Welcome back! Given my long absence, I went ahead and wrote a few chapters before I posted anything. The goal is to get you through to a good point in the story before I disappear again. On that note, sorry I was gone for so long - life, as you know, gets in the way, personal stuff, work stuff, general life stuff. I appreciate everyone who has stuck with this story despite the long delay. Hope it was worth the wait!

Also, thank you to my beta lynedele77. Hope it was also worth the wait to you.

Doctor Lauren Lewis was an intelligent woman.

She had graduated summa cum laude from her undergraduate program. She had been accepted to her first choice medical school, and once there, she had graduated in the top half of her class. If you went back and looked at her elementary school report cards, do you know what they'd say? They'd say that Lauren Lewis possessed a bright and agile mind, and that she would go far in life accomplishing great things.

There was no question about it – Lauren Lewis was an intelligent woman.

So why couldn't she write a stupid wedding toast?

She sighed deeply and leaned back on the couch, stretching away from the paper and pen on the coffee table. Then she snagged the remote and flipped the channel to an episode of Hoarders, playing with the volume nearly off, and began to watch absentmindedly.

It was Tuesday night, about 8:30p. Bo had gotten home around 7, looking exhausted both physically and mentally. She'd lost the trial, which she had expected, but somehow she just looked…vacant. Lauren had made her a quick dinner and, at 8, when Lauren recommended she go to bed, Bo had offered no resistance.

She stood from the couch and walked quietly to the bedroom to check on her. The room was quiet and dark, with Bo sleeping soundly and Zeus asleep on the floor beside her, his tail flopping up and down every few moments.

Once back in the living room, Lauren sat down to pretend to work on the speech again, still watching the show, her thoughts on Bo.

Bo had the nightmares the last two nights, even though she'd never discussed them in the mornings. It was stress, that was fairly obvious, and it worried Lauren to think about the pressure inside of Bo's mind. Her work was always on the edge of out of control, and the accident hadn't been great for either of them.

Hopefully things could start calming down now. Work would still be work, but this case was over, at least. Lauren was healing well, often forgetting that anything had happened due to the lack of pain. If nothing else, they had Kenzi and Nate's wedding to look forward to, a nice trip for them both to unwind and reset.

Shit, the wedding. Lauren looked back at the blank paper where a speech should be.

She rolled her head from side to side to crack her neck and leaned forward again, grabbing the pen. Okay, wedding speech. She could do this.

Alright, when I think of Kenzi and Nate…Kenzi and Nate…and therein lied the problem. Sure, Lauren loved Kenzi and Nate, but she had only ever known them together. She couldn't exactly talk about the transformative power of love without having a sense of who they were before they met.

Okay, so talking about how their love had changed them was out. She thought for another minute, chewing on the inside of her lip as she watched a therapist trying to convince a woman to throw away expired soup cans.

Fine then, maybe writing something ultra-specific to Kenzi and Nate was the wrong approach. After all, this was only a first draft so Kenzi could be assured that Bo wasn't going to say anything inappropriate, which she probably definitely would, but whatever. Bo could fill in the more specific personal aspects later. What Lauren needed was a good base, a foundation about love that Bo could build from and tailor to Kenzi.

Resolved. Lauren could do that. She could lay a foundation. With renewed focus, she picked up the pen and leaned towards the paper.

Thirty-five minutes later Lauren was getting to know a woman named Marcy who collected hats.

Lauren sighed as the blank paper mocked her. This was crazy. Lauren understood love. Hell, she was in love. Why couldn't she write a few quick musings on the subject?

Because they all sound trite. And it was true. In the last half hour she had started and crossed out at least fifteen lines. Everything sounded hacky, or stale, or overused. Nothing felt…right. Nothing felt organic, or meaningful. It all just sounded like something you'd find on the internet.

Hey, the internet, I bet I could just google this…she thought, smiling as she realized it was Bo's voice in her head even as she thought it.

One more time, she told herself. What do I think of when I think about Kenzi and Nate. She sat back and mulled it over for a moment. The truth was, when she thought about Kenzi and Nate, she thought about Bo. That was how she met them, why she was friends with them, why she was working on this speech in the first place. If it weren't for Bo's connection to Kenzi, she would probably have been focusing on Marcy's hat collection right now.

Alright then, that was a new angle. Bo. What did she think about when she thought about Bo?

By 10:05p, Lauren was learning about Karl, a toy collector from Northern Ohio whose house was infested with a shocking amount of mold and roaches, and wondering if she should get her apartment fumigated. With a sigh, she looked back at the paper on the coffee table.

Love is finding someone that makes you want to be

Love is finding someone who you are willing to change for even though.

Love is finding someone who won't ask you to change no matter

Love is finding someone who can make you laugh when

When I think about love, I think about Kenzi and

Kenzi and Nate are

Being here today makes me think about

You know you love someone when

I believe that love is when you find that person who

Each line was crossed through. Scratching her forehead, she ripped the paper off and balled in up, adding to the six other balled up paper sheets that sat there.

Alright, Lewis. It's a speech. One little speech. You can do this. She'd given a fair share of presentations in her career. She knew how to write. This should be simple.

She took a deep breath, turned to the blank sheet again, and began.

Bo woke up feeling disoriented. She wasn't sure what day it was, or what time it was, or for how many days she had slept. Rolling slightly she looked at Lauren's side of the bed and found it empty, the sheets mussed. Stretching her arms and legs before she stood, she climbed out of bed and headed towards the kitchen.

She found Lauren there, hair wet, stirring milk into her mug. When she heard Bo approach, she looked up. "Morning."

"Hey," Bo answered, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before grabbing her mug.

"How'd you sleep?"

Bo poured herself a mug of coffee and nodded her head while she yawned. "Hard."

"I noticed," Lauren replied with a lightness to her voice.

Bo took a sip of the coffee, raising her eyebrow at Lauren.

"I thought you had taken up a second career as a lumberjack."

"I snored that loud?"

"You're lucky I love you," Lauren said with a smile.

Bo smiled. "How's your day look today?"

"Pretty standard, I think. I feel like I'm getting my feet back under me. How about you?"

"No court for the first time in a while, so I'm hoping to catch some things up." Bo glanced at the clock. "Shit, I didn't realize how late it was."

"You have time."

Bo nodded and walked back out of the kitchen towards the bathroom. "Thank you for the coffee," she said, giving Lauren another quick kiss on the head on her way past.

"Easiest way to your heart," Lauren smiled back.

Lauren's morning moved quickly and soon it was approaching lunch. In between patients, she grabbed her phone to send Bo a quick text to find out where they were meeting to eat. Bo texted back the name of a café near the hospital, surprising Lauren. With as busy as Bo had been lately, she didn't think she would want to drive so far from her office.

When Lauren arrived, she found Bo already at a table, a mug of half-finished coffee in front of her, surrounded by papers. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she made notes on a legal pad beside her, Lauren hesitated for a moment to look at her. They had been together now for about nine months, known each other for over a year, and still Lauren found herself having the same reaction as the first time she saw Bo through her kitchen window.

"Is this a working lunch?" Lauren asked, walking up and dropping into the seat across from her.

Bo's face immediately lit up when she registered Lauren's presence. "Hey, babe," she said, sliding a mug of tea towards Lauren before beginning to gather her work into a pile. "Sorry, I'm avoiding my office phone today."

"Bad day?"

"No, actually, just wanted a change of scenery so I brought some stuff here for a few hours. Plus it has the added bonus of proximity to you."

Lauren smiled. God, Bo was cute. "So what are you working on today?"

"Mayhem. Murder. General tomfoolery."

"Murder?"

Bo smiled. "No, not actual murder. It's just a random assortment of things, actually." She finished organizing her papers and set them to the side.

"You seem better," Lauren noted.

Bo nodded. "I think I am, a little. The extra sleep helped. Thank you for that."

"You're thanking me for letting you sleep?"

"Well…yeah, kind of, I guess. I mean, not just that, but you made me dinner, and cleaned everything up after, and made me coffee this morning…you took care of me. I don't want you to think I didn't notice."

Lauren smiled, taking a sip of her tea. "You don't need to thank me, but you're welcome. I probably owe you, anyway."

"You know a great way to repay me?" Bo asked, a small smile on her face.

"If you are about to ask me for sex in a public place…"

"Keep it in your pants, Lewis, I was going to ask about Kenzi's speech."

"I was working on it last night, actually."

Bo grinned. "Lauren Lewis, you are the best. If I wasn't so shy I'd have sex with you right here on this table because I know you're into that kind of thing."

The waitress, who approached about halfway through Bo's comment, stood frozen over Bo's shoulder.

Lauren's cheeks deepened to a dark red. "We just need another minute, thanks," As the waitress walked off, Lauren looked at Bo. "Great timing," she commented, keeping her voice down.

Bo picked up her coffee and grinned. "I know, I made sure I timed it right when I saw her walking up."

Lauren balled up her napkin and threw it at Bo.

At 7:45p Bo walked into the Dal and found Kenzi standing behind the bar. The Wednesday night crowd was calm, and Bo ordered a sandwich from the kitchen before sitting down in a booth off to the side. A few minutes later Kenzi finished passing off her customers to another bartender and came over to join Bo.

"BoBo!" she said, sliding into the seat across the booth.

"Hey, Kenz," Bo answered as the waitress brought Bo's dinner over. "Hey, I'm going to order something for Lauren before I go, if that's okay?" Bo asked. The waitress nodded before walking away.

"I was worried you were going to blow me off," Kenzi remarked with a teasing smile. "After all, we all know you're totally into writing speeches about love."

"Are you kidding? I would never blow you off," Bo remarked. "Here, why don't you start reading this while eat?" Bo offered. She reached into her bag and pulled out the folded papers Lauren had given her before she left the house, passing them to Kenzi and then reaching for her sandwich.

Kenzi smiled and unfolded the papers while Bo took a bite. Almost immediately, she looked back up at Bo, her expression sour.

Bo paused mid bite. "What?"

"Seriously? Seriously?"

Bo swallowed. "What's wrong?"

"You got your girlfriend to write this," Kenzi answered.

"No, I didn't!" Bo lied.

"You totally did."

"Didn't!"

Kenzi fixed Bo with a withering look. "C'mon. Admit it. You did."

Bo paused and then relented. "Alright, I did, how did you figure it out that fast?"

Kenzi tossed the papers back to Bo. She picked them up and read I got nothing. Riff. Love youuuuu –L

"Goddammit, Lewis."

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