A/N-- Huge thanks to M for all her support and the amazing beta. You rock! :wub: as always to Maple Street, the most amazing forum out there. You're all wonderful.
Continued from Chapter Ten.
Chapter Eleven:
The first night she had slept with Jack, the only evidence of their night together the indentation in his pillow and a pair of his boxers tossed aside into a corner of the motel room bathroom.
Now, on what potentially could have been their last night together, he remained pressed against her, his right arm draped across her midsection and one of her legs trapped between his. Sliding her calf free, she realized he had stripped down to his boxers at one point during the night, and a t-shirt now replaced her bra. She wondered how tired she must have been for him to have managed that without waking her. Twisting to face him, she studied his face as he slept, wondering what kind of man would make the effort to make the woman who had just broken up with him comfortable.
One that loved her? He said he did. It wasn't something she had expected to hear from him at any point. Their relationship had always been safe in that respect. An easy, comfortable rapport at work that translated into the bedroom. There had never been a lot of pretense to their encounters. What had started as a release from the worst of their cases started to happen more frequently. Bad cases, good cases…soon the excuses didn't exist at all. They'd gather their belongings and leave together, the destination sometimes in question, but never the outcome.
Extricating herself from his grasp gently, she climbed out of the bed and made her way to the bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she turned on the water and was content to let the steam alleviate the headache that had manifested itself as soon as she remembered the events of the night before. Tossing his shirt onto the counter, she stepped under the hot spray and reached for the soap. Bar soap.
One night, long before they had slept together, he had stopped by her apartment to go over a case. It had almost seemed a little contrived at the time--she lived fairly close to work. Whether it was out of convenience or just a lack of desire to go back to the office, he had suggested they grab takeout and work at her place.
She had been sitting at her kitchen table the next morning when he had walked in, wearing nothing but a towel and holding a bottle of her raspberry herbal body wash. Not sure which sight was more improbable, she stared until he spoke.
"Do you have any real soap?"
"That's real soap."
"Soap that doesn't smell like fruit. Bar soap." He had practically growled the last part, as if to express his testosterone-driven need for soap in any other color but pink.
She hadn't been able to suppress her smile. "I'm sorry. Besides, bar soap dries out your skin."
"My skin thanks you for your concern."
"It's just one shower, Jack." This conversation was surreal.
"Won't people get suspicious when I go to work smelling like you?"
"I'd be more concerned if Vivian or Danny were getting close enough to care," she paused. "Besides, they can't be suspicious of something that didn't happen."
He had grunted and returned back to her bathroom, leaving her to wonder how close he had gotten to notice how she smelled in the first place, and thinking about how, in the space of three minutes, her relationship with Jack had changed in some tiny, yet inexplicably huge way.
Standing in his shower now, using his soap, she thought of more turning points. The first day she walked into his office. Their first kiss. The first case she worked where the victim didn't make it back alive. The time she had left to go home, and he didn't leave in the opposite direction.
She was at another turning point.
Stay in Washington, at a job where she was unhappy, but be able to keep some contact with the man who had somehow become her lifeline since she had left New York. And, in some ways, before she had even left. She'd have a job, and Jack, but both would suffer at the expense of the other.
Go to New Orleans and take a job that would allow her to do what she joined the Bureau to do. Helping others, carrying a gun, all the elements that every wide-eyed new agent came in for. Unlike a lot of the others, however, she had kept the drive. In many ways it would provide more opportunity than even her position in New York, but it also meant saying goodbye to the relationship that had set this all in motion in the first place. She thought she had made her decision the night before.
Then he told her he loved her.
She wished she could believe it.
She wished she could believe it, because despite the emotional distance she had tried to keep, she sometimes found herself wondering if he did. If maybe there was a chance that this was more than an affair, that eventually he wouldn't go home to his wife and his kids and leave her with a goodbye tempered by 'You knew there couldn't be more than this.' Thinking back, she thought that one of the problems might be that despite the nature of their relationship, no actual parameters had been set.
He'd never taken her to dinner on her birthday, but there would be flowers with an unsigned card left on her desk. Christmas was spent alone, but she could expect a call wrapped in context of a case. He had risked everything to trade himself for her in a hostage situation, but there were no visits at the hospital.
For every action there could be an equal and opposite reaction, and it had left both of them treading water.
Stepping out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a towel she found hanging from the shower rod. Realizing she had forgotten a change of clothes, she opened the door softly to find Jack sitting at the foot of the bed.
"Hey."
"Hey."
He nodded in the direction of her bag. "Did you forget something?"
"Yeah." Instead of walking toward it, however, she took a seat on the bed next to him. She kept her eyes on the floor, not aware he wasn't looking at her, either. "Jack…"
"It's okay."
"No, it's not. I'm sorry about last night. It shouldn't have come out that way. I didn't come up here with that in mind…"
"Do you think it would have been better over the phone?"
He had a point. "I just don't see another option."
"It's your decision. I've told you how I feel."
Closing her eyes, she tried to keep down a sudden surge of anger. "That wasn't fair."
"As unfair as planning to walk out of here despite knowing that?"
"No offense, but whether I stay or go you still have your job, your children…it's not exactly like we're sharing an equal load here."
"I can't leave those things."
"And I respect that, but you can't ask me to give up everything to have half a career." She looked at him. "Half a relationship."
Nothing was said for several moments, and Samantha watched as water dripped down her arm and onto the bedspread. She found herself counting the drops as the seconds passed, and she had gotten to 30 when Jack finally spoke. "Did you believe me?"
"That you love me?"
He nodded.
"No."
There were no protests or reaffirmations. He just stared at the wall. "Why?"
"I think you told me what you think I needed to hear."
He didn't respond, and it might as well have been a physical blow. Not having a response, she settled for a short nod as she rose from the bed. Grabbing her bag, she reached in for a pair of jeans. She could take the 11am flight back to DC, leave Jack and this city behind, and start packing for the new life she didn't want.
"What if I asked you to stay?"
Shaking her head, she dropped her clothes back onto the dresser. "Are you serious?" At his unchanging expression, she answered. "There isn't a job for me here."
"Not now, but maybe there would be. You could just take some time off."
"I don't think I could take that chance."
Standing now, he moved closer and she was aware of how close he was. Meeting his eyes, she was surprised to see a kind of resolve there. "So this is it?"
His hands were on her bare shoulders now, and she thought of all the reasons this should be it. She was moving even farther away from a job that was no longer hers and a relationship that she could never truly be a part of. As much as the prospect of staying in New York appealed to her, it was idealistic at best. She hadn't gone through Quantico to play housewife to a man who was still married to someone else. She shared his bed, but she could never truly share his life.
Yet he had just asked her to stay.
He had asked her to stay knowing how much her career meant to her, knowing more than anyone how much she had become invested in her work. Knowing more than anyone how important it had to be in order for her to walk out of his life. It was undeniably selfish, and in no small way she resented it.
She reached up and met his lips as he turned. She felt the edge of the bed at the back of her thighs as he pulled the towel away and pushed her slowly backward.
He had asked her to stay knowing that this might never happen again, and it was then that Samantha realized that maybe, last night, he had told the truth.
Six hours later, an emergency page found them in the office.
They had dressed quickly and silently, and that same silence had translated into the car ride over. Typically their drives to work had always included Jack venting at the dense morning traffic or Samantha scrolling through the radio stations in an attempt to drown out the noise.
This morning, there had been none of that.
Nothing was said when she had crawled out of bed to retrieve the clothes she had removed from her bag in her first attempt to leave, or when she had gone into the bathroom and taken her toothbrush from where it had rested next to Jack's.
Nothing was said as she had zipped up her bag and walked to the living room to wait while Jack took his shower, nor was anything said when he came out, dressed and ready for work, and walked out the door.
He had said he loved her and she now believed him. He had asked her to stay and she believed that was what he truly wanted.
She was leaving despite those things, and in many ways, because of them.
Now she sat perched on the corner of Vivian's desk, observing the others at the table where she no longer felt welcome. She wasn't a member of the team anymore, and she had only come with Jack in order to say goodbye. She had done this before, but this time it held a sense of finality that hadn't existed the first time.
New Orleans was only another 600 miles from Washington, but it was far enough. The physical distance could be measured in miles, but the emotional distance couldn't. Friendships would be nearly impossible to maintain and a relationship would be even more difficult.
The case that had brought she and Jack out of bed was the probable abduction of Tommy Roberts, a six -year old boy from Brooklyn who had been with his mother at a department store when he was snatched by an unidentified man. No one had been able to get a good description, and since the boy was living in a single-parent home, they immediately looked to the father.
"I don't know. The dad lives in California, and New York is pretty far away to be conducting a kidnapping given he was placed in L.A. just yesterday." Danny responded to one of Martin's theories.
"He could have hired someone," Melissa interjected.
"And got him back how, a plane? Wouldn't that have raised some eyebrows?"
"We have conflicting eyewitness reports and a fuzzy surveillance tape. No one saw the boy or his mother enter or leave the store. I'd say this is our only lead."
Jack rubbed his eyes. "We do have a ransom note."
"And a father living in his van on the other coast."
"And you're suggesting we look there first?" Martin asked, already up at the map.
"I think we should pick up the father. Contact the Los Angeles office and have him picked up for questioning and center the investigation out there. Everything here has been a dead end." Melissa looked to Jack.
"I think that would be a mistake." Samantha spoke for the first time. "The ransom amount, the phraseology…Parents who abduct their children rarely refer to them in such impersonal terms, like 'the child.' or 'the collateral.' You can have 20 pieces of evidence pointing on one direction, but it only takes one to invalidate a profile." Samantha made eye contact with him. "You taught me that."
He nodded, and she saw her opening.
"At the very least we're talking two suspects, and if the child hasn't been delivered to the father…they've had more than enough time to put him on the plane."
Jack looked from Samantha to Melissa, then back to his file. "Fine. Melissa, go ahead and check out the father, but we're going to keep our focus here. Keep going through the surveillance cameras, re-interview witnesses. Someone had to see that little boy in a crowed store on a Saturday afternoon."
Danny headed to his desk, followed closely by Martin. Melissa was on her way out the door when Samantha stepped into her path. "I'm sorry about that. I just saw a pattern…"
"It's fine. You made some good points."
Samantha flashed her a relieved smile. "I'm glad you understand."
"Still, it must be nice to have such an impact on an office you don't work in."
"Excuse me?"
"How many victims do you think you've lost over the years because he can't say no?"
Her denial was immediate, and more out of habit than a legitimate need to defend herself. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sleeping with the boss might not be the brightest career move, but it's your careers. When it starts to enter the cases…"
Samantha quickly forgot about pretenses. "So you thought that back there was about Jack playing favorites and not just because you were wrong?"
"I've just seen enough around here to know this isn't a new occurrence."
"What? Listening to theories and going with the one that best fits a behavioral model? No, that's not."
"I just know what I see."
"You saw him agree with an observation I made. You haven't seen one of the 100 times he's questioned my judgment, and I doubt you've seen him actually take me off cases because he didn't think I was an asset to the investigation. He agreed with Danny earlier, and I'm fairly sure they're not having sex." Brushing past her to return to the table, she spoke to the older woman's back. "And this isn't helping to find Tommy Roberts."
She found Jack staring at a file several feet from where she had been sitting before, and she wondered if he had overhead the conversation. If he had, his face didn't give anything away. "I better head out. Let you guys get to work."
"So you won't be there when I get back tonight?"
"No." Not tonight and most likely not ever. It had begun to sink in shortly after they had arrived, and now it just left her feeling vaguely numb.
"I guess this is it, then."
He wrapped her in a brief hug and she felt his lips against her cheek. A friendly send-off that could still be perceived as a professional gesture of goodwill. There would be no long good-byes at the airport. Nothing that would indicate that just two hours ago they were sharing a bed after an encounter which now seemed like a way to recapture something that hadn't yet lost.
Now they were on the brink of losing it, and both old and new boundaries were falling into place. Work. His marriage was essentially over, but she wondered if it hadn't been easier to evade his wife and superiors than to have this new freedom and no way to exercise it.
She felt him put something in the pocket of her jacket, but she didn't look down. There would be plenty of time for that later. "I'm sorry."
He met her eyes. "I understand."
She wasn't sure that he did. Even more certain that she didn't. Denying everything she wanted in order to keep Jack from everything he shouldn't have.
Taking a step away, he spoke again. "Have a safe trip… home."
"Will you call me?" As much as she felt she needed to break all ties, now that the moment had arrived, she found herself desperate for a lifeline.
"I don't know."
They stared at each other for a long moment, and Samantha nodded, the sick feeling in her stomach only increasing.
"Bye, Sam."
He had gone and she had said her good-byes to Danny and Martin, the mood dark and Danny doing his best to lighten it. This time they didn't exchange phone numbers because she had no idea where she'd be in a week. No one needed to know she probably wouldn't have answered the phone anyway.
It wasn't until she was on the plane that she remembered.
Lifting her tray table, she dug into her pocket and retrieved an envelope folded neatly into thirds, her name printed on the front. Sliding a nail underneath the edge, she slid a thin piece of cardboard-- a post-it stuck to the top-- from the pouch.
I can't make the decision for you, but I'll be here if you need me."
- J
She peeled off the note to reveal an airline ticket voucher, open-ended as to both the date and the destination. This had been why he had said he didn't know if he would call her. If she had served the ball into his court when she had left for Washington, he had just hit it back twice as hard.
She wouldn't go back. Couldn't go back. To keep contact with him would be unfair to both of them.
The flight attendant came by with a trash receptacle and as she threw her plastic cup away, she contemplated throwing the ticket in along with it. Instead she reached under the seat in front of her and placed it in her carry-on.
Because as much as she wouldn't go back, she couldn't seem to move forward.
