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He’d known for a couple of hours, and he felt like he was losing his mind.

He had never thought of himself as a violent person, but knowing that Florence had been violated twice, both times when she was so young, both times without someone to be there and hold her hand and absorb her tears, made him want to kill the monsters who had taken something from her she could never get back.

She’d lost her innocence, a part of her soul, her ability to trust others, and yet despite all of that, she had triumphed.

She’d escaped the life that would have been so easy to fall into, she hadn't followed in her mother’s footsteps.

Instead, she’d blazed a bright trail through life as a respected and decorated cop who risked her life to keep others safe.

Eli found himself in awe of her.

In his life he’d suffered loss after loss, losing his brother, then his sister-in-law, his mother, and then his father.

Each time he’d had to stand beside a coffin watching it get lowered into the ground, knowing that he’d never get to see or speak to that person again, a little piece of him had gone with them.

But through all of that, he’d always had his family, even after his father’s death he’d had his nephew, he’d had connections, people he could go to when the loneliness became overwhelming.

Who did Florence have?

A brother who didn't even know half of what she’d gone through, and who seemed to have spent more time with his friend’s family than he had looking out for his little sister.

Florence had no one.

At least she hadn't until now.

“Please tell me you are not looking at engagement rings.”

“Okay, I'm not looking at engagement rings,” Eli told Elliot with a grin.

“Then why are you on a jeweler’s website with engagement rings on the screen?” Elliot asked, peering over his shoulder at the laptop open on his desk.

“Because I'm looking at engagement rings,” he replied, stating the obvious.

“You’re asking Florence to marry you?”

“Not today, but yeah, in the near future.”

“You’ve only known her just over a week.”

“So?”

“So don’t you think that’s kind of soon?” Elliot walked around to the other side of the desk and pulled out a chair, dropping down into it.

“I'm not known for waiting, hanging back, and taking my time. When I see something I want, I go after it.”

“Only Florence isn’t a thing, she's a person. A person who has been a lot more hesitant at going out with you than you were about going out with her,” Elliot said.

“She’s had a rough life, absent father, drunk mother, lots of Mom’s boyfriends in and out of her life, some bad stuff happened when she was a kid, she has trust issues.

Trust issues that she overcame this morning when she opened up to me.

” He wasn't going to betray Florence’s trust by going into details, but he wanted his friend to understand that just because Florence had had doubts, it wasn't because she didn't feel the same way about him that he felt about her.

“You’re really serious about her?”

“Deadly,” he said, then winced at his choice of words.

Given how they’d met and Florence’s job, it probably wasn't the best way to describe his feelings for her.

“I knew when I first laid eyes on her that there was something about her that called out to me. Yeah, that first day I wanted to get her to go out with me because I was attracted to her, and I wanted to get her into bed, but that first time she turned me down, everything changed.”

“You wanted her because you couldn’t have her, because she was a challenge.”

Although he hated to admit it, yeah, at first that was what it was, but it had quickly changed to something much deeper.

“I won't say that at first the fact that she turned me down when most women jump at the chance to go out with me wasn't intriguing, but it’s so much more than that.

I can't explain it, when I saw her I just knew that she was the one for me. Love at first sight I guess, just like my parents.” After spending his childhood and adolescence watching his parents trust their guts, both in their business and personal lives, it had taught him that sometimes your body instinctively knew things well before your brain figured it out.

“Things are still really new between you two, what if once you get to know her better you find out you're not as compatible as you think?”

“Won't happen. I know what I feel, man. I'm falling in love with her, and the more I know about her, the more I like her.”

“So, you're already all in?”

“ All in. She’s everything that I want in a woman, she’s strong, smart, compassionate, caring, and underneath her tough cop exterior she’s vulnerable and even a little insecure.

She makes me feel needed and not just for my money, she needs someone to be there for her, and I want to be, Elliot, I want to be, man.

I've never felt like this before, she consumes me.

I miss her when I'm not with her, like miss her with this gut-wrenching, stomach-knotting, raging emptiness.

When I'm with her I'm torn between wanting to ask her a million questions to find out every single detail about her, and wanting to take her to bed and never let her leave.

All I do is think about her, count the seconds until I can see her again, I want her and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

So, yeah, I'm not going to propose to her today, but I'm also not going to wait forever just because society thinks it’s too soon.”

Elliot leaned forward, elbows on his knees, studying him.

Then he nodded, “I get it, and I'm happy for you. I can't say I would have pictured you falling for a cop, but then again, I don’t think anyone expected me to fall in love with someone like Susannah. So you’re all in, and you said Florence is letting her guard down, did you think any more about Susannah’s advice that you try to connect with her on a different level? ”

“I did,” he couldn’t help but grin as he thought of what he had planned for his date with Florence tonight.

When he’d dropped her off at the precinct and told her he’d pick her up and take her out for dinner after work she hadn't protested, just kissed him and told him she couldn’t wait. “Actually, I got the idea from you.”

“From me?” Elliot asked, eyes wide.

“Yep.”

“So, you going to tell me what it is?” Elliot asked.

“Nope. Not until I tell Florence, but I know she’s going to love it.

” After thinking that there was a chance that she’d been hiding a relationship from him he’d felt like he had to make that up to her, especially knowing that while he’d been thinking the worst, she’d been lying unconscious in her apartment.

When they’d been curled up in her bed this morning, the idea had come to him, and the second that it had, he’d known it was the perfect way to show her rather than just tell her how much he cared about her and how important she was to him.

If Florence needed reassurances that he wasn't playing around, then that’s what he’d give her.

If she needed to hear a million times that he was serious about her and them, then he’d say it a million times.

If she needed them to date for a while before they were intimate, then he’d take as many cold showers a day as he had to.

Whatever she needed, he would give her because she was already his.

It didn't matter that they’d only known each other a few days, it didn't matter that she had issues from her past that made her wary of people but men in particular, it didn't matter that she was unaccustomed to having someone in her corner.

As a kid, he might have been the carefree, irresponsible rich playboy, but caring for his mother as she battled cancer, and helping to raise his orphaned nephew had grown his nurturing side.

Florence didn't just bring out that side in him, she also brought out his protective side, he wanted to tuck her away someplace where nothing and no one could ever hurt her again, he wanted to take care of her and make sure she never wanted for anything again.

It wasn't a side of him that most people saw, no one had ever whittled through the charming, sexy, playboy veneer to the man underneath.

No one had ever cared enough to try, to even see that there was more to him.

Florence saw, she saw every part of him, and that was both terrifying and exhilarating.

He was already in too deep and couldn’t walk away from her even if he wanted to.

And he didn't.

Florence had had a grip on his heart since he saw her in that alley, and it only tightened the more he got to know her.

1:06 P.M.

“So, he was right,” Florence said as she looked around the apartment of thirty-year-old Michael Stypes. “The man in my apartment knew that Michael was the killer. He said he was there when I was almost run down. Do you think he followed the car and found out who the driver was?”

“Makes sense, although what I'd really like to know is how he knew that we were onto Michael. He had to have been at the precinct at some point, seen the files on our desks. You think it was the Coffin Killer?”

Florence shrugged. “My guess would be yes, but I didn't know he was stalking me. He sends letters, sometimes pictures of some of his victims, but as far as I knew, he wasn't following me around. Obviously, I was wrong since he was there when I was almost run over.”

“I don’t like that,” Jake said, getting that protective look on his face.

“Can we just deal with one serial killer at a time please?” she asked, taking a step closer to the large corkboard that covered most of one of the living room walls in Michael’s apartment. “Lucky for us, our guy is a meticulous planner.”

“Lucky,” Jake agreed as he stood beside her.