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Luke couldn’t believe she thought he had been trying to break up with her. As if he hadn’t been stupid, over-the-moon in love with her for the past two years. Long-distance or not, he loved her, and he knew he was going to continue loving her for a very long time. “You know,” he told her as they got into the car and began driving. “Unless you break up with me, I don’t see us ending any time soon.”
She let herself smile a little bit. “Well, I definitely don’t plan on breaking up with you in the near future… unless you do something really, really bad.”
“Well then I guess we’re stuck with each other,” he teased. They came to a red light, and he knew he had about a minute before the light turned green. “Hey, look at me for a sec?” She did, and he leaned over quickly and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “I love you, Penelope Garcia.”
She shoved him playfully. “Eyes on the road, dork.” She paused, then said. “And I love you too, Luke Alvez. I don’t think I’ve said that yet this morning.”
“So, are we going to tell the team?” Luke probed.
Penelope thought about this. “I mean… we probably should, at some point, but do we have to do it right when we get in? Can we just kind of… let it happen?”
“So like, not outright tell them, but also don’t go out of our way to keep it a secret either?”
“Exactly. We just do what we do and see how long it takes them to figure it out. They’re profilers, it shouldn’t be too long.”
“Alright, sounds good to me.”
They pulled into the parking garage and made their way to the elevator— their elevator, as he had taken to calling it—hand in hand. Luke thought the team might find out then and there, seeing them holding hands in the elevator, since he knew without a doubt that they would all be waiting on the other side of the door to see their beloved Penelope. Not that he could blame them, obviously. He had only gotten to see her in-person for the first time the night before and he had been dating her for the past two years.
What he hadn’t accounted for, however, was the lightning speed at which she would pull herself out of his grip to hug her friends—a speed so fast that he didn’t even have time to process it had happened until he saw her in JJ’s arms, so they definitely didn’t have time so see the two of them holding hands.
Greetings and hugs and promises to catch up as soon as possible, but the happy atmosphere they found themselves in couldn’t last. They had a job to do, a big one.
“As much as I’m sure we’d all like to catch up,” Emily said, having stepped back into her role as Unit Chief—one Rossi was secretly glad to be rid of for a while. “But we have a case. Debrief on the jet.”
“Farewell, my loves,” Penelope said. “Fly safe.” She gave them all one last hug, Luke last, and if she held onto him a little longer, who was to say?
“Alright, let’s get Penelope to run those names,” Emily said. “Luke, can you call her?”
“Yeah, sure thing.” He dialed the number and opened his mouth to tell her she was on speaker, but she never gave him the chance.
“Love of my life, what can I do for you?”
Luke could feel the heat rushing to his cheeks as the team stared at him wide-eyed. He just stared at his phone, silent. This was certainly a way for them to just “find out.” Was there a way he could explain this away?
“Luke?” Penelope called again. Nope. There certainly was not.
“Pen, love, you’re on speaker,” he told her.
He could practically hear her shocked expression. “Oh. Okay. And who else is with you?”
He winced as he said, “The entire team.”
He could feel her mortification through the phone. They had agreed to just let it happen, but they had both been expecting to actually be in the same state when it did. “Oh. Okay. So, hi, guys, we have a lot to talk about…”