"You bounced me, Toby?", Sam said in a slightly annoyed tone.

"Where's the statement? CJ needs it for the briefing on Monday, and I'd like to be able to review it first."

"We're working on it right now, Toby. You'll get it in plenty of time to review it."

"Make sure that I do, Sam," he said as he turned back to his computer.

Sam left the office and went to see CJ.

"Hi there," he said as he leaned on the doorframe.

"Spanky, don't tell me that you've got the draft in your back pocket there."

"Sorry, Ceej, you don't get that lucky," Sam said as he walked into her office and closed the door behind him.

"Oh, G-d. What happened now?"

"Nothing happened! At least, not within the last hour and a half."

"Talk, Spanky, or else you will be in such physical pain that you won't be able to inch your way back to your office."

"Well, remember you said in the meeting that the Mirror had sources that said that our relationship began while she was a minor?"

CJ began to get very nervous. "Yeah?"

"That's not entirely untrue."

"Are you kidding me? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! What the hell were you thinking, Sam?! Starting a relationship with her while she was a minor? Are you entirely sure that you didn't suffer a severe head injury before this happened?"

Her last comment really pissed him off.

"CJ! Stop it!! It wasn't some weird 'Lolita' thing, OK? It happened that one time and that was it. Can you calm down enough so I can tell you the whole thing?"

"Yes, Sam. I'll be calm while you tell me about it, but I make no promises about what I might do when you've finished."

"That's fine. Well, she'd come down to visit her cousin, who was also my best friend and roommate while we were at Duke. She has such a thing for the Men's Basketball team that Mike got tickets to Minneapolis for the Men's Final that year..."

She listened intently as he told her the story of how they first met, the game, and the kiss on the hotel balcony. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.

"She left the next morning to go back to Massachusetts. She never tried to contact me and, since I didn't know where to find her, I didn't either. I hadn't seen her until she fell in the snow in front of my place during the blizzard. That's when we decided to see where things went."

"How old is she now?"

"She'll be 26 at the beginning of April."

"You're right, Sam. This should be a non-story, but the way things have been going around here, everything's a story."

He sighed as he got up. "I know that, CJ, but you're not the one who had to see the fear in her eyes. We didn't want to tell anyone what was going on. The only reason you found out was because of what happened yesterday. Otherwise, you still wouldn't know."

"Just be careful, that's all I ask."

He looked back at her as he reached for the knob. "That's all we've been, CJ. That's all we've ever been."

CJ put her feet up on her desk and thought about what Sam had told her. The way they met seemed like a fairy tale to her. She remembered Kate's tone of voice from Staff when she'd told them that they weren't going to get anything from her. She didn't even back down when Toby challenged her on it. Suddenly, she understood what Sam had meant by seeing her fear. The look on her face when she'd walked into the Oval and when Sam said that a statement was the best thing for them to do was saddening. She looked like a scared rabbit. She hung onto him during the whole meeting, save when she went to hug the President. CJ had a feeling that if Sam hadn't held onto her, Kate would've run out of the room, let alone walk in at all.

She also had a bad feeling that this was only the beginning of the questions she was going to get about her.