Chapter 10

Martin POV

Have you ever been in love? Have you ever loved someone but couldn't tell them? Lived in their shadow afraid to be rejected once again because they aren't interested or because they are in love with someone else? Someone that they shouldn't love, because that person already has a family?

The day that I joined the Missing Persons Unit, I will say that I was scare shit-less. I had met Jack once before, and I knew of his reputation, and how people looked up to him. But I also knew that Washington was after him. His unit happened to be one of the most successful in the country, but his unit also was under constant watch by Washington because of this. Jack and his people may be the best, but they sure didn't get there by following all the rules. I knew that from the day that I joined the unit.

That day when I checked in and went to meet my new co-workers I started to wonder what they would all be like. The truth was so far from what I got. I expected some old fat guys sitting around, and yes eating donuts, and all balding or already there. Never in a million years was I expecting the group of people in front of me that I was about to work with. Jack introduced each one, but when he got to Samantha, Samantha Spade, what a name, what a face, and what a body, I knew that I was in love.

That probably seems like something really lame. Love at first sight, but it happened. She was the perfect woman I came to learn. She knew how to hold her own, and she didn't take shit from anyone, even Jack. She stood up to him when most would have sat back and let him do as he saw fit. But she challenged him. It was then that I knew that something was going on between the two of them. Jack would never tell her to back off, or to keep quite like he did everyone else. He wouldn't tell her that she was wrong, and he wouldn't ignore anything that she said. He actually listened to her, did almost everything that she said. I caught him watching her on more then one occasion. It was then that I knew that Jack Malone and Samantha Spade were in a relationship. Not like any others that had come before the other, but if you watched them, you could see that Sam's love ran deep, just as Jacks did.

I didn't really catch on to it until Barry Mashburn had shot Sam. But I don't think that anyone really knew, well other then Van Doren, maybe Vivian, and Danny. So I guess that I was the only one who didn't know. It always seems that Van Doren knows everything that goes on with her people. Vivian has known Jack longer then anyone else, so she can read him like a book, and Danny and Sam have that brother and sister relationship, and they share everything with the other.

At first I thought that I could ignore that feeling that I felt each time that I saw her, that butterfly in the stomach, weak in the knees feeling that made me love her so much. But I was wrong, as the years went by my feelings kept on getting stronger.

I asked her out for drinks once. Oh yea. Big mistake. I let my guard down and I knew that she saw right through me. I haven't let many people in over the years, but Sam always was able to, with one look, knocked down all my walls. I remember once right after she had come back from being shot, we went out for drinks. She looked so broken. But boy could that girl hold her liquor. It took her 3 beers before she really started to talk to me, another 2 before she told me about college, and then another 3 before she started to open up. Never once did she talk about Jack, and if I mentioned his name she would just stop talking about whatever it was we were talking about, and start up a new contestation.

I don't know what it was, but that night as I walked her to her door, I was compelled to kiss her, and having had to much to drink myself I did just that. Now it wasn't this big huge elaborate kiss, it was a simple peck on the lips, just enough for me to die happy. But when she pulled away and I looked into her eyes I cursed myself. She just said, "This can and will never happen again." Opened her door, went inside and locked it. I went home that night praying to God that she didn't say anything the next day in the office. She didn't. But by the look that Jack gave me I knew that he knew. But what I didn't know is how he knew. They could just read each other like that.

Since the bookstore I thought that Sam and Jack had ended it. Especially since Jack was trying to "work" it out with Marie. But I guess that their relationship had gone further then the attraction, then the affair. I guess that they were always friends. Who knows. It just seems that I can't get a reading on either of them.

A few weeks after Sam and I had gone out for drinks. Jack and Marie decided that their marriage wasn't working, and nothing; no amount of talking it out, fighting, or their love for their two beautiful daughters, would bring them back together.

That is when I knew that Jack and Sam would begin again. They didn't actually start to date until the divorce was final, and even then they started from the beginning. They did the whole "relationship" gig. No one really caught on for a while. They were always really good at hiding their relationship before hand, why would this time be any different?

Soon Washington found out about it some how. It wasn't me to be honest. I would have, but all I ever wanted was to see Sam happy. And if that meant with Jack and not myself, then I wish her luck. I really did. I would chose for her to be happy over myself.

The day that Jack and Sam got married I cried. It was the first time in a long while, but I was losing the woman I loved to a man, 7 years his senior. It wasn't fair. I loved her. I knew that I shouldn't have. I knew that it would only end in a broken heart, and I was right. But how do you tell yourself not to love someone, how to you ever stop loving that person? Once you fall in love, can you ever fall out?

It broke my heart. I had hoped that one day Sam might feel for me what I felt for her, but I was wrong... again.