Author's Note: Once more, thank you all for the kind feedback! We're winding down now, just one more chapter after this one. And I'll say, it's been nice being back in the CM fandom and hearing from you guys again. It was my original one for writing, and reading this over to repost, I ended up reading over a lot of my other stuff from back then. It's comforting. Still. Again, probably because it was my first 'home,' and I spent so many years with these voices in my head, they still live in there somewhere. I guess never say never that I might get a few of those unfinished stories to wrap, because I realized that two of them literally just need one more chapter, and I had already started the drafts on those chapters back in the day. You guys think it's frustrating to read 80k words and not get to see how it ends, imagine WRITING 80k words and not getting to put UP the end! So yeah, we'll see. Again, nobody hold your breath, but if I can, I will.

And now to this, back with Hotch. It's a short one.

Prompt Set #10

Show: Everwood

Title Challenge: He Who Hesitates

Hotch's POV

My New Resolve

It's been three days since our kiss on the side of the road.

For the first twenty-four hours I went insane with worry. I hadn't known what to do. If I should call her, if I should make sure that she was okay. But then I'd realized that what I really needed to do was just to give her some time. To let her figure out her own feelings, before I bombarded her with mine.

After all, she was the one who was married.

But SHE . . . and this was key here . . . was the one who had sobbed that she had missed me. And she was also the one who had initiated our kiss.

That wonderful kiss.

When she'd first grabbed me, I'd been almost too stunned to react. What I'd wanted, what I'd needed, it had finally been right in front of me.

It had been like a tourniquet on my bleeding heart.

And then I was clutching her, and kissing her, desperate to keep her with me. To make that moment last forever. But then suddenly she'd pulled away and I'd seen the shame on her face . . . and I'd remembered.

She was married. She had a family. We couldn't do what we were doing.

It was wrong.

But I hadn't been able to bear her tears either. So I'd reached for her . . . and she'd stepped back.

Just out of reach.

My heart had clenched when she'd done that, and I'd been filled with a panic as I'd started to scream in my head.

No! Please don't do this to me! Please don't go away again!

Six months ago I had begun to believe that it would be easier, less painful, if I just didn't see her anymore. That maybe then my heart would finally begin to heal.

I'd had that thought, and then like a miracle . . . all of a sudden . . . she'd disappeared. For months I didn't see her. As the second month had passed into the third . . . seven weeks had previously been the longest I'd gone without running into Emily . . . it had almost been a relief.

But not quite.

My hope had been that maybe I'd begin to move on, but instead, that shimmer of relief in the distance . . . it morphed into a terrible fear. I had become obsessed wondering WHY she'd vanished completely from my life.

Was she was okay? Had something happened? Really, we worked on the same campus. I'd seen her once or twice a month for the last three years, so how COULD she have just suddenly disappeared?!

So I had starting looking everywhere for her face. Hoping that maybe I'd see her in the hall, or in the parking garage, or in the coffee shop. Even though I'd never had any business at all with her unit, I'd almost reached the point where I was going to just show up there and ask to see her. Just for a minute though.

Just to make sure that she was all right.

I might have been miserable with her in my life, but my misery had become tenfold without her.

The 'you don't know what you've got until it's gone' cliché was a life lesson that had been slammed into me over and over again these past three and a half years. And as we'd stood on the side of that road, and I'd seen her slipping away into the darkness, I knew I couldn't go back to that misery again.

So I'd called out her name . . . but she'd run from me. So I said it again and she'd moved further back. And then she got into her car and I began screaming.

Emily . . . Emily, please come back!

But as I saw her marks of rubber on the road . . . I knew she had left me once more.

She was gone again.

I picked up Jack yesterday. My son has been a comfort to me. A distraction. I'm immersing myself in his little boy problems. Should he play Army men or dinosaurs? What book should we read before bed? Which submarine should we take into the bathtub?

Important things like that.

That's where we are now, in the bathroom. He's in the tub playing with his submarine . . . he chose the grey one . . . and I'm scrubbing his hair and behind his ears.

Today we went to the park and played catch. He kept missing the ball, but still, he'd run and dive into the dirt even as it rolled away. I told him that it was okay. That he didn't have to try so hard, and he'd looked at me like I was crazy. Then he'd said, "but daddy, how am I going to catch it if I don't chase it?"

My son is not yet six, but already he is wiser than me.

On the heels of everything that had happened this week, I'd resolved then and there to go after what I wanted. It is absolutely wrong to break up a family . . . to break up a happy life . . . but a happy woman doesn't hurl herself at you like she's drowning in quicksand, and you're the only thing that can save her. And as much as I hate the thought of Emily being as sad and miserable without me as I have been without her . . . I do obviously also see hope in her actions. And in her words. She'd said that she missed me. Missed me so much. And that, in conjunction with her kiss, has allowed me to truly believe for the first time, that maybe I didn't lose my chance. That it's not actually too late.

That just maybe, she really still could be mine.

So I'll give her a few more days to think. But next week I'm going to go to her office at lunchtime, and I'm going to ask her to take a walk with me off campus. She'll go, I'm sure of that. And then I'll tell her how I feel . . . tell her what I want . . . and then I'll ask her to decide what she wants.

Me or him.

One way or another, I'll finally know where I stand. Because the bottom line is . . . someone has to put us out of our misery.

Just then, as I begin to pour the cup of water over Jack's head, I hear the doorbell.

My son's too young to stay in the bath by himself. Or perhaps he is old enough now and I'm just overprotective.

Either way though, he's coming with me.

I quickly finish rinsing his hair before I pull him out of the tub. He's still dripping, blinking droplets of water from his lashes as I put him down onto the bathmat. I smile when I see that he still has his submarine. I gently take it from his hand as I wrap him up in a large fluffy green towel. Then I hoist him up into my arms and turn towards the hall.

"Come on buddy," I let out on a sigh, "let's go see who's at the door."

A/N 2: This was the extra chapter, which took us from 'three acts' to four. Originally it went from the last chapter, to the concluding one. But I thought Hotch's perspective on the side of the road incident, and his subsequent days of pondering and decision making, added something important to the story.

Arcadya commented on my "obsession" with bath time. I guess that's like my obsession with Emily's pajamas ;) But, if you're at all familiar with little children, then you know, they get dirty! Bath time rolls around again and again. And for the big person supervising, your mind wanders. It's a good place for a retrospective :)

One bit of credit to another entity. The line "little boy problems" that was inspired by a line from Medium. Angelica Huston was the guest star and she was talking about her daughter when she was three and that she didn't have time for her "little girl problems". And I thought that was such a great line and it clearly stuck in my head because when I was writing this the little boy version came to me, but I knew it wasn't an original thought. Credit always to where it's due :)

Next: "My Great Unknown"