When Christine came out of the bathroom, dressed in the white cotton outfit of The New Life Yoga Center, she found Reid sitting on the end of the bed with his left knee bounding up and down uncontrollably.
"Spencer, are you okay?" Christine sat down next to him and tried to put her hand on his bouncing leg.
Reid pulled away from her. "You ran away from me!" It was an accusation.
"I ran away from myself," Christine corrected him. "I didn't like what I had become and I was afraid you and everybody else would expect me to go back to being what I had been before. I knew I couldn't do that."
"How did Hotch find you?" Reid demanded.
"Actually, it was Dave who found me," Christine clarified. "He read something I had published and, even though I had used a pseudonym, realized I had written it. It took him a while, but he tracked me down."
"What? Where?" Reid questioned. "I have been reading all the professional journals, and I haven't seen anything that you could have written."
"It was fiction," Christine was reasonably certain he hadn't read her book, and didn't want to pursue it.
"Okay, Rossi and Hotch knew where you were. Who else?" Reid was beginning to suspect that he had once again been made a fool of.
"As far as I know, they are the only ones, and I asked them not to tell you," Christine told him. "Believe me, Spencer, no one has been playing you for a fool."
"I wanted you back – I needed you back!" he pleaded. "But, you ran away!"
"Spencer, the person you wanted back doesn't exist any more!" Christine explained sadly. "That man took everything from me – My pride, my dignity, my self-respect, and my life! You may have lost the person you knew, but I lost even more. I lost my soul!"
"Okay – I've heard enough - I'm leaving!" Reid stood up to go, but found that Christine had also stood up and was blocking his way.
"Spencer, we need to talk!" she insisted. "I want to know why – "
"No!" Pushing on her shoulders with a ferocity he didn't know he was capable of, Reid forced her back onto the bed and then stood staring at her as she lay there. Christine knew that all she had to do was say something and he would back off. Violence and rape were not part of his psyche. However, she remembered and, when she held out her arms, he bent down to kiss her.