"And handed them exactly what they needed to destroy you." I leaned forward, desperate for her to understand. "I should have asked you. I should have listened when you explained how things worked in your department. Instead, I charged in like some white knight and proved everything they'd been saying about you needing a man to fight your battles."
She was quiet for a long moment, staring into her coffee cup. When she finally looked up, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
"Do you know what the worst part was?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "It wasn't losing the promotion. It wasn't watching Santoro get everything I'd worked for. It was knowing that you — the person who was supposed to understand me better than anyone — had fundamentally misunderstood who I was."
Her words loomed over me ominously, panic clawing at my chest. "Izzy —"
"You saw me as someone who needed protecting instead of someone who was already protecting herself. You saw a victim instead of a fighter." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, the gesture angry and vulnerable at the same time. "And maybe... maybe I let you. Maybe I was so tired of fighting alone that I forgot how to let someone stand beside me instead of in front of me."
I felt something crack open in my chest. "I'm sorry for pulling away, too. After the letter, after everything went wrong... I didn't know how to face you. I was drowning in my own failure, and I was a coward."
"What failure?" she asked, confusion flickering across her face.
This was it. The thing I'd never told her, the wound that had been festering for months.
"The patient I told you about," I said slowly. "The domestic violence case. The one that came in beaten up, and I... I gave her all the resources, set up safety planning, convinced her that people could help her."
Izzy's expression softened slightly, but I pressed on.
"She was murdered. Beaten to death by the same man who'd stood in my ER and threatened to put bullets in anyone who tried to help her." My voice cracked. "She trusted me, Izzy. She looked at me with this desperate hope when I promised her safety, and I failed her completely."
"Jimmy," she said softly.
"When you told me you wanted kids, all I could see was her face. All I could think was, 'How can I promise to protect a child when I couldn't even keep one woman safe?' How could I give you a child, Izzy, when I still wake up wondering if I even deserve to be someone's father?"
The silence that followed was profound. I watched emotions flicker across her face — surprise, understanding, something that might have been pain.
"You pulled away because you were trying to protect me," she said finally. "From your own fears."
"And you pulled away because you were trying to protect yourself from mine." I managed a bitter laugh. "God, we're idiots."
"Speak for yourself," she said, but there was the faintest hint of a smile in her voice. "I'm a professionally trained idiot."
Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch. "Is that better or worse than a regular idiot?"
"Worse. We have credentials."
The moment of levity felt like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. But then her expression grew serious again.
"Jimmy, you can't save everyone. No one can. Not me, not you, not anyone in our line of work." She reached across the table, her fingers barely brushing mine. "But that doesn't mean we stop trying. It doesn't mean we're not worthy of love or family or happiness."
"I know that now," I said. "Intellectually, anyway. I'm working on believing it."
"And I know that I can't keep pushing people away every time I'm scared of getting hurt." Her fingers pressed against mine, the contact warm and familiar. "I became someone I didn't recognize, Jimmy. I turned into this cold, untouchable thing because I thought it would keep me safe. But it just made me alone."
"You're not alone," I said fiercely. "You're never alone. Not if I have anything to say about it."
She was crying now, silent tears streaming down her face. "I missed you so much. Every day. Every call, every quiet moment, every time something funny happened and I wanted to text you about it. I missedus."
"I missed us, too." I turned my hand palm up, letting her fingers interlace with mine. "I missed your terrible movie choices and the way you steal the covers and how you make everything taste better just by being there while I cook."
"Jimmy," she said, her voice thick with tears and something else. Something that sounded like hope. "I don't want to do this here. I don't want to fall apart in public."
I understood immediately. This conversation needed privacy, needed space for the kind of vulnerability that couldn't happen over coffee in a crowded café.
"Your place or mine?" I asked.
"Mine," she said without hesitation. "I want... I need you to choose to come home with me. Not because it's convenient, but because you want to."
