Chapter 5: Morning Run
Teresa woke a few hours later to the grey, hard light of a full morning. Her body felt heavy, anchored to the couch by a profound physical exhaustion, but her mind ignited the moment she remembered: Patrick was being released today. The adrenaline was a sour, metallic jolt in her veins, severing the last shreds of sleep.
She unfolded herself from the afghan, every muscle protesting. In the kitchen, she made coffee, the routine movements comforting in their bland normality. She forced herself to try to eat a single piece of dry toast, but it turned to sand in her mouth. She gave up after two bites, washing the taste away with bitter coffee.Anxiety was a live wire under her skin, buzzing and erratic. She needed to burn it out. She changed into running shorts and a tank top, tied her dark hair back in a severe ponytail, and laced up her shoes. The neighbourhood air was cool and carried the damp, green scent of recent rain. She ran.
She pushed her pace until her breath sawed in her lungs, until the rhythmic slap of her soles against wet pavement became the only sound in her head. She turned corners without seeing them, her vision tunneling on the asphalt ahead. She ran past the park, past the row of identical mailboxes, past a man walking a fat, wheezing bulldog. Her thoughts tried to surface—the look on Abbott’s face, the quiet in Cho’s text, the unbearable clarity she imagined in Patrick’s eyes now—but she drove them down with sheer physical force. She ran until her legs became leaden, trembling things, until a sharp stitch in her side forced a ragged gasp. Only then, sweating and lightheaded, did she allow herself to turn back.The walk home was a slow, shaky cooldown. She climbed her front steps, her muscles screaming, and leaned against the doorframe to catch her breath. Her mind was clearer, not peaceful, but scoured empty, the panic momentarily exhausted.
A hot shower washed the salt from her skin. She stood under the spray until the water ran cool, letting it pound the ache from her shoulders.She dressed in simple, armor-like clothes: faded jeans, a soft, light-blue t-shirt. She brushed out her damp hair, leaving it long and wavy down her back, a concession to the day off.No suit, no holster.Just Teresa.
The silence of the house was different now.It felt like a challenge.She still had the day off. At the very least, she could try to be productive.
She stood in the doorway of her bedroom and looked at the bed.The rumpled sheets were a stark confession. With a sharp inhale, she marched forward, grasped the corner of the fitted sheet, and yanked it off the mattress with one violent pull. The pillows followed, then the duvet. She bundled the linens into a chaotic armful, carried them to the washer, and stuffed them in, slamming the lid shut. She stared at the control panel for a second, then ripped open the bottle of floral fabric softener. She poured in a generous, excessive glug, drowning the spinning cotton in the cloying scent of lilacs. It was a petty, symbolic act. She needed the sheets to smell like a laundromat, like cheap flowers, like anything other than him.Next, the clothes.She opened her closet. His shirts hung there, interspersed with her blazers and jackets, a perfect, intimate mosaic. The sight was a punch to the solar plexus. One by one, she pulled them from the hangers, the crisp cotton and soft linen feeling alien in her hands. She folded them with a methodical, almost aggressive precision, the kind she used for evidence bags. She gathered his socks from her drawer, his razor from her bathroom counter, the paperback novel he’d left on her nightstand. She found the gym bag Cho had originally brought, still smelling faintly of the airstream’s particular blend of tea and old wood.
She packed it all with meticulous care, creating a perfect, compact inventory of a life that had briefly touched hers.Zipping the bag closed felt final. It was a small, physical act of reparation.She placed it by the front door, a delivery ready for pickup.
Then, she texted Cho. Her fingers hovered over the screen before she typed, concise and clear: Can you come by my place today? Need you to take Jane’s things back to the airstream before he’s discharged.
She hit send and immediately put the phone face down on the kitchen counter, as if it might bite. The action was done. She couldn’t unsend it, couldn’t re-zip the bag. A weird, hollow stillness filled the space where the anxiety had been. She needed to move, to do something utterly mundane to prove she was still a person who lived a normal life.
She pulled a notepad and pen from a drawer, the pen clicking with decisive finality. Milk, she wrote. Eggs. Laundry detergent. The domestic script felt alien in her hand. She turned on the radio tucked under the cabinet, tuning it to a classic rock station. The opening chords of a familiar song filled the kitchen, a sonic blanket over the quiet.
She sprayed citrus-scented cleaner on the counters and wiped them down in broad, frantic circles. She plumped couch cushions that didn’t need plumping. She aligned the magazines on her coffee table into a perfect, soldier-straight line. The music and the mindless motion created a fragile bubble of pretend normalcy. She was just a woman cleaning her house on a day off. That was all.
A half hour after her text to Cho, her doorbell rang. The sound was an electric shock up her spine. She froze, the dish towel in her hand dripping onto the floor. Cho was efficient, but this was remarkably fast. She took a breath, smoothing her t-shirt as she walked to the door, already forming the words in her head.
She pulled the door open, a half-smile of greeting on her lips. “Cho, I hadn’t expected you so—”
The words died. They curdled in her throat. Patrick Jane stood on her step. He wore his own clothes, the ones from the go-bag, and held a small paper sack from the hospital. The late morning sun lit the edges of his hair, and his expression was calm, composed, and utterly, terrifyingly lucid.
“Hi, Teresa,” he said. His voice was his own—the gentle, melodic tone, free of any spousal presumption.
Her brain short-circuited. A strangled, mouse-like sound escaped her. “Jane!”
Her body acted before her mind could. Her arm shot out, shoving the door shut with a force that rattled the frame. The deadbolt clicked into place with a deafening finality. She spun, pressing her back flat against the wood as if to physically hold the world at bay. She covered her face with her hands, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that fogged her palms.
A firm, deliberate knock sounded on the door. Three taps. “Teresa?” he called, his voice muffled but clear.
“Go away!” she shouted, her voice ragged against the wood. “Come back later!”
“I need to speak with you.” There was no anger, no urgency. Just a simple statement of fact.
“Then talk through the door!” she yelled, pressing her hands harder against her eyes, seeing bursts of color in the darkness.
A beat of silence passed. She could almost hear him thinking on the other side. When he spoke again, his tone was light, almost conversational, and it chilled her blood. “I’m coming in whether you open the door or I pick the lock. Your neighbors are lovely, by the way. Mrs. Gable across the street is currently watching me from behind her hydrangeas.”
Her hands fell from her face. Panic was a cold flood in her veins. He would do it. He would casually kneel there and fiddle with her lock with a paperclip while the entire street watched. The humiliation of that spectacle was worse than the confrontation itself. She stared at the deadbolt, at the brushed steel sheen of it. She had three seconds to decide.
With a shuddering breath, she turned, her fingers fumbling on the lock. The mechanism scraped loudly. She opened the door just wide enough to see him, one hand still gripping the edge like a shield. He hadn’t moved. He simply looked at her, his head tilted slightly, those blue eyes taking in every detail: her damp hair, the old t-shirt, the wild fear she couldn’t hide.
“May I come in?” he asked, as if he were a salesman with vacuum cleaners.
She stepped back, relinquishing the doorway without a word.
He crossed the threshold with a fluid, familiar step, as if he’d done it a thousand times. Teresa pushed the door shut behind him, the latch engaging with a soft, definitive click.The sound sealed them in together.
She immediately retreated, putting a wide space between them. He stood just inside the foyer, placing the paper sack on the table by the door with deliberate care. The quiet hum of the refrigerator filled the space where words should have been.She studied his face. The bruise had faded to a yellowish shadow.His eyes were clear, focused, intensely present. She braced for the storm—for the icy betrayal, the wounded anger, the sarcastic fury she knew he was capable of. It wasn’t there.His expression was calm, open, and utterly indecipherable. It was a blank page, and it terrified her more than any accusation.
He took a single, smooth step toward her.
Teresa mirrored it with a step back. “I know you’re angry,” she blurted out, the words too loud in the quiet.
“I’m not angry,” he said softly. His voice was a gentle counterpoint to her sharpness. He took another step.
She shuffled backward again, her socked feet silent on the hardwood. “You must be hurt, then. You have to feel… betrayed.” Her voice hitched on the last word. He started to speak, a slight shake of his head. “I’m not—”
“I’m sorry!” she cut him off, the apology bursting out like a plea. Her heart hammered against her ribs. “I’m so sorry for what happened. All of it. But we can’t… we can’t change the past.” She drew a shaky breath, the rehearsed lines tumbling out in a frantic rush. “I think it would be best for everyone if we just put it behind us and moved forward.”
She kept backing up as she spoke, her retreat a desperate, unspoken map of her guilt. He continued his slow advance, a silent counterpoint to her frantic speech, until the backs of her thighs met the low table in the hallway. She wobbled, off-balance, and instinctively threw a hand back to brace herself.Her other hand came up, a fragile barrier between them, palm out. “Jane, please.”
He didn’t stop. He stepped into her space, forcing her to either push him back or give ground. She gave ground, stumbling sideways until her shoulder blades met the cool, unyielding drywall of the hallway.She was trapped. The floral scent of the laundry detergent from the other room drifted between them, a sickly-sweet ghost of her earlier attempt to erase him.
She pressed her whole body against the wall, as if she could melt into it. He closed the final distance, stopping only when the toes of his shoes almost touched her socked feet. He studied her face with an unnerving, clinical focus she recognized from a hundred crime scenes—but now it was turned entirely on her. She saw his pupils were wide, dark pools swallowing the blue, and the expression there wasn’t anger or betrayal. It was something raw, a focused intensity that stripped away every pretense and left her completely exposed.
“At first,” he began, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, “I was going to come grovelling. For forgiveness.” He tilted his head, his gaze tracing the line of her cheekbone, the tremble in her bottom lip. “The fragments were… hazy.I remembered touching you. I remembered you stopping my hand.”
Teresa stared, her mind scrambling.Forgiveness?From him? Her mouth opened, a confused denial forming. “It wasn’t your—”
“Then the pieces got clearer,” he cut her off, his voice gaining a soft, undeniable precision. He leaned in, one hand coming up to rest on the wall beside her head, his forearm brushing a strand of her hair. “They slotted together.And I started remembering how you reacted. What you did.”
The air felt too thick to breathe. “I was doing what the doctor said,” she stammered, the defense sounding hollow even to her.His other hand came up, caging her head between his arms. He wasn’t touching her, but his presence was absolute, a physical fact she couldn’t escape. The space hummed with a terrifying intimacy. “The doctor didn’t tell you to push back against me,” he murmured, his eyes locked on hers. “To grind against my hand.”
A hot wave of shame flooded her cheeks.She swallowed, her throat clicking. “I stopped you.”
“You were so close,” he breathed, his gaze dropping to her mouth for a heartbeat before returning to her eyes. “I could feel it. I could feel how hard it was for you to stop.” He shifted infinitesimally closer.“The doctor didn’t tell you to kiss me back like that. Like you were drowning and I was air.”
His words were a scalpel, dissecting every hidden, shameful truth. He leaned in, his lips a breath away from her ear. The clean, familiar scent of his skin filled her senses, overwhelming the fake lilac.His voice was a velvet scrape against her nerve endings. “And the doctor definitely didn’t tell you to come in my mouth, Teresa.”
A sharp, helpless whimper escaped her.She squeezed her eyes shut, as if darkness could save her. “I was half asleep,” she protested, her voice a thin thread of sound.
“You said my name,” he countered immediately, his lips grazing the shell of her ear.She flinched. “You were saying my name before you were even fully awake.” He pulled back just enough to look at her again, his face a mask of quiet, devastating understanding.“How long have you been imagining it? Me, like that.With you.”
She had no answer. Her breath hitched, a ragged, uneven sound in the silent hallway. She was laid bare, every secret cavern of her longing illuminated by his brutal clarity.She clenched her eyes tighter, tears pressing hot against her sealed lids. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered, the question choked with despair. “Why are you punishing me like this?”
He didn’t pull away. Instead, he leaned into the space beside her neck, his words a soft, warm current against her skin. “Do you want to know how I spent last night?” He didn’t wait for a reply.“I spent the whole night remembering. The weight of you in my arms. The way you felt under my hands.” He paused, and she felt the faintest brush of his nose against her hairline. “The exact, precise taste of you.”
Another whimper tore from her throat, this one lower, loaded with a defeat that felt perilously close to surrender. She went utterly still against the wall, her eyes still sealed shut, as if the darkness behind her lids was the only shield she had left. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this,” she whispered, the words barely audible.
She forced her eyes open but stared fixedly at the collar of his shirt, at the familiar weave of the cotton. “Is this your way of humiliating me?” Her voice was a frayed thread of sound. “Because if this is you punishing me, it’s cruel, Jane.”
A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path through the faint freckles on her cheek. “I can’t help how I feel about you. Or how my body reacts to you.” She swallowed, her throat tight.“I know you have no… interest in me like that. But I thought, after everything we’ve been through, I at least mattered enough that you’d make sure whatever punishment I received was fair.”
She took a shaking breath, the offer tasting like ash.“I’ll leave. I’ll resign from the FBI. I’ll go back to Washington State.” Her gaze remained locked on that safe, neutral point on his shirt, unable to meet his eyes. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Slowly, he lifted his hands from the wall. He gently cupped her face, his thumbs brushing away the tear tracks. His touch was warm, shockingly tender.“Teresa,” he murmured, his voice soft. “Look at me.”
Her resistance was a physical ache, but his hands held her with a firm gentleness that refused her escape. She dragged her eyes up, past the line of his jaw, past his mouth, until she met his gaze. He was staring at her with an expression she had never seen before. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t triumph. It was a gentle, aching wonder, a soft smile playing on his lips.
“I am not trying to punish you,” he said, each word deliberate and clear. His thumbs stroked her cheekbones. “I can’t quite believe that you… that you want me at all.”
Her mind rejected it. She tried to shake her head, but his hands held her steady. “Don’t,” she breathed. “Don’t do this.”
“I have loved you for a very long time,” he continued, his voice dropping to something intimate and raw. “I have wanted you for even longer.” He searched her face, watching the confusion and disbelief war with a fragile, desperate hope. “Why do you think, when my mind broke, it built a world where I was married to you?” He paused, letting the question hang in the fragrant, charged air between them. “Why do you think it wasn’t anyone else?”
The question hung between them, a delicate, terrifying thing. Teresa’s mind scrambled for solid ground, for the safe, logical explanation. “Because we’ve worked together for so many years,” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “Because I was familiar. Because I was there.” She drew a shaky breath, ready to list more reasons, to build a wall of practicality between them.
“No.” The word was soft but absolute, a gentle guillotine on her sentence. His thumbs stilled on her cheeks. “It’s why I wrote you every month for two years while you were in Washington.” He watched her eyes widen, the confession landing with physical weight. “It’s why I defied the entire FBI bureaucracy to force them to hire you.” He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers, his breath warm on her lips. “It’s because you are the most important person in the world to me.”
He paused, letting the silence swell. “Because I love you.”
Teresa gaped at him. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. All the air had left the hallway. All the rehearsed speeches, the resignation letters, the desperate bargains—they evaporated like mist in a sudden, blazing sun.
A slow, brilliant smile touched Patrick’s eyes first, then his mouth, as he watched her speechless shock. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated delight. “So,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur, “Patrick Jane, widower and single man, would like to kiss Teresa Lisbon, beautiful and enticing and single woman.” He tilted his head, his gaze flicking to her lips and back. “With the hope that we might resolve our mutual status of… single.”
The words, so formal and so utterly him, broke the paralysis. A laugh, small and disbelieving, hiccupped from her throat. As his meaning fully crystallized, a genuine smile bloomed across her own face, slow and wondrous. She felt it transform her features, easing the tension from her jaw, lighting her eyes from within. She smiled shyly, a flush warming her cheeks, and gave a single, definitive nod.
He didn’t hesitate. He closed the last inch of space and kissed her.
It was soft at first, a tentative brush of his lips against hers, a question and an answer all at once. It was nothing like the desperate, deluded kisses in her bed. This was present, conscious, and achingly deliberate. She sighed into it, a release of breath she felt like she’d been holding for years. Her hands, which had been clenched at her sides, uncurled and came to rest lightly on his waist.
Then he deepened the kiss. One hand slid from her cheek into her damp hair, cradling the back of her head. The other arm wrapped around her, pulling her firmly against the solid length of his body until not a whisper of space remained between them. She melted into the embrace, her spine softening, her own arms winding around him to clutch at the fabric of his shirt. The world narrowed to the feel of his mouth moving over hers, to the scent of hospital soap and him, to the dizzying rightness of his body aligned with hers.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing heavily. He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes still closed. “Okay,” he breathed, the word a puff of warm air against her lips.
“Okay,” she echoed, her voice husky.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his gaze searching her face. The intensity was still there, but it was softer now, laced with a vulnerability that made her heart clench. He glanced past her shoulder, down the hall toward the living room. “Can we… sit down?” he asked, a faint, uncharacteristic hesitation in his voice. “I’ve been discharged for about twenty minutes and I think I’m still a little wobbly.”
The mundane concern shattered the last of the surreal tension. A real laugh escaped her, bright and clear. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” She took his hand, lacing her fingers through his, and led him the few steps to her couch. The simple act of holding his hand, of guiding him, felt monumental.
They sank onto the cushions, knees touching. The afghan she’d slept under was still bunched at one end. The radio in the kitchen was still playing a faint classic rock song. It was all so normal, and yet everything had changed.