[the Mentalist, Big Bang fan-fic] Tricking Stella- Accidentally Engaged part 4 and 5
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
She jumped, taken aback, when, still in front of the mirror, long dark hair still wet, naturally curly, she heard the click of the lock of the front door, and she run, almost falling from the stairs, to welcome them at open arms, shivering and blushing fearing that Stella could really be like her brother, could actually see through her, reading her mind, see the sinful things the mentalist inflicted her among the sheets, and what she inflicted to him as well, not a prude, open minded as she had never been before in bed with other men…. She knew she was blushing, she was aware of that, always been, even before Jane come along keeping bringing it up, but she just hoped she wasn’t looking like the heroine from those cheap romance novels she had but claimed to hate and not possess, the look they had after a night of making love, that dreamy and hair-headed, but, like often remembered by male characters, so, so sexy. Is he going to think this of me as well?
She had barely had the time to arrive at the door that something resembling a tornado hit her, engulfing her, Stella, so similar to her (half) brother with the blonde curls and the light blue/green eyes, slightly younger, a shocking resemblance with Kate Hudson, and everything happened so quickly that Teresa could barely register the arms around her neck, the warm embrace, as warm as anything she had received lately, and she felt tears…. Tears from that woman who didn’t know her, from that woman who thought her brother was getting married with her … for the first time in a while, she felt guilty. And dirty.
“Oh, Teresa, you can’t imagine how happy I am to finally meet you! Rick has told me so much about you and you two, I think I already know you, and I couldn’t wait to meet you for real, and I’ve always told Rick you were just perfect for him and one day he’d see it and here we are now, and you two are getting married and I so knew it and you can’t imagine how happy I was to know he met someone and had decided to start anew, and knowing it’s you he is going to start a family with is even better!” as Stella kept talking without taking a single breath of air, hopping with her hands on the cop’s shoulders, said cop remained speechless and kind of astonished, because, really, where was the terrible person Jane had describe her? Stella looked just like someone a bit too enthusiastic, maybe with a tendency to go where she wasn’t supposed to, but certainly, she didn’t look like some kind of female mentalist, nor a tyrant. Not if her behavior was indication of anything…. “Well, Rick here forgot to tell me you were absolutely cute, but I guess I’ll forgive him. it’s what little sisters are supposed to do, right? Idolize their big brothers and assume they are just perfect!”
A little piece of Lisbon’s heart broke as she heard that simple sentence. Stella did knew about her, knew a lot- or at least, she assumed so - but still, her brother had never told that his girlfriend was cute. She kept asking herself why, over and over. Didn’t he think she was cute? Or, did he just told Stella the most important details, forgetting everything about the rest? Or maybe, he didn’t find her cute at all; after all, she was Teresa Lisbon, senior agent, nothing but plain, there was no reason for him to be sexually attracted to her, also because…. Because she had seen pictures of her, of Angela, his beautiful wife, a princess from a fairytale, but, still, was it really necessary? He should not have done that, threatening her that way, in front of Stella, a woman who was supposed to be her soon to be sister in law, even if it was just a lie, a lie they were the only two aware of. But, after all, she couldn’t say she was surprised, considering it was Patrick Jane she was thinking about, always honest about the others, unable to hide things concerning the rest of the universe.
Even reading her feelings, or maybe just because of what he saw into her green irises, Jane just smiled, a Cheshire grin printed on his lips. “Teresa isn’t cute. Cute isn’t an adjective that suits her.” With two quick steps, he joined his “girlfriend”, and without touching her with his hands, he kissed her, a peck on the lips that was extremely close to a very passionate kiss, so close it was almost a make-out session; still, she answered to his kiss, with as much passion as he had put into it, but as soon as she started to enjoy it, when she was going to throw herself at him - literally - he parted, grin still in its place, and all she could do was staring, unable to think, unable to understand, still partly mad because of his words, still incapable to read between the lines, to understand where he was going, what he wanted, from her and from them.
“Stella, Teresa is the most beautiful and charming woman I had ever seen, and I didn’t tell you because I knew you weren’t going to believe me and I wanted for you to see it with your own eyes.” His voice was a whisper, words breathed on her lips, the same lips he was going to kiss once again, but this time differently; lost in her own eyes, there was no trace of malice or mischief, but something else, something entirely different, something Teresa couldn’t describe. She shivered, confused, shocked by his deepness, by his honesty. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if he was just a good actor, and an extremely good one, or if maybe, just maybe, he was honest.
It was Stella’s brilliant laughter to awake her from her reverie, from that kind of state of trance she seemed to fall into almost every time Jane was around, put into it by his very presence and not his voice or his touch. “Typical Rick. He says something tactless, but the he remedies saying something that’s incredibly sweet, looking at you with those puppy eyes, and all you can do is forgiving him!” she laughed again, just once, then she started to walk around, wondering around the space she could have access to without having to bother asking. She kept walking, until her eyes fell on a picture - She took it in her hands, the picture, a framed image of few years prior, and looked at it with dreamy eyes, taken completely by what she was seeing…. Her brother, in smoking, Teresa with a gorgeous black dress, an evening gown, his arm around her waist, eyes in the eyes, smiling, almost conspirators somehow, isolated from the rest of the world, glasses of champagne in hand to cheer up to a magic that was theirs and theirs alone.
At her back, Teresa jumped, seeing what Stella was carefully studying, the picture she was gently skimming over with long fingers. That picture, she knew it, she had saw it so many times… because she had it as well, preserved from years, carefully hidden between the pages of her favorite book, and Jane, Jane had had it, he had kept it, framed it, secured it. And she didn’t knew it, never did. It was another piece of the puzzle that was Jane that kept confounding her; the more time passed, the more she started to think it wasn’t a scam, not just a lie, an act, but something real, that they were meant for each other, to stay together, because, maybe, he loved her for real. Maybe her feelings weren’t one-sided as she thought, maybe they were reciprocated.
“You know, Rick, it’s pretty amazing what Teresa did to you. I’ve never thought possible that I’d have seen the day you’d stop living into a motel room, and now, this, a proper home, with real furniture. And tidy. You, woman, are just great! ”
The aforementioned woman went to hide behind Jane, eyes on the soil blushing furiously and tucking a rebel lock of dark hair behind her ear . For many reasons, one of them was the fact that Jane had never moved on because of her. And because she wasn’t exactly the right person to address for a tidy and ordinate proper place, considering that she put in order only when she was extremely nervous. “Uhm, well, we’ll see what you’ll think when my compulsive untidiness will start to show….. the place is kind of new and freshly rearranged, so it’s no big deal, it’s kind of easy, I mean, I’d feel guilty leaving everything around…”
“And that’s the reason she still had unpacked boxes in the middle of her living room after 4 years she had moved there!” he hugged her from the back, an arm around her waist, the whisper of a kiss on her dark, wild curls, natural and not styled in any way, just like he loved them the most and his mind wondered back, a few years, to a dark day, when Teresa Lisbon opened completely up to him, trusted him beyond reason, was naked, figuratively speaking, right before his eyes, those days, when she thought she had killed a man, body and mind poisoned by that evil doctor, and he was there, to take her in his arms, to save her. and he did it, he saved her, like he had promised her to just few months before.
“Can I take a look around?” Jane laughed under his teeth, smiling, looking at his fully grown up sister, still behaving like when they had first met, many years prior, when she was just a teen. She still had those huge, puppy eyes, and she still pouted in that particular way that made impossible saying no to any request. Eve if… even if he knew. It wasn’t that she wanted to have the tour. She wanted to have a tour with Teresa. “Teresa, just remember that I still have Annie’s number, so rest assured that if I get to know she told you embarrassing details about my life, I’ll get Tommy to repay the favor!” He screamed, still laughing, while he come back into the kitchen to keep himself busy, and to avoid listening to their conversation, almost positive that Stella would say embarrassing things, anecdotes from his childhood learnt from their mother; he grinned when he saw Teresa, dragged upstairs by what, in a perfect words, would really be her soon to be sister in law, showing him her tongue, playfully, laughing and smiling. Like they were a real couple.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Teresa was silently thanking God that, in all his pomposity and arrogance (and jerk-ness) Jane had decided to move in something quite… small, for his taste, and not something à la Mashburn, like she thought he would have done, once returned to be a fully functional and complete human being. She thanked for that, and for the small tour Jane himself had given her the previous evening, before things went south. Also, she thanked God that she (they) had put Stella inside the first room once reached the top floor, hence avoid her need to put her nose where the younger “Jane” wasn’t supposed to even if… even if the real motive they had put her there was no more, since Teresa’s belongings had been put not in the guestroom like they had previously agreed when they decided to play this charade in Stella’s honor, but in the master bedroom, alongside Patrick’s, after they had decided that they were both adults and that could need a little bit of comfort and release without adding anything else.
“Oh my freaking, bloody hell!” she woke from her reverie when she herd Stella clapping her hands and jumping enthusiastically like a child in candy-land, and she left her spot in the corridor to join the younger woman inside the room. She smiled of a little smile, her heart happy to see that Stella did have something in common with her brother- the tendency of getting distracted (or apparently so) by things. Things like fresh linen in cotton, bought in a whim inside a small shop, coming from the Provence, like the bars of soap, lavender and rose and milk and strawberries and cream ( her favorites), or things like the bottle Californian red wine, or maybe, the box of chocolate from Marie. All things she loved herself, but had never indulged into, too busy being a cop and forgetting about the woman. “You know, this doesn’t exactly scream Patrick to me…” Stella teased, falling on the bed, Teresa in front of her, uneasy, not really knowing what she was supposed to do. She had sisters in law, and nieces and nephews, but when the boys got their own lives, she had been long gone. Having, for the first time, a soon to be sister in law (or… well… Stella) at home, her own home (or, well, Jane’s place) was definitely new. But… she wasn’t sure she wasn’t liking it. Stella seemed to be a nice person, a little bit like Jane but more normal, less on the edge, probably for the lack of traumatic events tainting her life and the slightly different uprising, with no father forcing his own child to be a con-man… Stella was the kind of person she was going to miss, once it was over.
She sat at the other woman’s side, not looking at her but at her own feet, smiling of a sad smile, her mind on overload, filled by memories of her past. “My mum… she loved taking care of our guests. Back home, in Chicago, we always arranged everything together. She loved taking care of people, making them feel special, appreciated.” She made a face, suddenly. “My brothers, they weren’t exactly into French linen. Or soap.” She laughed, and both then fell in a comfortable silence, a silence neither of them were willing to break, so delicate and precious it was - Stella didn’t need to be her brother to understand the underlines of Teresa’s words, to get that she had lost her mother, probably at a young age, and that she had to look after few younger siblings. She understood it even if Rick hadn’t told her so, keeping the talk about Teresa at a minimum, but saying everything there was to say in few words or even less.
“He is happy” Stella suddenly said, getting up, sitting at crossed legs, Indian style, her back against the headboard, looking in front of her and never at Teresa, like she was scared or it was a too deep confession, but there was a smile on her lips, one Teresa knew too well, one she had seen so many times on the woman’s brother. “he is as happy as I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Teresa just nodded, and Stella saw that as her encouragement go on. “I know how he looked from the outside, but… you have to understand, Rick has always wore a mask, and besides, it’s not like Alex taught him any different, nature and nurture, you know? Angela and Charlotte, they were the only good and real things about him, in his life, and… sometimes, I think that saying he loved them couldn’t even start to cover what he really felt. And when they died…”she paused again, this time, looking at her hands, her interlaced fingers, and a small ring in her right hand, gold with a black stone, like a heart. “Rick… he felt so guilty, because of what he told about Red John, because he hadn’t quitted, that he… he built a wall around himself, never allowing anyone inside, never leaving himself. He become a prisoner of his own soul, of regret and sense of guilt, but you… you know, every time he talked about you, I could see you walking past his defenses, and making the wall fall. I could.. sense that he was coming back to being… functional, and now that I look at him, I see that he is happy, again. maybe even more than before because he knows he is a better man.”
“He has always been a good man. He helped people…”
Stella rolled her eyes. “Don’t take me wrong, I adore Rick, but I knew him back then. He used to sell hope in exchange of money, to put food in the plate at the end of the day, but he was still doing it for the money. But now, I see that he does it because he feels he has to, and because he really thinks he can make a difference.”
“And on a state salary, nonetheless!” Teresa smiled, but not too honestly, not with her heart. It was, after all, just a pathetic tentative of lowering the tension, hoping that Stella would change the subject, or maybe, just maybe, even shout up, stop altogether that complete nonsense about her being Jane’s guiding light, the real and only love of his life.
“So.. don’t go breaking his heart, because I don’t think he could recover this time around. You saved him, and he is the kind of man who needs it constantly.” The breath died into Teresa’s throat, hit by the irony, shocked by the fact that, contrary to what she had thought until that moment, Stella was definitely no Patrick Jane. She didn’t need to ask Jane if he loved her, because she knew the answer was no. She knew that whatever was going on between them was a farce, a parenthesis, brief, doomed to end soon breaking her heart in the process. But she couldn’t do any different. Jane was her drug, and she couldn’t die without having had her filling as long as she could. She need to feel like she really belonged to him again and again, to remember it once he’ll be gone, once he’d be no more hers. She just couldn’t help it.
Teresa knew that, on a rational level, she was supposed to dread the evenings, when she came back to Jane’s, but, truth to be told, she couldn’t find in her to be scared. It was quite the opposite, and what scared her was how easily she had fallen in a routine that saw the day belonging to the job, the evenings to meals and chats spent with “Patrick” and Stella, while the nights, the night no longer filled by nightmares, hurting memories of her teen years and insomnia, but by passion. The nights, those belonged just to her and Jane, and every night, as long as she was sharing his bed, even if there was a tiny part of herself that kept repeating it was a mistake, they both kept falling victim to passion and lust, abandoning themselves to each other in the quiet and dark room, just to be lulled by their breathing and heartbeat to sleep afterward. She kept saying that it was merely sex, that they were both considerate adults who hadn’t been into a relationship of any kind for too long, but, every night as she went to sleep, her head on his naked chest, listening to his heart, she knew otherwise. She knew she was in love with him, knew she was just torturing herself, and knew that, despite her affirmation, feelings were very much involved, at least on her side. But… that was just half of the problem.
The other half was what side of Jane she had fallen in love with. Because one thing was caring about and wanting the affectionate, good-looking and skilled and talented lover that kept her body warm in their sensual nights, but loving just him, Patrick, was another pair of sleeves. She found herself realizing that she had fallen for him for the small things, the details, lost looking at him while driving her to work in his traps on wheels or reading a newspaper late in the evening, in front of the fireplace (with a pair of glasses, nevertheless. She couldn’t believe he was such a narcissist he was hiding the fact he actually needed glasses to read…); she was mesmerized, looking at him talking with his sister, discovering yet again another layer of the man she had known for almost a decade, one she had never witnessed before, one that she was absolutely crazy about - a man not only free from his obsession, but carefree, at least when with the younger woman, a man who always showed an honest to God smile, open and funny, but not in a childish or stupid way like often on the job. She was just glad that, after their amicable chat in the bedroom the day of her arrival, maybe under Jane’s orders, Stella had dropped the subject of their relationship altogether, contrary to the man’s initial fears, not fuelling her childish and irrational fantasies any further - it was bad enough knowing that her “relationship” had an aspiration date, but knowing that while hearing someone talking about love and weddings, Teresa was sure she wouldn’t be able to deal with that.
On the last day, though, just few hours before leaving, Stella decided it was time to drop the bomb once again and to stop behaving like she had promised her brother to. The younger woman knew it wasn’t exactly right, but she had just few hours left in their company, and there was a couple of questions she wanted to examine before it was too late. As much as unconventional Rick was, as many mistakes he had done in the past, and even if she hadn’t known him since her birth, he was still her brother, and she loved him. And she wanted to make sure he was happy. And even a blind would have seen how much happy Teresa made him. Only, to work on the permanent long term thing, it looked like he needed a bit of encouragement. And encouraging him was what she was best at. Subtly, of course.
***
“You know, my boss is such an ass, you can’t imagine what a scene he did when I asked for my vacation time! I work like a mule for months, I work extra hours, I even help him out on my supposed free days, and when I ask him for a couple of days off, he just start mumbling some nonsense about having to tell him with months prior and not at the last moment! Like I could actually know what, say, I’ll do in six months time!” she exclaimed, exasperated, her last evening, while she was cutting vegetables in the kitchen while Jane was looking at some cake and Lisbon was dealing with the beef. The man, as soon as she had started her lamentation, has started grinning, barely resisting the urge of laughing. Because, even if she was his sister, Stella hadn’t inherited his acting skills, and even Teresa could see that she was faking it. It was all an act, and as soon as she said the last words, they both got where she was going - Teresa’s blushing face was telling him as much.
“If this is one of your subtle hints to tell us you need to know in advance the date of the wedding, I’m telling you, sis, you are wasting your time here… we haven’t thought of a date yet and we’ll not think of a date in the immediate future.”
“Yes, but what I’m telling you is, when there will be a date, you’ll need to decide it in advance, so that your family, and I assume hers as well, could take what common human beings define as vacation time to actually attend the ceremony. You don’t want Teresa to be all alone on her wedding day, right?” he rolled his eyes, puffing. Stella, when she wanted, could be exasperating. And even worst- she kept playing the mommy with him, him, the way older eldest brother. Or maybe the teacher. He had never had a proper teacher, but, from Lisbon and Annie’s (the beloved niece of his beloved lady cop) tales, he assumed there wasn’t such a difference…
“Listen, 10, 15 years ago, I could have agreed with you, but right now, I really don’t see your point. Society and law have evolved, right now marriage is no longer a necessity to have rights upon each other, and children born inside and outside the marriage have equal status. Teresa and I are fine this way, Stella, we just need each other without the troubles of having to follow archaic traditions connected to a bourgeois society now decadent.”
“Here we go, mentalizing modern day’s society…” she rolled her eyes, annoyed, and turned to face her brother, clearly annoyed, but just not that. Jane could see it in her eyes, Stella was serious. And mad with him. The fire in her eyes told him as much. “First: maybe you kind of forgot it, but in modern day’s society, as you call it, women actually have a saying about their lives. So, I think that you should just ask her what she wants, instead of assuming by reading her, like you do with everyone else, and besides… what kind of man are you? A wedding is serious business for us women! She is probably arranging it since she was a young girl, and you… you are robbing Teresa of the most important day of her life!” she started to cry, and Jane fought the urge to pat her back to sooth the pain like she was younger, but decided against it. There was a chance he had been wrong, and that Stella had, indeed, inherited his acting skills. In doubt, he rather preferred not giving her any field advantage.
Teresa, on her side of the kitchen, instead, was… divided. She didn’t know if make a face (when she was a teenager, her priorities had been finishing school, putting enough food in the plate for her family with her job and defending her brothers, and definitely not thinking about how she wanted her wedding dress to look like) or simply fallen victim to the nervous breakdown that had slowly made its way into her since her arrival days prior at Jane’s (because thinking of a wedding while she and Jane were going to “break up” was just too hurting, too frustrating).
At the end, she decided to have mercy of herself and Jane and find an excuse that could shout Stella up for the time being. “Stella, take it easy. Before setting on a date, we’ll have to tell my brothers that we are actually together, and that, we’ll not do it until at least Christmas, when I hope I’ll be able to finally fly to Chicago and tell them in person of this… development.”
“She thinks they’ll not understand because she told them for years that I was a thorn in her side and an immature idiot….”
“…which you obviously are not….” She sarcastically added, repressing the urge to either laugh or shout at him in exasperation.
“…so she wants to explain them in person how it happened that she fell head over heels in love with this charming and handsome specimen of male…”
“aka an immature idiot and a pain in the ass, because that’s how I usually call you, darling, a pain in the ass. Don’t deny it, when it comes to work, you are oh so terrible!”
“Don’t listen to her, sis, that’s all an act to look like a though on the book cop. Which she isn’t.” he smiled, when he had to retrieve an apron that Teresa herself, extremely annoyed, had thrown at him. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a piece of office furniture. Or a bullet. “She is just very motional about it, and she feels like she has to be face to face for this kind of discussion. Teresa here isn’t simply the mother hem of her family, she is the mother, and like any other mother with her children, even if they are all grown up and divorced, she wants to be the one telling them they are going to get a daddy. Or, at least, a very cool uncle for their own children.”
“Oh, yeah, right, a cool uncle that teach them to pick pockets, con poor Rigsby and to manipulate me.”
“Ehy, at least I didn’t teach her hypnosis, considered you are so against it, and besides, I’d like to remember you that what I thought her, are all things important in her line of work…”
“Annie is merely 14 and if Tommy dares to bring her along just another time for his so-called bounty hunt job, I swear to God that I’ll kill him with my own two hands. The same that will happen to you if you dare to get close to her again. Especially to teach her… things she shouldn’t learn at all. It’s bad enough she is growing up with divorced parents and a mother that behaves like she is bipolar and concentrate on her own fun and sleeping around, she shouldn’t… be put in all of this. She shouldn’t consider a job where she could die, where she doesn’t have a private life, doesn’t go out or meet normal people, a job that allows her close to no sleep and stop her from seeing her family when she feels like!”
“Oh, c’mon, you don’t see enough your family because they basically live on the other side of the country, and you do have a private life. I mean, you have me, after all…”
“I have you that are my consultant! Jane, we met at work, on the job! Like I did basically with the majority of my last relationships!”
“First, you didn’t have relationships, you had one night stands before me. Second, do you have an idea how many couples meet at work? The world is full of people who’s married and work together! Third, don’t underestimate Annie. If, in few years time, she’ll still think she’ll want to be a cop, I’m sure she’ll make it to detective in no time. She is astute and has a great ability in observing. Did you know that she pointed out to me that we were crazy in love with each other? At a time I wasn’t even close to admitting it with myself. I bet she’ll not be surprised that, at the end, we surrounded to our own feelings. I’ll tell you, I bet everything you want that, when you’ll tell your brothers about me, they’ll not be surprised because she has probably already prepared them for this possible outcome.”
“You know that I don’t like betting, especially with you. Only a madman would bet with a professional conman like you.”
“Or, maybe, you just know that I‘ll be right yet again and you absolutely hate when you have to say that you are sorry to me because you mistrusted me yet again when, yet again, I was right from the start.”
“Don’t you ever get bored of being so full of yourself?”
“Nope, because, like you, my dear” he said, stealing a quick kiss, just a quick peck that made her blush. “I’m completely in love with myself. And, like it or not, I know you love me because that’s how I am, and you’d never change me for anything in the world. Because, otherwise, I’d not be the man you feel in love with” he smiled, and yet again he stole another quick peck on her lips, and yet again Lisbon blushed, smiling a little. She was beyond confused, and yes, a little scared. Everything he had said about her was true. She loved him for who he was, and she didn’t want for him to change, not for her, didn’t want to see him looking any different, from his character to his look, because that was the man she had fallen, hard, for. Was he reading her mind? Was he just acting? She didn’t know what she wanted to believe. Both possibilities were equally scary, in her mind, though.
“You know, you are right, there’s no need for a marriage. You already behave like an old married couple, with all this bantering.” Stella smiled, grinning mischievously, inserting herself in the conversation. Both Lisbon and Jane blushed- yes, even Jane- because, frankly, they had forgotten about her. It had been just them, the rest of the world, simply gone, vanished. “But, still, I think that you should hurry up and put a ring on it before someone else noticed all her good sides and proposed first. And you don’t want to lose her, right?” He rolled his eyes, and Teresa, she simply laughed at the sight. It was… strange, in a good kind of way, seeing Jane being pestered by his sister, a sister who kept behaving like a mommy. She smiled, imagining a scene that never actually took place, both Jane and Stella robbed of their own siblings- she could see Jane taking his sister for her pigtails, and she could see Stella playing the nurse and the caring mother with both her beloved dolls and her brother, whenever he was sick.
“No” he whispered, at low voice, again lost in Teresa’s eyes, again trapping the rest of the world outside their own bauble. “No, I don’t”
Teresa found her eyes suddenly filled by silent tears, and, she wasn’t sure if consciously or not, she got closer and closer to Jane, until her chest was pressed against his warm light blue cotton shirt, one hand in his curls, the other one cupping his cheek, while he held her for the waist like for dear life. They closed their eyes, and inhaled deeply each other’s scent, until Teresa broke the spell by kissing him, not a quick peck like he often did, like he had done just minutes before, but not even the lustful ones they shared in the privacy of the bed where they loved each other silly every night. It was… different. It was a kiss of love, full of feelings, at least for her. “And I’m not planning on leaving. I love this life too much for renouncing this.” she held him again, hiding her face in the crock of his neck, crying silently in his collar, hoping that Stella would mistake them for tears of happiness, and not the ones of a broken and desperate soul, of a woman who had had everything and was going to lost it, because deep down the cop knew the truth- it was all a farce, and Jane wasn’t in love with her.
But at that moment, he lifted her chin with his right index, green eyes focused and lost into ocean blue ones, and he lowered his head to hers, allowing their lips to melt in that slow and sensual movement that had become routine as soon as they had started it just few days prior; that, got Stella pretty exited, and like the romantic girl she could be from time to time, she clapped her hands together, squeaking like a mouse among a forest of cheese. “You know, I have the sensation that next time I’ll be here, we’ll be arranging a wedding. Or maybe, even attending one….”
“You can bet on it” he answered, his voice a whisper on Teresa’s lips, still refusing to let it go of her or of her gaze, refusing to let it go of the woman in his arms altogether. He was scared, terrorized just thinking about how he could have gone on living his life after having tasted this slice of heaven with her. she was going to no longer be his, body and soul, soon enough, and he didn’t know how he could have been able to deal with that, a life without her, looking at her meeting Mr. Right, getting married to him, having the children of that man, and not his own…
And he didn’t know she was thinking the same, was hunted by the same nightmares. He didn’t know, because he wasn’t a mind reader, he didn’t know because she wasn’t transparent, but just translucent.
He had never been as good as he claimed at reading her.
She jumped, taken aback, when, still in front of the mirror, long dark hair still wet, naturally curly, she heard the click of the lock of the front door, and she run, almost falling from the stairs, to welcome them at open arms, shivering and blushing fearing that Stella could really be like her brother, could actually see through her, reading her mind, see the sinful things the mentalist inflicted her among the sheets, and what she inflicted to him as well, not a prude, open minded as she had never been before in bed with other men…. She knew she was blushing, she was aware of that, always been, even before Jane come along keeping bringing it up, but she just hoped she wasn’t looking like the heroine from those cheap romance novels she had but claimed to hate and not possess, the look they had after a night of making love, that dreamy and hair-headed, but, like often remembered by male characters, so, so sexy. Is he going to think this of me as well?
She had barely had the time to arrive at the door that something resembling a tornado hit her, engulfing her, Stella, so similar to her (half) brother with the blonde curls and the light blue/green eyes, slightly younger, a shocking resemblance with Kate Hudson, and everything happened so quickly that Teresa could barely register the arms around her neck, the warm embrace, as warm as anything she had received lately, and she felt tears…. Tears from that woman who didn’t know her, from that woman who thought her brother was getting married with her … for the first time in a while, she felt guilty. And dirty.
“Oh, Teresa, you can’t imagine how happy I am to finally meet you! Rick has told me so much about you and you two, I think I already know you, and I couldn’t wait to meet you for real, and I’ve always told Rick you were just perfect for him and one day he’d see it and here we are now, and you two are getting married and I so knew it and you can’t imagine how happy I was to know he met someone and had decided to start anew, and knowing it’s you he is going to start a family with is even better!” as Stella kept talking without taking a single breath of air, hopping with her hands on the cop’s shoulders, said cop remained speechless and kind of astonished, because, really, where was the terrible person Jane had describe her? Stella looked just like someone a bit too enthusiastic, maybe with a tendency to go where she wasn’t supposed to, but certainly, she didn’t look like some kind of female mentalist, nor a tyrant. Not if her behavior was indication of anything…. “Well, Rick here forgot to tell me you were absolutely cute, but I guess I’ll forgive him. it’s what little sisters are supposed to do, right? Idolize their big brothers and assume they are just perfect!”
A little piece of Lisbon’s heart broke as she heard that simple sentence. Stella did knew about her, knew a lot- or at least, she assumed so - but still, her brother had never told that his girlfriend was cute. She kept asking herself why, over and over. Didn’t he think she was cute? Or, did he just told Stella the most important details, forgetting everything about the rest? Or maybe, he didn’t find her cute at all; after all, she was Teresa Lisbon, senior agent, nothing but plain, there was no reason for him to be sexually attracted to her, also because…. Because she had seen pictures of her, of Angela, his beautiful wife, a princess from a fairytale, but, still, was it really necessary? He should not have done that, threatening her that way, in front of Stella, a woman who was supposed to be her soon to be sister in law, even if it was just a lie, a lie they were the only two aware of. But, after all, she couldn’t say she was surprised, considering it was Patrick Jane she was thinking about, always honest about the others, unable to hide things concerning the rest of the universe.
Even reading her feelings, or maybe just because of what he saw into her green irises, Jane just smiled, a Cheshire grin printed on his lips. “Teresa isn’t cute. Cute isn’t an adjective that suits her.” With two quick steps, he joined his “girlfriend”, and without touching her with his hands, he kissed her, a peck on the lips that was extremely close to a very passionate kiss, so close it was almost a make-out session; still, she answered to his kiss, with as much passion as he had put into it, but as soon as she started to enjoy it, when she was going to throw herself at him - literally - he parted, grin still in its place, and all she could do was staring, unable to think, unable to understand, still partly mad because of his words, still incapable to read between the lines, to understand where he was going, what he wanted, from her and from them.
“Stella, Teresa is the most beautiful and charming woman I had ever seen, and I didn’t tell you because I knew you weren’t going to believe me and I wanted for you to see it with your own eyes.” His voice was a whisper, words breathed on her lips, the same lips he was going to kiss once again, but this time differently; lost in her own eyes, there was no trace of malice or mischief, but something else, something entirely different, something Teresa couldn’t describe. She shivered, confused, shocked by his deepness, by his honesty. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if he was just a good actor, and an extremely good one, or if maybe, just maybe, he was honest.
It was Stella’s brilliant laughter to awake her from her reverie, from that kind of state of trance she seemed to fall into almost every time Jane was around, put into it by his very presence and not his voice or his touch. “Typical Rick. He says something tactless, but the he remedies saying something that’s incredibly sweet, looking at you with those puppy eyes, and all you can do is forgiving him!” she laughed again, just once, then she started to walk around, wondering around the space she could have access to without having to bother asking. She kept walking, until her eyes fell on a picture - She took it in her hands, the picture, a framed image of few years prior, and looked at it with dreamy eyes, taken completely by what she was seeing…. Her brother, in smoking, Teresa with a gorgeous black dress, an evening gown, his arm around her waist, eyes in the eyes, smiling, almost conspirators somehow, isolated from the rest of the world, glasses of champagne in hand to cheer up to a magic that was theirs and theirs alone.
At her back, Teresa jumped, seeing what Stella was carefully studying, the picture she was gently skimming over with long fingers. That picture, she knew it, she had saw it so many times… because she had it as well, preserved from years, carefully hidden between the pages of her favorite book, and Jane, Jane had had it, he had kept it, framed it, secured it. And she didn’t knew it, never did. It was another piece of the puzzle that was Jane that kept confounding her; the more time passed, the more she started to think it wasn’t a scam, not just a lie, an act, but something real, that they were meant for each other, to stay together, because, maybe, he loved her for real. Maybe her feelings weren’t one-sided as she thought, maybe they were reciprocated.
“You know, Rick, it’s pretty amazing what Teresa did to you. I’ve never thought possible that I’d have seen the day you’d stop living into a motel room, and now, this, a proper home, with real furniture. And tidy. You, woman, are just great! ”
The aforementioned woman went to hide behind Jane, eyes on the soil blushing furiously and tucking a rebel lock of dark hair behind her ear . For many reasons, one of them was the fact that Jane had never moved on because of her. And because she wasn’t exactly the right person to address for a tidy and ordinate proper place, considering that she put in order only when she was extremely nervous. “Uhm, well, we’ll see what you’ll think when my compulsive untidiness will start to show….. the place is kind of new and freshly rearranged, so it’s no big deal, it’s kind of easy, I mean, I’d feel guilty leaving everything around…”
“And that’s the reason she still had unpacked boxes in the middle of her living room after 4 years she had moved there!” he hugged her from the back, an arm around her waist, the whisper of a kiss on her dark, wild curls, natural and not styled in any way, just like he loved them the most and his mind wondered back, a few years, to a dark day, when Teresa Lisbon opened completely up to him, trusted him beyond reason, was naked, figuratively speaking, right before his eyes, those days, when she thought she had killed a man, body and mind poisoned by that evil doctor, and he was there, to take her in his arms, to save her. and he did it, he saved her, like he had promised her to just few months before.
“Can I take a look around?” Jane laughed under his teeth, smiling, looking at his fully grown up sister, still behaving like when they had first met, many years prior, when she was just a teen. She still had those huge, puppy eyes, and she still pouted in that particular way that made impossible saying no to any request. Eve if… even if he knew. It wasn’t that she wanted to have the tour. She wanted to have a tour with Teresa. “Teresa, just remember that I still have Annie’s number, so rest assured that if I get to know she told you embarrassing details about my life, I’ll get Tommy to repay the favor!” He screamed, still laughing, while he come back into the kitchen to keep himself busy, and to avoid listening to their conversation, almost positive that Stella would say embarrassing things, anecdotes from his childhood learnt from their mother; he grinned when he saw Teresa, dragged upstairs by what, in a perfect words, would really be her soon to be sister in law, showing him her tongue, playfully, laughing and smiling. Like they were a real couple.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Teresa was silently thanking God that, in all his pomposity and arrogance (and jerk-ness) Jane had decided to move in something quite… small, for his taste, and not something à la Mashburn, like she thought he would have done, once returned to be a fully functional and complete human being. She thanked for that, and for the small tour Jane himself had given her the previous evening, before things went south. Also, she thanked God that she (they) had put Stella inside the first room once reached the top floor, hence avoid her need to put her nose where the younger “Jane” wasn’t supposed to even if… even if the real motive they had put her there was no more, since Teresa’s belongings had been put not in the guestroom like they had previously agreed when they decided to play this charade in Stella’s honor, but in the master bedroom, alongside Patrick’s, after they had decided that they were both adults and that could need a little bit of comfort and release without adding anything else.
“Oh my freaking, bloody hell!” she woke from her reverie when she herd Stella clapping her hands and jumping enthusiastically like a child in candy-land, and she left her spot in the corridor to join the younger woman inside the room. She smiled of a little smile, her heart happy to see that Stella did have something in common with her brother- the tendency of getting distracted (or apparently so) by things. Things like fresh linen in cotton, bought in a whim inside a small shop, coming from the Provence, like the bars of soap, lavender and rose and milk and strawberries and cream ( her favorites), or things like the bottle Californian red wine, or maybe, the box of chocolate from Marie. All things she loved herself, but had never indulged into, too busy being a cop and forgetting about the woman. “You know, this doesn’t exactly scream Patrick to me…” Stella teased, falling on the bed, Teresa in front of her, uneasy, not really knowing what she was supposed to do. She had sisters in law, and nieces and nephews, but when the boys got their own lives, she had been long gone. Having, for the first time, a soon to be sister in law (or… well… Stella) at home, her own home (or, well, Jane’s place) was definitely new. But… she wasn’t sure she wasn’t liking it. Stella seemed to be a nice person, a little bit like Jane but more normal, less on the edge, probably for the lack of traumatic events tainting her life and the slightly different uprising, with no father forcing his own child to be a con-man… Stella was the kind of person she was going to miss, once it was over.
She sat at the other woman’s side, not looking at her but at her own feet, smiling of a sad smile, her mind on overload, filled by memories of her past. “My mum… she loved taking care of our guests. Back home, in Chicago, we always arranged everything together. She loved taking care of people, making them feel special, appreciated.” She made a face, suddenly. “My brothers, they weren’t exactly into French linen. Or soap.” She laughed, and both then fell in a comfortable silence, a silence neither of them were willing to break, so delicate and precious it was - Stella didn’t need to be her brother to understand the underlines of Teresa’s words, to get that she had lost her mother, probably at a young age, and that she had to look after few younger siblings. She understood it even if Rick hadn’t told her so, keeping the talk about Teresa at a minimum, but saying everything there was to say in few words or even less.
“He is happy” Stella suddenly said, getting up, sitting at crossed legs, Indian style, her back against the headboard, looking in front of her and never at Teresa, like she was scared or it was a too deep confession, but there was a smile on her lips, one Teresa knew too well, one she had seen so many times on the woman’s brother. “he is as happy as I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Teresa just nodded, and Stella saw that as her encouragement go on. “I know how he looked from the outside, but… you have to understand, Rick has always wore a mask, and besides, it’s not like Alex taught him any different, nature and nurture, you know? Angela and Charlotte, they were the only good and real things about him, in his life, and… sometimes, I think that saying he loved them couldn’t even start to cover what he really felt. And when they died…”she paused again, this time, looking at her hands, her interlaced fingers, and a small ring in her right hand, gold with a black stone, like a heart. “Rick… he felt so guilty, because of what he told about Red John, because he hadn’t quitted, that he… he built a wall around himself, never allowing anyone inside, never leaving himself. He become a prisoner of his own soul, of regret and sense of guilt, but you… you know, every time he talked about you, I could see you walking past his defenses, and making the wall fall. I could.. sense that he was coming back to being… functional, and now that I look at him, I see that he is happy, again. maybe even more than before because he knows he is a better man.”
“He has always been a good man. He helped people…”
Stella rolled her eyes. “Don’t take me wrong, I adore Rick, but I knew him back then. He used to sell hope in exchange of money, to put food in the plate at the end of the day, but he was still doing it for the money. But now, I see that he does it because he feels he has to, and because he really thinks he can make a difference.”
“And on a state salary, nonetheless!” Teresa smiled, but not too honestly, not with her heart. It was, after all, just a pathetic tentative of lowering the tension, hoping that Stella would change the subject, or maybe, just maybe, even shout up, stop altogether that complete nonsense about her being Jane’s guiding light, the real and only love of his life.
“So.. don’t go breaking his heart, because I don’t think he could recover this time around. You saved him, and he is the kind of man who needs it constantly.” The breath died into Teresa’s throat, hit by the irony, shocked by the fact that, contrary to what she had thought until that moment, Stella was definitely no Patrick Jane. She didn’t need to ask Jane if he loved her, because she knew the answer was no. She knew that whatever was going on between them was a farce, a parenthesis, brief, doomed to end soon breaking her heart in the process. But she couldn’t do any different. Jane was her drug, and she couldn’t die without having had her filling as long as she could. She need to feel like she really belonged to him again and again, to remember it once he’ll be gone, once he’d be no more hers. She just couldn’t help it.
Teresa knew that, on a rational level, she was supposed to dread the evenings, when she came back to Jane’s, but, truth to be told, she couldn’t find in her to be scared. It was quite the opposite, and what scared her was how easily she had fallen in a routine that saw the day belonging to the job, the evenings to meals and chats spent with “Patrick” and Stella, while the nights, the night no longer filled by nightmares, hurting memories of her teen years and insomnia, but by passion. The nights, those belonged just to her and Jane, and every night, as long as she was sharing his bed, even if there was a tiny part of herself that kept repeating it was a mistake, they both kept falling victim to passion and lust, abandoning themselves to each other in the quiet and dark room, just to be lulled by their breathing and heartbeat to sleep afterward. She kept saying that it was merely sex, that they were both considerate adults who hadn’t been into a relationship of any kind for too long, but, every night as she went to sleep, her head on his naked chest, listening to his heart, she knew otherwise. She knew she was in love with him, knew she was just torturing herself, and knew that, despite her affirmation, feelings were very much involved, at least on her side. But… that was just half of the problem.
The other half was what side of Jane she had fallen in love with. Because one thing was caring about and wanting the affectionate, good-looking and skilled and talented lover that kept her body warm in their sensual nights, but loving just him, Patrick, was another pair of sleeves. She found herself realizing that she had fallen for him for the small things, the details, lost looking at him while driving her to work in his traps on wheels or reading a newspaper late in the evening, in front of the fireplace (with a pair of glasses, nevertheless. She couldn’t believe he was such a narcissist he was hiding the fact he actually needed glasses to read…); she was mesmerized, looking at him talking with his sister, discovering yet again another layer of the man she had known for almost a decade, one she had never witnessed before, one that she was absolutely crazy about - a man not only free from his obsession, but carefree, at least when with the younger woman, a man who always showed an honest to God smile, open and funny, but not in a childish or stupid way like often on the job. She was just glad that, after their amicable chat in the bedroom the day of her arrival, maybe under Jane’s orders, Stella had dropped the subject of their relationship altogether, contrary to the man’s initial fears, not fuelling her childish and irrational fantasies any further - it was bad enough knowing that her “relationship” had an aspiration date, but knowing that while hearing someone talking about love and weddings, Teresa was sure she wouldn’t be able to deal with that.
On the last day, though, just few hours before leaving, Stella decided it was time to drop the bomb once again and to stop behaving like she had promised her brother to. The younger woman knew it wasn’t exactly right, but she had just few hours left in their company, and there was a couple of questions she wanted to examine before it was too late. As much as unconventional Rick was, as many mistakes he had done in the past, and even if she hadn’t known him since her birth, he was still her brother, and she loved him. And she wanted to make sure he was happy. And even a blind would have seen how much happy Teresa made him. Only, to work on the permanent long term thing, it looked like he needed a bit of encouragement. And encouraging him was what she was best at. Subtly, of course.
***
“You know, my boss is such an ass, you can’t imagine what a scene he did when I asked for my vacation time! I work like a mule for months, I work extra hours, I even help him out on my supposed free days, and when I ask him for a couple of days off, he just start mumbling some nonsense about having to tell him with months prior and not at the last moment! Like I could actually know what, say, I’ll do in six months time!” she exclaimed, exasperated, her last evening, while she was cutting vegetables in the kitchen while Jane was looking at some cake and Lisbon was dealing with the beef. The man, as soon as she had started her lamentation, has started grinning, barely resisting the urge of laughing. Because, even if she was his sister, Stella hadn’t inherited his acting skills, and even Teresa could see that she was faking it. It was all an act, and as soon as she said the last words, they both got where she was going - Teresa’s blushing face was telling him as much.
“If this is one of your subtle hints to tell us you need to know in advance the date of the wedding, I’m telling you, sis, you are wasting your time here… we haven’t thought of a date yet and we’ll not think of a date in the immediate future.”
“Yes, but what I’m telling you is, when there will be a date, you’ll need to decide it in advance, so that your family, and I assume hers as well, could take what common human beings define as vacation time to actually attend the ceremony. You don’t want Teresa to be all alone on her wedding day, right?” he rolled his eyes, puffing. Stella, when she wanted, could be exasperating. And even worst- she kept playing the mommy with him, him, the way older eldest brother. Or maybe the teacher. He had never had a proper teacher, but, from Lisbon and Annie’s (the beloved niece of his beloved lady cop) tales, he assumed there wasn’t such a difference…
“Listen, 10, 15 years ago, I could have agreed with you, but right now, I really don’t see your point. Society and law have evolved, right now marriage is no longer a necessity to have rights upon each other, and children born inside and outside the marriage have equal status. Teresa and I are fine this way, Stella, we just need each other without the troubles of having to follow archaic traditions connected to a bourgeois society now decadent.”
“Here we go, mentalizing modern day’s society…” she rolled her eyes, annoyed, and turned to face her brother, clearly annoyed, but just not that. Jane could see it in her eyes, Stella was serious. And mad with him. The fire in her eyes told him as much. “First: maybe you kind of forgot it, but in modern day’s society, as you call it, women actually have a saying about their lives. So, I think that you should just ask her what she wants, instead of assuming by reading her, like you do with everyone else, and besides… what kind of man are you? A wedding is serious business for us women! She is probably arranging it since she was a young girl, and you… you are robbing Teresa of the most important day of her life!” she started to cry, and Jane fought the urge to pat her back to sooth the pain like she was younger, but decided against it. There was a chance he had been wrong, and that Stella had, indeed, inherited his acting skills. In doubt, he rather preferred not giving her any field advantage.
Teresa, on her side of the kitchen, instead, was… divided. She didn’t know if make a face (when she was a teenager, her priorities had been finishing school, putting enough food in the plate for her family with her job and defending her brothers, and definitely not thinking about how she wanted her wedding dress to look like) or simply fallen victim to the nervous breakdown that had slowly made its way into her since her arrival days prior at Jane’s (because thinking of a wedding while she and Jane were going to “break up” was just too hurting, too frustrating).
At the end, she decided to have mercy of herself and Jane and find an excuse that could shout Stella up for the time being. “Stella, take it easy. Before setting on a date, we’ll have to tell my brothers that we are actually together, and that, we’ll not do it until at least Christmas, when I hope I’ll be able to finally fly to Chicago and tell them in person of this… development.”
“She thinks they’ll not understand because she told them for years that I was a thorn in her side and an immature idiot….”
“…which you obviously are not….” She sarcastically added, repressing the urge to either laugh or shout at him in exasperation.
“…so she wants to explain them in person how it happened that she fell head over heels in love with this charming and handsome specimen of male…”
“aka an immature idiot and a pain in the ass, because that’s how I usually call you, darling, a pain in the ass. Don’t deny it, when it comes to work, you are oh so terrible!”
“Don’t listen to her, sis, that’s all an act to look like a though on the book cop. Which she isn’t.” he smiled, when he had to retrieve an apron that Teresa herself, extremely annoyed, had thrown at him. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a piece of office furniture. Or a bullet. “She is just very motional about it, and she feels like she has to be face to face for this kind of discussion. Teresa here isn’t simply the mother hem of her family, she is the mother, and like any other mother with her children, even if they are all grown up and divorced, she wants to be the one telling them they are going to get a daddy. Or, at least, a very cool uncle for their own children.”
“Oh, yeah, right, a cool uncle that teach them to pick pockets, con poor Rigsby and to manipulate me.”
“Ehy, at least I didn’t teach her hypnosis, considered you are so against it, and besides, I’d like to remember you that what I thought her, are all things important in her line of work…”
“Annie is merely 14 and if Tommy dares to bring her along just another time for his so-called bounty hunt job, I swear to God that I’ll kill him with my own two hands. The same that will happen to you if you dare to get close to her again. Especially to teach her… things she shouldn’t learn at all. It’s bad enough she is growing up with divorced parents and a mother that behaves like she is bipolar and concentrate on her own fun and sleeping around, she shouldn’t… be put in all of this. She shouldn’t consider a job where she could die, where she doesn’t have a private life, doesn’t go out or meet normal people, a job that allows her close to no sleep and stop her from seeing her family when she feels like!”
“Oh, c’mon, you don’t see enough your family because they basically live on the other side of the country, and you do have a private life. I mean, you have me, after all…”
“I have you that are my consultant! Jane, we met at work, on the job! Like I did basically with the majority of my last relationships!”
“First, you didn’t have relationships, you had one night stands before me. Second, do you have an idea how many couples meet at work? The world is full of people who’s married and work together! Third, don’t underestimate Annie. If, in few years time, she’ll still think she’ll want to be a cop, I’m sure she’ll make it to detective in no time. She is astute and has a great ability in observing. Did you know that she pointed out to me that we were crazy in love with each other? At a time I wasn’t even close to admitting it with myself. I bet she’ll not be surprised that, at the end, we surrounded to our own feelings. I’ll tell you, I bet everything you want that, when you’ll tell your brothers about me, they’ll not be surprised because she has probably already prepared them for this possible outcome.”
“You know that I don’t like betting, especially with you. Only a madman would bet with a professional conman like you.”
“Or, maybe, you just know that I‘ll be right yet again and you absolutely hate when you have to say that you are sorry to me because you mistrusted me yet again when, yet again, I was right from the start.”
“Don’t you ever get bored of being so full of yourself?”
“Nope, because, like you, my dear” he said, stealing a quick kiss, just a quick peck that made her blush. “I’m completely in love with myself. And, like it or not, I know you love me because that’s how I am, and you’d never change me for anything in the world. Because, otherwise, I’d not be the man you feel in love with” he smiled, and yet again he stole another quick peck on her lips, and yet again Lisbon blushed, smiling a little. She was beyond confused, and yes, a little scared. Everything he had said about her was true. She loved him for who he was, and she didn’t want for him to change, not for her, didn’t want to see him looking any different, from his character to his look, because that was the man she had fallen, hard, for. Was he reading her mind? Was he just acting? She didn’t know what she wanted to believe. Both possibilities were equally scary, in her mind, though.
“You know, you are right, there’s no need for a marriage. You already behave like an old married couple, with all this bantering.” Stella smiled, grinning mischievously, inserting herself in the conversation. Both Lisbon and Jane blushed- yes, even Jane- because, frankly, they had forgotten about her. It had been just them, the rest of the world, simply gone, vanished. “But, still, I think that you should hurry up and put a ring on it before someone else noticed all her good sides and proposed first. And you don’t want to lose her, right?” He rolled his eyes, and Teresa, she simply laughed at the sight. It was… strange, in a good kind of way, seeing Jane being pestered by his sister, a sister who kept behaving like a mommy. She smiled, imagining a scene that never actually took place, both Jane and Stella robbed of their own siblings- she could see Jane taking his sister for her pigtails, and she could see Stella playing the nurse and the caring mother with both her beloved dolls and her brother, whenever he was sick.
“No” he whispered, at low voice, again lost in Teresa’s eyes, again trapping the rest of the world outside their own bauble. “No, I don’t”
Teresa found her eyes suddenly filled by silent tears, and, she wasn’t sure if consciously or not, she got closer and closer to Jane, until her chest was pressed against his warm light blue cotton shirt, one hand in his curls, the other one cupping his cheek, while he held her for the waist like for dear life. They closed their eyes, and inhaled deeply each other’s scent, until Teresa broke the spell by kissing him, not a quick peck like he often did, like he had done just minutes before, but not even the lustful ones they shared in the privacy of the bed where they loved each other silly every night. It was… different. It was a kiss of love, full of feelings, at least for her. “And I’m not planning on leaving. I love this life too much for renouncing this.” she held him again, hiding her face in the crock of his neck, crying silently in his collar, hoping that Stella would mistake them for tears of happiness, and not the ones of a broken and desperate soul, of a woman who had had everything and was going to lost it, because deep down the cop knew the truth- it was all a farce, and Jane wasn’t in love with her.
But at that moment, he lifted her chin with his right index, green eyes focused and lost into ocean blue ones, and he lowered his head to hers, allowing their lips to melt in that slow and sensual movement that had become routine as soon as they had started it just few days prior; that, got Stella pretty exited, and like the romantic girl she could be from time to time, she clapped her hands together, squeaking like a mouse among a forest of cheese. “You know, I have the sensation that next time I’ll be here, we’ll be arranging a wedding. Or maybe, even attending one….”
“You can bet on it” he answered, his voice a whisper on Teresa’s lips, still refusing to let it go of her or of her gaze, refusing to let it go of the woman in his arms altogether. He was scared, terrorized just thinking about how he could have gone on living his life after having tasted this slice of heaven with her. she was going to no longer be his, body and soul, soon enough, and he didn’t know how he could have been able to deal with that, a life without her, looking at her meeting Mr. Right, getting married to him, having the children of that man, and not his own…
And he didn’t know she was thinking the same, was hunted by the same nightmares. He didn’t know, because he wasn’t a mind reader, he didn’t know because she wasn’t transparent, but just translucent.
He had never been as good as he claimed at reading her.