Leo sat heavily at his desk. His right cheekbone throbbed and his eye was already swelling shut, but the pain in his heart was much stronger than its physical counterpart. Somehow he had known that it would come to this. All those years ago when he'd begged and pleaded with Abbey not to tell Jed what he had done to her he had known exactly what kind of action he was trying to prevent. It was the reaction that he had gotten tonight. For a long time he had believed that Jed would never have to know about that sordid night, that he would never have to find out about the attraction he felt for Abbey. These past couple of years had proved him wrong on that front, and with his feelings becoming stronger and more difficult to hide he had known that it was only a matter of time before somebody saw something they shouldn't. The only shocker in this whole mess was that everything had blown up in his face thanks to a picture taken so long ago, not due to Jed catching him watching Abbey with his heart on his sleeve.

"Leo," Toby poked his head in, "I knocked but…" he was stopped short when he saw Leo's bruised cheekbone and swollen eye. "What happened?"

"Nothing, " Leo scowled with embarrassment. "I walked into the corner of my door."

"You'll have to come up with something better than that."

"What?"

"You didn't walk into a door. The President did that to you, didn't he?"

"Toby" Leo's tone warned him not to continue.

"I saw him storm out of here." Toby rarely heeded warnings. " He was so angry he punched the wall in the hall. This has something to do with the picture, doesn't it?"

"Christ, does everyone know about that damned picture," Leo groaned.

"Just me and CJ, and Danny of course. He's the one who gave it to CJ. I can't believe it, Leo. You and Mrs. Bartlet." He gave a low astonished whistle, "How----"

"You leave Abbey out of this," Leo flashed protectively. "There was NO me and Mrs. Bartlet. There was me WANTING Mrs. Bartlet and trying to take what I wanted but that kiss was all my doing. You need to make sure that Danny knows that. I don't want that picture getting out and hurting her. Oh Jesus, Toby, I never meant to hurt her."

Toby stood stunned as he watched Leo's eyes fill with tears. This was completely out of his realm of expertise. Any show of excessive emotion made him squirm with discomfort. Without a word he turned and opened the office door. Just as he had expected CJ was standing there with her ear pressed to the door. She too had seen the President's hasty, angry departure.

"Get in here" he mouthed. CJ shook her head negatively and tried to back away but Toby grabbed her arm and yanked her in the room. "Leo needs to talk, don't you Leo?"

Leo looked up at the two staffers standing in his office. They were the two people he knew had been, on some level, on to his attraction to Abbey. Two people he trusted not to let his story outside these four walls. It had been so long and so hard to keep this secret that it would be nice to finally unburden himself. He had meant to explain just what happened that night between he and Abbey so CJ could pass it on to Danny, but once he started talking he found himself telling them the entire story of his infatuation and love for his best friends wife.

"You fell in love with her the moment you met her at South Station?" Toby asked with awe.

"No. It wasn't love then. It was infatuation, pure and simple. She was so different from what I expected. I don't know how to explain it except to say that she really was this free spirited kind of beauty, you know, sort of all lit up inside. I think it was because she was completely head over heels for Jed. They were something to see all right. I remember watching them with a kind of awe. The chemistry between them was almost touchable. They laughed and teased each other; they finished each other's sentences. They were both so damned smart; they could talk and argue about almost anything and they did it with such passion and conviction. I envied Jed, Abbey, from that moment on, but I don't think I fell in love with her until I stayed with them in London."

"You stayed with them?" CJ asked surprised.

"Yeah, a few months after they got married. I was in the navy and I was sent to France for some special training before going to Vietnam. I had a weeks leave so I flew to Europe early so I could spend some time with them in England before I shipped out to France. Abbey was about seven months pregnant. I had flown out to London with Jed and his brother Jon before he married Abbey so he could find an apartment for them. He was starting at the LSE just a couple months after the wedding and he wanted to make sure they were settled in before school started. You have to remember that London in the swinging 60's and early 70's was THE place to be and apartments didn't come cheap. Jed was pretty disappointed when he realized what he and Abbey were going to be able to afford if he wanted to preserve his trust fund for their future. When he figured out that he wasn't going to be able to keep Abbey in the style that she was accustomed to living in or that he was for that matter, his one criterion became that we find a place near the water. Abbey loves the water. Let me tell you, we searched high and low for just the perfect home. We finally found a place that he could afford across the street from Battersea Park, just over the Albert Bridge from Chelsea. It was a big old Victorian and to the left it had a view of the Thames and the Albert Bridge and across the street the park was spread out with woods and fields and a boating lake.

"Sounds pretty posh for not being able to afford much." Toby lifted a skeptical eye.

"Well, now it is. But back then Battersea was pretty run down. It was full of pensioners and students. The apartment itself was horrible. It was on the third floor, very dark and dingy with stained walls and floors. It had a tiny kitchenette and they had to share a bathroom with the two other tenants on the third floor, but Jed fell in love with the romance of the view and he knew that Abbey would too. Anyway, after seeing the apartment that way, you could have knocked me over when I showed up there just over four months later. Abbey had turned that dark, dismal place into a warm, comfortable home. She had painted the walls a bright cheerful yellow and covered them with colorful art prints and family photos. She covered the second hand furniture they had found with matching slipcovers, and re-stained or painted the old chipped wood tables and chairs. She found some braided carpets to cover the stained, faded wood floors and she filled the whole place with vases of fresh cut flowers. I never would have realized that it was the same place. They were so happy there. I mean I suppose that's true of any newlyweds but it was especially true with them."

"It must have been really hard for you being around them when they were newlyweds." "It was. They were incredibly affectionate with each other and not ashamed to show it."

"Well, that hasn't changed." Toby's deadpanned.

"No, it hasn't. A lot hasn't changed about them. I have never seen two people so happy just to be together. Abbey was working at an antiquarian bookstore on Cecil Court, not all that far from the LSE and rather than studying at the school library or at home, Jed would stop at the bookstore and sit in front of the fireplace to study and wait until Abbey's shift was over. That way they could go home together. He was very protective of her, I think even more so because she was pregnant."

"Well, you've just given us a very clear picture of your visit to London, but what has that got to do with you falling in love with Mrs.Bartlet. Did you really lust over a woman who was almost seven months pregnant?"

Leo stopped for a moment, not sure if he could convey how he had felt. His feelings for Abbey were so complex and so mixed up with the envy he felt toward Jed; sometimes they even confused him. "I guess what I was trying to tell you with this story is that London was where my feelings for Abbey changed from merely wondering what it would be like to sleep with her, to what it would be like to have a woman like her love me, and not just because she was so damn pretty. Her intellect actually matched Jed's. I remember shaking my head in bafflement at some of the obscure references they made to authors they had read and how much I enjoyed watching her go off on some political diatribe. Yet, there was also a softness to her. She was about to become a mother, which at that moment was what her world was truly centered on. She has always been so strong minded and opinionated but also as feminine as hell. I remember her saying once that being a feminist was supposed to glorify being a woman so why did some ultra feminists try to take away what made a woman a woman, what made her different from a man. Abbey may have wanted to make her way in a man's world but she loved being a woman. It never fazed her to spout off feminist rhetoric while wearing a tight mini skirt and those high heels she has always loved. I've always found that confident pride she takes in being a woman as sexy as hell. Then of course there was the amazing change in Jed. Here was a guy who, because of his upbringing, had kept the passionate side of his nature hidden. I don't just mean sexual passion; I mean his passion for knowledge, his passion for imparting his knowledge and debating what he believed to be true, his passion for life in general, and his affectionate passion as well. Abbey brought that all out. She drew out that side of Jed he had tried so hard to hide and it was if he was getting a whole new lease on life, like a dam had burst and suddenly he could be who he was supposed to be. He became very involved in political rallies and helped tutor kids in the East End. He held Abbey's hand or the small of her back wherever they went and for a man that I never heard say I love you until he met Abbey, he sure was saying it all the time now. They used to sit at night snuggled up together under a quilt in front of the heater and read. Abbey was always stroking Jed's arm or running her fingers through his hair and his hand was always anchored to her belly waiting for their baby to move. When she did he would get this soft, proud, loving smile on his face and Abbey's hand would move to cover his so that together they could stroke their unborn child. It was very moving and sometimes so intimate that I would feel out of place. I remember the first time that Abbey let me feel the baby move inside her. It was amazing to me and yet it also seemed kind of forbidden, like I didn't have a right to share that with her. I think I have felt that way on and off for the rest of my life, always on the outside looking in, watching them dancing, or kissing or listening to their soft laughter coming from the bedroom."

"You felt this way even when you were married to Jenny?" CJ asked with astonishment.

"Yes," Leo admitted, "there were times that I still felt that way even after I was married. I loved Jenny, don't get me wrong, but we never had the kind of marriage that Jed and Abbey had. Ours was more old fashioned. The only time Jenny worked was when she was putting me through law school, then I joined the firm and she had Mallory. I became the breadwinner, a big shot Wall Street lawyer, and Jenny stayed home with Mal and she had her charities. We were husband and wife but we were never best friends." Leo left out the fact that Jenny lacked Abbey's easy sexuality or affectionate nature and he really missed that in his marriage. "We didn't see Jed and Abbey often, they lived a different sort of life up in rural New England than we did in Manhattan. I was busy trying to make as much money as I could so someday I could buy my way to get what I wanted while he was teaching and she was saving lives."

"Leo, there is nothing wrong with making money. You lived the American dream and you've given plenty back, you shouldn't be ashamed. The President never really had to worry about making money, at least not the way you did."

"Maybe not, but I still felt that way. Here I was working 16 hour days, getting home after my daughter and my wife were already asleep and I would visit them and they were packing up all three kids to go off to Nicaragua and help earthquake victims or something. Anyway, my feelings were still there on the rare occasions that we would see them but it wasn't like I was obsessed or anything. I didn't dwell on them and I could go months without even thinking about Abbey, that is until I would see her again and that old pull would come back."

"All those years you had those feelings and Abbey never knew?" Toby asked.

"Not until I acted on them. By the end of the 80's into the beginning of the 90's my drinking had gotten totally out of control. I got drunk one night at a DNC fundraiser and I made a pretty heavy pass at Abbey. I told her how I felt about her and how much I wanted her. That is what you saw in the picture that Danny gave you. I scared her. You don't know how much I regret that, I mean I regret it all but especially that I did that to her knowing what she had been through. What you didn't see was Abbey hauling off and smacking me across the ace. She was furious with me, as she had every right to be. I had betrayed her and I had betrayed Jed." He gave a tired sigh and rubbed his weary good eye

"And she never told the President?" CJ asked.

" I begged her not to. I promised to go into rehab and I did."

"And the President never knew?"

"Not until you showed him the picture. Now he knows."

"And he didn't take it well."

"What do you think?" He sarcastically asked as he turned his face to give them a better look at his right eye, which was by now swollen shut. "Those Bartlet's both have one hell of a right hook."

"The President has to know that you can't help how you feel, " CJ said.

"It doesn't matter. I think he would have gotten over the fact that I had kept my feelings a secret if I hadn't made that pass at her, or if I weren't still in love with her."

"You were drunk, you didn't know what you were doing." CJ tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Leo could see that Toby was not buying it.

"Oh, I knew what I was doing. My inhibitions were lowered, yes, but I knew what I was doing and that night I just wanted so badly to have what I had been dreaming about that I threw all caution into the wind. He won't forgive me this. You don't know what he went through after Abbey's rape, I do, and he knows that I do. He won't forgive me."

"Of course he will," CJ rubbed his arm comfortingly. "It may take him a little while but he has to forgive you, you're his chief of staff."

"Not for very much longer."

"What?" CJ's face fell.

"I have a feeling that he is mulling over firing me as we speak."

* * * *

Very early the next morning Jed sat at his desk in the Oval Office. He hadn't gotten much sleep and was already in a foul mood as he grappled with what to do about Leo. His first instinct had been to fire him; he wanted to fire him. Right now he couldn't stand the thought of seeing his face. Abbey had continued to plead with him to think his actions through asking him to wait at least until after Easter to do anything. It was not the sentiment of the holiday that had given him pause; it was her following argument that he would need Leo next week at the summit in Finland. He sat staring at the walls of the Oval Office willing himself to think as the President and not as Jed Bartlet. That was never an easy task and even harder right now, especially when he knew what conclusion that he had to come to. Leo had betrayed his friendship. He had not betrayed his job, he had not betrayed his country and he had not betrayed his President. As President he needed to do what was best for his country and right now what was best would be to keep Leo as his right hand man, at least until after the summit. It was a decision that was leaving a decidedly bad taste in his mouth.

Josh had arrived early at his office. It was going to be another busy day. The President was doing several satellite feeds from the Oval Office and he and Sam were going to be busy preparing for the summit with the Russian President. However, before he even made it into his office, Donna stopped him to tell him that Leo wanted to speak with him ASAP. Josh made his way down the hall, gave a couple knocks, and entered his boss's office. He nearly dropped his coffee when he saw Leo's black eye.

"Whoa Leo, where'd you get the shiner?" he asked with a low whistle.

"The President punched him," Toby said bluntly.

Josh gave a snort of laughter then realized neither man was smiling and quickly sobered. "You're serious?" He was stunned. "What did you do, make a pass at Mrs. B?" The response to his joke brought silence and guilty looks. "Oh my GOD, you did!" Josh's voice was unnaturally high pitched.

"I want you to be prepared to take over my position." Leo told him.

"Why would I be taking over your position?"

"Because I'm going in to see the President and if by some miracle he doesn't fire me, I'm going to offer my resignation."

TBC...