drink out of the container, Brennan snatched it from his hand. She set an empty glass in front of him, filled it up, then put the milk back in the refrigerator.

"Did she say why he broke up with her?"

"Because he's an asshole? Sorry." Zach apologized automatically when his mother frowned in disapproval. "That's what she said, though."

"Have you heard anything in school that might explain his actions?" Still concerned, Brennan stepped out of the kitchen to look up again toward Christine's closed door.

"I'm a 14-year-old senior. Nobody talks to me." Having finished the pie, Zach slid off the barstool and went back to the fridge. "Are we out of hummus?"

"Third shelf, near the back. What do you mean, no one talks to you?"

The alarm in her voice drew his attention. He straightened with the bowl of hummus and a bag of baby carrots in hand. "That was not a desperate cry for attention, I promise. I'm perfectly happy . . . in the basement with my Dungeons & Dragons stuff." When her brow furrowed in confusion, his mouth curled up in the lopsided grin he'd inherited from Booth. "Never mind. I'll ask Dad to explain it to you."

Mollified if not completely reassured, Brennan went back to the subject of Christine. "Perhaps you and I should go upstairs and talk to her. This is her first experience with rejection. We could show her our support together, as a family."

Zach choked on a half-eaten bite of carrot. Coughing to clear his throat, he shook his head vigorously. "We? No, Mom, there's no 'we' there. That's a girl thing."

"It is?" Brennan glanced anxiously at the ceiling, as if she could see through it directly into her daughter's bedroom.

He nodded emphatically. "Definitely. You should go up and talk to her. I should stay down here. Where it's safe." He used another small carrot to dig out a huge bite of hummus, then went searching for a knife. When he found one, he grabbed an apple from the basket of fruit on the counter and began to slice it into thick wedges.

"I suppose you're right." Suddenly aware of how much food the teenager had consumed over the short span of their conversation, Brennan looked at her son aghast. "Zach Henry! We're meeting the Hodgins' tonight to celebrate William's birthday. Stop eating!"

Mouth full of apple, he paused mid-chew. "But I'm hungry now!"

Brennan sighed. As she headed out of the room, she waved one hand over the scattering of dishes and utensils. "Make sure you clean this up."

Upstairs, she stood outside Christine's closed door and leaned close, listening for the sound of weeping. When all seemed quiet, she knocked softly.

"Christine? It's your mother."

"Go away."

The tear-stained voice was clearly audible through the barrier of the white-painted wood. Brennan turned the knob slowly and opened the door a few inches.

"Did you mean that literally or are you being hyperbolic because of your distraught emotional state?"

Christine laughed once, unwillingly, and pulled herself up to sit curled against the headboard of her bed when Brennan stepped inside. With her damp cheeks and red, puffy eyes, she looked heartbroken and tragic. Brennan sat down at her feet and laid a sympathetic hand on the sock-clad foot closest to her.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

She sniffed piteously. "Zach told you?"

"Yes."

"He's an asshole."

"Well, I asked him to tell me what was wrong. I heard the door slam and - -"

"I meant Preston," Christine interrupted. "He's the asshole, not Zach."

"Ah." Brennan's head dipped as understanding rose. "Of course he is."

The story burst out as if Christine couldn't hold it back any longer. "He didn't even tell me why," she cried. "He just walked up to me after last period and . . ."

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When Booth arrived home a short while later, he found Zach still in the kitchen, reading on his iPad with the remains of his after-school snacking scattered around him. All too aware of the growing boy's enormous appetite, he laughed and ruffled his son's dark hair.

"Whoa there, buddy. Save some room for dinner." A plate smeared with cherry filling caught his eye. "Hey! Where did that come from? Your mother told me the pie was all gone!"

Zach grinned, prepared to enjoy himself. "It was, except what she saved for me."

Booth swelled with faux outrage. "She's hiding pie from me now? Where?"

Still grinning, Zach elbowed him in the side. "Well, I'm not going to tell you. Then it wouldn't be a good hiding place anymore."

"Harrumph. Obviously she and I need to have a talk about her misplaced loyalties." Booth stuck a glass under the filtered tap at the sink and filled it with water. "Where is everybody?"

Zach pointed to the ceiling with a slice of apple. "Upstairs. Mom's talking to Chris. Preston broke up with her."

"What?" The glass of water froze halfway to Booth's mouth. "When? Why?"

"Because he's an assho- a jerk?" Unwilling to press his luck with the off-colour remark a second time, Zach quickly changed the insult to something less profane.

Booth wasn't concerned with his language. He set the glass aside. "Damn it. Is Christine okay?"

Zach could only repeat what he'd said earlier. "I don't know. She was crying and yelling and hitting stuff on the way home. Is that normal?"

"Damn it," Booth said again. "I knew I didn't like that kid." Long strides took him toward the entrance to the kitchen, where he paused and looked back at his son. "Stop eating or you'll ruin your dinner. And make sure you clean all this up."

Christine's door stood several inches ajar. As he neared the top of the stairs, the hushed murmur of voices reached him. His steps slowed automatically as he hesitated, not sure if his presence was necessary but unwilling to allow his baby girl to be unhappy without doing something about it. Looking for a sign as to what he should do next, he peeked through the small opening. Brennan sat on the end of the bed, facing what he could see of Christine's legs. Her profile showed a face full of motherly concern as the teenager sniffed piteously.

" . . . You don't understand, Mom. You and Dad have this great love story. You don't know what it's like to have a broken heart."

Brennan brushed at the fringe of their daughter's dark hair. "Your father broke my heart once."

Booth leaned forward. Even after almost two decades, the memory of that time in their lives was strong. Hearing Brennan's side was a temptation he couldn't resist.

The shock in Christine's voice was palpable. "What?"

"Not deliberately," Brennan added quickly. "Or maliciously. But I broke his first so, in a way, I suppose it was fair."

"You broke Daddy's heart?" Christine sounded even more surprised. "Why?"

Booth sympathized as Brennan shifted uneasily. The story wasn't an easy one to tell, and Christine's rapt attention meant that now Brennan had started telling it, she had to finish.

"I was frightened," she said finally. "Your father wanted our . . . our friendship to become something else, something more than what it was and . . . I was afraid. I was afraid that I couldn't be what he needed, that I couldn't love him the way he should be loved. And I was afraid that if I failed, I would lose his friendship, too. I wasn't brave enough to take that risk. So, I said no."

Those moments outside the Hoover unspooled in Booth's memory, strong enough that his hand rose to his chest as if he felt the stab in his heart all over again. There had been tears on both sides but it was Brennan's he remembered now, and the fear in the trembling words when she'd asked if they could still work together.

Christine felt none of the pain of her parents' past. "Is that when he broke your heart? He left you?"

Brennan smiled and shook her head. "No. He stayed."

Booth could almost see Christine jaw drop. "He stayed? Why?"

"I don't know." Surprised at the response, Booth studied Brennan as she stared down at the hands clasped in her lap. "I don't know. And I didn't realize until later how hard it must have been for him. But he stayed," she told their daughter. "He stayed until we both ran away to opposite sides of the world."

"Was that when he met the woman on TV, the one with the bad plastic surgery?"

"We were all much younger then," Brennan replied diplomatically, "and at the time, she was very pretty. But yes, that's when he met her. And unfortunately for me, that's also when I realized how I felt about him."

"Oh, no! What did you do?"

"I told him . . . and he told me that I was too late, that he was in love with Hannah."

Only the fear of being caught eavesdropping kept Booth from barging into the room. It wasn't a memory he was proud of, when he'd sat frozen into immobility while Brennan hunched beside him, crying and broken. Christine's horror-stricken gasp only deepened his remorse. Completely forgetting that her parents had been together for all of her eighteen years, she reached for her mother's hand. "Mom, that's awful!"

A shadow of remembered pain fell over Brennan's face. "Yes, it was difficult to hear. I had always scoffed at the use of broken heart as a metaphor for grief. The heart is a muscle, of course, and necessary to sustain life. If it were broken, it would be fatal, or so I believed at the time. But I was wrong. Broken hearts are real, and you can live with one."

Christine sniffed again, this time with tears of sympathy. "What did you do?"

Brennan shrugged away the memory of the dark period. "I did what I had to do. There were days when it hurt just to breathe but I adjusted. I got up every morning and I went to the lab and I worked and I . . . I adjusted."

"So what happened with Dad and the woman on TV? Obviously they broke up."

Brennan hesitated for a moment, as if searching for the right words. "They realized they wanted different things," she said finally. "Hannah was restless. She wasn't interested in staying in one place, or in settling down. Their relationship ended and several months later, your father and I were finally in the same place, at the same time. Most importantly, it was finally the right time for us. And now we have you," she smiled. "And Zach and Parker. We are a family."

Christine slumped back against the headboard again. A few minutes of silence passed while she considered the story she'd just heard and her own situation. "I don't feel like that. It hurts but I think I'm more angry than anything else. Maybe I didn't really love Preston."

"Your father told me once that we could love several people in a lifetime but there would always be one whom we loved the most. Perhaps you did love Preston," Brennan shrugged. "But you will fall in love again, probably several times before you meet the person you'll love the most."

"Thanks, Mom." Although he couldn't see her face, Booth could tell by the brightening of Christine's voice that she was past the crisis. "Do you think Dad would take me to the firing range tomorrow? I think I'd feel a lot better if I could shoot something."

Brennan laughed. "I'm sure that can be arranged."

Deciding to use the moment as a cue to announce his presence, Booth rapped the frame of the door and pushed it open. "Is this party just for the two of you or can I come in?"

His appearance prompted a fresh bout of tears from Christine. "Daddy!" Wailing dramatically, she flew off the bed and into his arms.

Booth hugged her close, pressing kisses into her hair and murmuring soft words of comfort. All the while, his dark eyes held Brennan's.

Her gaze slipped to the doorway and back, silently asking if he'd overheard their conversation.

He nodded.

Brennan's lips twisted, offering a tiny smile of apology in case he needed it.

Booth shook shook his head. He didn't.

When Christine's storm of weeping finally ended, Booth leaned down to kiss her forehead. "I'm sorry, baby."

She laid her head on his shoulder and pouted. "He's an asshole."

Booth let the invective go unchallenged. "Want me to beat him up for you?"

She played with his tie and peeped up at him from beneath her lashes. "No, but can we go to the firing range tomorrow? I could put his picture on a target and - -"

Booth smothered laughter and tried to look stern. Her resemblance to Brennan was never so strong as when she tried to wheedle something she wanted out of him. "I'll take you to the range, sweetheart, but that's a negative on shooting his picture up."

Christine's eyes widened as she blinked with false innocence. "Not a good idea?"

"Definitely not." Booth did laugh then. He gave her a hard squeeze and pointedly glanced at his watch. "I hate to bring this up, but we're supposed to be at Antonio's in 45 minutes so . . ."

The reminder of the birthday celebration erased the last traces of her self-pity. "Oh, no! My face!"

Brennan joined Booth in the doorway as Christine raced to the bathroom to smooth over the evidence of her tears. "How long were you standing there?"

He drew her into his arms for a kiss that lingered. "Long enough. To answer your question, Bones, I stayed because I love you. I came back because I love you. When I didn't want to love you," he smiled tenderly, "I still loved you. And that thing I said about loving one person the most? It was you. It's always been you."

Christine's peevish tones broke them apart minutes later. Outraged on seeing their embrace, she marched past them into her bedroom. "Do you mind? I have a broken heart! I don't want to see you two making out right now! Have some respect for my pain!"

"Sorry, honey." Not the slightest bit sorry, Booth winked at Brennan. "We'll finish that later," he said, in a whisper that deliberately carried.

Reacting on cue, Christine nudged them both out into the hallway. "Go away. Go do that stuff in your own room."

When the door clicked shut, Booth waggled his eyebrows at Brennan. "I'm game if you are."

"We don't have time."

Her raspy chuckle turned what had been a bit of teasing flirtation into something more serious. "Sure we do. We could - -"

"Hey! When are we leaving for dinner? I'm starving!"

Yelling from the bottom of the stairs, Zach put a stop to any hope Booth had of impromptu romance. Giving up for the moment, he raised Brennan's fingers to his lips and sent her a look that sizzled with promise.

"Later."

"Absolutely."

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Thank you for reading!