DISCLAIMER: Women's Murder Club and its characters are the property of James Patterson, 20th Century Fox Television and ABC. Popular belongs to Ryan Murphy. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The version of Sam used in this story comes from another embarrassingly long Brooke/Sam saga I wrote a while ago called Just a Little Insight. But you don’t have to read that to get this. I just used Sam because… it’s Sam. And Carly Pope is hot.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Sneak
By Misty Flores
PART XII
Save for the beep-beep-beeping that had been annoying the crap out of Sam for the past few hours, her room was remarkably silent for being so crowded. This was of course due to the fact that the three women who had been hanging on their every word were now crowded around the laptop, scrolling through it silently.
She was grateful for the respite. Her side was flaring, her head was aching, and in the back of her mind there still existed the urge to take some time, and really process the events of the past few days; finally let it sink in that yes, she had been stabbed, and yes, it was probably by a serial killer, and the pictures and lives she deconstructed really were of women who really did die in horrifying, incomprehensible ways… and this was just all… so… real.
It hurt to breathe, and when she inhaled, trying hard to keep her suddenly rapidly beating pulse down, she winced in reaction, feeling suddenly as if her side had torn open.
Gentle pressure suddenly landed on her shoulder, squeezed, and with that, Sam was brought back. Feeling suddenly exhausted, she managed a nod to the concerned expression standing beside her. "I'm fine," she managed, resisting the urge to push a palm over the bandage that stretched over her lower back and around her side. "I'm just…"
"You're tired," Brooke said, and Sam resisted the urge to retort that she was one to talk. At least Sam had actually gotten some sleep. Her girlfriend, who, on any ordinary day had men and women tripping over themselves to look back at her as she walked down the street, had dirty, stringy hair, and the bags under her eyes were only barely hidden by the glasses she had begun using sometime during the night, when the contacts had begun to sting.
It was Brooke at her most human; exhausted and not caring at all about her appearance because Sam had almost died.
Sam was going to adore her forever.
"I'm okay," she rasped, to prove her point, reached up and squeezed the warm hand sitting on her shoulder, doing her best to mask the pain that would not stop throbbing.
Brooke's gaze was hard, searching, testing her.
The click of fingers against the laptop gave Sam a small reprieve, when Cindy Thomas exhaled loudly through her nose, a faster reader than the rest. "Even in a woman of the highest distinction, he saw only the heart of a hypocrite," she began, her face paler than Sam had ever seen it. "Elated with pride. To him she was a cruel enemy whose unbroken ambition was to gain the mastery over whatever unhappy man might surrender to her." Cindy closed her eyes, crossing her arms, shuddering. "God. This guy defines misogynist."
The quote had been one that Brooke herself had highlighted, from one of the fairytales that Sam had always hated, back when she had researched the French guy in an attempt to stop being bored on late summer night while Brooke was brainstorming ideas with her showrunner.
Brooke, apparently too tired to keep standing, sank heavily into the chair beside Sam's, her uncomfortable version of the bed for the sleepless night she had just spent. "I know, on paper, maybe it doesn't make sense. Griselda… just takes everything. Everything the prince does to her… she just takes it. To prove their love. She's nothing like Lindsay."
"No, Lindsay is nothing at all like his perfect woman," Claire agreed. She was the woman that Sam knew least, but her bearing was almost regal, movements elegant, as she precisely drew her fingers up to her forehead and rubbed. "His perfect women takes this shit and thanks him for it."
Jill shut the laptop, apparently unable to read anymore. "Which is the whole point, right? Lindsay is the anti-Griselda, so she must be punished." The lawyer was shrewd. She too, looked paler than before, expression a mixture of nausea and revulsion, and everything in between - the consequence of finally getting into this guy's head. A glance at Cindy, and then she opened it again, "And everywhere everyone's eyes were on Griselda whose patience under the greatest adversity was praised by all. Indeed, the people even praised the prince's cruelties because they had produced so remarkable a proof of Griselda's constancy that people saw in her a model for women everywhere in the world."
"What a fucking asshole."
The line was spit by Cindy, who had gone from pale to red, face blotched unattractively with splotches of anger. Sam had only dated two women in her life, the one before Brooke was a red-head, her first girlfriend who had a temper to match her fiery tresses. At the moment, the younger Cindy Thomas seemed eerily reminiscent of Rebecca, who had lost her temper with her once or twice, mostly over Brooke related fights, because even when she was with Rebecca, it had always been Brooke.
And Sam got it. She understood, because Cindy Thomas was head over heels over the chick who was meant to learn this lesson, and her fellow reporter was finally starting to make some headway, based on what Brooke had told her about finding Cindy with Lindsay's tongue down her throat.
Sam's head throbbed. Her side throbbed.
"It's what you were looking for, right?" Brooke's tone was gentle, carefully grabbing hold of the laptop before Jill or Cindy could fling it around in their frustration. "The reason he's doing this?"
"The reason he's doing this?" It was Lindsay Boxer, lady-cop who hated her and may have saved her life that interrupted. Any hesitation she might have had entering Sam's room was gone, as her dark hawk eyes landed fast on Sam McPherson. "What's the reason?"
There existed in Cindy Thomas a set of emotions that were so tangled and so extreme she honestly, for the first time in her life, was unable to define what it was she was feeling.
She tried, standing in a sterile hospital room, looking at a pale reporter in obvious pain, and the haunted girlfriend who hadn't slept a wink all night, and her friends beside her that loved Lindsay as much as she did and knew her better. It was the only way to really face what it was she was dealing with - untangle her emotions, categorize them, set them each in their preferred location and mark them with a little sticky, allow her brain to memorize how each felt and find the words to describe them as distinctly and cleanly as possible.
She felt guilt. She felt anger. She felt fear. She felt horror. She felt curiosity. She felt the type of excitement that comes from adrenaline, and she also felt weariness - a weak urge to wish this was just all DONE.
But that one was fleeting. Because this was good. Not the stabbing or the murders, but the fact that maybe, just maybe, they were closer to understanding this guy. She began to breathe, and tried to think logically through the idea that Lindsay had been picked because she was strong and amazing and flawed and divorced and impatient and everything that this guy hated. Whoever he was.
And it wasn't like she needed the push, but now every part of her was invested - because she was Lindsay's lover. She had tasted her, and made love to her, and had seen a vulnerable, frightened Lindsay that she had always suspected existed, and only now had she been trusted to actually witness.
She had been scared before, terrified actually, of the idea of Lindsay being targeted. It had consumed her more than she wanted to admit, but in a sense, she hadn't actually dealt with it. Not when she looked at those pictures. Not with the idea that Lindsay could be anything like those women in those photo. Lindsay was strong. She was a hero. She was untouchable.
In reality, Lindsay was only as strong as the rest of them were. She was a hero, all right, but she was also dark and brooding and prone to relying too much on a gun. And just last night, Cindy herself had touched her, branded her and made her human, and God-DAMMIT, this was real and Cindy was so much in love, and she would die first before she would let someone break Lindsay.
Never before had her ambition seemed so… ambivalent. The story didn't matter more than the person. It was never hard. But this?
And so she categorized her feelings, tried to get them under control, and then of course that all went to hell because Lindsay Boxer walked into the room.
For once, Cindy was struck dumb. Lindsay was a detective, she was hopelessly obsessed, and Cindy took no offense to the one searing glance Lindsay glared in her direction before landing on Brooke. Lindsay had this hanging over her shoulders long enough. She needed answers.
Thankfully, they had them. Not all of them, but more than what they had before.
It was Brooke who explained it, the story of Griselda, the patience shepherdess who met a prince who had gotten lost in the woods, and for whom the prince had fallen in love. The prince who hated all women, thought them deceitful and selfish, and who had sworn never to marry lest a woman destroy him. Brooke, voice monotone and going scratchy from her all night research session, talked about his one order to Griselda when he proposed: she would always obey him, never say no to him, no matter what his will. And of course, Griselda did just that, never questioning, never saying no, not when he stripped the new princess of her jewels and forced her to live like a hermit in her quarters. Not when he forced her to give up her newborn daughter to him to be raised elsewhere. Not when he told her the baby had died. Not when, years later, he brought the baby, now a fifteen year old girl, back to the castle and pronounced her as the new queen, evicting the shepherdess, and then forcing her to be the girl's new guardian. It was only on his supposed wedding, after she had survived and 'passed' all these tests of patience and love, did he finally reveal his plans and reinstate the Shepherdess to her former glory. And both daughter and mother were thankful, pleased, happy that finally she had proved her love to the prince, who was praised for his actions, because Griselda did indeed, prove to be the perfect woman.
Lindsay took that in with an achingly inscrutable frown on her face, one that was only betrayed by the sudden widening of her tell-tale brown eyes, wide and moist, before darkening and blinking away any emotion.
"If that prince lived right now, I'd have his ass thrown in jail for abuse and incest," she snarled as soon as the story was over, and it was enough to break the somber spell, forcing Cindy to blink, methodically uncurl her arms from over her chest.
"It's what you wanted," Brooke replied again, and Cindy, tearing her eyes from Lindsay, nodded shortly.
"It is," she said, trying to sound as unaffected as possible, despite the distracting presence of Lindsay two feet away. "Thank you."
Brooke caught her glance, must have noticed the obvious conflict in her expression, before she only looked away, and once again touched Sam, like she was suddenly reassuring herself.
"I sent you an email," Sam said, rubbing at her face, "With what we found… and… here." She reached out the packet of papers she had been hoarding, waiting for Cindy to take it. "We got Dr. Morris' okay to send some stuff to the nurses station. They printed it up."
Oddly aware of herself, Cindy reached forward to pluck the folder from the other reporter. "Thanks," she said again, as meaningful as she could. "Thank you."
"Just find this bastard."
"And now, I think we should let you rest." True to form, Claire had already plucked the clipboard from Sam's bed, scanning her report with careful, caring eyes. "You're on Advil and I know for a fact that isn't enough when you've gotten your side split open. Mind if I look at that before I go?"
It was her not so subtle clue to clear out, the doctor in Claire cutting through the sudden somber atmosphere.
"I thought you were a Medical Examiner," Sam said, obviously confused as the other woman came forward, gentle and carefully as she began to roll up the side of Sam's t-shirt. "As in dead people."
"You have to know how to cut up a living person if you ever want to get near a dead one," was Claire's quip, before throwing them all a look that clearly said 'get out'.
Finally allowing a small smile, Cindy once again mouthed Brooke McQueen a 'thank you' before following the blonde and the brunette out to the hallway.
"We need evidence," Jill interjected as soon as they had exited the room, voice low. "We need a suspect. We need more than we have."
"You don't think I'm trying to get you that?" Lindsay's voice was strained; angry. Cindy's brow arched in reaction, noting the tight face and its fierce contradiction to the expression she had seen just a few hours ago. "I'm figuring it out Jill, until then I need you to talk to Denise and her FBI contact and figure out a way to keep Ashe here for a few more days."
The statement was jarring. "What? Why?"
Lindsay shot her only a sideways glance, before turning her attention back to Jill. "He got orders to head back to Quantico. He doesn't want to go."
"And Denise has any pull in that how?"
"You tell me," Lindsay answered rhythmically. "She's the one with the source. He was comfortable enough to call her and bitch to her about us arresting him, she can bitch back about recalling him."
Jill's eyes were sharp and curious. "And why exactly are you so amped on him staying?"
Lindsay looked tired. "Because I don't think he's the guy anymore. And he may be the only person on the planet as obsessed with catching Kiss-Me-Not as I am."
"I think there's a few people in this hallway who may disagree with you," Cindy blurted without thinking. A half second, then Cindy felt a blast of heat invade her when those gorgeous eyes beamed in her direction.
"And you had something to tell me."
"Ashe had a girlfriend and it was Elaine Lewis," she said automatically, averting her eyes, feeling flushed when she felt Jill's scrutinizing stare on her.
When there was no audible reaction to her revelation, she looked up again, to discover Lindsay looking at her with the most odd expression.
"What?"
Lindsay still didn't answer her. Instead, she just kept looking, looking through Cindy and then suddenly at her, before blinking her eyes and ignoring her completely.
"Given when Brooke and Sam have uncovered and the fact that the guy is after me and Ashe, I think he's close to making a mistake," Lindsay said, dismissing the information completely, as Claire joined them. "I'm going to keep the uniform with Sam, and I want to know who goes in and out." She turned to Claire. "What do you think?"
"Same knife allright," Claire agreed. "And now that the research is done, I suggest we leave them alone. Sam has refused the more powerful painkillers, and that's a hell of a paper cut. Thankfully the ER doctor who admitted her seems to be quite invested in her. The nurse said he's checked in on her three times."
"Dr. Morris?" Cindy queried. "Yeah, he's the one that talked to you over the phone."
"It happens when you're hot and your girlfriend is even hotter," Jill murmured, apparently not over her harmless Brooke lust. "Even after no sleep that girl is gorgeous."
"At any rate, she needs to concentrate on healing. And her pretty girlfriend is one sleepless night away from turning into a zombie." Claire stopped, and considered the faces of the women in front of her. "Did ANY of you sleep last night?
A loud sigh indicated Lindsay wanted the conversation back on track. "You're going to talk to Denise," she said, pointing a finger at Jill. "Right?"
Gaze darting from Cindy to Lindsay, the woman chose not to question Lindsay's sudden focus. "Yes," she said simply.
"Good." Cindy was startled when suddenly Lindsay was staring straight at her. "I need your witness tapes, all of them. Everyone you questioned at the crime scene, I want them all. Get them to me by the end of day."
The callous tone confused her, but Cindy found herself nodding regardless. "Okay. Sam also gave me the list of all the people she interviewed before she was attacked. When do you want to go over-"
"No." Brown eyes flashed harshly at her. "I just want the tapes. And your notes. And Sam's notes. I don't want you. I want you to go back to your job, and write your article, and then I want you to stay the hell away from this investigation. Do you understand?"
No, she didn't understand. She was completely flabbergasted. Aware that she must have looked like a fish, Cindy closed her gaping mouth and then tossed helpless glances to the women on either side of her. "Lindsay-"
"Drop them off with Jacobi at the precinct."
And then Lindsay was moving, walking away from them without so much as a good-bye, which was bitchy Lindsay on a worst day, but now, after last night… almost unthinkable.
"So… apparently Lindsay's still pissed you didn't tell her about Ashe," Jill breathed.
The summation didn't make sense, not at first, until she knocked herself out of her hurt daze and discovered both women looking at her with mutual looks of pity. And then she realized that as far as they knew, the last they had left her, Lindsay was still furious at her for not telling her about Ashe.
They had no idea that Lindsay and Cindy had spent most of the night fucking each other senseless.
God… why did that seem so long ago now?
"I gotta go," she breathed, and headed in the same direction she had seen Lindsay stomp her booted feet.
"Cindy, leave it alone," she heard, Claire offering her sage words of wisdom, but of course, Cindy didn't listen.
She couldn't.
Not when Lindsay was at stake.
The words had become blurry, no matter how hard Brooke tried to make them focus into actual words. Instead, the little black letters blinking at her from the white monitor seemed to almost mock her. Not that it mattered. Even if she did manage to read the word, she hardly had the concentration to make the sentence make sense.
"Claire's right."
Lifting her head from her palms, pausing in the middle of a self-imposed massage to her temples, Brooke discovered her girlfriend eyeing her with that look that was usually reserved for interview subjects. "What? About what?"
"About the fact that you're exhausted." Lips pressing together, Sam held out her palm. After a brief moment, Brook took it, rising weakly to her feet and carefully settling in on the edge of the bed, allowing Sam to intertwine the fingers on their joined hands. It took effort not to sink into Sam's body, allow herself just a minute of rest. The jet leg was taking its toll. "I love that you're here. But you need to get some rest."
Brooke ignored the statement to carefully brush her fingers through the dull strands of Sam's normally shiny hair. There were lines around Sam's eyes, caused by pain, but she had noticed them before, after her long assignment in the Middle East.
Brooke would have never thought Sam capable of withering. Sam had always been so full of life so… determined to live it.
She supposed in some way, that was a consequence.
"I'll get some rest when they catch this guy," she said gruffly, careful as always, as she smoothing strands away from Sam's forehead, exposing a perfect complexion that as a teenager, Brooke had always envied.
"Did I ever tell you that you are a stubborn jackass who doesn't know when to quit?" The flat observation was actually a quote, and despite herself, Brooke had to hide a smile at hearing her own statement to Sam thrown back at her.
"So apparently we have that in common."
The fingers knitted against her squeezed lightly. "Brooke. Seriously. Get some rest. Go back to the hotel. Sleep. We've done all we can."
It was easy to say. It was hard to do. Not when letting Sam out of her sight meant not being able to take responsibility for her well-being. And Brooke knew how to take care of people. She knew how to take care of Mac, and how to take care of her father, before Jane came along. She tried to take care of Sam, and that was the most important, because honestly, Sam was the only person who knew how to take care of her.
Sam could see her weakening, because she turned her head and pressed dry lips to her the corner of her mouth, nuzzling into the side of her face. "Come on, baby. I'll be fine. I'd be better if I knew you weren't turning into the crazy coffee guy from those old Mad TV sketches."
God, she was tired. She glanced at the empty bed, the unoccupied side of Sam's double room, but Sam shook her head, squeezing her fingers again.
"No. To your hotel. Into your bed, and then you'll sleep. No calling my Mom to give her the updates, and if Maria so much as texts with questions about how to host that damned London show, you will throw that phone away." Brooke's phone buzzed in retaliation. "And I swear to god if Mary Cherry calls one more time and tries to get you to do her True Hollywood Story I'm going to get up out of this bed and kick her ass myself."
The last line, said with such exasperation and such a mimic of their time in high school, caused a sudden chortle, and that exhalation of emotion was almost too much for her. Her shoulders bunched, and her body ached, and she found herself almost sobbing, head falling to close her eyes against Sam's ear, gripping her as tightly as she dared.
"You saved my life, Sammy," she whispered.
It was a statement she had told Sam over and over, and it was true. Every day, in every way, Sam kept saving her.
The fingers against hers lifted, and she felt the soft pressure of a kiss against her skin. "I know," Sam said roughly. "You saved mine too."
She had been afraid of this.
The utter focus that encompassed Lindsay during her most extreme cases left a shell of a woman, whose near-sighted focus alienated and confused vulnerable young reporters in love with them.
It was the most tragic kind of conundrum, in which the one thing Lindsay needed to get through this huge pile of steaming shit she was digging through was the one thing she was so damned good at fucking up.
"Cindy's a big girl," Claire said softly, obviously sensing her thoughts. "She can handle it."
Pulling out her cell phone, Jill found she was actually shaken. "You know what?" she decided. "That's not even my problem right now. I love Lindsay and I love Cindy but I don't care if they work it out or not. I just want Lindsay alive. And when that happens and we catch this bastard, then we can lock them in a room together and have them go at it."
"Okay, but... we're taking away Lindsay's gun first, right?" Claire's sense of humor was appreciated, as was her ability to make a quick exit when she saw Jill flipping open her phone. "Be careful," Claire warned, and squeezed her arm in silent good-bye. "You know where to find me."
Nodding in distraction, Jill scrolled quickly through her contacts, and found the number she was looking for.
To him she was a cruel enemy whose unbroken ambition was to gain the mastery over whatever unhappy man might surrender to her
Breathing out raggedly, she tried hard to banish the creepy Griselda story from her mind, eyes on the bored uniformed officer who hooked his hands through his belt loop and leaned against the door, watching idly a cute nurse who snuck glances at him from the nurses station.
Two rings, and a clipped voice cut into her ear. "I've got court this afternoon. You should be here. This better be good."
Jill found it infinitely easier if she considered Denise to be a domesticated cat. Fluffy and capable of purring if you knew where to pet, but she still had claws and a hell of a hiss.
Idly, she thought that was actually a pretty hot analogy. "I'm on my way back," she said, "I had to make a stop at the hospital first to check in on that reporter."
Denise paused. "Your friend called it a hate crime in the paper."
"I have a feeling that wasn't entirely her doing." Straightening, Jill grimaced. "Remember when you said you'd do something for us if we needed it?" She walked past the uniform officer and ignored the glare of the doctor who passed by her and her phone.
A pause. "I remember prefacing it with the rule that it had to be within reason."
"How well do you know your FBI contact?"
There was a heavy sigh. "Jill, if I keep calling the guy he's going to think I'm trying to ask him out."
The image drew an unexpected smile. "Well, is he cute?"
"I'm hanging up now."
"Denise, seriously. Apparently Ashe has been recalled to Quantico. Lindsay wants him to stick around."
"I thought the entire reason you had me call him in the first place was to give them grounds to take him off the case."
"What can I say?" she quipped, punching the elevator bunch. "Women are a fickle bunch."
A deep voice laughed low behind her, sending an unexpected chill up her spine and forcing her to nearly drop her phone. "I definitely know something about that."
Insides suddenly tight, Jill licked her lips, apprehensive and, against-her-will, sadly hopeful as she turned and laid eyes on her own personal Dr. Luke, tight-lipped and now standing beside her.
"Jill?" Denise's voice was suddenly tinny. "Hello?"
"Luke," she whispered.
"Luke?!"
Luke's brown eyes burned into her. "You know this is a hospital," he said, strict and formal, crossing his arms as he stared her down. "You need to turn off that phone."
Swallowing hard, Jill found herself unexpectedly numb, never looking away from his achingly beautiful face as she managed into her phone, "Denise, I'm going to have to call you back," before disconnecting.
You listen to me. You can't protect her. You may think you can, but you can't. Whatever relief you're getting from her right now, no matter what she tells you, it'll be nothing compared to the devastation you're going to feel when you get word that she's got her lips sewn shut and her guts torn out.
The words haunted her. The image was too easy to picture, and that gutted her, and even so, she couldn't get free of Cindy Thomas.
She hadn't walked twenty feet before she heard her name being called, the scramble of the reporter trying desperately to catch up.
She followed her. Of course she followed her.
An immense spurt of irritation worked its way up Lindsay's chest and twisted around her heart, because Cindy Thomas was damned infuriating. She could feel her, coming up behind her; she could hear her, with those damn little boots that clacked on hospital linoleum.
"Lindsay."
Jaw clenching, Lindsay held on to the irritation, wanted desperately for it to bubble up into anger, because she had given Cindy specific instructions, and like always, Cindy didn't follow them.
"Lindsay, wait."
A rankle of emotion shivered up her spine, and she was grateful for it, as she drifted to a stop and turned, keeping her face was blank as she could as she watched gorgeous and infuriating Cindy Thomas chase after her like a kicked and pissed off puppy.
"I told you what to do," she bit, letting her eyes flash, hoping to God she could manage this. Because all she could think of was Ashe, drilling those words into her, and Ashe, with his dead girlfriend, and the one achingly real memory of staring down into a beautiful face and feeling absolutely, completely loved. "So why don't you do your job for once instead of stalking me?"
She said it harshly, too harshly. She could see the way Cindy visibly reacted, nearly taking a full step back, obviously not expecting this.
And then Cindy surprised her. Her face hardened and she took two steps forward, draping her bag around her shoulder and rising to her full height, still so much shorter than Lindsay, but looking her straight in the eye.
"I fell for that once," she said flatly. "I'm not going to do it again. Just how stupid do you think I am? Don't answer that," she added, before Lindsay could open her mouth and offer the obvious insult. "You'll only piss me off."
"I thought that was the point."
"No, the point is to drive me away, right?" Cindy's chin came up defiantly. "Scare me so bad so I leave you and I don't end up like Ashe's girlfriend. Because you think the same thing that happened to her will happen to me and you can't stand to have that happen because you actually care about me. You think you're not being completely transparent? Lindsay that's like... every Lassie story ever told."
"So now you're comparing yourself to a dog?" she asked, against her better judgment.
"A dog knows its place." Cindy's brow arched coldly, and Lindsay flushed, remembering the harsh words thrown at this young girl in her first attempt to distance herself. "I on the other hand, would do something really stupid, like handcuffing myself to you and swallowing the key."
That response, for the moment, stunned her into stupidity. "You'd do that?"
"Do you want to find out?"
Cindy Thomas was insane. She couldn't deal with that. Not now.
Shuddering, Lindsay reached forward and grabbed hold of Cindy's elbow, dragging her into a nearby bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
"Listen to me," she began.
She didn't get to finish, because without words, Cindy simply stepped forward, wrapped her arms around her waist, and let her head fall ever so sweetly against Lindsay's chest.
Any protest she might have made died the second she felt the soft form press against her own. Her heart jackknifed in her chest, lodged in her throat, and Lindsay went stiff, looking down at a sweet red-head who now only wanted to offer comfort.
And she wanted it. She wanted it more than she hated the fear.
Her weakness broke in the face of Cindy's strength.
Admitting defeat, Lindsay's palms smoothed over the ruffled top and drew over Cindy's shoulders, bringing her in closer, until they fit together perfectly, just like they had the night before.
In that action, Lindsay finally discovered she could breathe.