Bartlet strode briskly through the Residence. His conversation with Leo McGarry had helped to quiet some of the turmoil that had roared within him since that outburst made from the floor of the upper landing at the Manchester house. Quiet the uproar, but not still it. He was still upset by the darkness of the emotions he had given voice to, and that agitation lent energy to his movements.
Leo, bless him, had done his best to offer a measure of absolution, argued calmly and reasonably the naturalness of such a reaction, that it was not what you said but what you did which counted. Had pointed out that the President had a responsibility that went beyond the personal, but also that this was a war. A war the likes of which none of them had ever thought to engage in. Unconventional and lacking the traditional battle lines, but with the potential to be every bit as catastrophic.
The Chief of Staff had done his best to drive home that a momentary surge of rage, induced by shock, fear, grief and pain, did not necessarily render morally suspect any decision made under its influence. Volkov had to be dealt with, and McGarry had done everything to convince his President and friend of that necessity, quietly reassuring Bartlet that his repugnance at the desire for vengeance that had originally prompted the order should not prevent him from doing what was necessary.
"You're a good man."
God, how he wanted to believe that.
The conversation had soothed the President, helped release him from the inability to take action for fear that it was the rage and not necessity that drove him. He had never experienced such murderous emotions before. Not even the death of Morris Tolliver had unleashed such a cauldron of boiling rage. He had not thought himself capable of so badly desiring the death of another human being, and the revelation had shaken his perception of himself badly.
What else am I capable of? What darkness lies inside?
McGarry's pointing out dryly that the fact he was capable of asking such questions would suggest that Mr. Hyde was in no danger of taking up permanent residence any time soon, had been a balm to his bruised sensibility. So had the realization that his old friend carried such a weight of guilt over the events of that night in Manchester.
Masterful persuasion had always been Leo's style. Still, it was amazing what comfort a session of mutual absolution and reassurance could achieve.
But the process wasn't quite done. Bartlet quickened his pace as he reached the corridor leading to the private suite. Abbey. Leo might have offered an assurance that he had not lost the moral high ground in this war, but he could still remember the shock on his wife's face, the way her body had stiffened under his arm. He had frightened her. After all the terror of recent days and months, it had been he who had put that fear in her eyes. Fear for him? Or fear of someone she had thought she knew?
He needed to talk to her, to reassure her that the ruthless and vengeful stranger had been banished back to whatever depths from which he had emerged. To gain her own reassurance that she could forgive him for that lapse.
Striding up to the doors, Bartlet stretched his hand out towards the knob, and promptly snatched it back at the familiar stinging sensation. Not quite quickly enough however. The two agents posted on either side of the doorway remained impassive, although they could not help flicking their eyes to the side to regard their quietly swearing Chief Executive, who briefly nursed his bandaged hand before wrathfully ramming his briefcase under his arm and reaching again for the door with his now-free right hand.
"Twice in one day, what are the odds..." Bartlet's muttered monologue of frustration tapered out as he swung the door closed and unceremoniously dumped his briefcase on the floor. "Abbey! You here?"
"Right here, Jed and, oddly, in full possession of my hearing." The First Lady rose from one of the high-backed armchairs near the fireplace. "This is rather early for you, isn't it?"
"I need to talk to you." Her husband crossed to her, holding out his right hand to take hers. She took it, a wry expression on her face that he didn't stop to analyze. "Abbey, about the other night. I need you to know..."
"Good evening, Mr. President."
By a heroic effort of self-will, Bartlet managed to prevent himself from making an undignified leap ceiling-wards. However, his hand tightened on Abbey's, whose wry expression was segueing towards open amusement at his reaction. He turned slowly to face the tall man who had emerged from the depths of the second armchair behind him.
Well, damn. "Good evening, Admiral. I wasn't expecting you to be here."
"I know, sir. So I thought this might be the best place to wait."
Bartlet shot his physician a narrow glance, but the naval officer showed only the gravest and most respectful of demeanors to his Commander in Chief - and most recalcitrant patient. "Yeah, well about earlier. Something came up. Sorry and all that," he added in his most unapologetic tones.
"That's perfectly all right, Mr. President." Hackett was maddeningly unruffled. "The First Lady has been kind enough to suggest that I could take a look at your hand here instead, away from the distractions of the office."
Bartlet found himself defensively whipping the hand in question behind his back and out of reach. Flushing in annoyance at the instinctive gesture, he pulled it back out and said with all the authority he could summon, "Thank you, Admiral, but that won't be necessary. I'm perfectly good for today. Now if you'll excuse me..."
"Nonsense, Jed." Abbey effectively aborted his slide towards the door and freedom by tightening her grasp on his clasped hand. "You know very well that the dressings have to be changed every day." She nodded to her colleague, who turned to retrieve his medical satchel.
"C'mon, Abbey," Bartlet pleaded, a note that only the First Lady would have the lese majeste to call whining in his tone. "What's to check? You said it yourself yesterday. Healing well, no infection. Surely one day won't hurt?"
"Sit down, Jed." The words were spoken so firmly that he found himself on the sofa without ever consciously making the decision to sit down. Scowling, he reluctantly submitted his hand to the be-gloved Hackett's scrutiny. Seeing the naval medic raise an eyebrow at the two or three minute discolorations on the bandaging across his palm, the President cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I, ah, may have had a slight accident earlier today."
"So I see," Hackett replied with unperturbed ease, peeling away the dressings with a sure hand. "Second degree burns are notoriously susceptible to... accidents, sir."
Any rebuttal the President might have offered to that remark was quickly squashed flat by the ultimate authority in the room.
"And you didn't think it was worth mentioning?" His wife rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I swear to God, Jed. It's a good thing we can depend on Charlie to keep an eye on you."
"Charlie tattled on me?" Busted. He thought he had covered up the moment so well, too.
Abbey couldn't smother a grin. His tone of disappointed surprise made him sound about six, a child feeling the sting of betrayal by a playmate. "Sorry, babe," she said, half-sympathetically. "You should have listened when I told you I'd be keeping a very close eye on you."
"I thought you meant your eye," Bartlet muttered sulkily. "Not half the West Wing. Charlie's supposed to be my aide after all."
"Charlie is also a very intelligent young man, who knows precisely when it's necessary to rat on his pig-headed boss for his own good."
"Yeah." There really wasn't much else to say to that.
Bartlet sat there glumly, absently watching Hackett tend his battered palm, and mentally wishing the man gone already. He darted a sidelong look at his wife, feeling the need to talk to her beating at the barrier of his self-control. At the same time, a sort of sick dread rose at the prospect of having this conversation with her, of asking her to walk with him into his darkest places, to peer into the shadowed corners that not even he himself had ever thought could exist in the recesses of his soul. The all too momentary recovery of faith in himself was already beginning to fade, away from the reassuring presence of Leo McGarry.
Leo's unswerving faith in him, always treasured, never less than a burden, had never weighed so heavily as it did now. Normally the man's assurance had the power of a benediction for his old friend, but Bartlet could not shake the niggling little inner voice that told him this time it was different. This time, try as he might, he couldn't seem to convince his friend of the fundamental wrongness of what he had done, wished - did it matter? For surely the intent mattered every bit as much as the deed.
And his intent had been… murderous; he could feel his very thoughts shying away from facing that truth. Leo might be convinced that his President and friend would never yield to temptation, but how could he himself be so sure? There in that moment, on the landing, it had been as if he had for an instant felt his entire being shift and swing off compass, and he was still struggling to regain his balance.
A part of him admitted that he was beginning to obsess over this, that this slow spiral down into ever-darker thoughts wasn't entirely healthy, but he could no more seem to arrest his fall than he could make peace with himself. Every time his own logic, or a friend, cast him a lifeline, some impulse within refused to allow him to make use of it.
His increasingly black thoughts must have been visible on his face, because he suddenly became aware of Abbey's hand gently stroking his back, smoothing over the tense muscles beneath his jacket.
"Honey? Still with us?" she asked softly, concerned.
"Yeah." Bartlet seemed a hundred miles away. "They won't let me go to the funeral, you know," he said suddenly.
Hackett glanced up at Abbey, but didn't comment. The First Lady's features were creased in concern.
"You mean Lewis Paulson's funeral?"
"Yeah. Carlyle was by to see me yesterday, before the speech. Given that the poor devil's family has had to wait a whole week to bury him, I was hoping I could be there. But Dale says that security would be too difficult." The President's features tightened bitterly. "The unspoken implication being that my presence would turn an occasion of mourning into an undignified media circus. I really can't do that to his family. I've already taken enough from them, I can't rob them of their chance to say goodbye as well."
"Jed…" Abbey trailed off, the automatic assurance dying in her throat in acknowledgement of the truth of her husband's words. She stifled a sigh. A tiny, guilty part of her was almost relieved by the news. She understood Jed's need to pay his respects, but she dreaded its effect on him. He usually felt compelled to go if it were at all possible, to offer that last gesture to the men and women who had given their lives for their country, or its leader, and try to convey to their families by his presence that their loss had not gone un-remarked or un-noticed. But these occasions left him unsettled far more often than they brought a sense of peace or closure. Given how agitated his manner had been since his loss of control last weekend, she was eager to have him avoid anything that might upset him further.
Hackett, feeling the tension in the hand he was tending, would have agreed. Carefully blotting away the tiny blood droplets, he frowned slightly at the new damage his troublesome patient had managed to inflict upon himself.
"Two stitches torn out," he reported to his fellow medic, who leaned in over her husband's shoulder to see for herself. "Also, there's some weeping where the new tissue has been disturbed, which, I'm betting, has irritated the burns again." From the faint color rising in the President's cheeks, he was pretty sure he had bet correctly, but the man remained stubbornly silent.
Hackett sighed - noting that the President seemed to be having that effect on everyone who came in contact with him recently - and squeezed more salve onto the burns, spreading the ointment gently with his gloved fingertips.
"I won't re-stitch the tear," he assured his Commander in Chief, seeing the man's tensed shoulders slump slightly in relief. "There's hardly any bleeding, and I'd as soon refrain from traumatizing tissue that's trying to heal. The scar may be slightly more pronounced, but I don't think that will bother you?" Bartlet shook his head in affirmation, but Hackett saw pain flash in the eyes of Abbey Bartlet. The First Lady could probably have done without having yet one more legacy of the bloody campaign of recent months to mar her husband's body, and provide her with a painful reminder. "I'll just bandage it up."
"You're not going to swathe it up again, are you?" Bartlet asked in tones of faint dread. He really didn't want a return to the heavier wrappings that had rendered his hand all but useless in the days following the injury.
"Not so heavily, no sir. But I'm going to add another layer of bandaging to constrain the muscles and prevent them from stretching and further tearing open the wound. And I'm afraid that we'll have to continue with inspections for a while longer, until the new skin over the burns has a chance to reform. Morning and evening. I mean it, sir," Hackett spoke firmly.
Bartlet nodded again, but his attention had drifted back to Abbey. Hackett observed from the corner of his eye as he swiftly applied the fresh dressings, noting the man's puckered brow and distant, faintly troubled expression as he contemplated his wife. She was leaning forward, chin in hand, watching the care the medical officer was lavishing on her husband's hand.
Finished at last, the Admiral carefully laid down his patient's hand and rose to his feet. Closing his medical bag, he paused briefly by the President, and gently laid his hand on the man's shoulder.
Bartlet's head rose in surprise. He met his medic's gaze, and suddenly a genuine smile flashed across those somber features, touched by the other man's gesture and all that it implied. Hackett smiled back, and gave his Commander in Chief's shoulder a quick comforting pat. He sketched a half-bow to Abbey, who nodded her gratitude, and quietly took his leave.
In his wake, silence reigned. After wanting so desperately to have his wife alone, Bartlet found himself suddenly tongue-tied, at a loss to verbalize the confusion he felt.
For her part, Abbey eyed her husband speculatively. For one of the few times in their marriage, she found herself unable to read him. His general mood was relatively easy to detect; it seemed to start somewhere around dejection with a tendency to slide downwards, but for the life of her she couldn't understand why. Since this whole affair had started, she had seen Jed seemingly run through the entire spectrum of negative emotion, from sorrow to cold rage. None of these emotions were normally characteristic of him, but she was at a loss when it came to even putting a name to the mood that had claimed him this past week. At first she had put it down to the usual guilt and chagrin, writ large, that he always experienced when he felt he had given in to that fiery temper of his, but this was deeper.
Leo McGarry had recently offered his own opinion on what was bothering the man they both had spent more than half a lifetime studying, and Abbey had agreed with him. But now she was starting to wonder if that was only part of the story. She knew that her witnessing of it had only strengthened Jed's guilt over his loss of control. His protective instinct was a fearsome thing when roused, always had been even when its remit had only included his family and friends. Nowadays, with his perception of duty extending across an entire nation, it tended to flare more readily. Normally, it was Leo who bore the brunt, and Leo with his usual calm good sense who talked her husband back down from declarations that he regretted almost as soon as he had given them voice.
Leo had seemed pretty confident of being able to do just that again, and Abbey had been certain of her own ability to finish the work, but now a hint of doubt tickled her mind. She was used to the signs of frustration, anger and remorse that plagued her husband until he managed to recover his perspective, but something was different this time. For a start, those moods rarely lasted like this. Jed had enough trust in himself, and more than enough confidence, not to agonize over such outbursts for long. Abbey wasn't conceited enough to suppose either that she alone could be the cause of throwing her husband into such a funk.
No, whatever this was, it had been born in that moment of destruction, rage and loss, but something more was fuelling it now. This time there was another emotion thrown into the mix, one that as yet she could not quite identify.
The silence dragged on, becoming heavy.
"So." Abbey figured that she might as well start the conversational ball rolling, since her companion seemed uncharacteristically disinclined to do so. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"I… yeah." Bartlet seemed suddenly unable to meet her direct gaze, his eyes and fingers instead idly tracing over the fresh wrappings on his left hand. He lapsed back into silence, and Abbey was content to let him, comfortable in the knowledge that it wouldn't last.
Finally, he looked up at her, and she was almost shocked to see the apprehension dwelling in his eyes.
"It's about what happened on Sunday."
"I thought it might be," she said gently.
"I'm sorry." He chose to take that mild remark as a rebuke. "I know I should have said this sooner. I've never been very good at apologizing, have I?"
Now they were starting to get to the problem. "You feel the need to apologize for being shot at, Jed?"
"You know what I mean," he said seriously. "Abbey, I know I frightened you…"
"Now, let's just get something straight right here, Jed." Abbey spoke briskly, fire starting to flash within her eyes. "I was frightened for you, not by you. Honey, you have in your time exasperated, annoyed and infuriated me. God knows you've scared me often enough, and I'm still scared for you - hell, I'm absolutely terrified for you - but I've never been frightened of you. Never."
"Maybe you should be." Bartlet's features had softened and crumpled slightly, but remained shaded.
"I don't think that's possible." Abbey paused for a moment, weighing her words. "This is about that outburst of yours, isn't it? Jed, have you been worrying about that? Because if ever a man had been goaded…"
"That's just it, Abbey! It wasn't just an outburst! I've had outbursts!" Hell, he was having one right now. Bartlet's voice rose in frustration, struggling to find the words. "This wasn't… this wasn't - this was wrong!"
"Jed…"
"No, Abbey. Listen, please." Desperate to make her understand, Bartlet was suddenly kneeling in front of her, clasping her hands between his as best he could. "This isn't about just being in a rage or venting, although the words I said were bad enough. This is about what I was thinking. My God, Abbey. I never believed I could feel such terrible things, for anyone."
Stunned by the force of emotion pouring out at her, Abbey stared into his upturned face, seeing the anguish, the guilt and... there. That new sensation that she had been unable to identify, lay bare on his features.
Self-disgust.
At that realization, a hand rose to her mouth in mingled grief and shock. Unable to bear the idea of the man she loved judging himself like this, she reached out with all the protective fury of that love to drive the doubt from his mind.
"Why do you feel that what you felt, what you said, in that moment was so unforgivable? Honey," she caught his hand as he started to draw back, "I know how you feel about being responsible for ending a life. I know because I've seen you after every crisis, every military incursion. Because I phoned you at six-thirty in the morning when you returned from receiving the bodies of those young soldiers at Dover, and I heard it in your voice, and damned you for not asking me to stay with you. I know you've borne their loss, and accepted the responsibility for their deaths. But you've always been able to find some balance before. Why not now? And for God's sake, why over that man?"
Abbey felt herself almost spit the words, a rage rising within her that was every bit as powerful as the force she had been so shocked to see welling within her husband as he lay slumped against the bullet-torn wall outside the battlefield that had been his study, his sanctuary.
His home.
And he wasn't listening…
"Abbey, didn't you hear what I said? 'By any means necessary.' I said those words, and I meant them. I practically ordered Ron to kill him! Dear God, Abbey. Your whole career has been devoted to saving life, not taking it. I claim to be a man of faith, yet I found myself able to discard it in an instant, to serve a desire for revenge."
"The Church allows you to defend yourself, Jed! To preserve your own life - "
"No!" He pulled away from her abruptly. "That's just it! To defend yourself, yes, but not pre-emptive! And certainly not like this. This had nothing to do with self-preservation, and everything to do with wanting blood for blood."
There. It was said. Bartlet turned his face away, hoping it was enough.
"Jed…" Abbey took his chin in her hand, turning his face back to her. She tried to bring him back, make him see and understand, but it was only half-hearted on his part. He needed to say this, to have her hear.
So Abigail Bartlet listened.
"All my life, Abbey, I've held to my belief in the sanctity of human existence. I was raised to it; for me its truth was as unquestionable as breathing, and as natural. To take life, it was a mortal sin." Perhaps not even his wife, raised in the same tradition and also professionally sworn to the preservation of life, could fully understand the sheer weight of fundamental, Catholic, conviction behind that tenet. "It destroyed not only the victim, but the taker as well." Bartlet's mouth twisted bitterly. "I was damned lucky all my life thus far. I never had to face up to the possibility of ending a life, not like Leo had to. I flattered myself that I never would, that I couldn't. I was better than that."
He rose and began to pace restlessly. "Then I took this job. I don't know if it was hubris, or stupidity. Did I think I would be the first leader in history who would never give the order to destroy? Or not give the order to save? I don't know…" He threw his arms out in angry frustration at his inability to fit the emotions bubbling inside into mere words. "I suppose I rationalized it, convinced myself that there was no way I could ever give such an order unless it really was for the best – but is it ever for the best? I just don't know any more. All I know is that ever since I took this office, I seem to have done nothing but kill and kill and kill…"
Mindless of Hackett's latest efforts, his fist crashed down into his bandaged palm in distressed and angry emphasis.
Abbey rose and closed her hands around his, pressing softly until he slowly lifted his head to meet her scrutiny. She smiled crookedly at him, her eyes shining with distress for his anguish. Dropping her gaze, she gently lifted his clenched right hand from the palm it had just abused, and ran her thumb over it repeatedly until she felt the tension begin to dissipate and the fingers uncurl. Slipping her own hand into his, she drew her husband to sit beside her on the sofa. With a low sigh, he came to her, drawing her into the crook of his arm and resting his cheek against her hair. Resting back against his chest, she drew his bandaged hand into her lap and cradled it gently.
"Jed," the First Lady's voice was soft as she ran her fingers delicately over the wrapping protecting his palm. "Sweetheart, what is it you feel right now? Really? Tell me."
Tell me. His breath soughed out gently, a soft, almost keening sound against her hair. He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke the sense of loss in his voice broke her heart.
"Like I've lost something so important to me, or worse, maybe discovered that I never really had it at all." He tightened his arm around her, seeking a thread of reassurance. "Abbey, what I felt, what I wanted in that moment - it was as if I found a blackness within myself I'd never have thought possible. I wanted to kill him; I'm terrified that if he had been standing before me in that instance that I would have killed him. And I can't forget that. I feel…" he dragged the words out, slowly, unwillingly. "I feel as if I've somehow damned myself."
"Do you think Leo's damned, too?" So that was the true heart of the problem. She should have known. Abbey would have been half-tempted to laugh at her husband's dumbfounded expression if she hadn't felt so close to tears.
"No!" His denial was as certain as it was instantaneous, and held more than a touch of outrage at the very idea.
"Why not? Honey…" she met Jed's gaze steadily, "… Leo's killed, too, in the name of county and patriotism. What makes him different from you? Why should he not be condemned as well?"
"Because Leo…" This man, considered to be a world class intellect, struggled to express beliefs he had buried so deep that they were instinct rather than thought. "Leo… Leo is good," he finished, and Abbey, hearing the almost innocent simplicity of that reply, and seeing his faith in its veracity shining in his eyes, bit down on her lip against the up rush of emotion that swelled within her.
"Leo was fighting a war, but so are you," she whispered, her voice no less convinced despite the softness of its tone.
"No, it's not even that…" He struggled for words. "Fighting a war doesn't excuse, not automatically. Leo never wanted the death of another human being. He knew his actions might cost lives; that was the way things were. But he could always hold onto the fact that he never truly desired the death - the destruction - of another human being."
Bartlet took a deep, ragged breath
"For a long time, I held onto that thought, too. Through all the death and destruction, the blood on my hands, I could focus on that. I didn't expect to be forgiven, and I know that I will have to answer for it one day, but that's only right. I knew the judgment would come but, through it all, no matter how far I seemed to drift, I could hold onto this one thought, this one lifeline - I never wanted their deaths. I never truly wished destruction on another human being, not for any reason… until last week. And now I feel as if the last thing that kept me from losing my way is gone, and I'm drifting."
They sat together in silence for a few moments, the weight of his desolation heavy in the air between them.
"God is full of love and compassion, slow to anger and rich in mercy." Abbey felt her husband's startled gaze upon her as she murmured the words of the psalm. She met his eyes steadily. "I remember your saying those words times without number over the years. It was a prayer and a creed with you."
"Yes." He smiled at her slowly. "I always loved what it told me about my God, my faith. A God of love, not vengeance. Everything I needed in order to be able to trust, to believe, contained in that one sentence."
Abbey's face was soft with affection as she regarded him. "I like what it tells me about you," she whispered. "What it tells me about what is important to you. When the girls were little and first asked you who God was, you didn't talk to them about omnipotence or infallibility or judgment or immortality. You just told them God was the person besides you and me that they could rely on to love them and forgive them, no matter what. No matter what, Jed," she repeated more strongly. "If you can believe in His forgiveness, why can you not believe that you should be entitled to accept it?"
He smiled at her, but it was a shaky, tremulous smile, lacking real conviction. Still, he came into her arms as she held them open to him, squeezing her in gentle gratitude. Her forgiveness he accepted gratefully, but he could not yet allow himself to believe that his actions permitted him the right to the unquestioning belief and trust that she so readily bestowed.
Leo's earlier reassurances had offered comfort, but they were merely a papering over of the emotional cracks that not even Abbey's absolution could completely fill. Bartlet knew that while their trust in him was a balm, he would have to find his own way to crush the poisonous little trickle of self-disgust that dripped inside, marring the brightness of that core of self he had always leaned on so confidently. He was aware of the sense of guilt, and the need to atone that kept him morbidly worrying at and reopening those cracks as fast as his wife and his friend tried to bandage them, but he couldn't help it.
What he had done, all that had happened because of him, his conscience insisted required penance of some kind. If a constant tearing at the wounds within, a reliving of the taste of self-doubt and abhorrence was the only way he could make expiation, then he would be unable to stop himself doing so, until finally the wounds ceased to hurt so much and he could feel some measure had been repaid.
In the meantime, knowing that he only had to contend with his own judgment, not that of the people whose opinion mattered so much to him, caused his spirit to lighten somewhat. However dark the journey got, at least now he knew that he would have his anchor, his safe port during the emotional storms ahead. A niggling little voice darted out to suggest that he had no right to such comfort just yet, but he crushed it down. Still, a faint echo lingered and he regretfully started to pull back, bestowing a final, gentle kiss on his wife's lips.
Abbey's eyes opened and regarded the face watching her so intently from mere inches away. Jed's inner confusion still clouded those blue eyes, the lingering guilt deepening the lines on his features. She sighed to herself. 'Oh, Jed. I don't know why you feared my judgment. It could never be worse than your condemnation of yourself. Everyone else understands, why can't you?'
Frustration welled at her realization that her declaration of faith had soothed but not reassured him. In this case one of Jed's greatest strengths, his ability to rely on his own judgment, was also his weakness. He couldn't embrace their reassurances; not until he had fought his own way to acceptance, until he had forgiven himself. And there was little she could say or do to hurry that process.
Swallowing her own anguish and frustration at his pain, Abbey decided that at least she could cushion the path for him as far as possible. If declarations of faith and trust alone were not enough, maybe another kind of declaration might help.
Reaching out, she cupped her husband's face in her hands and gently drew his mouth back down onto hers. He came willingly and kissed her softly, before starting to withdraw again. Knowing him well enough to have a sense of what tangled thoughts were running through his head, Abbey resolved that no misplaced self-flagellation was going to take place while she was around.
Slipping a hand behind Jed's head, loving the feel of the still thick, soft hair between her fingers, she firmly pressed his mouth back down onto hers, sensing his surprise as she deepened the kiss. Her other hand slid around his waist, feeling the tense muscles of his back begin to relax slightly at last.
Loosening her grasp slightly, she breathed, "Jed? Leo told me he was clearing your schedule for the rest of the evening. He felt you needed some time to yourself. Would you mind spending some time with me?"
She felt Jed smile against her mouth and, as his hands brushed gently up her arms to wrap around her shoulders, she felt a flicker of joy at the thought that the darkness had been beaten back for the moment.
But just for the moment…