CHAPTER TWO

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"Go," Vick had said tersely, and so Juliet was going, driving like a bat out of hell to Lassiter's place. He wasn't answering his phone (she called him at every light) and she was freaking out. She'd been too far behind to have his car in her sights, so it was only a guess that he was going home.

His Fusion wasn't there when she arrived. She ran up the steps anyway and pounded on his apartment door, but there was no answer, and the little old lady across the hall poked her head out to say "Stop that racket, young lady," and that she hadn't seen him since he left in the morning.

So where the hell was he?

Juliet called Vick to say she'd had no luck and considered asking to put an APB out on him, but knew it was ridiculous and kept quiet. Vick told her to keep looking, though, and that was something. Even Vick knew this was a very big weird event.

Shawn called while she was heading back to her car. "Jules!" he sang. "What's going on in the world of—"

"No time, Shawn, I'm looking for Lassiter. I don't suppose you've seen him? Or sensed him?"

"Nope. What'd he do? Did he finally shoot someone in cold blood? We knew this day was coming," he tsked, and she hoped he was very surprised when she hung up on him.

She drove around for a while, trying to figure out where the hell he could be; Shawn texted her three times and called twice more but she couldn't talk to him. He would only make jokes and take shots at Lassiter and she wasn't in the mood.

Finally she realized she wasn't going back to work today; she called Vick and told her she was going to wait outside his place as long as it took, and Vick simply said, "Okay."

When she got there, he was just going up the steps, carrying a plastic bag. "Carlton!" she yelled, and he stopped.

"O'Hara! What are you doing here?" He continued up the steps inside the building, unlocking the door to his place and turning to face her fully. He looked… energized.

"What do you mean what am I doing here? What do you think I'm doing here? I'm here to find out what in God's name is going on!"

The little old lady opened her door to glare, and Lassiter took Juliet's arm to pull her inside. "Calm down. Everything's fine. I told you."

"You told me nothing!" She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, staring at him. She knew him. She knew him as much as he let himself be known, but this man, this blue-eyed man smiling at her, was a stranger.

"Relax," he said soothingly. "Just relax. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Everything's great, in fact." He put the plastic bag on the table, removing stacks of what looked like catalogs. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No. Thank you. No. What is all that stuff? Where have you been?"

"The university. Picked up some info for summer classes." He turned from her, humming, and went into the kitchen proper. "I'm having a glass of wine. Sure you don't want one?"

She followed him, watching—unseeing—as he reached up to pull glasses from the cabinet. "Carlton. Stop. Look at me."

He did so, and she studied his face, his eyes, his whole demeanor. "What is it?"

"I don't know. Look, please just tell me what happened to make you quit your job." And tell me you loved me, she added silently.

Lassiter smiled. "And tell you I loved you. Sorry. Didn't mean to lay that on you." He filled his glass with chilled sangria from the fridge, and after another look at her, poured a second glass, which he handed to her before striding back to the living room.

Juliet was floundering. She downed half the glass before following. "Is this how it's going to be? I'm just going to follow you from room to room until you talk to me?"

He sat on one end of the sofa and kicked off his shoes, putting his feet up on the coffee table. "O'Hara, you are a lovely and wonderful woman and I would normally be happy to have you follow me almost anywhere, but really, you don't have to worry about me. I feel…" He hesitated. "I feel the best I've felt in years."

"Are you having some sort of psychotic break?" she demanded. "Because I can dial 911 pretty damn fast if that's the case, and Vick can probably pull some strings to get you into a good facility."

Lassiter laughed. "That's kind of insulting. Just sit down already. You're making me nervous."

She polished off the sangria and set the glass down with a smack before obeying. "Talk."

"Grenovich," he said simply. "What he said. It was amazing. I listened to him and went back to my desk and suddenly everything was so clear."

"The man wanted to make fashion apparel out of bulldog clips! What the hell was clear about that?"

He laughed again, and she marveled at how… nice it was. He didn't seem insane. He was insane, of course; he had to be—but he didn't seem insane. "Not that. The stuff about how we blame our past for what's in our present. About how we make our own… destinies, if you will, and have only ourselves to blame when things go wrong."

"But that's not… that's not new thinking. He was just regurgitating what a thousand self-help authors and psychologists have said already."

"Well, today he regurgitated on me, in a manner of speaking, and I was just exactly in the right frame of mind to hear it. These past few months—" He stopped, and for a second she saw the shadows which had stayed so close to him of late. "Let's just say I've been reflecting on a lot of things. Grenovich's speech brought it all to a head."

"I've been asking you what's wrong," she said quietly. "You put me off every time."

He shrugged. "It wasn't your problem to solve. Not that you wouldn't have tried," he said with a smile to her. "But I couldn't put it on you."

"Tell me now," she urged. "Please."

Lassiter sighed. "Look, you know I'm not the happiest guy in the world. Anyone who looks at my life will see it's about the job. I was raised to think I had to be the best, and that by being the best, I would be respected. All I had to do was be the best. Failure was not an option. Ever." He drank some of his sangria, twirling the glass afterwards, and looked full at her, his eyes clear. "But where am I? My father abandoned us. My mother's a… hell, I don't know what she is, but it's not warm and fuzzy, that's for damn sure. My brother was out of the house before I got to know him, and my sister's in another world entirely. She used to look up to me, but now she thinks I'm an idiot."

"She does not," Juliet protested.

"Yeah, she does. I'm not saying she doesn't love me, but she knows what I am."

"I know what you are, too, and 'idiot' is not the word!"

"Anyway," he went on pointedly, "I'm divorced from a woman I never should have married in the first place. I knew we weren't suited for each other. I knew her family hated me. But I had to prove them wrong. And when I figured out her main attraction to me was that her family did hate me, I had to prove her wrong, too. I held on as long as I could, O'Hara, long past the point of complete and total crapdom, but I resisted letting go because that would mean I'd failed. Again." The next slug of sangria was deeper.

"It's not a personal failure that a marriage doesn't work, Carlton." She touched his arm, and he smiled faintly.

"I even screwed up cheating on her during the separation, because it only took Spencer about three seconds to out us and there went that chance as well. Lucinda got transferred against her will, I was thought of as a philanderer, and there was another failure."

"No," she tried. "You're being too hard on yourself."

As if she hadn't spoken, he continued, "I had to be the best in the academy. I had to make detective as early as possible. Being named Head Detective as young as I was then—my God, that was such a coup—but where am I now? I'm a joke. The job eats up every hour of the day, and I let it, because it's not like there's anything else to fill the time. Then Spencer waltzes in and starts taking over—perfect, devil-may-care Spencer—and to make it worse, as soon as I go even one second without a lead in a case, Vick speed-dials the man and he comes in and ass-clowns his way to an arrest." He jerked his head toward her. "You, too. No offense, but you're pretty quick to assume we can't do it on our own. You look at me like I'm failing because we're stuck, and poof, there he is. And what can I do? He solves the damn cases. He jabs at me the whole time, making sure everyone knows what a loser I am, and everyone's okay with that, because why the hell not? It's gotta be true, right?"

"No! And I don't look at you that way. I don't feel that way. You're not a loser and neither am I. We're damn good cops and, okay, maybe we do call him in too soon but half the time he's there before we have a chance anyway, and you know how he is. He can't be stopped once he has his teeth into something."

"Doesn't matter. He's just part of the problem." He finished off the sangria. "The real problem is me. My choices. My life. My loser-ness, which is only my fault—"

She punched him in the arm, startling him considerably. "Stop saying that. And you're missing something kinda big about Shawn, you know. You're missing that for all the effort he makes to get under your skin, you're still the first person he calls when he's in trouble."

Lassiter frowned. "He calls you, too. And his father."

"Yes, he calls Henry, but when it's real trouble? When he's in over his head? It's you, Carlton. You're his speed-dial, because he knows you're gonna save his ass. And what's so great about his life? He had fifty-seven jobs in ten years before coming up with Psych. He has a rocky relationship with his father, no significant relationships with women, and no ability to manage as an adult. If it weren't for Gus, I don't know how he'd cope."

"Plus there's that whole eating addiction," he mused, and she grinned despite her aggravation with him. "But seriously. He's only a symptom. I'm the problem, and today, listening to Grenovich, I figured out the solution."

"Hang on. I was listening to that conversation too, you know, and I never once heard him tell you to quit your job and your life's work."

He said slowly, "No, but the thing is, I think maybe I've been doing the wrong work."

"No. This is the work you were made for, Carlton. I don't see how you can—"

"This is the work I chose," he corrected her, "because I thought being a cop was the best possible way to succeed, to achieve respect, to be the best. To not fail. I just didn't figure on reality." He got up and went to the kitchen, retrieving the sangria and returning to fill her glass and his. "I'm sick to death of…" he trailed off, and then gestured to the apartment, to the photos of most-wanted criminals on the west wall. "Of me. Of this 24/7 saturation in a war I can't win, can't contain, and don't even enjoy anymore. I'm sick of the reality I created for myself, and Grenovich made that all seem so clear."

"I'm going to punch that son of a bitch right in the nose," she said grimly.

Lassiter laughed. "Go for it. He has it coming anyway. Dresses? Really?"

"Chain-mail type," she explained. "He's quite the seller of clip-based clothing on eBay." She got up and approached him. "I am so sorry you've lost sight of who you are and what you mean to people."

"I haven't lost sight of anything: I've gained it. And what people?" he challenged. "I have no friends, O'Hara. I have colleagues, some guys I knew twenty years ago in college. No one gives a damn about me outside of the job."

Later she couldn't believe she'd even tried; her hand flew up to slap him—but Lassiter clamped onto her forearm before she made contact.

"What the hell was that going to be for?" he asked tightly, still gripping her arm.

"I give a damn, you ass. I give a damn." She felt tears burning, and wrenched away from him, but he caught her and pulled her close to him again. "How dare you say that? What am I to you if you lump me with everyone else?"

"You know what you are to me," he said quietly. "But it doesn't matter."

"What, I'm supposed to forget what you said today? That doesn't matter?"

"It doesn't have to matter. I'm not asking for anything. I just wanted to tell you before I left."

"That anyone loves me matters, Carlton. That you love me matters even more. You're incredibly important in my life; don't you know that?"

For a moment, his blue eyes showed pain, but then they cleared. "We're partners. And you're a lovely, caring person. But you owe me nothing and I shouldn't have said it. I wasn't trying to screw with your head. I'm sorry."

Juliet let out a slightly shuddery breath. "Please don't say that again. Don't tell me you're sorry for telling me how you feel."

"It's not like that," he said softly. "Juliet. I just thought—if you could say I thought at all—that I was walking out for good and it would be okay to tell you. I got caught up in my own drama. But telling someone you love her when you know she doesn't feel the same way is an unfair burden, and I—"

"It's not a burden to be given someone's heart," she protested.

"I… I didn't give you my heart," he said, his voice so gentle. "I only showed you I have one."

She couldn't help it, then; she was so upset and confused and all she knew was that he must not remain this removed from her even though his hands were still grasping her arms. She pressed herself to him and kissed him, and that was real; his warm mouth was real, the way he kissed her back was real, and it was Lassiter, and it was right, and she felt that it was right until the very second he set her away from him and stood with his hand to his mouth, staring at her with an absolutely inscrutable expression.

She wouldn't apologize, though she knew she should. "What are you going to do? If you're really quitting. What are you going to do?"

It took him a few moments to answer, and she couldn't tell if he was angry with her or not. "I'm going to do a lot of things I never had time for. First I'm going to take a tour of Civil War battleground sites. I want to stand where those men stood to fight for their causes." He returned to the sofa and picked up his glass of wine. "Then I'm going to go back to school. I don't know what for yet but I'd love a history degree. Maybe get into historical military research. Or forensics. I'm fascinated by that; always have been. I don't much like people and God knows people don't like me, so some kind of lab work might be just the ticket." He drank, and Juliet sank into the nearest chair, her legs unsteady.

"Carlton."

"O'Hara?" he drawled.

She didn't know how to ask the one question she had left in her. "Are you… are you shutting me out of your life?"

He seemed surprised. "No, but why would you want to be in it? It's not like you'll have any time anyway. Vick should promote you, for one thing."

"I'm sorry—did you just actually ask me why I'd want to be in your life?" She felt fury. "You can't possibly think that was a rational question. You have been my partner for nearly five years."

"That wasn't your choice," he said without hesitation. "You were assigned to me."

"No. I asked for you."

Lassiter said in disbelief, "You didn't even know me. Junior detectives don't get to choose their first partners."

"I did. I was supposed to be assigned to Ben Pappas but I heard about you. I heard you were tough and cranky and hard to please but that you did damn good work and you'd make me into the best detective I could be. I asked Vick if I could be partnered with you instead."

"And she agreed? Why the hell would she agree to that?"

"Because I told her what I just said to you. I wanted to be with the best, and if I was going to learn anything it needed to be from you. I know I looked like some kind of bubblehead, too young, too blonde, and too perky. I knew anyone else would either coddle me or kick me to the curb, but by God, if I could get Head Detective Carlton Lassiter to accept me, then I was set." She smiled triumphantly, seeing his genuine surprise. "You're not the only one who hates to fail."

His smile was slow, but honest, and she felt an only slightly unfamiliar curl of desire to go sit in his lap and kiss him senseless. She'd felt that desire for him before over the years, but had always suppressed it, for all the right reasons professionally. Now she wondered whether she'd been an overly-cautious fool.

"Look," she went on earnestly, "You have been my closest friend, my closest real friend, for years. You know me better than anyone else. You have to trust that I know you better than anyone else knows you, and I value you. Yes, I want to be in your life. Why the hell would you think otherwise? I don't understand what's in your head right now and I don't know if it's the right thing for you to do but if you're really going to do it, if you're really going to leave me high and dry, then you owe me."

"Do I?" Lassiter was still smiling. "And how exactly do I repay what I owe?"

She thought fast. "Lunch, whenever I call you, and you can't say no unless you're in class. Dinner at least once a week. And I'll think of other stuff along the way."

"I'm sure you will." It was a grin now. "You're demanding."

"Yes. I am. And I'll tell you something else. I'm going to ask Vick to record you as having taken a leave of absence, not quitting."

"That's really not a good idea."

"Carlton, you don't know how you're going to feel about any of this tomorrow, let alone six weeks from now. A leave of absence protects you in case you decide you want the job back. I know Vick doesn't want to lose you. She was all for me coming after you today."

He looked down into his glass, swirling the sangria gently. "I appreciate you wanting to do that. I'm sorry to have suggested you weren't my friend. But you have to give me room to do this right now. It's the first time I ever did anything simply because it felt right for me." He smiled at her now. "Apart from kissing you this afternoon."

Despite herself, she blushed. "Yeah, well, I'm glad you liked it. Next time I hope to be more prepared."

"Next time," he echoed.

"Next time." She felt breathless.

Lassiter looked over at her, and why did his eyes have be so compelling? "A minute ago you told me I didn't know how I would feel about any of this tomorrow. Maybe you should take that warning to heart for yourself."

Maybe she should. She got up, still feeling surreal, and smoothed her skirt. "All right. I'm going to leave now. But I'm calling you tomorrow if you don't call me, so you'd better call me."

"You'll be working," he reminded her. "You shouldn't take personal calls." He rose and came closer. "I'll take you to dinner. Tomorrow night if you're free."

"I'm free. And I'll call you." She looked up at him, and that curl of desire was back. Maybe it wasn't unfamiliar at all.

He enclosed her into a hug, his arms tight around her, and she closed her eyes against his chest, sighing. "Thanks."

"For what?" She spoke it to his shirt, holding him just as tightly, hearing his heartbeat.

"For being you, and for caring about me." He tilted her head up, his fingertips warm on her jaw, and smiled. "Now get out of here before I throw you out."

She was shocked by how much she didn't want to leave. But he was right, and she left him without further protest.

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