BOOTH

This wasn't what I'd planned for our evening. Not even close. I'd wanted a quiet dinner with just the two of us, then I'd hoped to convince Bones to share a bath with me in that big jacuzzi tub in her bathroom. Afterwards, we'd make love and lay face-to-face talking quietly as we've taken to doing the last few weeks. I love those times. Every minute, every second of them. Almost as much as I love moving a foot a couple of inches in the middle of the night and finding hers, or the feel of her hand brushing against my arm or hand as we sleep.

It would have been the perfect evening.

Instead, here we are, mired in the past that had turned me into a man I no longer recognized and had nearly broken her. As I wrap our plates and sit them in the oven to stay warm, I watch her where she sits on the couch: Stoic and unmoving. Anyone else would think she's fine. I know by the way she avoids looking at me and by the faster-than-normal rise-and-fall of her chest, she's not even close to okay.

I vow to myself, she'll never again feel the way she does right now, the way she's felt the last year, because of me. Not ever.

As I clear the rest of the table, I let my mind slip back into the past, trying to figure out how to explain how I'd done the unexplainable a few months ago…

I'd once told Sweet's that my and Hannah's relationship was battle tested, we'd even met on the battlefield. There was some truth to that although I'd intentionally framed it in a much bigger way, for my benefit as much as Sweets'.

I'd kept Hannah from getting killed when she'd been darting around in a restricted area where she had no business being. She'd reminded me of Bones: Intelligent, driven and putting her life on the line for the job. She'd thanked me with some hard, loud, lusty sex underneath a fig tree as the sound of bombing had provided cover for our moans and the occasional holler and had made the ground beneath us tremor much like our bodies had when we'd… Well, you know. That much had been accurate.

I'd exaggerated when I'd made it sound like we'd been involved longer than we had and had spent more time together than we had. The truth was, we spent as much time apart as we did together. She could disappear for a couple days at a time when chasing a story and I had night training missions to lead. The nights we were both free we'd meet up for a little dinner and a lot of sex. I'd been thrilled when Hannah had said she wasn't interested in any long-term commitments, that she just wanted to have some fun. After Bones leaving my shredded heart at my feet, where still, months later, I'd realize it was still lying there, bleeding, I didn't have it in me to put myself out there like that again. Not any time soon. Some fun was exactly what I'd needed, both making me stay in the present and not in the past when I was spending time with Hannah and to help quiet the call of the cards, the dice and the pools.

I may have lost my gambling sobriety soon if she hadn't come along to distract me.

I will always be grateful to Hannah for that.

We both kept the promise we'd made, and we'd had fun. Joking and laughing, teasing and taunting… all wrapped around some wild sex, with only a couple romantic gestures between us before I'd returned to the States. Even when we exchanged 'I love you's', they'd never been in that 'here's my heart, I'm putting it in your hands to take care of' kind of way but more the 'I'm really glad we met and I enjoy being with you… oh, and, by the way, the sex is really good' kind of way.

When the call came from Caroline summoning me back to D.C., I'd been honest when I told Bones…

"I couldn't ask her to leave, anymore than she could get me to stay."

Gordon-Gordon had a field day with that one…