Author's Note: My apologies for delays in posting. A family emergency has taken over 85% of my brain's processing functions, so it was hard to find the time and energy to do any writing at all. Then when I did write stuff, I could not tell for myself if it was utter crap or if it was worthy of continuing to work on. I leaned even heavier on LittleMender than usual - she let me know what was worth working on, and when I had no idea how to make it better, steered me in the right direction. Without her, this chapter would not being seeing the light of day for at least another three weeks. As for when I will be posting further chapters, well let's just say the good news is that I'm only about one (maybe two) more chapter(s) out from some good solid material that I wrote out of order between the time I posted "Five Red Herrings" and when I started posting this. The bad news is, I'm still trying to function with my brain running at 15% of capacity, so there is just no making any guesses as to when I will be able to write what comes next.

Many thanks to those reviewers who cannot be contacted through the PM system here. And thanks also to information specialist for encouragement.

After eating, they stayed on the couch, Jane sitting up working on crossword puzzles, Lisbon with her head in his lap. Sometimes she was awake enough to read her book, but mostly she was too worn out to concentrate.

An hour or so later of attempting to read, she put her book down on the floor and began gently running her hand over the knee of the leg she rested on. He stopped what he was doing and looked down at her. Brushing her hair back from her ear and neck, he ran his fingers lightly up and down. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, he said, "You're not thinking loudly enough for me to hear you, you know."

"You didn't answer me when I asked how this was going to work. I've never been good at relationships."

"You weren't good at the relationships in your past because none of them really mattered to you. You got in them for inessential reasons. You did it because you were lonely or because you thought you were supposed to or because you wanted someone to sleep with. This does matter to you." His fingers reached her collarbone and followed it down across the base of her throat. Goose bumps raised on her her upper chest, and she took a heavy breath. "It was a foregone conclusion. From the time you let me onto your team, we were always going to be together. It won't be as difficult as you think."

"You think this was inevitable?"

"I don't believe in Fate, Lisbon. You know that. But yes, inevitable describes us very well. Why else-"

"Why else what?"

"Why else would I," he paused for a fraction of a second, "have craved your trust so badly?"

She caught that miniscule pause, and the change of direction it signaled. She chose not to pursue it, but she did wonder what his original thought had been.

He had been thinking of all the times when he had acted as gatekeeper for her attention, all the times he had grabbed her hand to check the time, all the times he had asserted a higher level of social dominance around her, when he would not have bothered for any other women of his acquaintance. But he did not care to own up to being an alpha male jerk, more than he already had. "That was not all that you want to ask."

"You still haven't answered."

"I'm not going to give you the answer you want. No checklists, no explanations. The only answer is in living it." Something about her was not right - vitality had drained out of her since their last conversation out on the beach.

He examined her more carefully, set to observe for signs pointing to why so much of her essence had been siphoned off.

Feeling his gaze, she asked, "When you stopped at CVS, did you get anything other than that toothbrush?"

"No. Is there something you need?"

"You need-" and she rolled her eyes a bit and carried on, "to get condoms. Relying on the vending machines in the bathrooms at the Kum&Go up the street is not going to work."

"That's the EZ In & EZ Out, not a Kum&Go. There aren't any of those further west than Montana. You're a Midwest girl, you should know that."

"Really? That's the part of what I said that interested you most?"

"You know there hasn't been anyone -"

"It's been a while since I had a physical and blood work. I should do that. I've got an IUD, so we don't have to worry about back-up contraception." She spoke quietly, almost an aside, rather than addressing him.

She did not sound the way he expected she would during this conversation. No surprise that she would bring it up, responsible to the core as she was. He had expected coy blushes hidden behind her take-charge, no-nonsense Agent facade. Or bold in arousal, she might have spoken with confidence and anticipation. He had seldom seen her beaten down to resignation, but that was what he saw now.

"You're due to have it replaced in seven months, aren't you?"

She rolled onto her back and looked up at him.

"About the time of the Ashbury murders, when you were seeing that Coast Guard Commander from San Francisco - you took a day off. Did you expect me not to notice? Then you had obvious abdominal discomfort for several weeks, followed by your period stopping."

"I take days off. And it's a little creepy that you pay that much attention to female coworkers' cycles."

"I don't pay attention, exactly. I was married before. The signs are there. You never complained when I used to slip a Snickers bar into your jacket pocket."

"I thought those were apologies for your schemes."

"The little ones were apologies. The big ones were... let's call it an offering, an oblation in hopes of divine favor."

"How about not?"

"The little packages of Oreos were because I kind of liked you."

"You used to eat three of them yourself. And don't change the subject, Jane."

"Have you ever been able to stop at three Oreos for someone you didn't like?"

"Fair point." She lifted her eyebrows and bobbed her head just a bit.

He waited half a minute then said, "You have plenty of time to think about whether to have it removed or replaced."

"Removed?"

"Options."

She sat up. Confusion and anger writ large in her eyes, she started to speak, but he interrupted her. "Shapely as your feet are, I'm not making plans to keep you barefoot and pregnant. The option is yours. You decide. And you have plenty of time to do that."

"What color is the sky on your world? Even if I did agree to skip six months of preliminaries and jump right in, this is too much. On my planet we save the long range reproductive planning for after a couple have been together long enough to actually decide to make a future together. I take it back, I really can't do this your way."

Covering his own confusion, he ran a hand through his hair. "What do you think happened here today, if we weren't deciding to make a future together?" This was right for them, for him. He had exposed to her the horror of how he lived and she not only did not shrink back from it, but also had guided him toward a measure of peace with it. Was she blind to what she had done? What was the slow dance of seduction and months of 'getting to know each other' compared to the sledgehammer and chisel intimacy they already had? He could come courting a hundred times and earn no more right to deeper entrance into her life.

He needed to get up before the hammer and chisel turned into a filleting knife and he lost the battle with temptation to tear her open. Gathering up the remains of their meal, he got up and moved away from her to the kitchen. Putting it all away, he made tea for himself. He was willing to concede that her previous loneliness was better for her than rushing headlong into old patterns that would harm her even more than her childhood had done. But her notions of love and intimacy must have been warped by having spent so much time free of them.

IIIIIIIIII

Absurd. He was absurd for expecting her to cooperate with these maneuvers. When push came to shove his control issues were monumentally deeper and harder to uproot than hers. It was even more absurd that she had let him fool her into thinking there could be anything between them.

She had mostly kept herself out of the "planning a future together" stage of relationships by keeping well back behind the casual line. If all her liaisons were not one-night-stands, none of them had gotten past recurring interludes in a long time. She had settled into that pattern a few years before she had even met Jane. Even when she had been seeing someone, no one had claimed her in the way he had.

But now here he was, seemingly expecting her to settle right into a permanent commitment as though all he had to do was command and have. This was beginning to feel more claustrophobic than sharing that single mattress, the seat of his horror and grief, had been. She had kept him alive. She had done what she set out to do. It was time to get away. Van Pelt was worried about protecting her from abuse, but the only one who could protect her from insanity was herself.

Yes, Dear Readers who have not had the opportunity to experience this for yourselves, there is a chain of gas stations with convenience stores called Kum&Go. I kid you not. The Man and I stopped at one on our way through Iowa to buy a bag of ice just so we would have something with the logo on it. The EZ In & EZ Out, I gleefully stole from a list of suggestions. There might well be such a place, but I am not aware of it.