Alternate Hunting Season
"Senator Davis was your boyfriend from 2002 to 2006. You lived together in Georgetown and New York. You had an engagement ring. And you were seen with him yesterday looking very cozy from what I hear." Fitz stepped closer as he felt his anger drift away and the hurt, which was hiding so well behind the anger, begin to emerge.
"You two screwing again?" he asked.
Fitz was purposely vulgar because anything Liv and Edison did together was screwing. It was detached and perfunctory. It was scratching an itch. It was simply satisfying a physical need. Because he couldn't think of her making love with that man, giving herself to him the way she gave herself to Fitz. When they came together, they made love. They made love, as in creating something beautiful and pure and unshakeable. They created the very thing millions of people spent their whole lives searching for, but never finding. Leaning in close to her ear, he asked, giving voice to his secret fears, "Is he everything you ever dreamed?"
As Fitz started to walk away, Olivia couldn't take it anymore. "Stop walking," she said. When he continued to walk away from her, she yelled, "Stop!Walking!"
He stopped in his tracks but didn't turn. He couldn't turn and face her after what he'd said, how he'd treated her since she got there. And he couldn't stand the fact that while he'd laid his heart bare to her, she was still able to keep a part of herself reserved. If she could let down her guard with anyone in the world, she should feel safe enough to do so with him.
Olivia walked up to his back and threw her arms around him and just held him. He'd been walking since he put those boots on her, and she just needed him to stop for one second so that she could say what she needed to tell him, what she should have told him long ago. Because it tore her up inside that she was the cause of the anguish she both felt and heard behind his words. That she was the reason he'd thrown his pride aside to ask her 'Is he everything you ever dreamed?'
"No," she answered.
Fitz had been surprised when Liv had hugged him from behind but nothing could make him push her away, not now, not ever.
"No, what?" Fitz asked, exhausted. He'd fought with her, he'd yelled at her, and accused her. And it angered him that when he'd seen her earlier, all he'd really wanted to do was haul her into his arms and kiss her until they both forgot their own names.
"He is not the man of my dreams," Liv said reasonably. "Because that man, he has blue eyes and a smile to die for. That man makes me weak and vulnerable, and I am weak for no one. I would move heaven and earth for that man. He has curly hair and seeing him hurt or angry makes me hurt and angry.
"I love that man, this man of my dreams, the one that has blinded me to all others since I met him almost three years ago." Liv tightened her hold on him when Fitz started to turn around because she knew she wouldn't have the strength to say everything she needed to say if he looked her in the eye and she lost her nerve.
"I didn't sleep with him, and I'm not sure if I could even if I wanted to, Fitz. But, let's face it, he's a catch. He's a United States senator. He's tall and good-looking and highly intelligent. He's single. He doesn't have any children with anyone and no one would judge me or look at me like I'm the evil queen if we were seen out in public together—"
Fitz broke her hold on him and turned around, looking uncertain, but no longer angry.
"But even with all of his good qualities…no matter how great he looks on paper and the fact that it would make perfect sense if we did get back together, there is still the one undeniable, glaringly obvious fact that keeps staring me in the face," Liv lifted her hands and placed them on Fitz's wrists, where his thumbs had been stroking her cheeks.
"He's not you," she whispered, shaking her head. The tears she'd been holding back all this time began to fall. "And—"
"Stop talking," Fitz said as he closed the distance between their mouths.
'Yes,' Liv thought. 'This is what had been missing from my life.' As his mouth crashed against hers, Liv felt something shift on the inside of her, like her entire being was a broken puzzle that had just clicked into place. It felt like she needed nothing else but this man in her arms, this brilliant, powerful man—arguably the most important man in the world—who would get on his knees before her and change her shoes.
And suddenly Liv couldn't breathe but she didn't care because she didn't want to breathe if it meant separation from Fitz, the most precious thing in her whole world.
And from an outsider's perspective, they might think that she could do better. That she could have someone more worthy of her or someone who'd be perfect for her. Someone like her ex, Edison.
But then, what would be the point?
She couldn't give Edison her heart because Fitz had claimed it for himself almost three years ago and refused to give it back. She'd forever feel like she'd settled. And no matter what Edison did to make her happy, he'd always just be second best.
And that wasn't fair to either of them.
So the question now was, would she rather live alone than have only a part of him? Or should she take any part of him that she could get because living without any piece of him was unbearable—like being alive but not alive.
"Stop thinking," Fitz pulled away from her neck to say briefly before using his grip on her hair to pull her up to his lips again. He'd been walking around the past week, pretending to ignore how much it hurt that she'd stopped answering the phone when he called. And seeing that picture of her with the senator made him think of the two of them in bed together and then it was all he could see.
But having her now, in his arms, reminded him that there was only one woman who owned his heart. There was only one woman who could push him to this point of no return.
He pulled away from her mouth so that he could just hug her and hold her.
"And if you ever yell at me like that again, I'll kick your butt from here to next week," Liv said against his neck. Fitz smiled and his eyes filled with tears as he crushed her tighter against him.
"I'd like to see you try," he muttered, kissing the top of her head.
"Hey, you may have been in the army, but I've learned some signature moves since you saw me last," she said, stroking his arms through his jacket and pulling him impossibly closer by his shoulders.
"Like what?" he asked her, relaxing for the first time in over a week.
"I now know how to do a decent eye gouge, nipple twister, nut crusher—"
"Who is coming up with these names?" Fitz interrupted, laughing.
"You don't like them?" she asked innocently.
"As long as they teach you how to handle yourself, I don't care what you call them," he said seriously. He hoped that she never had cause to use any of those moves, but he was grateful that she knew them. "And you can kick my butt anytime," he said as an afterthought.
"I'll remind you that you said that one day," she said, knowing that they'd have to break apart. That he would have to go back to the Oval and do his duty to his country and she'd have to go back to the office, working as if she had not a care in the world, while they both longed for the other.
And therein lay the crux of their problem.
"What are we going to do, Fitz? We can't do this forever—it's too destructive to the both of us. And while I can fix most things, I don't know how to fix this," she said, pulling away slightly so that she could reach inside his jacket to wrap her arms around his waist again. It still wasn't close enough, so she lifted the back of his shirt and rested her hands on the small of his back. She'd wanted skin.
Fitz caught his breath. "Your hands are cold—" he started,
"Like I said, if Tom and Hal had told me where we were going, I would've dressed accordingly," Liv interrupted.
Fitz raised an eyebrow and said, "But if they had told you where you were going, you'd have gotten gloves and then you wouldn't need to put your hands on my back to warm them."
She stroked her fingers around his spine and said, "I didn't put them there because I was cold. And you're avoiding the question."
Fitz said, "I wasn't avoiding the question, I was thinking." He paused. She was right—they couldn't continue like this. Even if she was willing to see him clandestinely, she deserved better. Sneaking around would cheapen her, it would cheapen what they shared.
"I don't know what to do, Liv," Fitz admitted. "But I know that I can't live without you and find happiness. I can go through the motions and I can pretend to be alright, but that's all I can do without you," he said, pulling her forehead to his. "The ball is in your court, Liv. I tried to leave once and you wouldn't let me. So, I think we should think about this, together. Let's think and come up with a game plan. Put your team on it if you have to," he said.
Liv had to think. She'd been spending so much energy focusing on why they shouldn't be together, but she'd never put any thought into how they could be together.
"Agreed?" he asked.
Liv looked into his eyes and thought about all they'd been through together. She thought about what had happened between them from the moment they met one another until this point, and she knew that she could physically do it, but didn't want to, live without him either.
"Agreed—" she started to say before Fitz crushed his lips against hers, stealing her breath but giving her so much more. He was her match, and if she was lucky enough to have found him in this lifetime, she didn't want to be stupid enough to let him go ever again.