She catches herself sometimes, eyes following the slope of his hunched shoulders. She tells herself that he's her partner and that's reason enough to discern the deepening circles beneath his eyes or the bloodied quicks of his fingers.
It's something about how he looks at her, how he treats her. Like an equal, a person. He doesn't jump in to protect her all the time, doesn't assume that as a male he is somehow stronger or more capable. She watches his hands as he gestures wildly and knows that those hands would never hurt her, that she could never push him so hard that he would swing back.
And it's perhaps the first time that she's been drawn to something other than power and strength and authority. Maybe she's growing as a person. Or maybe she's seen too many wives and children of those type of men sitting on the other side of her desk.
She's not asking anything of him, not even sure that she wants anything of him, but there's nights that find them sitting at Hal's Diner, sharing a plate of choc-chip pancakes – his head stuck in a text book and hers muddling through preschool applications and nanny recommendations – that have her mind wandering to dangerous territory.
But then there's the days when Bella drops by the precinct with boxes of second-hand baby clothes for her, the days when Sonny wraps his arms around his niece with a big smile. And she's so scared that she would infect that. Because he is bright and full of potential, and she is dark and broken.
So she pulls back, she spends nights wrapped around Frannie and letting Finn's words of wisdom halt her fingers from inching towards her phone. "You can't take anyone from this job home with you."