AN: Ties into Turkey
A Maybe Mistake
Hands in his pockets, he had followed her into her office.
"The Secretary seems…"
Nadine sunk down into the chair behind her desk. "Heartbroken," she said as she pushed her glasses up the slope of her nose.
Jay frowned. "I was going to say down, but…" He looked over his shoulder, and even with the late hour, he pulled his hands from his pant pockets and closed the door to her office. "So, her and Blake?"
Her hands stilled over the stack of paperwork she had been fingering through. "Have you heard a rumor?"
She looked horrified.
He shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I just…" He met her eyes, and the truth spilled out. "I saw them a few months back at the G20 Summit in Rome. After the hotel had been evacuated, they were out in the courtyard, kissing behind one of the cars." He stepped forward and wrapped his hands around the wooden back of the chair that sat in front of her desk. "I figured it was just one kiss. We could've died." He shrugged. "But she'd been agitated when DS escorted her out. Kept asking Matt if Blake was outside."
"I had no idea."
"You were pretty busy handling Daisy." They'd all had to walk her back from that ledge. God, she'd even started to have contractions from the stress right there outside the hotel. "I should have told you."
"It doesn't matter now."
Nadine's eyes turned down to her desk as she opened a folder.
"She won't even look at me," she whispered as her eyes found his again.
"I've noticed," he said after he took a seat.
The Secretary had been unfocused in their morning meetings. She was all but refusing to work with her own chief of staff… It almost felt like they were back in the first few weeks after she'd taken office. Except, now, she was missing the dotting assistant that followed half a step behind her.
"It was my idea to assign Blake to the embassy in Turkey. I'd thought that separating them would… I don't know."
"Would put their feet back on the ground?"
She nodded. "I ripped them apart, and she blames me for it." She hit a key on her keyboard, waking up her computer. "You can't tell the others about this."
He wouldn't.
"How long have they been…"
His eyebrows pushed up towards his hairline.
Having an affair? Was this an affair?
"Long enough." She moved her mouse, clicking out of something on her desktop. "I found them in bed together when we were up in New York for UNGA." She fiddled with the pendant of the necklace that hung around her neck. "I took my anger out on Russell Jackson that morning."
He wanted to smile, but it didn't seem appropriate— Blake had, in full detail, described her outburst.
"She hates Megan," she said.
They all felt for the Secretary's new assistant. She was trying her best to fill the shoes of the person who was her point man for nearly four years. Now, knowing that he was much more than that to her, it seemed that Megan would be unable to fill those shoes for various reasons.
"She's keeping things pent up." She shook her head. "I've never seen her so angry. And her mood swings are worse than the ones she was experiencing after Iran."
"He kept her in check."
She stared at him. "He kept her happy," she corrected. She let out a breath as she looked off to the side. "Maybe this… Maybe sending him away was a mistake."
He shrugged his lips, thinking back to the relationship between Nadine and Vincent Marsh. "Are they a fairy tale or a tragedy?"
Her fingers touched her necklace again. "Blake told me that he loves her."
"Do you think that she could ever love him?"
She looked into his eyes. "Did Vincent ever love me?"
