Hey guys! I know this one took a while, I'm sorry, haha! This one marks the end of season 3 on the show and I just wanted it to be a good one. I wasn't pleased at first so I kept going back to fix or add things, but here it is, finally, along with an added song to the playlist.

I hope you like it!

I LOVE YOU

"No…" Lea replied, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. "I'm fine. I don't think that was because of my head, I'm fine"

"You're not a doctor. Let us take you to the hospital so actual doctors can examine you"

"I don't want to go to the hospital, just get Dr. Lim!"

"She's inside with Dr. Park trying to save a boy who has a beam on top of him! There's no time to go in there and take her from what she's doing just so she can come see you…"

"See? You just said it. I'm not a priority right now, that boy they're helping, Dr. Murphy and the woman down there about to drown are the priorities, you should all be helping THEM, not me!" Lea argued, on the verge of falling apart.

"The rescue team is taking care of that, but for your own sake, we should take you to the hospital to make sure you're actually okay…"

Both were interrupted by Shaun's voice through the radio again and Lea automatically looked at it.

"Dr. Lim, I am going to try to cut the rebar to free Vera's leg. I didn't do it before because it risks rupturing her posterior tibial artery, but now I have to try"

The chief of surgery replied to him and, even though he didn't need them, she still gave him some instructions.

"I'm staying here" Lea told the EMT, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Lady, just let me do my job and take you to the hospital" He reached for her arm to lead her into the ambulance but Lea immediately pulled back, frowning.

"You can't take me against my will…"

As they continued arguing about her well being, Dr. Lim and Dr. park realized the boy under the beam couldn't be saved, so Dr. Park decided to stay there with the boy until l his dad got to the scene and Dr. Lim got out of the brewery to head back to the hospital and help with the overload of patients there, but when she walked out of the building, she saw Lea and the EMT moving their hands around as they argued, so the doctor approached them.

"What's going on here?" The chief of surgery asked with a slight frown.

"She doesn't want to go to the hospital" The EMT started.

"I already told him I'm fine, I wanna stay and help!"

"You told me to get her to the hospital so she can get properly examined because of the wound in her hand and the mild concussion she has, but the last one might be progressing. She threw up not that long ago"

Lea rolled her eyes and sighed. Instinctively, Lim moved closer to check her vitals and take a closer look at her eyes with her pen light.

"I told you to get me or someone else if you had any other symptoms…" The doctor scolded her.

"I asked him to get you, but you were re busy with the boy under the beam. How is he?"

The doctor ignored her question "They're offering to take you to the hospital, in fact, I told you to go there so you could get stitches, and now there's this…"

"I'm fine!" Lea cut her off. "I - I just got scared and that's why I puked. I wanna help here. Shaun needs help. They need to get out of there. They only have an hour or less, so they need all the help they can get!" Said Lea as an attempt to persuade them to let her stay.

"No offense but you can't be of much help with one hand and a possible skull fracture, it could made things worse for you. Right now, what we need is to get you to the hospital, get a CT scan of your head and then work on your hand before if gets infected"

Lea sighed frustratedly but knew the doctor was right, she couldn't help the rescuers, but there was no way she was leaving. As tears filled her eyes, she stubbornly shook her head, and with a shaky voice, she replied. "I can't leave… Y-you can't take me against my will…" Her emotions began to come out.

The doctor sighed too and subtly rolled her eyes. "Look, you can refuse treatment, but with a head injury, I could claim that your judgment is compromised, and advocating for your well being, I could actually take you to the hospital against your will… Leaving you here would be negligent of us, because for all we know right now, you could have a skull fracture, have a stroke at any moment and…"

"I can't leave him!" Lea shouted, shaking her head stubbornly and fiddling with the lapel of her blazer. Lim knew exactly who she was talking about.

Before the doctor could say anything else to Lea, someone from the rescue team approached them.

"We've shut off the service line that leads to the building, but apparently water is still coming out and we don't know why. We're moving as fast as we can to get them out of there, though. Just wanted to let you know"

"Thank you, please keep me posted" Lim said to the guy and he nodded before walking back to where the rest of his team was. Without thinking it, Lea tried to follow the fireman, but Dr. Lim stopped her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back, then looked into her eyes.

"Shaun would want you to be safe, he'd want you to go to the hospital to get checked out…"

Lea pulled back from the doctor's hold and argued more. "You should be in there helping them too! They don't have time! Let me go in there and see what I can help with!"

"If I let you go, chances are that you won't be here when he gets out" The doctor replied.

"If he even gets out…" Just the thought of the possibility that Shaun could not come out alive of where he was, hit Lea like a ton of bricks. She moved her shaky hands to her face and started crying.

Dr. Lim pulled Lea closer and wrapped her arms around her. "He will. They will take them both out and they'll be fine…"

Feeling useless and overwhelmed by everything, Lea sobbed against the Lim's shoulder for a moment, but the doctor saw an opportunity. She looked at the EMT and gave him a nod; he understood the message and immediately signaled a colleague, then, one of them climbed in the driver's seat of the ambulance while the other helped Dr. Lim to get Lea inside the ambulance.

Wrestling as she could with them, Lea tried to break free, but they put her down on the stretcher and strapped her. The EMT closed the rear doors of the ambulance while Lea, out of control, tried to free herself from the stretcher while Dr. Lim cut up the sleeve of her blazer while asking the EMT for a few things for an IV; he grabbed said things from the cabinets in the ambulance and gave them to the doctor.

"Please let me go" Lea cried as she tried to unclip the stretcher straps, but the EMT held her down while his partner started driving the ambulance, away from the brewery.

"I can't, it would be wrong… I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I left you and something bad happened, and I think Shaun wouldn't forgive me either… Now, you need to calm down because more stress won't do your head any good" The doctor said as she worked on the IV, then hung the bag on the IV pole and proceeded to push a very small dose of a sedative through the port, which took effect within minutes.

—

"I didn't tell him I was found and taken out…" Lea muttered, minutes later, slightly slurring her words as some tears were still trickling down her cheeks, but she was calmer.

"Why?" Lim asked arching up a brow.

"Because… I'm an idiot… And now he won't know… And I won't be able to tell him all the things I want to tell him because…" She sobbed again at the thought of losing him.

"He's not gonna die…" Dr. Lim reassured her, but wondered if she herself believed what she was saying or was just trying to not only give Lea hope, but herself too. Because nobody knew for sure if the rescue team was going to be able to pull Shaun and the patient out safely.

—

When they got to the hospital, they pushed the stretcher into the ER and Dr. Lim presented the case to the team who received them, then they moved Lea from the stretcher to a bed.

As the effects of the sedative intensified, her mind was still running, but in a kind of different way. She saw people moving around her, as if they were performing a choreography they all knew too well, everyone knew what their moves were and performed them perfectly in their green and navy blue scrubs. Their mouths moved as they spoke to each other or to her, but her brain wasn't really paying attention. To her, everything seemed to be on mute and in slow motion, while at the same time, all she could do was think of Shaun.

Her gaze wandered around the ER, looking for something specific, the clock on the wall at the nurse's station, and once she found it, she stared at it for a while as nurses and Dr. Lim kept talking to each other, but Lea wondered how long it had been since they left the brewery.

—How much time do they have left? Are they out or still in there waiting to be rescued? Will they make it out in time?— She thought as her body felt heavy and weak, and her eyes wanted to close, but she fought it.

"…Get a head CT and X-rays of her hand, then page Neuro and Ortho to come see her. Also, move her to a room so we can monitor her for the next 24 to 48 hours depending on the results of the CT" Dr. Lim ordered to the team and they nodded while checking Lea's vitals.

They asked a few routine questions to Lea, but she barely responded to any. She could hear their voices as if they were far away even though they were right next to her, but she also didn't want to talk to anyone and just wanted to be left alone… At the time, nothing mattered to her, she only knew that part of her felt empty.

"Everything will be okay" Dr. Lim said to her with a soft reassuring smile before Dr. Brown interrupted her to show her something on one of the tablets they use, then, with worry in their expressions, they walked away together.

Staff pushed Lea's bed around the hospital to radiology, helped her out of most of her clothes and gave her a gown to wear before moving her to where the CT scanner was; the same place where Dr. Melendez had been not long before her, because they also checked his head, but his brain and skull were fine, his abdomen not so much, though. Turns out he was bleeding internally.

While the machine was doing its thing and she was laying there, all she could do was count in her mind. Seconds turned into minutes and she just wanted to know what was going on back at the brewery.

They took her to a room to keep her under observation and all she was supposed to do was to wait for a doctor from Ortho and one from Neuro to go see her, but all she wanted was to somehow get out of there and go back to the brewery, but she couldn't, because due to the sedative, she felt too weak, which pissed her off. She thought that if she were different, someone annoying, she probably would sue Dr. Lim and the EMT's for taking her against her wishes, but she knew they were just doing their jobs, caring about her well being and doing their best to keep her safe, and that if it had been Shaun, he probably would have done the same. He would have pulled her into the ambulance himself and held her down if he had to, as well. Because that's how he is, he cares deeply about the health of his patients.

A nurse had left her phone, along with the rest of her belongings, in a bag on the bedside table. She sat up on the bed and weakly reached for the bag, pulled her phone out, and the first thing she did was to check the time. It was past midnight… Between however long it took them to get to the hospital and the time she had already spent there, clearly an hour or more had passed.

Meanwhile, at the brewery, the spot where Shaun was in, was flooding so much that Vera, his patient, was about to be completely underwater. The only thing in his mind at that moment was saving his patient's life. He was still able to move and get up to breath, but she couldn't, so he ended up having to amputate her leg. Because trying to cut the rebar was taking way too long, the rescue team was also taking too long, and their surroundings were too unstable, which only got worse when another tremor hit the area and made the space around them become smaller and, although Shaun did everything he could to put himself and his patient out of some danger, the rest was up to the rescue team.

Right after the other aftershock, worry and fear tormented Lea in high levels again, making her feel like she might throw up one more time, and she fought against the rising panic inside her, but tears began to flow from her eyes.

There was no way for her to know what was going on at the brewery. Maybe she could have tried to call Shaun, but didn't know if he even had his phone with him, and who knows if he would have answered, he was probably too busy with his patient to attend a call from her. Rescuers were supposed to keep in touch with Dr. Lim, but Lea had not seen the doctor since she left with Dr. Brown, and it was likely that she was not going to see her anytime soon, because Dr. Lim was busy, not only being chief of surgery but also working on her close friend and colleague, Dr. Melendez's case…

—

"We're gonna drown in here soon!" and "I think we have about an hour…" were some of the last things Lea heard Shaun and his patient say, and the only ones her mind got stuck with. She had no idea Shaun was somehow out of risk from drowning, but even if that was the case, there were still other things that could go wrong; whatever was on top of them could've collapsed killing them both, for example…

She was of no use at the brewery and also at the hospital, which she hated, and also hated how alone she felt in that moment. She didn't know what to do. She wasn't a religious person, but she even considered praying to whatever God was out there, for the safety of Shaun, his patient and the rescue team, but all her thoughts were suddenly interrupted when Dr. Glassman, whom had just finished a surgery, walked into her room while she was just sitting on her bed, hugging herself and crying silently.

"Hey…" The doctor said and frowned a bit when he became aware of the state she was in. He moved closer to her bed and sat on it. "Are you - well, stupid question, clearly you're not okay…" He paused for a moment, trying to find something better to say, then added "Concussions can sometimes make people emotional, moody, overwhelmed, etcetera, you know? It'll be okay…"

Lea gave him a "seriously?" kind of look, thinking the doctor's choice of words had been terrible, then she glanced away and shook her head.

"But I suppose that's not why you're crying… Dr. Lim told me about Shaun…" Glassman added.

Lea sniffled. "I can't stop thinking about him laying in there, lifeless… because of me!" She let out a sob. "It's my fault he went in there! And I… I can't lose him, Glassy" She sniffled again and wiped away some of her tears, but more came out.

Glassman sighed and couldn't help to feel a tad of resentment, because she was somehow right. Shaun had in fact gone into the brewery and crawled in that hole with the sole purpose of rescuing her, right after he told him she had been there. And even though part of him was hopeful about Shaun getting out of safely, the other part feared losing him, too. Shaun was not his son, but he sure loved him as if he were, and he had already lost a child in the past, so…

Although the doctor understood Lea's reasons to not date Shaun and wasn't happy with the way his basically son reacted to that, of course part of him was resentful over her for hurting Shaun. In that moment he pretty much thought —So what now? Is this her changing her mind just because she fears losing him? What kind of love is that?— But being judged and reminded of all that was not at all what Lea needed at that moment. He didn't know what to tell her though, so he just went on to talk about the results of her CT scan.

"You have a small linear skull fracture in the occipital region…" He showed her the images on the tablet he was holding and pointed out the fracture, but she didn't give a damn about the topic, yet, he continued "…But I see no brain injury… We're gonna keep you here for the next 24 hours anyway, so we can act quickly in case something changes"

Staring into space, still lost in her thoughts, Lea just sniffled again.

Glassman reached for a box of tissues and gave it to her, opening himself up a bit "I'm scared and worried, too…"

Lea looked at him for a moment, then gazed away again as she randomly and quickly licked lips, tasting the saltiness of her tears, then grabbed a tissue and with a trembling voice, she said: "I'm sorry… for everything"

The doctor shook his head slightly and reached to touch her shoulder, the same way he had touched Shaun's shoulder days before "I'm sure he is too ... and he'll be fine... I can't lose him either ..." Glassman replied, and before getting too emotional, he got up from the bed and changed the topic. "I'm going to go find someone from Ortho so they come check your hand as soon as possible. I'll move some strings around for you" He subtly joked, trying to lighten up the mood a bit, then left the room.

She watched him leave and sighed, brought her knees to her chest and hugged them, burying her face between them as she quietly cried some more. Whether it was due to her concussion or not, emotions hit her hard that night.

Dr. Morgan Reznick was returning to her own hospital room where she should have been from the beginning, but the hospital was short staffed for the amount of patients they received that night, and even though she had just gotten out of getting surgery on her hands, she decided to help in the ER, risking her hands and career in surgery to save a patient… Her room happened to be next to Lea's, so when she walked by, she saw the petite brown haired girl on the bed, hugging her knees and slightly rocking her body back and forth.

"Why are you here?" The blonde doctor asked, standing by the door of Lea's room.

Her voice startled Lea and she lifted her head from between her knees, meeting eyes with the surgery resident who was wearing a gown just like hers and bandages on both hands.

Morgan raised a brow and added "Wow, you look like crap…"

Lea's eyes were red and puffy, and whatever makeup she had put on for the night, had gotten messed up with all the crying she had done in the previous hours, plus, her hair and over all skin, were still dirty from all the dust at the brewery, but she couldn't shower yet because she was supposed to wait until getting her hand examined and her wound closed...

With a still sad expression on her face, Lea glanced down at Morgan's bandaged hands, then looked at her own hand and sighed.

"So much for talking about your hands the other day, huh?" She muttered with remorse in her voice.

"I'm sure your problem is not as bad, but yeah, karma can really be a bitch sometimes, what can I say…" Morgan joked and shrugged with one of her shoulders.

"I'm sorry…" Lea said and wiped her tears away. "I was a bitch that day and I probably shouldn't have said all the things I said to you… mentioning your hands was out of place"

Morgan scoffed and rolled her eyes walking into the room to stand by the window and look out.

"I don't think you're a bitch… at least not one at my level…" Morgan joked again. "I'm good pressing people's buttons, but I have to admit I did not expect that clap back… And you made a good point, I don't know you and you don't know me…" She added while still staring out the window at the night sky, the buildings around, and the news helicopters flying around the area, then she turned around to look at Lea again. "You haven't answered my question… I could go out there to check your record on one of the tablets, but…" She lifted both hands a bit to show Lea.

"It doesn't matter…" Lea muttered again. "I've got a…" She forgot the name of what she had and sighed. "…A thingy on my head and this…" She held her hand up slightly and briefly.

"And that's why you've been crying inconsolably?" Morgan raised a brow.

In another moment Lea probably would have rolled her eyes and told Morgan to piss off, but that night she didn't have the energy, so she just shook her head and tried hard not to think about Shaun and cry even more, but her eyes filled with tears one more time and she wiped them away as fast as she could, taking a deep breath.

"Events like this always tend to make us rethink life and realize we've taken some really stupid decisions, huh?" Morgan turned around to the window again and thought about the stupid decisions she herself had taken in the past, letting out a sigh.

"You want a sedative?" Morgan offered. She may or may not have been joking, though.

"No, I already had one, and not by choice…" Lea replied with a frown

Morgan arched a brow again and muttered. "Doesn't look like it…"

Lea was about to reply, but Dr. Andrews interrupted them when he, standing outside the room, called out Morgan's name, and the blonde resident whom in that moment was just another patient too, walked out of the room without saying anything else and headed to her own, with the attending.

Alone again, Lea picked her phone to check the time, then unlocked the screen and looked through her photos, deleted a few and got to the one of Shaun and her with Hubert. In the pic, she had a big smile on her face while Shaun was looking at the fish in the tank right in front of their faces, so it looked like he was crossing eyes, which Lea always found amusing and it was the reason why she only kept that take out of like 10 she had taken when she set up her phone for a hands-free photo. It always made her smile, and that night wasn't the exception; her lips gave in and formed a small, soft smile, just remembering that day.

Then there was a photo she once quickly took of Shaun driving the Stripped Tomato on one of their trips to pick Glassman from his house to take him to his appointments, back when she was teaching Shaun how to drive around the city because Glassman couldn't… Shaun looked confident, focused and… cute… but she didn't tell him that, she just told him he almost looked comfortable behind the wheel and he complimented the seat's back support.

Apart from having songs that reminded her of certain things; she liked taking photos of places and her loved ones at random moments, because she liked having something to remember those times, just so they would not be only saved in her memory.

She sighed and stared at the photo for while until a nurse entered the room with a wheelchair to take her to a procedure room where an orthopedic surgery team would examine her wound.

While they worked on her hand, the surgeon basically told her the same thing Dr. Lim had told her earlier, that she was lucky the glass didn't do great damage to her hand and stuff like that, but once again, Lea was in her bubble of thoughts and her own well being wasn't something she cared a lot about that night.

"…some really stupid decisions…" She recalled Morgan's words while staring up at the ceiling of the cold room they were in, and as the surgeon sutured her hand, she began thinking about those that for her were the most stupid decisions she had taken in the past, but mainly the latest ones, and among those, she thought that saying no to even trying to be in a relationship with Shaun was the most outstanding one, because all that time she had only been focusing on the bad. The bad side of her and the bad side of him, and all the things that could go wrong between them, instead of thinking about how far Shaun's actually got since they met, and how much good he's brought to her life, too; because she also became a better person thanks to him.

Back at the brewery, the rescue team pulled Vera and Shaun out of where they were stuck, then they carried Vera outside to an ambulance.

Shaun was intact. He was dirty, tired, and his clothes were wet, but his priorities were clear, he needed to get Vera to the hospital so they could take care of her leg and shoulder, and make sure everything else was fine; one thing got back to his mind, though… He knew nothing about Lea yet. Dr. Lim could have told him but she had been busy with her own case, along with Dr. Park and then with Dr. Brown, and apart from them and the rescue team, Shaun had not had contact with anyone else.

While the EMT's got Vera ready inside the ambulance to take her to the hospital, Shaun was standing in the middle of the road, looking around, searching for something…

Lea had not taken her car to the brewery because, since it was a brewery, she knew she was going to drink, and with all the stress she had been carrying for the past few days or couple of weeks, she was probably going to end up drinking a few too many beers, so driving was not an option. She got an Uber instead to take her to the event; she was planning on getting another to the get back to her apartment, but then the earthquake happened…

"Shaun! Are you okay?" Said Dr. Park when he saw his young colleague, and walked to him.

"Yes" Shaun replied with a small nod and turned to look at Park "I am fine. Are you?"

"I am… at least physically. The night was horrible…"

Shaun nodded again "Did they find Lea?"

"Yeah! You didn't know? I thought she had let you know. They took her out and Dr. Lim examined her, then gave Lea her radio so she could talk to you, but I guess she didn't…"

"Was she okay?" Shaun asked, starting to get anxious, just like when Glassman told him Lea had been in the brewery when the earthquake happened.

"Dr. Lim told me she had a mild concussion and a laceration on her hand, but apart from that, she was fine. The chief left her out here, waiting for someone to take her to the hospital so she could get sutures on her hand… Maybe she left with the chief when she headed back to the hospital, or before that. I don't really know"

Thinking of all the ways a concussion and a hand wound could turn into something worse, Shaun excused himself, turned around, and walked back to the ambulance that was supposed to take Vera to the hospital, climbed in, sat down, and the EMT closed the doors. Shaun's list of priorities had grown; he needed to know if Lea was truly okay.

Once they finished with her hand, a nurse helped Lea to get back on the wheelchair and pushed her around the hospital as they headed back to her room.

"Why are hospitals always so cold?" She asked the nurse as she snuggled up on the wheelchair.

"It helps slow bacterial and viral growth. The same way a fridge or a freezer slows down that process on food"

Lea arched a brow slightly and muttered "Great… I'm in a frigging fridge… I'm like a pice of meat in a fridge" She let out a small groan and the nurse chuckled.

"You don't like cold temperatures?"

"I don't dislike them, but I'd rather be on a beach or just somewhere warmer right now, with…" She sighed and shook her head. "Never mind"

"I haven't been to the beach in a while…" The nurse replied.

The beach sounded like a great place to be at in that moment. Laying on a lounger, next to a palm tree that would maybe provide some shade while wearing a nice bikini and holding a margarita in one hand. Lea closed her eyes and imagined it all. The sound of the waves, the warm humid weather, and him… But he's told her he doesn't like sand, and who knows if he'd enjoy that kind of weather… She sighed and opened her eyes again. Back to reality, where she could barely feel her hand due to the local anesthesia they had administered. The whole hospital was cold, and her body felt as tired as she used to feel back in her college days on a Monday morning, like her soul had been sucked out of her body. Back to reality, where instead of sun, there was only artificial white lights that bothered her eyes as if she were hungover, and she could feel a headache coming back, but then… there he was… Waiting, still in his dirty and damp clothes, Shaun was standing by her hospital room and she couldn't believe it.

She saw him as soon as she got pushed out of the elevator. Suddenly everything moved in slow motion again, and a fluttering sensation invaded her stomach… She wasn't sure if she was going to see him alive again, and if he happened to be fine, she had no idea what she was going to do; there wasn't really a plan, she just wanted him to be to be okay. She had things to tell him, but there was no plan on how or when she was going to do it.

She stared at him as if wondering if he really was there or she was hallucinating due to the trauma on her head or something else. And as the nurse pushed the wheelchair around the nurse's station, Shaun followed Lea with his gaze and they locked eyes for a moment.

"I got it" Shaun said gently signaling the nurse to stop with his hand, then he pushed the chair inside the room and the nurse walked away.

Lea kept looking at him, speechless, relieved, but also still worried, then she slowly got up from the chair, stood in front of him, and eyed him from head to toe, then, with her slightly shaky good hand, she gently reached to touch him; for one, to confirm he really was there, and secondly, to see if he really was okay.

She was no doctor to know how to properly examine someone, but she touched his side, right below his ribs, then moved her hand across his abdomen, over his damp jacket, to the other side of his torso while Shaun watched her, wondering what she was doing, but didn't really mind the touching… He let her hand slowly slide up to his chest as she let out a shaky breath, then Lea looked up at him again as her eyes welled up with tears. Her hand gripped his jacket in a soft fist and gently pulled him down a bit as she pushed herself up on her tiptoes to finally press her lips against his, but he was confused, so he pulled back after a few seconds.

"I don't know what that was… It could be a practice kiss or a pity kiss or a goodb…"

Lea shook her head and cut him off, pushing herself up to kiss him again, moving her hand from his jacket to his cheek, but he wanted answers, so he broke the kiss again.

"Lea, I don't know what this means" Shaun said, with a little shake of his head. "Did you change your mind? And if you did, why?"

She sighed and shook her head a little, looking down, slightly embarrassed and letting go of his jacket.

"I didn't change my mind…" She admitted in a soft voice.

"S-so you still think I'm limited?" He asked, confused by the situation.

Lea frowned a bit while looking at him again "What? Of course not" She denied with her head "I don't think you're limited, Shaun…"

"I'm autistic and I can't fix it, that's what you told me. You didn't want to be with me because of my autism, but now you're kissing me and I don't understand"

She sighed again, looking back down. "I… I'm sorry about what I said…" She pressed her lips together as she tried to hold back her emotions, then swallowed a gulp with guilt "It wasn't really about you, it was about me"

Shaun analyzed her words, but shook his head again "You're gonna have to expand on that…" He said, repeating the same words she once said to him, which in another moment she would have found amusing, but not this time.

"I was an idiot and a coward…" She admitted, and a single tear rolled down one of her cheeks, then looked up at him one more time "Every time there's been a chance of losing you; apart from worrying, I've felt this… emptiness inside of me" She moved one of her hands to her chest. "And since I met you, my life's been better" She nodded and wiped away the tear on her cheek. "I just… I guess I didn't want to see it or admit it. That's why I was an idiot" She paused for a moment, choosing her words in her mind, trying to make it all make sense. "And I was a coward because I was too focused and worried about my crap and what might go wrong because of it, that I didn't even think of giving the good things a chance" She shrugged one of her shoulders slightly, sniffling softly as Shaun listened to her and looked into her eyes from time to time.

"It's not that I think you're limited. You're not…" She continued. "I was just afraid I wouldn't handle things well… The way Carly did, for example… Afraid of not being good enough for you or not being ready" Her voice quivered a little. "Of opening up to someone and getting hurt…" She sighed "I still don't think I'm good enough, and I'm still scared of screwing things up, and of hurting you again or getting hurt… because we don't deserve that" With watery eyes, she shook her head, still looking at him.

"But I'm not perfect" She added. "None of us are, and no relationship is perfect... But I want you. I want to be with you… And chances are that one of us is going to screw up somehow, at some point. Not everything will be good… But if there's bad moments, I want to go through them with you, and I want to overcome them with YOU, because you - us… I've never felt like this for anyone else…" She said, looking into his blue yes. "I don't think I've ever been loved the way you love me, and I have to admit it's a bit overwhelming and I don't really know what to do with what I feel or with what you feel for me, but, If I know one thing, is that I love you with all my heart, Shaun" She nodded some. "And you know what? You do make me more… I am a better person because of you, Shaun Murphy" She sniffled softly and subtly nodded again as he quietly glanced around for a moment, processing everything.

"Please say something…" Lea added, after a minute or two.

"What I did was wrong" He replied. "You hurt me" he nodded."But I shouldn't have gone to your place drunk and wanting to smash your car up with a baseball bat. I probably shouldn't have gone at all… I scared you and your neighbors. Glassman told me they called the police… And I hurt you"

Lea cocked her head to the side a bit, thinking about that night, which wasn't pleasant. "That's… a conversation we could have another time" She nodded a bit. "We both have our flaws, as anyone else… but we can work on them together, or individually while we're together, if you want… If you want this, too…?"

She looked at him expectantly and nervously looked for a clue of what he was thinking on his face as he was taking his time to reply again with his eyes still wandering around the room, but his silence was torturing her.

—He doesn't want this…— She thought and sighed with disappointment and sadness, feeling about to cry again. It was understandable, though, and if it was the case, she had to respect him… He looked into her eyes again, but remained quiet.

"I would totally understand it you don…"

This time it was Shaun who cut her off by leaning down to press his lips against hers, shyly wrapping his arms around her small frame.

She immediately closed her eyes and returned the kiss, but for the first time, she kissed him properly. It wasn't just a peck of a few seconds like their first and second kiss during and after their road trip. This was a proper full of love kiss that they shared. She wrapped her arm with her bandaged hand around the back of his neck and he, getting carried away, wrapped his arms fully around her waist, pulling her as close to him as possible, almost lifting her off the floor as they continued kissing. She melted in his arms and her other hand moved to his cheek as their soft lips moved in synchrony; a pair of lips more experienced than the other, but it was still heavenly. They clung onto each other as if their lives depended on it; kissing each other with love and passion, yet slow and tenderly. The fluttering in Lea's stomach intensified like a bunch of monarch butterflies migrating, and her heart was beating hard inside her chest, because that electricity she hadn't felt with anyone else, was there again. Everything around them ceased to exist while they kissed, and it went on for a few minutes, until they had to pull back for air, but their arms remained around each other.

She slowly opened her eyes, looked at him, and her lips formed a soft and foolish, but loving, smile.

"I love you" She said.

"I love you, Lea" He replied with a soft smile.

She smiled some more, looking into his blue eyes, then glanced down at his lips and pushed herself up to kiss him again, feeling safe, content and at home in his arms.

In the mean time, Morgan, who had been by her door listening to everything, peeked through the glass walls and smirked to herself at the scene she witnessed, then she walked back to her bed, still smiling.