Even Lovers Drown CH 44

He could feel her presence before he looked up to see Olivia enter the room with Cyrus. He and Jocelyn were already seated opposite one another on the twin couches of the Oval Office.

Fitz’s eyes looked up to meet hers. They were carefully, coolly polite.

“Mr. President.” she said.

“Olivia.” He stood up. “Thank you for agreeing to help us in this situation.”

“Once Cyrus-” and she emphasized his name purposefully, “once Cyrus explained matters to me, of course I agreed to help this administration, Mr. President.”

Not him, his administration. So, Fitz thought, that was the tack she was going to take. Despite the seriousness of their meeting, something perverse in him was prodding him  to break that wall of ice she's so carefully crafted.  Maybe he would, if he got the chance.

He gestured with one hand for them both to take a seat and noted that she moved before Cyrus did, to take a seat opposite him.

Jocelyn handed around folders with lists and ideas. Even as they began to discuss the information in them, a part of Fitz’s senses remained all too aware of Olivia’s presence so close in the physical, yet so far away in every other way. And in spite of her professional demeanor, he knew without a doubt that she was just as aware of him.

It was almost like old times.

An aide knocked on the door for Cyrus. After hearing his message, he made his excuses to Fitz and asked Jocelyn to accompany him for a moment.

Once the door had closed behind him, Fitz allowed himself the luxury of looking at Olivia fully. White pantsuit, pale cream buttoned up blouse; she was armored to the teeth against him, he noted. She still looked tired, as tired as in the last set of photos that Jake had delivered a few days earlier and he made a comment on it.

“I could say the same about you.” Olivia said. His eyes looked as tired as her own felt, although they were both hiding it well, she thought.

Fitz was dressed a little informally at the moment and she hadn’t been able to help but notice. His suit jacket had been discarded on the back of a chair and he’d loosened his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves, which did nothing but show of the play of muscles of his upper body and remind her of his strength.

She caught her eyes sliding over that very familiar view, remembering the very familiar touch of his arms around her, his hands upon her. She jerked her gaze away.

“It doesn’t look like you’ve been getting much sleep either.” she said. Olivia picked up one of the folders again, pretending to read them over.

But he knew - and she knew - that she was doing nothing of the kind. There were too many memories in this room with them alone for that.

Fitz nodded. “There’s been a lot on my mind lately. All kinds of complex issues.”

He paused. “Not the least of all  is you.”

Caught off guard, Olivia’s eyes flew up and was caught and held by his. Blue and brown gaze clashed.

“I didn’t come here for this...” she began.

He cut her off. “And I didn’t ask you here for that either - but here we are.”

“What do you expect me to say to that?”

Fitz stood, pointed one hand upward.

The cameras.

He walked over to the perimeter of the room, where there were blind spots.

After a moment, she followed him. And repeated her question.

“I expect the truth.”

“The truth? Like the truth you told me when we were at Cyrus and James’?”  her voice was hard, for all that it was quiet. “I’m not that cruel.”

“Or you’re unable to be that honest.” Fitz said. There was the dark side of his soul again, making him hard, making him cruel. He had to be cruel, before he lost himself in her closeness. But other thoughts were pressing in on him that wanted something else.

Now there was a spark of challenge in her eyes. “Like you’ve been? You’re the bastion of truth and honesty now, are you - sweet baby?”  The last words dripped from her lips, full of disdain.

Her last two words hurt them both. They had been special to her once, when she had let herself believe that they were special to him, to them. But that had been a lie. How much of them had been a lie?

He saw the question in her eyes. “None of it.”

“What?” she stammered, thrown off guard for a moment. She hadn’t expected that connection to still be a part of him - a part of them - but he’d known what she was thinking when she hadn’t even said a word.

He proved her right with his next words.

“Everything else might have been, but none of us, what we were - what we had - was a lie.” He lifted one hand helplessly as though he would reach for her; instead, he clenched it shut with remembered pain. “You left me. You left me and my life went to hell.”

That hurt. Olivia blinked, dropped her eyes and looked away for a moment before lifting her gaze back to his. “And now you’ve returned the favor. You’ve left me - so where do you think I am now?”

She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Sweet baby - have you ever stopped once to think about what hell you put me in with hearing that you used those same words with another woman? I should have hated you - for a moment - I did, I swear I did. But it was one moment weighed against a million others and I couldn't let that one moment define what you felt for me - or what I felt for you.”

Fitz was struck speechless; in all the upheaval that had come in the wake of her death and the scandal that had been narrowly averted, they had never really talked - not the two of them - about Amanda Tanner after that one night.

He watched as Olivia paused to take a deep breath. “How can you let one moment destroy everything else? Is this how one mistake has changed you? Is this the man you’ve decided to become? If so, then may God help this you - and this country.”

He was stung by her words. “What did you expect my reaction to be when I found out what you had done?”

“No.” she said.

“No?”

“No, you don’t get to lay this on me - not totally.” Olivia took a step towards him. “I made choices - one of them was a bad one. But now you’re making choices - you and you alone.

“The question isn’t about what I expected.” she shot back. One slender brown finger jabbed at him. “The question is what do you expect of yourself? Here. Now. That’s the question. Is the man you’ve shown me lately, quick with cruelty and self-centered judgment, so sure in his right to be so - is that the man you want to be? Have you really decided that one act defines a person? Is this one act going to decide who you are from this point and into the future? If so, then that’s your choice. But you need to make it.”

Before he could answer, Olivia spun away, turned her back on him, moving away back to her seat without looking at him again. What he might have said in that moment was lost forever as a knock came at the door and Cyrus and Jocelyn returned.

If he had had the chance, Fitz wondered what he would have said in answer.