Happy Friday! Welcome to chapter 18 of our newest installment. Hope everyone is well, and that everyone has a good weekend. Enjoy!

Sunday

Bo felt spent. She was emotionally drained. She was physically exhausted. And yet she found herself panting, her eyes vigilantly scanning the street, making sure no one who looked like her mother was nearby.

This is why everyone thinks you need therapy the voice in her head chirped, because you're behaving like an escaped mental patient.

She turned and made another circuit.

When she walked back into the house, she was startled to see Lauren sitting at the counter.

"Hey, what are you doing up?"

Bo crossed to the coffeepot and poured a mug full, and then took a long sip while looking at Lauren who was still silent.

"Everything okay?" Bo asked when Lauren continued to not speak.

Lauren regarded Bo's mug without comment. "What time did you leave to go running?" Lauren asked, and Bo noted that her voice sounded tense, like she was angry.

Bo gave Lauren an odd look, and then shrugged. "I don't know, not long ago, why?"

"How long ago is 'not long ago'?" Lauren shot at Bo, and Bo was alarmed to hear the sharpness of her tone.

"I'm not sure what time it was," Bo answered, trying to assess what was happening with Lauren.

Lauren set her mug down with force and Bo saw the splash of tan colored coffee on the counter. "Did you have a panic attack today?" Now there was no question about her anger Bo's instincts kicked in as she tried to determine what was happening.

"I'm fine, Lo, what's going on?"

"You're not fucking fine, Bo."

"Okay, okay, what's wrong?"

"You've been gone for four hours. Four hours, Bo!"

Bo's eyes scanned over Lauren quickly, trying to determine if she was hurt, if something had happened while Bo had been out running. She noted that she had forgotten her phone again, but nothing looked amiss. Seeing nothing, she replied. "Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was that long. Did something happen?"

"Are you serious right now?" Her tone was harsh, strained.

Bo continued to stand still, afraid to move, continuing to assess Lauren.

"This isn't sustainable, Bo. Four hours? Running four hours in the middle of the night? And when I ask you about it, you deflect, or you deny, or tell me not to worry about it. How can I fucking not worry about it?"

Bo stood quietly. "I just…needed to run. I'm sorry." The confusion was beginning to break, and Bo was quickly finding she had no words waiting behind it.

"In the entire time I've known you I don't think I've seen you go running before this week."

Bo didn't say anything.

"I understand that you manage your anxiety through physical activity. Running, sex, whatever. I get that. But you need another outlet, and it needs to be something that addresses the root of the anxiety. Constant action isn't sustainable. We need to work on this."

Bo continued to stand silently, taking in Lauren's words.

Lauren sighed. "Please say something," she said, wearily.

Bo took a sip of coffee and then sat her mug down. She took a breath. How could she explain this? How could she make Lauren understand? The truth was Bo almost didn't understand it herself. She only knew that doing things was infinitely better than doing nothing. If she went for runs, should could make sure her mother wasn't nearby. She could use the endorphin rush to say awake, avoid the dreams that she couldn't quite remember but that she knew she hated. She could handle this if everyone would just stop making her try to think about it.

After some consideration, she spoke. "Doing physical things keeps me from fixating on problems. Running, working, having sex…it takes my energy and refocuses it somewhere positive. It helps me."

Lauren nodded. "There's nothing wrong with that, but there has to be more than that. You can't just run until all this is over. Your body will give out eventually. You don't sleep. There's no way you aren't the edge of a full collapse. The panic attacks make me think that's coming sooner rather than later."

"Panic attack," Bo corrected. "Just one."

"Do you honestly believe another one isn't coming?"

Bo shrugged. "Maybe not."

"C'mon, Bo, you're not delusional. It happened once, it can happen again."

Bo shook her head. "It's not delusion. Maybe it happened once. There is no evidence that it will happen again."

Lauren looked at her sharply. "So, that's it then? Hope that was the only time?"

"Lauren…"

Lauren shook her head and took a drink of coffee. They lapsed into a tense quiet.

Bo tried to think. Tried to find words for Lauren. She knew this was her fault, alright? She got it. She needed to open up to Lauren, to tell her that, yes, the case had been bad and it had thrown her off, but it was about way more than that. It was about the fact that if her mother got to Lauren, the world would shatter. It was about the fact that right on the back of that shit case, she was watching her mother charge headlong towards the same ending. It was about the fact that she knew whenever Jack finally killed her mother, her dreams would be haunted by Tuesday's crime scene.

In her mind, the echoes of the crime scene were still ringing loudly. The SpongeBob DVD menu music playing loudly through the house. The bloody footprint on the stairs. The bloody fingerprint on the front blinds, where he had used his index finger to pull them down so he could make sure no one was in the street to see him leave in his bloody clothes. The stuffed elephant in the corner of the boy's room, blood on his trunk.

Red and blue, red and blue, red and blue.

Police lights, swirling. Blood, staining. Oxygen, missing.

"What do you expect me to do, Bo?" Lauren said, cutting into Bo's thoughts.

Bo shrank back from the words.

"I mean that honestly. If you were me, what would you be doing right now? You won't talk to me. You barely look at me. When I come near you, you constantly are startled or look like you want to run away. I try to get you to sleep and you leave in the middle of the night to run. You hide that you're have panic attacks." Bo started to correct Lauren's use of the plural again, and Lauren froze her with a sharp look. "And you downplay every goddamn part of it," she concluded.

Bo took a sip of her coffee, absorbing Lauren's words. Of course I downplay it, she thought. If I didn't you would have to deal with it, too. She knew that was wrong, and only half the truth. She knew marriage was a partnership, and it was sharing, and all that crap. She also knew that it would kill her for Lauren – beautiful, kind, gentle Lauren – to flinch every time a commercial for a SpongeBob toy came on the television. Bo squeezed her eyes shut at the thought of it. Absolutely not, her mind commanded. You are fine. You will get past this and you are fine. Grow the fuck up, and make some goddamn progress or you're just as weak as your mother. There was a moment where she noted that she couldn't tell which voice from her head was speaking now. Undeterred, the voice charged on. YOU. ARE. FINE.

"I'm fine," Bo said, her voice a whisper.

And that was when Bo saw Lauren start to cry.

Bo immediately came to her, putting her arms around her, trying to comfort her, and its only effect was to make Lauren cry harder. She struggled to get her breath as Bo held her. When she finally started to find herself again, she choked out, "why can't you let me do this for you?"

Bo shuddered. Because I have to do this for you, she thought. Because I can't ruin you, too. She kept silent, knowing she couldn't effectively communicate that right now.

"What am I doing wrong?" she asked, as she pulled back from Bo's arms.

Bo felt her own tears slipping down her cheeks. Lauren ran her thumb across them, clearing them, and Bo silently cursed herself again for her weakness. "It's…it's my fault," Bo said, her voice quiet, wishing she knew how to tell Lauren what she was thinking.

"What's your fault?" Lauren asked back, softly.

All of it? "I can't…" Bo paused and opened her hands flexing her fingers out as she searched for words. "I don't know how to…I don't know."

"Am I doing something that is making it harder for you to open up, or that makes it more difficult for you to communicate with me?" Lauren asked, her voice patient.

Bo hated herself at that moment and quicker than a reflex she shook her head. "It's me," she said, "it's…I'm just…"

Lauren put a hand on Bo's cheek, stilling her. "After everything we've been through, after everything we've shared, you have to know that there isn't anything you could say to me that would change the way I feel about you."

She thought of her message thread with her mother sitting in a phone mere feet from where Lauren slept. She thought of the years of fights, of screaming, of crying, of dishes breaking and windows smashed. She thought of the times her mother had told her that she was going to kill herself. She thought if the quiet nights, somehow worse, because it meant her mother was nodding out on the drugs again. She thought of cooking dinner for Kenzi and burning it all every time, because she was a child and she didn't know how to cook. She thought of the day she moved out, how her mother wasn't home and how she had looked at her key to the house for a minute before launching it into a dumpster and not looking back.

She thought about the money she had given her mother, so many times before, how it had all gone to the same purpose as this money would if she gave it to her again.

She thought of the hospital admissions, the court dates, the bond reviews, the eviction notices, the empty refrigerators, the unattended parent conferences, the CPS reports, the blocked numbers, the screamed curses, the longer silences.

She thought about when she was sixteen and her mother had told her she was going to kill herself if Bo didn't give her some of her money, and how Bo had finally shrieked at her to just do it then, just give Bo some goddamn peace. Would Lauren feel the same if she knew – truly knew – the shit show she'd tied herself to? No, she wouldn't. There's no way she could. "You don't know that."

"I know you," Lauren replied. "And I know how I feel about you."

Bo drew in a breath. The horrible part was she wanted to have the words for Lauren. She wanted her to understand what was happening. And she had no idea how to do that.

After a tense silence, Lauren spoke again.

"Did you want to go to the bar today?"

Bo cast her eyes down and nodded. God, she didn't want to say what she was about to say. "And I…I need to go by my office, too."

Lauren stilled.

Bo sighed. "I know that's…" she shrugged. "I have court tomorrow, and I need to at least look things over so I know what's going on."

Lauren was unmoving, and for a moment Bo was worried she was going to snap. And then, mercifully, through gritted teeth, Lauren agreed.

Bo arrived at her office and disarmed the alarm, punching in the code automatically and quickly. She'd had the same code for years – Kenzi's birthday – and she thought, absently, that she should probably change it at some point. But that was a task for another day, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she already had enough waiting for her. Taking a breath, she walked back to her office.

The midmorning light was clear and suffused her office well enough that she didn't need to turn on the florescent overheads. Her desk was, presumably, still there, although she realized that she couldn't technically prove that at the moment as instead of the desk top she just saw a mass of papers, reports, photos, thumb drives, and files.

Okay, this isn't that bad, she told herself. Just a few…hundred…files…

With a near silent groan, she dropped into her desk chair, turned on her computer, and started to work.

The first two hours flew by, and Bo was stunned to see the time when she checked her clock. She cracked her neck by rotating her head from side to side and took a breath. She needed to get ready to leave. She grabbed her docket for the next morning, deciding to give it a quick once over and then pack up to head for the Dal.

She was ten minutes into the files when her cell phone rang. Without looking at the screen, she grabbed it and automatically hit answer.

"I know, I know, I'm almost done," she said, absently, waiting to hear Lauren's reply.

"Hey, baby." Her mother's voice was tired and thick, sluggish with the lethargy and sickness that came from advancing withdraws.

Bo's pen fell from her hand without her notice, her gaze snapping to the whiteboard on her far wall but focusing on nothing. "Why are you still calling me?" Bo asked, her voice low and distant and mostly meant for herself.

"I miss you, baby."

"Bullshit." The response from Bo was automatic and biting.

"I want to see you, baby, please." In her mother's voice Bo could hear a jittering edge, the rapid desperation of her addiction biting at her, urging her to do this quickly, find the drugs quickly, we don't have a lot of time! This is important! Get this done!

"I'm not doing it this time, Mother. I can't." Even as Bo said it, she could hear the resignation in her voice. She felt beaten, used up. She felt like an empty tube of toothpaste, squeezed flat and twisted until there was none left, and then left discarded and forgotten.

"Can't or won't?" her mother spat back with venom.

At the familiar question, Bo froze, her heart pounding. An image of Lauren came to her mind, of the question being asked by her in her soft tones, her kind voice that was warm even in frustration. The contrast to the hate-filled slice of her mother's voice was staggering. Bo felt something change in her, a fog breaking, a film being peeled away.

"Baby, I know we've been through a lot, okay?" her mother forged on, her tone pulling back from the sudden burst of anger, trying to reel Bo back in. "And I know, I know, I know…I'm sorry if I've hurt you, okay?" If I hurt you. If. "But you're hurting me now." I'm not. I'm just not giving in. "I just need to get on my feet. You know I can do this. I really mean it this time. I haven't always meant it in the past, but I mean in now, and that's all the matters, right?" You keep saying it's different, it's different, it's different. You just can't say how.

"No," Bo said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. "Actually, that doesn't matter at all."

"I'll come to you, baby, I can prove it to you if I can come to you and show you that I –"

"Mother, please hear me very clearly. Do. Not. Come. Here. I do not need to see you. It will not help you. There is nothing for you here. I have nothing for you. Do you understand that?"

"He'll kill me this time, Bo. You know he will."

"Mother –"

"You know he will. I can do this, baby, I swear, but you're always telling me that I can't do this alone and you're right, I'm admitting that now, you're right and you've been right. I need help. I just need you to help me. I just need to come to you, and I can show you what I mean." Her voice was growing increasingly rapid, desperate.

"I don't want you here."

Bo heard her mother's sob. "Okay, then just send me some goddamn money and I'll leave you alone!"

Bo's head dropped forward, almost colliding with the desktop. How many times had they been down this road? How many times had she heard her mother cry, sob, wail that she needed money, just help me, just some money and I'll leave you alone, I'll go away.

And how many times had it worked? More than she could admit.

She felt exhausted. She was drained. And she couldn't do it anymore. "I can't keep doing this. I can't. And I won't." In saying the phrase, Bo felt something harden within her and she found the strength to sit upright again.

"Bo, baby, I –"

Before her mother could finish, Bo hung up the phone. It rang again almost immediately and she sent the call to voicemail. This process repeated two more times, and then the phone fell silent.

After two minutes had passed, Bo picked up the phone and surveyed the blank screen, thinking. This isn't ever going to stop. She knew it wouldn't. She'd been naïve every time in the past when she believed it might. It won't stop until you stop it. She then woke the screen and set to work blocking the number.

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