“Like a vacation?”
She shrugged.
How did she tell the people she loved that she might just be hanging it up forever? That she might be tucking tail and heading back to DC? All she knew was she hated it inDamascus, and since coming here, it had been a downward spiral.
Nothing felt real anymore.
NOTHING.
“Something like that,” she said, keeping it ambiguous and with good reason. Ethan and Gene were here inDamascus, and he wouldn’t be leaving.
His roots were here, and hers were not.
When he’d said he wanted to stay, she had not been willing to break up the family.
Now…
She wasn’t so sure.
Was it a family if she was so miserable it was eating away at her soul? Like her job also was now?
Again, he went there.
“Don’t. Do. Anything. Stupid,”he stated. “Think about everything not once, but ten times. I know you, and you’re not impulsive. Just promise me you’ll weigh it all and use that logic that keeps you intact.”
She patted his leg with her hand, and then she focused on him.
“I may need a favor.”
Oh, Jesus.
This was getting worse.
“Don’t ask me to let you walk away,” he said. “Especially alone. I can feel that in my balls. I know you, Elizabeth Renee LaRue Leonard-Whitefox-Blackhawk.”
She sighed.
“Not the full government name,” she said.
He turned her head, so she was focused on him. That was when she said one thing.
“Okay, I won’t.”
Oh, fuck.
That said it all.
She was leaving.
When this was over, she was not going to be staying here, and that threw everything up into the air. She was the one who kept the family intact.
Elizabeth was the core.
If they lost that…
“Elizabeth.”
She squeezed their linked hands.
