briar. |cm|

chapter eighteen

     "I hate mornings," I groaned. It'd been a week since the last case, the one at the mall. We hadn't been called in for anything, the office was painfully quiet all of the time. Spencer and I were playing chess, he was winning. There was a comfortable silence, the one that generally came with the end of winter. The first week in march is always my favorite, there was rain, fat droplets lightly beating at the office windows.

     Aaron was in his office, ever the still, cold statue. His stoic face peered intently into a case file, hand tracing words onto paper, gripped by his left hand. He's a lefty, I had never noticed that before.

     "Ren," Spencer snapped his fingers in my face, breaking my train of thought.

     "Huh?" My head snapped up. "Oh, sorry Spence. Is it my turn?"

     He sighed. That's the issue with having a best friend, there's no lying, no hiding, no shielding yourself. You can't, because they see right through you, they always do. "Don't look at me like that."

     "You have to talk to him, Ren. You know what? Why don't you go do that right now."

     My eyes widened. "What?" He grinned and looked at me knowingly.

     "You heard me. Just go, speak. We have nothing better to do."

     "But- but we're playing chess!"

     "I'm going to win."

     "Bloody hell. I hate you."

     "I love you too. Now go," He used his hands to shoo me away, and with one last glare, I made my way up the stairs, hovering outside of his office. A doorknob never seemed so unappealing as that one did in the moment. His blinds were drawn, and really the only people who didn't know about our strange situation were Rossi and Morgan, neither of which were paying attention. I could've just stood there for a bit, but I decided against it. Gathering all of the nerve I had left, I quickly reached up to rap my knuckles on the door, three times, quickly.

     "Come in," I heard his voice call. I took in a deep breath, and pushed the door open, walking in confidently and shutting the door behind me. "Oh, Flor. I don't really have time-"

     "Aaron, with all due respect, shut up." 

     I sat down in the chair across from his desk. The bookshelf directly behind him held criminal thinking, psychology, an overview, sociopathy vs. psychopathy, and other books along that line. No Jane Austen, no Margaret Atwood, no Charlotte Brontë, this is what I noted the most when my eyes trailed over the words that decorated the spines. He hadn't read too many of them, I knew that much. None of them were worn in, loved. None of the spines were cracked, none were filled with sticky notes and page markers. A thin film of dust was almost visible, dancing on the gold-edged pages. "We need to talk, and since you've decided to avoid me for the better part of a month, I am taking the initiative."

     "Okay-"

     "Nope. I'm doing the talking," I interrupted. "What happened, happened, and it shouldn't have, but it did. We can't bloody well ignore it because, well, even Reid can feel the tension, and you know he's positively daft when it comes to these things," I paused before continuing.

     "It was late, and I was caught up in the moment, so I'm sorry. But I think you also need to take a little bit of responsibility."

     "I-"

     "No, still talking," I cut him off. "I was simply trying to get a bloody hair tie for my hair, and you came over with all your tell me to stop and I will  rubbish, which is insanely hard for a girl to resist when she's sleep deprived and practically a walking corpse. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm not attracted to you Aaron, because I am. And I know that you're attracted to me, but this cannot ever happen again. Honestly, I'm going absolutely barmy, and it's fucking with my work."