Ivan went to the small kitchenette and grabbed a bag of ice for his face to give them some privacy, and Uriel accompanied him.
As soon as they were alone, Corbin shared.
“It caught me off guard. I was working with Alex, and I smelled him.”
Elizabeth lifted a brow.
“You smelled him?”
Gene set him free, and they walked him to the couch where he could sit down.
“You might need to explain that one, Corbin. I’m trying to figure this one out.”
“His cologne. It’s the same as my dead husband’s. It set me off, and it was downhill from there. We got back to the room, and I needed a nap. We ran hard this last week…”
She reassured him.
“Corbin, it’s okay. If you needed a nap, and you finished the assignments you were given, your downtime is your downtime,” she offered, refusing to bust his ass.
There was just no need to do that.
She trusted the people they worked with, and who were on her team. She’d just busted Axelle’s balls over that, so she wasn’t going to be a hypocrite.
Gene ran his hand up and down his back as he sat beside him.
“I just got pulled under in the dream. It was Will. It was again, horrible.”
Gene was curious.
“Did you find him dead again?” he asked, knowing that was a common occurrence with Corbin.
He shook his head.
“Worse. It was one of the nights before he died. I came home from work, and we had sex, only, we didn’t this time. We revisited our wedding in Puerto Rico. I wanted to wake up, but he kept telling me that this was fate, but how could my misery and destruction be fate?”
Gene let him talk.
Corbin needed to get it off of his chest.
“I couldn’t accept that. At the end, he was telling me I had to move on, like it’s that easy. It’s not. Losing someone who is your soulmate is crushing.”
No one there could attest to that.
But they still saw it happening a lot in life.
Yeah, Gene lost Ethan, but not to death. Preston was someone he loved deeply, but he wasn’t his soulmate.
Elizabeth had lost Chris, but they were back together after a few years. Death didn’t take him. One day, she knew she’d have to live through that, but that was tomorrow Elizabeth’s issue.
Even Callen understood.
He’d lost Desdemona, but she hadn’t been the love of his life. Losing Chris, Ethan, Elizabeth, or even Gene would be traumatizing.
One day, there would only be one of them left, and that would be a fate worse than death.
“How do you move on?” he asked. “If someone could just snap their fingers and do it, they would.”
Elizabeth had to go there so she could find a way to help the man.
