+18 eps. 17-21 - After a hard case that takes the team to DC in order to catch a blackhat and prevent a bombing, all hell breaks loose on their return to Boston , when the ghost of the Libra killer comes back to torture Brock seven years after the m...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Brock closed the faucet, dried his hands and picked up his phone just before the call skipped to voice mail. He didn't check who it was, so Gillian's voice took him by surprise. Just like the reason of her call.
Andrea wasn't back from school yet, and she hadn't mentioned her plans for the evening. It made sense, though, considering Gillian and her team were returning to Boston in the morning. It was Andrea's last chance to share some time with Gillian's son.
He honestly welcomed Gillian's idea of having Tanya go out with their children instead of them. Not because he didn't feel like sharing another evening with her, but because he did. Which meant there was some serious tweaking he needed to do, especially after the last four days with her almost around the clock.
They disconnected as if they were to meet next morning at the office—what were you expecting, Brockner? Some special farewell words?
Brock resumed cleaning, determined to leave the apartment the best he could before leaving DC again in a few days. He lifted the chairs on top of the table while he mused about her it. That awfully awkward moment on the subject's roof was a warning he just couldn't ignore. And crazy as it might seem, it got him at a complete loss.
The floor tiles shrank in panic at the way he mopped them, while his mind kept going over such an embarrassing sensation.
Okay. So Gillian turned out to be something more than the brilliant but reckless asset he loved/hated working with. She turned out to be an attractive woman, able to be unexpectedly charming and delicate. And he turned out to be vulnerable to that unexpected charm. The very memory of how she looked two nights ago, or yesterday morning, was enough to make him breathe deep. And his own reaction made him feel worse.
Not only because it was Gillian, even though that was enough reason to take a butter knife to his wrist. It really didn't matter who she was, but what she was: a fellow federal agent and his subordinate. That alone was all levels of wrong.
The floor tiles did their best to shine, as close to a mirror as their nature allowed them to, hoping that would spare them.
It worked. Brock emptied the bucket, his mind repeating over and over the same four words: all levels of wrong.
And yet he knew he was lying to himself. True, it was a major issue. And it puzzled him because it was the first time in his whole career that he found himself in this situation. Feeling attracted to a fellow agent made work incredibly harder and complicated. Yes. But what really had him on edge was that it was her. Gillian. Of all people!
His glare fell on a tiny spot on the oven and the poor thing braced itself, while he put on the rubber gloves as to sink his arms in dump up to his shoulders.
Why? asked a shy voice from the back of his mind. Why was so wrong, this feeling attracted to Gillian? Despite her rogue ways, he knew what a brave, caring, brilliant woman she was. He sprayed the oven, clenching his teeth. The list scrolled down in his head, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Let aside how breathtaking she looked when she gave a break to her jeans and flannels. Looks had nothing to do with it. And it wasn't only the way she respected him, and how she cared about him. She understood and shared his passion for their work. She knew about that irresistible pull that would keep them up all night just going through files, the urge to solve a case because lives depended on it. She knew about the horror, the misery, the insanity out there. And none of it scared her. It only gave her more reasons to keep going and try to catch yet another bad guy. Just like him.
It had never been easy, being such a driven, restless workaholic in love with his job. There would always be questions, demands, complaints when his work kept him up late, or away from home for a week or two. Andrea's mother had never accepted it, and it had ended up in their divorce. And even Georgia would sigh and roll her eyes now and then, when he called from the airport to let her know he was leaving instead of going home that night, or when a case kept him away for a special occasion.
So yes, the easy fix was a hot, independent woman like Viv, to spend the night with now and then. It seemed the only option if he wanted to have anything other than work in his life. An occasional lover might seem the perfect fit for him. But no matter what his groin thought about it, Viv had turned out to be more of a nuisance than anything else in the end. Because even she had tried to question and complain.
She didn't know—she didn't care—about the smallest thing of what gave any meaning to his life. In her fancy world, work was something that happened to other people, usually Monday through Friday, nine to five. And it was supposed to be boring, or stressing. So there was nothing they could share past the edge of a bed.
And he still came back home to an empty apartment, filled only with the thick, looming silence of loneliness.
The oven reflected his scowl, praying not to get another inch thinner. Brock faced his reflection and set his jaw again.
That was what was actually all levels of wrong about being attracted to Gillian.
Because the one, huge, terrible, unfixable problem about her was that she was the true perfect fit for him.
Forget about the little detail that she liked young fit men in their thirties, and he was neither young nor fit, and twenty years past his thirties. He was light-years away from considering the option of anything that could lead to any intimacy between them. That was completely out of the picture.
The issue here was this thing going on inside him. Because no matter how sad, coward and sick it might be, if there was something he just couldn't afford, that was falling in love again. Not now, not ever.
Talking about affording, he could use a shower before Andrea got home.
The whole apartment oozed relief at his decision.
He sighed, mocking himself. A shower wouldn't wash away what felt like dry mud all over him. And not even that dry old mud would ever fill the dark, cold, hurting well of absence inside of him.
