Page 315 of Affair
No.
Matter.
What.
She heard him admit they started a relationship, and now the man was bailing.
“You want to leave him behind?” she asked, getting angry. The doctor crossed a line, and now he was bailing on the man?
On Gamble?
Poe was honest.
“I have to go back to handle my parent’s estate and the mess there. I’m going to be under scrutiny. Gamble is a ghost. He’ll never want to live that life. I have nothing to give him, Elizabeth,” he said, the tears coming. “I love him so much, and I know I shouldn’t have fallen in love with him, but my heart…”
She stopped getting angry.
In that moment, she saw it wasn’t a fuck and run. It was a man who was trapped between two worlds.
Love and duty.
Oh, she’d been there and fought that for a very long time herself.
She believed that he wasn’t leaving to abandon Gamble, and it hadn’t been a fling.
As for what he was saying, Poe was making a valid point.
“Shouldn’t Gamble be able to make that decision?” she asked. “Maybe he would…”
He stopped her.
“I did you a favor taking him on, and shuttering my business. You asked me for a favor, and now, I’m going to ask you for one.”
Well, she didn’t expect that.
“What?” she asked.
“I need you to get me back home. I need to do this. My whole family has been wiped out, and I am it. I’m the last Seville heir. I have to go. I don’t want to, but duty...”
She worked with Marines.
Elizabeth of all people understood duty, and she knew she needed to warn him.
“This will hurt him. He’s going to feel abandoned by you.”
Poe touched her leg.
“Being scrutinized, in every tabloid as my gay lover, and being outed will hurt far more. I know. I ran from that life for a reason. I’m the Seville that was an embarrassment, but now that my whole family is gone, I have to take over.”
She knew she wouldn’t change his mind.
This was a dead end.
The man was mourning, and everyone was entitled to that time to heal after losing a parent. When Charlie died, she left the FBI and headed home to hide out for a year. She understood that pain.
“Okay, Doctor. I can have one of my Marines get you on a flight to England.”
He needed one more thing.
