He hated Wisconsin. It was cold, no one rooted for the Eagles, and everyone was nice to him. It sucked.
He didn't even know why he was here. The team he was with was sure that this was the place they'd catch the drug cartel. Not for the first time, he scoffed at the idea that his FBI career had led to drugs. He was brought on for a serial killer, solved it, and then shipped here. It was small potatoes, but he guessed it was better than twiddling his thumbs and waiting for the phone to ring.
Not that the phone was bringing any good news lately. He picked his phone up again, remembering how good it felt to have someone to call on a stakeout.
"You should wear your hair like that more often"
"You mean like I just rolled out of bed?"
"It's cute...and are those cats on your pajamas?"
"What are trying to accomplish here?"
"Well, just know I'm not usually the type of guy to call his girlfriend on a stake out"
"You did just call me your girlfriend"
He almost smiled at the memory. They'd been so young then, and she had looked so cute. He'd watched her sleep all night, wishing he could leave his post and hold her. And that hadn't been the only time, either. He always called her when he was on a stake out, he always aimed for right before she went to sleep, but on occasion he'd woken her up and she'd answer him anyway. He loved the sound of her voice when she was half asleep, it felt so intimate that they talked like that, like they did when they were in bed. She always worried about him on stakeouts, feared that something would happen and he'd get hurt. She'd sleep with her phone next to her on the bed. He'd find her in the morning, sleeping on his side of the bed, he knew so she could pretend he was there, usually dressed in a decent shirt and yoga pants in case she had to leave in the middle of the night in a hurry. No one had ever cared about him so much, and it made the stakeouts easier to bear knowing someone cared that he'd make it through the night.
But no one cared about him this time. Natalie wouldn't take his calls, and as much as he hated himself for it, she every right not to. He wasn't allowed to call her while he was on a case, his superiors had made that perfectly clear. They had a point, thinking about her made him distracted, and that was a dangerous liability. That didn't stop him from thinking about her all the time. He'd really blown it, and he had no way to fix it. He knew there was more to the story, but he didn't know how to find out what it was. It didn't seem like Natalie to take out a restraining order against him, she'd promised him Liam would always know both his parents. That she knew how much it sucked to not have both of them and her child wouldn't know that pain. But he supposed she had a right to be angry, he'd sort of cheated and for all she knew he really had. He'd give anything to fix it, but he didn't see how he could.