Miranda Lambert – The House That Built Me

Connor followed a couple of steps behind Taylor as she led him into her childhood home. Though she had insisted that she would be fine, he could detect subtle rising in her stress levels, her shoulders tense as they crossed the threshold. Her blue eyes were glancing around the room, but when she noticed his stare, she smiled at him.

"I was staying in the downstairs guest room. It's this way." She continued to lead him through the house, across a living room and down a hallway. There were framed photographs hanging on the wall, he could recognize a younger Taylor and Jakob in some of them and knew that the other child must be Hayley Kolbeck.

"Does your sister also live in Detroit?" He asked as they walked. Taylor hesitated a step, but kept walking, trying to play it off.

"She lives in East Lansing," she answered, noncommittally as she reached the end of the hall and opened the door. Inside was a large Queen bed, a chest of drawers, and a door that probably led to a closet. Taylor sat on the bed and started pulling her boots off, sighing with pleasure once her feet were free.

When she noticed him lingering in the doorway, she looked hesitant. "You're going to stay, right?"

"I have to return to the Lieutenant in the morning," Connor said as he walked over to sit beside her.

"I have to go to the station to make a statement. Maybe we can make sure Hank arrives on time for once." She smiled, but when he gave her a skeptical look she added, "I may have lied to Gavin so I could make it to the protest."

"Detective Reed?" Connor said, surprised.

"Yeah, he was there. At the hotel." She tilted her head, blonde hair spilling over her right shoulder. "He was actually really nice to me."

"You really should rest. I think you may be delirious." Taylor giggled, the sound of her laughter causing his thirium pump to speed up just a bit. Still, she slid off her trench coat and climbed back into the bed, following his advice.

Settling back into the pillows, she tugged her sweater over her head as well. Clad in just her white camisole and jeans, she shimmied under the covers. She peered at him from over the covers before smiling.

"Are you going to stay there all night, or...?" She trailed off, her blue eyes locked on his brown. He kicked off his shoes and complied, resting his head against the opposite pillow.

"Androids don't sleep," he said, staring at her across the small space that now separated them. She was still smiling.

"I know, Connor." Her arm emerged from the blankets and she curled her fingers around his left hand. It finally sank into his head, new to processing emotions as it was, that she was only trying to be closer to him. "Thanks, for staying."

Connor reached his right hand up to brush the hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. His hand lingered against her skin. The sudden urge to slide closer to her, to cover her mouth with his. He thought back to the kiss they had shared before, the one that Markus had interrupted, his emotions going haywire.

"Connor?" He blinked. Taylor was looking at him, concerned now. He realized his LED was flickering red. He moved his hand away as it faded to blue again. He couldn't bring himself to kiss her now, in this house where all of the most terrible things in her life had happened, where she was afraid to sleep alone.

"Go to sleep." He said softly. She closed her eyes obediently, burrowing down into the pillow. Before long, she had drifted off.

Connor moved down the hallway as quietly as possible. Taylor was still sleeping peacefully in the downstairs bedroom. He would have to wake her soon so that they could leave. He'd gone into sleep mode for a while, but he'd grown restless and decided to explore.

At first, he'd only wanted a closer look at the photos he had spotted in the halls the night before. Yet he'd moved from the hallway to the other rooms of the house, following a timeline of Taylor and her siblings' childhoods. Taylor's mother, Ayla, must have been fond of taking photographs, because it seemed like every available space on the wall was taken up by frames.

Taylor was the spitting image of her late mother. There were only a few pictures of her biological father, but the only feature they shared was that slightly bumped nose. Jakob and Hayley both had his stronger jawline and smaller mouth, but Taylor could have passed for Ayla's twin sister in some of her younger pictures.

There weren't any pictures with Anthony Jacobsen on the walls, even as he climbed the stairs to the second story. He wasn't sure if it was because Taylor had taken them all down or if he just wasn't around to be in them. Even the pictures that seemed to be from the right time, picturing the rest of the family, he was notably absent.

Connor had peeked into several rooms. The house was large, some of the rooms upstairs were more guest bedrooms, aesthetically neutral. He'd come across a room colored in deep blue and bright yellow, apparently the colors of the local sports team, which he deduced by the Michigan Wolverine poster still tacked to the wall. Jake's.

He had just shut the door on a pink and white princess-themed room that must have belonged to Hayley, moving further down the hallway. Still taking in the pictures on the walls, he kept expecting to see some indication, some moment where he could tell something had changed with Taylor, but in each new photograph she was still smiling, still happy, still the same.

Reaching the next door, he pushed it open and knew he had found Taylor's room, though it wasn't what he had been expecting. A different kind of hush settled about the place, tomblike in its silence. Whoever had been hired to clean the house, to make the space livable again, hadn't come here. If the thick layer of dust was any indication, no one had come in here for quite some time.

Connor took a step inside, the floorboard instantly giving a small groan of protest. The walls were a muted gray. Whatever the bed had once looked like was impossible to say; it had been stripped bare and was only a white headboard and a bedframe. String lights were hanging from the ceiling along the wall, all dark.

He walked further into the room, drawing closer to a bookcase in the corner with a row of books. Awards from ballet recitals, grade school, some old stuffed animals were stuffed in random spaces on the shelves. On the wall by the window was a cork board with various ticket stubs, more photographs pinned to it.

There was a picture of a much younger Taylor smiling widely into the camera, infant cradled in her arms that must have been her younger sister Hayley. The three siblings sitting in a line by their ages, their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. In one corner of the board there was a picture of an adolescent Taylor with an older male, dark hair and green eyes, both of them laughing.

"Just can't help yourself, can you?" Connor jumped as her voice cut through the thick silence in the room, turning. After looking at so many versions, there was the Taylor he knew, standing in the doorway. Her lips were curved just slightly with amusement as she regarded him.

Outwardly the picture of composure, but he could detect her stress levels still climbing, even as she stood on the threshold. Her knuckles were turning white on the door frame, but her blue eyes stayed fixed on his brown, not a muscle in her face giving the slightest twitch.

"I'm sorry," he said, crossing the room toward her, a new emotion coming over him that he couldn't reconcile but he suspected might be guilt. The higher Taylor's stress levels climbed, the more it intensified. Still she shook her head, the small smile still tilting her lips upward.

"It's okay, I'm not mad." Connor finally closed the distance between them. He reached out, his fingers closing gently around her elbow as he led her away, pulling the door shut behind him. She startled but followed him without protest.

"We should go," he said by way of explanation, releasing her as they made it further down the hallway. Taylor glanced down at his hand, then looked into his face, her expression now thoughtful. Her stress levels were dropping now, though, as they descended the stairs.

"Learn anything?" She finally asked, stepping around him as they entered the guest room. Lowering to the bed, she started pulling her boots on.

"You were a cute kid," he answered. Taylor froze, her head snapping up. He smirked as her cheeks flushed a rosy pink and she ducked her head again, pulling on her other boot.

"Thanks," she muttered. She made a show of pulling on her sweater and her coat, trying to tame her hair by pulling her fingers through it, avoiding his eyes. "If you're going to meet Hank then I guess I will see you at the station. I have to find out if I can pick up my things from the hotel."

"Come with me," Connor reached out to place his hand on her forearm again, an uncontrollable impulse to touch her, forcing her gaze back to him. Their eyes met again. "You don't have to go alone. Come with me, we'll go together."

A beat of silence stretched between them, but she didn't look away, just considered him with those blue eyes, dark in the dim light of the morning. Finally, she conceded, "Okay."