We often argue. Not fight. Argue.

And she's so good at it. She uses a lot of large words. They drip off her tongue like honey. Of course she knows I have little to no idea what half of them mean. It's why she does it. To make her point. She's smarter than I am. Book smart. She knows it irks me. Makes my blood boil to be honest. But as far as arguments go, they are exhilarating and I suspect we both enjoy them.

I of course lash out, fumbling over my vocabulary. I use my heart words as she calls them. I use my feelings. I accuse her of not having any. She laughs at me. I rarely win these arguments. I don't want to most of the time. She needs to. She thrives on knowing she's smarter than me. It makes her feel good about herself. She often doesn't feel good about herself, and that makes me sad. She should. She's amazing. But she doesn't really know it. Not deep in her heart.

She brought up Hannah the other day. It was during one of our arguments. She doesn't do it often. Usually it's her big gun when she thinks she might lose. She got upset when the new FBI girl was assigned to me for mentoring. Pretty young thing with long blonde hair. Of course she would never admit she was jealous. Jealousy is a useless emotion, she would say. Instead she brought up my past attraction for blondes. Wonders out loud what I see in her. She needs my reassurance every now and then. As I point out to her, yes, my past relationships have all been blonde. But not one of them lasted. Not one of them was her. She looks down, smiles, nods and I laugh to myself, because she cannot win this, and she'll never admit it.

Tonight's argument was about Pelant. Or more to the point how I put my life at risk because of him. I admit it, things got a bit messy this time. Well, more than a bit. I was lucky. Really lucky. A gunshot wound is nothing to laugh about. And she got angry at me for making light of it. I apologised. Again. She was right of course. She accused me of not thinking of her, or Christine. But she doesn't know how much I was thinking of them. How all of this was to protect them. She has no idea how close he got. And if I have my way, she never will.

The bottom line is, it's over.

Since Christine was born, we've been doing this dance. Tiptoeing around something that we both have trouble agreeing on. Commitment. Marriage.

I want it. Badly. She. Well, not so much. She thinks marriage is an antiquated ritual, tying people together according to the legal musings of men. But I think it frightens her. She has trouble living in the now. Always trying to guess what might happen in the future. Using that as a shield. Telling people that she'll never marry. How marriages ruin relationships. Often too loudly for my liking. I made this joke once. That she would be the one to ask me to marry her. The joke got turned around on me when she did. And I ruined it. I said yes, then I took it back. I don't know if I can ever forgive myself for it, let alone expect her to. Of course she says it doesn't matter to her. That we are good. We got past it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, if there is a wedding on the TV, or something in a magazine, I see her looking. She gets this look on her face. I can't describe it. Longing? Wistful? Then it's gone.

I've decided that she really does want it. Especially now we have a daughter. And especially now that she's pregnant again.

Oh. She doesn't know I know. It's pretty early on. I found the stick in the bathroom trash last night. She thought she was clever, tucking it away at the bottom of the bin. She forgot that I upend it into the main trashcan every week. So there it was. Right on top.

At first I thought I was imagining it. I also nearly didn't think to look inside the box. You can imagine my excitement. There were two test sticks. Both positive. So she obviously didn't believe the first one. How like her. I can just see her, staring at the stick. Thinking it must be a faulty test. The panic rising in her throat as she squatted over the second stick. Then the longest two minutes of her life. Staring at that little window waiting for that little plus or minus sign.

We haven't discussed more children. Not officially. She knows I want more. I love kids. I'd like two or three more. You should have seen her face when I mentioned that once. I thought she was going to throw up! She actually snorted at me and told me I had better consider finding someone else to satisfy that dream. I know she was joking of course. She knows there is nobody else for me. Nor for her. We were destined. From the moment I met her. From the moment she lifted those blue eyes and stared at me with disdain. I was hers. One hundred and fifty percent.

So tonight when the lights go down, and we are sitting snuggled up on our couch with a glass of wine. After we have settled Christine in bed, and I have read her a story, and she has sung her a bedtime song, I'm going to tell her I know about the baby. I'm going to tell her how happy I am. How much I adore her, and that she is the only woman in the entire world for me.

I'm going to pull out the small blue velvet box I've had hidden for a year.

And I'm going to ask Temperance Brennan to marry me.

And we will probably have an argument over it.

But this time. I'm going to win.