She walked out of the office and past Noelle, who glanced up at her with wide eyes.
“Don’t give up on her yet,” Ryan told Noelle. “You might still get a chance to do something important with her.”
Friday, October 18
It was eighteen days until election night, and Harrison had nothing to do. There was no town hall meeting, no fundraising to do. No staff meeting. Nothing.
The calm before the storm, Wallace called it. What could be done was done. And what was coming was prepared for, so Wallace gave everyone the night off.
Which was suspicious, actually. The way Wallace had been making side eyes at Noelle during the breakfast party a few weeks ago made him think his staff was out somewhere getting wasted and having sex, while he was in the small den off his bedroom writing thank-you letters and clearing out his personal email in-box.
And ignoring his wife.
You would drag me under and never even know you were doing it. That’s what Ryan had said.
And it was the truth. And it paralyzed him with self-loathing.
His father’s nonsense about putting Ryan into a position to ruin his campaign was ludicrous. She was making his campaign. Things had only been going better since she’d gotten involved, and so he just kept asking more of her. More and more and more of her.
And what did he give her in return? Media scrutiny and sleazy run-ins with his father.
Day by day, he’d been forcing her into the mud where he lived.
Down below him, he heard the creak of the couch as she got up for something to drink or to go to the bathroom. There was a constant hum of music from her laptop … she was a big fan of Maroon 5.
Occasionally he caught himself listening for her when there hadn’t been any noise for a while, wondering if she was asleep. Wondering if she was thinking about him.
That scene in the car, it haunted him. It woke him up from a sound sleep. Distracted him in the middle of meetings. The other day, standing in front of a podium at a library, he’d lost his way in his speech thinking about that sound she’d made, that whispering sigh that turned into a cry at the end when he’d slipped his fingers beneath her underwear.
Perhaps other men, with different pasts, with different parents, with different plans for his life, would be able to understand how to blur the lines they’d laid down at the beginning of this relationship.
But he didn’t. Every feeling he had felt leveraged because of that contract, felt dirty because he wasn’t supposed to feel it.
Because he was his father’s son there was something in his bloodline, something in his genetic code, that found a way to ask what he shouldn’t ask.
And it wasn’t just the sex.
It was how well she was playing her role. How perfectly she adapted. How she rose to every challenge. How she winked and flirted with all of those journalists when they’d thought she’d cower and run at their questions.
When Wallace had called her his good-luck charm, it had all been hammered home and in one fell swoop, he ended it. Because he was using her in every way.
And if he wanted to argue with himself, defend his actions by claiming to care for her, that was even worse. Because it was a lie he was telling himself.
He didn’t care for people. Not like Ryan would want to be cared for.
Loved. She would want to be loved.
And he didn’t know how to do that.
So the least he could do was try and protect her from his family.
Downstairs the floor creaked, and he shook his head clear from his thoughts and forced himself to settle back into his work.
Buried between press releases, updated schedules from weeks ago, and Wallace’s efforts to get a group of staffers to play basketball on the weekends, he found a series of emails from Ruth Corlo, mother of Michael, the boy in the kindergarten class he and Ryan had visited shortly after their marriage.
Michael had been sitting alone while Ryan read the story to the class and there had been something about the boy’s posture that he recognized, the sideways glances at the group and the stubborn set of his shoulders. He wanted to join the group of kids sitting at Ryan’s knee, but something had been holding him back. Weighing him down.
It didn’t take much to get it out of Michael; he was just a kid, after all.
Michael had told him that his dad was coming home from Iraq and his mom was scared, because the last time he’d come home all they did was yell at each other.
He’d given Mrs. Tellier his card to give to Michael’s mother. She’d emailed right away and he’d tried to answer her questions personally, but lately he’d just been too busy, so he got the acting director of VetAid to step in.
Ruth Corlo had just sent him a thank-you note for his help.
Things aren’t great, she wrote, and might not be for a long time. But they are better, thanks to you and your organization.
When he started VetAid, he’d gotten drunk on the very specific pleasure that came from seeing a need and being able to fill it.
But those moments in the campaign, after events when he and Ryan stood onstage or walked through a community center, talking to people and shaking hands and answering questions. The policy meetings with Wallace, the staff meetings, the ideas and brainstorming. The plans. They felt right on a whole different level.
And Congress, Washington, D.C., whatever trajectory followed, he couldn’t wait. His sister once told him that the work she did, the stuff in the camps, the disaster relief—she felt compelled to do it. Like she was more herself in those situations than at any other time.
That was exactly how he’d felt these last five weeks. More himself, his purpose fulfilled.
There was a scratch at the door to his den just before Ryan poked her head in.
“You busy?” she asked.
Yes, he thought, the sight of her filling him with a sort of panic. Busy ignoring her. Busy trying to pull this desire for her out by its corrupt roots.
“No, I’m not busy,” he said, pushing away from his laptop. He shoved the pile of dirty dishes on the corner of his desk behind the printer and grabbed the socks off the floor and threw them in the shadows in the corners.
“I’ve been doing some research,” she said, stepping onto a rug just inside the room. “And I am not going to go to Washington with you.”
Chapter 23
“Once you are elected, you have to go back and forth from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta a few times a year to keep everyone happy,” she continued. “But I can stay and take some psychology classes at Georgia Tech, maybe help out at the food bank …”
“And not have to suffer living with me?” He tried to make it a joke, but it didn’t come out that way and they both knew it.
The room was hushed, the moment heavy, and he didn’t know what to say about it. Or do about it.
Every time he looked at her, all he was aware of was how much he wanted her and how wrong that felt.
“That good-luck charm thing,” she said. “You know it’s not true. You’re ahead because you’re the right guy for the job. And the world knows those ads are bullshit.”
He waved it off. Painfully. Her being good luck had been true, and now it seemed he was working hard to make it untrue.
And she’d backed right off since that Monday. Choosing not to come with him on any more events unless he asked.
And then he’d stopped asking.
Why, he was not sure.
Because I want her to be beside me because she wants to be.
That sounded ridiculous; he understood that. They’d signed a contract. He was in fact paying her.
But he wanted her to want to share this with him.
See, he thought, she was right. You would drown her and not even notice.
“I was sort of thinking you wouldn’t have to suffer living with me,” she said, her eyes carefully someplace else. “You’d be able to work and I wouldn’t get in the way of anything.”
“You’re not in the way of anythi
ng.”
“Well, I’m not really in anything, am I?” She tried to make that sound like a joke, but it didn’t work. The night broke open around him, revealing all kinds of ache.
“I know you’ve stepped back from the campaign, and that’s fine, but you can come back anytime.” He stood up from his desk, stepping out of the golden pool of lamplight into the shadows by the door where she stood.
I’m sorry, he thought, remembering the morning he told her to stay home. The way she’d been unable to hide the disappointment. The hurt. She’d backed off because of him.
God, somehow this complicated relationship had gotten even more complicated.
“But isn’t this ideal?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not like we have a real marriage. Why continue pretending?”
There were a thousand answers he could give right now. Polished, political, perfect answers, the types of which he’d been giving to almost every question asked of him in the last month.
But instead he was silent. Totally silent.
Because he couldn’t stop thinking, what if we stop pretending?
What if we just stop?
“Jesus Christ, Harrison, I’ve watched you talk nearly nonstop for weeks now and the second we’re alone, you’re silent. I can’t …” She shook her head, shoved her fists into her pockets, and stared, unblinking, at the corner of his desk. “Ever since Paul destroyed my life, my sister … my whole family has made me feel like I’m good for nothing.” She sniffed and nearly smacked away the tears that had the audacity to fall from her eyes. He reached for her, but she stepped back.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t touch me. It’s the hormones. Let me just finish this.” She took a deep breath. “I think I’ve been believing them, my family, for years. Proving them right, while I pretended not to give a shit. The crappy jobs in bars, the bullshit modeling, the fucking … psychology textbooks, I collected and read like they mattered at all in my life. It was all nonsense. My life was nonsense.”
He wished he could touch her. Wished he were that man who knew how to just casually reach past the wall she’d put up, because she needed to be touched. Hugged. Comforted, the way she’d done for him over and over again. But he didn’t know how, not without her permission.
And not in the silence of his house. Not without a witness making it somehow … less real. An act. A show.
Not a gesture of his affection and care.
Fuck. I am just like my parents.
“And then you come along with this … proposal. And this campaign, and you give me this stupid little part in it—”
“Nothing about you is stupid. Nothing.”
“Everything,” she spat. “Everything about me has been stupid. Because I started to believe that maybe I could be a part of this thing you’re building. And maybe I could build something of my own, too. With school and the food bank. And you. And then, God, Harrison, the sex …” Her eyes, wet and wild, met his. “It’s been four years since I’ve let anyone touch me. Four years. And I didn’t have sex with you lightly. Not in New York and not here. Then … I don’t know what happened, Harrison. You said you didn’t agree with your dad, that you don’t think I could poison the campaign.”
“I don’t agree with him!”
“Then why did you push me away? For God’s sake, I’m being as honest as I can be; at least try to do the same.”
Honest. Fine. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Take advantage of me?” she cried. “This is a job, Harrison. You are paying me to smile and wave and talk to the press.”
“But we had a contract about the sex.”
“I could have said no. I would have if I wanted to. I’m not your servant or a kid you picked up off the streets. I’m not scared of you or impressed by your money. I want you, Harrison, just you. You have an overinflated sense of your power if you think you’re taking advantage of me. You can’t take from me what I don’t want to give.”
I want you, Harrison, just you.
He had no idea what to say to those words. How to process them.
Once when he was young, and his parents were filming a radio spot with his whole family, Harrison had gotten a cold and lost his voice and his mother had done a casting call to replace him.
It was ridiculous to remember that now, but there it was.
“Who was Heidi to you?” she asked.
The world went still. Soundless.
“Harrison?”
“Is that what my father was talking to you about?”
“He said I wasn’t the first woman to try to con you. She was the girl in the car crash?”
He turned away from her, back to the desk, that safe island of thank-you notes and emails, but she grabbed his elbow. She grabbed him, pulling him back to her. “How do you know about that?” He finally found his voice.
“My brother sent me some information about your family when we got married, just so I would know what I was walking into, and then, later, I was able to put it together.”
“Did it say she was pregnant?”
“No,” she gasped. She still held onto him, her fingers stroking the weave of his shirtsleeve, like she was petting him. He wondered if she even knew she was doing that. “Tell me.”
“Heidi was a twenty-five-year-old intern from Iowa during Dad’s vice-presidential campaign. She was bright and beautiful. Ambitious. Very ambitious.”
“You think she slept with your dad to get ahead?”
“She slept with me to get ahead.”
Her mouth fell open and he reached out; with his thumb against her skin, he tilted her mouth closed. Her hand at his elbow, his fingers at her cheek—the little points of contact that were somehow paramount, somehow keeping him on his feet.
“I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Harrison,” she sighed, the word, her eyes, her whole body saturated with sympathy.
“It’s okay,” he said. Though it wasn’t really. Like a wound that never saw sunlight or fresh air, it just kind of festered, hidden away. He remembered the pain of realizing he was being used as if it were ten minutes ago. “I’m not the first twenty-two-year-old kid who thought he was falling in love.”
“Doesn’t make it any less awful.”
“True. It was awful.”
“What happened?”
“I met Heidi her first week on staff. We went on a date a week later and not long after that, we had sex for the first time. I didn’t want anyone to know about it; I thought I’d get in trouble. So we were hot and heavy for about two months, and I brought her to the house a few times under the guise of work. In hindsight, I should have seen it. The way she was always angling for my dad, but … I don’t know, I was young and stupid and I wanted to believe she wanted me for me. After a while she stopped returning my calls and she got harder to pin down about seeing each other. And then the rumors started about her and Dad. I didn’t believe it, but then Dad and Heidi got in the car accident and they both lived, but she had a miscarriage.”
“Did you think the baby was yours?”
“I absolutely did. I was … I was totally devastated. But then I overheard my parents fighting at the hospital, and Heidi was only one month along, so the baby couldn’t have been mine—we hadn’t had sex in months. And then Dad … Dad confessed to the whole affair. My mother said she’d take care of it and as soon as Heidi could travel, she was gone.”
“All that were left were rumors?”
“There were always rumors about my dad. About women and drinking and corruption, but I never believed them. When I was younger, my dad walked on water, but once I saw what happened with Heidi, I could never look at him the same way.”
“Heidi was far from innocent.”
“That doesn’t make the way my family dealt with it any better, does it? She’d miscarried, nearly died, and my mom gave her money, doped her up, had her sign a confidentiality agreement and then sent her away. I mean, I thought the whole point was to hold ourselves to a bette
r standard. She was an employee and half his age. The power dynamics of it all are totally skewed.”
“I’m not Heidi.”
“I know you’re not.”
“No. I don’t think you do. I’m not Heidi angling after the family dynasty. And I’m not Heidi getting used and discarded, either.”
He turned away, because he really didn’t believe that. There were a thousand forks in the road between them—different ways things could pan out. And almost all of them involved her getting set aside with a bunch of cash once she’d served her purpose.
Unless I can convince her to stay, he thought, but he knew that everything he’d done toward her, every hot-and-cold moment, only alienated her further. Pushed her to this point—of proposing separate lives. Separate homes.
“This explains a lot about how you reacted to my being pregnant.”
“I’m sorry for that,” he said, turning back to her. “For the way I acted in your apartment.”
“That’s why you wanted to marry me,” she said. “The thing you said about making your father’s mistakes.”
Her fingers were still touching him, and he knew, he really did, that he should step away, break the connection, but he didn’t want that. He didn’t want that at all.
He wanted more connection.
Like a dog begging for more affection, he pressed harder into her hand.
It was odd how little he knew about her, how narrow their association was. For instance, he didn’t know what her face looked like in sunlight until that first press conference (beautiful, was the answer); he didn’t know what she liked on her tacos, what she took in her coffee. He didn’t know if she had nightmares or remembered her dreams at all.
She’d slept on her stomach that night at the hotel, her hair a curtain he’d lifted with his fingers so he could watch her for a few moments longer before leaving.
But he knew that she was fierce. Loyal. Proud. Funny. Smart. In some ways smarter than him and Wallace, with all their degrees and experience.
If he reached forward—just a little, not even a full extension of his arm—he’d touch that big button. The body beneath it.
Indecent Proposal (Boys of Bishop) Page 24