"Ms. Pope? These came for you."
Lost in her own mind, Liv didn't realize she wasn't alone until the man stepped into her office in front of her.
"Hey, sorry Nick. What? What are those?" She looked up at him holding a large vase of what looked to be a at least a dozen red roses.
"They just arrived for you, ma'am." Nick put the flowers to the side of her office and turned his attention to her. "Everything okay? You looked a bit out of it," he asked with a smile.
Nodding her head, she got up to see if there was a card attached. "Perfectly okay. Thanks Nick."
Leaning down, she took a smell of them while looking for the card and pulling it open. Five days away is too long. Can't wait to come home to you. Fitz. Reading the card over and over again, Olivia shook her head and put the card back.
Fitz. JUST Fitz. Not 'love', not 'yours', just Fitz! I knew this wasn't right. Give yourself five minutes to believe you're in a real relationship and then it's gone. He doesn't love you, Olivia. You are unlovable. You're damaged beyond repair. You knew you were only the rebound. And you can't love someone. You just can't! The last thing we need is a repeat. No, you have to protect yourself and him. You have to protect Fitz.
Deciding to go back to work again, Liv continued with her emails. An hour later she got the alert that Fitz's plane had landed. Waiting a few minutes for a text from him, Liv saw the notification come up. 'Wish you could be here. Just landed and on the way to the hotel. Everything okay there?' she read the text. Typing out a response to him, she paused multiple times.
'Thank you for the beautiful flowers.' Backspace, backspace, backspace. 'Wish you didn't have to go.' Delete, delete, delete. 'Miss you too.' Are you crazy? Opting out of sending a worded text, she sent a thumbs up to him and put her phone down.
Fitz sat in the back of the car seeing the bubbles pop up on his phone that Olivia was typing. After seeing them appear a few times then disappear, he was a bit let down to only see a thumb up emoji from her. "For real?" Fitz asked his phone making the driver look back at him. "Sorry, text messages," he laughed. 'That's not really an answer,' he typed back. Waiting for several minutes, he could see that she had read the message but wasn't responding to it. 'Livie?' Fitz saw she read it but still no response; no bubbles to show if she was even trying to respond.
Ignoring her phone for a few hours, Olivia threw herself into her work. Getting her reports done for Fitz on the other locations across the globe, sending off emails and subpoenas for clients that needed to be done; she was keeping her head in the game of work.
"Coming up for air anytime soon?"
Hearing the voice from behind her, Olivia turned with a wide smile on her face. "Aren't you supposed to be, I don't know, in a classroom or in a court room, Cyrus?" she laughed turning her full attention to him.
"I took a few days off. No class for the week and no court room drama to deal with for two. Plus, I was told that you would be alone for a couple of days before anyone could get back to you. I thought I'd jump at the chance to get you to myself for a while; you know, when I'm not having to harass you about going to doctor's appointments or telling people secrets."
"Oh really? Just come to spend some one-on-one time with your favorite person."
"I spend enough time with my husband, who is my favorite person. Now my second favorite, yes, any chance I can. Come on, let's take you for dinner. Grab what you need, you're not coming back afterwards either."
Looking at the clock on her computer, Liv was shocked to see it was already nearly ten at night. "Guess I lost track of time."
"You were in the zone this afternoon when I stopped by several times, I didn't want to interrupt your process," he told her while he looked for her jacket. "Nice flowers."
"They're from Fitz," she sighed, grabbing her phone and purse. Great, multiple texts and calls from him. I'll deal with it later. "Let's get going."
Cyrus watched her face as she looked at the phone and caught the eye roll but chose to ignore it for now; he'd figure out what was happening later. Heading down to the parking garage, he took her in his car and headed to their favorite place.
"Really? Gettysburger? This is what you want to eat," she laughed when they pulled in.
"Better than your wine and popcorn diet."
Having just finished the first day of the seminar, Fitz changed from his shower and sat up in the hotel bed flipping through the channels. Still, he hadn't heard from Olivia. I'm not tracking her phone again. I'm not tracking her. She's fine, she's safe, she's working, she's at home, she's… she wouldn't know if I tracked her again. It's for her own good. One look just to keep my mind from wandering. No! No, I won't do it. Fitz went back and forth in his mind debating on what to do. He'd called her so many times and left multiple voicemails, but how was he to know if she saw them? What if she's not seeing them because she's laying in a ditch somewhere? Fitz slapped his head for even thinking such a thing. If you want answers, you know who you have to call. Groaning at the idea, Fitz grabbed his phone off the nightstand and opened it up. Let's just take a look. Taking his first piece of advice, Fitz opened the tracking app to see where Olivia was and shook his head seeing the sight of it and called.
"Hey son, how's Detroit?" Jerry answered on the third ring.
"So far, so good. Did I catch you at a bad time? I never know when you're up anymore," he laughed.
"All good, all good. Verna and I are just finishing up a game of chess before we head to bed. How are you? First night away from your girlfriend since you two started dating. Figure out that you miss her yet?"
"More than anything. I've been trying to get ahold of her all day. She hasn't been answering. You haven't spoke to her today, have you?"
Jerry made his move on the chess game and thought about it for a moment. "Can't say that I have. You guys get in a fight before you left? What'd you do? Tell her to not let me over while you're gone?" Jerry laughed at the idea of someone telling Olivia Pope what to do.
As much as Fitz hated that Jerry was the person Liv would turn to, he was starting to learn that she wasn't going to give that up. No matter what Fitz said, Olivia would always be able to ask Jerry for help in any circumstance. "Actually, just the opposite. She told me she loved me."
Hearing what Fitz said, he couldn't believe it. "Wait a second, wait, wait, wait. Tell me that again."
"Dad, it's not funny."
"You're damn right it's not funny. Are you serious? How? When?"
"I was getting on the plane, and she just shouted, 'I love you, Fitz'. And then she ran off. I didn't get the chance to say anything back."
Jerry almost dropped the phone in surprise. "Are you sure she said she loved you?" Pausing her move on the game to take his queen, Verna stopped and looked up at him. "You're sure she didn't say something else? Maybe she yelled she wanted olive juice? Or that she wants to go to Malibu?"
"I think my hearing is much better than that. She doesn't like olive juice and she's not a big fan of California. Why can't you believe she said it?"
"Because Livia doesn't say those words. She hasn't since…"
"Since Steven died. And now she's not answering my calls or texts. Damn I screwed up. I should have said it to her long ago. I should have said something back to her today," Fitz sighed and let his head fall back on the pillow.
Jerry could hear the disappointment in Fitz's voice but was unsure of why. "No matter what you said, whenever it was, this was at some point going to happen. Um, here," Jerry held the phone out to Verna to take, "you talk to him." Verna hesitated to take it from Jerry. She hadn't spoken to Fitz in years. And to talk to him now, mainly about Olivia, she wasn't sure this was the best option. "Talk to him so I can call Livia."
"Fitz?" Verna asked unsure if he was going to hang up or yell at her. They hadn't spoken since her breakup long ago with Jerry when Fitz was a teenager.
"Hey Verna. Where'd Dad go?"
A bit surprised that he didn't just hang up, she hoped that was a good sign that he had moved on from his anger towards her. "He went to call Liv. She hasn't answered any messages from you?"
"Not one. Does that seem… well I wouldn't say normal, but Olivia normal?"
Rubbing her temple, she laughed at his categorization. "Well Olivia normal is different than a normal I suppose. It sounds like she's inverting into herself again."
"Uh huh, for the hell of it, let's pretend that I have no idea what you're talking about," Fitz laughed. "She's doing what?"
"Sorry, I forget sometimes that not everyone understands these terms," she smiled. "Olivia, from the sounds of it, I haven't spoken to her in a… never mind." Verna had to give herself a moment to formulate how to tell Fitz what was going on without breaking Olivia's trust or confidence as her therapist. "Inverting into yourself means that she's withdrawing from you. She is protecting herself from a trauma that she's experienced that she doesn't want to relive again."
"Liv thinks that her saying she loves me is a trigger?" Fitz asked.
"I can't say for sure, for various reasons. But it could be a trigger."
Jerry sat across from her hearing the conversation between them with the house phone in hand, ready to call Liv whenever he needed to. Piecing what Verna was saying and what he knew about Liv, Jerry took the phone back from her. "She's inverting herself to protect you. Edison is still breathing. Livia's mind is telling her that if he is still alive and breathing, locked in prison as he is, there's that chance that he finds out that she loves you and he'll come looking for you too. That's the trigger."
Verna looked at Jerry, stunned that he was able to read into what she was saying completely. She nodded yes and let them continue.
"So, she's going to live her life in fear that a man in prison is somehow going to get out and kill me? She's closed off enough that she can do that? Mentally, she can handle doing that? Locking the rest of the world out?"
"Livia could convince herself that the sky is green, and the grass is blue if she really wanted to," Jerry told him. "She's pretty good at convincing herself, anyone really, of a lot of things."
Fitz sighed and thought of ways he could help her. "I need to come home. I've got to tell her that I love her and make her understand that she's safe. I don't know how to get her to answer the phone, I can't figure out where she is. She turned off her damn location!"
"You're tracking her?"
"Oh, bad idea. Very bad, don't tell her that," Verna told him. "She hated when you did that last time."
"Could you call her, dad? Maybe she'll answer for you. Put us on a three-way call at least until she answers?" Fitz asked him, sure that she would answer if Jerry was calling.
"I'll give it a shot. How do I do that though?" he laughed.
Taking the phone from him, Verna put it into a call for all three of them.
After a couple of rings, the line connected. "Hey, Jerry."
"Cyrus? What are you doing? How'd you get Livia's phone?"
